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funtarou · 3 years

Text

Wishes || Kuroo x Reader

The Second Part of "Plans" || Kuroo x Reader" fic

Second part is here and I hope it's decent or maybe satisfying enough. Like wise, I'm rusty and still trying to regain my writing zone. Also I haven't throughly slowly proof-read this so-- Also also ya know, like wise, how I depict Kuroo has no guarantee that it's the actual Canon Kuroo, ya know. But I'm tryna get a bit close-

Story Warning: Angst, Comfort/hurt?, Human emotions are weird okay. There's one Sexual action but not described specifically. Still just incase, 13 year old below minors do not interact.

Writing Warning: Bad English grammar and possible spelling mistakes and wrong use of words. English is not my first language and I'm still tryna get back in writing groove.

Read part 1 here

Kuroo Tetsurou never expect such a dirty play from life. He though all of the dark side in life for him has already ran out the moment his mom stormed out of their house when he was a kid. He though it was already enough the moment he heard his own older sister said she doesn't want anything to do with him. He though it was satisfying enough for life to see him bid farewell to his friends back at his old neightbourhood. Maybe he's still naive to think that he won't be affected by any games life would play him after the things he need to went through in his early childhood. Even after it already forced him to think more maturely in a young age, and developed a sort of social anxiety in those younger days, there just seems to be more and more things life had planned for him.

But after witnessing a near-death experience, Your near death experience, he wish life would let him off the Hook. Because it was just too much.

It has been 96 hours since you were hit by the bastard with the car who drives away the next second. And despite already being treated, you still haven't wake up. The doctor said you'll be fine despite the injuries, but might experience headaches when waking up. But on the matter of when, it was still uncertain. For now it's best to let you rest, let your brain process the shock from the hit.

96 hours, and Kuroo still stays by your side. Only leaving on occasion to get some supplies he needs to stay at your hospital room. He hasn't attend his classes for the past four days yet, but has someone he's on good-terms with (and has the same classes as him) to give him notes and stuff that was taught at those classes. Kenma occasionally stopped by to give him food and check up on your condition too. A few of your friends and family also came for the same reason for the past four days.

Even though his heart ache and yearns for you to open your eyes, to know for sure that you'll be okay, he always tries to maintained a cold head. Despite the lingering fear that stays at the back of his head and the image of your frail body being hit and thrown to the side of the road, he put up a strong front. to himself and to the people around him. He has been focusing on his studies despite not present in classes, still maintaining a proper diet and sleep schedule. Acting normal, and trying to think everything is fine now that he knew you're treated and is going to be okay. He cant just go in deep depresso espresso mode now while you're unconcious. Because he knew you'd be upset if you wake up and found out he hasn't been taking care of himself. Another thing he always keep in mind is, that he cant let this bump in life ruined his plans. Not to mention he's nearing graduation if he Ace his essays and IP. He can get a job soon, a well-paid one if he works hard enough. Soon enough he can buy you the things you always dream of getting ever since highschool. He can already imagined the beaming in your eyes when he give it to you, one day.

Yeah. This is just a bump in life. Everyone Will eventually experience it at Times. Nothing is perfect, but that doesn't mean he cant stop trying to reach his future plans with you.

As Kuroo was typing on his laptop, sitting beside your bed with one hand on top of your hand, he sensed a sudden movement. His eyes quickly shot up from the device to your laying figure. He stays quiet for a few seconds, that is before he can feel the sudden broken movements of your fingers in his once again. He stand up, putting the laptop aside before putting another hand on your hand that had moved. Eyes slightly wide in anticipation for your own to open.

"... (Y/n)?"

He whispered, not wanting to startle you. The movement on your hand in his owns slowly became stronger, until it managed to lightly close in to a half fist and open again. Your eyelids trembles lightly, making an effort to open. But when it does, your orbs slowly land on him. He cant help himself, as he feels his vision getting blurry with the unintentional tears gathering up.

"Hey love... How are you feeling...?"

He softly and slowly questions, letting you process your conditions as he notices your eyes roaming around as if trying to understand where you are. And then he sees your eyes roaming at his figure, at your conjoined hands. And for some reason, the way your eyes looked at him, the way it moved as if analyzing him and the way your hand slightly shifted in his soft grip, gave him a bad feeling under the relief.

And it seems like Kuroo's gut feeling has always been spot on. For the words you weakly utter next Made his heart drop.

"... W-Who... Who are you...?"

And he wish you were pranking him at that moment.

2 years since the incident.

The day when you woke up, Kuroo called the doctors to check up on you. After going through some tests, the doctor concluded that the impact and shock from the accident Made you lost a big part of your memories. Your family was called the same day to received the information.

Ever since that day, Kuroo has been trying to rush your memories back. He's taking it slow, not wanting to pressure you and the recovery of your memories. He's been really supportive and optimis on making you remember your family, your friends, your life style, hobbies, and him. Gladly you still remember and can manage most of the things you learned at your major, and you returned back to campus a few days after you woke up. Now you've successfully graduated with an average but good scores. Yet due to not remembering your passion, you're not quiet sure what career you want to take, up until now. You've only been doing part-time jobs and online shops. Everything still feels unfamiliar to your head, yet strangely familiar in your chest.

After getting out of the hospital, You agreed on still staying with Kuroo at your shared apartment. Kuroo also persuaded your family that it might make you remember faster on your latest life style. And in a way, he has a point. Most of the stuffs you supposely enjoy and most of the things you use in your routines is in the apartment. The things back at your family house are the old things you didn't use and left when you moved out for college. In the end you spend those two years living in the same roof with him, someone who people told you is your lover of some years now.

For the past 2 years also, Kuroo tried giving you your space. He restrict himself from kissing you everytime he sees you. He tries to hold back on smushing you againts his chest. He lets you choose where you wanted to sleep, either it be the guest room or your shared bedroom. If you're not comfortable with him hugging you, like how you two used to do everyday, he'll make a distance from your side of the bed or sleep on another place. Through those Times, be tries to done the deeds on his own, not with anyone else, without you knowing too. It's been hard for him to locked up all of his swelling feelings and affections for you, yet he doesn't want to overwhelmed you. Not until you remember him, or maybe, developed the same compassion feelings for him as your new self.

But it seems like you've caughed on his hidden desperation for you. And if there's a side of you that stays, it's your need to return the favor he has been giving you. Afterall, he's the most supportive person you've met ever since you woke up. The one who let you stay at the apartment despite not remembering him, the one that pays for all your need with his new found job, the one that's with you through the twisted road for you to remember the people you love and cherished. And so that night, you confronted him.

"Please let me help, Kuroo."

Despite the sting in his heart when hearing you call him with his last name, he cant hold himself back. Afterall, saying no to you feels so heavy for him to do.

You felt familiar under his touch, under his warmth. And whatever he did to your body, you always response accordingly. He knew every parts of your body, every beauty and insecurities. He knew what to do, because before the incident it's not like you two were playing holy-boy holy-girl in your relationship.

There's this momenterally serotonin he felt when being connected with you once again. Seeing your raw emotions of pleasure and your body doing the talking. It feels like everything was back like how it was. Everything was normal, back when you would know every part of him as much as he does, back when you utter the words of love as much as he does. But, he described the feeling as "momenterally" for a reason.

You two spend the night, cuddled againts each other, or could also be said him pulling you close out of habbit. But after experiencing one of the world's pleasure with you again, he really just need to be slapped with a sour something.

"Kuroo... I don't think I could keep pretending..."

Because deep in your heart, Kuroo Tetsurou is still a stranger in your foggy head. To your old self, your old memories, he would be the man of your dreams, the man you wish would spend forever with you. But now everything is different. You tried to find that passion within you for him, it's not like it's that hard because he was an attractive man. Despite all that, you come to realized it feels wrong. You knew, you've been knowing of how he loves you with all his beings and existence, while you only stays and manifested your love for him through a facade and a form of "Pity" for his desperate heart. It fills your chest with aching guilt, feeling as if you're using him at his more vulnurable mental and emotional state.

One could say you utter your next words on panic and quite irrantional thinking. Yet it felt right at the back of your head, to let him break free from the past. To let yourself break free. Because your little heart cant keep this game much longer.

Yet, He wish you would for a little longer.

4 years passed by.

The whispering noises of the audiences are audible through the whole building. Some excited whispers, some casual talks. They're all waiting for you, not to mention the spiky haired JVA member.

His head hang low, looking down at the ground. Hands remains restless, patting his neat suit here and there and occasionally being put in his pant's socket. Beside him was Kenma, putting a hand behind his back and soothing his best friend.

Minutes passed by, and finally the slow music started playing, silently announcing to the people in the building of your soon arrival. The flower girl appeared from the door first, your nephew dressed In beautiful frilly white dress with flowers decorating. Her Tiny hands throwing the pastel mix colored petals as she skipped her way down the aisle. Some of your relatives coo'ed at her cute attics while throwing the flowers. And then when your form is visible In the room, all eyes are on you. Dolled up beautifully in your long white wedding attire, a thin veil lightly covering your face. You walked down the aisle, a family member holding one of your arm, accompanying you to your soon to be husband.

If someone were to ask what Kuroo Tetsurou though Angels looked like, he would describe this scene in front of him.

The scene was beautiful and breath-taking to Kuroo's eyes. Even Kenma can hear his tall friend's breath hitching for a second when his eyes land on you. Your face moved up, eyes locking at Kuroo's cat like ones as if on instinct. You two starred for a few seconds, before a small smile softly tugged at the edge of your glossed lips. But after that smile, you turned your head and tore your gaze away from his.

A drop of tear unconciously traveled down his face. Followed by another from his other eye, and then followed by a few more soon after. He's silently crying, holding on a sob as his hands formed in a fist shakingly. Kenma of cource notices this, as he glanced to his tall friend beside him. But he was unsure of what to do himself that can comfort his best friend, and so he continued rubbing (hopefully) comforting circles behind the taller male's back.

Afterall, Kenma doesn't think he's in a much better emotional state than Kuroo at this moment either. Where Kuroo cried on his realization of fully loosing you to another, Kenma hold tears of his mix emotions. Kenma's happy for you and your soon to be husband, but he cant help but sympathize with Kuroo. Afterall he's the only guy that has seen and hear you two go through all the hard and happy Times. It's always you three since grade school. Even though you and Kuroo formed a romantic relationship Along the way, you two never left Kenma behind and Kenma never stop supporting you two. And at this moment, Kenma is unsure how to feel with the whole ordeal. He wanted his best friend back together like before, but he doesn't want to force you in to it, not when you forgot all those happy and sad Times you three experienced together.

And as you reached the end of the aisle, a hand awaited to take yours in. A hand that was not Kuroo's, but someone whom he atleast knew at one point in life. Osamu Miya. The man you met and developed deep feelings for, after you left him back in Tokyo.

Kuroo thinks you're being subconciously quiet mercifull for him. If you were to marry someone you and him knew for years, it would be more painful for him to try and mask his sadness with a smiling face in false supportive-ness. And as he sat there in silent tears, he watch and listens to you ex-changing vows with the Kansai man you've chosen to plan your new future with.

He wish it was him again. He wish he has that privilages to be a part of your future again.

Afterall he already planned everything beforehand.

As Osamu slipped the gold ring through your delicate finger, Kuroo's mind went back to a few days a go. Where he had found a neatly wrapped letter in his mailbox. He wished he didn't come when you had sent him a wedding invitation. But years of not seeing you nor ex-changing much conversation through text, could add to the factor on how desperate he is to remain in contact with you. Even after years, He's not used to being so far away like this yet.

His cat like eyes bore on to the piece of decorated paper.

How he wish it was his name written there beside yours.

5 years has passed by since the wedding.

After the ceremony Kuroo only greeted a few familiar faces and then silently leave with Kenma. For some reason Kuroo doesn't have it in him to face you, nor say his congratulations for you. He doesn't feel like tugging a smile for you at all that day. He hoped you didn't dechiper his emotionless face as something bad.

Now he's sitting in quietly, looking at the stars above him. Behind him can be seen a wooden cabin he had rent for a small nature trip, by himself. He thinks maybe he needs it, to atleast distract himself from the though of you. Honestly the first thing that dragged him to nature and disconnect with technology, is when he sees a picture being posted by Osamu Miya and shared by Atsumu on his social account. A picture of you and your 3 year old daughter with Osamu, smiling happily as it seems the three of you are eating at Onigiri Miya.

But for some reason, having his time within the fresh air of the mountains and therapeutic noises of the forest surrounding him, only Made his thoughs Drifts further on you. He though that your love is truly for him. He though that maybe he does deserve "forever". Maybe he shouldn't expect so much back then. There was never been a perfect love story from the beginning and he should've seen it coming. Even if all the odds around him seems to lead him on thinking "yes you two are meant together", maybe it's just another one of life's trial. He kept thinking like that through the 5 years.

Crouching down, Kuroo grabbed a small gasoline can that was placed beside his leg. He walked further to the wild, the backyard of the cabin, nearing a cliff where in the morning the breath-taking view of the waterfall and field can be seen. From his inside jacket pocket, he pulled out a paper file. When opening the file, it can be seen there are several papers within it and one quiet thick handmake-shift book.

He took a seat on the dirt, not minding some dust getting on his already dirty pants from the previous hike he had. One by one, his eyes wander off through the pieces of paper in the file, reading his small writings on it before dropping it to the ground in front of him. Until all the paper has been read lightly and dropped on the ground, he moved to the book. He only ever took the moment to fully and slowly read the words on the first date of the book. The date where he finally mustered the courage to confess his long-time feelings for you, and the date where he found out you also felt the same. Felt.

He schemed through the rest of the page, rather carelessly. Because he knew if he ever took the time to read each and every single plans he had for you and him, he would spend the rest of the night in tears. Heck maybe he couldn't even sleep seeing how many he wrote in the past.

Finally he reached the last page with his writings on it. His saving plans to buy you a ring. His written plan of how he was going to pull one of the best proposal action, only for you. Seems like all of that is for nothing now.

Kuroo closed the book, dropping it down with the other papers on the dirty ground. Standing up, he stretched his limbs lightly before moving to grab and open the gasoline can. Pouring all over the papers and book, not leaving any surfaces untouched, until all the papers are nicely soaked. After he emptied the gasoline can, he pulled a box of matches out from his pant's pocket.

He lights one up and throw it at the pile of papers. It went out before it could touch the wet surface, which Made Kuroo clicked his tongue in annoyence. He lights up another one, but this one went out in his hand when a sudden gush of wind hit his face. He groans in silent frustration.

'Now nature wants to hold me back?'

Was his first though.

He tries one more time. Lighting up a match, but this time dragging it down and guiding it to touch the surface of the papers. This time it finally lights up the flames on the paper. He sight contently, standing back up to see how the fire slowly covered and burns every pieces of papers and the book. Soon enough, the small fire turned in to a camp fire with the amount of fuels given to it.

