#but then was too physically and mentally spent to even touch this drawing

[jgracie]

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ the way they love in which i share some little things about being in a relationship with the hoo boys

masterlist | rules

warnings none!

percy ⊹ embarrassing yourself so the other isnt embarrassed alone. making sure you aren't overworking yourself. being compared to an old married couple. drawing on the other's schoolbooks when they aren't looking. everyone can see it but the two of you. insisting whatever he baked is good even though its burnt and probably bad for you. always buying two of everything. endearing nicknames. spending more time at his place than your own. getting random “i thought of you” texts followed by an image only the two of you would understand.

jason ⊹ tucking you in bed after a long night. memorising your skincare routine to a t just in case theres a day youre too lazy to do it. lovingly teaching you concepts you dont understand. whispered confessions late at night. promise rings. spraying your perfume on his things so he can have something to comfort him when he misses you. scrapbooks of your lives as teens for your kids to flip through when you're older. asking him to sleep in just one more hour. painting your nails his favourite colour. princess treatment.

leo ⊹ taking care of the other when theyre ill and getting yourself sick in the process. keeping a mental note of all your likes and dislikes. acts of service acts of service acts of service. making random little gadgets just for the sake of making the other's life the tiniest bit easier. dancing 'round the kitchen in the refrigerator light. carving your initials with a heart around them on the trunk of a tree. spam texts. warm, feel good hugs. learning how to make dishes from your culture to remind you of home. messages in morse code.

frank ⊹ trusting the other more than you trust yourself. putting things on the top shelf just so he has an excuse to help you (and flaunt his height). mornings always spent together. giving the other the bigger half of whatever you're sharing. lighthearted competition. being proud of each other no matter what. physical touch. making eye contact from across a packed room. doing your hair better than you ever could. having movie marathons every night. knowing if you prefer gold or silver. watching all 146 tiktoks you send him in the span of an hour.

travis ⊹ incorporating the other's favourite music into your own playlists, no matter how different their taste is. shamelessly calling you "the wife". pictures of you in his wallet. pictures of you on his phone. pictures of you everywhere. arm tightly wrapped around your waist. piggyback rides. sleepovers. drawing constellations out of his freckles. your personal photographer and videographer. having his proposal planned from the age of 14. partners in crime. sweater weather by the neighbourhood.

[monster-disaster]

i’ve been really insecure abt my appearance which is just making my depression even worse. would you please be able to write something with a ghost or shadow monster bf comforting the reader in both a fluffy and smutty way?? no rush for this btw😊😊

ghost!boyfriend x human!Reader Good to know: angsty with comforting boyfriend, smut

A/N: I hope my story gives you a moment of peace and comfort. :)

By the time you arrive home, take a shower, and settle in front of the TV, you are exhausted and ready to do nothing for the rest of the night. You are utterly spent, both physically and mentally. You are at your limits and unsure how to take back your control of your own self. The reins slip out of your fingers no matter how tight you try to hold them.

There are days when you feel content and happy in your own skin, savoring the world and its offerings. These days, though cherished, are often very fleeting. Sometimes, sometimes more often than you would like, you have to face the difficult days when everything seems to go awry. The world around you feels too tight, pressing in from all sides to the point you can barely stand underneath it with your own overwhelming thoughts. These days demand more from you than you feel capable of giving. On these days, you need more strength and understanding, but it's not always so simple. It barely ever is.

You are nestled on the couch, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and comfort. The soothing scent of your favorite lotions lingers, and your freshly laundered pajamas are soft against your skin. The blue glow of the TV illuminates your small living room, casting a gentle hue over the furniture. The aroma of your favorite takeout on the coffee table drifts through the air. Though your stomach rumbles, you remain still. There is not a single fiber in your body that you can make to move; instead, you melt even further into the pillows behind you.

Sometimes, it's easier to take care of yourself physically than mentally, although definitely not always.

There are days, or even weeks when you can go above and beyond to break free from the shadows of your mind, but it's still not enough. Your brain remains trapped in this gloomy, exhausting place where nothing is enough and everything is too much. You don't do enough, and you are not good enough, while the world is too much, and sometimes you are too much, and even though you know deep down that it's not true, it's hard to remind yourself every now and again and again. These fights with your own mind leave you drained and spent.

Fortunately, you don't have to face these days alone.

You never have to be alone when you are at home.

You sense his presence long before you feel his touch or see the gentle shift of your blanket as he slips beside you. His presence wraps around you like a second layer, clinging to your skin with a warmth that sends tingles through your body. A relieved sigh leaves your lips, and you snuggle closer to the comforting feeling seeping into your bones.

"I'm fine," you break the silence. The memory of your exhale lingers in your words. His disapproval is clear and heavy in the air. You curl into yourself even more. "I will be fine," you correct yourself after a few seconds. You don't have to hear or see your ghost to know what he wants. You just know it.

The plastic container on the coffee table moves closer, but you shake your head, pulling the cover tighter around yourself. "I will eat it later." Another wave of disapproval washes over you, but he leaves the topic for now. Instead, his presence envelopes you even more, curling around your body and settling over your shoulders. Your eyelids fall shut at the caressing motion through your hair, massaging your scalp and drawing small circles on the nape of your neck.

Pulling your legs closer to your chest, you rest your head on the back of the couch. "Thank you," you hum.

"I don't know what went wrong today."

The moment you opened your eyes this morning, you knew you would have to face one of those days when your mind acts like your enemy while you try to drag yourself through your chores with heavy limbs and an even heavier chest. The clouds were dark and thick above your head all day, and nothing you did chased them away.

"I'm just tired," you tell him while the TV goes on in the background.

You tried to make your day better, to make yourself feel better, but it was a lost cause from the moment you looked at yourself in the mirror. Nothing felt right as you stared at your own reflection, finding every flaw with merciless criticism and unforgiveness. Your skin felt too tight, and your features looked too wrong. You changed your clothes again and again and again, but nothing was good enough. It seemed like every one of your dresses and blouses and trousers highlighted all the wrong things in all the wrong ways.

"I know they are not true," you continue, motioning to your head. "My thoughts, I mean. But it's so hard to make myself believe in the opposite."

The invisible hands go down from your hair to your neck and to the soft curve that leads to your shoulders. Fingers dig into your skin through your shirt, rubbing against your muscles. You lean forward automatically, letting your head dip to your chest with a soft sigh. The hands slip to your shoulder blades, following the straight line of your spine and spreading out to find every soreness and knot.

"Thank you," you break the silence after a while, keeping your eyes closed. You can feel yourself gradually relax under your ghost's ministrations. You know your problems won't solve themselves because of a massage, but right now, they move back to the back of your mind, letting you breathe again after a whole day.

You are ready to fall asleep just like that, sitting with your legs crossed when his hands slip under your shirt like a light summer breeze. Your back straightens immediately, and you reach out to grab and stop nothing. Your fingers curl into your palm. Your nails dig into the soft flesh there.

The air freezes for a second. "Wait!" You gasp.

For a long moment, nothing happens. "I-" You want to say something to break the tension, but your words get stuck in your throat when the warm sensation from your side glides to your hand. You can feel his fingers slipping through yours as he lifts your arm into the air, and soon, you can feel his lips brushing over your knuckles.

You still don't know how a ghost can make you feel so much, but you welcome it gratefully.

He plants soft kisses on your hand until you calm down, and he can continue his way under your clothes. The soft fabric falls to the couch beside you silently after a few minutes. He moves slowly and carefully, letting you melt against the pillows behind you once again while the warmth of his touch creeps over your sides to find rest on your bare breasts. He cups the soft globes, stroking his thumbs back and forth over your nipples.

You know he is behind you, kissing up and down on your neck while groping your tits and caressing your heated skin. Your back arches, pushing yourself into his palms even more, and your mind is blank and hazy with pleasure. Shivers run through your spine with every circling motion and gentle tug on your nipples. By the time he decides to wander lower on your body, they are swollen and sensitive, and every small stroke and brush feels like a strike through your body.

Your breathing is heavy and ragged. Your legs open on their own when his hand slips under your pants and panties. Your head falls back on the couch, and an impatient moan escapes your lips. His fingertips brush over your slit teasingly, smearing your wetness all over your pussy before finding your clit. He draws small circles on your aching bud, making your hips grind against his invisible touch as you chase your rapidly approaching pleasure. You can feel your climax building. The familiar knot is hot and burning in your stomach.

"Please." Your plea is soft on your tongue in the quiet room.

Your ghost rubs and flicks your clit faster and faster. Your muscles tense, and your whole body jolts when he pushes you over the edge without any warning. Your world spins as you reach your climax with another mewl. It surges through your veins, urging your heart to flutter against your ribcage. 

His lips are warm on your forehead as he kisses you while you are still panting and trying to recover.

And not even a second later, your food on the coffee table is pushed closer to you again.

Your laugh is weak and amused. "Okay, okay. I will eat."

You know your problems don't magically disappear because of an orgasm. The battles and demons that haunt you are still with you somewhere deep in your mind, demanding your attention and energy time and time again even when you feel too tired and weak to face them, but right now, the darkness of the night falls easier on your shoulders, and you know tomorrow will be another day. Maybe a better day, maybe not, but either way, you won't be alone.

So, you let yourself rest tonight, embracing the peace of the world and your mind.

[xxanaduwrites]

much ado about nothing, major

ii. bluell & blue skies

the main hub

pairing: john “bucky” egan x (ofc) maude “blue” bluell

warnings: this story will contain mature themes, descriptions of injury, blood, sexual content, swearing, as well as, physical and mental illness. proceed with caution.

— ii. some inappro-pro jokes courtesy of curt & mentions of beating a dude up, that’s all i got folks !

word count: 5.5k

there must be something or nothing at all.

The sound of clinking glasses, chattering men, giggling women, and tapping feet amongst the beat of swinging jazz filled the Officer’s Club and the ears of one Maude Bluell at roughly around 2100 hours.

The newly polished nurse of Thorpe Abbot’s infirmary leaned rather uncomfortably against a nearby wall with her fellow colleagues observing the function. Now changed out of her more suitable work attire, she stiffened like a board in the confines of her neatly pressed Red Cross issued uniform. Already becoming rather used to her usual loose white ward dress and cap, the fitted material of the more proper wear seemed foreign to her. Too foreign to be a uniform worn just a week prior, in route for base transfer.

The more she spent in the infirmary, the more time was proving itself to be heavier conceptually speaking and lighter actuality speaking. The truth of the matter was that Nurse Bluell witnessed enough loss in one week that could very well add up to more than whole lifetime.

So maybe — just maybe the Dirty Shirley Q was attempting to shove into Maude’s hand — wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “‘S not all that bad, Blue. Just a cherry little thing with a pinch of alc. ‘S like sucking up straight candy.” Susie slurred and the bright red liquid swayed like a wave in a storm trapped in glass.

“Not everyone wants to rot out their teeth and stain their tongues red like you, Q.” Lottie pointed out and grimaced at the concoction with a sweet cherry on top. To prove her point further, the blonde took a sip of her less colorful drink — a simple gin and tonic.

If the concept of “two sides of the same coin” could be defined by people, Maude was certain Lottie and Q were the perfect definition.

