#and my mom and brother many times have both texted me the same question unprompted without speaking to each other.

[youremyonlyhope]

My uncanny ability to accidentally specifically predict bad things now means that for the second time, a supervisor has told me to stop making predictions while at work since they keep coming true.

This has happened in two different jobs in two different fields now. Yay.

[freebooter4ever]

my dad group texted my brother and i, highly unusual, and i think jordan was weirded out too cause his response was equally short and confused. on the list of things my little brother and i have never discussed, our dad’s relative interest or lack there of in our lives is pretty high. dad’s been messaging me since october, asking about stuff like where my next living plans are (which he has never done since i first moved out age eighteen), and i’ve only been vaguely responding to the point blank questions cause its just. so. weird. i think my grandpa’s death has shaken dad’s worldview a bit more than he’s been letting on.

he alienated my brother and i pretty much immediately after his secretive marriage to the bottle blonde rich bitch when i was 22. he kicked my brother out as soon as jordan turned 18, and when i discovered this by coming home one summer and seeing jordan wasnt in the house, i got so fucking mad that it was the first time i ever had a full out screaming match at my dad. and apparently this display of anger was when rich bitch decided she didn’t like me (probably valid, but also ironic because pretty much from birth it was known in my entire extended family that dad and i were almost identical personality wise, and both of us have tempers where we will not get mad at anything but frustration will build up and up until on the rare blue moon it boils over, and oh boy. watch out. those moments were the only times i was ever scared of my dad as a kid and i think it only happened twice in my entire life)(if she thinks im crazy when im angry, she should see my dad)

but i was crazy mad because while i was lucky enough to be put in therapy due to attempting to starve myself into non existence at age 13 (many many sessions of ‘family’ therapy with me in the center of a long couch silently trying to pretend i was invisible and my mom two feet away at one end and dad on the opposite end of the couch, and my mom doing all the talking, ranting and raving about how im starving myself to punish her. and then the therapist kicking both my parents out and trying to convince me to say a few words, and her finally getting me to realize that how my mom treated me was not normal and not something i needed to put up with if it made me sad and scared, and then the therapist realizing that i was still too sad and scared to confront it, and her and i coming up with a compromise where we would tell my mom that i was just ‘really attached’ to dad’s house and it wasnt that i was terrified of living with my mom or liked my dad better, it was that i just really liked living in one place instead of out of a suitcase and moving every week), and so had both the therapist and my dad supporting me when at fourteen i finally said enough was enough and demanded that my dad get full custody so i didnt have to spend every other week with my abusive mother anymore - while i got out of that situation, my brother didnt. i tried, he knew that it was my decision to live full time with dad and i made it clear he could do the same, but just as it was a given that i was identical to dad’s personality, my brother was identical to mom’s so i think he was more attached to her than i was. either way, he always refused and insisted on continuing to live between both of them. after i hit driving age, my dad transferred responsibility to me for shuttling my brother to and from my dad’s house to my mom’s apartment. dad’d lock himself in his room, or go to the gym, and i’d turn on an endless rotation of star wars movies for jordan and i to watch before i had to take him to his next week’s place (phantom menace was our favorite cause darth maul was just cool ok, dont judge).

anyway, the last day i ever stayed at my moms house, my brother was there. and i must have been twenty or twenty one because he would have only been around seventeen. but even at seventeen he was well over six foot five cause he got all the height in the family which was totally not fair but thats besides the point. so while i was there my mom flew into one of her alcohol induced rages, and took it all out on my brother. i had intellectually figured that all the anger my mom used to take out on me had then transferred to my brother once i stopped living there every other week, but up until that point i hadn’t actually seen it. she started shoving him, and punching him, and not enough so it would hurt much, because as i said he was well over six feet and she was barely five six, so he could pretty well block any thing she dished out. but he was cornered, and he looked scared. and i was hiding useless on the stairwell, crying, and begging mom to stop. and it only stopped cause jordan managed to slip out the front door and once he escaped mom went back into the kitchen, still yelling and angry. and i took the chance to grab my school bag and leave in solidarity. and my brother and i stood there awkwardly on the porch, me still crying, and him smoking and trying to look cool and not like he just got chased out of the apartment by a woman half his size. and i promised him we wouldnt go back until she calmed down, and that she was being unreasonable and he didnt deserve any of it, and id figure out somewhere to go. and we started walking down the sidewalk, but not together because we were never that close. he wandered off somewhere to smoke. and that’s as far as i remember.