The mountain around this place is quiet, especially at this time of the night. The only thing prominently audiable to the spiky haired male at the moment are the sound of the fire eating the papers.

And just like that his future plans are all ruined by the flames. The flames in front of him right now, and the flames of lingering love he still has for you. Just this week he figured he should destroy the pieces of papers that still Remind him of the old Times with you, so that he could move forward. He's in his late twenties already, he needs to get over with things and start looking up for his own future. No matter how lonely it seems like without you by his side.

He wish in another life, he could have the privilages to plan a future with you once again.

And maybe if that time does happen, he wish that everything wasn't just mere plans and wishes.

If he were to be given another chance, in another time or another universe,

He'll make sure to make every wish and plans he had in this life, a reality.

A solid reality of you and him.

But for this life, it seems like it was never meant to be.

- End

A/N: I hope I delivered well. Maybe- Actually I wish I could deliver my ideas better

Like wise, cover edit by me but the image belongs to the Haikyuu manga

#kuroo x y/n #kuroo x reader #kuroo angst #kuroo x you #kuroo tetsurou #haikyuu!! angst #haikyuu!! x y/n #haikyuu angst #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x y/n #kuroo tetsurou x reader #kuroo tetsurou x you #kuroo tetsurou angst

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pinkerhero · 4 years

Text

I have a bit of anxiety because a hurricane’s going to pass near my city and I’ve easily read well over a hundred of em so here’s a list of my fave tropes/concepts in trobed fics (plus author recommendations and a note to the fandom):

Announcements through any variation of the “Troy and Abed in the morning!” jingle:

“-are together!”

“-are engaged!”

“-being boyfriends!”

“-become canon!”

Upon them getting together: (very consistent)

Annie saying “Aww! You guys!” *hugs them*

Bets are paid up, sometimes to the exact date/time.

Britta being an overzealous ally.

Shirley accepting them like the loving Christian woman she is.

Members not being surprised.

I love you:

“I love you for all time.” “I love you for all space.”

Complete/reverse parallel of “I love you.” “I know.”

On a related note, this post made me lose my mind all over again.

Abed being Troy’s favorite person.

Platonic!! “I love you”s!!

Mirrored letter closings like “I miss you and I love you.”

Engagement:

Proposing at the same time.

Proposing in a bouncy house/any silly circumstance.

Troy wanting Nadir-Barnes.

A wedding full of homages and hijinks because of course.

Annie telling Troy, “He tried to replace you with his love interest and I tried to replace you with my brother. It was rather on the nose in hindsight,” is GENIUS.

The GENRE that is Epidemiology:

Fighting zombies together!!

Comforting each other/making their doomsday plan after the unknown trauma.

“His thumb grazes across the dark circles under Abed's eyes. Part of him hoped that the action would get rid of them, like wiping away markings on a dry erase board. Even though he knew it wouldn't work, he found himself a little upset that they remained.” I burst into tears.

Affectionate things:

Casually sharing one of the bunks (or doing so because of nightmares).

Platonic cuddling.

“like gently hugging a sack of antlers.” The first fic I read and absolutely everything I wanted.

Forehead kisses.

Abed latching onto/laying across Troy in his sleep. (very consistent; it makes him seem so small.)

Characterization I can see/hear:

“I’m fine,” he said, knowing they didn’t know to ask the spelling.

Abed tilting his head, “cool cool cool,” spreading his hands to set the scene like the storyteller he is.

Troy’s (ADHD brain) mental association gymnastics, saying the wrong word and Abed correcting him (rare detail I want more of), stuff “wrinkling his brain.”

Having buttered noodles, special drink, Lucky Charms, and other fun things.

Abed being described to have doe eyes or gentle, mysterious ones.

Every single time they do the handshake, I mime half of it with a huge grin.

Post-canon: (haven’t read much but happy to have access now)

The ghosts of Original Abed and Original Troy getting to be together forever.

This THREE!!!! PARAGRAPH!!!! HUG!!!!

Never realizing they were in love the entire time because they’re huge dorks and having to figure that out together.

Troy not needing the homing pigeon gene because he was always coming back anyway.

Abed healing from all the acknowledged canon trauma he went through after Troy left, especially with Troy’s help.

Separated character development so they could be together.

General serotonin:

Open, honest communication, especially that expands on scenes or adds missing ones through episode rewrites.

“Troy and Abed at IKEA!”

Understanding all of each other’s facial expressions, and Troy’s huge grins in return to Abed’s small smiles.

Creating something better than anything that’s ever been on TV.

Anything in the Dreamatorium room as it should be.

Intentionally or not acting out “homages” to romcom tropes like Only One Bed or Fake Dating but also subverting/avoiding certain tropes like Miscommunication because they know better.

Troy just knowing how to follow through on a bit without being told, such as in the wedding fic linked earlier, in which

[“Oh, duh. Don’t worry, guys, I know what this is.” He jogged the length of the apartment twice, and all their friends stared.] and I laughed.

Walking through the halls holding hands and swinging them as far as they can for fun.

Troy calling Abed “buddy” whatever their relationship status is.

Someone else may have made the drawing in the textbook, but Troy added the hearts.

Abed making movies about them because it’s the best story.

Some of my favorite AO3 authors are:

onemechanicalalligator @1mechanicalalligator

They pack a strong emotional punch in every single work and it’s beautiful.

Fave work: the entire Topics in Romance and Recovery Series; I really need to comment on stuff, but it’s hard to articulate. This series was so validating and healing for me, especially since some of the incidents Abed went through gave me so much anxiety, but also because “Your feelings are valid,” and “Meltdowns aren’t your fault,” started sinking into my head, too. They said they wrote from experience, and I could see it, and I’m so proud of them. We all deserve healing and love.

bothsexuals

Lots of cute concepts and soft single-chapter works I blazed through most of in a few nights.

One of my fave works so far: don’t ever set me aside with the things that you don’t need (a conventions of space and time rewrite); THIS IS HOW EASY IT WOULD BE to make the show more inclusive and kind while staying genuine and funny!! It would be so easy!! But also take effort from people who genuinely cared, like this author. Thank you so much.

In conclusion, to everyone who’s ever written or enjoyed/spread these ideas, and gave this wonderful pairing everything they deserve:

Thank you!! Nya’ll deserve representation and wholesome relationships you believe in portrayed to their fullest potential!! And you do what you can to manifest that and it’s valid and appreciated, trust me!! You only amplify the serotonin they gave me in canon!! Please don’t end posts with “haha never mind I know it’s not-” because those ideas are VALID and you should fully embrace them in your heart!! It’s nya’ll’s movie now!! Make it what you want!!

Please tell me anything I missed that you love, too!!

God bless, Tori. ♥

#mine #text #trobed

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glitterblazercalum · 4 years

Text

got a river for a soul, and baby, you’re a boat

or: Oh, fuck. We showed up wearing matching couples’ costumes to this party by accident and now everyone thinks we’re together.” + cashton

hello and happy halloween everyone!! giant thank u to ainslee @ashesonthefloor for putting this event together!! and for forcing me to actually get this fic done, looking it over, and generally being a major source of serotonin in my life. another huge thank u to bella @clumsyclifford for being one of my favorite people and loving frat boys enough that it made me want to write a fic about them to annoy her <3 love you both <3

here is the link to the event masterpost bc I highly recommend checking out all of the other amazing fics:

https://ashesonthefloor.tumblr.com/post/633534107120549888/hello-welcome-to-my-halloween-fic-event

warnings: mentions of alcohol

word count: 2,872

without further ado, please enjoy the fic I wrote mostly all last night while looping drag me down for thirteen hours straight :))

Calum doesn’t know what fuckhead came up with the idea of having a joint Halloween party for Sigma Nu and Sigma Pi this year, but he really wants to fight them. He thinks he’d probably have a lot of people on his side, considering how much Sig Nu and and Sig Pi hate each other, so he tucks the idea of interfraternity war away in his head as a contingency plan in case the party goes to shit, as joint parties with any other frat always seem to. And it’s not like it’s a one night thing, because all three days of the “Halloweekend,” as Michael refuses to stop calling it, are supposedly going to be spent with Sig Nu, one party at their own house, and two at the shithole that he assumes is the Sig Nu house, in some deranged attempt at bonding. He’ll be lucky to make it out alive, probably.

Before college, he really never did anything of his own for Halloween, mainly used to being used as a prop or side character for his sister Mali-Koa’s elaborate costumes, or, after she’d moved out, sticking a pair of fake fangs in his mouth to hand out candy to the few kids who rang the doorbell despite his efforts to keep all the lights in the house off. Last year, as a freshman, he’d gotten roped into a group costume with some of the other Sig Pi pledges, and while his memories are...hazy at best, he vaguely remembers falling asleep in a Teletubbies onesie at the end of the night.

This year, though, no one has tried to tell him what to dress up as, so it’s now a few hours before the first of the three parties, and Calum still has no ideas for what he should dress up as. A quick Google search for “cheap easy costumes” hadn’t really been all that helpful, so he decides to ignore the problem and take a nap until he actually has to leave.

A few hours later, Michael barges into the room to drag him out of bed, and looks around for a few seconds before asking, “You don’t have a costume, do you?”

Calum groans, pulling himself out of bed and wracking his brain for an idea that he can plausibly bullshit in the next few seconds, because he can’t let Michael be right and have something to tease him about, so he blurts, “I’m going to be a salt shaker.”

Michael gapes at him a bit for a few seconds before asking, “What the fuck? What kind of costume is that? What are you even going to wear for that?”

Calum mentally kicks himself in the shin, as hard as possible, because he really hasn’t thought this through. Why couldn’t he have just said cat or cowboy or something even slightly in the realm of normal Halloween costumes?

“Uhhh.. y’know that baseball tee I have? The one with the black sleeves and white middle?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s in my closet, but continue.”

“What the fuck, dude? Give it back!”

“You haven’t noticed that it’s missing for like three weeks, I just assumed it was mine now. Tell me what the rest of the costume is,” Michael demands.

“I’ll just tape a piece of paper with a big ‘S’ on it to the front of my shirt, and then put one of those pots with the holes on my head. Bam! Salt shaker!” Calum says, moderately impressed with his ability to pull stuff out of his ass this quickly.

“What makes you think we even have a colander?” Michael asks, crossing his arms.

Calum gives him a blank stare. “A what?”

“That’s what the pots with the holes are called, you idiot.”

“You think Harry would live anywhere that didn’t have a fully-stocked kitchen? There’s bound to be one in one of the cabinets or something.”

“Fine. I’ll go get the shirt while you look for the colander.” Before Calum can object, suggest that he look through Michael’s closet himself and steal back any of his other clothes that have somehow wound up there, Michael’s already halfway down the hallway.

Sighing, he trudges down the stairs towards the kitchen, where one of the seniors, Niall, is sitting with his head in his hands, dressed as a pirate.

“Hey, dude, nice costume,” Calum offers as a greeting. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find a colander, would you? I know Harry—”

“Do not talk to me about Harry right now,” Niall says, and Calum stops his search for a moment to send him a concerned look.

“What happ—”

“That needy-ass motherfucker thinks that just because I didn’t want to do a couples’ costume with him, it means I don’t love him anymore! Never mind the fact that he literally mentioned this idea to me yesterday, well past the point where everyone finalizes their costumes.”

Calum offers him a sympathetic look and offers, “Couples’ costumes are boring and cheesy anyways. Neither of you are missing out on anything, at least in my opinion.”

Niall lifts his head up from where he’d been repeatedly hitting it on the table to smirk at Calum and ask, “Have a lot of experience with couples’ costumes, do you?”

Luckily, Calum has finally found the colander, so he opts to ignore the question and just leave the kitchen entirely.

When he gets back upstairs, Michael’s in his room, unabashedly checking himself out in the mirror that’s on the back of the closet door. “Yeah, yeah, your anime character of the year looks great, now get out and let me get ready.”

Michael scoffs, “Get ready, as if you’re even doing anything,” but moves towards the door anyway.

Michael’s right, the costume is ridiculously easy to throw together, and two minutes later, they’re both out the door, walking across Fraternity Row to get to the Sig Nu house, where the music is already blaring and strobe lights throw red, then green, then blue shadows across everyone’s faces. On his way to the kitchen to grab a drink, he sees Niall and Harry walk into the house, holding hands and laughing together, so he assumes that their fight has blown over as quickly as all of their other fights always seem to.

He sees a few different trays of shots and decides he might as well take one to get the night started off right. After, he realizes that he probably shouldn’t grab a beer now, Mali’s rule about sticking to one color of booze for the night ringing in his head, so he settles for filling up a Solo cup with whatever glow in the dark gin concoction is in all the punch bowls. He wouldn’t put it past the Sig Nus to poison the drink on purpose, but it tastes relatively normal, so he grabs another cup for Michael and attempts to leave the kitchen, steering around the couple sloppily making out in the doorway.

It’s harder to spot Michael than it usually is, considering that at least half the people at the party are wearing some type of wig, but Calum eventually makes his way back over to him. He’s talking to Niall and Harry, and they both offer him a smile before continuing on with the conversation. Once that reaches a lull, Niall leans closer to Calum and says, “Mate, you didn’t need to lie to me about couples’ costumes.”

Calum has no idea what Niall is talking about, so he shakes his head and asks, “What are you talking about?”

Niall cackles, and Harry turns to look at him adoringly before going back to talking to Michael, and Calum is more confused than ever. Niall grabs his shoulder and spins him around and points in the direction of a clump of people. “You’re salt and he’s pepper, right? That’s such an obvious couples’ costume, although you two do seem to have a bit of a disconnect on how much effort you put in. That guy really went all out. And dude, why haven’t you told us that you have a boyfriend? You know we’d want to know about that, give him the Sig Pi seal of approval and all that. Wait. Unless he’s a Sig Nu, in which case, I don’t want to know because I’d probably have to kick you out. That’s a joke, by the way.”

Calum barely has the presence of mind to mumble, “He’s not my boyfriend,” before crossing the room to get to the guy in the hyper-realistic pepper grinder costume.

The guy smiles as Calum approaches, and despite the costume covering most of his body, Calum can tell that he’s cute. “Why so salty?” Pepper Guy greets, the sunshiney smile still on his face.

Calum smirks and replies, “Maybe I just need some more spice in my life.” Pepper Guy laughs, and just like everything else about him, it’s cute, and Calum wants to hear it again. “I’m Calum, by the way.”

“Ashton. Nice to meet you, man.”

Calum leans a little closer so that it’s easier to hold a conversation over the loud music and asks, “What’s the deal with the super realistic pepper grinder costume?”

Ashton makes a strange noise, somewhere between a laugh and a groan, and says, “I got it off some random sketchy website, but it was supposed to be a chess piece. Something clearly went wrong somewhere in production, and my friend Luke said that I might as well sharpie a “P” onto it and just go with it.”

