#it still feels unfinished but if I sit on this any longer ill actually just collapse

[bluesnailsstuff]

its the one and only :]

[secretobsessionstuff]

the one recent anon about gentle caretaking is so so right, can you actually write something with that as a prompt for micah and alexi? both holding by the waist while the sickee is sick in the sink AND then by the forehead when it gets too intense in front of the toilet again. no scat please

I love this prompt so much and I had so much writing it! I hope you love it!! Thank you to the other anon who got this prompt started ❤

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When Alexi went to bed at midnight, he was surprised to find the light on in the bedroom.

He had been looking forward to pulling Micah’s sleeping body closer to him as he himself fell asleep. Most nights he came to bed much later than Micah. It was their ritual. Alexi would wrap his arms around his boyfriend and fit himself perfectly into place. Half-awoken by the motion, Micah would make the cutest sound upon realizing that he was once again safe in the arms of someone who loved him.

Alexi was unusually eager for tonight’s ritual because he hardly saw his boyfriend all day. Micah was working on his manuscript non-stop to meet the upcoming deadline. The tight schedule meant that he needed to be alone. The boy was writing like he was running out of time…because he was. It was a particular exhausting stage in the process because his editor covered the document in red writing. As far as Micah was concerned, the red markups were nothing but blood—blood that marked the death of his favourite irrelevant scenes, the cleverest yet confusing lines, and the fun yet unnecessary side characters. Yes, killing your darlings is a taxing process that took all of Micah’s time and energy, and as Alexi would discover, his health.

There might as well have been an invisible Do Not Disturb sign on the bedroom door. The unyielding typing from inside the room also served as a reminder for Alexi that he couldn’t demand attention whenever he wanted it. He couldn’t just walk in and smother Micah in kisses until he did something with him. Now bedtime was Alexi’s only chance to be with Micah when he wasn’t distracted.

But the opening sentence still remains: the light was on in the bedroom.

Alexi stood confused on the other side of the door. This didn’t look like bedtime. Not hearing any typing from inside the room, he walked in to find that it looked a little bit more like bedtime. Micah was asleep, but at his desk. He wasn’t nicely tucked into bed. His head was resting on the desk next to his laptop. The screen was black.

“Micah? Alexi said quietly as he came over to his boyfriend. He clicked the space bar on the keyboard, making the screen come to life. So much red.

Micah never fully turned off the computer before falling asleep. His own sleep looked just as shallow as the computer’s. His back rose and fell sharply, and his breathing matched. He didn’t look restful at all.

“Micah, wake up, mon amour.” Alexi shook his boyfriend awake who shot up from the desk. Alexi was quick to grab hold of his shoulders. “Easy, you’re okay. You fell asleep while working.”

Micah squinted and put a hand up to the side of his head. His neck hurt from the awkward way in which he passed out. “What time is it?”

“Midnight…you never went to bed. Are you alright?” Alexi didn’t like the dazed look on his boyfriend’s face. His eyes were glassy and bloodshot, like they reflected what was on the computer screen.

“I wanted to finish the chapter,” Micah said while sinking back into the chair. His gaze sluggishly travelled to the screen. The late hour and the unfinished work made him groan and put his head in his hands. Like a slow-moving landslide, Micah dragged his hands down his face, rubbing his eyes deeply. It only irritated his already blotchy skin.

Alexi watched his over-worked boyfriend curiously. There was something romantic about a dishevelled writer. But this romanticized version did not belong on Micah. Alexi didn’t want a melancholic, candle-lit boyfriend who captured the essence of dark academia. He just wanted a boyfriend who slept well and who took care of himself.

The boy before him was not well. Alexi knew this even before touching Micah’s forehead. He knew it while he lightly traced his fingers over Micah’s cheek. He knew it for certain when he lifted Micah’s face with a hand under his chin. Micah’s laptop wasn’t the only thing overheating.

The boy’s eyelids drooped, forcing Alexi to crane his neck to make eye-contact. “Love, you need to go to bed. You’re burning up.”

“But I told Shannon I would have these chapters done by tonight.”

“Well Shannon is going to have to wait, isn’t she?” Alexi said as he grabbed Micah’s hands to help him up from the chair. Alexi quickly found himself supporting much of his weight as Micah’s head came crashing down onto Alexi’s chest. The boy let out a low moan. “I’ve got you. Are you still okay?”

“…’M dizzy.” Either Micah was having a stroke or was too tired to speak because the words came out in cursive. “…don’t feelgood.”

Micah proved his point (not that it needed more proof) by vomiting on the floor between their feet. The only reason he didn’t fall forward was that Alexi held onto his shoulders as he heaved.

“Oh gosh,” Alexi muttered under his breath. “Oh, you’re really sick, but that’s okay.” He said it so quietly that Micah wouldn’t even have heard it. He was telling himself that everything was okay.

Thankfully, Micah didn’t immediately heave up everything in his belly. The countless cups of coffee and handfuls of crackers were still nauseatingly churning in his gut. This gave him the chance to breathe and moan in pain.

He lifted his head slowly, making his tearful eyes look like pleading puppy-dog eyes. After wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he spoke with a voice so thickened by illness. “…my stomach hurts.”

Alexi allowed himself a second to feel broken-hearted by his boyfriend’s pain. Then that second was over, and he had to ease that pain just a little. “I would never have guessed it. Now, come on.”

The small intermission gave Alexi the chance to practically drag Micah to the bathroom. He could tell it wasn’t over by the way Micah kept a hand over his mouth. At least the toilet would be a better place to throw up than on the floor.

But Micah’s belly had other ideas. His sick and stubborn stomach couldn’t wait the two seconds that it would take to reach the toilet. As soon as Alexi got him to the bathroom, Micah made a sharp turn for the sink.

This round was much more productive than the last. A torrent of bitter black coffee and whatever other snacks Micah had for dinner filled the sink rather quick. Even the sight of it made Micah heave again.

As he continued to vomit, his vision blurred and blackened around the edges. Seeing the contents of his stomach was no longer the problem. The new problem was being unable to stand.

Alexi noticed the way his boyfriend leaned heavily on the counter and the way his legs wanted to give out. He switched from rubbing Micah’s back to holding him at the waist to keep him steady. It was oddly close to how he pulled Micah into his arms for their nightly ritual. This was not how he envision the night going.

“Don’t worry about holding yourself up, Micah,” Alexi said while spotting the white-knuckle grip that his boyfriend had on the edge of the sink. “I won’t let you go. I’m not leaving.”

Micah loosened his grip ever so slightly. He leaned back further against the body that kept him up.

After a few minutes of this, Alexi was startled by a change in sound. The heaving seemed to shift into choked sobs, each retch ending with a guttural moan. Eventually, Micah was left panting over the sink with saliva dripping from his lips. Actual sobs made his whole body shake. He tried not to look at himself in the mirror because he knew a dark-eyed stranger would stare back at him.

“Micah, are you…okay? Are you done?”

Micah shook his head to say no, shaking loose strings of bile that hung from his mouth. “I don’t want to do this anymore…I’m so tired, Lexi.”

Micah was tired. Tired of the stress he put upon himself. Tired of thinking that his worth came solely from his writing. He was tired of holding himself up when all he wanted was to let someone else carry the burden for a while. Alexi was so good to him. He carried the physical burden, that was Micah himself, so well. It was well past midnight now. Decades seemingly have gone by while Micah’s body broke down from the fatigue. Alexi knew that he was tired from heaving his guts up, but he was more than just physically tired. Unfortunately, Micah didn’t have the strength to tell him about the other kind. Fortunately he didn't have to.

“I know. I know, it’s exhausting.” Starting with his hands on Micah’s waist, Alexi gently trailed his fingers up the boy’s back. He felt as if there were a barrier between him and Micah. He couldn’t get as close as he wanted. All the gentle touches in the world couldn’t take away the pain. Still, Alexi didn’t take his hands away from his boyfriend, hoping that he was providing some comfort.

He also knew that touch was not the only way to offer comfort. “I know it’s exhausting to feel like you need to finish this project so that your life will have meaning. I see you everyday, working so hard to make your dreams come true. It’s tiring to do what you do. But you should know that taking a break does not mean that you’re giving up. You’re tired, I know, so sit down for a moment and lean on me.”

