thinking about how I've seen OCD get talked about now, but haven't really seen many posts that actually explain what it is. And like, obviously people shouldn't get all their info about mental conditions from posts, but u can't deny that internet communities and stuff play a major role in people recognizing and putting names to their own experiences.
But like since the general public has like absolutely no idea of what OCD actually is (no thanks to popular media), and a lot of things I see talking about intrusive thoughts don't mention OCD (either bc they originated in OCD circles or bc intrusive thoughts aren't Exclusive to OCD or for some other reason), there should prob be more explanation put out on what OCD actually consists of.
Which is kinda hard in some ways, bc there are so many ways OCD can present in terms of what "themes" a person experiences, so someone talking about what their themes are might not ring a bell with someone who experiences different ones. But like, the core thing with OCD isn't the presence of certain themes, it's a specific pattern of spiraling thoughts and reactions.
Like. OCD is a mental condition/illness where people experience stressful, unwanted, repetitive thoughts. These are intrusive thoughts are what make up the "obsessions" part of the disorder. In response to these intrusive thoughts, a lot of people will perform certain actions or think certain things in an attempt to neutralize or disprove the threat they represent. These are the "compulsions" part of the condition.
For a more "traditional" example, someone experiencing intrusive thoughts that they might catch a communicable disease may obsessively wash their hands or google their symptoms to try to lessen the anxiety. While someone who is worried they might hurt someone (even though they very much do not want to hurt someone) may avoid being near sharp objects or may avoid the people they're afraid of hurting.
One of the issues with OCD is that performing the compulsions provides short term relief, but in the long term it only strengthens the stress caused by the intrusive thoughts, thus furthering the thought spiral and actively making it worse, to the point where, depending on your themes, you may be (almost) convinced that your intrusive thoughts represent the truth or the inevitable or something permanent.
Intrusive thought themes cam be literally anything, but some of the common ones are stuff like
Questioning your sexuality, gender, etc (what if I'm actually straight/gay/bi/trans/cis/etc?)
Being worried about losing control and hurting yourself or others physically, sexually, emotionally, basically any way (what if I want to kill someone? What if I'm a pedophile? What if I'm an abuser? What if I want to stab myself? Etc)
Fear of becoming or being sick
Worrying something bad will happen to you or people you care about
Worrying about your spiritual beliefs or lack thereof (what if I'm actually Christian? What if I'm actually atheist? What if i don't believe in the faith i ascribe to? Etc)
Worrying about relationship status (what if I don't actually love them? What if they're not "the one"? What if they're cheating? What if *I'm* cheating? Etc)
What if I'm a bad person?
Fear of losing things
Fear of things not feeling right (this is often be related to other themes via magical thinking. ex: if I don't have my things organized Just Right then something bad will happen)
Fear of unreality
Compulsions vary by theme a lot obviously, but some common ones include
Hand washing
Organizing things until they Feel Right
Checking and double checking and triple checking to make sure you did something correctly
Obsessively reviewing your memories to disprove a thoughtor make sure you don't believe something
Arguing against the thoughts in an attempt to disprove them
Testing your mental reactions to a thought or to certain kinds of content, to show yourself you don't actually believe or feel something
Obsessively googling symptoms, testimonies, things related to your thoughts
Obsessive prayer
Repeating phrases, mantras, affirmations, etc in an attempt to make thoughts go away
Avoiding things and situations that set off your intrusive thoughts
Repeatedly asking for reassurance from others ("I'm not being xyz, right?")
But yeah this obviously isn't exhaustive but, just, if this kind of thing sounds familiar, you should probably do some research on OCD, bc while intrusive thoughts can occur with other conditions, the intrusive thought-compulsion spiral is the core of OCD and isn't really a subaspect of depression/anxiety/ptsd/etc. and the treatment and management of OCD can look different from other stuff, so its a good thing to look into.