Calum makes a noise of agreement, mind stuck on a dumb idea. Before he can reconsider, he sends Michael a quick text that says if u’ve already taken over as dj, can u play that come grind w me song? and a few seconds later, he hears the opening notes and grins.

“Hey, Ashton?”

“Yeah?” Ashton replies, as realization slips across his face.

Right in time with the singer’s voice, Calum says, “Come grind with me,” and he laughingly pulls Ashton towards the makeshift dance floor. Neither of them can really dance, so it’s a mess of laughter and limbs flopping around, but Calum feels an unmistakable electricity between them too, and once the song is over, they stay for the next few, enraptured by each other. When they finally exhaust themselves with all the laughing and mock-twerking, Ashton asks Calum if he wants a refill, and when Calum nods, he grabs his hand and starts pulling him towards the kitchen.

Once they’re there, Calum goes for another serving of the glow in the dark punch, which is steadily dimming as the glow sticks run out of light. Since that’s really the only light source in the kitchen, Calum doesn’t see Ashton until he’s turning around and Ashton is right in front of him, reaching around him for a cup. Calum’s kind of trapped with his back against the counter, Ashton’s pepper grinder costume tall enough to really block out the view of the rest of the party, and the world narrows, all of it contained in where their eyes connect, and then, after Calum has safely set his drink back on the counter, that narrow point expands just a bit to where their mouths land on each other’s. The colander gets knocked off Calum’s head as he lifts himself up to sit on the counter, wrapping his legs around Ashton’s waist to pull him closer, as close as he can possibly get him.

Ashton’s sucking a mark into Calum’s neck when Calum has his first coherent thought of the past few minutes and pulls back, breathlessly asking “Wait, wait, you’re not a Sig Nu, are you?” fully expecting the answer to be no.

Ashton steps back a little too, and it takes him a second to register the question before he groans, “Of course you’re a fucking Sig Pi, that’s the only explanation that makes sense for me never seeing you anywhere before. You’re too hot for me to not notice otherwise.”

Calum flushes and mentally curses out whatever idiots had started the rivalry between Sig Nu and Sig Pi before he grabs his stupid colander off the ground and gives Ashton an awkward wave goodbye.

Once he’s out of the kitchen, he quickly glances around in search of Michael, and when he can’t immediately find him, he just gives up and leaves entirely. Fuck Sig Nu.

He spends most of the next day bitching about his hangover, and then, a few hours later, bitching about his hangover while helping to set up the house for that night’s party.

He doesn’t really have much more of a costume for tonight, throwing on a gray shirt and sharpie-ing some whiskers on his face. Michael takes pity on him and makes him a headband with an approximation of what they both think mouse ears are, and Calum is mildly entertained by going up to everyone and saying, “I’m a mouse, duh.”

His heart’s really not in the right place to party tonight, which is probably breaking the cardinal rule of being in a frat, so he sticks close to Michael, who has taken over the role of DJ, once again. Zayn from Alpha Sig strolls over after about half an hour, devil horns askew, and quietly says to Calum, “Cat and mouse, huh? Didn’t think you had it in you, Hood, that’s proper cute. Not as cute as me and Lou, mind you, but still, I respect the effort.”

Calum is reluctant to look up and see who he’s accidentally matching with today, because, with his luck, it’s probably another guy from Sig Nu. When he does eventually look up, he immediately makes eye contact with Ashton, who happens to be walking by, dressed in all black and with whiskers sharpie’d onto his face too. Calum wants to bang his head into a wall because the universe clearly hates him if it’s having him match with Ashton again. Even beyond that, Ashton looks so good out of the stupid pepper grinder and in all black that Calum wants to make out with him again.

Ashton is clearly having similar thoughts when he gestures Calum over and leads them towards a little pocket of quiet space in one of the lesser used hallways.

Calum really wants to hook his thumb into one of Ashton’s belt loops, so he does, as Ashton looks him up and down a few times. “Is the mouse costume your way of telling me you want me to chase you?”

Calum murmurs, “Shut up,” before leaning in to kiss him, frat rivalry be damned. It’s just as good as it was the night before, maybe even more so, now that the pepper costume isn’t in their way. At this point, there’s no denying the chemistry. It can’t be blamed on being drunk since Calum’s been nursing the same beer all night, and the part of his brain that’s protesting against being this close to a Sig Nu is getting smaller and smaller as he and Ashton continue to kiss.

They stay in that hallway for the rest of the night, eventually sliding down to sit on the ground, legs pressed together, sharing stupid stories about their respective frats. Calum’s surprised when the music shuts off because it feels like it’s only been an hour at most, that’s how easy it is to talk to Ashton. Ashton heaves himself up and reaches both hands down to help Calum up, too.

“I don’t think there’s any way you can match your costume to mine tomorrow, but I’ll come find you anyways,” Ashton says, as he leaves Calum with a kiss on the cheek.

Calum’s too wired to sleep much, so he opts to help clean up the house instead, and that takes up enough of his day that when nighttime rolls around, he’s stood staring at his closet without a costume idea for the third time in as many days. After ten minutes of consideration, he digs through one of his drawers to pull out the fake vampire fangs that he had somehow remembered to bring with him, and he goes down the hall to ask Jack to put some fake blood on his mouth and neck. Jack always goes all out for Halloween.

Once he’s at the party, he doesn’t have to wait long to find Ashton, who looks incredibly good in his werewolf costume. There’s fake blood on him too, which is really the only way their costumes could be understood to be matching, or so Calum thinks. Tonight, Jack and Alex are the ones to tease him, “You know what, I agree. Jacob and Edward should have ended up together, Bella was boring as shit.”

Calum’s really not bothered by the comments at all, so much so that he’s already thinking of couples’ costumes ideas for next year when he finds his way over to Ashton and whispers, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Are you trying to make a move on me? I’m a respectable Sigma Nu, I don’t know if I can allow that.”

Calum laughs and tugs him out the door, “Told you I wanted some more spice in my life.”

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luvdsc · 3 years

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cat i will first of all excuse my poor coherent thoughts bc i just finished reading ypur newest jeno fic and im so in shambles i have been crying these oast few minutes trying to compose my thoughts and myself and

You see, I wished that i could explain verbally what i am feeling but as always, your writing is always so well balanced like we have the comedy, we have the angst, we have the fluff and all the in-between!!! Also, bonus points for all the frat names being groups love to see it and honestly i do appreciate that dynamics are always very real, like things that happen and real emotions like ofc i would have wished that since the moment OC and Jeno realize both had feelings back in freshmen year they suddenly fall in kove and live happily ever after bam the end, but character wise in how both were made it made sense to see how theu react, they both were scared and yes, Jeno took the leap of faith by confessing but it also was very human for OC to feel scared, more so with the whole issue of not catching feelings allowed.

Plus something i found very interesting is how some dialogue like came back, buth with a whole new meaning like the phrase "choose me" when Jeno made reference to the cat and at the end with how OC realizes Jaemin chose to stay, to love and so did she or also the whole ordeal of Lee Jeno (when oc first see them at the party and i think kater when he finds her with hyunjin) and i bet there were more that i couldn't see but uhhhh my point is that i appreciate how much thought you always put in creating wonderful stories and how the endinh was very much an accurate ending of what things happen.

I'm very sorry for my rambling but, believe me i loved it a lot! Would have reblogged it but my phone kept crashing whenever i wrote sksksk sorry about that lol but thanks again!!!! Good luck with everything!!!

omg honey bee, thank you sososos sooo much for always leaving the kindest comments on my fics !!!! 🥺💗💗💗 kajhdsfkljas whenever i see your url in my activity feed, it’s like my brain goes !! instant serotonin boost !!! 🥰🥰 so thank you so much for all your efforts, lovebug, and i appreciate you very much 🤧💜 and i’m so sorry for making you cry 😭 but thank you for confirming that the feelings i was hoping to portray came across :’) once again, i’m putting this under the cut because my answer is long asjkdfa

i feel like my previous fics were realistic enough in a sense, but they were also pretty idealistic with the way everything lined up perfectly and had a romcom movie ending, and that was where pussy blocked was headed too originally! 💞 the alternate ending i had roughly written was the original ending i was aiming for, but that went out the window when i spontaneously decided to make yn kiss jaemin, and suddenly, jaemin just made so much more sense as the ending. for me, her choosing jaemin in the end is what makes this feel more real 💗

aaa but making jeno and yn fall in love in freshman year and go on to date and live happily ever after has peak luvdsc fluff romance written all over it, doesn’t it? 🤧💖 jeno definitely took the leap there, and unfortunately, yn just wasn’t ready to jump with him. like i had mentioned in my response to your lovely thoughts about august, love really does depend on so much happenstance and timing 🤍 and this time, it didn’t work out for these two sadly ):

YES oh my gosh, you noticed the repetitive language used aaaaa sweetpea, that makes me so unbelievably happy 😭💟💟💟 choosing and choices play a huge role in this fic, and i’m just over the moon that you picked up on those details, lovebug 🥰🥰 and yes!!! there is a rewrite of her impression of jeno at the beginning of the fic and near the end of the fic to show the shift in feelings she has for him :’) repetition is something i like to incorporate in my writing style, so it was used for various paragraphs / phrases here and there in my fic :’) the bathroom scene with hyunjin overall is supposed to be reminiscent of the bathroom scene at the beginning of the fic, right down to her wearing the same white top 💕

you are the absolute sweetest sweetpea, and i am so so sooo grateful for your appreciation and sharing your thoughts with me 🥺💞💞 please don’t ever apologize for this, honey bee, i absolutely love to hear what you think about my fic and thank you for giving it so much love 💓💓 askjdfa tumblr isn’t very mobile friendly when it comes to reblogging long posts unfortunately, but thank you for even taking the time to rewriting everything you were gonna say in your reblog and sending me an ask instead 🥺 i hope you have a wonderful day/night, angel 🌷🌷🌷

#asks #iroxanamiranda #flowers #fic: pussy blocked

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the-wlw-cafe · 5 years

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Craving Comfort (A supercorp fic)

This is my secret santa gift for @super66legends87! Now I do realize that I might have messed up a bit here, when I went through your blog and found that you like supercorp, i decided to turn this into a supercorp Story, but now that the Holidays are rolling around every secret santa fic i see is a Reader insert, so that ´s a whoopsie. If you’d rather have a Reader insert Story, I totally understand and I’ll write another one for you ^^

anyway, thanks to @oneofakindimagines for letting me participate!

Some days were harder than others. Some days Lena just wanted to down decanter after decanter of scotch until the world around her started to fade into a dull haze. Were it not for Kara, she would absolutely already have drunken herself into a stupor.

Before, Lena would always ask herself how Kara always seemed to know when she needed her best friend, which sixth sense told her that Lena was about to do something stupid, about to indulge in her coping mechanisms she damn well knew were unhealthy, but didn’t have the strength to leave behind. But that was before. Before Lex revealed Kara’s secret with his dying breath, before the all the anger, the hurt, the resentment, and the months and months of bitter loneliness whose memory alone made Lena want to curl in on herself and cry. They were fine now, different, but fine, and yet a sore scar remained, a deep cut only recently healed. The months of radio silence had almost been too much to bear for Lena. She didn’t know how she would survive another rift like this.

But know she knew. She knew how Kara responded to every minute change of her heartbeat, because she had told her time and time again that it was her favourite sound in the world, because she used it to ground herself when everything would become too overwhelming. She knew how Kara could hear every half-choked sob she couldn’t contain after she would lock her office doors and tell Jess to send everyone away, because after so many assassination attempts Kara couldn’t fight the habit to check in on Lena every so often. She knew that Kara would be there in literal seconds, and all she had to say was...

“Kara.”

It still came difficult for her, openly asking for help like that, when every single one of her Luthor instincts was telling her to lick her wounds where nobody could see her, where nobody could ever bear witness to her shameful weakness. But some days were harder than others. Some days she just needed Kara.

She heard the quiet tap on her balcony door before she could start to second-guess herself. She opened it quickly and let Kara puller her into her arms like it was the most natural thing in the world. Kara had always been a very tactile person, but after their reconciliation the physical side of their friendship had intensified even more. It was as if they both needed physical confirmation that they were here, they were real, they were not going anywhere, a comfort that went beyond kind words and soft affirmations. A comfort that was a slippery slope to Lena, because the longer she allowed herself to be held by Kara, the more difficult it was to let her go again.

“Do you want to talk about what happened?”, Kara murmured into her hair, squeezing Lena tightly. The honest answer was no. No, Lena didn’t want to talk about it, she just wanted to forget. But what she wanted and what she should do were, as was the case so often, two very different things.

“Remember the important board meeting I told you about?”

“Of course I do,” Kara replied without a modicum of hesitation, as if it went without saying. Lena could feel her throat get tighter with the effort not to cry. A deep crinkle born of worry began to form between her best friend’s brows.

“Did something happen? You know, my offer to dig up dirt on every single one of these old chauvinists still stands, I bet not even half of them do their taxes...”

Despite herself, Lena could feel a smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

“It’s about Mr Whitman”, she says, and immediately Kara’s face lights up in recognition.

Mr Whitman was by far the oldest chairman of the board, he had watched the former Luthor Corp change hands from her father, to Lex, and finally to her, and through it all, he had never once doubted her. He was the good one, the one decent person among all these men still infatuated with Lex and his ideals, barely hiding their xenophobia and misogyny behind a facade of civility.

“What about him? Is he okay?”

Lena gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to recall their conversation, but she knows she’ll feel better afterwards. She always felt lighter after crying in Kara’s arms, which was a worrying development to say the least. Any kind of attachment this profound made her feel queasy, because she knew it was just going to spiral from there, like it had countless times before, in boarding school, in Metropolis...in the end, she always got too attached too quickly, and in the end it got her nothing but ridicule and isolation.

“After the meeting, he came to congratulate me. He told me that he envied my patience, that it was a skill Lex never possessed.” She can see Kara opening her mouth, doubtlessly to say something along the lines of he’s right and I’m so proud of you, so she quickly presses out the rest of the sentence from behind clenched teeth.

“He said he knew it can’t be easy to uphold that mask of a politically correct do-gooder until all the damage Lex did with his ill-advised actions has been undone.”

“Oh, Lena...” Kara sighed, and fuck, Lena could feel hot tears spilling onto her cheeks now.

“And I realized it would never be enough. No matter what I do, no matter how many lives I save, I’ll always be indistinguishable from them...”

Her voice tapered off into sobs, and the silence that ensued stretched long enough for Lena to worry if she’d done it now, if she’d been too clingy, too emotional.

But then, she felt it: The gentle press of Kara’s lips to her forehead so softly it was barely more than a whisper of a touch. It still made her gasp out loud, and even through her anguish she felt a warmth spread through her entire being that has nothing to do with Kara’s heightened body temperature. It had been so long since she’d felt a tender gesture like that, the last time being a hazy memory of her mother, her real mother, trading spoonfuls of peas for kisses when she was barely more than three years old and a very fussy eater.

