#at this point ive been up for four and a half hours

[wiressmiled]

might .... fool around in ps & see about a new header today

[eyeliketoeatpoosay]

ANYTHING ~ matt sturniolo.

summary ~ christmas eve and your mom does nothing but fight with you. you decide to leave and get stoned in some random parking lot when matt finds you.

warnings i! ~ ANGSTY ANGST, fluff, established relationship, soft!matt, use of petnames (baby), use of y/n (SUE ME), lower case intended !, mentions/details of suicide and depression. - tell me if ive missed anything !

a/n ~ hey ! haha🤣 so i was reading a fan fic and i started sobbing bc this song came on so i thought wait this is such a good song to write about💯💯‼️ so here i am💋 enjoy

not proof read !

✧༺💌༻∞

christmas eve. the last 24 hours before christmas day. the day of love and commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ. the day of love, celebration, and hope.

christmas was the one day a year, besides birthdays, that kids looked forward to. the day that children got presents from family members they had never even heard of, it usually just being a box of chocolate and a card with ten dollars shoved in it carelessly. but, the children didn’t care. they saw ten dollars worth of candy and robux. they saw fifty new cavities for the dentists to worry about, toys for decades, and snow to lay in and create artificial angels.

however, christmas hadn’t been the same for you since your father died. the day felt dull, empty, lonely. december 19th 2016. one day after your thirteenth birthday, you walked into your parents newly organized bedroom to see your father’s limp and lifeless body with his feet floating 6 inches off the ground.

the day permanently imprinted in your closed mind. the way his skin faded white and his cheeks puffed up red. the way your father took his own precious life twenty four hours after you turned thirteen.

you were adding setting powder to your under eyes, making sure your makeup was perfect before putting your outfit on.

you, your mother, and sister always stayed indoors all day on christmas eve. playing board games, watching movies, drinking hot cocoa. it was like a tradition at this point. your father introduced it to your family when your mother was pregnant with you, now you were carrying on the legacy.

it wasn’t your favorite time of year, in fact, you dreaded the clocks striking midnight on december 1st. you wished you could stay in november forever. relive that last month of your life when your father stayed alive for every single day. when your father didn’t waste a single breath.

you shook the thought and wiped off the powder, curling your long and black lashes and swiping mascara across them. something about doing your makeup every morning was therapeutic, comforting. it wasn’t that you were ugly or insecure, no, it was just something to make your smile break out.

and something to make your boyfriend convince you that you didn’t need.

the brown fluffy hoodie that you stole from matthew sturniolo, your boyfriend, laid on your pink floral bedding. along with your red and black checkered pajama pants. it was a cozy and warming day. you weren’t going anywhere, so you didn’t bother with actual clothes.

it was now 10:07 am. matt was most definitely not awake, but you decided to message him. just to let him know you loved him. you couldn’t let anyone down ever again. you couldn’t end an interaction without an ‘i love you.’ or the guilt would eat you alive.

‘morning matt’

‘i love u’

‘merry christmas eve !’

‘tell ur mom and dad i miss them’

‘i already told nick and chris’

‘call me when u wake up baby’

‘love u so much.’

‘💌💌💌’

you sling your phone onto your mattress and tie your hair up. half up half down with a ribbon. just what your father knew and loved. what you know and love.

you stand in front of your six foot tall mirror and held your hands at your sides, looking at your reflection and not recognizing a single molecule of your body. from your toe nails to your hair follicles, you were a stranger. a complete stranger.

a deep breath escaped your lips as you switched your bright white led lights off and made your way to the living room where your mother was sat drinking a mug of black coffee, which was probably laced with vodka. her frail hands were shaking against the boiling ceramic piece, clearly already brain-dead.

your younger sister, monica, was slouching on the opposite sofa. her phone fixated in her sweaty hands which caused you to roll your eyes backwards into your brain.

you quickly glance over at the cats empty and stained food bowl, “has cookie been fed today?” you ask to a simple head shake and a mumbling of ‘no.’ you scoff and make your way into the kitchen, grabbing the cat biscuits from the cupboard and pouring a generous amount into her small bowl. you rinse away the three day old water and fill it with ice cold water for your cat.

you stroke your soft hand across her back as she wolfs down her food, storming into the living room. you snatch the mug of black coffee from your mother, holding it up to your nose and immediately being wafted by the smell of vodka.

you nod as tears gloss over your eyes, a pearly vision to them now. “you promised, mom! you fucking promised.” your voice started off as a yell until it breaks and the tears don’t even threaten to escape, they just do.

your mom furrows her brows, taking back the ‘worlds best mom.’ mug and shaking her head. her pupils were dilated and her scoff had the smell of alcohol. “i didn’t promise shit, y/n!”

“that’s bullshit mom and you know it.” you snap, monica shoving her wired headphones in and scurrying off into her bedroom up in the attic. “it was four months you were sober. now you’re off drinking vodka for breakfast. what the fuck is wrong with you?! don’t you care?”

your mom, ashley, laughs in your face like you’re a fool. like you’re just a piece of dirt she wiped off her shoe. “oh, so i’m a bad mom, is that it?”

“because i have tried so hard to suit your needs, y/n, but nothing seems to please you anymore.” she added.

you press your lips together tightly, pinching the bridge of your nose. “yeah, you are a bad mom. what happened, hm? ever since dad died you’ve been gone. it’s like you’re here but your head is in oblivion.”

your mom scowls, her fists in balls. how dare you speak to her like that? who did you think you were? your father?

“don’t speak to me that way, y/n. i am your mother.”

“are you?! are you my mother? because i don’t see you. i never see you anymore! you’re always in the clouds. you’re never here, you’re always in space.” tears flood as you speak your mind, as you bring up the same argument for the one hundredth time, hoping that she will finally listen, finally get help, finally be a mother.

your mom stands closer, her hand coming up to slap your face, ready to leave a red handprint in your pale skin, but you grab her wrist. she clenches her jaw and yanks her arm down. “i wish it was you that died.”

you immediately grab your tote bag and leave the house. making sure to slip your ugg’s on as you exit. you don’t even grab your phone, instead just sit in your car and drive off. no plan, no money, and a million thoughts.

number one priority is getting far away from your home, wether you get to australia or the local gas station, you had to leave. but, just your luck, the car ran out of gas as you pulled into a random parking lot. no clue where you were, you threw your head down onto the steering wheel, the beep continuing on for thirty seconds until you were finally cured of the sound.

the stress you received from your mother never failed to dig your grave further.

i wish it was you that died.

i wish it was you that died.

i wish it was you that died.

the longer you let the words sink into your brain, the faster your heart sank. the words stung. you knew when she’d sober up she’d apologize and cry, like she always did, but you were sick of the empty apologies. you were sick of the games. you just wanted it to be november 2016.

you rummaged through your tote bag, hands gripping onto a week old roll up that you and matt forgot to use. you took a deep breath and picked up the lighter from your glove box, holding the blunt to your cracked lips as you lit it. you wished matt was there to hold it to your lips as he lit it, blowing smoke into your mouth as you made out. you wished you were with him.

an hour had passed. a long ass hour. you were lucky for your watch. about twenty minutes in you realized your phone had been forgotten and left on your pink floral bedsheets. you had no idea if matt had texted you, you hoped he’d still be asleep.

since you were bored out of your mind, you took the nearly finished blunt with you and travelled around the entire parking lot on foot. over and over again until you spotted a bench outside of the target. you took a seat and stamped out the blunt, kicking it under the bench.

your fingers danced around on the arm of the rotted bench. you felt a coldness wash over your body and felt a human presence in front of you. matthew.

his hand pressed against your knee as he knelt down and looked at your face with worry and concern. “hey.. what’s going on, y/n?” he asked, his thumb swiping over your kneecap as a way of comforting you.

you frown, “what are you even talking about, matt? i’m fine.” you cross your arms and look away, but his free hand grabs your chin and turns your face towards him.

“you’re stoned at half eleven in the morning, baby. what happened?” he asked, soothingly, tucking a strand behind your ear. “you only ever smoke with me, and even then you’re cautious.” he sits beside you, waiting patiently for a reply.

“i don’t wanna talk about anything.” you mumble, “i don’t wanna talk about anything.” you repeat, a lot softer, glancing up at matt for a moment.

matthew sighs, rubbing his eyes, “did your mom upset you? i understand the time of year, but you’re gonna have to tell me if i’m gonna help you, baby..” matts lips twist to the side and he rests a hand on your shoulder.

“i don’t wanna talk about anyone.” you sighed, “i want to sleep.” a small chuckle escaped matts lips as you said this, looking at the store behind him.

“well, let me just quickly buy some more whipped cream and marshmallows since chris ate them all, and we can head to my house, ‘kay?” he suggested at you nodded, a small, soft kiss being planted on your temple.

it only took him ten minutes to grab what he needed. he took your hand and walked over to his car when he stopped in his tracks. “how did you get here?”

“drove ‘til i ran out of gas.” you shrugged, pointing at your car isolated across the parking lot. matt took a deep breath and look at you, shaking his head playfully.

“i’ll bring a fuel can down here later and drive it to mine for you.” matt smiled softly and opened the drivers door, climbing in and tossing his bag into the back seat.

this target was almost thirty minutes away from the sturniolo household, so you connected your phone to aux and played one particular song on repeat, ‘anything’ by adrianne lenker. you hummed the lyrics, staring out at the snow trickling down onto the sidewalks, kids building snowmen with their families.

your eyes shut as you stayed slouched in the passenger seat, your arms folded and your head resting on the inside of the car door. you took a deep breath before eventually falling asleep.

it was almost 12pm, afternoon, but you needed this nap. you needed this break. you needed matt.

4pm. you woke up in matts bed with three blankets sloped across your body. drool down your face with hair stuck to your cheeks. you took a deep breath and rubbed your eyes, sitting up slowly as you yawned and stretched your arms.

you blinked multiple times, still trying to come back to reality. your mind was foggy, cloudy, you had no idea what happened or where you were for a good few minutes.

matt suddenly walked into his bedroom and shut the door, jumping when he saw you staring directly at him. he smiled softly and walked over to kiss your forehead. he sat beside you on his bed and handed you your car keys, but you looked up with a blank expression.

“oh! i filled your car with gas, it’s out in the front.” he grinned and you nodded slowly, yawning again. he sighed, tilting his head and looking at you. “hey. what’s going on?” he kissed your cheek, “why did i find you stoned outside of a target thats no where near you?”

you finally start to wake up fully. wiping your drooled-face and shrugged, “don’t know.”

matt shook his head, “c’mon. speak up, baby.”

you sighed deeply and loudly, “i just hate this time of year, matt. my mom was literally drinking vodka at 10am. didn’t wanna fight, but she insisted.” you sob, laying your head in his lap and covering your face with your hands. “why did he have to die.” your words were muffled as you whispered into his lap.

matt felt sorry. he didn’t know what to do or say. all he knew was to be there for you. his fingers ran through your hair and he leaned down to kiss your head, “i know, i’m sorry, baby.” but he didn’t know. his father was alive and in the living room below them.

you choked on your cries, using his sweatpants as a rag. “i just don’t want to do it anymore, matt.” you say, sitting up and wiping your eyes. you look at his face, “i love you so much.”

matt nodded and kissed you tenderly, “i love you more, y/n.” he smiled softly and hugged you, “when we grow old and have grandchildren, we’ll give them a box of chocolate for christmas.” he chuckled, rubbing your back.

“with ten dollars in the christmas card.” you smiled back, holding his hand and pulling away.

matt nodded and spoke, “for now, we get to love eachother and be grateful for 8th grade science.”

@mattslolita @sturnprime

[zer05trange]

Roaring Sea

IV. Good Things

⋆｡°✩ (childe x fem!reader)✩°｡⋆

⋆｡°✩ wc: 3.5k

⋆｡°✩warnings: angst, graphic violence, slight gore (blood), mentions of sickness and getting sick

⋆｡°✩: series masterlist

“Ivan, you can go ahead and clock out for today,” You say, with your arms deep within the oven, “I do need you all day tomorrow, though. You’ll probably need to close, if that’s okay with you.” 

“Yes ma’am,” You hear him from behind you. He should be satisfied with that, he was rightfully busy with school over the past few months, so he hasn’t got many hours in recently.

The boy proceeds to leave the store after getting half of the tips, and when he opens the door, a gust of cold wind blows in. You immediately start shivering. Even with the many years you’ve lived in Snezhnaya, her cold touch always froze you half to death. 

As the sun started to set, it began to be more dangerous to be outside for any longer than necessary. Your mind begins to wonder about Tartaglia, and how he’s fairing in the biting weather. It had been around 13 hours since he left you earlier that morning, so he must have felt the frostiness of the winter at some point in the day.

You need to stop thinking about him, though difficult, because the mere thought of him makes you anxious. And at this point, you can’t tell whether the anxiousness is from worriment or excitement. So instead, you try to focus your brain on closing your bakery for the day and serving your last customers. 

By the time that the least customer left your bakery, and all of your. closing tasks were finished, it was close to 11:00pm. You sigh as you turn off the lights and head upstairs, locking the door behind you.

You quickly change into some comfortable house-clothes before walking over to the kitchen to heat up the leftover soup that Tartaglia brought the night before. You heat the bowl on the stove and steeping a pot of tea, flipping through pages of a novel while you wait. Eventually, you take your filled bowl and mug over to your sofa, where you begin to eat your meal. 

You stare at the wall opposite you, looking at the vast amounts of pictures and paintings that mounted it. If anyone saw you, they'd be able to tell that something was bothering you. That may have been because of Tartaglia’s absence, or the whole Tartaglia situation itself. You can't tell.

You continue to eat and stare, trying to keep your peace amongst your sea of thoughts. And you do achieve some sort of peace for a few minutes.

That is, until you hear loud noises coming from outside the window of your back room. 

It makes you jump, at first. There’s yelling, and clashing of metal, and even screams. You quickly, yet quietly, make your way to the source of the sound. The back window faces the other side of Snezhnaya.

There isn’t a nice city street to gaze upon, but rather the isolating and barren landscape of the Snezhanayan mountains. You get close to the window, and even with minimal lighting outside, you can see that there are two groups of people having some sort of… battle. 

One group is being cornered against a large, snow-covered rock, while the other, which is much larger in size, approaches them. You realize that the more powerful group is unmistakably a Fatui squad.

There are a few agents, cicin mages, as well as a legionnaire and a vanguard. They’re massive, as well, but they’re forming a protective u-shape around someone. It must be their leader, you think, as the group seemingly follows each meticulous move from the center. You squint your eyes to get a better look at the group causing so much noise, but the darkness outside hinders your ability to get a clear look.

The vanguard lunges for the main leader of the smaller group, which you think is a band of treasure hoarders, and grabs at him. He turns the hoarder around by the back of the neck, where he’s now facing the Fatui group, about four inches off the ground as well. The Fatui leader gets closer to him, barking something unintelligible at the man before bringing his hand up to the neck of the hoarder.

The Fatuu swipes their hand across the man’s neck causing it to slit open. As the leader does so, you could swear that you saw a flash of purple-like lightning. The man’s throat opens and blood gets everywhere.  Everywhere. You put your hand over your mouth to cover a gasp as the vanguard drops the man to the ground, whose body is convulsing on its way to death. 

This is the first time you’ve seen someone die. Sure, you’ve beat some people up for commissions, even a treasure hoarder or two, but killed someone? Never, and you can’t see yourself doing so. It makes you feel nauseated to see how the man’s life was ripped away so fast. 

But you can't look away. You keep watching as the Fatui are signaled by their leader to ambush the rest of the hoarder group. You witness how they butcher each and every one of the smaller, weaker group. You see the hoarders being bashed by the vanguard’s hammer, slashed to pieces by the agent’s blades, and how cicins and frost are released by the mage and legionnaire. You want to look away, but your eyes remain glued to the scene. 

Their leader gets in on the action and is somehow more violent and bloodthirsty than the rest, despite being less muscular than the others. You can tell from here that the leader is a man, as well.

He begins to slash and stab using some sort of water-like sword, and you know that means he’s not just some Fatui soldier. He has a vision and a delusion, he must be a harbinger.

The blood of the hoarders soaks into the snow, a deep pool of crimson surrounding the entire scene. The Fatui group starts celebrating in victory as the last hoarder goes silent, and they turn around to head the opposite way. Since they now face your general direction, you attempt to hide yourself while still watching the group. They get closer and closer to the streetlights of the strip you live on, and you stay to see what exactly was going on. Their leader gets into a visible light first, and your eyes blow wide.

The leader has a disgusting grimace on his face, with eyes blown wide and a face of pure malice donning on him. His irises are so small you can barely see them, but rather, a sea of white paints over his eyes. He has a grin akin to the cheshire cat, each corner pulled to a supernatural looking upturn. It’s a face of nightmares, one so scary that it distracts you from the fact that the face belongs to

Tartaglia. 

You freeze in place.

No, absolutely no way. It cannot actually be him. There’s no way that the sweet, fun-loving Tartaglia you knew is the same man you were looking at at the moment. It couldn't be possible that the left cheek which is covered in a helpless man’s blood, was the same one that you softly brushed flour off of. The face that you woke up to this morning, the face you kissed this morning, was the same face that donned such a horrifying expression. The eyes that looked at your face with so much adoration, were unrecognizable as they were clouded over in a bloodthirsty haze.

You can’t believe it.

Out the fear of being caught, or pure weakness, you fall to the floor and out of the window's view. You can feel your dinner coming up from your stomach, but you physically cannot move. You’re shaking, you feel so numb that you can’t feel the multiple tears streaming out from your waterline and down your face. 