It became quite apparent early on that Lottie upheld a more serious and resolved persona, taste aligning simplistic and rather blander than her bubbly and eccentric colleague Q who flourished in a rather colorful nature.

In an odd way, even though the two could get into the occasional spat over their differences, they overall leveled each other out in a way where Blue wasn’t sure where she exactly fit in. How she found fit into such an established dynamic.

“And not everyone wants to deny every name on their dance card, but here you are,” She countered, clearly commenting on something Maude was unfamiliar with. Something that spiked a nerve in Lottie. The red headed nurse noticed the newbie's confusion drawing prominently in her features. “Lots has a look but no touch policy,” She explained, the drink flailing about even more dangerously as she exasperated, enough for Maude to accept this drink from her without a word.

Crossing her arms over her chest, the all work, no play blonde ignored her former colleague and turned to her new one. “It’s not entirely true. You see, I look at it this way. We touch men all day long –” Sue promptly cut Lottie off with a well timed snort, and Lottie sighed but continued on, “rotating between check-ups, wrapping wound after wound, and seeing them in their most vulnerable states…I just – I don’t know, something about it doesn’t sit right with me,” she shrugged nonchalantly, not knowing that her words laid heavily on Maude’s own chest.

“But, there’s no denying that the girl lovesssss to look!” Sue chirped in, nudging her friend’s shoulder who’s mischievous grin was hidden behind the rim of her gin and tonic. “Speaking of, has anyone caught your eye yet, Blue? See anything you like?” She mused, fishing for the hot gossip as she liked to do.

Had anyone caught her eye? Well a very certain major who had waltzed his way into the infirmary just this morning had, but could she admit such a thing when she was trying to convince herself otherwise?

“Oh I – I dunno,” Maude finally spoke up and blushed madly, cheeks promptly dusting pink.

She suddenly felt grateful for the Dirty Shirley and took a sip, the tart yet sweet mixture coating her tongue in a delightful way. The condensation of the glass felt cool against her now heated skin, and she prayed it would cool down her unease in the current conversation. If not, at least she could simply blame it on the drink. Not that she knew very well what it was like for herself. She wasn’t much of a drinker to begin with, but she had been around enough functions with family and friends alike to know how flushed face one could get on a glass or two – worse with a few more added into the mix.

“Give the girl some time. She just got here after all and we haven’t given her a run down yet on who’s who.” She noted. “Wait, have we?” She asked, turning to Blue for confirmation to which she shook her head in a delcarative no. “Oh then, this’ll be a thrill. Perfect timing then, ain’t it Sue.”

“Absolutely! You’re in good hands Maude Bluell. Can’t go wrong with Lots full boring government names in conjunction with my fun nicknames for the full effect.” Sue added.

“It’s not boring, it’s official and makes our job a whole lot easier.” Lottie reasoned. “At least I can identify each pilot by their title and rank efficiently with no hiccups on their health charts.”

“Hey! It was just one time, and in my defense it’s not my fault that two Majors decided to have the same goddamn nickname, and it’s no help when Croz only refers to them as the “two Buckys” in conversation.”

“Two Buckys’?” Maude questioned, rather perplexed.

“Yes, see the blonde over there. Strong cheekbones. Full lips. Bright blue eyes,” Lottie — as loud as Maude could hear over the blaring music and as subtly as she could, a good two gin and tonics in — pointed to the definition of such a man seated right in front of the Officer’s band.

Maude followed her eye and nodded in confirmation.

“That’s Major Gale Cleven,” She said in her left ear.

And on her right side Sue added in, “Buck, or in other words — if you couldn’t tell — the man Lots was fawning for before she found out he’s got a girl back home.”

Lottie shot her a look.

“What? Made it real obvious with those detailed descriptors. I’m simply stating facts.” Sue regarded Lottie while fetchinf the cherry out of her own Dirty Shirley “Anyways, Name’s Marge. Short for Marjorie. High School sweethearts from Wyoming or something like that.

Major Gale “Buck” Cleven — Maude repeated over in her head, trying to commit it to memory.

“Couldn’t help it. He’s a real gentleman. Quite reserved but extremely smart. Doesn’t drink. Doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t gamble. Doesn’t dance with a single girl. It intrigued me.” Lottie concluded and then continued on, “next to him, to the right is Major John Egan.” Lottie trained Maude’s gaze just where she wanted her and just where Maude herself had not expected to be.

Major John Egan. Major Egan. The man Lieutenant Payne had mentioned in his demotion and replacement from today’s mission. The man who walked right into the infirmary at 0900 hours and churned something deep inside her, yet to be deciphered.

Out of his flying gear and signature sheepskin jacket, she took in the sight of Major Egan in his more formally pressed uniform, and her breath hitched. There was no denying how handsome he looked all cleaned up, but she wouldn’t make that known to them. Not now and especially not here.

“That’s Bucky.” Q was back in her right ear, and Maude wondered if this is what it felt to have an angel and a devil on your shoulders, whispering different things. “Confusing, aye?”

“Bucky,” she repeated aloud, a small laugh escaping the nurse as she twirled the straw around in her drink. “So it’s Buck and Bucky then, not the Buckys.”

“Technically, yes.” Lottie nodded.

“Quite redundant.”

“Precisely, but for good reason I suppose. Sue can explain that one further.”

“Oh yes!” She lit up. “So apparently, Major Egan has always been known as Bucky back home and when he first saw Major Cleven, well he couldn’t get over how much he looked like some fella named Buck from Manitowoc, Wisconsin — also his home — and they’ve been stuck like glue ever since. All in good word from Curt of course who filled me in on all this business.”

“Right…and oh! Over here is Captain Bernard Demarco.”

“Benny.” Sue cut in again.

“He’s the one that has that sweet pup Meatball running around, and….” Lottie kept the flow going, canning the conversation on the redundant nature of the Buckys.

Maude tried her best to stay attentive, taking in the passing faces and attaching them to their respected names, yet she couldn’t help but draw her gaze back to Major Egan who’s long fingers were tapping against the arms of the chair he occupied to the beat of smooth jazz as he spoke to his friend next to him. She attuned her bouncing stare to the drink starting to take effect in her system, but also to her remembrance of why she truly pulled up to the function — to find Lieutenant Crosby and properly congratulate him on his promotion.

Yet, through the whisking crowd of people, the target of her mission became indetectable.

At some point Katherine “Tatty” Spaatz, daughter of Lieutenant Carl Spaatz, and Helen — both Red Cross volunteers for the Clubmobile circling the Eighth Air Force’ First Air Division — joined in on the conversation, greeting the nurses, and meeting the new addition to their circuit.

Tatty recounted stories to Lottie of countless pilots trying to get in her good graces just to secure a promotion from her father. It never worked, while Helen continued to help Sue familiarize Maude with the crew on base. Helen was in the middle of trying to point out another pilot to the nurse when the band started playing a new song — a popular song that not only Sue knew very well, but Maude too. Blue Skies by Irving Berlin. Maude hummed it to herself the past week any chance she got. Any time she was feeling rather blue so to speak — ironically enough. And Sue — well Sue wasn’t one not to be observant.

“Blue!” She interrupted Helen’s tagging game by latching onto Maude’s arm. “It’s your song.” She proposed excitedly.

Maude, taken aback for just a moment, collected herself enough to correct the notion and Helen’s sudden raised brow. “Oh — I — ‘S not my song. I just like it.” She shrugged.

“But your Bluell. Blue. Blue Skies!” Q slurred shirly as ever. “Come on Blue. Sing for us.”

“Oh no I — I don’t sing,” The shy nurse mumbled out, not lying so to speak but not telling the truth either. Sure, Bluell sang, but only when she was alone. When no one else was present. When she had a good sense of privacy. Humming was one thing, but singing no — singing was a whole other ball game.

“‘S not true. I’ve heard you.” She assured, making escaping this proposition even more impossible.

Maude gasped. “When?”

“Just the other day. When you were out hanging the sheets up on the line,” the red head recalled, not giving up by any means.

As a newbie of sorts, Maude was appointed to hang up the freshly washed sheets outside to dry before the beds were made back up — neat and clean in preparation for the inevitable return of injured pilots. Q usually came out with a basket to collect the dry ones, and on one particular day, she had caught the nurse there — singing away in what she assumed to be a rather private area. Instead of making herself known, Q took a moment to listen to the newbie's voice, connecting to what she could only imagine to be what fluffy clouds would sound like if you could hear them in one’s ears, if clouds could in fact sit in such a way — soft and airy on a summer’s sunny day.

“My, well I —I” Embarrassment dusted Maude’s features as she found herself at loss for words in being discovered.

“Yes, she has quite the voice!” Lottie suddenly overheard the conversation, added in, piquing the interest of the Clubmobile girls.

Maude silently wondered if her colleagues and newfound friends were really her friends at all.

“Oh! Now I must know. Would you sing for us?” Tatty asked, absolutely intrigued by this information and ever-so slightly tipsy herself.

“I – I dunno,” Maude replied shyly, her fingers reaching up to the edge of her collar, tugging the material away from her now heated skin.

“It would boost morale,” Helen reasoned, actually considering the state of their boys and how music seemed to ease their souls.

Especially one Major John Egan who, little to Maude’s current attention, was absolutely fizzing with delight just across the way.

“Do you know what this is missing?” The Major probed suddenly to the blonde Lottie described in heavy detail only moments prior.

Buck, knowing his friend and exactly what he would be up to whenever music was involved did not hesitate in replying. “Nothing.”

“Vocals.” John announced, totally disregarding his friend’s input on the matter.

With a sigh, Gale reiterated, “no, it’s not.”

“I’m gonna sing.” John proposed, as if it was not already obvious enough to Gale.

Already ten steps ahead of his antsy friend, Gale’s reflexes proved to be on par and he eased John back down in his seat just as fast. In complete conjunction as one Nurse Maude Bluell was being eased herself. Right in front of the band and the lone microphone propped on a stand next to the conductor. A conductor who found himself rather confused with the sudden presence as well as the rest of the club when she nervously tapped it with a cherry red nail, freshly done up by Q. A necessity as the red head liked to say in her chain of convincing for the night. A chain that Maude had found herself unmistakably tied to for the rest of the evening with a reasoning of Biddick’s MIA on center stage.

“Looks like a lady has beat you to it.” Gale hummed in complete amusement. An amusement not reciprocated by his friend, slouched in defeat with his arms crossed over his chest in utter disappointment.

The nurse cleared her throat suddenly, trying to stifle her nerves and block out the faces that were drawn to her every move. So much so that she even had one Major John Egan attuned, eyes glued to her like a hawk catching their prey.

A twinge of familiarity washed over him as he took in the young woman with full red lips and pinned up hair, a complete contradiction to the nurse he saw in scrubs just a few hours prior attending to Lieutenant Joseph Payne. Yet, what captivated him, what really set in that sense of recognition were her eyes. Those hazy green eyes that had almost rendered him speechless in completing his promotional tasks for Croz.

“B—Blue Ski —“ the raven haired woman’s vocal chords betrayed her rather quickly leading the men — with a lack of better judgment enraptured with booze filled minds — to laugh at her mishap.