It was beautiful, it was peaceful, and it was over far too soon. Lena could just so keep from stopping Kara when she pulled back, holding Lena at an arm’s length so she could look her in the eyes.

“Lena, you are nothing like them”, she states firmly. “You are nothing like them, and nothing like the person they want you to be. You are infinitely better, infinitely stronger than they could ever imagine.”

Lena sniffed, and nodded.

“You’re good, Lena. Can you repeat that for me?”

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

“I’m good”, Lena said, with barely any tremble in her voice, her fingers absently touching the spot where she still felt the echo of Kara’s lips.

In the days following, Lena could barely think of anything but the kiss. It was almost a welcome respite, because in the moments her brain was not occupied it seemed hell bent on reminding her of every conversation she’d ever shared with Mr Whitman, fond memories with somebody she’d almost considered a friend that had become poisoned now that he had shown his true colours. She trudged through the days, fuelled only by Kara’s frequent texts of either gentle encouragements or pictures of whatever animals she’d met on the streets that day. And the texts did make her forget about her miserable situation for a second or two, but in the end, they just reminded Lena of what she needed most: She needed Kara, she needed her to be there for her, to hold her, to tell her she wasn’t inherently wicked, to...to kiss her forehead again.

But she couldn’t ask that of her. She wouldn’t even know how. For a woman who prided herself in her ability to outsmart and outtalk any adversary in the boardroom, she didn’t have the words. It was probably for the best anyway. Asking for a forehead kiss from her best friend would definitely be weird. Crossing boundaries. Being clingy. Dependant. Overly physical. Manipulative. Predatory.

So she didn’t bring it up, she just smiled, rested her head on Kara’s shoulders during movie night with her heart almost beating out of her chest and her palms damp from anxiety, and yearned in silence.

She held out for two weeks. Now that she knew what Kara’s lips felt like when pressed to her forehead, she could not focus on anything else. It was a wonder, really, that it took so long for her to make a complete fool of herself in front of Kara. But here she was, completely enveloped in a shocked, painfully awkward silence, having just asked her best friend to kiss her.

She hadn’t meant for it to sound like that. She hadn’t meant to say it at all. The only excuse she could find was the fact that she’d been running on nothing but caffeine and spite for days now, she was frustrated with her company and most of all herself, and really, could she really be counted as fully accountable of her actions in her addled state of mind? But the why wasn’t important. The only thing that mattered now was how on earth Lena could salvage their friendship now. Because she’d been stressed, she’d been moments away from crying again, and Kara had been so kind to her, hugged her like she always did when she thought Lena needed a “serotonin boost”, and Lena had just craved the comfort so much she hadn’t been able to stop herself from blurting out the words “Kiss me?”.

And of course, shocked silence had been the answer. And Lena contemplated throwing herself out of the nearest window.

“Kara, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I was thi-”

She didn’t get any further than that, because the feeling of Kara’s lips pressed gently against hers effectively shut her up. There was maybe half a second of uncertainty, half a second of questioning if she was really exhausted and crushing hard enough to hallucinate Kara kissing her, but then she could feel Kara’s hand tangling with her hair, playing with the strands, and Lena felt herself lean into the kiss, reciprocating with the same dreamy reverence Kara showed through her touch.

When they finally broke apart, it was with a soft sigh, and for the life of her Lena couldn’t figure out from whom it had come. She felt airy, light-hearted and most decidedly light-brained. Which might explain why the next words exiting her mouth were:

“I was asking for a forehead kiss.”

She could see the dreamy smile immediately fading from Kara’s expression, and Lena instantly felt heartbroken for being the cause of it.

“Oh Rao, Lena, I’m sorry...” Kara scrambled to explain, but Lena was quick to interrupt her by placing a single finger on her best friend’s lips. Kara fell silent immediately, as if Lena had stolen the words right off of her tongue.

“I’m not complaining,” she whispered, slowly moving closer to Kara as if approaching a frightened animal. “In fact, when taking into account that it took me two weeks and a worrying amount of sleep deprivation to work up the courage to ask for a forehead kiss, I don’t think I’d ever be brave enough to ask for this.”

She watched with undisguised affection as Kara’s lips opened in a surprised oh and her eyes went wide.

“Kara?” she said, chuckling softly as her best friend nodded slowly, as if caught in a trance.

“Kiss me again.”

#supercorp #secret santa fic #supercorp fic #supergirl #supergirl fanfiction #wlw fanfic

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fanfictionandmore · 4 years

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Serotonin | Laszlo Kreizler One-Shot

Dr. Kreizler is the only person I'll open up to, and I think the other Alienists are annoyed by that. But... he's the only person that makes me feel comfortable. Not that the others are scary or anything, it's just... Kreizler is different. And maybe... just maybe I have a crush on him. 'Of course you have a crush on him, y/n. He's the only person who has ever shown you kindness.' I thought inside of my head. Dr. Kreizler is patient, caring, kind, and so... so gentle. Every time I see him my heart skips a few beats and butterflies flutter in my stomach.

I always get lost in his beautiful brown eyes. They're so big and deep that it's easy to get lost in them. His voice is so pleasant to listen to as well. To me he just... feels like home. But I know the way I feel is stupid; I'm just one of his cases. Another mind for him to study and examine in the attempt to understand the human brain. A knock on my dormitory door took me out of my thoughts. That's when I noticed I was absent mindedly sketching a picture of the doctor. "Who is it?" I asked curiously. "Dr. Kreizler." His familiar deep, yet soft voice said from the hallway.

I sat my sketchbook aside after closing it, and walked over to open the door for him. He was standing there in his usual black suit looking exceptionally handsome. But maybe I found him extra pretty today, because I haven't seen him in a while. Apparently he had some private matters to deal with. "I think you an I need to talk about your behavior over the past few weeks." He said, and anxiety filled my already quivering stomach. I knew I what he was referring to; he wanted to talk about how uncooperative I've been with the other Alienists while he was away. I desperately hoped he wasn't angry with me.

"Come with me, we'll take a walk so we're far from prying ears." He said with one of his small smiles that quickly faded. I nodded once and closed my dormitory door behind me. I don't think I ever felt this nervous in my entire life if I'm being honest. I silently followed him downstairs and out through the main doors of the institute. Both of us remained quiet until we reached the nearby park. The September sun was shinning bright in the blue sky above us. Its rays were just powerful enough to warm your bones. "You probably already know what I want to talk to you about." He said, breaking the soothing silence that was enveloping us.

"Yes, I do. I... I'm sorry for giving your colleagues such a hard time. It's just... I only feel comfortable when I'm with you." I said, and I felt like a child for saying it. "My colleagues aren't going to hurt you, y/n. They might have differing methods, but they're all designed to help you." He said with a soft look in his eyes that made me feel guilty. I didn't want his fellow Alienists to feel like they weren't doing their job correctly; I never meant for them to feel that way. "I'm sorry." Was all I could say. "It's alright, y/n. You feel safer with opening up to me than you do with the others. I understand." He replied. He took me to a small pond where we watched some ducks swim around. It was very peaceful.

I was a little upset when he said we had to go back to the institute. I felt content with being by his side in the peaceful park watching the ducks. But I knew he had work to get finished, and we couldn't do what my heart desired. When we reached the floor my dormitory was on I was suddenly aware of children's laughter. "There she is!" One of them giggled in an amused tone. "Y/n loves Dr. Kreizler." The group repeatedly teased, and I felt myself heat up with embarrassment. I'm sure I looked as red as the roses I saw in the park today. 'How did they find out?' I wondered curiously. It was all the more embarrassing because Dr. Kreizler was standing right next to me.

Then what I saw made my heart leap into my throat. One of the kids was holding my sketchbook... my private sketchbook. The one with all of my little drawings of the doctor inside. My heart started pounding so hard I could hear it, and my throat was so dry it was hard to swallow. "Isn't that your sketchbook?" Kreizler asked, and I could do was nod in response. He told the kids to settle down and scolded them for entering my dorm without permission. But when he laid hands on my opened sketchbook it got hard to breath. My insides ached and could feel tears being to fill my eyes. I ran as fast as I could and didn't turn to see if anyone else was following me.

I passed several teachers and Alienists as I tore through the halls. Eventually I left through the main doors of the institute without any intention of slowing down. I wanted to get as far away as I could. I couldn't face Dr. Kreizler now that he so obviously knew why he is the only person I'll open up to. When I reached my destination I slowed down. My lungs burned and so did the muscles in my legs. I sat down in one of the corners of the abandoned house I was now inside. It was one of my favorite hideaway spots before I went to the institute. For some reason it felt more like home than the one my parents brought me up in. But now it felt cold and empty.

Once I caught my breath, my mind played through the events that had happened in front of the doctor. My insides twisted and ached. Tears filled my eyes and I let them fall. I was so afraid of rejection from him that I ran away. I couldn't help but to feel stupid and worthless. As the hours went by, the sun started to fade and darkness quickly followed. The sounds of New York city at night were a lot scarier than I remembered, and I suddenly wished I hadn't came here. 'Maybe I would have been safer on some rooftop somewhere.' I thought. The sound of something or someone entering the house caught my attention.

My heart was hammering inside of my chest and I suddenly felt like a little kid again. I was cold, hungry, scared, and broken. Whatever or whoever it was seemed to be making an effort not to make a sound, and that worried me even more. Especially since I didn't have anything to protect me with. In the low light coming from the moon, I suddenly noticed a dark figure enter the room. It felt like something out of a nightmare or a scary ghost story. "Y/n? It's me. Don't be scared." The doctor's voice said, and I wondered if I was dreaming. I couldn't believe he had found me. "It's me." I replied softly and shyly. He moved closer and I watched him become more visible the nearer he got.

"Thank goodness you're alright. Come here." He said softly as he sat down next to me and wrapped his arms around me. I snuggled into his warm embrace and breathed in his comforting scent. A scent that I had fallen in love with over my years at the institute. "Don't run away like that ever again, or I'm going to have to keep you under surveillance." He said in a soft whisper as he held me close to him. "I'm sorry I... I was just... afraid. Afraid of what you'd say or do once you saw the contents of my sketchbook." I replied timidly. I felt so small in that moment, but I also felt protected in his arms.

"You didn't have to be afraid. I was upset that my younger wards violated your privacy." He replied as we broke the hug so we could look at each other. "But... you know how I feel about you now. You... you know that I...." I said, but he cut me off. He placed his forefinger over my lips to hush me, which made me gasp softly. The slightest touch from him made my insides melt. He removed his finger from my lips and raised my chin so we made eye contact. "I'm going to get... in so much trouble for this." He whispered, his warm breath touching my skin.

Everything felt like I was in a dream; the only time I've ever been this close to him is in my dreams. But I hoped that this was real. My heart felt like it was going to explode as he closed the short distance that was between us. When our lips met it felt like my breath had been stolen from my lungs. My insides felt warm and a tingling sensation enveloped my chest as well as my head. His lips felt warm and soft, making my eyelids flutter slightly before I closed my eyes. I melted into the kiss even though I was shy due to my lack of experience. We broke the kiss for air, but connected our lips once more after we filled our lungs.

Everything about that moment was soft, shy, and perfect. The feeling in my chest seemed to branch out and fill up my entire body. It was borderline overwhelming, but I loved every second. All I could feel was happiness and love. "I... I've never felt like this before." I managed to whisper after after we broke the kiss for a second time. "That's because your brain has just released a significant amount of serotonin." He said with a small smile. A few moments of silence passed as he gently caressed my cheek with his soft touch. "This is very inappropriate. You're my patient." He said, and I furrowed my brows. I didn't want him to ruin the wonderful moment so soon.

I didn't want to think about the rules or if what had just happened was inappropriate and unprofessional. I gently nudge his cutely shaped nose with my own, which seemed to change his train of thought slightly. "There are boundaries I shouldn't have crossed, and yet... I crossed them tonight," He said, gently nuzzling his nose against mine. "I'd be lying if I said I was sorry." He said softly before he closed the distance between us once more and captured my lips with his. After a few heavenly moments of kissing and cuddling, he took me back to the institute. As we walked through the front doors some of his employees expressed concern.

He expertly assured them that I was fine and all I needed was a good night's rest. When we reached my dormitory, I gently tugged at his good arm for him to follow me and he chuckled lightly. He did follow, which kind of surprises me. After averting his gaze as I got changed into my night clothes, he granted me my unspoken wish. He held me close and we shared a soft, tender make out session that I felt in my bones. When we slowly pulled apart I felt breathless and weak in the knees. We kissed each other until neither of us could speak. I wrapped my arms around him and rested my head on his chest. Listening to his heart beat in sync with mine for a few minutes was enough to bring me back down to earth.

++++++++++++++++++ A/N: Thanks for reading!!

#laszlo kreizler #daniel brühl #the alienist #writing #my writing #wattpad #laszlo kreizler fanfiction

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ramblinganthropologist · 4 years

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Aftershock

Summary: Joker finds it hard to adjust to a new Normandy, and it’s not just because of the leather seats. What the fuck do you even say to the guy you got killed because you wouldn’t abandon ship?

---

Alright. He had this.

Joker was doing his best not to fidget as he sat there, waiting. On the other side of the door, he could hear the conversation. His new boss was introducing the newest member of the team to what they had been working on while he was out. For most people, that was normal.

Problem was, his boss was the Illusive Man and the other guy in the room had died two years ago.

Honestly, he still couldn't believe it. Even when the man had come to him to swipe him from the Alliance, it sounded like a fantasy. After all, even the best scientists couldn't bring back the dead – fuck, they couldn't even fix his bones. The fact he was insisting that somehow he managed to...

It still hurt to think about. Joker had tried to avoid thinking about it over the last two years, but there was no denying the fact he had gotten the first human Spectre killed in his attempt to go down with the Normandy. It was impossible to – whenever he saw any of the old crew, it was there in their eyes.

Like he needed reminding. Every time he closed his eyes he could still see the commander drifting further into space.

Speaking of the commander... he could hear footsteps. Shepard had always been a light walker – he was pretty sure Chakwas had said he walked on his toes too damn much. Something about arthritis or something; maybe Cerberus reinforced his toe joints. That's what he would've done anyway if he was in charge of putting the man back together.

That, and maybe throwing a dick in. The commander deserved that much.

“The fuck is going on...”

A soft, Irish-accented voice sent a shiver up Joker's spine. It was a voice he would have never expected to hear again, at least not live. There were already a few Shepard VI's out there, but they never got the accent right. This one was right on the money.

He got to watch as the man of the hour entered the room, his back to him. Joker felt his heart stop, then restart at the sight of Shepard walking through the door like two years hadn't just passed. He looked... whole. Alive. Not being sucked into the vacuum of space.

“Hey, Commander. Just like old times, huh?”

Joker's mouth worked before his brain did. It was a common affliction he was often used to dealing with. Honestly, he had wanted to at least, you know, apologize for getting the guy killed and all. That was going to have to wait for later, because the man of the hour turned to face him.