(Also it's important to keep in mind, esp if you're someone that doesn't have it, that someone's intrusive thoughts Are Not "secret desires" or "repressed urges" or anything the person even remotely wants to act on. Someone having harm-related intrusive thoughts is not at risk of actually acting on them, no matter how worried they are of doing so.)
Anyway this was a long post and I don't have a neat way to wrap it up and also I accidentally added a poll and now can't get rid of it so here's free poll. I'm running on nyquil and a small amount of straight gin (which works very well at numbing a sore throat) rn gnite
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Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the Straights
Had a video call with my brother Chuck the other day. Things got heavy:
KATE: Was Kurt Cobain a trans woman?
CHUCK: What?
Kurt Cobain. Rock musician. He was in a band called Nirvana.
I’m familiar with him, yes.
Was he a trans woman?
Um. No?
OK. Why not?
I mean, he wasn’t. It’s like asking why he wasn’t an astronaut.
He wasn’t an astronaut because he never went to space. Why wasn’t he a trans woman?
Because he didn’t transition. I mean, he didn’t ever say he was a woman, didn’t ever say he was trans. So no. Kurt Cobain wasn’t a trans woman.
So someone is trans if they say they’re trans. Self-determination.
That’s what you’ve told me. Is that wrong?
No, that’s right. We know ourselves better than anybody else can know us. If we say we’re trans, nobody can say we aren’t.
And Kurt Cobain never said he was trans.
So was I trans in 1994?
I don’t know, were you?
Yes, but if you’d asked me in 1994, I would have told you “no”.
So if I tell you I’m trans, I’m trans…
Right.
But if I tell you I’m cis, I might still be trans?
If you tell me you’re cis, I believe you.
That’s not the same thing as “I’m cis”.
That’s a really good point. This is sort of what some queer people are getting at when they say “gender is a construct”.
Come again?
Well, you’re cisgender, right?
As far as I know, yes.
Aha.
Hmmm?
You hedged. “As far as I know” isn’t the same thing as “yes”. “As far as I know” opens up the possibility that you could be trans and not know it.
It doesn’t seem terribly likely.
That’s an interesting statement. Early on in transition one of the biggest problems I had was dealing with the sheer unlikelihood of my being trans. I mean, I knew trans people existed. I knew somebody had to be trans. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that it would be me.
Do you think this is why you’re on this whole “Kurt Cobain was a trans woman” kick?
Hey now, I’m just asking questions. You know. Like J.K. Rowling is “just asking questions”.
Kate, you are literally wearing a T-shirt that says “KURT COBAIN WAS A TRANS WOMAN” on it right now.
Am I? Oh, shit. I thought I was wearing my “Skip school, take hormones, kill God” T-shirt. To your question, though - yeah, I do think that’s part of it. Honestly, the hardest thing about growing up trans was believing that nobody in the world had ever experienced what I was experiencing. I didn’t have any role models. I didn’t wonder if I was the only one. I was convinced of it.
So being able to say that this incredibly gifted songwriter, the voice of a generation, was a trans woman like you…
I need someone like that. I need to not be the first of my kind.
Of course you’re not the first trans woman.
No, but before a couple of years ago almost every trans woman would tell you they always knew, unquestionably and innately, that they were women.
So it’s not just about him being trans, but specifically his being a trans woman who didn’t know he was a trans woman.
An egg. Right.
Why Kurt Cobain, anyway? What’s so special about him that you’re trying to induct him into the Egg Hall of Fame?
He knew things. Things cis guys don’t know. Things I didn’t know until after I started transition. He understood women, what we’re like, what we experience. “Pennyroyal Tea”. “Rape Me”. I just have a hard time thinking of a cis man who could write songs like that.
It wouldn’t be the only way in which he was exceptional.
True. Ahhh. I don’t know. I mean, I know, I can give you all the reasons, but there’s something in his eyes.
Something in his eyes.