“Learn your place sweetheart!” Someone hollered far away. Too far away for Bucky to attach a face to voice so to speak, but close enough that he could make out every single syllable, every single word clustered in a sentence that made his blood boil tenfold.

He was no singer himself — hell he couldn’t carry a note for the life of him, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that singing — singing your heart out was freeing. It was fun. It was a way to forget the truth of it all. The truth of this reality, adhered to a war wrapped in violence and a future of uncertainty. A future only men lucky enough could promise.

Instead of jumping out of his seat, finding the man, and beating him to a pulp like he really wanted to for speaking to a lady in such a disrespectful manner — he decided on a different approach. An approach that would ease the clear embarrassment of the pretty raven haired nurse in front of him.

“Jack,” he whispered over to the pilot on his left, cringing at the scene. “should I sing?” He asked him, hoping to gain a better sense of backup clearly not tuned to his level headed friend.

To Bucky’s misfortune, Jack was with Buck on this one. “No.”

He tried again, this time with another colleague adjacent to buck. “Should I sing?” He motioned again.

And again. “No. You’ll just make it worse.”

John sighed. “Alright, you’re right. You're right.” He feigned a nod in agreement, putting on a facade that did not last long enough to see the light. Looking back at the nervous nurse caged in laughter of no good nature, John knew there was no shot in hell he’d leave her there imprisoned. Whatever bit of jealousy had set him off as he saw her hit the stage of sorts was long gone.

So, he hyped himself up, readying himself to take flight just as he did every time in a B-17, and tapped his fingers against the wooden edges of his chair. Letting out a breath, he finally stood up and danced his way over to the mic, leading Gale to send him a classic knowing glance of his that was reserved to him alone anytime he whipped up an antic.

“It’s my song, Buck!” He reasoned to his best friend just before turning around and coming face to face with the green eyed goddess.

Completely surprised, Maude nearly gasped at the sudden intrusion but collected herself enough to follow his gaze as he fitted himself behind her.

“May I?” The Major whispered against her ear, his arm brushing against her hip as he reached for the microphone in front of her.

His touch proved to be magnetic — electric even, and it shot something within her enough to keep upright and reply ever-so carefully. “My yes. Of — Of course, Major.” She went to step out of the way, but a warm and gentle hand wrapped around her waist and pulled her up against John’s side.

She could have melted then in his embrace, fitted so perfectly next to him as he grasped the mic and stared down at her as he began to sing….

Never saw the sun shining so bright

Never saw things going so right

Noticing the days hurrying by

And then, just as she was starting to feel comfortable being serenaded, but considering the prospects of a duet, Major Egan’s hand flexed at her side, signaling the tilt of the mic close enough in her direction that they could sing together.

Yet, to her surprise he let her have her moment alone.

When you’re in love. My how they fly.

And the lines came out clear — clearer than she could ever imagine, but that was all she would contribute. She’d let the Major take the reins on the rest of the song with a simple nod of encouragement.

Blue days

All of them gone

Nothing but blue skies

From now on

With a final flourish, he dipped the young nurse. Her heart dropped to her stomach at the sudden movement, sending shock waves throughout her whole body in a reminiscent way. One that reminded her of her childhood. It brought back memories of the very first time she ever rode the Coney Island Cyclone with her father. The creeks of the wooden structure probed nervous jitters as the roller coaster went up, up, up — only to bring sweet relief as the cars swooshed down, down, down. And down she was now with Major Egan’s charming features in her direct line of sight. Pretty pearly whites, deep blue eyes, and large warm hands leaving her breathless yet grounded in his embrace.

If it wasn’t for the cheers that rounded out amongst the ladies and the hardy laughs that echoed from the men, the Major and nurse could have very well been locked in their own world — where it was just the two of them, alone. But they weren’t alone. They were surrounded by a bubbly crowd of fellow airmen and red cross members alike who were now making their way to the floor to dance out their newfound excitement.

Yet, the caging of it all felt rather intimate to Maude — who was now being pulled right back up by Major Egan. With a bit of a stumble and a trip of a heel, he caught her before she could trip — a strong arm wrapping around her lower back, urging her upright like a straight torpedo.

Her cheeks reddened ripper than the deep shade of lipstick coating her lips as her hand subconsciously found itself situated on Egan’s chest. Palm fizzing against the eloquent beat of his heart.

“Hi,” he mused, eyes sparking in delight as he took in the small frame of the nurse in front of him — her lack of height noticeable at this newfound proximity.

His prominent figure towered above her, forcing her to crane her neck back and head upward to look him in the eye. It wasn’t surprising. Truly it wasn’t. His stature became apparent the moment she first saw him. But now, standing right in front of him, practically caged over his towering presence was intimidating. “H-Hi.” She managed out and then tumbled in a frantic frenzy. “Bucky — I mean J— Major.” She sighed in an effort to compose herself and settled on, “Major Egan.”

Maude’s fumble did not fail to surprise the Major. It struck a pitch of laughter out of him instantly.

A pitch that Maude didn’t catch as a reaction to his sudden charm of her. “My apologies.”

So John, well he would swing until he got a home run. “No need to fret, doll.” He reassured her. “‘M not a formalities type anyways. Nothing good comes out of being a tyrant in team sports.”

“You’re an athlete then?” Maude questioned, trying to annunciate her words as loud as possible considering the boisterous music in the room.

Bucky chortled and matched her. “Far from that. Much more enjoy being an observer. A listener. More of a reader nowadays to keep up with the score.”

“Understandable.” She nodded, tilting her head ever-so subtly to get a better reading of him. “And what team has the pleasure of your devotion, Major?”

“Bucky. Please. Call me Bucky.” He corrected her. “And baseball. The New York Yankees,” he replied and her eyes alit with a familiarity John picked up on without fail. “You like the Yanks, doll?”

“Yes — well no. I mean being from Brooklyn it’s only customary for me to be a Dodgers fan. But you — you’re not a New Yorker, so I’ve heard.”

“That’s right. You’re fairly acquainted with me, ain’t yuh? Yet, I can’t recall the same for you. No shot in hell would I ever forget a gal quite as pretty as you.”

“That’s rather kind of you, Maj — Bucky.”

“Got a name, doll? A nickname even? Rank?”

“Maude. Maude Rue Bluell. American Red Cross Nurse for the 100th bomb group. Just touched down last week. But, I’ve found myself replying to the call of Blue. Quite redundant in name. I know. Yet, I have a bit of suspicion that it’s more complimentary of my mood as of late,” she revealed, more than she intended. More than she even expected. Usually — in matters such as this one — she’d find herself to be rather shy and timid. Especially in the presence of such a devily handsome man as Major Egan himself.

But something — something in the way he spoke to her was easing. His teamwork mantra proved to be a strong suit in his personality. She could tell he was a good leader just by his attitude and stance — equalizing himself against a woman in such an untraditional light. Subconsciously, it made Maude more drawn to the young man in uniform.

The edge of his lip curved up in a smirk. “Blue, huh?”

Bluell only had a second to nod in confirmation before the Major grabbed her hand, spinning her in a circle in accordance to the music. He pulled her back just as fast, her back aligning perfectly against his broad solid chest. A strong arm wrapped around her stomach, slender fingers taking shelter against her hip.

He leaned over then, the combination of his lips and mustache tickling the delicate skin of her ear quickened the pace of her heart. “Seems I’ve found myself my very own Blue Sky then,” he whispered.

She let out a laugh. A real genuine one. Lips perking up in a sweet smile.

“Smooth, yeah?” He mused, his lips still close enough to brush a smile against her ear a second time and his voice still low yet husky enough to warm up her insides.

“Mhm,” she hummed simply, rolling her emerald eyes playfully in an attempt to conceal her affections. “Out of the park.” She mused, swaying back and forth in his hold.

“That’a girl!” He chirped as she spun out of his hold.

Their hands puzzled right back together instantly, feet tapping to the beat as they danced with the rest of the pairings on the floor. There they were, forgetting all their troubles in the heat of the party. Just as the other girls intended. Just as John intended. Maybe for once, Maude could admit that the Club was the best medicine for her troubles, even if it would wear off come morning.

John and Maude danced well off into the night, until the nurse’s heels left blisters on her soles and a sheen of sweat dusted the curls on Bucky’s forehead. The Major was one to take notice, channeling his inner gentleman as he excused himself to fetch the two of them refreshments from the bar.

Alone, she moved out of the boisterous crowd to meet the girls but stopped short once she noticed Lieutenant James Douglas approaching them.

Meanwhile, John was situated at the bar next to Buck when a call came through for them. “Buck. Egan”

“Sir.” Buck replied as John took a swig of his drink, waiting patiently for Maude’s to be fixed up.

“From who?” Bucky asked intrigued.

“Operator, I have Majors Cleven and Egan…” Red murmured before passing the phone to Buck.

Buck took it with ease, a chorus of his name ringing out of the speaker from a far too familiar New York accent. “Yup.”

“Ayeeee Buck is that you?” Lieutenant Biddick exclaimed on the line just as John was leaning over to listen in on the conversation.

“Curt.” Buck confirmed, leading John to follow suit an octave louder in a Bucky like fashion.

“Curt!” John banged his fist on the table, pleased to know Curt had made it.

Susie being nosey as she tended to be, did not fail to excuse herself from the flirting attempts of Douglas on Helen. She whipped across the floor in an instant, locking a careful arm around Bluell, dragging her to the bar with her. “It’s Curt!” She chirped, beaming from ear to ear.

“Buck! Buck!” Curt repeated as the girls found themselves at the bar. Q fitting herself right next to Gale on his right – Maude sandwiched between her and Red.

“Yeah, it’s Buck and John. Susie’s here too. Where’d you end up?” Gale spoke for the two of them.

“Ughhhh, that’s a very very good question, but we’re safe and sound ‘er.” Curt replied amidst his own boisterous surroundings. He pulled the phone away for a moment to ask, “Hey! Aye, wh – where am I?”

“Where are ya?” Someone asked far away. Too far away for John or the girls to grasp, but close enough for Gale to catch the tail end of.

“Where am I?” Curt repeated.

“In the devil’s dope son!”

“Ugh–ah we made a wee bit of a mess up ‘er.” Curt explained. “Well – the people are really swell and they’re looking after us. It turns out they don’t like the English much either, but they like me because I’m Irish!”

Again muffled voices took over. “You’re not Irish.”

“I’M IRISH!” Curt yelled, brushing smiles across the faces of Buck, Bucky, and the girls.

“No you’re not.”

“Hey, my family's Irish.” He was still going on, the group trying their hardest not to burst out in laughter. “I told ya I’m an American but anyways… Buck – hold on, hold on.” A rustling sound took over for a moment as Curt resituated himself. “Ugh, I wanted to call you and to let Sue know I’m ‘ight but…Thank you Buck…Thank both of you for saving our asses. I mean it.”

“Yeah, well alright you just get back here soon, Curt.” Buck replied.

“We miss you Curt. We’re glad you’re still with us!” John yelled.

“He’s okay. He’s really okay!” Susie bit back a smile.

“He’s quite alright.” Maude assured, resting a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“Eh – John said he misses his little spoon.” Buck joked and Sue laughed.