They'd fixed his eye.

“Joker?” Two blue eyes blinked – he probably wasn't used to seeing out of both. Couldn't exactly blame the guy if he was adjusting to double vision all over again. He looked weird without the scar cutting through the right side of his face.

Luckily, he had plenty of open wounds glowing bright fucking red to make up for it.

Joker's stomach flopped. Shepard's face had a long cut along his jaw and across his right eye. You could almost see under the skin, to the glowing implants that hadn't finished healing over just yet. Maybe a few more months under would have closed that up, but they hadn't had the time. Now they were just big gaping slices.

His weak knees shook, but he stayed firm as the commander walked through the door. At least he was still the same shrimpy height – came up to about his jaw in the heavy boots he wore. Joker braced for anything. Hell, he'd probably deserve getting biotic blasted into a wall at this point. Hopefully they had a medic on hand for all the bones he was about to break.

“Wasn't expecting to see you here.”

Shepard's eyes and voice were as calm as ever as they started walking, Joker just a half step behind. With the bigger guys – like their old XO – he'd be almost two. Shepard was slowing down for him probably, given they both dealt with the same issue of having to run after bigger people. He was a good guy that way.

“Look whose talking, I saw you get spaced.”

Open mouth, insert broken foot into shattered jaw. Joker regretted it the moment the words left his mouth. Immediately he braced for the biotics, or at least to be told to fuck off. Neither of those came. In the end, it wasn't this Shepard's style.

Instead, he offered an awkward grin that didn't quite reach his repaired eye. “Yeah... well, I got better. Mostly.”

His hand twitched towards the gaping open wound on his jaw, but stopped somewhere around his shoulder. Then it went back to his side, looping into the empty holster where a little red pistol should have been.

Last Joker had heard, his sister had that. It was one of the few things they had found from the commander, and it had been in so many pieces it looked like somebody had smashed it with a hammer. Probably would've matched its owner now.

A lump formed in Joker's throat. “Look-”

“Hopefully the implants heal up. I really don't enjoy walking around like a living light display.” Another awkward grin. “Besides, I've been told red makes me look too ruddy. Think I could hack them to blue without breaking anything?”

Sometimes, it was hard to understand Shepard. Joker chalked it up to a biotic thing, or maybe it was brain damage from one of those N7 training missions. It was one of those moments where he just couldn't get what was going on under that mop of red hair.

He would've been mad. Shepard should have been ready to fucking kill him... he would've deserved it, after all.

“Just don't turn your pancreas off, it barely functions now.” He fell back on jokes as they started to walk towards the window. Their new ride was waiting for them – all it needed was a name. At least this helped him feel better, even as the guilt ate at his stomach.

“You think they would've replaced that.” Shepard shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, you're supposed to show me something? I hope it's a new hamster cage, I need something small and furry in my life again.”

Leave it to the commander to fall back on his husbandry. Still, it allowed Joker to grin a little as he approached the window. Below them, the SR-2 slowly cruised into view. Thanks to the angle, the pilot got a perfect view of his CO's face. Both of Shepard's eyes widened as he braced against the glass as if he was seeing his lover at the spaceport again.

“It's good to be home, huh commander?”

Even through everything, Joker had to smile as they started their descent towards the docking bay. In a matter of hours, they would be in the air again. It would be like it was before... or at least that's what he hoped for as he limped behind his commanding officer.

But... he still couldn't shake the feeling in his stomach.

---

“You seem upset, Mr. Moreau.”

Yeah, anyone would be with fucking EDI in the cockpit.

Joker shot a glare over his left shoulder as he leaned back in his seat. “I'm fine, EDI. Don't try to play any AI mind games on me.”

“That is not in my programming.” A likely story. It was built by the Illusive Man, therefore it got his asshole personality. “A data scan shows elevated heart rate and - “

He tuned the AI out as it rambled off his symptoms. Instead, he kept his eyes on the glass in front of him. Right then, they were in a holding pattern at a docking bay. The shore party had left about two hours ago, and the lack of echoing gunfire gave him the feeling things were going pretty well. Shepard could be the model of ammo conservation for how he tried to use his words over a pistol. It would have been admirable, but it stopped being so when people tried to shoot him anyway.

Still, he tried. A for effort.

“- decreased serotonin. Your focus is off.”

EDI's voice drew him back to reality. He glanced over at the blue orb to his left. It was flashing, probably waiting for his input. So Joker turned his chair around so he could ignore the damn thing and its blue light. Let it wait, it wasn't its business anyway.

“The shore party is returning from their mission and heading to decontamination.”

That made him sit up in his seat. He could see them now, off to the left and heading for the docking bay. Apart from some dirty armor, the trio looked pretty good. Even better, he was getting a call to Alliance command. Guess they had gotten the guys out after all.

“Leave it to Shepard to talk his way out of shit.” He turned in his chair, towards the Normandy's entrance. It would open with a slight hiss once decontamination was complete and everyone was safe. After that, Garrus would head to the battery to calibrate the stick up his ass, Mordin would go play god in a lab, and...

He frowned as he watched the door hiss. The three stepped into the small hallway, weapons holstered. Mordin was talking about three hundred miles a minute about something, with the other two party members giving their tech input. Leave it to a bunch of nerds to come up with something like that.

“Commander Shepard has returned to the ship. XO Shepard stands relieved.”

Joker watched as the only human in the party nodded towards EDI. He held his breath, watching as the man's eyes started to slide towards him. Just as they started, they stopped dead. Then his shoulders sagged under his black armor and he turned on his heel to walk to the nearest terminal to send off a message.

“Right... good talk.”

The words died under his breath as he turned in his chair back to facing out to space. Once Shepard gave the order, they'd be back in FTL drive to the next planet that needed his special touch. Another mission where he wouldn't look at him.

There were 7 of those now.

“Mr. Moreau, your-”

Man, he wished that damn thing had a mute button.

Joker shot the blue orb a dirty look as his fingers found the controls. Might as well be ready for when his commanding officer needed him to do his job or something. Better yet, it made it less likely for EDI to want to continue the conversation. He might not like the AI, but he was learning how to fuck with it.

“I'm fine, EDI.” Even he had to wince at his tone. With any luck, the AI wouldn't pick it up. Of course, its damn orb surface was flashing like a Mass Relay on red sand, so it was working through something big. Whatever it was, it could shove it up its nonexistent ass.

Where would that be on an AI anyway? In the central core? He'd go down there and shove it in himself if it kept him from having to hear it.

“Your stress levels suggest otherwise.” Something about that even, pleasant voice really pissed him off. Sadly, it wasn't work breaking another finger trying to find a mute button. All Joker could do was sit there and scowl at the damn thing. No matter what he did, EDI just kept flashing away with that metaphorical dose of red sand.

He was pretty sure the Illusive Man had set that port up in the cockpit just to fuck with him. What a nice guy.

“We've got the Collectors on our ass, anyone would be stressed.”

“Your stress spikes whenever Commander Shepard returns from a mission. Most evidence would suggest the opposite.”

Well, EDI could shove that up their nonexistent ass too. Hopefully it was big enough to fit all that. Maybe with a little pushing, he could make it work.

“The guy gives people ulcers, what can I say.” He shrugged, carefully, to avoid breaking something. “Never know when he's going to bring some new alien in as a friend.”

Speaking of – his com channel was blinking in the way it did when Shepard was trying to call him. This button he definitely risked breaking a finger on as he pounded it. Judging from the lack of static, he was out of uniform.

“Joker? We're going to need to head back to the Citadel. The council wants to see me.”

Normally, it was hard to tell how Shepard felt about things. As long as he had his meds, he was pretty calm and even tempered. Even off them, it wasn't that bad. This, though? Joker had to wince as the pure annoyance leaked through like never before. Hell, he sounded like he was gritting his teeth as he spoke. That... was new.

“The Citadel? That's a bit of a jump. They can't do it over a vid?”

He swore he heard Shepard growl, but that was just impossible – he was pretty sure the man's voice didn't get that low. “Believe me, I asked. I guess they want to bother me into my second grave.”

That made Joker's stomach drop even further as he primed the Normandy to go. The ship was humming to life around him, and he felt it through his chair as he went through the motions. Normally, this was one of the best parts of his day. When he was in space, with FTL drive in high speed, it felt like he was floating.

Now, though? He felt like a rock lodged in cement at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

“We'll be there in about 12 hours.”

“Great. I'm going to...” Shepard paused, voice faltering. When he spoke again, it was calmer in the way he got when he was painfully aware of how in control he had to be. Joker hated that. “I'm going to get some work done. Thanks, Joker.”

The line cut after that, leaving the helmsman alone with his thoughts and a growing sense of anxiety deep in the pit of his stomach. Jumping to FTL drive didn't exactly make it easier. They said that feeling motion sick was just psychosomatic, but damn if his gut didn't roll through the first few pulses and waves as they hit the relay. Normally the blue light and tingle that rang through his aching bones did wonders for that, but now he just felt cold.

Cold and needing to be anywhere else but in that cockpit. Damn it all...

---

Everything hurt, and that was saying something.

Joker wasn't having the best day as he limped away from the cockpit. All he wanted right then was to go to bed and maybe try to shove something down his throat in the way of food. Of course, the doc would insist he take his meds before any of that. She got all frowny when he didn't, and there was the whole bone breaking thing he had to worry about, so thus the limping towards anywhere but a place to sleep.

Why did the medbay have to be so fucking far?

The ride down the elevator made his insides rattle, especially as it hit the floor and opened up. He was probably lucky he hadn't broken something as he made his way out. There was plenty of noise here, but none of it could really distract him as he limped away from the elevator towards the waiting medbay and his pills.

How big was it going to be today? Fuck...

Normally, when he got in this kind of mood Joker didn't notice much around him unless he was about to walk into it. There could have been naked dancing krogan as far as he was concerned, it just didn't register. Unless four testicles hit him in the face, he had tunnel vision. Yet, there they were metaphorically tea-bagging him.

What was Shepard doing in the observation area?

Joker cocked an eyebrow as he crept a little closer. No doubt about it, the person sitting there was Shepard – he was the only one with hair that red on the Normandy. He wasn't moving either, just... sitting there, facing the open window.

He should have just kept walking on to take his pills. After all, biotics were weird. Maybe it was some space meditation technique to keep their brains from frying over. Yet he kept walking towards his commanding officer in a perfect example of curiosity killing the cat.

Oof... even thinking that hurt.

“Commander?”

Shepard didn't respond as he entered the observation room. With his back to the door, he was just sitting there, staring out the window. Joker was practically on top of him, but he never broke his sight on what was in front of him.

“Hey, you ok there, Shepard?”

With his words, Joker broke a spell. Shepard snapped to life, and sweat trickled down his brow as he rounded on the man. His skin was practically white, and his eyes were as wide as softballs as his breathing began to slow. Before that, it was like he hadn't been breathing at all.

“Shepard are you-”

“Close the window.” He added a “please” at the last second as he shut his eyes tightly. The pilot didn't need to be told twice. In fact, he almost broke a fist hitting the button. The window shut closed on them both, and the room dimmed slightly before the lights had time to adjust.

Then it was just him and humanity's fist Spectre, sitting like two idiots in a dark room.

Joker felt the sweat trickle down his brow as he settled in. “Am I interrupting some biotic thing? You're not going to take a wall out, are you?”

Shepard let out an uneasy laugh as he ran a hand down his sweaty face. “No... just trying some self administered exposure therapy. I don't think it's working very well unfortunately.”

He opened his eyes – they were smaller now. “Don't you have a date with Dr. Chakwas in the medbay right about now?”

Yeah, but that was before the universe stopped moving.

Joker felt as though he had been hit by a bolt of lightning as he stared at his commanding officer, and then to the closed window. Details were streaming in at about a thousand kilometers a second, and he was about to hit the mass relay at “I'm a fucking moron” station. He tended to visit that one a lot – it was his favorite those days.

It was hard to make his mouth move, but Shepard was expecting something. “Well, had to make sure you were keeping on your weird biotic regimen.”

“Don't worry, I am.” Shepard smiled and his stomach flopped. The man stood, attempting to stretch casually. His form was far too stiff for that – it just came off looking painful. “Come on, I had to talk to her about something anyway. Might as well get it over with, right?”

He was doing it again – the biotic always cared way too damn much about other people. He looked like he was about to keel over, but Shepard was trying to put him at ease. It made Joker's stomach flop uncomfortably as he stood as well, bones creaking at the effort. Nothing but his heart was breaking right then.

Damn it all...

“Commander... I'm sorry.”

Shepard smiled at him again as he waved it off. “Nothing to apologize for, like I said I have to stop by there. She wanted to take a look at my implants and make sure I hadn't tried to hack them yet. You make a joke once about trying to match your aesthetic...”

He chuckled to himself as the door opened on them both. The pilot wanted to say more, but he realized as they made it through the mess that there was no point. He might have blamed himself – and plenty of others did too – but Shepard never would.

God, he wish he would...

All he could do was stare at the man's back as he threaded his way towards the medbay. Whatever else he wanted to say died in his throat as he watched a risen Spectre act as though this was Tuesday for him. Hell, he was fucking glowing thanks to those implants!

Glowing because of him...

“Joker, you ok back there?”

The man stopped – blue eyes were focused on him. Words were born and died in the space between the two, in what felt like a lifetime to the pilot. In the end, he swallowed them down. None of them would do him any good anyway.

“Just keeping up. Got a little stiff making sure we don't crash into shit.”

Shepard smiled and nodded. His footsteps slowed ever so slightly – how could a man's pace make him feel worse? “Yeah, that whole not crashing into shit thing is pretty important. Planets get mad when we make our own docking bay.”

They both laughed over that, but it was anyone's guess if that was genuine. After all, they were headed to the medbay with a mountain of weight between them. The best Joker could do was have his commander's back, like he should have that day.

Maybe it would've been easier if Shepard hated him... then again, he was pretty good at doing that himself those days.

Fuck....

#Joker #Alistair Shepard #this was really fucking hard to write #ramblinganthropologist's writing

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modern-oedipus · 4 years

Text

Kinda a personal post that is not required to read but just first line is enough

Also I couldn’t get back to much of personal messages today because:

• i threw up in the morning and it shoookth me

• was running on 2 hours sleep

• had 8 hours of continious lecture and barely made it home just now, eaten, and calmed her shit down

•has 3 assingments and 2 quizzes due tomorrow

•did I mention, I can hear my own breath making Z z Z z Z z z Z sounds due to post-asthma hypersensitive body or SOME anNOYING THING that doctors said

• im mentally unwell because someone I love is mentally unwell and I can’t do a thing to help him regardless of my efforts and also i feel quite sad and desperate in general even though I do my best to not just let it go and get in a depresso mood

• so like. Responsibilities piled up, emotionally at my limit, physically sick, but at least not in so much physical pain.