He didn’t just lie to you about his job, but he actively kept it from you. A harbinger one of the most dangerous and well-known individuals in all of Tevyat, has now been frequenting your bakery almost every day.

There’s no way people don’t know, right? More socially knowledgeable Snezhnayans visit your shop every day and must see you happily chatting to a Fatui Harbinger. 

It begins to make sense to you, even in a state of shock. His body being covered in scars, the fact that he never took you outside of the bakery, or how he always left in the early hours of the morning.

How many people has he killed? How many dark deeds has he done, and then come into your home to hold and kiss you as if nothing happened? 

And his face was so, so horrifying. Distorted to the point where it was almost unrecognizable to the person he’s spent almost every night with. His lightless eyes blown so wide, and even being in the darkness for so long, his pupils were almost invisible.

His smile, not that you could call it that, was so wide and full of pure bloodlust. And there was blood all over his face, the parts that you kissed, held, and brushed over with your thumb almost daily. It was in his mouth, as if he had internal injuries, and matted itself in his hair. The hair you love to brush through, grab at, and ruffle.

Your sobs are silent. At some point, you get yourself to your bathroom, where you sit beside the toilet in case you get sick after what you’ve seen. Through your choked sobs and curled up body, you feel exhaustion setting in. And eventually, with your back against the bathtub, you fall asleep against the cold tile. 

the next day

Today was a good day for Ajax. He got through with training his Fatui underlings before lunchtime, and quickly finished off his day with mandatory, though grueling, paperwork. He was working efficiently, but it was very quick-paced, even for him. He knows exactly why he was so quick in his actions today, too. He can’t deny it any longer, he’s fallen for a woman who runs a bakery.

He never thought he’d see the day. He thought his heart was too cold. He wouldn’t even say he had a heart, not after falling down and witnessing the horrors of the abyss. He cared for his family so deeply that the abyss couldn’t even take it away from him, but one other person in his heart? He couldn’t imagine a world where he could let another person into it. 

But now he’s living that reality. 

He's never felt the feeling of it outside of his immediate family, but he has to be sure about it. The feeling that warmed his frozen heart, is love. It has to be.

And it scares the 11th. 

It scares him how much he worries for you once he leaves your presence. It scares him how for the longest time, you acted as if you denied any idea of a future with him. It scares him when he thinks of you moving on from him, and finding someone else. But that recurring thought is more than fright, it brings on anger and anxiety. 

As he walks down the city, he thinks of the idea, and immediately brushes it off before his electro delusion sets off. Again.

He needs to tell you about his job, and soon.

It’s not like he intentionally meant to keep it from you from the start, it was Teucer who introduced you to Ajax through his stories, and Ajax had to keep that up around his brother. You just got caught in a protective lie.

And his name, you need to know it. He’ll give it a few more dates, Ajax thinks. He needs you in his future, without the lies and without the cover-ups.

It’s only 5:00PM, and he’s sure that he can get you to close the bakery early to go on your planned date with him. He’s wearing a more put-together and warm outfit than his usual uniform and even found himself double-checking his look in the mirror to look good for you. In his eyes, you’re so gorgeous, too beautiful for his tainted eyes to look upon. So, to try and get even get close to your level of beauty, he took some extra time in getting ready. 

He tightens his scarf around the bottom of his face. Man, the weather today is intense. Ajax begins to wonder whether going outside with you is the smartest idea. But it has to be, if it's what you want.

He’s always known that he wants to add to his family, regardless of whether he could ever love again or not. But now, he has someone he loves, and someone that he could see fitting in perfectly to his future. So he has to try, Ajax has to win the battle over your affections.

And if that means he has to be out in the cold, or anywhere else other than the comfort of your little apartment, he would stand out in the weather for thousands of hours. If it meant he could be with you.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he missed the bakery by a few steps. He quickly retraces them to the front door of the shop, and looks into the bakery from its large glass panes. You aren’t in there, or in sight at least, instead there’s a boy behind the counter. 

Oh hell no. 

He confidently enters the bakery and makes a bee-line to the front counter. 

“Welcome, is there anything I can help you with today?” He hears the man speak.

“Where’s Y/N?” Ajax asks with a friendly tone. But the glint in his eyes is nothing but friendly, instead, he’s staring down the man with dangerous eyes.

“Ms. Y/N is sick at the moment. If you need me to take a word for you, I’ll gladly tell her when she’s bett–”

“No,” Ajax barks at the boy before making his way behind the counter and to the door leading up to your home. He sees who he hopes is just your employee getting ready to defend your privacy, but Ajax just side-eyes him and scoffs before opening the unlocked door, and locking it from behind him.

He makes his way up the steps, as he begins to worry over your health. Sick? In the months he’s known you, you’ve never felt under the weather. Specifically, on the one day he was going to take you out and ask you to be something official with him. That can’t be intentional–right? Not after yesterday morning. 

He reaches the front door to your home, and hesitates to turn the knob. What if you’re too sick to see him, or you don’t want to see him? He finds how disgustingly dependent he is when it comes to you. 

He turns the knob, finding that it is locked. So he tries to knock, three separate times. On the third, he hears your voice. Oh thank the archons, you’re decent enough to speak. Though your voice is hoarse.

“Ivan? Is that you?” You respond from the other side of the door. Who the fuck is Ivan? 

He hears you unlock the door, and open it. He notices you before you notice it’s him, and you do look like you’ve been sick. Your hair is unkempt, and your eyes have darker circles around them, and they’re puffy. You’ve been crying. 

He’ll slaughter the person that made you this upset. 

But before he can say anything, you lock eyes with him, and sharply inhale through your teeth.

A gasp? Why are you

“How did you get up here?” You hiss at him. Your face is full of fear, as well. Ajax thinks of the thousands of reasons you could possibly be so alert, each possibility making him more anxious.

“Your door was unlocked! We were going out today... right?” He says with a nervous chuckle, trying to qualm whatever mood you were in.

“You can’t be in here,” You respond shakily, taking a step backward from him each second.

“Y/N, what’s wrong?” Ajax says, “Can we talk?” 

He closes the door behind him, against your wishes. His face is now as worried as yours is, yet you’re trembling in his presence. Your face is no longer looking at his, now it faces the floor. 

“You want to talk now?” Your face still looking at the floor, “Yet you didn’t want to tell me that you’re in the Fatui? That you are a harbinger?” 

Oh. 

“Y/N, I–”

“You what? Were you ever going to tell me?" You bark quietly.

He stays silent, so you continue.

"When were you going to tell me that when you weren’t with me, you were mercilessly slaughtering helpless people?” Your words are filled with venom, like you were condemning him with your statements. 

“Y/N, who told you about this?” He responds, his voice getting shaky itself. 

“Why? So you can go kill them too?” Your voice begins to raise before you take a deep breath, “I saw you! and you looked so- so…” 

“Y/N–”

“Stop it! Stop saying my name,” You yell at him, “If you wanted to keep this from me, you should maybe be quieter when you go and kill someone right outside of my home.” 

“I never meant to keep it from you,” He says, in a voice much quieter than your own.

“Last time I checked, a toy maker was a little different from being a harbinger, Childe.” 

The use of his Fatui alias shocked him. Have you just been mulling and researching over this all day? It’s unlike you, almost too unlike you. He never said that name, did he? Where did you get this information?

“A Toy-maker is what I use to keep what I do from my young brother,” He snaps, then realizing the tone he just took with you. He takes a deep breath and a pause before continuing, “I am so sorry. I really am, and I was going to tell you. But I can’t tell just anyone what I do.”

He knows the second it left his mouth, he knew he fucked up. 

“Just anyone,” You repeat with a small, pained smile, “you need to leave, now.” 

“No– Y/N, I didn’t mean it like that,” He responds, taking a step closer to you. You back away in fear, while simultaneously summoning a sword out of pure elemental energy. You bring your sword in front of you, as a means to protect you.

He stands back, out of respect and shock. You drew your weapon on him... something he never thought you'd do outside of a playful spar. His eyes widen at your gesture, as he puts his hands at his side.

“I am scared,” You almost whisper. He can feel his stomach drop when you mutter it, too. The one person, in all of Tevyat that shouldn’t be scared of him, just declared it right in his presence, "What am I supposed to do, Tartaglia? I mean, I don't even know your name!"

“You have no reason to be scared, you are one of the most protected citizens in this nation. Even when I’m not there, you’re still protected,” He tries to comfort you. But that didn’t work, because your eyes were blown wide at his confession. 

“What do you mean by that? Do you have people stalking me?” You yell at him, “Tartaglia I am scared of you. I was scared by what I witnessed. And I am scared of the face I saw on you last night," You spit out nervously. His heart cracks slightly, an unnerving and unfamiliar feeling.

"You enjoy it, don’t you? You enjoy stripping the lives away of others, I could tell. Honestly, Tartaglia, I would be okay with the whole Fatui thing, I would. But your face, and your smile, after killing someone? I don’t think I can–” You cut yourself off, “Please, just leave. I don’t want people watching me, so stop that too. You don’t need to come back either.”

He can’t find the words to explain himself any longer. He wants to scream that he loves you, and he never meant to keep anything from you.

But in a rare defeat, he begins to take steps backward toward the door. The entire time he gets closer to the door, he’s looking at you. He can see how a few tears escaped your eyes, and how the sword you’re holding is shaking along with your body at this point. 

“Alright Y/N,” He mutters quietly, before turning the knob and softly closing the door behind him. 

He could feel it physically, the heart he thought was no longer there, was breaking. He should’ve seen it coming, he had a few fleeting months of happiness, but all good things must come to an end for him.

⋆｡°✩a/n: this fic is actually anti—situationship propaganda >:). Thank you for reading, next chapter will be out soon!

⋆｡°✩tag list: @inlovewithlondonn @zamorazz @ay4tou @kur0melon @boomie-123 @esthelily @i-simp-for-giyuu @itsflowerdomethings @whatamidoing89 @luvrkise

[wellplacedbanana]

I’ve seen a few posts recently talking about how important it is for us to share our tips for dealing chronic illness with each other, and I’ve realized that as a freakishly avid community enthusiast, I’ve been falling down on the job. So, I present

Wellplacedbanana’s Ridiculously Long List of Tips for All Things Chronic Illness (Curated Over 8+ Years):

Infusion Centers

Headed to an infusion center to get that sweet sweet (expensive as hell) live-saving medication pumped directly into your veins? Here’s what I do.

Bring headphones or earplugs. Most infusion centers try to maintain a semblance of quiet for the patients, but it can get loud fast—beeping IVs, pulse ox monitors, loud families, codes. Some infusion centers do pods of multiple people and some do individual bays, so this can affect noise levels.

Drink lots of water before if you have to get an IV placed. Don’t worry too much about bringing a water bottle because they’ll give you one when you get there. (Of course, if you have something like POTS and need more intense hydration, bring the damn water bottle.) If you’re not hydrated and they can’t find a vein, they’ll call in the ultrasound tech, and they’ll bring the longest IV needle you’ve ever seen. It hurts. Drink water.

Bring a book or your Switch or something else to entertain you, but don’t expect to actually do it. I tried bringing papers to edit the first time because I was like “Oh it’s an hour and a half of uninterrupted free time. I can get so much done!” I was wrong. The nurses are constantly checking in for vitals, the unit can be loud, and I spent the whole time trying not to vomit everywhere. Different infusions will have different side affects. Knowing what yours might be will help you plan for what you want to bring. Knowing how long your infusion will be can also help. Most infusion centers have to keep you 20-45 minutes after your first dose of a new medication to make sure you don’t have an allergic reaction, so factor that into your time too.

If you’re in a pod with other patients who’re friendly and if you feel up to it, don’t be afraid to talk with them. Lots of them are lonely, bored, interested in other people, etc. I met an elderly Thai lady one time who had been there for three hours and would be there for another four AFTER I left. We talked about her husband and her kids, and she listened to me talk about punctuation as style in prose. It made me feel less alone in the medical system and helped distract me from the nausea.

Conversely, if you don’t want to interact with anyone, snap on those headphones and block everything out. The nurses will get your attention if they need you. Don’t worry about staying lucid. Your job is to get the infusion and do what’s best for you.

You can bring snacks if you want, but most units/centers will have something to munch on or can order you something from the cafeteria if you’re at a hospital. Also the medication and the smells in the unit always make me nauseous, so it’s kind of a waste for me to bother pulling together food before I leave. You can always eat before or plan to get something on the way back. Going through a drive thru to get something with protein is my go to.

If possible, schedule your next appointment while you’re there. I have to go every three months, so I schedule the next one while I’m there, and then I never have to make any fucking phone calls. Phone calls are the worst.

My last and most important tip: ask the nurses when you need something. Blankets, water, snacks, pain meds, the lights turned off. If they can’t do it, they’ll tell you. They’d rather have you ask and have to say no, then you be uncomfortable. Don’t suffer if there might be a solution.

Dealing with Shitty Doctors

There are shitty doctors everywhere, in every specialty and every hospital system. It sucks, and you can do your best to avoid them, but most chronically ill patients will have to put up with one at some point. Here are my suggestions:

If they’re refusing to acknowledge one of your symptoms is a problem (won’t order tests, won’t refer you out, won’t ask any questions), tell them it’s affect your Activities of Daily Living. ADLs are one of the ways doctors measure severity of symptoms and quality of life. ADLs are the absolutely essential things you need to do to be a functioning human: eat, shower, get dressed, brush your teeth. ADLs are a trigger word for most doctors. Physical therapists and occupational therapists were created specifically to help patients achieve their ADLs. If you’re having severe joint paint, say it’s affecting you’re ability to shower and dress in the morning. If you have intense fatigue, say you’re too tired all the time to cook food to eat or even brush your teeth before bed. Tell them your symptoms are affecting your quality of life and your ability to function daily. This won’t always work, but it’s a good starting place. (A side note: if you have have to submit an insurance appeal for something that was denied, citing ADLs as a reason to receive the treatment/medical equipment/doctors visit, will often spur them into action. Sometimes, it’ll just make them ask more questions, but questions are better than flat out denial. This was a very helpful tactic when I was trying to get my manual wheelchair approved. I told them I was unable to complete my ADLs and it was affecting my quality of life, and they eventually came around. It’s also important to remember that ADLs are only the most base tasks that you need to live. Driving, working, socializing—those aren’t included in ADLs, and insurance especially will laugh in your face if you try to say you need medical equipment for something like that.)

Lots of doctors, consciously or unconsciously, will judge how you’re actually feeling by your mood in an appointment. I had a pediatric neurologist who couldn’t be convinced that my pain was at an 8 because I would laugh with my mom in the waiting room. Eight months in, I started getting real quiet, not talking, crying when he talked, all that shit, and he was so fucking flummoxed. He was like “what changed?? Are you depressed??” And I had to remind him that I was thirteen with a severe shoulder inure that hurt every time I breathed. Doctors will judge you based on how you look and how you present. It’s horrible, but it’s true. Present to them in the way that represents what they’d expect to see for your symptoms.

Whatever you do, don’t say anything (or send any snappy messages) that might be considered aggressive until you are absolutely, 100% positive you will never ever have to see them again. I’ve had a few doctors that said ridiculously horrible things to me. It’s tempting to send them a message about how shitty they’ve been or how much they’ve hurt you, but it won’t help. Shitty doctors have fragile egos and they don’t like to be challenged. They won’t take this well, and they’ll mark you as attention seeking, emotional, mentally unstable—you name it. When your other doctors call to ask questions about symptoms, etc, they’ll start talking shit, and everything gets complicated. This might sound dramatic to anyone who hasn’t seen it happen, but honestly, the medical system abuses emotion and mental illness to discard patients that aren’t afraid to advocate for themselves, and this is one of the least immoral ways they do it.

Remember that you don’t owe your doctors anything (except basic human decency). If they ask you to do something and you can’t or don’t want to, don’t. My psychiatrist was really fixated on me getting a light box to cure my depression. I did Not want to do that, so I didn’t. Sometimes, your doctors won’t move on to further treatment or tests until you try it, but most of the time you can say, “that’s not something I’m able to do right now. Let’s explore further options,” and they’ll move on.

Remember that learning to advocate for yourself takes years of practice. Just do your best, and try not to blame yourself for the ways you get mistreated. Therapy is the best investment I’ve ever made for this. It’s helped me learn how to advocate and how to process medical trauma.

Medication

For gods sake, take the as needed medication when you have a migraine or if you’re nauseous. Don’t punish yourself.

This might seem like a no brainer, but if you’re traveling and you’re going to take your medication bottles with you, put them in a ziplock bag. They will definitely open in your suitcase, and you’ll have to pick Levothyroxine out of your socks.

If a medication gives you icky side effects, tell your doctor and ask if there’s something that doesn’t do that. For me personally, it’s hard to find medication that works at all, so I often get stuck with things that make me feel like shit. But it doesn’t hurt to ask. Sometimes new medications come out or they dig up old ones.

Some medications come in dissolvable tablets or suppositories. They’re not fun, but if you have trouble swallowing pills, this is a good way to go. Again, communicate with your doctor about these things. I know that there are Scopolamine patches for nausea too. I’ve never used them before, but it might be worth looking into if need easy nausea relief.

All Things Wheelchair

Man, wheelchairs suck, but they’re also amazing. If you find yourself using one, you’ll encounter a steep learning curve.