“Heyyyy I’m the big spoon ‘er remember?” Curt chided. “Just ask my Sue. Where’s my Sue?” He asked, unraveling the lollipop she supplied him earlier.

“It’s gonna be cold tonight Curt!” John added.

Curt’s voice became muffled as he shoved the petite treat in his mouth.. “Gotta tell ‘er I’m sucking ‘er cherry rye now.”

“W–What?” Buck’s eyes widened up in surprise and embarrassment at the rather inappropriate and unexpected joke.

John did not fail to miss the twist of Gale’s features. He picked up on it rather quickly, his interest peeking instantly. “What he say? What he say?”

“Nothing.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You know what Curt. Lemme pass the phone. Sue, Curt wants to talk to you.”

She squealed excitedly and grabbed the phone. “Hi baby!” Soon her fingers were wrapped around the cord, mirroring how wrapped up she was in conversation with her man.

Maude watched her friend beam with a newfound sense of radiance. Her joyfulness bounced off of her like bright sunbeams, warming up Bluell just as much.

She was so stuck on the picture of her friend, she didn’t realize John had weaseled his way next to her until he was nudging his shoulder with hers. “Doll..” He pushed a glass of water across the table in front of her.

“Thank you.” She hummed. A smile was still plastered across her face as she took a sip.

“So much for being blue, huh?” John mused, completely infatuated with her smile. “Nothing but blue skies…from now onnnn…” He sang in her ear.

Her cheeks began to sting from smiling so much. “You're something else, Major Egan.”

“Well – I’d hope so. Rather be something than nothing at all, you know?” He replied thoughtfully, so thoughtfully that his simple yet profound words settled deeply within the confines of her chest.

“I –” She began to say something, anything really but lost her train of thought in an instance when a fellow pilot interrupted across the Club to make an announcement.

“Come on everybody! Bike race in the mess hall – who’s in?”

“I am.” Bucky stated.

“Me too.” Buck agreed.

And that was that. It was settled. The boys would be racing and Maude and the rest of the ladies would be pulled along to watch.

John grasped Maude’s hand then to do just that, but stopped her in his tracks as he leaned over to whisper, “wait – don’t I get a good luck kiss?”

His forwardness took her by surprise, and even though his charm was very well infectious, she found herself hesitant to appeal to his wishes. “I wouldn’t suggest pushing your luck, Major, but I’m not the kind of lady to oppose a reward in the face of a victor.”

“Ah,” He held their conjoined hands up and kissed the back of hers, sending goosebumps across her fully clothed skin. “More reason for me to win then, hm.”

“Precisely.” She hummed in agreement, right before he took off, dragging her along. Leaving her in a fatal attempt of matching his long strides as she giggled and yelped out his name.

Before she knew it, she found Lottie and the rest of the girls in the Mess, perched and ready to watch the race along with Croz who was mounting a bike not too far away. She congratulated him in passing, and he was happy to see her. It was all a frenzy of fun and games, absolute excitement – until it wasn’t. Until the boys were just reaching the finish line, – Bucky right behind Buck – and the alarms were going off. Alarms that reminded them of the war they were truly in. A war that kept them on their toes and left them taking shelter. Left John without his kiss and Maude running dry of her medicine.

There would be more blue days than blue skies for Nurse Maude Rue Bluell and Major John Bucky Egan – but this night – this very night proved to be the catalyst of something new for the two.

Something that would become much ado.

iiii!! idk how i feel about this but enjoy peeps. feedback would me amazeballs. also curt is wilddddddd 👀🍒🍭

love ya’ll,

xanadu

tag list:

@rubberpsyche

@luminouslywriting

@justheretoreadthxxs

@karmasloverrr

@precious-little-scoundrel

@hellfirequinnie

@yorkshirekiwi

@beingalive1

@andreakz

[eldritch-spouse]

I’m literally soo devoted to krulu idk what it is he just draws me. i think i would be part of a cult for him if he was real. anyways what are some of the traits admin gains from being his vessel? do they get physical marks or is it just special powers like enhanced strength for example?

Krulu's manifestation in you isn't fixed, it can be something as simple as an "off vibe" to visible mutations and disfigurement. But, listing off some general factors-

Physical mutations

Physically speaking, Krulu can and oftentimes override the left side of your face, his two slitted eyes remaining where your left one was. He does it to study things more closely, or to let someone know he's present;

In a similar vein, your mouth can also be altered to resemble his more closely, facilitating direct speech through your body;

The more you're physically mutated for the higher's convenience, the more black veined protrusions will appear along your body, protruding with varying degrees of intensity, to the point where your feet and hands may become darker, digits elongating;

Both you and Krulu can manifest, from your figure, pairs of his arms. For whatever purpose really. As Admin, you likely use only two at once, as it quickly becomes too many limbs for your brain to coherently pilote at once. But Krulu can use all six of his arms on you, or even more;

Similarly, his tail can also be manifested for a variety of purposes, though it's quite long and disproportionate on you, usually;

On a number of occasions, you've been given the privilege of sporting a manifestation of Krulu's male anatomy on your pelvis. Though this isn't something you can summon at will, permission is required first.

"Abilities"

It's no wonder you have increased strength, is it? You're also noticeably heavier than you should be, but that fluctuates. Generally, this increase in strength is something easy to control, activated in choice moments;

Since your body has been tinkered with very thoroughly, you're also extremely durable for a human. Meaning a stab to the stomach isn't going to do you in, nor will being set on fire or tossed into the bottom of an ocean to drown. Of course, you still feel a lot of pain, but you're not dying anytime soon, not even if a bullet flies right between your eyes;

Inflicting fear and pressure upon others is something extremely easy for you to do, given Krulu's aura always shines a little through you, no matter how well either one of you attempts to mask it. People will simply be intimidated by you, inexplicably afraid, which, in turn, makes them a lot more cooperative;

The sexual rejection response. Whenever Krulu doesn't want anyone touching what's his, he makes it so whoever attempts to penetrate your orifices is met with rows of jagged teeth ready to snap and tear at any offending intruders. Your insides will also clench to nearly impenetrable states, though thankfully painlessly;

In a complete 180, you've been modified to welcome partners who are much bigger than humans. This was done entirely for his pleasure, but that doesn't mean it doesn't come in handy when the two of you pursue someone else.

Less amazing aspects

You go through his ruts. Enough said;

You may still occasionally experience the side-effects of trauma inflicted upon Krulu, due to all the time they spent in the Null. This means that you may have fits on unquenchable hunger as if you've been starving for ages and your stomach is a bottomless pit, usually ending in you bent over, puking your guts out. Alternatively, it can also manifest as hyper-aggressive states and a desire to hide somewhere utterly quiet and suffocatingly dark;

Mental tangling. Sometimes, when either one of you or both are having overactive episodes, your individual thoughts may "leak" onto the other's conscious and begin gradually taking over more and more space, making one element "recess". These episodes are bothersome and can escalate to a point where some time is required to stabilize them.

I'm sure I'm missing some things, but this is what jumps to mind.

[thelampisaflashlight]

A Moment of Respite

[Set back back when Alpha and Omega were still in the band, Dew leaves a party to spend some time outside. Feat. Jeremy and Lamb. I felt like having them interact even though I previously established that they hadn't before. Maybe it's just one of those things Dew doesn't remember from before his elemental change, but who's to say? Not suitable for younger audiences.] Below the cut.

Dew stares at the drink in his hands, cringing at the potent smell of alcohol wafting from the cup over the fizzing cola.

Rum and coke.

A pretty standard drink, hard to fuck up, but definitely not something he generally gravitates towards.

He swirls the liquid around, debating whether or not to take a sip as he takes in the sights and sounds of the party around him.

It's towards the end of the night, so much of the excitement has died down, and it's only a matter of time before people start filing out the door.

Dew would leave with them, if he wasn't already home.

In theory, he could retreat down the hallway to his dorm room, lock his door from the inside, put on his headphones...

He sets his drink down on the back of the couch, where it will probably spill and leave a sticky stain, but he doesn't care really.

Someone will clean it up in the morning or not and it won't really matter.

They'll throw out the couch in a month, or a year, or, fuck, maybe even burn it.

Dew knows he would if he could.

Taking stock of the room, he can see Alpha is already passed out in his favorite chair -the one that smells heavily of piss, even if the fire ghoul insists it "DOES NOT"- and Mist is drawing dicks on his face.

Omega is decidedly... missing.

Truth be told, Dew lost track of the quintessence ghoul halfway through the party, and he wouldn't be entirely surprised to find out he's shacking up with some random sister of sin in a corner somewhere.

He'd walked in on him plowing a nurse from the infirmary one time and had been too embarrassed to look at him after the fact, let alone let him touch him, even if he was bleeding pretty badly.

He worries the line of the now faint scar along his index finger.

Zephyr had stitched him up, between panicking over the blood and cursing his existence, they'd managed to get Dew patched up with shaking hands, swearing more every time the needle skipped in his unsteady fingers.

Of course, Omega found out eventually, and, boy, had that been an interesting conversation...

Taking a deep breath, Dew slips away from the noise of the party and makes his way down the hall, taking the winding corridors back to his dorm room.

Dew's room -little more than a glorified storage closet- sits at the far end of the ghouls' den, next to the stairwell leading up to a little courtyard that's seldom used by the human members of the clergy.

When he's bored at night, Dew likes to go outside and sit on the lone bench posted along the wall and smoke.

Sometimes, one of the ghouls from the other half of the basement, the rehab, will sneak upstairs and sit with him.

They're always good company, even if they don't talk much.

The rehab is...

Well, he's not really sure what it is.

Ghouls from other branches of the ministry wind up there from time to time.

Ferals, strays...

Omega takes care of them with help from one of the human staff members.

Brother Elijah.

It's a sort of "side project" started by Primo for reasons unknown to the masses.

Dew spent a little time there in the past, back when he was first summoned.

He can remember doing a lot of tests, physical, mental, emotional...

"It's just to see where you're at." Omega had assured him, "There's no shame in not being able to do something, I only need to know what you can do so we can help you better."

Creeping up the steps, Dew hears a startled gasp as a lighter falls from above, bouncing off of his head.

"Shit, sorry-"

"Sitting on the wall again?" Dew asks, making eye contact with a scruffy faced man with mismatched eyes, "You're lucky Omega is AWOL, or he'd be lecturing you for being out here alone again, Jeremy."

"I'm not alone." Jeremy says as Dew hops up to sit beside him, noticing a figure crouching beside the other, a single, eerily green eye flicking towards him briefly as its owner pauses their digging in the soil, "Lamb's keeping me company."

"Lamb's not supposed to be out here either." Dew comments, fiddling with the lighter Jeremy dropped a moment ago, "...How are you feeling?"

"Good... Bad." he sighs, running a hand through his newly trimmed hair, "Tired... Stomach hurts."

"Because of the b-" Dew cuts himself off, looking up at the sky, "Well, fresh air helps with that."

"Mn." Jeremy tilts his head towards Dew, and the ghoul shifts closer to let him lean on him, "I wasn't smoking, just so you know."

"...What were you doing?"

Jeremy gestures towards the area where Lamb is digging, "Lighting leaves on fire... They like the smoke."

Dew watches the little ghoul play, "...I should really get you two back inside, it's supposed to get pretty cold. Might even snow."