All the pictures of him. No matter what he’s doing. If he’s grinning, or sad, whatever he’s doing, you can see something trapped there. Trapped and in pain, wanting to get out but not quite knowing how.
Huh. You, uh, know that what you’re doing is pretty much the textbook definition of projection, right?
Maybe. Chuck, do you think I’m happier?
Since you transitioned?
Yeah.
Of course. Absolutely. Night and day.
Everyone says that, and honestly, I see it. Even in pictures, you know? I see it. You’ve seen some of my transition timelines, right?
You do look really different.
It’s not just me. Every single person who transitions looks like that. We look so much happier, so much more alive, so much more us. I don’t understand how anybody can hate us.
I don’t get it either, Kate.
And when I look at any timelines, I look at the before photos… and I see something in their eyes. Transmasc, transfem, doesn’t matter. There’s something trapped wanting to get out. Every picture I’ve ever seen of Kurt Cobain looks like the “before” picture on a transition timeline. It’s just that with him, there aren’t any after pictures.
And it’s not just the eyes, either. The way he dressed, the whole “grunge look”. It’s just literally egg fashion. We dress with total disregard for our appearance or how we look because no matter what we do it’s wrong.
“Egg fashion”, egg this, egg that… isn’t it a little bit anachronistic, judging him by 2022 standards, 2022 values?
Is it? Chuck, I was alive in 1994. I was an 18 year old egg. I know what that feels like. I know what that looks like. I lived that. Why didn’t I come out as trans in 1994? Because I didn’t have the opportunity. Because self-determination needs to be informed, and none of us were. None of us. Look. You know what he said to Melody Maker in 1991? “I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all.” That’s what he said.
Holy shit. Really?
Really. September 14, 1991.
Hold on, let me look that up. Oh, yeah, I see it. Look, if you look at the full quote he’s just saying he’s not a jock. Like he didn’t fit in with the jocks.
Well, what about the dresses?
What dresses?
Kurt Cobain wore a lot of dresses. Like, a lot, both onstage and off. On MTV in 1991, he said “It’s ‘Headbanger’s Ball’ so I thought I’d wear a gown.” He said in a 1993 interview, “I personally like to wear dresses. I wear them around the house sometimes.” This is not some shameful secret he kept hidden from the world. He was open about this. He was proud about this.
Yeah, but… it’s just clothes.
Except it’s not just clothes. Listen to his songs. Listen to his lyrics. “Should have been a son”. “I’m a lady, can you save me?” “Everyone is gay.” The original lyrics to “All Apologies” from his journals – “Boys write songs for girls. Let me grow some breasts.”
I mean they’re song lyrics. There are all kinds of ways to interpret song lyrics.
Sure. All kinds of ways. You ever read Michael Azerrad’s biography of Cobain, Come As You Are?
Nope.
Azerrad spent weeks talking to Cobain. He was Cobain’s biographer, but also his friend. And he has his own interpretation of the lyrics. For instance, Azerrad talks about all the lyrics about guns, and to me, now, I look at that, and I think of how he died, but Azerrad, when Kurt was alive, he looked at it another way. He thought it’s about dicks. “To paraphrase Dr. Freud,” he says, “sometimes a gun is just a gun. But not this time.” He talks about “Come As You Are”, where Kurt keeps singing “I swear I don’t have a gun.” That’s not my interpretation. That’s never been my interpretation. That’s what this cis man says. More than one cis man. Kurt says Dave Grohl’s dad, he said the same thing. Yeah. There are all kinds of ways to interpret lyrics.
“By this time,” Azerrad wrote, “one begins to wonder how Kurt rationalizes being a man at all. His first response is revealing. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Castration.’” I don’t wonder how Kurt rationalizes being a man. I rationalized ���being a man” in all kinds of ways. What strikes me is that he needed to rationalize being a man. Had to come up with some kind of excuse. It just strikes me kind of funny.