If you’re not super buff when you first start, it’ll seem impossible to go up even a slight incline. Your arms will get stronger the more you move around, but it might take time. I eventually bit the bullet and started doing personal training. I’m lucky that I can afford it, and I know it’s not an option for everyone, but if you can, find a trainer who won’t saying anything shitty and who’s willing to accommodate. I worked with a queer-owned gym to find someone I was comfortable with. We do upper body strength training, and it gives me a chance to move my body more often. I still can’t go up big hills, but I feel infinitely more mobile. Give yourself time to adjust to the new strain on your body, even if you don’t do training for it. You’ll be sore in the beginning. Ice and heat will be your friends after long days. If your wrists start hurting a lot, you’re not wheeling correctly, and you should ask your doctor for a referral to PT or OT. Oh and your hands will be fucked for the first few weeks. I bought special wheelchair gloves to try to combat this, but it just made it harder for me to maneuver. Now I only use the gloves if it’s cold, if I’m going down hills, or in the rain/snow. (But seriously, if you’re going down steep hills, use traction gloves.)

Learn to pop a wheelie as soon as possible. It’s such a helpful skill. If you get good enough, you’ll be able to get up over single steps and traverse shitty pavement.

If your wheelchair has a cushion, then it has a cushion cover. Wash it.

Time for the grossest part: cutting hair out of your caster wheels. I hate this. I hate it so much. It’s fucking disgusting, but you have to do it. It’ll fuck up your wheels and make it harder to maneuver. Also it’s just gross to have all that nasty hair hanging out by your feet. Get yourself a long pair of thin scissors and cut all that hair out every week or every two weeks. If you don’t have long hair or live with people who have long hair, then you might be able to wait longer. You should also sanitize your hand rims while you’re at it. Hand sanitizer or Clorox wipes are great for this.

You’ll notice that it’s fucking impossible to carry shopping baskets or suitcases if you use a manual chair. Some people try to balance them on their laps or wedge them onto their footplates, but it’s pretty precarious. I got these weird peg things that attach to the frame. You can place a basket or your bag on it and still keep your hands free. Here’s the link for the ones I got, but it depends on your make and model, so do some research and call some different companies before buying anything. Also, make sure to measure the distance between the two sides of your frame to make sure a basket will be able to balance on the two pegs. Your frame might be too wide for this. Mine is, but I bought a special basket to take to the store that’s wide enough to reach across.

Lots of people will offer to push you. Some won’t even offer; they’ll just grab on and take you in whatever direction. It’s insanely invasive and dehumanizing. Don’t be afraid to put on your breaks if someone does this. I can stand and take small steps, so sometime I just get up and stare at them. You can also buy covers for your handles that have spikes so people can’t grab them. I know some wheelchair users who like it when people offer to push them. That’s good too! Take the help if you want it. Just remember to prioritize your safety and comfort. I had a big debate with another disabled person about whether it was infantilizing for someone to offer to hold open the door for us. I’m firmly on the side that they can offer, and I can say no, and they can listen, and then we can both appreciate the moment of shared humanity between us. They did not agree. Disabled people fight and disagree all the time because we’re not all carbon copies of each other. That’s okay! Just be respectful.

Getting a customized manual wheelchair was one of the single most stressful things I had to deal with. Insurance doesn’t like to pay for them because it’s about 3-12k, depending on the specifications and add-ons. But it’s also been the most liberating thing I’ve done since getting my mobility stripped from me. I’m not sure how it works for everyone, but I got a referral from my doctor to a custom wheelchair company. From there, they took measurements, discussed needs, and showed me different models. It’s going to be really really difficult to know what you want the first time. There’s a lot of different brands and customizations, so do your research and talk in depth with whoever’s making your chair. Ultra lite rigid frames are my favorite because they’re usually only 15-40 pounds, and the wheels can come off to make it even lighter. However, rigid frames don’t fold together in the middle like classic manual wheelchairs that you might find at a hospital or get at a rental company. They can be difficult to fit in the backseat of a car or in some trunks, so make sure to measure any cars you ride in regularly. Some people prefer to have tilted wheels so they can turn easier. Some people don’t want anything to do with that. Depending on your mobility and the people in your life, you might choose not to add push handles to your chair. I added some to mine because I often get dizzy, and it’s helpful to have handles in case I need someone to push me out of the crosswalk or into the shade. People who are highly independent and extremely strong might not want push handles because they won’t need help up steep hills. I like my handles a lot; however, my chair back is shorter than a standard wheelchair because it helps increase range of motion when I’m wheeling, so my push handles are lower than normal, and anyone who wants to push me has to hunch a bit to reach. Again, do your research and talk to your rep before making final decisions. Some companies will let you test out the chairs they have on hand to see what you like. It’s important to work with a wheelchair company you really like because you’re literally putting you life in their hands. I’ve had better luck with smaller, locally-owned companies, but you can’t always get referrals there, and not every town has them. Here’s my tip to you: Numotion sucks ass. Avoid them. My branch of Numotion seems to be an outlier; I’ve had really good experiences with them. But most of the time, its impossible to get ahold of anyone, their hours are few and random, and their customer service reps are rude. But! After you’ve completed your order form—gotten measurements and found customizations—they’ll submit it to insurance. This is the tricky part. I went through four appeals, before I got mine approved. Luckily, I had insurance through my mom’s job, and after the last appeal, her company told the insurance that they had to pay for it. This won’t be the case with everyone. Be diligent with your appeals. Have your doctors write specific, clear letters about why you need it, including information about all the customizations and add-ons. It’s likely that they’ll only pay for the base chair, and you’ll have to pay out of pocket for any extra things. Another note: most insurance companies will only pay for a new chair once every five years (if they approve the first one at all), so be sure that the chair you pick out will work for you for at least the next five and a half years.

I had an advisor in college tell me something devastating once: there is no AAA for wheelchairs. I’d broken a caster wheel and gotten stuck on a university sidewalk in 102 degree heat, and she was telling me about her own experiences getting stranded after one of her tires popped. She’s right; if you’re wheelchair breaks, you’re stuck wherever you are without any backup. Carry your phone with you. Tell your friends or family where you’re going before you leave. Familiarize yourself with the wheelchair repairs shops in your area. Sometimes places like bike shops will be able to help you fix smaller things. I always carry an Allen wrench with me in case I need to take a part off. And don’t worry; you’ll find that if something does go wrong, people are far more willing to help than you’d expect. One of the sculpture professors in the art department found me that day and went back to his workshop to get all his tools. He brought me water and sat in the sun while he tried to fix my wheel, and when he couldn’t, he offered to drive me wherever I needed to go. This man was a tenured professor with a prestigious MFA, and he was running late for a party where he was supposed to be handing out awards. You’ll find lots of good people when things inevitably go to shit.

Going along with the last point, your wheelchair will break, and you will have to send it into the shop to get repairs. If you can, invest in a cheap manual chair that you can use in emergencies. If you live with other people, you can buy a transport chair for cheaper, but you’ll need someone around to push you because it won’t have hand rims.

If you’re new to wheelchair use, give yourself space to feel all the emotions. When I first started, I had been using an office chair(!) to get around. My mom would push me from my bed to the bathroom and then back to bed while we waited to get a rental. I was so relieved when I got my own chair that I pushed everything else down. It took months to allow myself to be sad about all the things I couldn’t do anymore and be angry about all the inaccessible infrastructure that America has. Don’t push it down. Talk to a therapist or find people in the community to discuss it with. (If I choose to talk about my frustrations with friends, I always start with “I need to vent right now, and I’m grateful you’re willing to listen to me, but I’m not looking for any solutions to this at the moment,” or “can you give me some suggestions to work around these things that are frustrating me?” This gives my friends insight into what I need, instead of making them guess. It keeps us both from getting frustrated, and I highly suggest it, especially if you or your friends have trouble navigating social situations/expectations.)

Hand Controls

Hand controls are great option for your car if you’re unable to use your feet to drive. I got mine about a year back, but it was tricky and really confusing at first.

First thing you need to know: you can’t get hand controls without a prescription from a specialist. Usually a certain type of occupational therapist. You can look up driving rehab OTs in your area, but there aren’t many of them, and lots of the time you’ll have to drive several hours to see one. There’s usually a long wait list as well. (And of course, a lot of them don’t take insurance.)

If you’re able to find someone who’s certified, they’ll do an intake appointment and assess your physical abilities and needs. Sometimes, they’ll do the assessment and decide you aren’t fit to use hand controls. This can be for a multitude of reasons, including impaired mental cognition and slow reaction time, issues with hand or arm mobility, or there might be a better way to adapt a car for you. Again, it varies greatly on the person, and I’m not an OT, so I don’t know all the ins and outs. If you pass the assessment, and they view you got to drive with hand controls, you’ll be required to do a certain amount of training where you practice using different equipment. Some OTs will know what you need to use right away, and others will have you try different things out to see what fits best. There’s a lot of types of hand controls and a lot of adaptations that can be done to a car, so it really depends on the person. My training was only about 15 hours (plus independent driving practice), but it’ll depend on whether this is your first time ever driving, if you’ve driven without hand controls before, and if you have any other medical issues that might make it hard for you to adapt. Once you’ve completed the training and received your certificate from the OT, they’ll write a prescription to send to a shop that does specialty car adaptation. Kind of like wheelchairs, the shop you go to is very important. Ask your OT if they have any favorites in the area. Insurance never covers this, and some shops will way overcharge you if you’re not careful. My hand controls were about 3k out of pocket, but it was definitely worth it. It would’ve been a lot more to add other adaptations like a lift or a ramp, but sometimes you can buy used accessible vans for cheaper than adding it to your own car. Something to know: you’re usually able to turn your hand controls on and off. So if your friend needs to borrow your car, or you need to let a mechanic test drive it, you can disable to hand controls and allow someone else to use the foot pedals as normal.

Overall, it’s a very long, very expensive process, so plan ahead and be prepared to wait and pay.

Navigating Raising a Kid with Chronic Illnesses

I don’t have any kids, but my mom was my sole caretaker growing up, and I can offer you some of her thoughts. You have to remember that no matter what age your kid is, chronic illness is an impossible thing for them to deal with, and yet they have to deal with it anyways. Sometimes, there’s no good way to comfort a child who’s in 10/10 pain, or who’s about to undergo a life-altering procedure. All you can do is your best. Communicate. Offer support. Give affection. Make your love unconditional. I was a very angry teenager. I was angry with my mom that she couldn’t fix it, and I was angry with my doctors for the way they treated me. There were days where I would yell and sob and refuse to take my meds, and there where days where I would stare at the wall and not respond to anything. It drove my mom up the wall. She’s used to fixing things, and this was one of those things she couldn’t even help. I know she stills holds a lot of guilt for this, but she shouldn’t. She did her best. You’re doing your best too. You can’t fix everything. That being said, here are her suggestions:

Therapy, therapy, therapy. They might hate it, but some day, they’ll thank you. Remember that not every therapist is right for every patient. If your kid wants to switch to a different therapist, let them. It’s better than them sitting and not speaking the whole session.

Lots of kids with developing rare undiagnosed diseases will go through this vicious cycle where they get a new symptom, get sent to a specialist, get dismissed, and then develop a new symptom and start the process all over again. It’s not easy. My mom was a fan of throwing Pity Parties. Every once in a while, when the grind of it all started making us feel hopeless, she’d take me to the store and say, “pick out snacks and drinks. We’re going to throw a pity party, gorge on sugar, watch Lord of the Rings, feel bad for ourselves, and tomorrow, we’ll dust ourselves off and try again.” It helped. It was good to know that sometimes you can let life feel unfair, and it was even better to know that the next day it would be easier to try again.

A lot of being chronically ill as a kid is getting decisions stripped from you and having unexpected negative experiences. My mom would try to do spontaneous things every once in a while to remind me that not all surprises are bad. Instead of driving straight home after school one Friday, she took me to Starbucks without saying anything. After an MRI, she stopped at an art fair and let me pick out a necklace. We would go to the library after I spent the day in the hospital. Sometimes, she’d call my aunts while I was at school to come over and play card games on the weekends. And she was really big on giving me choices in everything. She never made me agree to new (non-lifesaving) treatment. Ever. If she really wanted me to do it, we’d talk it over and come to an agreement that made us both happy. Sick kids are forced into adulthood early; they know how to make calculated, logical decisions when needed. Let them be a part of their own healthcare. (They should also be given the chance to make rash, stupid decisions that have no bearing on their health.)

Keep track of everything. Doctors, meds, ER visits, PT exercises, diets they’ve tried for GI issues, everything about the surgeries they’ve undergone. Some day, you’ll need it. Or your kid will grow up into a chronically ill adult, and they’ll need it.

Talk to their school counselor about getting a 504 or IEP. Even if they’re not struggling. I was a super academically minded kid; I didn’t struggle to understand new concepts or complete homework correctly. But eventually it became hard for me to attend class and finish assignments. Having an IEP saved me. 504s are a lot easier to get (a lot less paperwork, less testing, less pushback from admin), but they’re not legally binding. If you want something concrete and all-encompassing, go for the IEP. IEPs are also really helpful when trying to get accommodations in college. You can also start with a 504 and switch to an IEP later. While we’re on the subject of school: remember that education is important, but school is not the end all be all of your child’s life. What should matter the most to you is that they end up safe and happy. I didn’t graduate high school; I took a proficiency test my junior year and dropped out. It was the best choice I could’ve made at the time, but it was still tough for my mom. I ended up going to college, and now I have a pretty solid job, but every kid will be different. Their mental and physical health is the most important. School is a huge huge huge stressor. Don’t make it harder for them than it already is.

Dating

God dating sucks enough on its own, but adding in chronic illness and disability just makes it a shit show. I don’t have a lot to offer on this other than you shouldn’t settle for anyone who doesn’t respect you, treat you with love and compassion, and accept every part of you for what it is. People will say rude shit. They’ll be nasty, fetishizing, infantilizing, dismissive. Some won’t be able to put up with all the things that come along with being ill. I sound like a broken record, but find a good therapist who can help you voice your needs and expectations clearly. Remember that you never have to go on a date if you don’t want to. Participate as you see fit. Throw it all out if you want.

I don’t have enough time to go into my tips for intimacy/sex and disability, but I’ll give you the highlights.

Communicate. Make it very clear what you’re able to do, what you’re interested in doing, and what you don’t want.

There are lots of ways to have sex. If you’re both having fun, being safe, and engaging consensually, then you’re doing it right. Don’t let abled bodied people tell you the way it should be done. There are lots of accessibility friendly toys to invest in, too.

As weird as it might sound, don’t be afraid to take breaks. Keep water near by. If you have POTS, keep salt or electrolyte tablets on hand. If you have to stop to vomit or go to the bathroom, don’t let it shame you. Go at your own pace and take care of your body.

Misc

Having seizures on a college campus: Most universities have a policy that if you lose consciousness while on campus, they have to call an ambulance. You are not required to ride in the ambulance. You can decline, and the paramedics will make you sign a form before leaving. If you’re still actively having seizures, then they’ll take you anyways, but you probably won’t be in any shape to try to decline. If you’re having seizures regularly, tell your professors. It’ll freak them the fuck out, so warn them ahead of time. It makes the whole thing a lot less awkward when you collapse in the aisle during a lecture. Related to that: communicate with your professors about all your accommodations and emergency health needs. They really honestly appreciate it when you talk to them about this stuff. Even if they have a big class and don’t remember you, it’s good to send them an email and introduce yourself. Hopefully, you’ve also talked to your college’s Disability Resource Center. If not, go do that. Now. (There’s a whole lot of shit that I have to say about campus accessibility and disability resource centers, but I’m not gonna go into it right now.) Also, wear your medical alert bracelet. I know they suck, but it sucks more for someone to be digging through your pants pocket while you’re seizing to try to find your wallet. And keep your emergency contact info pinned up somewhere in your dorm. I used to put mine on the fridge and point it out to my roommates at the beginning of term. It can take a while for RAs to pull yours up, so it’s best to make sure it’s easily accessible.

Remember that you do not function like a normal person. There is no wrong way to solve one of your problems. If you need to put a stool in your bathroom to sit at while you brush your teeth, do it. I got an extra tall stool to sit at while I cook at the stove because my wheelchair is too short. (Cooking in a wheelchair is another thing I could talk about forever.) If you need to wear a sleep mask on the bus because the light makes your migraine worse, do it. People can look at you funny all they want. Like I said, I rolled around my house in an office chair while I waited for a rental wheelchair. What I’m trying to say is find things that work and implement them, even if they’re non traditional.

Here’s what I pack in my bag for an ER visit: headphones, phone charger, book, zofran, Naproxen, water bottle, wallet with cash, socks, and sleep mask to block out the waiting room lights. If I’m expecting to be admitted, then I’ll pack more, but I try to keep it light if it’s just triage and a visit with the ER doctor. Sometimes I’ll stuff a granola bar or some almonds in there too.

My biggest tip for surviving hospital stays is to get out of your room (if possible). Go on walks around the unit. Some hospitals have little courtyards patients can sit in. If you’re in peds, go visit the rec room, even if it’s awkward. Their activities are usually meant for the younger kids, but it can be fun to connect with other people your age, and you’ll thank yourself later when you’re stuck in bed at 3am. Also, tell your friends to come visit you. Not everyone will be able to, but most people are happy to come hang out for an hour or two. It’ll help; I promise.

Clean your room every few weeks. Dear god, clean your room. I have trouble with executive functioning and finding energy to do housekeeping type stuff, but I get more depressed when my room is gross. So clean your room. Especially if you have hypersomnia/sleep excessively.

Don’t force yourself to use a pill organizer. I know everyone says it makes it easier, but I get overwhelmed when I have to refill it, and then I just don’t end up taking my meds. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it. If it does, then do it!

Don’t buy the self help books your therapist recommends unless you’re actually interested in reading them. It’ll just sit on your shelf and make you feel guilty for not being good enough.