"Ten more minutes." Jeremy hums, closing his eyes, "The air is so clean out here, feels good."

"Okay... Okay."

They sit in silence, and slowly, but surely, Jeremy's head becomes heavier on Dew's shoulder.

"Ready?"

"...Ready."

[storms-corner]

a much needed comfort piece featuring skin to skin and nursing :’)

Eve had rather early on in their dynamic learned that skin-to-skin contact was a guaranteed way to soothe Oksana. It made sense in a rather sad way — Oksana had suffered such terrible neglect in her childhood that Eve highly doubts her mother spent any decent amount of time bonding with her baby like that. In fact, it was made clear that Tatiana never bonded with Oksana on any level. Be it physically, mentally, or emotionally. 

Laying skin to skin is bonding on every level. Through the physical contact of their bodies, through the mental relief they both feel, through the release of emotions that Oksana often experiences when they do this. She often cries, simply because she feels safe enough to let go of all the emotions Villanelle bottles up throughout the week.

This afternoon, Eve rid herself of her shirt and her bra. Then she helped Oksana out of her sweater. The girl wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, shifting from foot to foot as she waited for Eve to get into bed. It’s cold inside their cabin today, too cold to undress more than this.

Eve lays down comfortably on her back, supported by the pillows. She holds the blanket open for Oksana. “Mkay, Oksana, come here.”

Oksana wastes no time and instantly crawls into bed. She clumsily positions herself to lay on top of Eve, so her chest touched Eve’s stomach. She rests her cheek on Eve’s chest, and her hand curls small on the swell of Eve’s breast. Eve’s skin is warm and soft. Oksana sighs softly when Eve draws the blanket over them both, trapping them in a coccoon of comfort.  

“That’s better, isn’t it?” Eve says to which Oksana hums. 

Eve’s hand begins to move along Oksana’s back. Lightly, with just her fingertips, Eve traces Oksana’s spine. The touch makes Oksana shiver and nuzzle further into her mommy. Eve smiles at this and continues, drawing patterns and shapes on Oksana’s skin.

“Mommy,” Oksana mumbles. “Want to guess.”

“You wanna guess?” Eve smiles at the sweet request. “Okay, honey. Mommy’s gonna draw and you’re gonna guess.”

Eve thinks for a moment, and then she traces a shape with her finger. 

“Circle,” Oksana lisps sweetly.

“Yeah, good job!” Eve praises quietly, rubbing Oksana’s back. “Want one more?”

Oksana shakes her head. “Just mommy,” she says and scratches lightly at Eve’s skin. Her legs shift under the blanket and she makes a barely audible noise that tells Eve she’s not completely comfortable.

Eve’s hand moves down to tenderly trace the edge of Oksana’s diaper. “My baby…” she murmurs. “My sweet girl. It’s okay. Do you need something from mommy, hm?”

Oksana sticks her thumb in her mouth and glances at Eve’s breast. Eve noticed and couldn’t help but chuckle affectionately. Of course. It’s not always Oksana wants to nurse during skin to skin, sometimes she’s asleep within minutes of being placed on top of Eve, but other times she craves that extra bit of comfort. And who is Eve to deny her?

“Mkay, baby. Let’s get comfy on our sides, yeah? It’s a little hard for mommy to do it like this,” Eve says and begins to gently shift them both to lay on their sides.

The glaze over Oksana’s eyes lets Eve know she is tiny beyond words. She gets comfortable enough, and then she guides Oksana to her breast. She can’t help but think she’s gotten much better at this; latching used to be pretty tricky before. But now, Oksana latches properly on the first try and suckles eagerly right away. The milk lets down within a minute and a pressure Eve wasn’t even fully aware she was feeling goes away. 

“Good girl,” Eve says softly, stroking Oksana’s cheek. Feeling the work of her jaw. “Is that yummy, huh?”

Oksana just hums, smiling drowsily, and closes her eyes. It feels nice to be in this bubble, where time isn’t a concept and the only thing that exists is her mommy. She feels the safest here, and she wishes she never had to leave.

[jackiexmiller]

JACKIE MILLER -- ONE YEAR LATER

Jackie spent six months in rehab and took it seriously this time around. She's also been seeing a therapist regularly and taking her medication so her mental health stays balanced. It took a while to get here, but she's approaching a year of sobriety.

After leaving rehab, she joined Billie and Briggs for a short time on the road, but it was too difficult for her to stay as she needed the stability of a singular place and an access to her usual NA meetings. So she returned to New Orleans where she got a job working alongside her sponsor at a small downtown restaurant. Turns out she has a real passion for cooking.

She has been staying with Gabi, for the most part, but proceeded to move into her own apartment once she saved up enough for a deposit. She now lives in a small studio where she pays rent regularly and has her own space/peace.

She has been getting back in touch more and more with her father, and the two have developed a fragile 'bros' relationship kind of thing. She's happy to have him in her life as it seems he's on a journey to better himself as well. He visits once a month, sometimes more if he can, but due to conditions of his release he has to have a permanent residency in Florida.

Jackie has been running every morning for six months, sometimes even before the dawn. She's physically healthier than she's been in a long time. The running clears her mind, and helps her creativity and so she also spends time drawing and painting in the evening if she feels like it. Other times she has a lazy day in and just chills watching tv shows and cooking for fun.

A lot has changed for her in a year, A LOT, but that does not mean that she doesn't still crave drugs daily, or that she doesn't want to fall back into her old patterns. Still, she is doing the best she can to stay on the right track, with some occasional outbursts of anger or frustration.

Jackie is still seeing Lucas, but she doesn't open up to him or others at all which can cause tension with her relationships. She's also working too hard on staying sober so she's not actively 'dating' or even aware of what that looks like. There's still feelings for Abel which did not exactly subside. And she's developed several crushes on people at rehab, but it was truly all in good fun to pass some time.

Her primary focus now is staying clean, establishing herself as a person, and reconnecting with people while fixing broken bonds through honesty and changing her behaviours.

[wafflebloggies]

12. cathedral of bone

back - next The rain fell gently, tapping on the windows, casting an ever-changing pattern of soft white-blue dots and streaks on the shadowy net. The room was quiet and almost dark. Outside, a streetlamp was flickering on and off in the early-early morning, fighting the gathering day, casting a long pale slant across the carpet from the window and picking out a woven bounty of faded trees and flowering vines and long-tailed birds, all of which seemed to be engaged in an enthusiastically chaotic two-dimensional game of Twister.

Antonio was watching TV. The screen was almost silent, the captions blinking slowly from paragraph to paragraph at the bottom, the host’s voice a quiet murmur.

“This month is a time for tidying up,” she told him, from underneath a giant sunflower-studded straw hat. “A good gardener should be clearing up after the harvest season, and preparing for the next. You can discard your spent crops, remove unwanted growth, and you should be checking your structures to see if they’re sound.”

Antonio pulled a face. 

He didn’t like this show. It reminded him a little too much of Mrs. Hernandez’s Gardener’s Almanac, which was just as aggravatingly prescriptive. It liked to outline specific things that needed doing, and then stay smugly silent when it came to the picky details of how to do them, which Antonio felt was very unfair for a book clearly decades older than Google. All in all, Antonio didn’t really blame Mark for trying to throw it away. As he remembered them, the pretty, illustrated borders of its yellowed pages were in much the same key as the sunny, flower-filled garden crowding in all around the host of the show, depicting an ideal state of things. Everything vivid and thriving, full of bees and sunshine.

One glance towards the window, where the ghosts of branches were wavering in a wet bleary dawn, reminded Antonio that things were not so perfect in practice. He felt that he was starting to resent things that weren’t really the way they presented themselves to be on the surface. Flowers, sunshine, childish scribbles, fat cows in summer grass. It felt as if fake things only ever held up for so long, and their eventual collapse was all the uglier for it.

Which was a bad thing to feel, when you were a fake thing wearing a human face.

Remove unwanted growth.

Humans had no facade, at least not one that mattered to something like him. They were a peculiar kind of fragile; amazingly resilient, until they weren’t. Easily breakable, until a knot or tangle in their character pulled tight, and then they were like a steel wire, and only a force that was applied carefully and increased constantly stood any chance of making them snap. Then again, there were places in their minds like rents in armour, small hidden-away pits that sank infinitely deep, where a single touch could send everything crumbling. This was the way it was with Mark, and Antonio had no reason to think he was a unique case.

Antonio knew these places in Mark very well, and now as he sat and waited in the half-light of this room it was a relief to think he would not have to touch them again. There was a sick, involuntary look of hurt that registered even through the most stony of Mark’s everyday masks, which had been Antonio’s purpose and satisfaction for nearly ten months to draw out over and over, because that had been one of his most important functions. Mother required her hosts to be weakened physically and mentally. The Muse needed well-broken ground, to plant the spore.

Mark had been asleep for a little over sixteen hours. In contrast to his usual pattern of sleeping, which was light, short, and sometimes noisy, throughout the day and the long night that followed he had remained deep in the heavy, deadweight-still sleep of the completely exhausted. Antonio couldn’t see much of him from his post by the TV, but when he looked through his real eyes Mark’s shape blazed lively white-blue against the grey wisps of the room’s dull matter. He had forgotten how bright that frenetic glow could be, had been at first, before the Muse’s infection had choked it nearly to death. It was beautiful, in a way very different from Mother’s perfect, lazy golden radiance. It was something other, uniquely human, so relatively small and so relatively restless, never still.

The shape shifted. There was a sharp breath, a rustle, a pause, and a familiar plasticky click-scrape-fumble as a questing hand found the glasses folded on the small nightstand. Antonio opened his human eyes in time to meet a wary, half-awake stare, as Mark pulled himself up on his elbows and looked at Antonio across the dim dawn-lit room.

“Good morning, Mark!” Antonio didn’t have to try too hard to sound cheerful. After the long silence, it was nice to have someone to talk to, even someone who looked as if he could have been told Antonio was the original Tylenol killer without registering much surprise. Mark looked at the door, which Antonio had positioned himself quite far away from out of tactical consideration, and from there at the little else the room had to offer, from the framed print of uncertain yellow animals in a purple field to the baffling expanse of tropical carpet and the half-shaded window. Apparently finding nothing in particular to give him inspiration, he looked at Antonio again, and said,

“Where- uh, hi. Where… where are we?”

“It’s a motel,” said Antonio, happily. “You zonked right out, soooo... I fixed us up. Also,” he said, reaching for a small stack of leaflets he’d piled on the windowsill, “if we happened to need a fitness center, or a really teeny-tiny pizza counter, this place has got us covered! Cool, right? Okay, there’s no pool, but-”

Mark blinked. “You have money?”

Antonio shoofed the stack of leaflets aside, revealing the little bill clip shining dully underneath. Mark looked at it and a jolt of less-than-pleasant surprise travelled across his face, shifted quickly to resignation.

“You knew about... right. Of course,” he muttered, running a hand through his clean hair, and not managing to make it look much less like he’d slept upside down on it for a week, “you knew about that.”