Micah listened. He exhaled slowly, letting the tension go from his shoulders. He let Alexi lower him to the ground, where they both sat in front of the toilet. Micah wanted to say so much, but…

He was breathing hard again. Alexi eased the pain in his mind, but the pain in his belly persisted. There was one last round before relief.

Micah’s head was heavy. Heavy with worries and pain. It was a struggle to hold his head up while another weak wave of watery vomit fell from his mouth.

Every muscle in his body wanted to betray him. His neck almost let go, but then something stopped his head from falling towards his chest. It was Alexi’s hand on his brow.

“Ugh…thank you,” Micah said breathlessly in between gags.

“I told you, I’m not leaving.” Alexi kept one hand on the boy’s forehead and the other on his back. “I’ve got you.”

And so, Micah’s stomach finally calmed down after his over-worked and under-fed body decided that was enough punishment for the mistreatment. An event like this certainly wouldn’t happen again because Alexi was going to make sure that Micah got enough sleep, and proper food, and down-time.

“Are you done?”

“Yes,” Micah said with a hint of a smile. He was already falling backwards into Alexi’s embrace.

[make-me-imagine]

Submission by @thebookbakery; this is their first published fic, so I hope you guys enjoy it, and let them know what you think!

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Bruce Banner (MCU) x Female!Reader (sorry…)

Warnings: Reader with mental illness, so much fluff, code green (but dw, Hulk is a softie)

Marvel Taglist: @aquariuslavenderhoney

Fic Written by: @thebookbakery 

Go check out their new fic blog @trashywritestrash !!!

—–

Bruce’s POV

  I shove my head in my hands, closing my eyes in a desperate attempt to calm my mind; even though I know it’s pointless. My thoughts have been bouncing around all day, leaving me unable to focus on any task for longer than thirty seconds. Even as they run circles in my head, my thoughts keep making their way back to her.

  Y/N has been avoiding me for the past four days. But, to be fair, it’s not only me that she’s been avoiding. Wanda and Bucky noticed it too, but when I asked, they told me to let her come back in her own time. I understand why they would say that; but it’s getting increasingly difficult to hold myself back from knocking on her bedroom door. I’ve never been the type to be that direct- especially when it comes to women- but these past couple of days have been driving me to my wits end. I thought I was just worried, like any good friend would… But that’s not it. Tony’s daily ritual of annoying me while I try to work made me realize that I’m not worried I did something wrong.

  I miss her.

  Normally, she would come into the lab with enough coffee to kill a horse and sit with us. She would occasionally help me with an equation or grab Tony some tool he needed- but Y/N mainly stayed to keep us company. She’d join in on jokes and keep us from losing our minds to an unfinished project or a lack of sleep. I miss having her sit on an empty desk and read my screen over my shoulder. I miss seeing the sparkle in her eyes when we’d explain what we’re planning next. What I miss most is simply hearing her laugh at something I said. It’s nice. Knowing that Y/N enjoys my company. Or, at least, she did.

  I have no idea what time it is, but it must be late. The compound is dead silent, and it’s pitch black outside. Suddenly, I can feel the other guy clawing at my brain, trying to take control. My head feels as if it’s splitting open, my eyes watering as a searing pain shoots from my temples outwards. The reflection of my face on the desk shows green veins appearing.

Oh no.

Y/N’s POV

  I feel nothing but the cool water lapping at my ankles. My mind has been almost blank for the past week. This isn’t new, it’s basically a routine by now. Every once in a while, my head will empty, save for a few thoughts here and there. I won’t feel emotions, and when I do, they are so watered-down that I wonder if they’re real or if it’s just a reflex I’ve picked up after faking it for so long. When I get like this, I hide. I stay in my room, only leaving when necessary. I speak in short sentences, if at all. They don’t need to see me like this. I’m not fun, I don’t speak up, I sit on the couch and zone-out the whole time. Words will go in one ear and out the other, leaving only a small trace behind. I don’t want this version of me to be all they can see.

  So here I sit with my feet in the pool at three in the morning because I can’t fall asleep. The pool is my usual choice on these nights. If anyone has a nightmare, they’ll go to the kitchen or the common room. No one comes out here. Especially not at night.

  I take steady breaths, keeping myself calm. My eyes drift shut as tears slip out and land on my pajama bottoms. I lift my hand to cover my mouth as I sniffle, not wanting to make noise. The worst part of this is that I don’t have a reason for crying. I just feel like I need to get it out.

  As I wipe my tears away, I hear movement behind me to my left and quickly turn. Years of spy training and paranoia helps in the reaction time department. My eyes widen.

  “Bruce?” Loud footsteps approach and I realize that isn’t Bruce. The large green figure steps closer, dropping onto the ground beside me, “What are you doing out?”

  “Hulk heard pretty girl cry,” He mumbles, not wanting to be loud. Y/N wonders if he’s being quiet out of courtesy or fear.

  “I’m okay, big guy. But what about you? Are you okay? Did Stark do something stupid again?” He gives a small shake of his head.

  “Y/N cry.”

  My chest tightens slightly, “You… you came out just to check on me?” Hulk hums in agreeance, looking down into the clear blue water of the pool. “That’s sweet of you.”

  After a moment of silence, Hulk glances over at me. When our eyes meet, he looks back to the pool and gently slides in, careful not to splash. Although he went slowly, Hulk is so large that the water overflows and spills over the edges of the tile. It soaks my bottom, but I don’t care; it’s just water. I give him a smile as he steps in front of me, “What are you doing?” the depth of the pool makes him slightly shorter than me, causing me to look down the tiniest bit to see his face.

  “Pretty girl still sad,” he answers simply. I huff out a laugh.

  “Why do you call me that?”

  “Hulk think Y/N pretty,” Hulk looks down, like he’s nervous.

  I roll my eyes with a soft chuckle, “Well, you need to meet more people,” he looks back up at me.

  “Puny Banner think Y/N pretty too,” my eyes widen slightly.

  “Really?” I feel my face heat up, but I try to keep calm. I don’t want to get my hopes up. So, what if he thinks I’m pretty? That doesn’t automatically mean he thinks of me as anything more than a friend.

  “Yes,” I take a moment to collect my thoughts before Hulk asks, “Why pretty Y/N so sad?”

  After taking a deep breath, I explain, “Sometimes… my mind goes blank and I- I feel kind of empty?” Knowing he’s probably confused, I elaborate, “Do you remember that shell I showed you? It was small and pink- you called it fragile.”

  His eyes light up a bit as he nods, starting to get it, “Remember how I told you that a crab used to live inside of it, like a home?” Another nod, “Well… I kind of feel like a shell without a crab. It’s empty, and it just sits there until it’s useful again. When I feel like that, it’s sometimes hard for me to feel happy.” Hulk seems to get it but doesn’t say anything. Then, suddenly, he goes underwater. I watch curiously as he resurfaces, cheeks puffed out full of water. He looks up and puckers his lips, spurting water from his mouth like a roman fountain. And for the first time in the past week, I laugh. It’s quiet, subtle, but it’s real; and it feels good. Hulk sees and smiles when he’s done. Looking at him now, in this moment, it’s even harder for me to understand how people could be afraid of him. Hulk may look big and scary, but he’s a sweetheart.

  “Y/N happy?” I couldn’t stop my smile if I wanted to.

  “I am now.”

  He looks excited, “Hulk make Y/N happy?”

  “Yes, you do,” He smiles wide and steps forward, setting his head on your lap. He’s so precious. Carefully, I slide my fingers into his sopping hair, gently massaging his scalp. His eyes fall shut as he stays where he is. I’m completely soaked now, but I couldn’t care less- the incredible Hulk himself is snuggling me like a puppy and it’s adorable.

  I don’t know how much time passes like this. Eventually, Hulk pulls away with a frown, “Puny Banner want out.” I reach out to cup his cheek, causing him to lean into my touch with a content smile.

  “That’s okay, isn’t it? You can see me again soon.” I use both my hands to pull his face closer to mine, allowing me to place a small kiss on his forehead. He nods slowly.