this day came up in conversation with my grandma in the months after grandpa’s death, during one of our many three am can’t sleep conversations in grandma’s kitchen (grandma would wake up, i’d hear her get out of bed and wake up too. she’d make herself tea and eat some graham crackers and we’d sit together at the table feeling the third empty chair like an ache). grandma brought it up, because apparently, even though i cant remember this at all, i had my no/kia brick phone in my school bag (a minor miracle because i hated carrying around cell phones for the longest time), and i actually called grandma. and grandpa and her came to pick me up, and they found me sitting on a wall a block away from my mom’s apartment, and then we drove around till we found jordan, and then we all went back to my grandparent’s house. after bringing this up, grandma then, completely unprompted, told me something that child me thought about regularly - she said that even though her mom died when she was 8, leaving her to help raise her two younger siblings, grandma thought in some ways it was easier than what my brother and i went through with the divorce and my mom leaving. i used to regularly - not wish my mom dead, exactly - but wish i could pretend she was dead, rather than her just not being there anymore. especially since, when i was suddenly thrown into being her sole emotional and physical punching bag now that dad wasn’t filling the role anymore, a lot of the times being around her post divorce was not a good thing. (I cut off all contact with my mom finally at age 25 and haven’t looked back)

so yeah, i was fucking pissed that i had worked so hard to try to mitigate the damage i caused by leaving jordan alone with my mom for pretty much the entirety of my high school years...only to have my dad kick him out barely a few years after i left for college and thus putting my brother at my mom’s mercy. ostensibly my dad kicked my brother out because of his drug addictions, but my brother was the most mild mannered addict i’ve ever known. the worst thing he ever did was steal a couple hundred dollars from me, but he never got violent, he never got angry. other people got angry at him. my aunt once tried to fight him in a hospital elevator because he sold my cousin heroin or meth or some shit and my cousin ended up impaling a knife in his chest in front of my grandma, which is a whole nother story. but jordan was only nineteen when that happened. my cousin? thirty six. and a long time violent and angry drug addict with a record (he threw a book at his professor’s head and got kicked out of grad school while on cocaine once, which is how he ended up back in washington state and needing a new drug dealer - hence my brother suddenly getting involved) (same cousin later flew into a drug fueled rage in his forties and almost beat his girlfriend to death) (my brother was long since clean by then and had nothing to do with our cousin getting drugs at that point)

all this to say my dad’s rich bitch new wife didn’t think a drug addict and mentally ill artist fit into her picture perfect family, so dad started making it clear we were not welcome at family functions unless we complied with very strict rules. ironically, jordan was let back into the fold first partially because i can hold a grudge for a very long time and i was very very terrified of my mom and dad was the sane stable one and i had trusted him to take care of everything even without me there and dad had failed pretty spectacularly at that. im still bitter at my dad for his secret marriage and subsequent moving into her million dollar mansion and throwing my brother out. but also partially because jordan started following all of dad’s rules, got himself cleaned up (he moved in with his girlfriend, and i think being out of mom’s house had a lot to do with getting over his addictions), started studying computer science, found a really good software engineering job, suddenly dad approved of him. i also partially antagonized rich bitch wife by doing silly things like wearing black leather pants and the most provocative clothes i owned whenever i went over to their house. rich bitch was a very simple narrow minded person with a lot of prejudices. i imagine i was not seen as a good influence on her two younger daughters. and eventually they stopped seeing me altogether. even when i was living in washington for all of 2017 - the only time i ever saw dad was when he’d come visit my grandparents alone. the day before i took grandma on the train to move to ohio, we were supposed to all have dinner together at our family’s favorite place to eat out - crossroads mall - and the rich bitch refused to show up. that’s how petty she is. she also is so dumb she’s under the delusion that kids get into drugs if they don’t have dogs (????) so that’s why she forced my dad to get a dog for her spoiled brat youngest when the girl went into high school. my dad dislikes animals, so i will say one of the highlights of this marriage is seeing my dad become a dog person. the rich bitch and her daughters mostly ignore the dog, but my dad is so attached to max that he even lets the little puppy sit in his lap while driving. anyway, anyone who thinks dogs are the sole answer to preventing drug addictions can go to hell.