“Oh, not right away!” protested Antonio. “I guess I was getting a little sloppy, ‘cause I didn’t even know about the taser, or the mace, or that weird thing you did to the oven… I was really off my game toward the end there. When you left-”

Mark’s head came up, fast. “I didn’t leave,” he said, snapping off each word with unnecessary clarity. “I was taken.”

“I didn’t mean-” started Antonio, but just as quickly as Mark’s hostility had flared up, it seemed to stall in its tracks. From the looks of it, he had just noticed his own hands, all the cuts and scrapes cleaned and patched up with gauze and Bandaids with small cartoon ducks on them, from his fingers to his elbows.

He looked at them without saying anything for a little while, then pushed the covers aside and got up, a little wobbly on his feet, pulling his sleeves down.

“Never mind.”

Antonio watched him as he steadied himself against the nightstand. “How’re you feeling?”

Mark hesitated. He seemed to be struggling between his usual tight-lipped blankness and some impulse to at least offer something, to add something different to a dynamic that felt lost, derailed from its normal bounds. Antonio thought he could understand. People were guided by routines, needed the patterns of them as much as something like him did, in their own ways. Just as he had a Mark-clock, it occurred to him that Mark must have something of the same, after nearly ten months’ worth of existing with Antonio, as he knew him. Without the shape of this between them, they were both standing on formless ground, reaching for some kind of normalcy, even in such a twisted form.

The difference, of course, was that Mark knew how things were supposed to work outside of the structure of this relationship, if it could even be called one; this rancid thing struck into the roots of his life. Antonio didn’t. For him, it was the only structure he had ever known.

“I don’t know,” said Mark. “Different. Better, I guess. You- you still have… uh…” He swallowed, his eyes resting on Antonio’s face, and touched his own cheek. He was, Antonio realised, trying to be tactful.

“Oh, this?” Antonio smiled, and rubbed at his own face. He knew it didn’t look the most reassuring, the big dark scar running clearly along its original track from forehead to cheek, and a little further in both directions, the way a split opens in drying fruit. In the wrong light, at the wrong angle, it glistened. “Yeah, it’s just a little ouchie. I’m pretty sure it’ll clear up.”

He said nothing of the hour he’d spent before the scratchy little bathroom mirror, trying to will it to go away. Something in the fabric of him was too tired, or too outraged by the Very, Very Bad Thing, to listen.

Mark nodded. He seemed to be finding it hard to look directly at him. He always had- quite reasonably- but something about his hesitation felt unfamiliar to Antonio, who had up until now only ever read fear, physical discomfort, and outright revulsion in Mark’s reluctance to look him in the face.

“Good,” he said.

*

Mark, at least, seemed to have a purpose. This was such a relief to Antonio, who had none, that it didn’t occur to him for a second to question it, or do anything but wait, grateful for the direction, as Mark poked deep into the lining of his backpack and came up with a small and very dirty scrap of paper that looked as if it had been laundered five times. Antonio peeked as Mark scrutinized it, but he saw nothing but a few faded lines of writing in a hand he didn’t recognize. Mark spent a little time on his phone after that, the tiny jumbled reflections of maps and timings and routefinders flicking in dim blue-lit reflected procession across his glasses as he sat on the end of the bed, and then he shouldered his backpack and went into the cramped bathroom, where he tore the scrap of paper into sixteenths and flushed it down the toilet.

There was a bus. Mark said nothing as they waited for it, and spent most of the ride looking out of the window. It was a warm, overcast day, and flecks of water spotted from the road surface and other vehicles and dashed themselves across the glass, like long, wire-thin tears. Although the bus was near-empty, Antonio kept his mask (a literal one, now, surgical blue, swiped from the housekeeper’s cart) pulled right up to the bridge of his nose, and found himself really wishing he had a hat to pull down over the beginnings of the dark split in his forehead.

An anonymous neighbourhood, with a dog barking from some backyard enclosure, a tall grey-yellow building, outside steps and a flat, white front door, one of many along a drafty half-open balcony hall. Mark hesitated in front of it, glanced up and down the empty balcony and the parking lot below, looked sideways at Antonio.

“I don’t have a key.”

Antonio stepped past him and pushed on the door. Nothing happened, so he set his shoulder against it and pushed a little harder, and was rewarded with a satisfying cronch of metal and plaster from the other side. He pushed again, and the door sagged open a few inches, stopped by the jangly glint of at least half-a-dozen different safety chains. The air that drifted out was stale, musty and dry and on the edge of sour, and something very deep-set without a name started to bug Antonio at the bottom of his guts.

He pushed again, forcing the door against the cheap steel chains until they parted and pinged, one by one, out of the wall. Mark, who had been watching the procedure with a kind of alarmed fascination, took another glance down the way to make sure nobody had come out to investigate the noise, then ducked past him into the apartment.

Antonio closed the door after them as well as he could, but it persisted in creeping open on its damaged hinges until Mark blocked it with a chair. The main room just inside was dark and the light-switch by the door did nothing as Mark flicked it up and down. Looking up into the lampshade over their heads, Antonio saw that the bulb socket was a vacant black hole.

Mark held up his phone and stepped away, leaving Antonio in the dark. He watched as the bright little lozenge of screenlight moved slowly and with purpose across the room, turning this way and that, picking out weird metallic surfaces everywhere, dull creased expanses of reflection instead of wood or tile.

“Mark…?” Antonio stepped gingerly over things he could barely see, crinkling and scrunching in the darkness underfoot. For a reason he could barely shape in his head, a reason that felt like it had a lot to do with the rising and oddly familiar tension in his insides, he didn’t feel like looking at this place with his real eyes. Instead, he hurried to catch up with the receding light of Mark’s phone, and after a brief stumble over a cat tree and a pile of laundry he fetched up against an open doorway just as the light in the room beyond clicked on.

Antonio realized two things immediately. One, that the shiny stuff all over the room behind them was a vast quantity of tinfoil, more of it here, wrapped around everything and taped to the walls, ceiling, and floor in vast swathes. Two, that he knew this new room, or at least half of it. He’d seen it before, many times, on the other side of a screen.

And now he understood, the sour smell, the dark patches, the feeling that this place was empty even for a deserted home, empty even with all of its dusty clutter. He knew this place not just because of Carlton Mayhew’s videos but because he’d been in other places like it, two other places now, that first little apartment-

-the scarf, it was blue, soft, and someone had knitted little leaves into the edges in pale lilac-

-and Mark’s house. Gutted homes, places belonging to humans who had all but died, died in everything but body, because their Muse had taken almost everything else and finally…

“Hey, Mark...”

Mark didn’t answer. At a glance, Antonio couldn’t see much reason for his silence in this small room with its blank walls- just a chair, and a monitor, and a big elderly workhorse of a PC tower under the desk, beside a window that looked out onto a spindly fire escape and an expanse of grey concrete wall. There was a clunky inkjet printer, an ancient blue rotary phone, and a wastepaper basket stuffed full of suspicious greaseproof wrappers, shrinkwrap, and styrofoam shells, and a large corkboard covered in pictures and photos.

Anthony Williams’ face smiled out of his MISSING poster, half-hidden under grainy color printouts of cartoon characters and esoteric symbols. Mark, standing a couple of steps into the room with his phone hanging slackly in his hand, brightly illuminating his own leg, had perhaps been unprepared to see it, or maybe he was just having a Mark-moment- Antonio couldn’t really tell.

On another corkboard, behind the monitor, there were other photos. Some were strangers, some looked halfway familiar. A woman in a neat black blazer, a group of people in labcoats. Circled receipts and red-scribbled memos. A printed screencap of a young man in a yellow shirt, long hair framing a thoughful, faintly worried face.

“That Spongebob guy,” said Mark, quietly. “Is he mixed up in all this too?”

“Mark, I... I don’t think we should be here,” said Antonio. “I’m getting a really big case of the oh-nos. Can we go now?”

With a decisive movement, Mark shut off his phone.

“I won’t be long.”

*

He was longer than Antonio would have liked. While Mark rifled through drawers and files in the little office, Antonio paced like a fretful bear through the rest of the apartment, trying not to see anything upsetting, liking everything he did see less and less. There were dead and dessicated plants that had almost certainly never benefited from a Gardener’s Almanac, and a lot of neatly-stacked boxes which didn’t look as if they’d been packed by the same kind of mind that had created the clutter and the corkboard and the stuffed filing cabinets. There was dust, yes, but significantly less than he would have liked. There was a word, which kept bouncing around his mind as he looked at the tinfoil and the all-seeing eyes. The word was, performative.

There was also a nasty dark stain on the floor just inside the closet under the stairs, which he wasn’t sure Mark had seen. He pushed a sheet of foil over it with his foot, just in case, then returned to the little office with his skin quietly crawling and found Mark zipping up his backpack, which looked a lot bulkier than before.

“I think that’s it,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be any use, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Come on now, Mark,” said Antonio, nervously. “Accentuate the positive. You gotta kick Mister Can’t out the door, you know?”

“That’s a really nice sentiment,” said Mark, concentrating on the zippers. “I could have used some of that energy around the time you were breaking my fingers because I wouldn’t read those stupid ads for rump steak.”

“Okay, it was basically only one-”

There was a noise.

It came from the hallway, and to Antonio’s keen ear it was horribly easy to identify, because in the back of his mind he’d been dreading hearing it or some variation of it ever since they’d arrived. It was the sound of the chair, thump-bumping against the front door as someone tried to push it open.

Another moment, and it was the scraaaape of sliding wood and a soft crinkling thud, as the chair toppled over into a litter of tinfoil, away from the door.

A pause. Antonio looked silently at Mark and saw stark horror in his face as he stared back, speechless. And then came the voice, which made Mark start so badly that his phone dropped out of his hand and clatter-shivered softly on the foil that coated the floor of the little office.

“Mark?”

[rescuefield-a]

a rundown of claire's kids, somewhat canonically, sometimes assumed / implied:

• sherry. this one is obvious, claire bonded with her in an instant that night in raccoon city and became claire's responsibility the same way she was to chris when their parents died. their bond is different because claire and sherry are not actually age to be mother and daughter, but it doesn't mean claire is not there filling the role anyway - always mindful to not step on anyone's shoes, sherry's got a bio mom who cared about her for better or worse and her presence doesn't erase that. claire fought tooth and nail to get her custody before simmons revoked her visit rights, and it was all for nothing since there would always be an excuse for which they'd find her unfit to be a legal guardian. the family claire, sherry ( and leon ) have created is not conventional, some could use a wrong acceptation and say they're trauma bonded - but the point is that claire made a promise to take of sherry and that's what she intends to do for the rest of her life.

• rani. i headcanon that she was around 5 when claire first met her. in a way her family situation reminds claire of her own - parents dead and her aunt took her in, just like it happened to claire with the burtons when chris was in the air force then stars. throughout the years after degeneration rani's aunt would drop her in new york during assignments where claire wasn't needed - they'd actually worked a schedule to make sure that rani would always stay with either one or the other. rani also spends most of the weekends over at claire's apartment, not that she minds giving aunt chawla some time for herself anyway. in canon timeline rani would currently be 21 and studying at NYU. her aunt died some time in early 2017 ( aged 60, unknown if it was on the field or natural causes ) and since then lives full time at claire's apartment.