  “Bye-bye pretty Y/N,” And with that, he begins shrinking. I move my hands under his arms so that Bruce doesn’t drown as soon as he wakes up. When he’s back to normal, he immediately shoots up and looks around frantically.

  “Bruce- it’s okay, you’re okay! I’m right here,” he calms down and leans his arms against the edge of the pool to hold himself up.

  “Oh my- Y/N! Are you okay? Are you hurt?!” He begins looking over me for any injuries.

  “No, no, I’m okay. He didn’t hurt anyone,” once he relaxes some, he places his head in his hands. Bruce didn’t move far after transforming, so he’s still close enough for you to comfortably place your fingers back into his hair.

  “Y/N… Are you okay?”

  I sigh, “Bruce, I promise you, Hulk did not hurt me,” he tenses slightly.

  “I wasn’t talking about him…” I get the message and remove my hand from his hair.

  “I’m sorry. I was playing with Hulk’s hair before, but I shouldn’t have assumed that you’d be okay with it too,” he looks confused. “You’re two different people with two different opinions. Just because he likes something, that doesn’t mean you like it too.”

  “Actually,” Bruce looks down in his attempt to hide a blush, “I, uh… I do kinda like it. It feels… It feels nice.” I smile softly and nod, continuing the motions I was using on Hulk, getting a very similar reaction.

  Bruce opens his eyes and looks up at me, not speaking until our eyes meet and are locked for an amount of time that is probably too long for ‘just friends’.

  “Are you afraid of him?” I shake my head no, “Why not?”

  I hold back my giggles, “Because you’re both big babies.”

  His eyes widen slightly with curiosity, “What did he say that would make you think that?” The laugh escapes before I can stop it.

  “Let’s see… He came out just because he heard me crying and wanted to check on me, then he called me pretty. After all that, he spit water out of his mouth like a fountain to cheer me up,” Bruce smiles softly, but it falls as he thinks on the words.

  “Wait… What did he call you?” He sounds nervous. I was hoping he’d overlook that, but I guess I’m not that lucky.

  “Hulk kept calling me ‘pretty girl’ or 'pretty Y/N’,” suddenly feeling shy, I continue, “He’s actually really sweet when you get to know him…” My voice trails off as I worry if I said too much. I know Bruce doesn’t like talking about Hulk, especially right after switching back. However, he only seems to blush at my words.

  “Did he- uh, did he say anything else?” Bruce is looking down at his hands, fidgeting nervously like a child who is afraid he’s going to be yelled at. As if the skies finally clear on a cloudy day, I get an idea as to why he is acting this way. Against my better judgement, I speak up.

  “He said that you do too… That you think I’m pretty, I mean!” I press my lips together tightly, trying to form a seal. Maybe if my lips fuse together, it’ll finally get me to shut my mouth before I make a fool of myself rather than after. Alas, it doesn’t work, “Hulk probably only said that to make me feel better though, so don’t worry.”

  Bruce tenses up at the mention of that. I open my mouth to apologize, but he beats me to it, “No, he didn’t. I- um… I do… think that you’re pretty…” His face flushes beet red and he refuses to meet my gaze. I slowly inch my hand closer to his until they are on top of each other. Carefully, he interlocks our fingers, obviously still scared that he might hurt me. I give his hand a gentle squeeze, causing him to look up.

  “Thank you.”

  We spend the next few minutes in total silence, staring at our joined hands and appreciate how calm this moment is. No missions, no aliens, no Loki, and most importantly- no Tony. I don’t think either of us could do this with him teasing us the whole time. Bruce moves his hand and, for a second, I’m afraid he’s going to pull away. Instead, he holds both of my hands in both of his, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles lovingly.

  “Y/N, would you… Would you like to go to dinner with me?”

  I quickly- probably too quickly- nod, trying to conceal my smile. After realizing how desperate I must look, I pull myself together, “I’d love to, Bruce.”

  His eyes shine in the moonlight as he smiles wide. Keeping his hands in mine, I pull them up to my face and plant gentle kisses on his knuckles. We just stay there, blushing and grinning like idiots as we bask in the comfort that comes with not being alone. No words are spoken, but they don’t need to be. I look into his eyes and I can feel the warmth and love radiating from him. And I will do everything in my power to show Bruce that I trust him and Hulk. That I am not afraid of him and never will be.

Tony’s POV

  “Did I just see that right?” asks Steve as he stares in disbelief at what we just witnessed.

  “Do we need to get you bifocals, grandpa? I knew you were old, but I didn’t think your eyesight was that questionable yet,” I quip as I slide my phone back into my pocket.

  F.R.I.D.A.Y alerted me as soon as the code green began. I woke Steve on my way to where the big guy was, but when I saw what was happening, I held Cap back. Y/N has a special effect on Hulk, we all know it. This only proves it. Steve scoffs at my comment, but I don’t care, it’s about damn time Bruce talks to her. Y/N is good for him, she makes him happy… They both deserve to be happy, to feel loved. If they can do that for each other, who are any of us to call it dangerous.

  Steve looks back at them through the sliding door, “What do we do now?”

  Bruce looks so happy. He’s never happy after going green. We can’t see Y/N’s face from this angle, but I can only guess how she must feel right now. For being a couple of Earth’s mightiest heroes who kick ass for a living, they seem content. Peaceful even.

  “We go back to sleep.”

[kitreadsbirdmen]

Birdmen Finale Thoughts

A Reflection on the End

Birdmen checked a lot of boxes for me. The most superficial being wings and flying, concepts that I would imagine from the window of a speeding car or subway train. I can’t say I was attracted to the freedom of the idea, that frankly scared me silly. But it was fascinating enough, and it preoccupied this small part of my imagination from time to time with the pull of the absolutely inexplicable. What if… What if something happened? What if I were different or strange? How would everyone react? What would I do? How would I change or what would I do to fight that change?

These thought experiments often led me to self-indulgent stories with fantasitcal premises that would only halt the speculation and sweep their characters towards their own plots and narratives. They would only glance over to the vastly more interesting human fallout of the [insert truly miraculous phenomenon] for the sake of episodic drama or a comedic take. These would deep down be very disappointing to me because they failed to give weight to the mind-spinning concept of the supernatural. By brushing past it, the story would dismiss my biggest questions, the ones I felt a morbid curiosity to see explained vicariously. That’s probably why I was so hooked to Birdmen at first. 

Birdmen was and is... rather mundane if you think about it. Grounded, set in a recognizable reality, gave nuance to very human quirks and details of life and society. Kinda dull-ish, slightly charming, and depressing, with all the same desire for something more that we feel when we watch the clock tick away. And even the murmurs of the supernatural had this incredulous air. Something amusing and perhaps hard to dismiss nevertheless. And as our cast is thrust into this new spin on reality, it’s given weight and time. Growing pains full of stumbling youth shenanigans and strife. The Introductory Arc is some masterful execution of humanity as the line of a new species skirts more and more into a diverging reality. It’s here that a very different kind of strength is capitalized on. The limitless potential found within limitation itself.

The core concept and primary conflict of birdmen comes from the subtle utilization of a grounded scientific and philosophical school of thought. This limits the entire narrative to concepts inspired not by the dramatic needs or visual aesthetic, but by the imagination of existing science itself. While a lot of things can boast this particular source, I think Birdmen is very conservative with where it could go. The most outlandish things are noted but not abused. Nothing is absurd no matter the demand. It’s the reason why I found the lore behind the growing science and discovery of the Seraph abilities to be immersive. It’s why I could create a million 1st ability ideas, headcanons, and theories (some of which would actually get confirmed) in one sitting. The source material existed within limits and therefore opened the door to boundless potential. 

To put it in a word, it’s realistic.

Realistic characters, events, ‘villains’, powers, relationships, conflicts… the list goes on. When we pick up a story we suspend our disbelief to welcome the basic empathy and logic to engage us through the world. But I felt a strange relationship with that process on so many levels for Birdmen. It’s why talking about it in-depth is such a hard to explain feeling. When fictional characters have all the nuance and depth as a real person. When wide-scale event scenarios start reflecting the common trends of the current mediascape. When manga-panels start echoing peer-reviewed articles… It becomes hard to see the need to suspend disbelief. At least not in the same way. It makes things seem so much more possible. Everything feels so much more personal.