I haven’t let anything go, though! I take care of my sick body regardless, I try to eat healthy, I /am/ doing the responsibilities one by one and making sure I finish them even if it costs me some sleep, I am trying to mentally reassure myself to things and although I haven’t got to write them down yet I planned some 2020 resolutions and cleaning; they have been on my mind for a long while now so if it all goes well I am planning to get a better start at the new year! I think I have done fairly well in 2019, most of my resolutions came to true by my own efforts anyway.

Anyway I didnt have to give a long explanation about why I was like this, I’d just say “I’m unavailable” if I didn’t want to share, but since I know that most of you care about me as friends (and I care about you as friends too, obviously, that’s a two sided thing), I thought those who care may read, just to have somr sort of idea about why Nila is shitposting but not individually replying. Those who don’t care (with no offense in them since no one is obligated to) have long scrolled past this, anyway.

Ihh I’m tired! Mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, I’m tired at all aspects but worse? I objectively don’t think it will get better. But I also objectively know that I hve no choice but to work to make it better because I love my life that I regained after so much hard work and battling with d, I love my family and friends whose days we brighten together, I (sort of) love my scientific research even tho science doesn’t seem to love me, I love the stories I am writing and the newspaper I am managing, I love walking in the soft wind, I love coffee talks and fun dates and hook ups, I love my pets and I love everyone who reached out to me and befriended me here on this account, I love reading/writing comments to the ao3 and reading/writing replies back to them, I love the fandom stuff we organize, I love working out and then having that serotonin boost, I love offering a newly baked recipte to family/friends, I love casual hook ups and if and when I’m in a relationship (my last rl lasted 3 years sooo... rip.. that was most of my life) I do love loving and being loved in return, I mean, I even love doing laundry like it is such a nice feeling to put all dirt in a machine and then take it back perfectly clean and cozy and nicely smelling, like idk, because of all these things (and more that I forgot to add) I can’t give up from my life and I can’t stop fighting for it to be better. I can’t give up from myself or my loved ones. There is so much to live for.

P.S. I also low key live for the days Given, To Die For, the “photographer Ray” au whose name I forgot, and the teacher/student norray fics ( ;) ) gets updated. I mean I’m sure I’m reading many more fics but these are the stuff I have been looking forward to ever since August or something and just knowing that one day I /MAY/ read a chapter of them sometimes make me motivated enough to go through a day. Also spaceomania’s (damn did I spell that right?! I’m absolutely NOT tagging anyone to this long ass post, don’t want them to go trouble reading it aLL) comments like I’m sure they made not just me but many other authors write a lot more happily than they normally would, oh I also live for Ardency but I am too scared to read it because itnis eNDING so I will procrastinate it, but like, yes.

I have reasons to keep going, I have reasons to stay strong. I may not be feeling my best now and my problems may not be fixed overnight but I have no choice but to have faith in myself & people I love & things I believe in (now, “believe” sounds so non-scientific but that’s subject for another day), so, I’ll go on.

I usually don’t like opening up about suicide or depression since I just think that’s way too personal to talk about (I still havent declared why it happened and I dont think Iw anna talk about it anyway), but, in case someone with suicidal tendencies is reading this (first of all congrats for coming thru this essay idk what kept you here but you’re amazing), just, remember that a year ago I was at where you are and, well, THIS is my mindset now. I am not telling you to compare your journey with mine or anyone else’s. I am just proving you that a way out of that dark tunnel is perfectly possible for you and even if my current situation may not be ideal (to be honest, is there even an ideal life? Problems will always exist), I’m gratefulthat I have got enough reasons to fight for. Sure, my energy still drains sometimes (hence why regular text talk with Nila is difficult. No she doesnt have adhd or anything. She has a fairly good attention span. She just lacks the friggin energy), but I restore it before it gets out of hand. Stuff like that. It’s possible, not for just me, but for you and for everyone. I’m not a publicly-spoken-social-norm-warrior or anything but I will always stand up for anyone who is feeling suicidal tendencies because no—

As someone who went through that, just, no.

Don’t.

Let’s make 2020 better.

*and here my friends, you went through a good representation of what it is like to be in my brain changing 485858 subjects. Anyway NOW that I let ut out I need to do my assignment. I want to reply back to you insividually bevause texting you all makes me feel warm and happy and i also wanna check on you but i need ti restrore my enrgy (i actually tried texting whdn my mood was low and I think I frightened some people over sudden agression so I’d rather text you wisely than text you randomly), so, see you all soon!

I know it is not just me going through shit in her life. So, know that I’m cheering for you and I am always in for friends bringing best of each other, so if you really read this far go do the thing you procrastinate!! Bud!! Go do it!! It’ll feel better!

What a conclusion tho

#nila stuff #personal

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pimpson18 · 5 years

Text

Month of the Sad Boy

I know this is tl;dr as heck but whatever, here you go.

In honor of #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth, I decided to have probably the worst breakdown I've ever experienced in my life. I'm ok now, but I feel compelled to share my experience, because as much as I appreciate all the memes saying "It's ok to take a day off" and "Being Bipolar isn't just moodiness", I feel like it makes struggling with mental health issues feel "cute".

It feels like struggling with mental health is a brand that's being promoted. Burger King made freaking UNHAPPY MEALS for Christ's sake. Your brain might not be able to produce serotonin, but it's generating some great marketable content.

My Mental Health Awareness Month® started with the death of my grandmother. I tend to handle death and loss pretty well, but this absolutely wrecked me. At first, I thought this was because I had lost my final grandparent. An entire generation of my family was completely lost. Cue a heightened sense of mortality and existential dread.

This was also the first time I was over a thousand miles away from my family; Outside of reasonable driving range. Air travel costs $700-$1000 for a last minute ticket. Cue resentment and helplessness caused by capitalism and class struggles. It's reasonable that maybe my anxiety and depression would be heightened by this predicament.

Thanks to some help from my parents, I was able to make my way out to my grandmother's funeral and spend some time with my family. It felt nice spending time with them. We cried and laughed in equal measure. A salve filled the wound left behind from the loss. Healing had begun.

But something felt off.

My foundation had shifted.

In quiet moments, I felt fear. Not "ooohhh it's kinda dark and creepy in this room" fear, but "Dear lord the specter of death has their (that's right, death is a they. I'm progressive) hand around my heart" fear. I have never felt this way before. It was terrifying. I truly thought I was dead.

I couldn't stop thinking about it. Every second all I could think was, "You've lost your mind. You're dead. You'll never stop thinking like this. You've lost your mind. You're dead."

It was like The Tell Tale Heart but I hadn't murdered anyone. My only crime was being alive and having a brain.

There would be moments where I could distract myself. I could get caught up in a conversation, or watch something engaging enough on TV, but these moments were fleeting. I'd feel myself get pulled back in, the demons inside dragging me, clawing and screaming, back into the endless abyss. I’m not being melodramatic here. If this were an UNHAPPY MEAL, it would be the Supreme Deluxe Family-sized XXL Jumbo Anxiety Box with a Large Cup of Depression and a tote bag full of Chili Cries (Sorry, it was too easy).

The thoughts went on for weeks. It was constant. Each passing thought a stone piling on top of the last one, slowly crushing me. I was trapped inside of myself. It was the opposite of an out of body experience. I was withdrawing deeper and deeper, sanity slipping further and further out of reach. I was plummeting like a rat that had been given a pair of brand new concrete shoes.

During all of this, I was seeking the help of professionals. I’ve been seeking help since I moved out to DC. My wife (who is a saint deserving of a thousand Michelangelo murals) and I left hundreds of messages with psychiatrists. A few have gotten back. Most of them weren’t available for an appointment well into the fall. Nothing really soothes an anxious breakdown like sitting and waiting.

We kept searching. I tried getting a teleconference with a psychiatrist so I could get at least some temporary relief. The app my insurance provided me hooked me up with some dude who was holed up in Alaska. He was an older gent who could only seem to get his wispy white comb-over in the frame of my phone screen. I don’t remember his name, but he was very warm and considerate. He recommended I double the amount of Welbutrin I was taking to help curb my anxiety.

“Isn’t Welbutrin an upper? Won’t that actually make my anxiety worse?” I asked.

“It is an upper but it will actually help lower your anxiety.” He said comfortably from his remote psychiatric ward/icefishing hut in Alaska.

One of us was right, and it wasn’t the person who has a license to be a psychiatrist.

I receded further. The thoughts of death and insanity looping tighter and tighter around me like dual anacondas, preparing to swallow me whole like Jon Voight in the movie Anaconda, only I wasn’t going to pop back out and wink at Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube. My wife consoled me as I sobbed in her arms, terrified I would never be able to enjoy another second with her ever again. This had been my life for two weeks, why would it ever stop?

My wife finally found me a psychiatrist who could see me immediately. A stroke of luck! She also found a therapist who specialized in CBT and sounded like a nice guy on the phone who could see me the same day. A two-for-one luck special!

The psychiatrist was part of a larger “mental healthcare group”. Whoa! Cool! It’s like they’re the Avengers of giving out happy pills!

Not really. It’s more like they’re brain farmers herding sad cattle into a slaughterhouse, grinding them into a bunch of manufactured Happy Paddies™. I got prodded into a cold, desolate office where a woman stared unblinkingly at a tablet, while she entered all my symptoms into some kind of program. The algorithm confirmed my medications were out of whack and suggested I #glowup the milligrams of my bipolar meds, while I cut down on the Welbutrin, which was not sparking my joy. The psychiatrist never made eye contact with me and the visit ended within 10 minutes. It was just like my wedding night, hey oh!

Next was the therapist. I thought I wanted eye contact until I saw this dude. He was 100 going on 100,000 years old. His eyes were bloodshot, his office smelled like soup, and his phone rang at least 20 times. It felt more like an interview to be his caretaker. I was so deep within my mind that I was about to fall down my throat and into my stomach.

The icing on the Shit Cake™ was when I mentioned that I did comedy (I can’t help but brag about myself, even when I’m completely collapsing. I’ll probably plug my Twitter page on my deathbed.). He stopped the therapy session and began plugging his side hustles. He mentioned that he did career counseling and could help me get gigs that paid upward of $40-$50 an hour. He also said I should bring by show flyers for him to look over. He dabbled in graphic design.

I was furious. Our session was 45 minutes in. I had opened up, cried, and begged for relief. He merely saw me as an opportunity. Someone he could upsell.

I had some choice words and stormed out.

Tears ran down my cheeks as I got in my car. They were bitter and hopeless.

At least I got a new prescription.

Turns out that was actually a decent enough solution. I’m 5 days into my new medication regiment and I’m close to normal again. The thoughts will pop up every now and then, but they’re faint and go away quickly. I’ve had two good days in a row. Feels like I’ll have a lot more.

The reason why I wrote all this is two-fold:

1. I like the attention

2. I wanted to show what the struggle looks like in all its ugly glory.

Depression, anxiety, bi-polar, etc. can be managed, fought back, and abated; sometimes for short periods of time, sometimes for years and years. It can be like a common cold or it can be full blown brain AIDS. You may need to take a mental health day; you might need to go to the ER.

Treatment can be as capricious as the sickness itself. You may feel safe, seen, and cared for. You might feel like a product on a conveyor belt, being inspected by an uncaring factory worker or gobbled up by an unqualified Lucille Ball (does this metaphor track? I think it does.)

Mental illness is hard because even the person suffering through it doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Sometimes all we need from others is to know that. Sometimes we might appreciate some effort, like going out and getting us an UNHAPPY MEAL™.

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relbyshock · 5 years

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Amy Winehouse, Princess Diana, Britney Spears, Marilyn Monroe, Aileen Wuornos, Angelina Jolie, Adolf Hitler, Darrell Hammond, Pete Davidson, Winona Ryder, Vincent Van Gogh, Tommy Tiernan….

What do they all have in common? Apart from being famous figures, they all suffer(ed) or were rumored to have suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder.

Hey, me too.

I’m over the moon to have something in common with Princess Di (apart from our shared plight with bulimia), but I have to say, I’d rather not have anything in common with Aileen or Adolf…..

Borderline Personality Disorder is a confusing term to say the least. On the borderline of what and what? Well, in the ‘30s, it meant you fell somewhere between psychosis (untreatable) and neurosis (treatable).

Great, that’s reassuring.

Come the ‘70s, BPD sufferers were described as being very emotional, needy, difficult, at risk for suicide, and to have an “overall unstable level of functioning”.

Check. *sings “Welcome to My Life” by Simple Plan*

We also have rapidly fluctuating mood swings, unstable self-image, and a fear of abandonment. This disorder wasn’t even recognized by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) until 1980.

Today, we know far more about BPD – “neurosis” is no longer used in the diagnosis, and BPD is no longer considered a psychotic disorder.

So what are we then?

Crazy?

Hormonal?

According to my family, yes. But in reality, the problem lies within our brains. Let me nerd out here for a minute:

The Amygdala (Ah-mig-dah-lah) is composed of two almond-shaped parts of the brain, deep in the medial temporal lobe, that regulate fear and aggression. People with BPD have amygdala’s that are noticeably smaller than that of a healthy person. The smaller the amygdala, the more overactive it is.

Like short guys with bad attitudes, or what I like to refer to as “little man syndrome”.

And then we have the Hippocampus – no, not pachyderm college. The hippocampus is responsible for spatial orientation (not falling over), long and short-term memory, and emotional regulation. Put simply, the hippocampus chooses the correct response to environmental events: Fight or flight.

You may be wondering if I was dropped on my head as a child. The answer is yes – frequently – but the chances of minor brain trauma causing BPD are slim.

The causes of Borderline Personality Disorder are unclear. It seems to involve genetic, brain, environmental and social factors. There are rumours that people with BPD have issues with serotonin production, which has been linked to depression, aggression and having a hard time controlling “destructive urges”.

As for environmental factors, those who have been a victim of emotional/physical/sexual abuse, as well as being exposed to chronic fear or distress as a child have a high likelihood of developing BPD. This is because our relationship with our parents and family has a HUGE influence on how we see the world, and how we feel about other people.

Gals are also diagnosed 3 times as often as guys. You’ve gotta wonder if that’s due to the fact that men tend to be more weary of the doctor, therefore avoiding a diagnosis altogether. This is pure speculation.

Shall we take a dive into the “Signs and Symptoms” as listed by Wikipedia?

-Markedly disturbed sense of identity

-Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment and extreme reactions

-Splitting (black and white thinking)

-Impulsivity

-Intense and uncontrollable emotional reactions that often seem disproportionate to the event or situation

-Unstable and chaotic interpersonal relationships

-Self-damaging behavior (ie, substance abuse)

-Distorted self-image

-Dissociation

-Frequently accompanied by depression, anxiety, anger, substance abuse or rage

We are also aware of the intensity of our negative emotional reactions, and since we can’t regulate them, we shut them down completely. What my doctor and I refer to as feeling “flat”.