Mental illness is tightly bound to physical illness. Try to be an active listener in your body. Sometimes, when I’ve been feeling really nauseous, my PSTD symptoms will get triggered over nothing, and it’ll frustrate the fuck out of me because it seems like it’s happening over nothing. I try to track when my emotional state is worse to see if it’s correlated to my physical symptoms. This helps curb the frustration and guilt. Sometimes it makes me dissociate more. It’s a balancing act. Just do your best.

Hobbies are so so so important. Make sure to give yourself time to work on them! And there are a million ways to adapt the activities you love if you’re having trouble, so don’t afraid to do some research. I know they have crochet hook grips for people with arthritis or loose grips, and there are super intense magnifying glasses for people who like to cross stitch and are having trouble seeing the tiny ass holes. I have a color blind friend who sends us pictures of paint to see if it’s the shade he wants. Very occasionally, you’ll come to the conclusion that there’s a hobby you can’t adapt. Let yourself be sad. I can’t hike anymore and it sucks. I can’t go tide-pooling either, and its not like if I just work really hard I’ll be able to do it some day. Life is shit, and sometimes you have to let things go. Be angry, be sad, tell people to fuck off if they try to turn you into inspiration porn, but also remember that there are lots of other cool things out there to try.

Going along with the hobby thing: take the time to learn ASL if you’re having trouble with your hearing or if you often go nonverbal. One of my friends had to get hearing aids last year, and we offered to learn with them, but they were hesitant because it feels like a non necessity to them. Something selfish that would take up all our time. If you think it’ll help, you should grant yourself the time to learn. Capitalism makes us think that we shouldn’t engage in activities unless we gain money or power from them, but that mindset will kill you. Your life will be infinitely easier if you learn ASL online with your partner or friends or siblings.

Look up Spoon Theory. It’s not a helpful metaphor for everyone, but most people in the community talk about it, so it’s good to be familiar with it.

Don’t be afraid to go out and find community! Find support groups, look up wheelchair sports if you’re into getting sweaty, brave the awkwardness of starting conversations with other patients in the clinic. I’m wholly and completely of the idea that humans are innately good. There are lots of interesting chronically ill/disabled people who’re looking for connection. Insurance companies and other medical entities rely on us feeling isolated, alone, and uniformed to continue making money and hold power. It’s important that we share with and support each other.

I know a lot of this is basic stuff, but it’s helpful to have reminders, and if you’re new to the whole song and dance, then it’s nice to get a sneak peak. There are a million things I didn’t get to, but this was what was on the top of my brain.

Also, I’m not the collective voice of every chronically ill person in the world. My experiences are not yours and they’re not everyone else’s. What works for me, might not work for you. Be kind.

[penvisions]

the melting point {chapter 16}

Pairing: Frankie Morales x Baker! Reader (ex EMT! Reader)

Summary: In the aftermath of a rather eventful and terrifying last summer farmer's market, you try to find a semblance of normalcy as best you can. Meanwhile, Frankie is up to something that is beginning to cause you to worry about the burden you've become in your recovery.

Word Count: 6.8k

Warnings: medical jargon, mild language, emotional monologues, internal monologue, negative feelings, negative thoughts, ptsd symptoms, pining, emotional pining, depressive thoughts, description of pain and injuries, blood, descriptions of post shooting chaos, panic attacks, notions of death, hospital setting, mentions of needles and iv's, mentions of narcotics, use of prescription narcotics, feelings of inadequacy, angst

A/N: um, so it's been four months since i've touched this fic, then i woke up yesterday morning and just began writing like nothing. takes breaks when you need to, don't force things and it'll all work out. please let me know what y'all think!

ao3 link || series masterlist || main masterlist || ko-fi

“C’mon, hang on for me baby, please, don’t-don’t close your eyes.”

“Mantequilla, everything is gonna be okay, I promise, we’re all here for you, please know that everything is going to be okay.”

“We’ve got you, you did so good, you saved my little girl, you did, you saved her.”

“Honey, we all love you so much, please stay strong, I’ll hold your hand the entire way there.”

“Let’s get you turned over, ma’am, c’mon. There we go, you’re doing amazing.”

“Santi, she-she-“

“Papa!! Papa, please help her, I love her! Tio Santi, do something!!”

“Merde, that’s so much blood, Frankie you’ve gotta focus, you’ve gotta calm her down. Get her home safe, to your mother’s, somewhere safe.”

“Will!! They got her, call Morgan! She went missing the second things got crazy.”

“Has anyone seen Benny?”

“They’re transporting her now, rushing her to surgery the second the get there.”

“She’s lost a lot of blood, any donations with the same blood type would be appreciated. Who here is a positive?”

“Sweet girl, please, you’ve got to pull through, I know you can do it. You’re so strong.”

“No response, it’s been how many days now?”

“She’s being rushed into another surgery, she keeps clotting. They can’t figure out why.”

“Fransico Morales? You’re next of kin?”

“No, no, but we’re all she has. Her family is flying out, they’ll be here in a few hours.”

“Taylor, take a moment, it’s…it’s a lot to take in.”

“Daddy, why is tia all tangled in those machines, she’s going to be okay, right?”

“This is my son, he wanted to come and cheer her up because she always did the same for him when he was sick.”

“Please, mi amor, please, you have to make it. I don’t know what I’d do without you.

Fractered memories played over each other, words echoing and bouncing off of each other through the fog that was all you knew. You couldn’t feel anything, all of your senses stripped away, and you were nothing more than a half-conscious mind tunneling in and out of suspended darkness.

Beeping, an even beeping was the only steady thing you could make out. Sense of environment completely gone and sense of awareness slowly trickling in. Your eyes hurt as you slowly blinked them open, the faint lights around you too bright and you clenched them shut with a huff that pulled at your lungs. The stillness of where you were was shattered as the clattering of a chair sounded, followed by a pair of hands tightening around yours that were settled over your middle. A hushed order to go fetch someone and then a deep voice was rumbling close. You turned your head toward the presence hovering close to your left side, drawn to whoever it was.

“Hey, hey, take it easy, sweet girl.”

A grunt sounded from deep in your chest as you tried to open your mouth and respond. Then a gasp when pain reverberated from the same spot. You tried to shift your legs, hips feeling oddly numb but you couldn’t quite feel them. It was as if they were asleep, but… you cracked your eyes open a second time, squinting down the length of the bed you were in. Your legs were there, obvious underneath the thin, knit, scratchy blankets that only a hospital possessed. You tried to shift again, but even your hips didn’t feel like a part of your body. Your eyes flew open completely, tearing up at the brightness of the room.

Shuddering breaths pulled deep hurt, but you tried to shift again and again but there was no movement underneath the blanket. None.

“Okay, alright, querida, please. Take a deep breath, it’s-it’s gonna be okay.” Frankie. It had been Frankie speaking to you, close to you. His hands reached out for your own, where you had pried them from him to try and prop yourself up, wires and tubes pulling, clattering against each other and making your head swim. “The doctors-“

“I know this must be quite a shock, but it’s good that you’re awake!” A white coat, thrown over a modest skirt and blouse, blonde hair. A kind face, pinched. A furrowed brow. Bad news on the tip of her tongue.

You tried to speak, demand why you couldn’t feel anything below your waist. But you could only croak out the faintest notions of words. Everything was a blur, the hospital room you were in a mess of blue and white, the beeping of machines hurting your ears. Nothing made any sense, confusion coloring every thought as to how you got here and why.

“Let’s get you some water and food first, your body is pretty weak right now. Can I get a level two meal delivered to room thirteen eighty-nine, please?” She turned to address someone who had been hidden behind her, a nurse in teal scrubs.

“Tell me.” You managed to croak out, eyes fixated on her pinched ones.

“I would really prefer to get you a little acclimated.”

“No.”

Her eyes flickered toward Frankie, as if in a silent plea to get him to calm you down and put you at ease however little he could manage. But you ignored the warm weight of his hand on your shoulder, eyes trained on the doctor in front of you as you tried to find more strength to speak around the dry cotton feel of your mouth, the panging hunger that was present in your stomach, the lack of control over your body.

She sighed, arms holding the clipboard in front her in an imitation of a fig leave over her hips.

“We had you in a medically induced coma for the last two weeks. I’m not sure all of what you remember, the brain is fickle that way, pushing things and events out in response to trauma.” She didn’t look from you as the sound of fast steps approached the door, nor when a large figure moved passed her and came straight to your right side. It was Taylor. Both of the most important men in your life on your sides. He was quiet, but you could see the evidence of tears in the puffiness of his eyes, the lack of a smile on his face as he hovered close.

“You were hit in the sacrum and coccyx region, paralyzing you from the waist down. We performed three surgeries to remove the bullet shards and repair as much of the damage as possible. Your blood flow and reflex reactions have improved but we had no way of knowing if anything truly worked until you woke. A week has passed since we stopped inducing you, we were beginning to think you might not wake up.”

The rest of the conversation was a blur, medical terms floating heavy in the air of the room. Daunting, terrifying, life altering. You didn’t think you could handle another life altering event of this caliber. But it didn’t look like you had to traverse it alone. You teared up once the doctor left the room, offering to come back and talk to you once visiting hours were over, though she had mildly glared at both men as she said it. But knowing them both, they had been alternating staying the night to watch over you past the set hours that allowed for them to be present.

You had two wonderful men who were willing to do anything for you, one with a friend group who would follow his lead and the other who had given you so much already. You hoped it wouldn’t be too much, taking what they were willing to give.

“It’s a lot,” Taylor’s voice broke, his words spoken through eyes glittering with tears. His hands tight around yours as he leaned his forehead against yours, completely in your personal space. “But we’ve done somethin’ like this before and we can do it again. We can do it again.”

You could only nod, throat and voice still weak from weeks of disuse.

He walked closer to the side of the bed, the man’s large build shadowing over you in the dimmer setting of the lights you had requested. The full effect of them too bright for you eyes after being unconscious for so long. You reached out to him, urging him to sit atop it as best he could as you all but threw yourself at him. He let you, aware of Frankie standing close to the other side, eyes watering as he heard the cries that began to bubble up from you.

“I-I-“

“Shh, it’s okay, I’m here. We’re both here.” Taylor murmured, as he wrapped his own arms around you to pull you close. He smelled like your apartment, a mix of faint buttercream and the rose perfume you favored all rolled into one comforting scent. His own masked by the time he had been in town. “Alfred was here too, but he had to be taken back for school. He sat with you every day for that first week and read to you. He was so worried about you, mami. He kept talking with you like he always does, hoping you would wake up and respond.”

Frankie excused himself, his phone beeping in his pocket and the sound of you crying too much for him to handle all at once. You watched him leave the room, his shadow visible through the blinds in the window looking into the room as he paced up and down the hallway just outside. His voice a low murmur as he spoke with whoever had been trying to contact him.

“I didn’t mean to scare him…or you. I’m so sorry, that call – it must’ve been so terrifying.” You hiccupped into his chest, unable to stop the tears and emotions from flowing all at once, overwhelmed and completely at a loss of how to respond to anything at the moment.

Hushed words eradicated any ill thoughts you were having of yourself, comforting in their genuine indication. He assured you he had been able to handle it, that he was able to handle the hard things that came along with being bonded with someone for life, for knowing someone for so long. For having already done something similar before. But yeah, that it had been scary but Frankie had been as detailed and direct as he needed to be, levelheaded in his description of what had happened and what immediately happened afterwards.

Frankie came up to you both as he entered back into the room, a hand on both your shoulders to get your equal attention. You looked up at him with watery eyes, feeling so proud of how everyone was trying to keep it together for you but guilty at the same time since it had been something they had been dealing with for weeks now.

“That was the airline, they need someone to come in and take over a few tours for double pay. I wouldn’t normally turn them down and I will if you need me here. You’re awake now and I want to be here with you.”

“Y-you should go, if you want to, if you need to.” Scratchy words spoken with what little conviction you could muster. He was conflicted, worried about making the wrong decision.

“You need me here.” He didn’t argue so much as read the thoughts in your mind as clearly as if you had displayed for him to see. “You want me here.”

“Yes, but….money is money, Frankie. For your house, for your daughter, for everything. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

“I’m gonna run and get a coffee before you head out, I’ll stay the night, okay?” Taylor announced before he pressed a kiss to your temple and stood. Leaving you and Frankie truly alone for the first time since you woke up. You reached out to the man, gripping his open flannel shirt and lightly pulling him toward you. But he didn’t budge, his feet stable on the ground and his back not leaning to meet you. He wasn’t looking quite at you, but just beyond you. His eyes a little distant.

“I’m sorry.” Pulling your hands back to rest in your lap, you began to twiddle your fingers, unsure of what to do, unsure of why he was acting so weird and distant. Maybe he was just exhausted, mentally wiped out from waiting and waiting for you to wake up. Maybe…he was rethinking everything he’s once promised you…

“Hey, no, you don’t have to be sorry.” His eyes caught your own, his hands reaching out to hold your own as he kneeled down to be at your eye level. Emotions you couldn’t read swirling behind them. “I just- It’s just… you’re awake. And I’m so scared I’m going to open my eyes or wake up and you’ll still be unconscious…or passed.”

“I am awake.” You insisted, worried about this being an elaborate dream all the same. Some made up fantasy your brain concocted in its last moments and none of it was real, that you weren’t real anymore.

“I want to stay,” He pleaded with you, desperate for you to understand how hard it is for him to make the decision to leave, to heed the call of an entire week’s worth of pay in just a few days. But he had a plan and he had to stick with it, it would be for the best in the long run.

“C-can you stay tomorrow?”

“Of course, sweet girl. I promise. I just- this is important. For the both of us. I swear.”

“I believe you, Frankie. I love you.” You lifted your intertwined hands and kissed his knuckles. He repeated the words before he shrugged his jacket on and bid you goodnight. He didn’t kiss you back, instead squeezing your hands twice in farewell.

“Hermosa, I-I just-“ Frankie hung his head, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees the next evening.

He had gone home to change and get a little sleep after a hectic two days of back to back tours. A touch restful now that he knew you were awake, but still fleeting. His thoughts had been a jumble as his mind flashed your unconscious form across the backs of his eyelids. Bleeding, hyperventilating, being rushed into emergency surgery not once but three times. Of you completely still save for the slight rise and fall of your chest laid out in the hospital bed. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing or diminish anything but- just thank you.”

“You saved her, at such a great risk to yourself. But you did, you saved my little girl when I couldn’t. I have endless love and admiration for you, querida. Please, I am here for you. I will help you with whatever you need or want. And not just because of this, but…but until you don’t want that anymore. You’ve got me, sweet girl. I promise.”

The conviction in his tone was strong despite the way his words were pushed out with deep breaths, trying to keep his composure. His shoulders were quaking with the effort he was holding back another wave of tears. Too many emotions for him to handle since the second you had rushed in front of that gun aimed at his daughter.

“Come here,” You softly compelled him, trying to shuffle atop the bed. Feeling still numb below the tops of your thighs, only some control over your legs that you were trying not to dissect. Going over your charts and test results had helped a little, compartmentalizing that it was happening to you and mind working to help solve and reason the things you read as if it was a patient of your own. Work. And a lot of it was ahead of you.

Frankie shuffled up and out of his shoes, choosing to urge you forward softly so he could be the one resting against the back of the angled bed. He helped to situate you against his chest, his arms coming around you in a warm embrace, the smell of his cologne and body wash puffing up and surrounding you in a comforting way. He pressed kisses to the crown of your head, nose shuffling in your hair and making you sigh out at the human contact.

“I would do it again, in a heartbeat. Even knowing what would happen.”

“Te amo. Te tango mucho amor ti, querida.” He whispered hoarsely in your ear, sending shivers down your spine. All you could do was repeat the words to him, meaning them with everything in your very being. Bringing his hands up to rest over your heart, palms flat over your chest, you both just laid there soaking up each other’s company.

His thoughts took over as you felt your breathing even, reaching over to silence the television that had been playing quietly in the corner where it was installed high on the wall.

‘Everything was so loud, a cacophony of too sharp frequencies grating on his ears as he watched the way your body fell to the ground. The man with the gun fleeing from the scene as soon as the gun had fired, steps heavy as he ran as fast as he could. Pope taking off immediately after him, his own gun pulled from the holster attached to his belt. Permission to carry it around off the clock from one of the local military bases where he worked as a freelance advisor.

Frankie was rushing too, toward you. Toward his daughter. Toward you both. There was a pool of blood forming beneath you, having twisted yourself to prevent from falling on top of Alexia’s smaller frame. She was kneeling beside you, tears running down her cheeks as you reached up to cup her face. A pinched expression on your features and blood blooming dark low on your front. His little girl turned to him as he crashed to his knees behind her and brought her in a crushing embrace to his chest, hearing the hum of the crowd that had begun to form all around.

Shouts to call 911 and responses that more than one person was already speaking with officers, telling them of what had just happened.

She begged him to help you.

She begged him to save you.

Shouting at him in her small voice that she loved you and she knew he loved you too.

She buried her face in his chest as he leaned forward to try and get your eyes to focus on him, but you were barely able to keep them open. Lashes fluttering as your breath became labored. He was speaking, words falling from him as he fell back on years of training. Pinging questions off one after the other, getting no response from you for even one. Unresponsive in the worst way, body completely laid out before him and eyes now completely closed. You could’ve been sleeping, as you were still for a fleeting moment.

But then you started to convulse, body fighting against the bullets that had landed deep in your body. He tried to tilt your head toward him, to avoid you biting on your tongue or choking on your own breath.

A new set of hands was taking over, gently ushering him away as paramedics appeared on the scene.

He could only hold tight to his sobbing daughter as he watched the two technicians tend to you. Your chest ceasing heaving at an alarming rate, your breath almost rattling as your lungs desperately tried to keep working.