The current pandemic has helped in this process of course. My life has been turned upside down and I often find myself asking ‘dude is this (still) happening???’. It makes a lot of stories and speculative fiction narratives seem a lot closer. But then the final arc of Birdmen introduces its own pandemic SEVERAL months before covid-19 is first spotted and we see a roll-out of cultural fallout that is eerily familiar. WHO press conferences following the resignation of Eden’s director. Forgetting your mask as you leave to greet your son’s arrival home. Teachers taking a sick day for themselves or perhaps out of caution (if only that worked state side lol). Misinformation and tension across social media. Unrest and riots in the street. (that image of Robin’s flock watching the riot from a distance got me big time. Mostly because I was thinking about the Capitol riots at the time). I think I just needed a chapter devoted to a successful and seamless vaccine distribution to set my resonating heart at ease.

...I’m not kidding there actually. We can’t just assume it went off without a hitch Tanabe. Can I get some wish-fulfillment here??

That actually brings me to a big takeaway as I read the final chapters. In my initial reflection, (and entire year ago) I talk about how I was certain Birdmen was prematurely cut short. And while there is probably a world Takayama could witness in his multiverse seeing eyes, where Birdmen runs for several more volumes and the playout of years of arcs goes much longer, I ultimately want to rescind that thought. 

I don’t think the ending was rushed. I don’t think Tanabe was racing against a clock to wrap things up. I don’t think she was dropping million plot threads into the void out of necessity. It is very clear at every point toward the end that Tanabe knew exactly where she was going and was taking a straight shot to that destination at every point. 

Yes, there are some characters that did not get a long enough time in the spotlight. Yes, there is a boundless potential to explore with many characters and concepts. Yes, there is an element of fallout that was left unaddressed. But this doesn’t make it unfinished or unsatisfying. The mundane, realistic nature of the narrative, allows this lack of tangible book-ends. It has uncertainty. The resolutions are not perfect. Not every person in your life is going to shine in the same way (no matter how much you like them). Their purpose in the narrative may seem small but has ripples of effects on the characters and chemistry of the collective. This is not wasted. I knew this wasn’t rushed because the primary themes of these characters came through and they were given all the space and time and panels they needed to tell that story. I noted this most when Robin was having that discussion with Agent Leo about her address to the media at the White House. The back and forth and revelations of Robin’s entire arc were expressed in this one conversation and it lasted several pages. This is the final volume of the story and this nuance is getting the full dry clean treatment. How can I claim that this was rushed? If I had to claim any ill intent I might say we would have gotten a few more chapters of proper fallout, but that would only be for the sake of neatness. But as I mentioned there is something grounded about taking that away and leaving that to the imagination. 

And thus, I’m left feeling incredibly satisfied. So impossibly satisfied. Birdmen has become something so integral to my life and I feel changed having known and loved it. To see it take a bow as gracefully and profoundly as it did fills me with a personal satisfaction I cannot put into words. This is and will forever be, one of the finest stories I will ever read. 

There is a part of me refreshed. Inspired by the daring embrace of reality. Charmed by the beautiful characters. Intrigued by the possibilities still to be discussed. I am almost left a little overwhelmed with how much I want to do as a response, both for the sake and honor of Birdmen and for my own personal motivations. It’s a kind of weightlessness, burdened by crippling fear. 

It’s a lot like flying really. 

[brideofcthulhu10]

How would the Lost boys react to having a motherly type of s/o?

OH MY GOD I DIDN'T KNOW TUMBLR POSTED THIS UNFINISHED! UGH STUPID APP! Okay, redo!

Cuuute. The boys could certainly use a motherly touch around, even Max had said that when he wanted to turn Lucy. For this I am gonna be writing a female s/o, if you ever want otherwise always be sure to specify ahead of time otherwise DM me and I’ll be sure to correct it. I love the idea one behind the scenes with the boys, after the late night partying and wild blood orgies. I mean, let's be realistic here- those guys probably smell like cigarettes and ass. That cave is no doubt absolutely filthy as hell, and I don’t think they’ve cleaned up a day of their afterlife. 

Lost Boys with a Motherly Fem!S/O

David

Now David isn’t exactly the type to be told what to do in almost any scenario. Well, almost. But even then he still prefers the majority of the control. It’s going to be a challenge to get anything done with him. Any sort of lectures or advice tend to fall on deaf ears simply because he and the boys have taken care of themselves for so long. Your best method of choice? STEALTH

I’m serious, you gotta be sneaky with this boy. He’ll wake up to you cleaning the hotel because you had assumed it was still daylight, or sweeping around when they go on hunts. Don’t fuck with the cobwebs, its an aesthetically pleasing decoration! Frankly, he’s just a brat who doesn’t like change. It’s gotten to the point however, where he can’t exactly stop you so he just decides to be a butt about it. Take-out trash litter the hotel lobby, he’ll even leave out half-full open containers and try to get some real maggots up in there. Not if you have anything to say about it! Sometimes he wonders how you can keep it as clean as you do.

You have no idea how absolutely rank a pack of teenage vampires can be. Especially with unwashed clothes. Seriously, David and Paul’s boots could make rats gag, the stank of unwashed vamp toes is gnarly. That can be a bit of a fight. Well someone has to get all those bloodstains out! What do you think they just vanished the next day? None of the boys want clean clothes, especially David. According to them you can't be badass vampires and have fresh pants. He’ll even hide his jacket from you on laundry day. How is he supposed to instill fear in the hearts of mortals when his jacket smells like FUCKING LAVENDER?

God help you if you try to make him bathe. The only way he’d concede is if you really went all out. Play to his ego, its the best way to get him to cooperate. After all, what man doesn’t want to be a king for a day. Especially one such as David. Once you finally, FINALLY get him in, then it's a fight to get him out. He’ll let off soft grunts when you massage shampoo through his scalp, leaning his head back with low, grumbling moans. Sometimes he’ll have you join him, even if you aren’t undressed. Yeah, he doesn’t care if you have your clothes on, time to get in. It's hotter when he sees your shirt tightly clinging to your bodice, although he'll huff that you had a bra underneath. If you try to peel off the soggy articles he won't let you. After all, if you got to strip him down, he gets to do the same to you. He'll take his time, and keep in mind the water isn't about to be clean for much longer.

Despite his protests, and he’d never admit it to the rest of the pack, but he really does love having someone caring for him. Being spoiled by his lover has some advantages, especially after a stressful day. Just laying back, having you rub his shoulders for a good minute, maybe suggesting he come over to your apartment and let you cook him a real meal for once. Sure you’ll be telling him how he needs to be more careful when he goes on hunts, but he can handle that much. You’re his precious doll, if it means a few lectures from you then he’ll put up with it. 

Dwayne

Dwayne is kind of the silent brother bear of the group so it’s a relief when he has someone who wants to take care of him. It makes him chuckle when you fret over him. Honey, he can fly, he’s not going to fall off the roof. Even if he did, it wouldn’t kill him! He’s lost count how many times you subtly, or not so subtly, toss around the subject of a helmet when he rides around. You’ll even try using persuasive ideas such as having it custom painted, maybe adding some spikes- anything just wear a stupid helmet! Again, he reminds you the threat of cracking his head open wasn’t exactly that daunting

When you’re on a cleaning spree he tends to stay out of your way. Granted he tried to help once, but you immediately shooed him out. You got it, just go sit down and quit futzing with stuff. On laundry day he’s a bit stubborn, but as long as you don’t wash his leather jacket, he’ll be fine. Seriously, do not touch his jacket. He cannot stress enough how bad it is to try and use water and soap to clean a leather jacket. NO. No touchy! So he’ll just sit in his underwear (personally I think it’d be boxer briefs) on the couch clinging to his jacket while you go off to the laundromat a few blocks over. Eventually you bought him lounge pajama pants for when you do laundry trips. At first he didn’t want to but… well they have a badass puma on them. It’d be rude to not wear it if you went through all that trouble to get that for him.