yeah, blah blah blah, to sum up its WEIRD for my dad to suddenly be texting my brother and i unprompted, and asking me about my life and my plans. i dont really know how to deal. i miss him. he was always the closest person in my life to the point where even when i moved away for college, i still assumed after i graduated i’d just move back in with dad so it was only four years being gone, cause why would i ever want to live anywhere else?. i kept thinking if i could hit some level of success that he would approve of, that maybe eventually i could become somebody his rich bitch wife would associate with. but that never happened, obviously. 

[feroluce]

TakeRitsu Week Day 1: Horror

aka RiMomo, aka Peach Sorbet, aka Feroluce continues her fond tradition of beating the tar out of Ritsu. 

Warnings: swearing, kinda sorta kidnapping, body horror (eyes), a knife, and spooky evil spirit shenanigans. Overall rated T for Teen. Its not particularly plot important, but Ritsu is in his first year of high school and he goes to the same one as Tokugawa and Kamuro. Mob and Momo are second years and they go to a different high school nearby.

Related hcs: Momo doesn’t actually have an aura/barrier. He can be possessed by force, but he’s so powerful that they get kicked out automatically. He’s probably been almost possessed NUMEROUS times in his life without realizing it, because he can’t actually see/sense spirits. (He can Hear them, though, if they want him to.) He would have to be very weak for it to succeed...

Momozou has been acting strange. For the past couple days, he's been oddly twitchy. On Wednesday he seems anxious and keeps close. On Thursday he keeps periodically looking behind him, to the point that Ritsu gets jumpy as well.

On Friday there is no student council, thank god, because Ritsu isn't sure how much more he can watch Kamuro and Tokugawa make out with their eyes across the table. They were far more tolerable in middle school when they were just childhood friends.

"Ritsuuu!" Oh, god, no.

Momozou comes trotting from around the school gate with one arm waving above his head and the other holding...are those flowers? Ritsu can feel his face deepening from peony pink to rose red.

"Momozou, what the hell are you doing?" He has a reputation to keep around here, dammit!

"Being a good boyfriend." His cheeks are slightly flushed, but he's obviously enjoying himself, the handsome bastard. He must have run from his own high school instead of waiting and meeting at a halfway point as usual. He probably cut his last lesson again just to make it right when class gets out, too.

"Oh, but you're always such a good boyfriend, Momo." The smile Ritsu gives is saccharine sweet, sugar added in excess to hide the bitter taste beneath it. Two can play at this game.

It works, much to his delight. Momozou’s face develops a petal of dark red that bursts and blooms towards his ears and down his neck.

"Kageyama, please remember that high school still has rules on PDA. You, too, Takenaka." Ritsu quickly wipes the smile from his lips as he turns to face none other than Kamuro and Tokugawa themselves. Are they giggling at him?

"Of course, President and Vice President. I wouldn't dream of subjecting other students to such a thing. Especially other council members." He really hopes they get what he's hinting at. The four of them walk together until they separate at the sidewalk. Kamuro wraps himself around Tokugawa's arm as though it were a trellis almost as soon as they step outside the gates. Ritsu and Momozou both make gagging noises once they're out of hearing range.