Blinking rapidly, Frankie focused his eyes on his hands curled over the controls in front of him. He was flying, the landscape of the city and surrounding greenery, the ocean all laid out before him. He was okay, you were okay. Alexia was okay.

He was at work. He was okay.

His fingers twitched at the clueless ‘ooh’s’ and ‘ahh’s’ of the tourists clamoring for views outside the windows. Their voices coming in clear through the headsets they wore to match his own. Completely in their own world and no problems plaguing them. Carefree.

He was at work. He wasn’t okay.

He should’ve stayed with you.

He should’ve turned down the offer.

But he had run at the first opportunity. Unable to stop the events from replaying in his mind on a loop.

Preventing him from sleeping, preventing him from being able to look at you half the time. Seeing you as you had looked right after the attack, seeing you as they rushed you onto the ambulance, seeing you as your chest went completely still once loaded up. The way your body didn’t respond to the attempts of resuscitation.

Mind torturing him by projecting you laid out in an open coffin. Copper hair resting around your lifeless frame, beautiful face covered in the wrong shade of makeup, hiding the freckles that dotted your face from him. Forever closed eyelids hiding your bright eyes from him. Black dress hiding your soft skin from his twitching fingers, itching to trace the delicate ink that decorated your skin. A masterpiece taken from him in a cruel twist of fate.

Shaking his head minutely, he shoved the fake notions out of his head and pivoted the helicopter toward the coast. Following and announcing the route for the tour that the people sat behind him had requested.

He was at work and he didn’t think he’d ever be okay again. But he would try for you, because you were awake and waiting for him to return to you.

He pulled his sunglasses from where the frames were hanging from his collar and covered his reddening eyes.’

“Come on, two more steps and we’re home free.” The physical therapist was encouraging in the most grating of ways. Your normally polite and civil personality being shattered by the turn of events your life had taken. It was a lot of work now, but it had been a lot of work to initially discover that you had only minimal feeling and control over your lower half. Hips sore no matter how much medicine was added to your IV, legs numb and unresponsive more often than not.

But that didn’t stop the doctor from putting you on a physical therapy track of two appointments per week. Something you had thought was a lot right off the bat but not wanting to argue. Just as angered by the quick pace as you were determined to stick to it. It was the second week since waking up, discharge looming like a storm over the horizon, visible but not yet tangible.

There had been talk about Taylor renting a home to move into for the duration of your recovery. His son being taken care of by his co-parent back home with school having started. But Frankie had offered up his own home, a flush to his caramel skin as he did so. Not having wanted to ask you to move in under such dire circumstances. But he would be lying if he said the thought of offering you a space in his home hadn’t been on his mind lately.

Taylor had offered to split his time between Frankie’s and the apartment above the shop. An outpouring of love from the community delivered to the shop and hospital in overwhelmingly equal parts. Baskets of treats, flowers, cards, vouchers for services from all around the city and local vendors. Everything was being toted back between the two spaces that were now yours.

Lex indulging in the treats as she sat with you in the afternoons after school. Homework laid out before her atop the bed as you helped her with her math and writing. Different people picking her up while Frankie returned to work, determined to put in as many hours before he took two whole weeks off to help you transition to being home once you were discharged.

But right now, you were stood on shaking legs, arms braced heavily on the bars on either side of you as you stood between the set up of the parallel bars. Sweat dripping from your hair thrown up in a haphazard bun, skin sallow from the medication you were on a strict rotation of. You had forgone shoes, insistent that you wanted to be able to feel anything should it come back to you while practicing.

Your arms were shaking, holding up the entirety of your body weight on them, muscles straining and tattoos looking distorted with the flex of them. With a huff, you shifted your hips, right leg lifting slightly and managed to shuffle it about a foot before placing your foot down flat and tipping forward to even your weight with the new stance.

“Alright, you did it!” The nurse was a kindly young man, his arms hovering behind you as he waited for you to tap out. But you sucked in a deep breath and concentrated. Shifting your left foot ahead in the same manner before a spike of pain shot up from the arch of it as you settled it flat on the mat.

“Fuck! Okay, okay, I’m out. That’s all I got.” You wavered, arms shaking and legs beginning to tingle where you could feel them.

“That’s okay, you did good today. Four steps is progress.” The nurse helped you, gathering your form in his arms and lifting to get the pressure off your aching shoulders.

Santi was in the room when you were wheeled back, no sign of Taylor or Frankie. He informed you that they were both taking care of something for you which made you feel a little uneasy that they hadn’t told you themselves the night before that they wouldn’t be in to see you today. The nurse let the man take over with helping you get back into the bed, knowing you’d rather it be someone who you knew handling you for something a little more intimate of a move.

The man’s broad shoulders tensed as he supported your nearly dead weight, completely at a loss of energy from the days activities.

“Did they say where they were going?” You inquired, voice soft as you nuzzled your face into the man’s neck. He smelled so good and you were just in a very physically affectionate mood in wake of not getting any direct attention from Frankie in the way you were too hesitant to ask for.

“Mante, you know I would tell you if I knew, but they were like school boys, shuffling their feet and avoiding eye contact. I’m sure it’s just a surprise for you, don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

You were quiet for a moment, allowing the man to situate your aching legs as best he could and covering you up with the blankets that had been brought from your apartment. He busied himself with getting a take out bag unpacked and placing containers over the collapsable table attached to the bed for you. A cup of coffee that smelled of caramel and foamed milk pressed gently into your reaching hands. He was so diligent, the soft curls of his graying hair falling over his forehead as he focused. When everything was set up, he settled into the chair beside the bed with his own container and began to dig in.

But you were still, only a sip taken from the hot coffee handed to you.

“Santi…”

“What is it, hermosa?” He looked up from his food, utensils loaded up and a bite halfway to his lips. “I get the wrong thing?”

“No,” A small smile offered to him as your heart fluttered in your chest, unsure of how to even broach the concerns that were crashing over you in overwhelming waves. “No, this is great. Thank you.”

The man watched you, eyes scanning your face as you averted your eyes. He let out a quiet sigh and set down his utensils completely, asking you to tell him what was really on your mind.

“Frankie…he, um, he-“ You felt like a complete idiot as your face heated up, tears welling in your eyes unbidden. Foolish question, it was such a foolish thing to be worried about when the man’s words were nothing but reassuring and loving. “Why won’t he kiss me, Santi?”

“Is that what you need right now?”

You warbled out an affirmative. Feeling for all the world like a pathetic lovesick fool even surrounded by everyone who you could possibly need in your life right now, everyone working together to help you in any way possible.

“Have you talked to him about it?”

A shake of your head was all the answer you could muster up.

“He’s probably just trying to respect you, not wanting to put pressure on you to be that way with him if you’re too overwhelmed.” Santi went on to explain that his best friend had trouble with stuff like this, showing his affection and feelings in wake of traumatic events.

That you should try not to worry too much, though he knew that was easier said than done. To not take it personally, but he admitted to knowing that might be hard to do as well, everything so much at the moment. He reminded you that you could reach out to you with anything at any time. He would try his best to be there for you in any way that he could. Even jokingly offering to pepper kisses over your face and approaching you with overly pursed lips until you erupted into a laughing fit at how ridiculous he looked as he loomed closer. He sealed the conversation with a genuine press of his lips to the corner of your mouth, his hands cradling your face in their warmth before he moved back to his seat and ordered you to eat.

Across town, Taylor and Frankie had a similar conversation as a bell dinged above them where it was nestled in the doorway to a shop front. The two men determined to surprise you with something that Frankie had quietly brought up one night following your first rush into emergency surgery. An approval of sorts he had been seeking after was granted instantaneously with a smile and words of encouragement from the only other man he felt like he could share the conversation with at the moment.  

“Discharge papers should be processed by end of day, looks like you’ll be spending the night in your own bed.” The doctor offered you a small smile. She had been worried about having you under her care when she found out you were a once trained medical technician, knowing how bad of a patient she was when sick herself. But you had surprised her, not talking over her or voicing opinions on what needed to be done. It had been another week, progress made in physical therapy.

You were able to walk the length of the parallel bars, slowly and with a lot of huffing and puffing. But it cleared you for outpatient treatment. The feeling in your legs was spotty, coming to you mostly in the mornings when you first woke up and at the end of the day after resting for a few hours. Something she was only mildly worried about, muscle atrophy from being unconscious for so long lingering even now.

But she had been confident that the feeling would come back completely, though she was honest when she said she was worried about numbness flaring up.

That’s how you found yourself seated in the passenger seat of Frankie’s truck as he pulled into the drive of his house. He was waiting for the garage to open, in order to make it easier for you to walk straight into the laundry room instead of having to attempt to tackle the stairs to the front door. Everyone would be over tomorrow, to celebrate your release. Giving you a free night to settle in and mentally deal with the shift in environments. Lex would be at her grandparents so Frankie could focus on getting you settled.

“One moment, just…want to get something set up before I help you out, okay?” His earnest gaze widened his beautiful eyes, watching you and making sure you were alright to be left alone for a moment. He was through the door and back in the garage in a matter of minutes, a shy smile aimed at you as he helped you down and got a walked ready for you. It had a cushioned seat in the middle, in case you needed to take any breaks when trying to move about. Something you wanted to argue but didn’t have a good one against.

You felt…weird. Having to rely on him so much, but extremely grateful that he was willing to. You’d seen friendships and relationships fall apart with this much stress and similar situations. Both as a professional and a civilian, as a friend. You only hoped this wouldn’t be one of the last things he did for you before telling you it was too much, that you were too much. Love could only encompass so much before it wasn’t enough to hold two individuals together.

Melancholic and depressive thoughts abundant as you tried to come to terms with what the near future would hold for an unknowable amount of time. There was no timeline with things like this and that’s what worried you the most. What if you had flares of numbness for the rest of your life, what if he began to see you as a burden, as work he had to come back to after doing his shifts at the mechanics and his flying tours. What if all your progress was meaningless and you woke up one day with no feeling at all?

He had hushed you on more than one occasion with soft words, promises he wouldn’t do that. Promises that he was yours, that you were his, that you were in this together. But doubt crept in regardless. Even more so in the realization that he hadn’t wanted to kiss you. He was quick to dodge your advances, placing placating touches of his lips to your hair instead; of pulling you tighter to his body instead. Almost as if he was hesitant to show you affection in that way and it was hard to handle when all you wanted was that type of comfort from the man you loved so completely.

His hands were warm as he supported your weight, but he didn’t shift you down to the ground completely, instead he pulled you flush against him. Your own arms tightened around his neck, feet barely touching the ground as he ducked his head to kiss you fully for the first time since you woke up in that hospital bed. You melted into him even more, welcoming his lips against yours reverently, desperately.

The plush give of them against your own feeling like a true welcome home.

Shifting your hands up into his soft hair, you knocked the cap clear of his head as you parted your lips for him. He held you tight, not risking you putting too much weight on your own feet for even a second as he kissed you again and again, lips meeting yours in a dizzying display of his unfettered affection. Pulling at his curls, you pivoted his head to deepen another kiss, desperate for his touch and his taste. He groaned into your mouth, pulling back slightly to rest his forehead against yours. You opened your eyes slowly, watching the way his face was completely relaxed. The lines of his age smoothed out slightly as he moved to peck one last kiss to your slick lips.

He had set the table up before picking you up, at home during the day as he had received your hopeful text about the paperwork this morning. But he had run inside to pull everything from where it was keeping warm in the oven, lighting twin tapers set in the middle of the dining table. You tried to hide the squeal of surprise as he lifted you up completely, choosing to carry you bridal style over the threshold of the house and through the laundry room and into the kitchen.

“Frankie, you didn’t have to do all this.” You placed a kiss to his cheek as he carefully set you down into a chair, making sure your legs were situated how you wanted them. “I woulda been happy with a fast-food drive thru, you know that.”

“I know, but I wanted to do something special for you.” He moved over to the closest chair, settling down into it with a sigh. He looked nervous, you realized as you took in the dinner had had made before picking you up. One of your favorite dishes filling the kitchen with its tantalizing scent. The boys had snuck in food from time to time, but it had mostly been bland hospital food for a majority of the last three weeks.

Frankie cleared his throat, your eyes lifting from the items on the table and toward him.

In his hands was an emerald velvet box, open to reveal a simple gold band with a sparkling rhombus diamond in the middle.

Your lips parted, a gasp falling from them as your heart stuttered hard in your chest. Hands dropping the utensils you had just picked up clattered to the table and you stared across the table at him. At a complete loss for words as he nervously shifted in his seat and leaned closer toward you to take your hands in his own, the small box set down gently beside your plate. His hands were shaking slightly, his nerves obvious as he bared his soul to you with his next words.

“Sweet girl, I know things are going to be touch and go for a long while,” He took a deep breath, chest pulling the fabric of his shirt taut with the action. His tongue peaked between his lips, a habit you noticed when he had a lot on his mind, and he was trying to sort through everything. “But I don’t want you to worry about anything to do with us, with you and me. You have me, you have me until the moment you decide you don’t anymore. I hope you don’t ever change your mind because I’ve been gone on you since the second you aimed that glare in my direction all those months ago. Will- will you do the honor of marrying me?”

Tears welled up the longer you looked at him, his eyes so wide and open, his voice cradling you with his earnest words. All you could do was nod, voice caught in your throat.

He let out a deep exhale, pulling a giggle from you when he broke out into the widest, goofy smile you had seen on him yet. You mirrored him, lips pulling as you squeezed his hands and leaned forward to rest your forehead against them clasped together.

“Of course I’ll marry you, Fransisco. Of course.” You kissed the tops of his hands, one and then the other before you were pushing yourself up slightly, tentatively placing weight on your legs and surging forward to kiss him.

He only let you get away with one before he was standing from his seat and kneeling in front of you with the box in his hands. He carefully removed the ring from its spot nestled safely inside the velvet cushion and you held out your left hand for him. It took a second for him to place it securely on your ring finger, snug and perfect against your skin. It glittered in the candlelight and you felt a tear run down your cheek.

Frankie’s hands came up to cup your face, his lips connecting with yours as he chuckled breathlessly at having managed to pull out the surprise proposal. At your resounding yes. At the prospect of a concrete future with you.

“I love you so much, thank you for...for everything.”

“I love you too, you dork,” Your laugh sparkled against his parted lips. “I can’t believe you just thanked me for agreeing to marry you.”

“Well, you could’ve said no.”

“Not in a million years.”

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taglist: @tanzthompson @clevergirl74 @sullyosully @bitchwitch1981 @anoverwhelmingdin @jessthebaker @peppermintfury @for-a-longlongtime

dividers by the lovely @saradika-graphics

[darkk-academic]

From the Shadows

[Five Hargreeves x Reader]

[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] [Part IV] [Part V]

Summary : Unrequited love is pure agony, you conclude.

Warning : Angst.

Love is such a funny thing.

A mere four-letter word, but with the power to tilt the world upside down.

The source of all emotions. Perhaps, even the foundation of the universe.

Love is many things.

But to you, love is Five Hargreeves.

And honestly, you wouldn't have it any other way.

You are sitting next to him in the library.

He's working on some equations, reading through the book and taking notes.

You're reading too.

Him.

Peeking from behind the book you're holding, you look at him.

The furrow of his brows. The spark in his eyes. The slight twitch at the corner of his lips, when he gets something right, impressed by his own intelligence.

"You know you're holding your book upside down."

I what—

You scramble, looking down. Eyes widening. Oh.

"I'm trying something new," you reply. Smooth.

He snorts. "Sure," he nods, "could've believed that, if only the book wasn't in Latin," he points out.

"Why does that matter?" You stall. Shit. Shit. Shit. Should I make a run for it? But-but I really don't want to leave.

"You don't know Latin." He smiles. Letting his elbow settle on the table, he rests his chin on his palm. Eyes glittering with amusement as they gaze at you. "In fact, you've been staring at me for the past four and a half minutes."

It was really more than that, but he doesn't have to know that. At least you saved yourself from more embarrassment.

"Something you'd like to say," he continues. Quirking a brow.

Is this a sign? Should you just confess?

Gulping, you gather your courage. "Five—"

"Hello."

You break off. Gaze snapping up.

Delores.

You look back at Five.

He's already staring at her. Smiling.

Your heart twists. A painful pang echoing through.

Delores smiles back at him, shy and soft. Her eyes blue and warm and oh so welcoming.

"Um, sorry to interr—"

"You didn't," Five asserts.

She peers down at you. Hesitant. "If you don't mind, can I steal him for a few moments?"

No, the fuck, you may not.

Steal him? What is that supposed to mean? Is she challenging you or something?

Five scoffs. "She is not my keeper—" Your heart gives another twist. "—And yes, you may steal me," he continues. Flashing a charming smile.

You're so startled by his words—Jolted into reality. As though he yanked you down from a dream world—that all you do is stare at their retreating backs with tear glazed eyes.

Yeah, you aren't his keeper. He made that clear.

A shaky breath. A tear spills.

He's not yours.

•••

Chemistry class is your favorite.

Not because you're good at it. Or because you like the subject.

Nope. It's because you and Five get the chance to sit together and when you don't understand something, he explains it to you.

Sitting next to him. Listening to him ramble about covalent bonds. You can spend hours doing that. His presence is enough to fill you with heady happiness.

You take your usual seat as you wait for him.

Except when he comes, he takes another seat.

You frown. "Five," you call out.

He turns in your direction. "I'm going to sit next to Delores," he explains. She taps him on the shoulder, and he just looks away.

Just turns away from you. That easily.

Your thoughts spiral.

At first, it was a few moments. Now it's one class. Next it'll be a day, then she'll take him away from you entirely.