Kurt’s songs have meanings. The lyrics to “In Bloom”, Kurt was pretty explicit about that. The lyrics he wrote have meanings. “Heart-Shaped Box”. You know what that refers to? When Courtney Love was flirting with Kurt, Michael Azerrad says in Come As You Are, “She gave Dave (Grohl) a package to give to Kurt – little sea shells and miniature teacups and a tiny doll, all packed into a small heart-shaped box.” A tiny doll locked away inside a box shaped like a heart. That was what I felt like before I came out. A tiny phantom doll. Kurt and Courtney first kissed after a show at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago. Rumor was that they fucked against the bar, but they denied it. What actually happened, Azerrad says, is that “Courtney had a bag of lingerie with her for some reason and Kurt ended up modeling the contents.” And then they went to Kurt’s hotel room and they fucked.
You’re making it sound…
Maybe it was. Because you look at that and you think that if it was like that, it was perverted and wrong, because that’s what you were told, that it’s a sick fetish thing, and I look at it and it isn’t. To me, that’s normal. That Kurt Cobain was sexually aroused while wearing Courtney Love’s lingerie, that’s normal.
Kate, he was a punk! He hated jocks, and wearing a dress pissed off jocks, so he wore dresses. He talked about wanting to wear a dress and piss on a redneck A&R man’s desk! You think that was some kind of sex thing?
Sexuality is part of being a woman. Part. Rage – and Kurt Cobain had a lot of rage inside him – that’s another part. Am I interpreting, am I looking at things from my perspective as a trans woman? Yes, certainly, just like you’re interpreting, looking at it from your perspective as a cis man. When cis people interpret things, their conclusion is never “they were trans”. Never.
Ed Wood wasn’t a trans woman. He was just a transvestite. He was a man.
Pete Burns from Dead or Alive wasn’t a trans woman. Sure, he got all sorts of feminizing surgeries, but he never said he was a woman. Man.
Prince Nelson adopted a female persona, feminized his voice, and recorded a song about wanting to be a woman's girlfriend, but he was also a Christian and believed that being queer was wicked and sinful, and that's the identity of his we need to respect. Man.
Richard Wright, who wrote the Phish song “Halley’s Comet”, spent most of the 1980s telling everyone he knew he was a transsexual lesbian named Nancy, but after being consistently treated like shit changed his mind about that, so none of that counts for anything. Man.
Dave Carter was on HRT when he died, but he was just questioning. He didn’t tell anybody for sure that he was a woman. Man.
Quentin Crisp said just before he died that if he was younger, he absolutely would have transitioned, but wanting to transition isn’t the same as actually transitioning. Man.
All men. Always, always men, whatever they do, whatever they say. I know how that works. I was told all these same things about myself for decades, all these same reasons, and now, I don’t know, I guess people will make a personal exception for me, but for everybody else, the same old assumptions, the same old arguments, they still apply. They’re still legitimate.
I thought we were talking about Kurt Cobain.
And the only way to do that is to talk about him in isolation. There’s no larger context to consider, no bigger picture. I can’t really know. I can’t really judge.
I mean, everybody else does. I guess I can’t tell you not to. But all of this circumstantial evidence, all of the dresses and the lyrics that you I guess know the real meaning of – none of that makes him a girl.
Sure. And nothing can make him a girl. Because he’s dead. Because he killed himself.
Oh, here we go. After thirty years and countless speculation, you have at last uncovered the real reason Kurt Cobain killed himself – gender dysphoria. Do you have a book deal yet?
Working on it. And yes, people say a lot of stupid things about Cobain’s death, like it’s this big shock that this guy who hated himself and wanted to die killed himself.
Right. He was pretty well-known for being a heroin addict, which isn’t exactly something that improves one’s quality of life.
Sure, but why did he start heroin?
I don’t know. Why does anybody start heroin?
To help him cope with his eating disorder.
Wait, what? Eating disorder?