• maalek. ( this one is tricky bc capflop didn't tell us shit, but who cares ) claire met him during her volunteering work in penamstan, his drawings catching her attention and quite literally starting all the chain of events that lead to her finding out about the outbreak. when we first see him, he's on a wheelchair and is declared mute by one of the volunteers even though he actually tries to speak a few words to claire, albeit unsuccessfully. i think claire spent a lot of time in penamstan after the events of infinite darkness, at least a few couple years since as we know of she's seen bsck in DC again only in 2010. claire made sure maleek would go to therapy both physical and for his mental health - taught him asl so that they could communicate with each other though she got him one of those blackboards that can be erased too. he was around 10 in 2006, which would make him 25 in current timeline. he's now comfortable walking with a cane, but still mostly communicate through asl. no need to mention he's one hell of a good painter.

• marilou. she gets an honor mention because claire met her back when she used to give ted talks in schools and they've kept in touch since then. obviously as we know marilou had a life already planned and it got crushed unfortunately, but it remains that she was still pretty young ( compared to claire at least ). though it's not outright specified, it's implied that claire took marilou under her wing after what happened in sonido de tortuga as is helping with the expenses for her college classes through a program with terrasave.

[chromorbid]

If you get this, answer with 3 random facts about yourself and send it to the last 7 blogs in your notifications, anonymously or not!

i just got so emotional over old ask chains bc of this, god you remember those days????? in 2012-2016 when this was a thing all the time and people had so much fun learning about one another and making friends??? i just happened to be looking at tags on my ollllllld second blog right before seeing this too. that feels a bit serendipitous, dont you think? :')

instead of just "3 random facts" i think i'll use this ask as a springboard prompt for a brief history of my time here on this website, since a lot of folks are returning and it might be nice to come out and see what some of my old lost chums might be up to now.

In mid-2011 i joined tumblr because i realized all my favorite dA artists were posting on dA less and on here more. I didn't do much here until i encountered a piece of fanart of a character from a certain webcomic, got curious about that comic, enjoyed it, and discovered that there was a big community on tumblr who liked it! my first ever URL was.... man i don't really remember! Maybe something reflecting my dA name at the time? But i don't remember what that was then either, having deleted that account ages ago. but i think my second one was "gamzeecryingalonewithpie" or something to that effect because the "laughing alone with salad" stock photo meme was big. It was so silly.

Eventually i trended into making all my urls/handles some sort of pun having to do with death, and some years ago i settled on my current url for a twitter handle because it really hit me in a place. My best friend and currently roommate @mossspores came up with it!

Anyhow, i basically spent all my time on tumblr being comparatively insufferable from 2011 to about 2017 before i migrated the majority of it to twitter. At the moment, I actually keep looking at all my archived posts from my old blog trying to find some old OC stuff and being ridiculously embarrassed at how silly (ignorant? abrasive? entitled?) my young self was. I'm not certain about sharing my olllllld URLs besides the one from before, but probably my most famous one was "ammodramus"--I was bestowed the nickname "Ammo" for the longest time and probably gained the most followers during the run of that one. I think the most followers i ever got up to was somewhere around 700 on my first blog and close to 1,800 on my second one. (funny now, i've had this particular blog probably the longest out of the three and barely have over 100. i like this better, though.)

Now for the BIGGEST thing i was part of....i was really into the whole once-ler fandom craze. yeah. i was there on the ground floor, and basically became one of the biggest enablers of the ask-blog phenomenon. i even tried really hard to make my own of the "personification" blogs eventually, but it fell down flat because i was in a dark place mentally on the side while also dealing with the gradual degradation of my physical ability to draw (aka painful arthritis). But i had the most fun i had ever had online before in the thick of it. i made toooons of friends and i even still keep in touch with a few of them. There were a lot of mistakes and upsetting blunders made by myself and a lot of people i knew, but these days i think i'm generally okay outing myself as having been a part of it. i mean, it's been ten goddamn years since that kicked off after all. lmfao. i was also an ignorant teenager.

Now you'll just see me skulking about on here vaguely while reblogging posts in short bursts because i still never took to figuring out how queuing posts works best. For a long-ass time i had a tagging system i took VERY seriously and trigger-tagged religiously. when i remade to my third and current blog, i gave that up and BOY did my mental health suddenly improve or WHAT. i realized i'd been absolutely running myself ragged with caring about appearances and making sure as often as possible to upset NO ONE with my posts. Basically, the way that simply analyzing every single post i shared and making sure to cover ALL my bases to make sure no one felt irked by my sharing of a post, was, uh. To put it mildly, fucking exhausting. And i posted A LOT. I can guarantee i had to have cumulatively reblogged nearly half a million posts between those two accounts. Last i checked on just my second blog, the pages went back into the 10,000s.

so yeah! hi to anyone who read through this whole thing who i knew way back when! I'm doing much better than i used to be, thanks to a lot of therapy and medication. i made it out of the house i grew up in, even the State i grew up in, and feel a lot less like i'm gonna die before 30! :') i've been chilling, playing final fantasy xiv, and eating lots of rice and vegetables. o/

thanks for the ask! <3

[worldismyne]

this might be too abstract of a question, but does the whole thing of "the charachters are hundreds of years old" make them less relatable to anyone else?

It probably is my pet peevee lol, but yeah even if I find your idea for Crona to be from victorian times or even before interesting, at the same time it kinda rubs me the wrong way, like its even hard to put to words, I think its the same when you watch LoTR but then learn that Legolas is actually 4000 years old.

(and not even touching the cases of the "she is actually a 1000 year old dragon so its ok-" excuse)

But I guess to try to explain myself, I guess to me people developing from childhood to adulthood in a relative simmilar span of time is kinda fundemental, guess its like trying to relate to a species that doesnt experience love or one which has no concept of leisure on a genetic level.

idk🤷🏿‍♀️, lol, sorry for wasting your time😂

I'll admit, I'm a bit puzzled by what your question is. It's okay if you don't like it, but I don't think it breaks the established canon or anything.

They are an anime character with another sentient being acting as their blood and people still relate to them. I don't think saying they age the same way their mother and aunt do is that far of a strech to make. (It's a fairly common headcanon)

Witches being 800+ years old is canonical to Soul Eater. As is Shinigami-sama and Kid living for hundreds of years at a time. I kinda assumed witches and shinigami opporate within the same lifetimes with how familiar they are with one another.

The whole point of fantasy races having extended lifespans is to explore what it means to be in a certain stage of development outside of socially established milestones.

In the case of my witch headcanon, it's to explore what it would look like if mental age and development reflected physically. Trauma (and fame) can freeze a person internally at a specific state of developement. There's a lot to world build with that. Like Maba who's lived long enough and actualized enough to be an old woman is greatly reveared because of how her expirences have shaped her.

I'm a big hater of × character is hundreds of years old, grew normally and then froze at appearing the age the author wanted to draw them in. It's lazy and usually has 0 impact on their character. Okubo seems to favor body snatching as an explination for why old as dirt characters appear younger, but it was always in the context of villains. I think canonically he's only ever said Chrona's a teenager. Idk if anyone's ever asked him how witches age. There's a bunch of holes in the lore, and witches society as a whole is one of them.

If your question is about whether it's hard for them to relate to other characters and vice versa if they were actually 400+ years old. They are still a teenager. Maturity wise, socially among others of their kind, they are a minor. Nothing changes from having more historical knowledge, other than not being as pressed about things like wars, but it's not like anyone's empathy evaporated.

As for what that would look like in the long term, I cover it in WDGK. Kid and Chrona are around '19' while their friends are moving on to their 30s. It puts strain and distance on their relationships as time goes on obviously. When they first met the rest of the cast, it was when they all happened to be in the same stage of life. They were able to get along just fine then, but as time goes on, it's harder to relate and more about honoring the time spent on each other. There's an inherient tragedy in that.

I explore it as well with Angela, who fears always needing protection despite having human caretakers. The frustration that comes from not being able to force herself "grow up" fast enough despite knowing Black Star won't be around to protect her forever is a huge part of her arc. She can't just decide to be over watching people die in front of her because it's inconvient for her to be stuck, she needs to heal and healing takes time.

That said, even regular people mature at different rates. Sometimes people grow apart and can only be friends for brief periods of time, when their lives overlap just right. That doesn't make those friendships any less valuable.

I think characters coming to find understanding despite having different life expiriences is one of my favorite parts of storytelling. So the more barriers characters have between each other, the more interesting and satisfying it is for them to relate and form friendships.

[bugbyte]

Medical nonsense! Spent my evening crying about it. That’s becoming my new hobby.

Some of this discusses needles and medical trauma, and even though I’m tagging those I also want to be up front because it’s pretty heavy.

Got a letter from an office I haven’t been to yet that’s doing yet more genetic testing for something that’s for sure confirmed to run on one side of my family and will also Mess You Up, and instead of being informed by a person it’s just. Like 3 sentences that vaguely explain this other test they want to do.

It’s a nerve conduction test, plus an electromyogram, both of which involve sticking a bunch of needles into muscles and then either putting electricity in to see what happens or measuring electrical output on an oscilloscope. Which, because I love electronics sounds fascinating on the surface except for the needles part and realizing that those suckers are going to have to go deep to actually touch muscle (which I learned from trigger point injections) and so yeah no I am filled with a copious level of nope and dread. The nah cup runneth over. I’m going to try and speak to a human and see if this is actually necessary because I don’t have symptoms of the genetic thing presently, but I was advised to test for the gene now because it appears later in life. And if I can do anything or science improves before then, I want to know.

Then I thought about it too much and had a panic attack, which took a while to put 2 and 2 together, but it’s trauma, it’s always trauma if you keep peeling back layers. I had surgery in mid-2020, sort of unexpectedly, and at the height of the pandemic. I had never had surgery before, so I was in the hospital, alone, cut off from family and support people because they took my belongings to a locker, so my phone was out of my hands. At the time I was much worse about dealing with needles than I am now and got a bunch of surprise blood draws and injections and several failed IVs in pre op when I had mentally prepared for…one IV.

Anyway, I was having a panic attack because I had been told not to take my meds beforehand and they threw my spouse out of the waiting area even though I had been told he could stay with me because of my anxiety. I tried to communicate all of this to the nurses setting me up but, man, these two just had some kind of good cop/bad cop routine going on and Bad Cop was trying to get blood from my hand and slapping my veins viciously. The other nurse was in my other arm placing the IV but the tube size was incorrect and instead it started leaking everywhere, so Bad Cop came over to help and just applied an excessive amount of pressure to keep the IV in place while a new tube was put in but man, it did not need to be nearly that rough. I was not bleeding and it wasn’t meds going in, just saline. All of this did not help my panic attack. She was just clearly pissed about having to deal with me and got away with just enough physical violence that could be written off as necessary for the blood draw and me exaggerating because of the panic attack. I wasn’t exaggerating though. I had bruises for over a month. I bruise easily, but this was something else.

The first person there to show me any kindness was the anesthesiologist who spoke kindly to me and talked about the procedure and then dosed me with versed to help with the panic. Here’s the thing: versed is supposed to calm you down and make you forget what’s happening. My anxiety was so high that she had to come back for another dose. I clearly remember everything up to being put under. My brain was fighting that hard, under the impression it was going to die, because panic attacks do that. I felt like a wilted plant but I had total awareness in a limp body, which was also a mildly terrifying experience.