You'll be left with your phone in hand waiting for a text or call that won't come. You'll be left standing alone by your locker as they walk through the hallways hand in hand.

The next hour crawls at the pace of a turtle. Some ancient torture, you seem to be going through. Watching as Delores and Five keep grinning and whispering heaven knows what in each other's ears.

Unrequited love is pure agony, you conclude.

Sitting on the seat supposed to be yours and his. Feeling hollowed out in a way you've never before. Alone. Alone. Alone.

You catch him tucking a strand of her blond hair behind her ear. She blushes. His ear turn red.

And you've had enough.

You stand up, drawing attention. You pay it no heed. Giving the excuse of wanting to use the washroom, you leave.

Coward. Coward. Coward. Your brain chants.

Once you're out.

You run. Tears blurring your vision, as your breaths stagger. An ache that stings all over your heart and ribs and abdomen. It hurts.

You find an empty classroom.

He's not yours.

•••

The heart absorbs many emotions.

It gulps everything down. Good, bad. Hope, agony.

But, everything has a breaking point.

Your heart just reached its.

Sliding against the door, you sink down. Curling in on yourself. A sob escapes past the cage of your lips, another follows, and then it's mutiny, one after another.

And you cannot stop.

Please, please, take me away, you think.

Take me away to a place where I can breathe.

A place with his smile, my happiness, my life. Him. Him. Him.

But that place is next to him, isn't it?

Yet, it's killing you.

You'd thought, the books and movies exaggerated when they described heartbreak.

But you get it now.

The cloth of your heart is splintering, tearing at the seams, unraveling rapidly.

And you can do nothing.

The needle has pierced you one too many times, your palms are bleeding.

"Please," a watery whisper. You don't even know why you're pleading or to whom.

You just know you're begging, for someone or something to take away this pain.

You're a coward. He's not yours. You're a coward. He's not yours—

•••

"This is not good for you."

"Lila," you sigh. It's always the same conversation.

She'd found you in the room just as the bell for lunch rang.

How are you meant to explain that you're in pain? The mere thought of being away from him is too much.

It's an addiction you've no control over.

Your eyes tear up again.

She softens. Kneeling, she envelops you in an embrace. You clutch on to her, body shuddering with renewed pain.

"You should love yourself more than you do him," she says.

"Oh, Lila," you start. But the words don't come out, clogging up in the pit of your stomach, sobs claw at the back of your throat.

Don't you see?

Loving him is loving me.

..................................................................................

A/N :

This feels very...stilted, idk. Would probably edit it.

KSKSKSKSM THERE'S GONNA BE ANOTHER PART! 😭

Hope you guys enjoyed it.

Thankyou! ❤

[Taglist : @danis-stuff-is-here @ninalol @wifeofcamillamacaulay @ssshhh-imreading @coolcatlover4 @katiemrty @honestlyspeedytree @ariyabella ]

..................................................................................

[strawnarrries]

Bunk

Summary: While joining Niall and the boys on their Where We Are tour, Niall wants you to sneak into his bunk on the tour bus.

Requested: no

POV: 2nd

Warning(s): hand stuff!!

hiya!!! ive been missing the 1d days a looooottttt recently and have had so many story ideas based during those days, so in honor of the boys 12 year anniversary, here's one of the sexier stories i've thought of! i hope you enjoy ;)

ps i'm also not completely sure about what the rules were when it came to gf's on tour but for the sake of the story, we're going to pretend that management was strict about it!

***

Are you up?

It was 1:48 in the morning when you got the text from Niall before replying back with, Yes why?

You were currently visiting Niall and the boys on their third consecutive tour, Where We Are. It was a couple hours after the show and the boys were out, each sleeping in their own bunk, inches away from you. You were in your bunk, Niall in his right above you.

Management was strict on the boys when it came to girlfriends visiting on tour. You were big distractions to them so they limited the amount of time you were able to visit. You were not allowed to go with them on tour, only allowed to visit a handful amount of times in the 6 months they were on the road, four days at a time max.

You and Niall had been dating for about a year and a half now and things couldn't be any better. Of course you have your ups and downs like every other couple, but you've learned how to work through those problems and exit out the other side happier than ever.

Long distance sucked. It was so hard. But you and Niall texted if not called each other every day you were apart. It didn't matter the timezone difference, you always made time for each other even if it was a couple small texts a day or a quick 5 minute phone call. You always dreaded the day he had to leave for tour. This year wasn't as hard as last year. Last year you were in a newer relationship, just entering the honeymoon stage and not wanting to leave his side ever. This year, while still hard, you have more love and trust in him, you know what to expect and know that you got through last tour, so you can get through this one too. And of course you know you're allowed to visit him a couple of times!

You wanna come to my bunk?

And do what

Cuddle

Kiss maybe

That's risky. What if we get caught? You know how strict they can get :(

Please

He didn't have to say anything more before you were quietly exiting your bunk and sneaking up into Niall's. As you pulled the curtain back slowly, you could point out the mischeivious grin on his face. You climbed in and snuggled up into his warm embrace under the covers, slowly closing the curtain, careful not to make any noise.

Turning on your side to face him, you mimicked his grin as you whispered low enough so only he could hear, "hi."

"Hi, pretty girl," he hummed as his arms wrapped around you, the pet name having butterflies erupt in your stomach, "'m so happy yer here wit' me. I missed ya so much."

"Me too. 'm gonna miss you when I have to leave again."

"I know, but let's not t'ink about dat right now," he pushed a stray piece of hair out from your face as he looked at you in the dark bunk, little to no light being shown, "Wanna kiss me?"

You nodded quickly before you leaned in and pressed your lips to his. A few pecks to his lips before a longer, more passionate one had you both craving more. The kisses started sweet and soft but soon picked up heat. His lips were soft against yours, his tongue moving magically in your mouth. The kisses were hot, but they were slow, both of you careful not to make them smack against each other in fear of being caught.

His hands gently caressed your back, short, bitten fingernails scratching your soft skin as he felt everywhere his hands would allow. Your fingers threaded through his unnaturally blonde locks, painted nails scratching at his scalp and playing with the dyed strands of hair.

"I love ya," he breathed out quietly.

"I love you too."

His lips were back on yours, tongue slightly grazing past your lips, his hands traveling lower and planted on your bum. He squeezed what he could grope in his hands and you wanted to moan, but kept it in. You could feel the twist in your core and your panties start to dampen at his actions.

"Lay on your back," he hummed and as he urged you to turn your body.

"We shouldn't," you whispered as you obeyed and turned your body so you were laying on your back, him still on his side next to you.

"Shhh, just lemme make ya feel good," he whispered back, sitting up on his forearm so he was hovered over you, "I miss ya. We never get any alone time here."

He was right. It was almost impossible to get any alone time with Niall while on tour. He rarely got any even when you weren't with him. The boys shared everything from rooms, to bathrooms, to even beds. Even outside of that, their constant schedule keeps everybody moving. People on every part of their team always busy with something whether it be getting ready for the shows, cleaning up after the shows, or keeping the boys in line, you are never alone.

You didn't reply, only letting your legs spread open more to allow him better access to your most vulnerable spot. After a few more kisses to his sweet lips, his lips trailed down to your jaw and neck. His calloused fingers slipped past the band of your nike shorts and your cotton panties, landing slightly to the left of your throbbing bundle of nerves. His fingers moved side to side and it felt good but he wasn't directly on your clit like you needed him to be. You reached down and grabbed on his fingers, adjusting them slightly. He continued to rub how he knows you like it and once he began to rub at that perfect angle, you had to bite your lip to keep from moaning.

His fingers moved south, feeling just how wet he's made you. Easily slipping his middle finger into you, he lifted his head from your neck and watched you react to him. He moved in and out of you curling his fingers up and feeling around. Your face contorted with pleasure. You fluttered your eyes open to look at him.

"Feels good," you hummed almost inaudibly, but he understood you.

He gave you a few kisses before slipping his index finger into the mix, his two fingers stretching you out and feeling as you clenched around him. Your breath hitched in your throat and began becoming staggered.

Continuing to thrust his fingers in and out of you, everytime he went in, he curled them up, finding the special spot that made you feeling oh so good. He paid special attention to that spot, finding it each time he went in.

You struggled not to moan. You were gripping his hair and the sheets to help relieve that struggle. He made you feel so good. He always made you feel so good. His hands were magical. Anyone can see it with how he plays that guitar on stage.

He was bringing your closer to your orgasm by the second. You both knew it wouldn't be long until he had you a struggling mess under him. The knot in your stomach was getting tighter and tighter, begging to be released.

"Gonna be quiet enough if I let ya cum?" he whispered, his breath tickling your ear.

"Please," you begged, needing the release.

He sped up his movements, careful not to make any noise, even though it was hard because you were soaked. His arm started to burn from overuse but he knew you were close and he wasn't planning on stopping. He began to press kisses and suck at all of your sweet spots again, urging you to release.

And you did.

Hard.

Your entire body erupted with pleasure, your back arching and your toes curling. Your face was scrunched up with pleasure, lips sealed tightly against each other to prevent any noise from escaping no matter how badly you wanted to scream. Your knuckles turned white from your grip on the sheets beneath you and you were seeing shapes behind your squeezed shut eyelids. You were in complete and utter bliss.

As you came down from your high, your body relaxed into the bed and Niall slowly pulled his two fingers out of you, slipping them into his mouth, sucking them clean. He laid back down next to you as you tried to maintain your heavy breathing.

"Did so well fer me," he whispered, "That feel good?"

"I wanted to scream so bad," you breathed out.

He smiled a sweet smile at you before attaching your lips together. You pulled back and closed your eyes, regaining your breath and your body. His head laid on your shoulder, hand running up and down your arm soothingly.

Once you were ready, you turned onto your side and lifted up his head to look at you. You kissed him again and reached your hand down, cupping him over his boxer briefs.

"Mm-mm," he shook his head no.

"No?" you asked confused.

"Tired, babe. Had a show tonight."

"Are you sure?" you asked, feeling selfish that he helped you out but you didn't help him.

"Mhm, got a off day tomorrow so we're checkin' into a hotel for the next two days and you've got me all to yourself then."

"Okay," you hummed, feeling the tiredness hit you as well.

You laid there in each other's arms for a bit, enjoying the euphoria and safeness it brought to you. His steady breathing in your ear, strong arms wrapped around you, and the warmth radiating off him relaxed you.

"I should go soon," you sighed, not wanting to leave his arms.

"Can we cuddle just a bit more?"

"Only 5 minutes. I can't fall asleep with you."

He didn't say anything. You turned onto your other side so he could spoon you. Getting comfortable, he pulled you into his bare chest, his arm snaking around your waist and you intertwining your fingers on top of his. He gave you a short squeeze as a silent way to say he loved you, enjoying the snuggles he's getting before you have to retreat back to your bunk. You did the same, sighing contently. Your eyelids felt heavy but you knew you had to stay up for a little longer. You decided to rest your eyes, promising yourself that you wouldn't fall asleep.

Rookie mistake, Y/N.

[geometricalien]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ❤

awww thank you for including me. this has just been sitting in my box for the past couple of days but HERE I AM- in no particular order:

This doesn't really have a name... It's just called Merman AU

and it's not a 'fanfic' it's half a collection of headcannons for this AU and half snippets from this idea that I posted on tumblr at @haikyuu-aus-cuz-i-cant-write (oops look who has actually written now jfdksalf) basically this is a cross between the little mermaid and the monkey's paw. I really liked this but it was wayyy too big of an idea for me to write and you can see that I stopped after writing Suga's wish which is reallly funny considering this whole idea spawned from wanting a mermaid/human bokuaka AU and i was not near to getting to the meat of the story at all

Things That Hold Us Together: Steel Bolts and Tender Hearts

yes i just recently posted this, yes i've had this in my folders for like 3 years. this one... this was spawned from an old friend - who i don't speak with anymore - offhand comment that a fanart looked like akashi was an android. four hours after they said that i had half of this fic, and they said it was the best writing i ever shared with them. they encouraged me to expand it but i kept hitting a wall and then we had a falling out and through out the years ive been coming back to this trying to add and edit and i decided to reclaim it as my own and publish it. the idea is that it's an introduction to a lighthearted sitcom/romcom between decommissioned war android akashi and engineer who fixed him up furihata

Language Barriers

i cyclically get star trek brainrot and this time it had a dash of akafuri, i really like how i described things in this one since furihata doesn't think in words but emotions and images instead, idk it was a good writing exercise

Horror wip

ive been hemming and hawing at it for literal months now because i have one central driving image behind my eyelids that i want to get to. its just been... harder than usual to get to it. i've rewritten like 3 times trying to get it write. i've currently landed on 2nd person narration with some thrown in spices of 1st person to signify that we are in the being- akashi's- point of view haunting furihata (the you) and its giving me an opportunity to make the reader feel akashi's destroying love from the front seat. my other goal with this is to write some surrealistic imagery soooo yeP

I Will Follow You Down Through The Gates of Hell

i cant not include this. this damn fic/series/idea has been brewing in the back of my mind for so damn long if it was a human child it could hold a fucking conversation. the imagery. the themes. the depth of emotion- AND WE ARE BARELY GETTING INTO THE WAR!? ITS BEEN 50K+ WORDS AND ITS JUST GETTING STARTED (or ending, if you wanna look at it that way) idk its... its been so long since i wrote part 1 that that fic doesn't feel like "mine" anymore? idk but it always makes me smile seeing an email saying that someone else liked the fics too.

[swagging-back-to]

the way im still reeling from just how much my sister let me down

rant incoming bc im genuinely still mad

like i dont even know how to describe this feeling. 'let me down'is such an understatement.

i went into the weekend knowing it was gonna be awful bc she had just started taking ketamine from her psychotic male friend and was planning on bringing all sorts of psychedlics and hard drugs like ket and molly to a party thats like 2hrs away from either of our houses and in a place we dont know.

she didnt tell me if she needed a place to sleep till half an hour before she was gonna get there and i still hadnt eaten any food at all yhat day. so i had to clean the guest room with all my roommates shit piled to the ceiling and cook at the same time. AND THEN SHE NEVER EVEN STAYED TO SLEEP.

she parked like half an hour away from the party right next to the worlds shadiest and darkest park in existence that had 5 guys just standing behind trees watching us go to the car. and then she wanted subway so we walked like half an hour to subway just for her to decide "im not actually hungry teehee"

and when i was like nah im gonna go eat now if youre gonna play this shit before we even go to the party. we go into an asian restaurant and SHES NEVER FUCKING BEEN IN ONE? all she eats is spaghetti and mac and cheese. didnt even know what a fucling spring roll is. she ate it (a THAI STYLE SPRING ROLL!!!!) like it was a lump of shit. like she ripped it apart with her hands and picked at it with a grimace. i verbally called her out on how stupid that is multiple times.

and then she got mad at me when i tried to tip the waiter everything i had in my wallet ($4) and tried to say i shouldnt tip at all. and in the same breath shared how whenever she doesnt get tipped she wishes death on the person. im actually very anti tipping and i never tip unless im with someone else and they do it. so i was like "he either gets four dollars or he gets fucking nothing. thats whats in my wallet so thats what he gets."

and she asked if ice has gluten in it which is genuinely the dumbest diet question ive ever been asked and ive had dozens of people try to tell me chicken and fish are vegetabels.

she waited until we were right at the door to pop open her fireball and then was like "yeah what if i just throw it on the ground in front of a hundred people and two cops" as if both of us arent underage.

speaking of underage <3 she left an entire box of twisted tea in the car for 3 hours completely unlocked while the cops prowled the streets ♡♡♡♡♡ said she doesnt see why the car needs to be locked even tho it had her id hanging from the mirror with big bold letters saying 'not even 20'

then when we were about to be jumped by the guy following us she kept doing like. the exact opposite of what you should do. kept screaming loudly "omg youre sober!?!?!?!" whenever i would say 'yeah im sober enough to get the fuck out of this place we need to fucking leave'. even as a COP WAS RIGHT NEXT TO US.

and when i was begging her to call the people she knew in the area she called them each one time. never explained the situation. to the point one of them thought she was just joking (which says a lot about how she normally acts that he thought she was joking). and then looked at me like i was being unreasonable for telling her to just CALL THEM and TALK TO THEM so we arent just two high women stumbling down the street quietly. it only ended up happening because she accidentally butt dialed one of her fwb and then was too embarassed to tell him she was with me [her sister] (called me 'some friend') and refused to even look at me when she was talking to him.

and this isnt even the entire fucking event. this is just the main points.

im just genuinely scared to be moving in with her at this point, not knowing whether she'll willingly bring back a predatory male or if she'll take hard drugs in my apartment (im the primary tenant and pay almost all the bills. it's my apartment.) or if she's gonna try to out my dogs to the landlord and get them evicted because "i just dont really like small dogs at all." or if shes gonna quit her job just like 'oh and btw i wont come in tomorrow bc this place is shit and i dont think one of my coworkers'despite not having any job lined up afterwards (she has actually done this!!!) and refusing to get a job closer or better paying because "oh maybe in the warmer months illthink of it" ??????

like she is just so.untrustworthy and so outrageously just.... not all there. even just the few things ive told my case manager makes her go 'is she diagnosed as bipolar? she sounds like my unmedicated bipolar clients."

like yepppp she sure fucking does. im pretty sure our bio mother was a bipolar schizophrenic (schizo diagnosed but idk about bipolar)

[storymaker14]

Author's Notes, Parts One and Two

If you haven't read the story before the author's notes... what are you doing?!? Go back and read the thing first!

Author’s Notes, 15 April 2023:

    That… is so much better. Even if it’s still meh, it’s so much better than my first try. Ugh.