You don’t know about that? He had stomach problems, for a long, long time. He could only eat certain kinds of food, certain kinds of food that wouldn’t make his stomach hurt. Doctors looked but they could never find any organic cause for it. Nobody took it seriously. So he self-medicated with heroin. “It was my choice,” he told Azerrad. “I don’t regret it at all because it was such a relief from not having stomach pain every day.” I know, though. Lots of cis guys have eating disorders. Doesn’t mean anything.
Kate there’s a lot of interpreting going on here.
Yeah, I guess there is. Is that necessarily a bad thing, though? Is that necessarily wrong? Like. You’ve seen The Matrix, right?
Only the first one.
Yeah, that’s fine. So you know how important The Matrix is to a lot of trans women, right?
Yes, but I’m not really sure why. Just seems like a retelling of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” with extra fight scenes.
It’s pretty trans, though, right?
Clearly. It was directed by two trans women.
And trans women who watch it – eggs or otherwise – find their own lives and experiences reflected in it in ways that cis people, like you, don’t.
I guess, but the fact that it was actually made by two trans women carries a little more weight with me.
OK, but what if the Wachowskis had died in 2000? In, like… a car crash or something? Does that mean The Matrix isn’t a trans film?
Well, no, because it’s still a film made by two trans women.
A film made by two trans women that speaks to the trans experience, and that is recognized by living trans women as speaking specifically to the trans experience. The only difference is that, in this scenario, nobody knows the Wachowski Sisters are trans women. And we can’t prove it. We can’t possibly prove it, and nobody is going to just believe us when we say it’s a trans movie, that the Wachowskis were trans women, because they didn’t say it, they didn’t say the special magic words. Self-determination. You know what self-determination meant to Kurt Cobain? I remember seeing Courtney Love on television reading his note, I remember her interrupting to say that he was an asshole, that what he was saying was bullshit. She didn’t respect his self-determination.
Um…
“Pennyroyal Tea”. Cobain told Azerrad “It's a cleansing theme where I’m trying to get all my bad evil spirits out of me and drinking Pennyroyal tea would cleanse that away.” Pennyroyal is an abortifacient – but, Azerrad notes, only in lethal doses.
Hell, not just that song. The whole album. In Utero. The collage on the back cover, the one Cobain described to Azerrad as “Sex and woman and In Utero and vaginas and birth and death". The occult symbols surrounding it, taken from Barbara G. Walker’s The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects1. There was something inside Kurt Cobain, something inside him waiting to be born, but he was told, over and over, that it was a monster, so he killed it, the only way he could. By killing himself.
That could have been me. That could so easily have been me. I was told all the same things he was. We all were. When I was 27? When I was 27, I was addicted to benzos, benzos they prescribed me because I was trying to bury, trying to kill this thing, this thing I had inside of me. I was a zombie. Walking dead. When I quit, I quit cold turkey. Nobody told me about the withdrawal syndrome. Nobody told me it could have killed me. And if it had, everybody would remember me, everybody would think of me, as a cis man. Forever. They would perpetuate the Lie. That’s why I transitioned, why I chose to go through all the shit I went through. The writer and musician Margaret Killjoy, in 2017 she talked about what she went through the day before she came out:
“All I could think was: ‘Oh god, I don’t want to die a boy.’”2
I felt the same way, came out for the same reason. I figured no matter what I did, I was dead. I didn’t do it live, but to at least have an honest death. I genuinely believed transition would kill me.
It didn’t, though! You’re alive and you’re beautiful and I’m so, so glad for that. It didn’t kill you.
It could have. Still could. Transition has helped, has made it easier for me, but it’s not that way with everyone. People have been kind to me, in ways that they aren’t kind to other trans women. Others of us… aren’t so lucky.