Unlike the other three, Dwayne doesn’t need much bribery to get in the tub. DO you have ANY IDEA the last time he had a god damn shower? He misses it, he doesn’t exactly like smelling like parfum de cul (kudos to any of you who know what that means ;) ). Oh just watch him sink into the tub as you massage his luxurious mess of dark hair, you swear sometimes he audibly purrs when you do. Its one of the few times Dwayne will let himself be completely vulnerable. He won’t necessarily force you to join him, but he would certainly love it you have your cute butt nestled between his legs where he could lather you up. But, I mean, that’s entirely up to you to refuse your ripped, completely naked boyfriend eyeing you up.

When he gets injured or sick, which you never expected that he could, you immediately go into hyperdrive. While he’d rather be out riding with the guys, he can’t help but love being pampered by his princess who always treats him like a king. You’ll shove him into Star’s old bed and demand he stay put, wiping his forehead down with a cold cloth. One would assume that someone with no body heat left would get a fever. Actually, it makes it worse. He won’t DIE from any illness, but it sure does suck when he gets them. Usually a few feedings will heal him up within a day, so you’ve started smuggling bags from blood drives and keeping them in a little cooler for him. Granted you only get him A or B blood, but he still appreciates all the effort you go to just for him. 

Paul

Paul loves it up until you make him do things he doesn’t want to. Typical guy. He DIED in a freaking bath tub, why the hell would you want to put him back in one?! It would take either a serious amount of strength or bribing to get him into one.

“It doesn't even have holy water Paul, just normal, plain, stupid water! You smell like a rat’s ass, will you please just get in?”

“I’d rather smell like ass!”

Yes, he may even try to bolt out of the room buck naked. Fuck you, try to catch him now! Did you hide his clothes?!

Your best bet is to play to his most vulnerable side: horny. Sure he refuses to get in the bath on his own, but add you naked covered in bubbles and it just became the best place to be. The blonde won’t even sulk when you’re sudsing up his hair because you’re too distracted to notice he’s about to cop a feel. He’ll just laugh like an idiot when you get mad, after all you put him in here in the first place. There will probably be tub sex, because dammit he deserves something for being such a good boy. Surprisingly he actually loves it when you use the hair dryer on him. It feels amazing, he doesn’t exactly get warm anymore so the sensation of heat rushing through freshly cleaned hair is just incredible

Paul is not a fan of laundry day, just like David. Again, you gotta chase him down. He’ll tease you the whole time though. 

“Babe if you wanted to just rip my clothes off me all you had to do was ask.”

You only leave him in his underwear because he doesn’t have anything else to change into. You never realized how much of a pain in the ass white pants were until you met him. Why the hell did he even have white pants in the first place? They show every damn stain! Paul will probably come with you to the laundromat. Its three in the morning, who cares if someone sees him in his boxers? Big deal! He’d even offer to go nude. You managed to find a pair of pajama pants and a band t-shirt he could wear on laundry day because this ass refuses to buy any other clothes. 

Paul thinks it’s absolutely adorable the way you dote on him. It’s a pain in the butt, but nothing is better than the tiny notes you leave for him when you go out. Or when you surprise the coven with a bunch of tupperware dishes full of real home cooked meals. Yeah being ragged on half the day is never fun but he knows that the only reason you do that is you care so much for him. You almost died when you thought he’d been killed, it was fair you got a bit over protective after. Besides, you were still his ride or die baby who did anything for him. Hell, last Valentine’s day you even went all around Santa Carla until you found someone who made him a mother fuckin Gene Simmons teddy bear, with the tongue out and everything. Paul loves you, nags and all

Marko

Probably one of the only boys to be a bit more cooperative when it comes to mothering him. After all, he’s the one being spoiled. It’s precious when you fret over him on a hunt out, warning him to avoid any hunters, fly safe, please don’t jump off any bridges. He’ll just hug you tight and assure you he’s gonna be fine. Yeah you’ll go one about how he should have a helmet when riding or raising concern when he tries something of questionable origin from the boardwalk vendors. But most of the time he just kind of tunes you out and smiles until you’re done.

He’s a sneaky boy, you oughta know that by now. You want him to take a bath? Only if you join him. You want to brush his hair out? Sure he’ll sit still… for ten kisses. Laundry day? Fine but he gets to come with. It’s hard not to laugh at him crouched up on the top of a dryer with his knees to his chest in only his underwear watching you throw in his pants and socks. He can’t help but grin when you throw him a side eye because of the stains all over his white shirt. Sheesh, him and Paul with the white clothes.  Again, please please PLEASE don’t wash his jacket. You will ruin it. He doesn’t care if you bombard it with air freshener until his sorry ass smells like Hawaiian Breeze, but do not ever wash it

It’s adorable the lengths you’ll go to for him. Last year when he told you they were just gonna have some hot wings and beers for Thanksgiving you flipped. Next thing they know you had them come over to your apartment as soon as the sun went down to a full spread. Paul actually ended up hugging you too. It looked like something out of a catalog. Two fatass turkeys filled to the brim with homemade stuffing, easily four pounds of mashed potatoes, gravy, bread rolls, the whole fucking thing! And veggies. Nasty. Sure the corn on the cob was bitchin, but asparagus? NO. Yeah you made Marko put some on his plate and half the time he just kept pushing his peas around until Paul flung one at him. Then it was a silent veggie war. After that they pretty much came over for any holiday. He’d be all over you just gushing over how happy he is that you went through so much hard work for him, for them. Even Max did fuckall besides what he had to, the guy wanted to toot his own horn about dad of the year but sucked ass at it. 

They start coming over so often that you bought black out curtains for every window in your house. Even during the day they could sleep in your guest room without fear of the sun. Well, the guys could. You had him tucked into your own room, still sleeping with his feet to the headboard for that upside down sense and his arms tightly pressed to his chest. He absolutely loves how much you care for him, especially after so many decades of being a filthy biker boy who feasted on the living. Even his vampirism didn’t send you away. You’d even keep a mini fridge in your room stocked with blood bags in case he craved a midday snack. Sometimes he’d awaken to you sleeping beside him and just savor those quiet moments with his baby. Maybe for Christmas this year he’d offer you the best gift he could think of. Who needs a wedding ring when you can offer an eternity with your angel instead? 

[stubbornness-and-spite]

Never Doubt I Love

Inspired by THIS post from @pretty-as-princey

Fandom: Sanders Sides - part of my collection Remind Me Why I Fell In Love With Happy Endings(Happy Endings)

Characters: Patton-centric, Roman, Logan, Virgil, Janus

Relationships: Patton & Everyone

Warnings: bad self esteem, negative self talk, negative self worth

Notes: Takes place an indeterminate amount of time after POF when Remus and Janus aren’t fully accepted, but not ostracized either. They don’t live with the Light Sides but they pop in on a regular basis. Patton cares about them and considers them vital parts of Thomas, but not really family yet. *italicized sections are flashbacks* My Masterpost will be updated to include this and the ao3 link when it’s posted

Summary: Love languages were hard. Patton wanted to be able to express himself in all of them so that no one in his famILY could doubt he loved them. He was loud and energetic and open and kind and tired. Patton was so tired.

Word Count: 4781

~

Patton loved the others, he really did. He made mistakes and he knew that, but he loved them so much and he tried so hard to make sure they knew that. He thought they did, but lately he was less sure. 

~

“Patton, please,” Logan sighed, cutting off yet another of Patton’s overly enthusiastic contributions. “Thomas has neither the time nor the money to adopt an animal. We have been over this before.”

Patton stiffened, his eyes widening slightly, his smile static on his face. “You’re right, Logan,” he said with a reassuring smile. “Silly me. I’m just gonna-” he pointed down and sank out of Thomas’s living room before anyone had a chance to protest. Well, that wasn’t totally true. He sank down before he had to hear them not protest and could pretend that he just missed it because he left too quickly. 