    I originally wrote it just with Saavik mourning Spock on her own. And it was shit. Like, really, it was absolute fecal matter. Now that it’s rewritten literally six months later, and it’s at a point where I’ll (as of writing these notes) read it over again one more time in the morning, correct anything glaring and sand down anything in need of smoothening, and then most likely actually post it, I feel much much better.

    So let’s talk about the elephant in the room. On-screen canon absolutely does show the young reborn Spock facing pon farr on the Genesis Planet, and Saavik being super affectionate for a Vulcan once this becomes clear. It shows Young!Spock absolutely not showing signs of blood fever (aka plak tow) in the following hours or days, which indicates that his pon farr, um, urges, were, um, satisfied. And it also shows Saavik not really being able to face Spock when he’s fully restored to himself afterwards, instead finding the floor very fascinating. And at the beginning of the next movie, Saavik is staying on Vulcan for… reasons. Reasons unstated on-screen. Reasons very clearly stated in previous drafts of the script, but cut later. And yes, those reasons. And we never see Saavik again. Her actress came back on TNG (and Babylon 5!), and Valeris from the sixth movie was originally supposed to be her, but in the end no more Saavik. Fast forward to TNG, and Captain Picard mentions, when they're bringing Sarek aboard, that he'd met him before, at the wedding of his son. Given Sybok was dead by the time Picard was born, unless we're going to find YET ANOTHER surprise Sarek child... that's Spock, canonically having married.

    And then we have the fact that, for a little while, the books (RIP, forever too soon) did have Spock and Saavik getting married, and still being married in the late 2370s. Unfortunately, this ended up being ignored, and I do think eventually contradicted, but come on. Vulcan’s Heart was a really good book, and when a certain other Vulcan needed to prove who he was in the first Titan novel and did so by sending Spock regards from his wife? Nice.

    And then we include the Romulan supernova, which in the books where the Spock/Saavik marriage was a thing briefly… never came up.

    So, this isn’t canon on screen, and it doesn’t particularly correspond to the Destiny / First Splinter book timeline either. It’s kinda my own sandbox, but only in the sense that I took sand from, like, two or three different boxes and sifted it all together. At least that first part is.

    As for the message from Spock... remember how I said the first version was shit? Let me amend that: I copied what I wrote for that message the first time, added one sentence and a half of another (obviously), and otherwise left it as is. That part, I liked from the first pass.

    The bits from New Vulcan? Yup, that’s the Kelvinverse from the JJ Abrams films. Totally surprised me on the first pass when I realized hey, that would be a fun thing to add. Took a sledgehammer to the first draft of that, too, but not quite as extensively. Basically the first part, I made longer and better, and the second part, I made shorter and better. And kept the middle as is. (Also, does that make it four sandboxes?)

    (Oh, I almost forgot: Trek movies II, III, and IV are about the only places where the fact that Saavik is half-Vulcan, half-Romulan doesn’t come up. So while it’s technically not canon… it’s close enough. Plus it explains why she cussed toward the beginning of II, and openly cried at Spock’s funeral at the end.)

    Also, the first version existed when Kirstie Alley died in December 2022, and I probably should have rewritten it then, but I’ve never been good at forcing my muse to arrive. Besides, Ms Alley was great but Robin Curtis is my Saavik. (Oh, shoot, I made a reference in the first draft that implied Saavik looked like Curtis, not Alley. I’ll see if I can drop it in, but if I can’t, I shan’t be upset. [Note from last re-read before posting: I didn't. Oh well.])

    In case you hadn’t noticed, I write in stream of consciousness sometimes.

    Thanks to the late Leonard Nimoy and to Zachary Quinto, for portraying the versions of Spock that show up. Thanks to Ethan Peck, whose Spock doesn’t show up but is awesome anyway. Thanks to the late Kirstie Alley and to Robin Curtis, for being Saavik. Thanks to the late Ben Cross (whole lotta late on this one, boo) and the even later Mark Lenard, for the Sarek who shows up and for Sarek in general. Thanks as always to Memory Alpha and Memory Beta. Two things about Beta that I want to point out here: one, it gave me the name T’Val, which yes is a reference to something, and ten thousand Trekkie points to anyone who knows without going to Memory Beta; two, Star Trek Beyond took place in 2263 and Memory Beta says Saavik was born in 2264, which I didn’t actually know until I went looking for her parents’ names but was just, *chef’s kiss*.

    LLAP, y’all.

Author's Notes, 11 December 2023:

This was originally posted on another site back in April, but since I tend to get a scosh more attention here than there, plus it's become my go-to place to put the stuff I write... well, here it is.

Sorry if anyone was excited to read something spicy or steamy, and ended up disappointed. What's interesting is that, judging from the dates on everything, this is the last piece of fiction I wrote before I started on The State of Our Union in earnest, because the earliest notes I can find on that were from about a week after I posted this initially.

Also, this is not the only Trek stuff I've written. Not even close. I might move that over here as well at some point. We shall see. (SPOILER: I did.)

Of course, now that Strange New Worlds has boldly gone in new directions, I kind of want to figure out a meeting between Chapel and Saavik... maybe with a little La'an as a nice bonus.

[soracities]

i read very irregularly, ive been reading siddhartha for a while (i know its such a short book but im almost done lol) and i’m really disappointed that i cant really seem to make myself pick up my book and actually read it. there are so many books i want to read, and i dont want to keep procrastinating, and to keep scrolling mindlessly on instagram or something. do you have any tips for how to make reading into a habit??

i’ve liked so much of your book recommendation posts for the sake of reading them ;(

very sorry for the delay in getting to this. i think the first thing to grapple with here and probably the hardest part about making reading a habit especially if you’re trying to come off from social media is the reality that spending less time scrolling on instagram will be very, very hard at first and you need to be prepared for that; you’re going to feel yourself drawn to it constantly because that is the habit your brain has built for itself and the hardest part may be resisting that urge in the first place. identifying when you do most of your scrolling, and rerouting that time instead towards 20 or 15 minutes or reading and, crucially, sticking with it might be the best thing especially if you can put up additional obstacles to divert the urge towards something else; i tend to scroll a lot in the evening but i downloaded the forest app after @engulfes mentioned it and it makes a huge difference for me personally. you don’t have to quit outright (what worked best for me was setting aside days when i wouldn’t use social media but i’m the kind of person who responds best to cold turkey approaches and i know that’s not for everyone)--you can work and read in gradually increasing increments if it makes you more likely to stick to the routine so even just leaving your phone in another room or far away from you and dedicating half an hour or so to reading before bed can help as long as, once again, you stick to it. (it might even help, if you are reading before bed to make an entire ritual before bed that doesn’t feature your phone at all--make a cup of tea, change your clothes, shower or whatever your routine normally looks like, take out your book before you sleep, etc -- however you can fit your reading in as naturally as possible within a larger routine, or even just constantly bring a book with you when you’re on or waiting for transport, or even just in the kitchen waiting for something to cook)

once you set aside time for your reading there are different ways to structure it depending on what suits you best: @pearblossomtree described a really good method whereby you set a number for yourself, such as 20 or 30 for example, and give yourself the option of reading 20 or 30 pages or reading for 20 or 30 minutes (or whatever number is most doable for you) which is incredibly helpful. you can also try the 5-Minute Method where you sit and read for 5 minutes straight without distractions. once your 5 minutes are up, you set yourself another 5 minutes, and when those are up you go for another 5 until you’ve done four or five cycles. you can even split those cycles up throughout the day: two or three cycles in the morning, for example, and then the same mount in the afternoon, or another round in the evening--most of the time, i think, you often find that you go over the time without realising, especially if you stick with it long enough to allow your attention span to grow and focus for longer.

while i know there are always so many amazing-sounding books to read and discover i do think it is also very important for you to really limit your choices; if you spend too much time worrying about or looking at everything you feel you have to read then you will very easily overwhelm yourself to the point of not reading at all. our brains are physically incapable of handling anything beyond 10 options at most so focus instead on a small handful of books that genuinely speak to you and that you know you will enjoy or look forward to. if there are six books you’re really drawn to, break them into three groups of two: once you finish one group, move on to the next one, and so on, and when you’re done choose your next six. don’t worry about reading lists or yearly reading goals or achieving a certain number of finished books--just focus on your group and your group only and keep going with it.

also worth noting i think, is that some books, even when they're short, require a kind of sustained attention or concentration either because of the language or the content, that is at odds with their length so they will, inevitably, take longer than you expect to finish; this is simply to say that, if you find yourself spending a lot of time with a short book, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing (and i think some of hesse's novels would probably come into that category which is why, if you’re just starting to read more or trying to read more while coming off of social media, i would recommend to not always go straight into (most) of the classics if you’re not already familiar with them or don’t already know you enjoy them, simply because adjusting to the language after having your attention fragmented by places like instagram makes sticking with the reading immensely difficult and you’re more likely to abandon it). to me, the most important thing in coming back to reading or delving into reading more is to put your pleasure and enjoyment first. you are far more likely to stick with a book that you’ve chosen yourself and that speaks to you than you are with something that’s been shortlisted for a dozen awards or that everyone is talking about and that you feel you need to have an opinion on in order to be seen as a Real Reader.

at the end of the day i think it's also important that, however you go about reading more, you do so in a way that is best suited to and accommodating of your own circumstances and pace. i'm a very irregular reader also, and have always tended to veer towards that more so than any set reading pattern; sometimes it may be a case of finding your time eaten up by empty scrolling or something similar, and other times it could be that there are other things that demand your energy and attention and that you have to attend to, which won't leave a lot of time for reading as you want. there are a lot of time constraints for me, as well as a number of other things that influence a lot of what i read and if i read and while i wish that wasn't the case, i have to accept the time i do have available and choose my books accordingly because i will burn myself out otherwise and not enjoy it anywhere near as much as i could. i hope some of this helps a little, and i wish you so much happy reading, whatever shape it takes for you x

[house-of-galathynius]

Dawn

Rowaelin Month, Day 5: A Trip to the Hospital @rowaelinscourt 

Words: 2.1k

I promise that nothing bad will happen to either of them in any of the Rowaelin month fics... I’ll actually be nice for once! 

Warnings: None

~~~

Aelin should have been used to the constant stream of injured people, the cries of pain and the sobs of family members. She should have been used to the long days and nights working non-stop to try and help as many people as she could… but there was something about today. 

It was her third night shift in a row and she was running on coffee, canteen food and about five hours sleep. She hadn’t even managed to get home at the end of her previous shift, instead crawling into the beds reserved for the doctors working in A&E. 

Before she had found sleep she had sent a text to Rowan telling him she would be at the hospital and she’d see him tomorrow. He’d responded with an I love you, be safe and she had promptly fallen asleep. It had felt like mere minutes when she was rudely awoken by the alarm on her phone and then another doctor telling her to turn that shit off. 

Four hours later it was coming onto two o’clock in the morning and she was frantically chugging an energy drink and giving herself a breather as the first lull of the evening came and she was finally able to take a breath. 

“You look like death, Galathynius.” One of the nurses chuckled as they took their seat at the computer. 

Aelin grinned. “Nothing like three night shifts in a row. I think my body is ninety percent coffee and vending machine chocolate at this point.” 

The nurse laughed and shook their head. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we have three people about to arrive in ambulances. Car accident.” 

Aelin groaned. She loved her job, she really did. But there were times when she wished she had chosen the GP route— sitting in an office all day just seeing to old people and babies all day. 

“How bad?’ 

The nurse scanned the screen and made a face that indicated it was bad. Bad enough that two of the doctors who were on-call came sauntering in and paused beside her. 

“Three patients. Two male, one female. Looks like a head on collision— two patients in relatively stable conditions, the third is touch and go. I’ve called surgery to prep a room in case.” They all nodded and Aelin felt her heart sink. 

There was a commotion behind them and Aelin turned to see the drunk woman who she had just managed to calm down, trying to rip the IV from her arm and stumble about her bed, knocking over a chair and then cursing loudly. Aelin rolled her eyes and went over to her. 

“Mrs Hartly—“ Aelin gripped her arm and lifted the woman up, taking her weight. “I need you to get back into bed. The medication needs some time to work. I promise you can go home soon.”  She said gently. 

“I—“ Mrs Hartly slurred, “I need,” she coughed loudly and held a hand to her mouth as Aelin managed to anticipate the vomit that was about to come out— grabbing a bowl in the nick of time. 

“Let’s get you back into bed.” 

As she helped her patient into bed, there was a rush of feet and shouting behind her and she managed to catch site of three gurneys being wheeled in, one of them going straight through to the main hospital, the second and third being taken into the spare spot in the corner and the curtain promptly closed. She needed to get over to them. 

“You have very pretty eyes, did ya know that?” Mrs Hartley said. 

Aelin half smiled and continued to re-do the IV. “Thank you.” 

“I bet you have,” a hiccup, “aaall the boys chasin’ after you.”

Aelin didn’t reply as she checked over her vitals one last time. 

“Do ya have someone waiting for ya?” 

She sighed, “I have a husband.” 

“A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be settlin’ down. When I was—“ Mrs Hartly’s head went into the bowl and Aelin just rubbed circles on her back as she got it out. Her attention going to the corner bed where the excitement was. When the patient was finally finished and was half asleep in the bed, she closed the curtain part the way and went over to the nurses station to get an update. 

The nurse from earlier was scribbling away on a notepad and when she noticed Aelin, her eyes went wide. 

“Aelin.” 

She responded with a smile. “Do they need help?” 

“Actually…” The nurse swallowed. 

Aelin was losing patience. It was late, she was tired and she didn’t have time for nurses who didn’t know what they were doing. She had always prided herself on being the kind and understanding doctor, but right now she needed something interesting and challenging to ensure she didn’t just sit down and fall asleep against a wall. 

“What is it? I don’t really have time—“ 

“It’s your husband.” 

Aelin froze. 

“We just got confirmation of the identities.” 

Aelin’s heart sped up and she could feel the room begin to spin. “Where is he?” 

The nurse handed Aelin the chart. “He’s been taken to the operating theatre. They suspect internal bleeding and some broken bones. He regained consciousness for a moment in the ambulance,” 

“Can they manage without me?” Aelin said sternly, gesturing to the corner where the other two patients were being seen to. 

The nurse nodded. 

“Which operating room?” 

“Three. They told me not to let you go in…” 

Aelin laughed hollowly, “they can go to hell.” 

She ran through the doors into the hospital and followed the signs down to the operating theatres. Everything was quiet as she raced through the white, sterile halls. No one stopped her as she rammed through doors and finally came to an abrupt halt as the double doors to the operating room were before her.

“Aelin they’re doing what they can.” 

Vaughan stood before her, his large frame almost as tall as the doors. His arms were crossed across his chest and his face was harsh as he prevented her from moving further into the room. 

“I can help.” She said breathlessly. 

“You have vomit down your scrubs, you’re in shock and haven’t slept properly in three days. You’d be more of a hindrance in there.” 

She hadn’t noticed the vomit. “I need to do something. That’s my husband. I can’t just sit here.” Her words slightly choked. 

Vaughan seemed to ease his posture. “You can find a room and get it ready for when he’s out of theatre. And wait in there until it’s done.” 

Aelin tried to get a glance into the operating room, even as Vaughan ushered her back down the corridor and onto the ward. They walked in silence even though Aelin could swear her heart was beating loud enough to wake all the patients. Vaughan merely held his hand on her shoulder in an act of kindness and then walked away. 

She was left to find the only empty private room that was left and she busied herself preparing it for when Rowan would arrive. She must have made the bed and then remade it several times, shooing away anyone who tried to come in and help. When she had exhausted herself doing that, she turned to checking the machines and then to pacing by the window. 

She eventually curled herself into a chair and watched as the sun begun to turn the sky into the early morning purple hues, the stars blinking out one by one. Her stomach was doing flips as the time went on. No one seemed to come in to check on her… and no news was better than bad news. 

It wasn’t much longer until her eyes went droopy and her head fell into her arms. The hum of the machines lulling her into a sleep. 

“Aelin?” The soft voice spoke quietly beside her, a hand going to her shoulder to lightly wake her. “Aelin, you need to wake up.” 

Her eyes opened slowly and she blinked a few times, unsure of exactly where she was. The room was lighter now, the fluorescent bulbs shining harshly down on them and the sun high in the sky. She looked around the room quickly and then jolted from the chair. It only took her a moment to see the figure in the bed, and then only a moment after that to realise he was awake and smiling at her. 

“Rowan,” she breathed out.

“Hey.” He replied, his own voice raspy.

She tried to contain the sob that was creeping up on her. Even as he held out his hand to her and let her climb onto the bed next to him. 

“I’m sorry I scared you.” He whispered whilst placing a kiss on her head. 

“You are never allowed to drive again.” She cried out, tears escaping as she held onto him and buried her head in the crook of his arm. “How are you feeling?”

Rowan laughed lightly and then winced. Aelin immediately withdrew her head and then examined him, noticing the scratches on his face and the cast on his other arm. 

“I’m okay. It wasn’t as bad as they thought.” 

“I don’t— what were you doing out?”

Rowan rolled his eyes. “I was coming to you. I was bringing you proper food.” 

Aelin wanted to hit him. But she refrained due to the fact he was in a hospital bed. 

“You work so hard and I wanted to make sure you were okay. I guess I was just too tired and lost control of the car.” 

Aelin wanted to be annoyed, but he had her best interests at heart. So she squeezed his hand and said, “I promise that I will eat properly if it means you never get in a car at night again.” She half laughed. 

“You worry too much. I’m really fine.” 

She gave him an incredulous look, but relaxed a little. “Did they tell you what was wrong?” 

He nodded. “A few broken bones, they thought I had some internal bleeding but turns out I just passed out because of shock.” 

She pressed her head into his arm again and shook it lightly. “Jesus, Ro.”

“I’m fine. I’m still here, aren’t I?” 

She huffed. “They made it sound like you weren’t going to make it. Half of me was sure Vaughan was just distracting me until he could confirm the bad news.” 

Rowan laughed again, “they know what you’re like.” 

“I am only like this when it comes to you.” Her face dropped and she cleared her throat. “I don’t know what I would have done if—“ she couldn’t even finish the sentence. 

Rowan stroked a hand down her hair. “I’m right here, Fireheart. I’m not going anywhere.” He promised. 

“I want to go first. Okay?” She asked seriously. 

Rowan nodded, a smile breaking out. “When the time comes, we can go together. How about that?”

Aelin shook her head and moved away. “I’m being deadly serious. I cannot live in this world without you.” 

Rowan smiled gently. “I’m being serious too.” 

Aelin gave him a look. 

“I promise you, Aelin, that I will let you go before I do. Even though the thought of it fills me with utter despair.” 

She met his gaze and then wiped a tear from her face. “I love you, Rowan. More than anything in this entire world. You are literally my everything and I am begging you to take care of yourself.”

Rowan’s face softened and wrapped his arm around her. “I love you, too. I’m sorry I scared you.” He left a kiss on the top of her head. “I’m sorry.” 

“I can’t lose you.” She whispered. 

“I know. You won’t. I’ll be here until we’re old and grey and we’re sitting on our porch complaining about the youth of the day” 

She laughed, the weight of worry lifting from her slightly more. “Our children will be telling us off as we do.” 

Rowan kissed her again and she gently lowered herself further into his embrace. “They’ll be so embarrassed of us.” 

Aelin laughed. “Exactly how I plan it to be.” 

They fell into silence and Aelin was more than grateful to feel the rise and fall of his chest and the warmth in his body. She couldn’t bare to part from him, even as a new doctor came in to do some checks and informed them that he would be fine to go home tomorrow. 

And even as they both fell in and out of sleep, their hands remained entwined and Aelin’s head tucked into the crook of his neck. There was nowhere else she would rather be than in the arms of the man she loved. She would relish this feeling for her entire life and be thankful to whatever Gods were out there, that they had protected her soulmate— granting her the time she so desperately wanted with him. 