"They absolutely knew what you were hinting at, by the way. They just don't care," Momozou speaks up eventually. Dammit. He's going to start putting rude anonymous notes in the comment box next week.

The two of them stay out until almost dark, meandering around the quieter parts of the city, with Ritsu watching and observing the entire time. He picks out several incidents where Momozou acts as though he's Heard an unpleasant thought, or turns and looks over his shoulder for something that isn't there.

Ritsu has a lot of homework (well, they both do, but whether or not Momozou will do his is questionable), so he figures they'll see each other Saturday night after he's done. Sunday, at the latest.

He doesn't hear from the other at all over the weekend. Not so much as a text message. Shige tells him he wasn't even in school on Saturday. This is highly unusual, at least for this amount of time. On days when Momozou's headaches get too bad, when his skull starts to feel like cracked glass, he can't bear to look at a back-lit screen and will let social and educational obligations slide. It's never gone on for two days straight, though, even during large public events where crowds gather like dumb birds around shiny coins and their thoughts crow just as loudly.

On Monday Momozou still isn't in school. Not even the disbanded telepathy club members or his older brother have heard from him. Class lets out and he decides to try to call one last time. It goes to voicemail. Again.

Ritsu can almost physically feel the uneasiness welling up around him, a dark and sticky pool slowly growing deeper and deeper. The longer he thinks and stews in his own muck, the worse it gets. They've been going out for a few months, but they've been friends for much longer, would it be too pushy to show up at his apartment? What if Momozou is just avoiding him? But his mom is also gone for the week, so he's home alone. What if something's really wrong? What if he goes over there and finds a body-

That's enough of that. Ritsu takes all of the images his own traitorous mind has conjured and tamps them down tightly into a neat little box before taping it shut. It'll be fine. He'll get Momozou's homework from his high school as an excuse to show up and his boyfriend will answer the door and give some explanation and everything will be fine.

(Unless he doesn't and-)

Ritsu lights the damn box on fire.

No one comes to the door and he sinks deep enough that the uneasiness forces it's way through his mouth and settles into his lungs, threatening to drown. There's something really wrong here, he's sure, he just doesn't know what yet.

Now what should he do? There's a balcony with glass doors in the kitchen and Shou never seems to have trouble getting into Ritsu's room through the same set up, so... After making sure no one is around to see, Ritsu levitates himself around the corner of the apartment building and onto a tidy landing with potted plants. The doors stay shut at first, but just as he's wondering if he should jam open a window, there's an ominous click. They're unlocked now.

His barrier manifests itself unprompted in shards of color as he cautiously steps inside. The air feels thick and oppressive, weighing heavy on his limbs and clogging up his throat.

He nearly drops his bag when a voice filters from down the hallway, quiet murmurs slipping beneath Momozou's bedroom door. The thudding in his chest starts to go faster, knocking his breathing into something quick and shallow.

"This time I've gone all the way without you. There's nothing more I can say..."

It sounds painfully weak and wispy and yet its still familiar from days spent in each other's quiet company. Ritsu’s feet carry him to the door.

"So maybe I took a little too much. Maybe life didn’t want this part of me. If it helps to know, I never let you go. I'm sorry, but I lost my mind..."

It sounds wrong, wrong, wrong, because Momozou usually only sings to himself like that when he's desperately trying to block out something terrible and Ritsu is the only one here. (Isn't he?) The door eerily creaks open before he even touches the handle, inviting him in.

"So maybe I took a little too much. Maybe you sucked the life right out of me. I should have let you know I never meant to go. Sure, I lost my mind, but I never really Meant to Die..."

It sounds like a swan song.

Ritsu steps into the room and nearly trips over something heavy and solid. He looks down and the box from before flies open, spewing ash and soot and thick black smoke everywhere.