BPD sufferers are also extremely sensitive to real or perceived rejection. Let’s explain with a meme, shall we:

*looking at an unanswered text from 12 minutes ago*

You: They must be in the shower or just busy, they’ll respond when they have a chance.

Me: Ok well they were active on Instagram 6 minutes ago and they just posted a snap story….they’re ignoring me, why do they hate me? What did I do? Are they mad at me? Should I send another text to get their attention or is that too needy?

If you’re annoyed just reading that, TRY LIVING IN MY BRAIN.

I annoy myself.

I feel grief, overwhelming shame and humiliation where others would feel mildly embarrassed. A minor inconvenience such as cancelled plans takes me from excited to absolutely miserable.

In the past, an unflattering photo on Facebook has caused me to reevaluate my self-worth, and even my life.

The Sickboy podcast explained it beautifully: Borderline Personality Disorder is like having a third degree burn on your emotions. I feel that. Everything hurts me just a little bit more than the average bear (or human).

Why am I telling you this? Because boys and girls, today is Bell Let’s Talk Day here in Canada. I’ll include the link at the bottom. Basically, in 2010, Bell began a new conversation about Canada’s mental health. They’ve enlisted such figures as Howie Mandel, Michael Landsberg, and Clara Hughes to share their stories of struggle and strength in the face of mental health.

I thought today was as good as any other to address the stigma surrounding mental health, but more specifically, the stigma around BPD.

I can’t pretend to know all the answers – I’m not and won’t pretend to be a psychiatrist. But this is what the world looks like through my lens.

If someone honks at me while I’m driving to work, I’m upset ALL DAY. I never want to drive again, I want to pull over and cry, or turn around and go home.

If I get a moderately rude email, my brain fills with cutting, angry, and just plain mean remarks to respond with. “I’m sorry your father never hugged you as a child” is not a suitable response to a professional email, but that’s where my brain goes.

When I make plans with friends weeks in advance and they bail 10 minutes before, I am a heap of inconsolable sobs for the rest of the evening, and even into the next day. This plays into the fear of “real or imagined abandonment”. My BPD brain does not care that something came up or you’re feeling under the weather. BPD tells me that you hate me and you never want to see me again and you were just pretending to like me this whole time and you’ve finally made your escape. My logical brain tries to tell me that it’s ok, and we’ll plan something for another time, but usually, my BPD brain wins the fight.

When I get nervous and start to ramble trying to tell a story and my mom cuts me off with “Anyways.” I want to crawl in a hole and die, but I also sort of want to throw a plate at her face. My mother is a saint, so why do I feel this way about her sometimes?

Let’s get back to the causes of Borderline Personality Disorder. Dad, Mom, maybe stop reading here…or don’t…but here’s your warning. You aren’t going to like this next part.

I was severely neglected as a child. Not physically – I had food to eat, clothes to wear, a roof over my head – but emotionally and mentally. The minor relationship I did have with my father was marked by him coming home from a long shift (as a firefighter) and starting a fight with me about my weight, my shoes at the front door, my marks in school, and more often than not, “why are you always crying?!”. My mom also worked full time at a stressful sales job. So by the time she got home, she didn’t want to have to deal with anyone else’s issues.

So when I would have issues with anything from being bullied at school to just having a ‘bad mental health day’, I had nowhere to turn.

See, my brother and I were latch-key kids. We got home from school at least an hour before my parents got home from work. He and I never got along, so some sort of fight would ensue, and by the time our parents got home, he had made me cry. I was deemed dramatic and sent away to my bedroom, while the 3 of them would eat dinner together (usually something I refused to eat – like meat – which would be another reason to fight).

I’ve voiced this to my mom before, and she remembers my childhood very differently than I do.

As long as I have been alive, I have come second to my brother.

No, honey, we can’t go to (insert activity I wanted to do) because Maxx has hockey/a book report due/needs a ride to the bike track, etc.

Every dinner or event we went to was with HIS friends and THEIR parents, who ended up becoming my parents’ best friends (still to this day). I was always the only girl; so naturally, I stayed with the adults, because the boys wouldn’t have me.

But the adults didn’t want me there either. I felt like a constant annoyance.

Thinking back on it, I realize that I may not have been as unwanted as I perceived myself to be. Remember, BPD brains are sensitive to even slight facial expressions and tones of voice. But, when I voiced this to my parents, that I felt unwanted, and why couldn’t we do things with my friends and their parents, etc. I was told that I was being ridiculous.

Enter: Invalidation

Invalidation is the number one cause of BPD, according to my psychiatrist. Growing up in an environment where nothing you do is good enough will cause you to internalize everything.

I have no memories or examples of healthy emotional behaviour or relationships. In our house, we got the point across by screaming at or just plain ignoring each other. So when I get hurt, or I feel let down, I have absolutely no idea how to deal with my feelings. Further reinforcing my belief that the world is full of bad people who are out to ruin your day and be unkind, because that’s all I’ve ever known.

Research shows that if you already experience these difficulties as a child, experiencing trauma as an adult could make things worse.

Dad - now is really the time to stop reading.

(Sometimes I feel like I live inside the DSM definition of BPD)

At the age of 21 – fresh out of college and trying to start my career in the fashion world – I was sexually assaulted. Cue the downward spiral.

I didn’t report. I didn’t seek help. I confided in a close friend, and was called a liar. But that’s a story for another time.

So I buried that part of me so deep, that sometimes I could convince myself that it never happened. Sometimes.

I reached the end of my rope in 2016. I knew that if I didn’t seek help, I would not survive. I finally went to my doctor and spent hours with her, just sobbing and telling her everything.

She hooked me up with a psychiatrist, and put me in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy, and started me on an SSRI (anti-depressant) immediately.

As of today, it has been 1172 days since the assault. I only told my mother this past summer.

Since reaching out for help, I have begun to repair the relationship with my parents. My mom and I are closer than ever, and my dad and I are working on it.

As I write this, I feel the judgements pouring in. But I have decided that this year, I don’t care. I am not ashamed of my story. I will no longer hide the things I have been through in order to make others more comfortable. I will not keep my pain to myself because it’s easier for others if I stay silent. If bearing my soul can help even one person seek the help they need, then I have succeeded, and all this pain has been worth it.

The long and short of it is SPEAK UP! There is nothing embarrassing about mental illness. If you aren’t feeling right, there are people who care and are here to help you, including me. The first step is to tell someone.

The best advice I can give is to find your people. People who trust you, who lift you up, who validate your feelings, who listen and take you seriously when you say you’re having a bad day. I have spent the past year painstakingly building my support system, because the truth of the matter is, I can’t do this alone. And that’s ok.

Today and every single day, be kind to each other – it’s the only thing that matters.

https://letstalk.bell.ca/en/bell-lets-talk-day

#TW #TWSA #Trigger Warning #Bell Let's Talk #BPD #Borderline Personality Disorder #Borderline Life #bpd thoughts #Assault #it gets better #I promise

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lettuceboi07 · 6 years

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The World Doesn’t Make Sense and I’m Learning to Be Okay With That

“The ozone layer is getting fucked on the daily, families are being split up at the border, Nazis are living 15 minutes away from us, and our lives are insignificant specks of dust on the crust of a doomed rock floating in the great expanse of an unforgivable universe. And yet here we are,” he didn’t look at me, but I could sense the need for a reply to his statements.

“I’ll drink to that,” I replied. Even though I had no drink. We weren’t old enough. And we didn’t know anyone who partied. Me being an insecure piece of shit with no will to talk to anyone, and him who had no real base in reality for a few years. Thank god we found each other or I don’t know what I would’ve done. Probably kill myself. That seems to be the solution nowadays.

“Preach,” he hummed and I could feel his smirk. His head was turned away from me and his body lay out in the grass. “Actually, fuck alcohol. We know anyone with weed?” He asked me this as if I had any other friends outside of our careful little group.

“No,” I replied, leaning back on my hands, looking down at him. He turned so his back was on the grass and he threw a hand over his eyes.

“Damn. I’m out of ideas.”

“Is it legal to purchase serotonin yet? Maybe some dopamine without the nasty hallucinogenic side effects?”

“Yeah, it’s called bottled water and a gym membership.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t knock healthy to you try it.”

“I saw you eat three big boxes of shoprite sugar cookies in succession last week.”

“We all have different definitions of healthy, bitch,” he stretched his arms above his head and I looked away from him. I lazily stared out at the couple of families milling about the park. They kept a wide berth from us. Which, granted, was fair. Most people avoided teenagers if they could. They looked so perky and fresh with the moms in yoga pants and workout jackets, kids in matching sparkly outfits and nice shoes, dads (if they bothered to show up) with beer bellies and polo shirts. I hated it. I hated every single one of them for thinking they could just enjoy their day like normal people. Why the fuck can’t everyone be miserable? How dare they actually put effort into their happiness.

I felt an elbow hit my side gently. He knew enough to not harm my ribs. “I can see you brooding from down here,” he smiled up at me when I looked at him. “Can’t we have one day without you wishing up a new plague?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I bit my tongue. I had a nasty habit of going off on tangents. Recently, it seemed to be doing more harm than good, but maybe I had been ranting to the wrong people. That happens a lot.

“I’m not your dad. Don’t try to lie to me. You’re horrible at it,” ever the asshole, he read me like a book.

I sighed. “Why do people feel the need to pretend like everything’s okay? Like, it feels as if whenever something isn’t affecting them directly or fucking up their lives, then it’s totally fine.”

“Like I said already, people are dickheads,” he sat up. He pulled at his shirt and wiped his nose. “This is in the middle of White Republicanville. Suburban sprawl galore. This is all you’re exposed to here. None of them,” he gestured to the white families running through the wood chips and plastic-metal play contraptions, “have to deal with any real shit. And if they do, it’s somehow fixable through gossip and cheese platters and barbecues.”

“Awfully assumptious of you,” I muttered and tore out a few grass strands. Poor Earth. Such flimsy hair.

“Sorry, the few that have dealt with actual problems no longer care and haven’t stepped up to deal with the rampant suicide rates of our high school or the massive drug problem. No one actually cares about the root of the problem,” he snapped back.

“It’s because we’d rather put on a mask that says we’re perfect than let anyone know we need help,” I pursed my lips.

“Yeah, like you.” It wasn’t said with malice, but he gave me a knowing smirk. “And me.”

“We’re working on it.”

“Emphasis on the present tense.”

“Don’t reference grammatical terms with me right now, bitch,” I tersely said. It was unfair of me, but it was only August and I already got fucked over by school.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not.”

“It really is.”

“No, it’s not. I’m sorry.”

“If I accept your damn apology, can we please get back to trash talking the lack of representation in media? This is a cycle that happens every goddamn time and you know it.”

“You’re getting better at calling shit out. You deserve to be angry. Well, not deserve, but you’re allowed to be,” he said, calmly, but I could hear the undercurrent of exasperation in his voice. We went through this every time one of us got upset. That someone was usually me. He had a better grasp in front of people. I used to be a spoiled rich kid, so I never really developed self-restraint.

“Emotions aren’t real, we’ve covered this.”

“It’s science! It’s chemistry. Stop invalidating your own profession.”

“Future profession,” I reminded him. “That’s if my dad actually let’s me apply anywhere.”

“Well if you do, you know you’ll get in.” He crossed his legs. “Where to this week?”

“ Caltech. Or maybe Stanford, get as far away from here as possible.”

“California. Gay country. You sure you’re ready to handle the big leagues?”

“You saying I ain’t gay enough?” I lightly pushed him with my shoulder and we both laughed a bit. It was the kind of laughter you forced out to lighten a mood. When you both know you can’t feel genuine but want to comfort the other person. We fell silent after and both stared at the grass. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable like it was with my father. It wasn’t tense like with her and the need to fill it with something. It wasn’t comfortable either, but it was at the same time. It just was and I liked it.

Our brains were as hazy as the day and I wondered if this was what real friendship felt like.

#him and i: the perils of a depressed student #him and i #my writing #original writing #can you tell im sad?

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yes-this-is-sam · 6 years

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Ok, I’m just going to be real on here for a minute. For my friends, for my girl, and for everyone else on here who needs to know, deep down, that someone else gets it.

This is not a one-up story. This is not for pity. You don’t have to read it or care. This is so someone who is struggling with the weight of the world in their lungs or trying to decide if what they feel is real and how to handle it... knows that someone else out there went through the same fucked up emotions and is here to talk. To vent. To reach out. So you don’t have to feel alone. I don’t care if we’re mutuals. I don’t care if I’ve never met you before in my life. I WILL be here and try to help you as much as I can.

There is depression in this. Abuse. Mental illness. Suicidal ideation. This is what I’ve gone through and I don’t want it to trigger you, so please don’t feel like you HAVE to read it.

I’ve struggled with trying to decide if I even SHOULD make this post. But I know, in my heart, I fought through all of this so I could understand and help others who struggle. And I can’t reach out and help those people unless they know I’m here. So I apologise that this isn’t ME related. That this isn’t fun or nice. I won’t bring it up again. But it’s here.

It kind of started when I came over from England to the States. At least, that’s the earliest I can remember. Kids making fun of the accent, making fun of being shy, making fun of liking books (No. Really. I read dictionaries for fun folks), of being the teachers pet. Especially because they moved me up a grade. OH HELL that set me up hard. I did not handle the culture shock well, a lot of people might say I NEVER got past it.

(Heh my brain is trying to get me to skip over all this cause everyone knows kids get bullied but fuck I will not belittle what I felt.)

No kid, especially that young, handles being isolated well. Now, there’s a difference between liking being on your own, which I do, and being forcibly isolated. It is Not Good. Those very important years laid the groundwork for every single thing that happened later on. It created the insecurity, anxiety, and need to be accepted that damn near ruined me.

I would do ANYTHING. Anything. To make people like me because I needed to not feel so alone.

My only friends in middle school were a spy ring, none of whom I remember well, to voluntarily keep track of rumours and threats to my safety. I was beaten up. I went to my parents, to teachers. Everyone discounted what I was saying and I couldn’t tell if it was because I couldn’t say it right or if they just weren’t listening. Most of these years I don’t remember. I have massive gaping chunks of lost memory. Or memories that come back looking like a weird acid trip scene in a movie. I had a boy who would follow me home from the school bus stop yelling names at me from across the street.

I went nonverbal for almost four years. It was not pretty. My parents were angry and frustrated and concerned. I was -pissed-. I was terrified and hurt. My words had failed no matter how I tried to twist them so they obviously weren’t any good. I became bitter and nasty, completely distant from any form of socialisation. It took so much effort to even breathe that it was painful. I stopped leaving the house, or even my room if I could help it. I’d have to crawl going up the stairs because I’d get winded halfway up if I stood up and walked. I stopped showering, brushing my teeth, stopped eating. Started hating every inch of myself.