~~~

Tags: 

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[miraclesabound]

Baby, It’s Happily Ever After

Summary: Charli has a health scare that puts things into perspective for her and Max’s future. 

Pairings: Max Phillips x Charlotte “Charli” Moore, background Frankie Morales x Rose Morales

Notes: This is it, folks! I know I had a lot more Kinktober entries I could have filled out, but this is the story I had always wanted to write, so I figured it was time to get it out there! This is set approximately three years after the last Kinktober story, so Max and Charli have been together for about four years. Frankie and Rose have now had a little girl whose name is Lily.

Warnings: Medical issues/procedures, mentions of periods/pregnancy, discussions of death, blood drinking. It’s a happy ending, I promise!

FAN ART BY @miranhas-art

Tag List: @writeforfandoms, @clydesducktape, @cinewhore, @hopeamarsu, @autumnleaves1991-blog, @littlemisspascal, @mswarriorbabe80, @princessxkenobi, @thirddeadlysin, @recklessworry, @readsalot73, @max--phillips—phillips, @fictitious-little-stitious, @lowlights

Join my tag list here!

“Cuz, I appreciate you and Max keeping me company while Frankie and Lily are away, but are you sure you’re all right?” Rose asked.  “You’ve been wincing ever since we finished dinner.”

Charli leaned into Max, who was sitting next to her on Rose’s living room couch. “I’ve been having these rotten abdominal cramps,” she said. “It’s been like this for about a week.”

“So, not period stuff?”

Charli shook her head. “Nope – and not pregnancy stuff either.” Max wrapped an arm around Charli’s shoulder, using his thumb to rub soothing circles into her skin. “We knew that was probably impossible, but we checked anyway. Lily’s not getting any little cousins from our side of the family.”

Rose got a thoughtful expression on her face. “Well, if it’s not those – you think it could be your gallbladder? Gran was your age or so when she had to have hers out.”

Charli stood up, trying to stretch out a bit. “Yeah, but she’d already had three kids by that point.” She let out a hiss and clutched at her gut. “AAAGH, that’s gonna be the death of me, I swear…”

“Baby, please sit back down, you’re making me nervous,” Max said. “Rose, I think we should get on the road before it gets too – ” He heard the slowing of Charli’s heart, and half a second later, she fainted. Max caught her before she hit her head on the floor, but the panic in his voice was obvious just the same. “Shit! Shit shit shit – Rose, call 911!”

At the hospital, Charli’s doctor confirmed Rose’s suspicion – Charli’s gallbladder was absolutely riddled with stones. As Charli was also starting to get a nasty fever, immediate surgery was recommended. At the crack of dawn the next morning, she was being wheeled into the operating theater – all Max could do was wait.

--

The procedure was straightforward, and when Charli woke up in the recovery room, she saw Max right by her side. “Hi handsome,” she said weakly. “How long was I out?”

“Hey baby.” Max leaned in and kissed her forehead. “It was about three hours ago that they wheeled you back. Doc said the surgery went well – and I can tell. You smell so much more like yourself than you have the last few days.”

“How bad did it get?” Charli asked. “Did I offend your vamp senses?” She giggled slightly.

Normally, Max would have joined in her laugh, but as he sat down on the bed next to her, his face was deadly serious. “It was enough that I should have insisted that we get to a doctor two days ago. I just…didn’t want to seem paranoid. If I’m honest, I was glad that Rose said something too.” He took her hand, making sure not to jostle her IV line. “I’m sorry.”

Charli shook her head. “This is not your fault, Max Phillips. I’m a grown woman, and I was the one not listening to my body. And speaking as a grown woman…” She turned his hand and began kissing his fingertips. “There’s something I’ve decided – I want you to turn me.”

Max was quiet for several seconds, and Charli dropped his hand, terrified she’d done something wrong. “Honey?” she asked timidly. “Max…please say something…”

Max shook his head and seemed to come back to himself. “I just…I believe you mean it, but why? We’ve been together four years now and you never seemed interested.”

“I hadn’t wanted to turn because I didn’t want to leave Rose and her family behind – but I heard the doctors talking just before the anesthesia kicked in,” Charli said. “I was nearly septic – if things had been different…” Her eyes started to well with tears. “I could have left you.”

Max pulled her into a hug, holding her gently but securely so he wouldn’t aggravate her incisions. “I wouldn’t have let that happen. We’ll talk more about it when you’re recovered, ok?”

“Ok.”

--

The recovery month wasn’t much fun, but with Max helping her stay on track, Charli got her pain management and diet figured out. After her final surgical appointment, she came home in high spirits. “I’m all clear!” she called out. Shucking her scarf, she hung it on the coat rack. “The surgeon said I can get back to normal activity whenever I want.”

She turned around and saw Max leaning against the wall at the end of the hallway, his smile warm. “Did she say what that actually means?”

Charli nodded. “She did – she’s comfortable with me turning.” She walked down the hallway and into Max’s waiting arms.

“I mean, I’m game for it when you are,” Max said, kissing her hairline. “I just didn’t want to rush. I know we were both pretty wound up when we talked about it after your surgery.” He rubbed a soothing hand down her back. “How about I make you some dinner and then we both change into something comfortable?” After a nourishing meal, Charli and Max went upstairs – Charli pulled on a large sleep shirt that covered part of her thighs, and Max opted to just wear sweatpants.

Max got downstairs before Charli did, and when she descended the steps, she was surprised to see that he had pulled her grandmother’s antique silver-backed mirror out of its storage place under the stairs. “Honey, I thought that thing gave you the creeps?” Max was standing in front of the mirror, and his reflection was gone.

“Usually that’s true, but…I had an idea. C’mere, will ya?” He signaled to her, and she joined him in front of the mirror. He started kissing her neck, and since she couldn’t see what he was doing, it made her jump more than usual. “If I turn you in front of the mirror, you could sort of get a visual of the process. Whattya think?”

“Is that how it happened for you?” Charli asked.

“Nah, the staff at UBB were more pragmatic. We finished our degrees, got our diplomas, had our parties – and then a week after the ceremony, we met up at the Dean’s house and he turned each of us.” Max rested his chin on Charli’s shoulder. “Not that romantic, as you can guess.”

“And me in a sleep shirt is peak romance?” The lilt in Charli’s voice was sarcastic. “You wouldn’t prefer I buy a red dress for the occasion?”

“After you turn, I’ll buy you as many red silk dresses as you want,” Max promised. “But trust me, you need to be comfortable for the next few hours.” He turned Charli’s face to look in her eyes. “Do you trust me?” His face was getting more vampiric by the second, and his fangs clicked open.

Charli’s pulse began to race, but she nodded. “Always did, always will.”

“That’s my girl.” Max pulled her in tight and kissed her hard, wrapping his hand around the back of her head.  After he disengaged, he quickly lifted her shirt and kissed her three surgery scars. “This should be pretty straightforward, but just in case – I love you.”

Charli smiled. “I love you too.” She turned to the mirror again. “Is it easier if I sit?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” Max helped her to the floor, having her sit between his legs. When she got comfortable, he sank his teeth into Charli’s neck without any warning.

“Oh FUCK!” Charli shouted. She could tell that if she’d been standing up, she would have fainted – the pain was that intense.

Max took a deep drink and then disconnected so that he could place a soothing kiss on Charli’s cheek. “I know, baby, I know – just hang on…” He wrapped an arm around her belly to keep her upright. “You’re gonna be getting spasms for about ten minutes as the change works through. Watch the mirror, it’ll help.”

Charli clung tight to Max’s arm, and as she watched in the mirror, each pulse seemed to wash her out – like getting a stain out of an old cloth. In the last minute, a wave of exhaustion hit her, and as her eyes closed, she felt Max lay her down on the floor.

--

Charli could tell she was coming back to herself, but what really woke her from her stupor was Max’s voice, sounding richer than it ever had before. “You with me, baby?” he asked.

Charli blinked hard, and Max’s face came into focus above her. “Hey,” she said weakly. “Yeah, I’m here…” She blinked again, trying to get her bearings. “Was I…gone?”

“Just for a few minutes. How do you feel?” Max stood up and then helped Charli to her feet. “I remember being twitchy after I turned.”

She nodded. “Yeah…yeah, I haven’t had nervous energy like this since high school.” Rolling her shoulders, she said, “I see why you wanted me to wear something comfortable – this shirt is cotton and it’s still itching, especially on my surgery scars.” She ran her tongue along her teeth, wincing when she found her fangs. “Yeah, that’ll take some getting used to.”

“You’ll figure it out in a few days,” Max promised. “For my graduating class, they let us run wild up in the mountains that first week so we could start gauging ourselves. I know we don’t have mountains, so…what do you want to do instead?"

"I dunno!" Charli said. The realization of how big her world was now was a little daunting. "Anything? Everything? Running could still be good if we had enough space somewhere, and I- baby, what are you doing?"

Max had walked over to a nearby cabinet, and he pulled something out of the top drawer. "I have an idea," he said, and pulled Charli into his arms. He opened his hand to reveal a ring box and popped the lid. Inside was a gold ring with a perfectly cut ruby. "Getting married counts as "anything", right?" From the way Charli tackled and started to kiss him, he assumed her answer was yes.

[irl]

wow!

yo money problems lol

//vent

okay like. ik im traumatized but like its wild every day i uncover new facets to the trauma

hold on lemme like. pack a bowl and get myself set up for success

—

that break was like an hour longer than id anticipated but its given me time to calm down and all.

anyway i was homeless for a while, the hippie manipulated me into it, and financially abused me for like two straight years of hell yadda yadda whatever

like ive always had money problems, i grew up poor and id only ever not been dirt poor for like 6 months (ah. the first half of 2021…………… except the job was killing me tbh) but like. what the hippie put me through was a whole different level that i dont think ive even begun to recover from

listen. living out of a four door hatchback that was filled with Stuff and Shit and Trash and Shit and Who Knows What and Shit and also infested with cockroaches. to the point where even during the middle of the day in the blazing heat with no ac while driving ans they have literally 80% of the vehicle to hide in and they were still crawling up my legs. when i slept i had to wrap my head and face up in my blankets i was twrrified of them crawling into my mouth or nose or ears and there were so many i felt like it was a definite reality.

that does things. being forced to live like that. off of nothing. i had lit cigarettes flicked at my head while i stood at an interstate exit with a sign begging strangers for money with no other option because of the trap the hippie had ensnared me in.

of course her main priority — and thus mine because keeping me high all the time was important for her to keep control — was to get enough each day for more weed. enough for us to get some food from the dollar menu from mcdonalds to “get some good protein in us” and sometimes we even had enough to go to some dollar store and spend ten dollars and leave with fifty dollars worth of food. enough to last us the week and feed all three of us. me, her, and her son.

i learned how to con. i learned how to steal. i learned how to scam. i did it more times than i could count. nothing bad against like. actual people. sometimes id pull a con on someone with a fancier car to get a couple gallons of free gas. this was back in 2019 and 2020 when gas was Cheap Cheap. everything else was always done at big box stores

ofc eventually we got caught. or rather she got caught and dragged me down with her kicking and screamjng and flailing and to more trauma but that was just a few hotel visits at jail it wasnt that bad lol

anyway. im, i think understandably, terrified of that happening again lmao. not just the financial abuse and the situation but like even to the root core being homeless again.

every time i lose track of my spending outside of more than a Five Dollars Definite Range i start freaking out. immediately and fully i am convinced that all of my money is gone and i have Nothing At All and im going to miss rent and im going to be kicked out and im going to have nothing tomorrow and i wont be able to survive it this time (even if rhis outrageous thing were to happen i would survive it but when im in a spiral i cant remember it).

god Forbid that my banks website is down or unresponsive when i try to check to assuage myself. thats when i start immediately and fully panicking. i start crying its hard for me to self regulate. i cant bring myself away from the reality ive convinced myself of and i obsessively check the bank app in any browser or way i can until i find an answer

so its fun

[savethepinecones]

i have been tasked with scanning all of my grandmother's handwritten recipe books (there are four plus a basket full of camping recipes and several other loose papers that the rest of the family has found while cleaning her house) and i spent like seven hours today scanning and formatting hundreds of recipes while everyone around me hauled stuff out of the house. at one point i tried to help the others by taking some of the decades worth of magazines from the basement to the truck we were using to transport everything and after three or four trips up and down the stairs i was forced to remember that i do in fact have asthma and doing that sort of thing will leave me wheezing and miserable for a good half hour after i finally give up. on the other hand a solid majority of my family is mormon and the several of us that arent try to be respectful by not swearing around them etc and over the past several days weve all been in town ive witnessed several swears both accidental and intentional and im living for the reactions. my mom keeps swearing out of habit and being absolutely horrified that one of her siblings might have heard her. my aunt said fuck at church (this one was secondhand knowledge since i didnt go to church myself ofc). my cousin whose queerness rivals my own was very diligent about not swearing up until we were the only people in the room and then proceeded to swear about three times a sentence while trying to organize the bookshelves. also another cousin of mine who ive never been close to and havent seen in years but is very mormon and last id heard extremely homophobic got married recently and i met her husband at the funeral where the first thing he told me was "ive heard entirely good things about you" and that either means my cousin is no longer homophobic and is trying to correct for past behavior by singing my praises or she and her husband are both not fans of me on principle and the guy immediately overcompensated. anyway im doing surprisingly okay energy-wise considering i havent been able to work for two months now and ive had a ton of family shit thrown on top of that so im either going to completely break down once im home and away from all of this or my new meds are fucking magical

[iawebtechmarketing]

colonoscopy test in Ahmedabad

Colonoscopy

Home / Colonoscopy

Colonoscopy Procedure & Preparation

It is imperative that your colon is completely clean before the test. In the colonoscopy preparation phase, you will usually be drinking cleansing solution, laxative or taking enema as suggested by the doctor for you. You must also inform the doctor about any allergies and medicines you take.

Procedure

• Your vitals will be recorded along with adding an IV for sedatives to ease the procedure for you. To begin with the process you will lie on your side or the back. • A four foot long and roughly half inch think colonoscope is inserted in your body through the anus. • The colonoscope moves gradually inside the large intestine until it reaches the tip of the small intestine. • The colonoscope is removed slowly and the inner lining of the large intestine is examined in the process. The process usually takes around an hour maximum.

Why Colonoscopy Test?

Colonoscopy mainly acts as a screening tool for colon cancer. Other than that, it can be used to examine causes of diarrhea, bloody stool, pain in the abdomen or abnormal CT scans of the colon. It can also be part of a routine check-up for individuals who have a family history of polyps and other cancers. If polyps are detected during the colonoscopy test, they can be removed during the test itself. In case of other suspected abnormalities, tissue sample is taken from the colon for further examination in laboratory.

Risks and Alternatives

Sometimes during biopsy bleeding occurs but it is quite non-harmful. If at any point, you feel discomfort after the colonoscopy has been completed, you must inform the doctor immediately. Some signs of discomfort include pain, fever, bleeding etc.

An alternative to colonoscopy is Flexible Sigmoidoscopy wherein only a small part of the colon is examined and not its entire length. Virtual colonoscopy is another alternative in which CT scanning provides images of the colon which construct a virtual image. Colon is inflated in the virtual method using a tube and the scans are collected and analyzed. However, the technique is not useful to identify and remove small polyps. If you are wondering where to find a center for colonoscopy near me, book an appointment at Mission Gastro Hospital with globally renowned Dr. Chirag Shah.