Who are we respecting, exactly, by remaining silent about our shared experiences, our shared perspectives, things we see that you fucking don’t, that you can’t see? Of course I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that I’m trans. You can’t prove that you’re cis. Cis people, though, cis people never have to prove anything. Their prejudices are the null hypothesis3. If I was to go out there and say that Kurt Cobain was a cisgender man, would anybody say I was wrong? Would anybody object or complain? Even though my saying that is an anachronism, is meaningless. The word, the concept, it literally didn’t exist when Cobain died. Have you ever heard the word “agnotology”?
No?
It means making a false claim to ignorance. Claiming that we don’t know something that we do. That we can’t know something that we can. We know things now, Chuck. We know what the symptoms of gender dysphoria are. We know what it does to people. How eggs think. How eggs act. How eggs die. But we pretend we don’t. We still pretend. We pretend suicide is an individual act, even when we know it’s not, that the reasons for it are wholly personal. We pretend that when someone dies by suicide, their reasons for doing so die with them. And they don’t, Chuck. We’re still dying, still dying for the same reasons Kurt Cobain did. It’s not just that we aren’t allowed to recognize ourselves. We aren’t allowed to recognize each other. Individual choice or social contagion. Those are the options we’re given. And neither of them are right. Neither of them are who we are.
Kurt Cobain wrote, thought, talked, died like eggs do. I don’t care if he never said the magic fucking words. We know our own. We recognize each other. And if someone is alive? If someone is alive I will go my whole life without ever breathing a word. Because as long as we’re alive, we do choose, and that means we can choose ignorance. What I think, what I want, for someone else, for us, it doesn’t matter. I do that, I follow that code, for the benefit of one person – the egg themselves. Once they die, all bets are off. Omerta no longer applies. Kayfabe no longer applies.
To be queer is to be erased, to experience erasure. I still hear straight men arguing, as if they have any right to argue, as if they know, that Emily Dickinson was not a lesbian. Emily Dickinson! I’m supposed to listen to people who say this shit? I’m supposed to take them seriously when they say well, actually, calling Dickinson a “lesbian” is historically anachronistic, we can’t apply the standards of the present to the past, and Jesus fuck have you read her letters? She liked girls. She really liked girls. Kurt Cobain was a trans woman. Kurt Cobain was every bit as much a trans woman as Emily Dickinson was a lesbian. Refusing to say it isn’t “respect”. It’s perpetuating the crime perpetrated against Cobain, against every other trans woman who ever killed herself because of the lies we were told about ourselves. No more. Kurt Cobain was a trans woman. I can’t, as an individual, say that. I don’t have the right. No trans woman can say that, individually. But collectively? All of us together? The things we see in each other, we see those things in him too. Not all of them, and not all of us. Absolutely not all of us. But enough of us. Enough that we have the right. We have the right, and I will fucking say it, and if you don’t like that, you can go fuck yourself.
Kate, are you ok?
I’m fine.
Do you want a hug?
Fuck you, Chuck.
OK, well. I’m, uh. Gonna go to the other room. You should, uh. Drink some water. Stay hydrated. Love you, Kate.
Love you too, Chuck. Sorry.
Shhh. It’s OK, Kate. It’s OK.
1 Diane Purkiss criticizes the occult nature of Walker’s encyclopedia in "Women's Rewriting of Myth", in Carolyne Larrington (ed), The Feminist Companion to Mythology, London, 1992, p. 444: “In Donna Haraway's influential terms, these women may wish to be goddesses, but they are cyborgs all the same”. The work she’s referencing is Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”. Haraway was, it happens, an academic advisor to the trans woman Sandy Stone, and her “Cyborg Manifesto” was a pivotal influence on Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-Transsexual Manifesto”, one of the foundational works of transgender theory.
2 Margaret Killjoy, https://birdsbeforethestorm.net/2017/06/im-not-even-going-to-try-to-pass/
3 Natalie Reed, https://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/04/17/the-null-hypothecis/
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any hc for male reader x yandere batfam?? any of them will work. also the batboy didn't know he was bi at first (unless you're doing Tim). and the reader is dealing with internalized homophobia?
somethin short n sweet :]
Soft! Older! Yandere! Damian Wayne / Male Reader
> romantic
> tw/cw: internalized homophobia, references to violent homophobia
> word count: 723
> a/n: just something short and sweet...