High school, if at all possible, got worse. My parents finally tried to take me to get help. The guy sat with me for all of 10 minutes and diagnosed me with ADD. Put me on Adderall. For those who haven’t been given this drug before, the long-term side affects include depression, hostility, and paranoia. Three things I already had in spades. I started punching myself. Punching hard objects. Biting and scratching myself. It became so habitual that the only times I would get that blessed serotonin were when I did hurt myself. The pain was the only thing that would clear my head and let me calm down and think straight. I got completely addicted to it, but I knew cutting was a problem so I never did that. If I didn’t, it wasn’t that bad, right? Then one day I blacked out and came to attempting to hang myself. It wouldn’t have worked, something would have snapped. But it still happened. I would still daydream about throwing myself out of moving cars. Down high things. I would zone out and wake up holding a steak knife in my hands trying to talk myself out of cutting cause “No, cutting is too far” and instead I started carving hateful things about myself and my family into my bedroom walls. Rage was in my veins, not blood.

When I did try talking again, just before the Adderall fiasco, I realised quickly in ninth grade that I had the societal equivalent of a 5th grade emotional and social comprehension. I was humiliated that I was so far behind. It took years to even start thinking and acting like a typical teenager, albeit a very angry hateful one. When I did finally get off the Adderall, I thought I’d been angry and resentful before but ha now someone had tried to help and only made things worse and they still wouldn’t listen. “Stop being a brat” and “you’re normal you’re just hormonal” were two of the best ways to set me off. But at school I was cold as ice. I was the scary one who collected the out of control bad kids like war dogs. And finally people would leave me alone.

In my senior year I got tired of being the bad one and tried to fight it all into a tight bottle. Make it ALL go away and try to be the sweet girl my parents remembered. And then boys started noticing me. Devon who would slide his hand up my skirt at the lunch table (to this day I don’t wear anything with a skirt unless it’s floor length) or that time he invited me to a party and then trapped me in a room with him and his ex-girlfriend and tried to pressure me into some exploration. I couldn’t say no to anyone. As scary as I’d made myself out to be, I would lay down and do anything to try and prove I could have friends. And people knew that. Get me into a situation and ask me to do something like that and I didn’t want to, I’d sit there for ten minutes staring at floors, walls, hands, begging myself to say no but frozen listening to this pressure cause I couldn’t. And then someone would open a door and I’d make a break for it. CJ who got me to hang out with him alone and because I couldn’t make myself say no, forced me to allow him to touch things I didn’t want touched.

I have had to scream this at myself every day for seven years: it doesn’t matter that I didn’t SAY no. I did NOT want it. It was CLEAR that I did not want it. If you have to talk someone up THAT hard, push them where you want them to go, that is assault whether the word no is said or not.

I took a year off after high school and hid in my home again. Praying it was over, that it would just get better. I was so tired, exhausted to the bone and soul, of fighting everything on my own. I didn’t tell my parents for over a year about CJ and Devon... and while my dad got angry, my mother (who is also a victim of depression and sexual assault) for YEARS after still believed I was just saying that because I was embarrassed to say I’d been experimenting. I had absolutely no support structure and a gaping sensitive wound in my chest that just wanted someone to love me and say I was wanted and safe. That groundwork from when I was a kid had scaffolding and a first floor built. My first year of college I fucking let myself get pressured into acts I didn’t want again because I didn’t want to lose my terrible boyfriend or my terrible friends. I almost accepted letting my best friend of fourteen years tell me that, and I quote cause this shit is still burned into my mind from 2012 “You’re an embarrassment to have around my friends and should be kept on a leash”. But between my, now ex, and her new boyfriend who was over 10 years older than her and a manipulative sociopath, I snapped and all that bottled up anger came out in a flash of red. I don’t know what I said but she ran off crying and I never hung out with them again.

I stayed alone for a while after that. I needed to get myself together. Started keeping a tally of days I wouldn’t hurt myself, trying to focus on school work even though I still couldn’t get out of bed. Tried to make myself eat more than once every three days, started keeping tallies of that. Got about twenty THOUSAND dollars worth of work done on my teeth over a five year period, including wisdom teeth removal. God it was like dragging myself through mud with twenty pound weights on each leg. Every day it was three steps back one forward. It never got easier. The trust never came. I never felt better about myself.

Then, when I hit maybe around 22, I say maybe because even for those years I still have massive memory gaps, I started seeing improvement. Some scattered good days. Days where I was still depressed but could laugh and smile, awkwardly hang out with the one or two people I’d allowed to stay. I started realising that, if I could just wrap my hands around this monster ruling my head and chest and wrangle it, I could live with it. I could force a balance and co-exist with it. Cause that fucker wasn’t going away, never. I would still flinch if anyone touched me. To this day no one can stand behind me and I HAVE to hear you coming from any direction or I will have a complete panic attack. But I could live with that.

I figured out what worked and, slowly and trying to be gentle with myself, pushed myself through each day into a rhythm. A weak sort of balance. Started getting stronger.

Then I met Matt. Tall, wicked smooth, handsome as hell and knew it. Proud of the fact that he could manipulate anyone, get whatever he wanted. Well that ended up being me. I fell head over heels with the charm. In only a few months he convinced me that we could move out of state and make it work. He got me totally isolated. I wasn’t allowed to sing. Tap my toothbrush on the sink to clean it. Drive with the windows down. If he wanted to go spend the night at another girl’s house I had to let him but if he was home, I couldn’t even be on my computer. At first sleeping with him was easy. It meant literally nothing, had no emotion, so that made it feel safe somehow. But god forbid someone actually have a crush on me and want to hold my hand or every red flag would go sky high and leave me keeping furniture between me and that person at all times. But then I didn’t want it anymore. The rush of feeling like I’d beat my own head at its games wore off. Of course.... that didn’t stop him. And I still hadn’t learned how to say no, if I tried he’d just convince me I was wrong. I worked, did all the chores. He flipped in and out of jobs and then just... stopped working, hanging out with girls and whoever else he wanted to. Then up and moved to Colorado without me, saying he’d make it rich and bring me out there too. After a few weeks without him constantly near me... it finally started registering what had been happening for a year. That I had been completely broken down and abused and I thought I’d been happy despite the daily panic attacks and the loss of all the self-worth I’d fought so hard for. And I called my dad and he drove from Virginia to Kentucky to pick me up and get me back home.

Matt came back to Virginia soon after and I tried to patch things up. He was angry he had to leave some of his things behind and I was too scared to tell him it was over. But the thoughts were whirling in my head and he couldn’t stop them unless he was right there with me and we were living an hour apart. I was trying to figure out how to make it stop when one day he choked me and I figured out the only way to do so. So when I left that day, I blocked him on every device and never spoke to him again. It’s been almost two years and I know without a doubt if I ran into him again it would take him minutes to get into that part of my brain again. I’d fight it off but that fear and self-doubt would be so real.

This year I got into therapy finally. Took her four sessions to diagnose me with PTSD and I actually told her I had known but refused to call it that because I didn’t want people to think I was being overdramatic. I rated extreme for anxiety as well, and severe for depression. And this was during the best year I’ve had to date, where everything feels like its finally working out.

These things, these events and feelings... they’re so strong. They meld into your DNA and completely alter how you perceive yourself and other people. But you’re still YOU despite them. You’re still HERE. That means you’re winning. That means there’s still a chance to find that balance.

I have a stable, if stressful job. My credit score is finally above 600 again after ruining it going to and running away from Kentucky. My finances are stable. I’m looking at the prospect of a much better job. It’s new but I have the best girl and the potential of a future.

I still have to fight these feelings and memories. They don’t go away. I still have days where I can’t eat. Where taking a deep breath feels impossible. My friends in my area say they’re drawn to me because of how damn strong and responsible I appear and in my head I hear myself go, God if only they knew the truth. But the disservice that does me, that thinking that does YOU, is unreal. Never discount how strong you are to have made it this far, nearly or even completely alone. That you matter, your pain matters, and you have MEANING. That no matter how you feel about yourself, you are a beautiful disaster that would alter the state of the world were you to be gone. A force of nature. There is steel inside of you guarding your potential and keeping you up.

All of this, and I’m okay. I’m finally okay. Great? Potentially, some days. Those days will start coming more often. I’m regulating my eating, my health, and forcing myself to keep tabs on my habits. Sleep is still a messy work in progress, so is my room (I developed hoarding habits as a coping mechanism).

But I’m okay. And I want YOU to be okay. I want you to not feel like you have to go through feeling like THAT up there, because no matter what you actually went through and whether it was like mine or not, your pain is pain just like mine. Loneliness just like mine. Loss and fear just like mine. Completely alone.

If you need me. I am right here. I don’t care how long it takes. It took me fifteen years. I don’t care if you backslide. I don’t care if you’re so lost in it that you can’t see what is in you or around you. I am here for you so you have one rock in the hurricane wearing you out. It does get better. I will talk to you, I will let you vent. I will distract you and cheer you on.

I’m right here and I love you. Every bruised and scarred inch. Everything I know you can be once the situation allows for it.

#personal #you don't have to read this #I can't emphasize that enough #but if you need to know someone understands #I'm here and I will #I don't know how to tag warnings well but here goes trying #tw depression #tw PTSD #tw mental illness #tw abuse #tw self harm #tw assault #tw anxiety #I'm sorry if this is too much info for some people #or too personal for a fan blog #but I'm seeing so much hurt on my dash #so many people struggling #I want you guys to know I'm here and I will stop at nothing to help you

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kamerionbeaudry91 · 4 years

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Premature Ejaculation Homeopathy Treatment Blindsiding Cool Ideas

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martinlawless · 4 years

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Ashwell Grass Track, 1hr TT

Ashwell Grass Track Smallgains, Ashwell, Hertfordshire 24 June 2020

There’s been no official racing for some time now. So unofficial racing it is! And to that, the only viable racing are TTs - as it’s easy to maintain social distance and all that.

Iain in the club had the idea to identify different races on the club’s pretty unique and special grass track that could be done CV19-friendly. The obvious ones that caught my eye were the longer distance endurance ones. The one-hour TT being the doozy. I will have a pop at the shorter distance ones too: though I’ll fare badly as I’ve no big power, and secondly my bike is geared for longer distance slogs rather than short distance power. so, even if I’m up for it, I’ll spin out - as I always do at grass track omniums. If I was being really keen, I’d change gears in between disciplines on an omnium, as I have witnessed Andrew Leverton do. But, I’m too cack-handed and not too fussed to do that.

It’s the hottest day of the year. My legs are in bits after the previous evening’s chaingang session: a fun 27 miles of hell that last night saw me link up with Adam Swan on the first lap and Mat Porter on the third lap. Both great, strong riders. I was wiped out leading or hiding in a 2-up with them. However, what I have fathomed out over recent regular riding day after day is that the body is unfathomable. It won’t tell you if it’s able or not. Sometimes, your legs feel tired, but they can give it top welly. And vice versa. So, I thought I’d have a crack at the one hour grass track TT in the evening, hopefully clipping into the cooler temperatures as the time went on.

I prepped beforehand. Banana on bagel a couple of hours before to keep energy up there. A gel, creams and balms. I didn’t put on an aero helmet or tri-bars. I’m not really sure, but there is something about the purity of a normal bike and equipment that felt right for this attempt. Having said that: I do have a top-end track bike. A Giant Omnium - that they no longer manufacture. A shame. It’s true class.

Over to the track I go. There already are Dan, Dan, Dave and the Ayers family. Is it helpful to be watched on as you bury yourself knee deep in watts? I think so. I told Dan not to allez allez me early on as I was fearful of popping near the end. How to pace this effort - I’d no idea. It definitely is an Art to work out how to map out your body’s energy over such a long time to a Goldilocks level: not too hot, not too easy - just right.

A bit of twiddling on the pedals, but not too much - as I know as an endurance race I don’t need to warm-up the short twitch muscles and want to preserve my longer ones. Away I go.

I figured to start I’d definitely stay under threshold and settle in. Grass track riding is hard - even with my easy ratio 46:16. The first several minutes pass slowly and my brain is frantic to find a system to keep focused. Do I count down every three laps? Do I look to trundle over a certain bump of grass every time? Do I sing a pop song in my head?

The wind is unfortunately a headwind on the uphill. But after 10-20 minutes, I no longer notice it as it dies off for the evening. With a brief word or two of encouragement heard every lap by the lads on the finish line, time cracks on. Constantly just under threshold.

Something odd occurs about 20 minutes in. A weird euphoria takes over me. I unusually feel a bit giddy. Like a caffeine hit. I don’t know how or why - though Daniel offers the idea that by now I have got into a rhythm and together with the undoubtedly pure zen-like nature of fixed-wheel riding, there may be some kind of serotonin release or whatever (I ain’t no medical professional). Anyway, the following 20 minutes sail by quite blissfully. Sure, I eat a few flies, but it’s all good.

On reflection, as serene as this section was mentally, I see my effort does dip ever so slightly. Going again, I ought to find more aggression.

Then, 40 minutes in, the end is in sight. Now is about trying to burn the reserves. I do step it up a bit, but the body is a little bit in denial by now and not responding as well as I’d like it to. I figured if I get out of the saddle for the climb, it would be a bad sign of unequal power application. Once or twice I nearly do. But rein myself in. Steady as she goes.

10 minutes to go and my loose chain rattles on the downhill. I wonder what I’d do if I suffered a mechanical now. I decide I’d grab any bike and crack on in a heroic failure styley. Fortunately, the chain stays good. I was taking it easy on each downhill to prep for the uphill, I decide to apply a bit of pressure each lap here on in.

Into the final minutes. I open up the afterburners. I can feel I have plenty in reserve and regret not finding a dark place earlier on - but at the same time - relieved I am in this place, than spent and into the Pop! zone. The final minutes pass quickly as I try for every last centimetre. And without much fanfare: I’m finished.

I expected everyone to have gone home by now. But the others all remained to which I was grateful. We share fizzy drinks and talk about hooking up with the grass track in Kansas as the sun sinks, and the flying hummingbird bee things swarm.

The backs of my hamstrings go off the charts in weird pain and stiffness. I guess it’s all the effort and bumpy pummelling they receive. I can’t bend over or walk very well for the rest of the evening.

I eventually work out my hour comes in at 19.0mph. Very happy considering my only other recorded effort was 17.0mph at Guilden Morden recreation ground. The difference? Grass length and desire. The Ashwell track is in good running condition - though the track line is patchy as its not that worn in and it was easy to stray into the long, slower grass.

Next time? I should have a go with aero-bars and pointy helmet. It is something of a goal now to break 20.0mph - though that feels quite a task. It may seem a small percentage, but over distance that gap is Herculean.

For now, I’m delighted with a speed that would be admirable on a road bike. I’ve done a lot of mindless mile munching over the last three months and I’m a little surprised by how I’ve missed any kind of competitive goal. This really helped deal with that - and hope to find good conditions to have another go at it soon.

Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/3666187489

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