Patton rose up in his room with a sigh. Logan was right, as usual. Patton was wrong, as usual. He was okay with that. He liked hearing Logan explain things and he didn’t mind when Logan’s explanations proved him wrong. Seeing Logan excited to share was more than enough. Patton just wished- no. Logan was right and he was wrong and that was that. It didn’t matter how much of his opinion or idea he got to say because in the end, Logan was right. All that Patton finishing his thought would do was waste time when everyone knew who was going to win in the end.

“Patton?” Patton turned to his door where he could see the shadow of someone’s shoes. “Is everything alright?”

“Just fine!” Patton called through the door, fervently wiping at his eyes which had started to dampen without him noticing. “I’ll be down and making dinner in a few minutes, don’t you worry!”

“That is… not remotely why I’m concerned, Patton,” Logan said through the door. “May I come in?”

Patton blinked his eyes quickly a few more times. “Sure, kiddo!”

Logan eased the door open hesitantly. “You left rather abruptly. Are you certain nothing is bothering you?”

“Abso-positiv-a-yepper-yes-a-lutely!”

Logan blinked. “Was that crime against the English language intended to be a yes?”

Patton sighed, smiling weakly. “Sure was, kiddo. I just need a minute before coming to make dinner, alright?”

Logan frowned. “Of course that’s not a problem, Patton, but—”

“Then I’ll see you in a minute, Logan,” said Patton almost sharply, cutting him off. Instantly Patton’s eyes went wide and he slammed his hands over his mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Logan!” He cried, his voice muffled by his hands. “I shouldn’t have cut you off! I know you hate it when we don’t listen to you and we don’t listen enough! I don’t listen enough! I’m so sorry!” The words spilled out of Patton’s mouth like water from a faucet(or blood from an open wound) but he couldn’t stop them. 

Logan reached over and grabbed Patton’s hands, pulling them away from his mouth and holding them between the two. “Patton. It’s okay. Please don’t worry about it. I’ll see you in a few minutes?”

Patton nodded shakily and Logan took a step back. Patton forced himself to let go of Logan’s hands and let him step away. Patton was the one who asked him to leave in the first place. Now he had to live with that. Logan’s fingers trailed over his as their hands dropped back to their sides and Patton couldn’t stop the small choked noise that escaped him at the loss of contact. Logan either didn’t notice or thought preserving Patton’s dignity was important enough to pretend he didn’t. Patton’s hands twitched at his sides and he shoved them in his pockets to hide them. Logan didn’t want to hear Patton whine. Logan valued productivity and even Patton’s attempts to be productive weren’t good enough; Logan definitely didn’t want to hear him whine and complain about his feelings. Logan has better things to do. Logan cared about him, but he didn’t want to deal with emotions and that was okay. Patton didn’t want to be a burden. That was how he showed he cared. 

Patton blinked. He was alone. Logan was gone. Patton wondered when he’d left. He wondered if Logan had actually been there at all or if Patton had just imagined him in another pathetic fit of desperation. 

~

Logan knew Patton loved him and Logan loved Patton too. That was how Logan showed he cared. Patton asked him to leave and he did. It wasn’t Logan’s fault that he didn’t try to stay and comfort Patton because Patton didn’t need comfort. Patton had gone downstairs and made dinner that night and no one had ever thought about it again. Patton needed to stop dwelling. Of course his famILY knew he loved them, he told them all the time!

~

Patton had gone directly to Roman’s room after that awful video when Janus revealed his name. It was nice to not have to be afraid of Janus and Remus, but really it was Roman that Patton was concerned about. The others were vital parts of Thomas, but Roman was part of Patton’s tiny family. 

“Roman?” Patton called through the door. Roman’s door was almost never closed. He liked having the other sides free to come in and out of his room and his door to the Imagination, but now it was not only closed, it was locked. Patton hadn’t even known their doors could lock. Roman must have changed his specifically. “Roman, kiddo, please let me in! I’m sorry we hurt you! We love you so much! Please, Roman!”

It felt like an eternity passed before Roman opened the door. He wasn’t wearing his usual regal attire, but was dressed in a large and ill-fitting tee-shirt and baggy sweatpants. His hair was a mess as if he’d been grabbing at it and his eyes were red and wet.

“Come in, Patton,” he sighed, stepping aside so that Patton could walk into his room. It was a mess. His posters were torn down and his usual outfit in a pile on the floor. Roman’s desk doubled as a vanity and it was disturbingly bare. Everything that had been on it, finished products that he displayed with pride, his unfinished work, his hair products, his face products, his makeup, had been shoved into a trash can or onto the floor. The mirror on it was shattered. Patton whipped around to look at Roman when he noticed a spot of red on the cracks of the mirror.

“Show me your hands,” Patton demanded. Sure enough, Roman was hiding his hands behind his back. Patton took a steadying breath and sat down at the foot of Roman’s bed. “Sit with me?” he asked, a little softer. Roman did, still keeping his hands folded to Patton couldn't see his knuckles. “Show me your hands.” Patton reached out his own hands and waited. After a moment, Roman reached over and put his hands in Patton’s. Patton gasped softly at the forming bruises on his knuckles and the spider web of cuts on his fingers. 

“Hey, Roman?” Patton asked shakily. “Can you conjure me some bandages and antiseptic? You’re so much better at conjuring than me.” Roman didn’t even blink at the compliment, but a roll of clean bandages and an unlabeled bottle that Patton assumed was antiseptic appeared between them. 

Patton used one hand to twist open the bottle, not wanting to let go of Roman altogether. As he cleaned and wrapped Roman’s hands, he started to talk softly. “Please don’t hurt yourself, kiddo. I hate seeing you hurt. I just don’t know what we’d do without you, Ro.” Roman didn’t respond, just staring at Patton’s hands, not even flinching as Patton cleaned his cuts and pulled out bits of broken glass, so Patton just kept talking, murmuring any reassurances and promises he could think of. “You’re so amazing that sometimes we don’t even notice how wonderful you are until you remind us. You’re our constant. We love you.” Patton pressed a kiss to Roman’s hands every time he said they loved him. It meant that he took a lot longer to clean off Roman’s hands than he would have otherwise, but it was worth it. “I love you. I’m so proud of you. I’m proud of all you do, but I’m just proud of you. I’m glad and I’m proud that I get to know you. It really is going to be okay, kiddo. I know it’s hard and sometimes things are hard, but I promise you: it will be okay.”

Eventually, Roman’s hands were clean and wrapped. “Thank you, Pat,” he whispered, managing a weak smile. “I know.”

“Do you?”

Roman shrugged. “I think I will?” he offered. “I think I’m going to go to bed early.”

Patton swallowed heavily and nodded. “Okay, kiddo. Do you want me to stay?” Part of Patton, oh who was he kidding? All of Patton really wanted Roman to say yes. Patton always wanted to comfort his family, but it wasn’t just Roman who’d had a really hard day. Patton didn’t want to ask one of the others to take care of him, that wasn’t fair to them after everything he’d done and been doing, but if Roman would let him stay and hold him then maybe Patton could pretend that he was being held too. Even if everything was wrong and Patton was wrong, maybe Patton could convince himself that he was still wanted.

“I think I’m good, Pop,” Roman replied and Patton’s chest was so tight. “You don’t have to stay.”

“I really don’t mind staying-”

“I’m going to be okay, Patton. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Roman said in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring. Patton considered protesting again, but he didn’t want Roman to feel like he had to let Patton stay.

“Alright, slugger, if you’re sure,” Patton said, not looking at Roman. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Patton didn’t bother walking to the door, preferring to sink out. It was faster and easier and he didn’t have to admit that Roman really wanted him gone. He could pretend that he actually did hear Roman call, “Wait, Pat!” as he rose up in his own empty room.

Patton curled up on his bed, not bothering to change his clothes. He pulled a pillow close to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut, pretending it was Roman or Logan or Virgil, pretending that it was someone who actually wanted him to hug them. 