Momozou is laying curled into a ball on the floor, arms wrapped around his head and pressed hard against his ears. He's staring up with his sunken eyes blown wide and glassy, looking at Ritsu like he's not sure whether he's even real or a hallucination.

"Ritsu...?"

His eyelids slowly sink shut. The shadows beneath them have never been worse.

"Help..."

Everything goes still.

Time stops and stretches into something almost infinite until Ritsu dives down and grabs ahold of a wrist to check for a pulse. This isn't real, it's a nightmare, he probably just ate too many sweets before bed again-

The hand he's holding suddenly grabs back, tight enough to pop his knuckles, as the body in front of him jolts. He's ecstatic for all of two seconds until laughter starts to fill the air, because that is definitely NOT Momozou.

Ritsu throws himself back out into the hallway, scrambling to get up on his feet as the thing in front of him rises. There's a physical sense of revulsion boiling in his gut at the way Momozou's body moves like it's being pulled upward. It's still laughing.

"Well, well, well! If it isn't the little brother! How sweet of you to save me the trouble of finding you."

The sound is an all out assault on his ears, it's Momozou's voice, but it's not at all the way that he usually talks. His posture and the way that he carries his long limbs is slouched where it shouldn't be. The sneer on his lips and the slant of his eyebrows has gone outright manic and murderous. Most startlingly, the whites of his eyes have turned a bright noxious purple.

Ritsu is made to revise that statement when more eyes appear over every exposed inch of skin, lining his arms and giving a spider-like appearance where they dot his cheeks and forehead. All of them are that same toxic shade.

"I was getting pretty impatient. It took three days to possess this body! Three days! Do you have any idea how boring it is to watch a kid either lay around or drive himself up the walls for three days straight in one tiny room? The answer is pretty fucking boring." There's a short pause as it stuffs Momozou’s hands in his pockets. "…OK, it was a little funny." The thing giggles again and it grates like nails on a chalk board.

Ritsu snarls as he raises his hand, aims straight ahead and lets loose his powers. Momozou's body is engulfed in color before it all suddenly disperses, flying at the walls in ripped apart chunks of blue and green and pink. Shit.

"Adorable. Alright, kid-" Another blast, stronger this time. Same result. "Awww, aren't you cute? Well, go ahead, then. Third time's the charm, right?" Ritsu grits his teeth as he forces his body to double the output. His aura whirls like a tornado with Momozou's body at the eye of its storm, but even still its sent flying back at him. "You done now? I suggest you quit." As if Ritsu would take advice from some evil spirit. He can already feel the pressure building up inside of him for another offensive. The thing just smiles and rolls Momozou's eyes and pulls something out of his sweatshirt.

A pocket knife.

"Do you really think you can threaten me with something like that?" Ritsu switches the charge to defense, shards of light glittering as his barrier comes into being around him. Momozou is taller and has a longer reach, but Ritsu has better stamina. As long as he can keep out of range, he should be OK.

"Oh, I think I could. You're not the one I'm threatening, though." Then the knife is pointed right at Momozou's throat and its as though a vacuum has sucked all the air out of the room, out of the apartment, directly out of his lungs. The uneasiness he'd been choking on before is drained and replaced with panic and cold fury, because how dare this thing go so far?

"There we go, now I think you understand. I'm gonna need some cooperation out of you later and if you don’t, well... This is a veeeeeeery nice vessel. I've never seen such a powerful telepath! But I just need it to be able to use its powers. It wouldn't hurt anything if I broke it a bit." The entire time it's talking, it's waving the knife around casually and Ritsu flinches whenever it gets too close to Momozou’s face or especially his eyes.

He should have known something was wrong earlier in the week. He never should have left him alone.

"You, on the other hand..."

Momozou's body lunges forward, slamming a fist against the wall that Ritsu only barely dodges.

"You're only the bait! It doesn't matter what I do with you!"

Part 2 goes up on Day 3: Action! @takeritsuweek2017