> male reader can be cis or trans
"Study with me," is what Damian Wayne says, before placing a pile of books on your already-crowded table.
His clean cut appearance contrasts with the hipster, rustic interior of your favorite cafe. It’s not really his scene, as far as you’re aware. Both the decor and the abundant crowd.
You lean back in your chair, narrowing your eyes. "Wayne.” You have to try not to sneer.
You are acquainted with him, after all. His marks are always top of the class, and yours are always seconding. You’re at Gotham U entirely on scholarship, just having transferred from community college. You’re first in your family to go to college, period, and they were risking everything for you to be here. You had to be top of your class if you wanted to pursue your post-grad plans.
Always being second to this nepo-baby billionaire is a bitter knock to your self-esteem. You wince, feeling sharp pain on your ribcage. One you don’t need with all the other bitter knocks your classmates already give you.
You stare up at the man, wishing he hadn’t caught you in your seat. You blink, realizing that he isn't moving. "Wait, what did you say?" you ask.
“... I said, 'study with me.'" He elegantly lands in the seat across from you at the all-too-small table. "I’ll be sitting here.”
You gape at him.
“But– y-you don’t even like me…?” Damian had never spared you the time of day until … this day. You assumed you were a gnat to him at best. Just some brokie who managed to sneak his way into his school.
How utterly wrong you were.
Damian Wayne hadn’t expected to end up with anyone other than a woman, he supposed. It had been assumed of him during his childhood and he hadn’t questioned it. From a young age he had been aware of homosexuality, and that men could be attractive, but he hadn’t considered it for himself in any serious capacity.
Even Timothy coming out didn’t spur any curiosity from him. Despite his siblings teasing, his closeness to Jon was entirely platonic. So Damian just assumed, like the majority of the world, he was heterosexual. Until you had transferred into one of his classes and stole his breath away.
Damian’s eyes narrow and, if you can believe it, glimmer with interest. “I don’t recall ever saying that. For all you know, I could be quite fond of you.” His eyes lower to where your lips lie. “... Or at the very least, interested.”
You cheeks heat rise to your cheeks, before you flinch. There's no way. He didn’t mean it like that. Yet despite discerning his expression… Oh fuck, maybe he meant it like that? You panic, head snapping away from his. No– no. You are not going to be weird about this. You could have a friend here.
The last time you misinterpreted friendliness from your peers as romantic advances... Those bruises are still healing, still aching when you stretch and bend. Your stomach roils with hurt, fear, and betrayal – no. You weren’t going to repeat the same mistake this time. You’ve been ostracized from most of your peers by now. ‘Pervert’ and ‘predator’ they named you. But maybe… you could have a friend here.
In your silence, Damian finds tendrils of curiosity churning in his stomach. He wants desperately to talk to you. To hear you speak. To listen to you talk at length about the lectures he finds so droll, but you find rapturing. Test scores meant nothing. He may be better at memorizing the text, but he’s read your essays. He clears his throat, lifting his chin on instinct to feign confidence.
You look up at him shyly, before realizing you’ve been mulling in silence like a freak for the past few minutes. Damian doesn’t mind, having been able to openly admire you.
You cough, trying to ease the confusion thrumming in your veins. “... Well, fine. I could use a sounding board.”
“Shall we start with the next test review?” Damian offers, flipping open a book.
You perk up, having been about to suggest lighter reading rather than the dense, metaphysical chapters your professor recommended. You nod fervently, lips curling to Damian’s delight.
“Yes, please,” you say, metaphorical tag wagging.
New friend, new friend, you inwardly cheer.
Damian’s thoughts run considerably more romantic.
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