He thought about that time Thomas had asked them all to say they loved each other. He’d gushed about how much he loved them like he always did because it was true. He loved them so much it hurt and at the time he’d brushed off how unwilling the others were to say it back as their discomfort at saying it on camera, but maybe it wasn’t. He’d mostly talked over Logan, but if he remembered right, Logan had barely managed to say their existence was good and even then it sounded like a lie. He was more willing to lie back then. Roman only said it after Patton scolded him. Virgil had actually come the closest to actually saying it back by asking if it could be an understood thing, but when Patton pointed that out he’d denied it. Maybe Patton pushed too much. Maybe he should act more like Logan, more professional, and treat the others like coworkers or friends instead of family to make them feel more comfortable. Patton imagined living like that. He almost threw up. He loved them with every part of himself and to pretend he didn’t would be denying his heart. The heart couldn’t deny his heart. He barely managed to keep from showing his bad emotions all the time as it was. He had to burden them with something and he’d rather burden them with his love than with his sadness.

~

It was okay. Patton was okay. He knew how bad repression could be now, they’d shown him that. It was bad for Thomas to not feel and engage with his feelings and he would never want to hurt Thomas! He laid back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He’d put glow stars up there when they were kids. Logan and Roman put glow stars up in their rooms too. They’d done it together when they were...eight? 

When they were ten, Logan started learning about the stars and how they weren’t random at all. He’d gushed for weeks about how amazing the real pattern of the sky was. He still would if anyone asked. No one ever did. Logan took the stars down two weeks after their tenth birthday.

When they were twelve Roman decided he wanted to paint a mural. He planned it for months and it was beautiful. Patton couldn’t begrudge him that. Roman took the stars down a week before they turned thirteen.

Now they were in their thirties and Patton still couldn’t bring himself to take down the stars. They were his stars. They represented the bond between him and Logan and Roman. He loved Virgil and he was part of Patton’s famILY, but it was Logan and Roman that Patton had never learned how to live without. When Patton was sure of himself and their bond, they glowed so bright that he couldn’t sleep without covering his face. 

Patton looked up at the dull pieces of plastic on his ceiling and tried not to cry.

~

When Virgil told Patton that he didn’t like the way Patton talked about him it felt like a kick in the face. All Patton wanted to do was show how much he loved Virgil and the other sides, but all he managed to do was hurt them. No matter how hard he tried, he always seemed to get it wrong. They knew he was trying though and Patton was pretty sure that counted for something. 

A few weeks after Patton started fixing the way he showed Virgil he loved him they were all eating breakfast and Patton was starkly reminded of just how much he needed to fix. 

Virgil was usually the last one of them to make his way downstairs in the morning unless Logan or Roman had been up all night working on a project. Hearing the tell-tale signs of his angsty son, Patton spun around with a bright grin on his face to greet him.

“Morning, kidd-” he caught himself. “Virgil! Morning, Virgil!” Patton didn’t let the smile fall from his face, but Virgil’s flinch at his greeting made him want to. Where he had been relaxed before Patton said anything, Virgil was stiff and awkward. He stumbled over to the table with Logan and Roman.

“Morning, Patton,” he mumbled as he passed by. “Morning, L. Morning, Princey,” he said as he leaned on the back of a chair, perking up noticeably. Patton swallowed heavily and went about his morning.

He made small talk with the other three as he finished up breakfast and they all prepared their plates. He smiled and laughed along with Roman’s stories and nodded along to Logan’s explanations and interjections. He didn’t say much of substance. Virgil didn’t say much at all. Eventually he sat down with the others and pretended he didn’t feel like he was walking through a minefield. He wanted to show his love in ways they appreciated, of course he did. They were just so vague about what they wanted and it was so hard.

...

“That sounds fun, Logan!”

Logan scoffed. “Really, Patton? I am not suggesting it for amusement. It is the most productive and therefore logical course of action.”

“Right.”

…

“Oh wow! That’s great, Roman!”

Roman rolled his eyes. “I appreciate the compliment, Pat, but it’s nowhere near finished. The completed project will be nothing like what I’ve described.”

“Right, yeah.”

…

“That’s so sweet of you, Virgil!”

“I’m not sweet.”

“No, of course not.”

…

“Did you have good dreams last night, kiddo?”

“Yeah, I slept fine, Pat.”

“Okay.”

…

“Thanks, little shadow!”

“Seriously, Pops?”

“Just joking, Virge.”

…

“And Logan’s just smart.”

“And what about me?”

“Well, you’re - you’re… Patton!”

“Oh, I- Aww, thanks, Roman!”

… 

“I’ll clean up, kiddos. Don’t worry about it!”

…

Then Patton was alone. He didn’t mind being alone so much. When he was alone he could play out elaborate scenarios in his head and not worry about how the others would react. He could pretend they were all waiting for him and that they would tell him nice things and hug him. He could pretend a lot of things when he was alone.

Patton did the dishes.

~

It was fine. He was fine. Everything was fine. He was a good person. Patton didn’t say nice things so that he would hear nice things back. He said nice things because he believed them and he loved the people he said them about. He was a good person.

Who was he kidding? Patton was a terrible person. He only pretended to be nice so that he could be complimented and when it didn’t work he was resentful. He was an awful, terrible, bad person who didn’t deserve all the nice things he had. He was a bad person. He was!

“Well, this certainly isn’t concerning.”

Patton sat up like a shot at the sound of someone in his room. Janus was standing in his doorway that hadn’t been open a minute ago. He looked like he was trying really hard not to fidget.

“Can I come in?” Janus asked tentatively. Patton nodded and Janus stepped into his room, closing the door behind him. He walked over hesitantly, but sat down on the bed by Patton when Patton gestured for him to.

“Is there something I can help you with, Janus?” Patton asked, trying to pretend that Janus hadn’t walked in on him crying.

“You can tell me why you’re lying to yourself.”

Patton stiffened. “Right. I was doing that. It’s okay, I stopped now.”

Janus raised his eyebrows. “You stopped telling yourself that you’re a bad person who only pretends to be nice?” he asked. “Because from what I could tell, you still were while I was standing at your door.”

Patton scowled. “That’s not the lie and you know it.”

Janus sighed heavily. “No, Patton. I don’t know that. Even when I couldn’t stand you, I didn’t think that you were faking being nice. I think being a good person is subjective, but there is absolutely no argument that you are not nice. There is no argument that you are not selfless and loving. I can absolutely argue with you over if those are good things, but they are true.”

“I don’t think I believe you,” Patton whispered.

Janus winced. “You really think I’d lie about something like this?”

“Maybe.” Patton shrugged. “I believe you believe it,” he offered.

“Look, Patton, we’ve never been close. Talk to the others. Let them tell you if you won’t hear it from me. You tell them you love them all the time. It’s high time they made you know too.”

“No!” Patton yelped before he could stop himself. “I mean, you know I can’t do that. I can’t turn my love into an obligation for them. I’m burdening them enough by loving them the way I do and not asking for anything back. I can’t put that on them.”

“What are you talking about? They already love you.”

Patton sighed. “Janus, I’m Morality. What’s the Golden Rule of morality that we all learned as kids?”

“Treat others the way you want to be treated,” Janus responded without thinking. “Oh.”

Patton breathed out a soft laugh. “Yeah.” He tipped his head back to look at the ceiling again. “Either I go against the simplest part of Morality and keep letting myself get hurt or I go against the part of Morality that I can’t let go of and hurt them for my sake.”

“I don’t think you’d be hurting them. I think they don’t realise. I think they’d be a lot more hurt if they knew you thought so little of them that you’d let yourself be hurt so as not to inconvenience them.”

“That’s a nice thought.”

“Dammit, Patton,” Janus growled. “Tell them or I will.”

Patton just kept looking at his stars.

“I can make you tell them,” Janus admitted, slightly choked up. “I can make you tell the truth as easily as I can make you hide it.”

“I don’t think I could forgive you for that.”

“Then don’t make me do it.”

~

Janus had left after that. Disappearing just like Virgil used to. Patton stared at his ceiling for a while longer. Janus thought he was a good person. Well, Janus thought that Patton was Patton’s definition of a good person. Maybe talking to his famILY would be good. Maybe it wouldn’t. 

Patton paused as an idea came to him. He wouldn’t tell them. He wouldn’t seek them out. But… maybe next time they asked, he wouldn’t lie.