Anyway, dropping a weird new test on me this week with very little information or justification, that’s apparently needle based and described as “mildly uncomfortable” (one of the greatest lies in medicine) just slapped every button on my console like a kid in an elevator.

I’m just, not willing to put myself in a room alone with people I do not know who are going to stick me and tell me “it doesn’t hurt that bad.” Baby, I have a connective tissue disorder, everything hurts that bad. Trigger points leave me bruised for a week. I sublux my shoulder on the regular and have to straighten my fingers because the joints have popped out and my free floating fingers are point more sideways. Tightly-focused, sharp, drawn-out pains are my kryptonite, but at least I’m self aware.

So. You know. Crying it out and trying to parse where all this defense mode came from, and what do you know, it’s hospital trauma. Chalk that up as a new one. Or an old one. Brains are awful. I’ll get through, I always do, but I feel like I keep re-emerging as a new person every time which is a confusing feeling.

[wevelocityteampresents-blog]

Making Up For Lost Time

I’ve wanted to write some blog posts that were larger compared to some of my latest ones. But I was too busy with important schoolwork. It didn’t help that the pollution in my country grew to the point where I couldn’t focus on the things I loved that weren’t Pokémon.

Thankfully, things have gotten better for me. For one, some close acquaintances are actually doing something to combat the air quality problems and the people who cause them. I’ve also recovered both physically and mentally. Now I can go back to working on the things I couldn’t do all those weeks ago.

It’s time to make up for all the time I lost!

JULY 17TH

I finally found all the orange stakes in Pokémon Violet! When I went to find the shrine for the next legendary Pokémon, I found out that it was in a completely different location.

And when I touched it, a Pokémon that WASN’T Chi-Yu popped out.

What is this thing, and why doesn’t its fur match up with the color of the shrine/stakes?

After one Master Ball, I managed to add it to my collection.

If it has something to do with swords, then why doesn’t Chien-Pao lower every other Pokémon’s Attack?

JULY 18TH

I spent most of the time I had for the day collecting shiny Pokémon.

I first went back in time to Hisui so I could trade this shiny Sylveon I caught in a Max Raid battle for another shiny Pokémon I haven’t gotten yet. After HOURS of waiting and haggling, I was eventually able to trade it for a shiny Yanma.

And with Yanma, the Yanma line has finally been completed.

Before I moved on to the next game, I had to release another Pokémon. And when I did, something happened.

Apparently, Pokémon you release in this game leave behind gifts for you. I’ve never seen this behavior since I never release any of the Pokémon I have. (Outside of specific situations...)

At least it was something useful.

After all of that, I moved onto Pokémon Brilliant Diamond Version to trade the Drapion I had. Thankfully, I found someone who was willing to trade something good to me. (Whatever that Pokémon is, you’ll just have to visit the Shiny Collection to find out.)

I was also fortunate to fight in a few battles. Naturally, I won them all. Even after 2 months, I’m still the best!

I should draw with my stylus more. (If only it wasn’t so terrible.)

I also managed to get another shiny Pokémon in a trade. The second shiny Unown I’ve ever owned!

It’s not an S. But it’ll do for now. (I could catch shiny versions of the other Unown and create a new Unown laboratory. But I think I’ll save that for later.)

JULY 20TH

I was kind of busy with schoolwork that day. I battled someone in Violet Version and I managed to get over whatever I was worried about the previous day. I even finished that assignment I mentioned earlier.

JULY 21ST

I managed to improve my battle skills. I feel like I can make smarter decisions now that my brain is getting the oxygen it needs.

I got a Charizard through an event. It has a Dark Tera Type. (Although, I don’t know why anyone would change it to THAT...)

I’m not sure WHY it has my name registered to it. (It was supposed to be someone else’s.)

I guess this makes Charizard the first event Pokémon I’ve caught that has a Classic Ribbon. (I should take him back to Sinnoh with me so I can win him even more ribbons.)

To improve my brain’s capabilities, I went to the academy to take on the Battle class.

I’m pretty sure the Treasure Hunt ended a month ago. (I hope I don’t cause any trouble by bringing a legendary Pokémon to this class.)

Then this class could become on par with the classes at Earl’s Pokémon Academy.

But it doesn’t completely restore their HP. (Most of the time...)

If they feel that way, they should have gone with a Pokémon that was right for the job.

The midterms are here already? I guess this class really is the one I excel at the most.

To be honest, an indoor area would be a more ideal place to hold a test like this.

A perfect A+. And THIS is what I get for it. (Captures the education system perfectly.)

Time to take on the last few lessons.

But will Auto-Battles increase a Pokémon’s specific stats?

Hopefully that hacker isn’t someone who comes to this school on a daily basis...

I wish the lessons in this class would go over stuff like this. Pokémon Stadium 2 went over battle basics in a much better way.

But what about Triple Battles? Or Sky Battles?

But they’ll be no good if their stats weren’t trained properly.

Eventually, I managed to complete the final exam and pass the class. Now that I’m done with this one, it’s off to Art.

JULY 22ND

When I was about to exit my dorm room, the map stated that Penny was somewhere in the main hall.

I mean, that WAS the plan for the admins, wasn’t it?

It HAS been a few months since they’ve reformed. Life should have improved for them in that time.

That should cover the previous week. I’d focus on battling more. But I want to go back to drawing. It’s been so long since I’ve sketched anything...

[esoraluco]

Here’s to hoping Spamt and Mtt’s similarities get explained one day.

[brandnewhuman]

I know everyone thinks of brahms as a selfish wall gremlin, and don't get me wrong he is, BUT hear me out:

I think brahms is that type of person who thinks of every possible way to make you feel special and seen. Like I can picture him writing down on notes quotes from books that made him think of you and then leaving them in random places for you to find. He likes to take your hand and with his index finger trace your soft ones cause he has read about it and wants to do it too.

Despite the popular belief I don't think he's like super horny. He finds much more comfort and pleasure on subtle and loving displays of intimacy such as kisses, hugs, touching your skin ecc cause I feel like, in his mind, having the hots for someone is not that difficult to fake but making you feel loved with such a simple a innocent touch is so much more harder. He's by nature really good at observing, having spent most of his life behind a wall, so he can catch easily those little details that can tell if you're true intentions are sincere when being nice to him. He knows very well when someone is being nice out of fear and not out love.

Since he likes music he would probably learn to play your favorite songs and would not tell you about it until he can play them perfectly. He knows he did a good job because your face lights up the same way it does when you're hearing the original version of the song.

He likes to steal your perfume to spray it on his bed so when there are times he has to sleep alone he can always feel like you're there with him.

Will remember everything you tell him. Seriously, this man does not gets tired of listening to you and what you have to say. He even makes a list of things that you particularly dislike or like just to know how to make you happy whenever you need it.

If you have physical or mental insecurities he notice them really fucking fast and does little and subtle things to help you feel more comfortable. He's reasoning is that he does with your insecurities what he would have liked someone doing with his.

Everything you had gifted to him (even flowers, please make him a flower crown notes, drawings ecc) has been place in a special spot in his room and that's what he mostly looks at after treating you bad. It reminds him that he's been unfair and he should apologise. Take it as a personal way of his to ground himself and to try to be better for you.

Overall he really deeply cares about you and does so many small things to show you that his love it's pure and unconditional. That even tho he knows he could get his way using violence and tantrums, he's putting an effort to make himself someone you could truly love without fear. That he can be patient and does like doing things for you without having to get nothing in return.

[not-a-coral-snake]

I couldn’t find any one-shots that were about Damen and Laurent spooning, so I wrote this one. Post-canon fluff, more or less.

“Laurent. Would you move closer?” says Damen, and while his voice when saying Laurent’s name had been tentative, by the end of the request his voice had been—wheedling is a fair descriptor, Laurent rules. Somewhere between wheedling and plaintive.

There is nearly an arm span of empty bed between them.

“Your wound,” Laurent reminds him. Damen has, in these last weeks, revealed himself to be an incorrigibly bad patient.

“I’ll let you know if you’re hurting it. And Paschal did say it wasn’t in danger of reopening any more, barring extreme exertion.”

‘Extreme exertion’ hadn’t been exactly how Paschal had put it. Paschal had been both a great deal more specific and a great deal less delicate.

And Damen is right that Laurent simply lying near to Damen, near enough to touch, is not likely to do the wound any damage now.

Laurent shuffles a little closer. Now he is lying next to Damen, close enough for his right shoulder to brush Damen’s left.

Laurent had been surprised, rather foolishly perhaps, when he’d moved into Damen’s bedchamber in Ios, at how natural it had felt to be sleeping alongside him. They may have only fucked a handful of times, but they had been sleeping side-by-side on the road to Ios for weeks, and before that they had spent a month sleeping in the same tent. Laurent has grown used to falling asleep to the sound of Damen’s breathing, to the vague but inescapable awareness of his presence.

Damen shifts, tucks an arm behind Laurent’s shoulders.

Laurent is aware that this is awkward, that he is not quite doing this right. Damen’s presence is familiar, comfortable. Physical contact is . . . Well, unfamiliar, certainly. Not unwelcomed. But. . .

Damen is still beside him, waiting for an invitation to do anything else. Or perhaps just accepting this, whatever this is, though the position can hardly be comfortable for him.

It’s just that for a long time now, Laurent has found comfort, found an ability to relax, in the feeling of sprawling surrounded on all sides by empty bed. He’s liked the feeling of waking up in Damen’s arms, the times it’s happened. He’s liked the feeling a lot. It’s just that he’s not sure how to replicate that feeling now. He’s not even sure that he can replicate it, or if he must rely on his unconscious self to make the decision to seek contact for him.

Slowly and with deliberate effort, Laurent tells his muscles to relax.

One of Laurent’s instructors in swordsmanship had been forever after Laurent to relax, to loosen his muscles in preparation for a quick response to the next strike rather than to tense them in anticipation of it. He tries drawing on that training now, taking note of his breathing, loosening first the muscles of his feet, then calves, proceeding upwards. He thinks it is probably helping at least a little.

He is not unaware of the absurdity of it all, that he needs to devote concentrated physical and mental effort to achieve the task of lounging with a lover. At least Damen beside him is graciously giving no sign that he finds Laurent’s manner in any way out of the ordinary.

It helps when Laurent thinks, how would I be lying if I were alone? It helps when Laurent thinks, how am I lying when I am asleep? When I wake up? He turns over onto one side, using the movement to nestle into Damen’s shoulder. He curls his knees forward slightly.

It helps still more when he begins to match his breathing to the steady slow rise and fall of Damen’s chest behind him. Damen turns over slightly too, so that Laurent’s back is pressed up against his chest. His other arm comes up around Laurent’s waist, hand resting on Laurent’s stomach. He moves slowly, deliberately, in the manner that Laurent has discovered is Damen’s way of saying, ‘nothing you don’t want.’ Of saying ‘stop me if you’d like.’

Laurent doesn’t stop him. He shifts backward, pressing their bodies closer together. And with a sigh that is half a yawn, he finds himself relaxing into the newfound comfort of Damen’s arms.