~

A week went by and nothing changed. Patton kept smiling and sometimes it wasn’t even forced. Roman told his stories and Logan pretended he didn’t love them. Virgil complained about everything, but in a way that sounded more like he was complimenting them. Logan shared his ideas and Patton made sure everyone listened. Sure maybe some of it was Patton’s guilt for skipping Logan in that one video, but most of it was just that Patton believed all his kiddos deserved to be heard. Janus popped in from time to time and gave Patton pointed looks. Remus barreled in every so often and dragged them all off on an adventure that they ended up enjoying more than they thought they would. A week went by and nothing changed.

They were at dinner. It seemed that dinner was the only time the four of them all talked anymore. It was always some grouping of them the rest of the time. Dinner was going...badly. From Patton’s perspective at least.

Roman had been flippant and dismissive of Patton’s attempts to compliment him. Virgil had been getting increasingly frustrated with every word out of Patton’s mouth. The more the two of them carelessly shut him down, the more outlandish his comments started to become just so they’d look at him for a few moments. Logan didn’t like outlandish comments. Logan started snapping at him when Patton would speak up. Patton stopped talking.

The other three continued their conversation for about an hour. Patton didn’t say a word. He didn’t eat either. No one noticed either.

“Pat, what do you think?” Virgil asked, turning to Patton. “Pat?”

Patton stiffened. He shook his head frantically, not trusting himself with an open mouth.

“Patton?” Logan asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “What’s wrong?” 

“I love you all so much,” Patton choked out. “I love you all so much it hurts and I keep hurting you with it and I’m so sorry! I know that’s not good enough, but I can’t stop!”

“Patton, no,” Logan breathed. “Patton, you are not hurting us.”

“I am,” Patton insisted. “I try to listen to you but I never understand and I just end up being a distraction. I can never tell Roman how much I love him in a way that sounds true. I keep telling Virgil I care the wrong way. You know all this, Logan. You know it’s true.”

“It doesn’t matter, Pat,” Virgil snapped. “I care more that you’re trying than if you’re succeeding.”

“That’s not even the worst part,” Patton whispered. “Nevermind,” he said quickly, cutting himself off.

“Pat, please,” Roman choked on his words. “Please talk to us.”

“I want to be told you love me too,” Patton said so softly they barely heard it. “You don’t have to,” he promised. “But sometimes I like to be- never mind.”

“Complimented?” Virgil guessed. “Like you always do for us?” Patton nodded.

“Hugged?” Roman added hesitantly. Patton didn’t look at him, but he nodded.

“Listened to,” Logan finished. Patton stared at the table, but he managed to nod.

“I’m so-”

Virgil cut him off with a hesitant grin. “If you apologize again, I’m going to physically fight you. If you keep talking bad about yourself, I’m going to physically fight you.”

Patton laughed. “Please don’t fight me.” He frowned, his eyes drifting back down to the table. “I know you don’t like it when I call you sweet and I’m trying not to anymore, but I…”

“But it’s hard?” Virgil guessed. “I know. I really appreciate what you’ve done and I-”

“Not what I was going to say, Virgil,” Patton said softly. “Respecting your boundaries is never going to be too much of an effort. I was just going to say where my boundaries are.” Patton took a deep breath and held it. “I like it? I like it when you all call me sweet.” he huffed a laugh. “That’s kind of what I’m trying for.”

Patton looked over at Roman with a smile. “You said I was the ‘sweetest puffball we got’ and I don’t know how you meant it, but I really liked that.”

Patton turned his now-blinding smile on Logan. “You called me adorable and to be honest, Lo? It was adorable.”

“You remember what we said?” Logan asked abruptly.

Patton’s smile widened. “Of course I do! I wrote them all down so I couldn’t forget. Those two are at the top of my Logan and Roman lists. Pop-star’s at the top of my Virgil list.”

“I am going to come up with so many names that you’re going to need to start a whole notebook just to keep up with my list.” Roman’s gaze was steely and he looked almost threatening. “I am going to hug you so much that you’ll be sick of me.”

Patton was going to burst. “I’ll never be sick of you!” he cooed.

“I will make a more visible and concentrated effort to listen to your contributions,” Logan promised. “I can’t promise that we will always agree, but I can promise that I will listen and hear you.”

Patton’s eyes were soft as he looked at Logan. “I’m okay with being wrong, Logan. I just want you to hear me.”

“I do hear you Patton. I’m sorry I don’t do it often enough.”

“Oh, Logan, no!” Patton looked at Logan in horror. “It’s okay. You don’t need to be sorry.”

Logan sighed fondly. “If you want to forgive me then that is up to you, but it’s not okay and I do have reason to apologize.”

“As do I,” Roman added. “I have been taking your affection for granted. I will not continue.”

“So do I,” Virgil mumbled. “I’m not sorry for setting boundaries because you’ve taught me that that’s okay, but I am sorry for brushing you off and not showing you that I care about you and appreciate you.”

“Thank you,” Patton said wetly.

Logan took a breath. “This is difficult for me and I apologize if it sounds insincere. I love you, Patton. You don’t always make my job easier, which can be frustrating, but you make it enjoyable.”

“Thank you, Lo.” Patton’s damp eyes started to drip. “Happy tears,” he clarified at the others’ looks of concern. “You don’t have to-”

Logan cut off any protest that Patton could make. “You’re worth it.”

“You make us a family, Pat,” Roman declared. “You are what makes us more than the sum of our parts.”

Patton was full on sobbing now.

Virgil stood up from his seat. He let his arms fall open at his sides. “Come here.” 

Patton dove into Virgil’s arms, his wet face soaking through his hoodie in a matter of minutes. Roman instantly sprang from his seat to wrap himself around Patton’s back and pull the other two into his arms. Roman was warm and his grip was steady and Patton felt like he could take on the world if he did it while he was in Roman’s arms.

Logan stood awkwardly and made his way over to them, standing about a foot away from Patton’s side.

“Logan, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Patton called, his voice muffled by Virgil’s hoodie.

“I know I just agreed to start listening to you more, but I believe I can be forgiven in this one circumstance.” Logan stepped forward wrapping his arms around Patton and resting his chin in Patton’s hair. “Shut your ever-flapping gobtalker.”

Virgil snorted which caused Roman to laugh. Logan simply smiled and held them tighter as Patton’s giggles rang out above them all.

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[aromantic-romance-writer]

Tanjiro Kamado x Ghost! Fem! Reader

[To Be Human Again]

I have r e s t e d.

So here you go! Enjoy!

When was the last time you feel the sun's glaring rays gradually burn your skin?

It was so many years ago that you forget how many, back in the Edo period. You were very ill and have not left the comfort of your own room for months. You overheard their coversation. The conversation that made you turn into a monster.

You don't have much time left to live. You may die next month, next week, or even tomorrow. You weren't ready. You can't die yet, not like this.

Now that you think of it, what a greedy desire it was to hold on to the arms of life for just a few more years. Death couldn't wait anymore; he was tugging at your feet already.

As if the heavens have heard your thoughts, a man in all black has stepped into your room. His eyes were red as the sky when the sun sets, as his aura intimidated you.

"How pitiful." he scoffs. That's where everything went white.

At that moment, seeing the blood from behind him, it wasn't the heavens that granted your wish. It was hell giving you a curse.

Once you woke up, the first thing on your mind was food.

Humans.

You didn't bother looking at yourself, you didn't bother knowing what happened, you didn't bother trying to remember who you were.

All you wanted was to get your hands on someone, anyone. All you craved for us the flesh and meat of a human being. A creature you used to be.

But it didn't matter, you were a demon now.

A demon who is starving and have blood-lust in her eyes.

~

It was all so hazy. You barely remember anything.

It's just been 30 years since you were turned into a demon, yet here you are now, disintegrating away.

Such a weak fool.

You can hear 'that person' say, even though he didn't need to, even though he didn't actually say it. You couldn't resist against him. You wanted to live.

How greedy.

But you never wanted this, did you?

Did you?

You close your eyes, finally giving in to death. In the end, you'll just die. Demon or not, you will die. That's how the world works.

So so stupid.

Yes, indeed, you knew you are.

You're a monster.

A single tear streamed across of what was remaining of your face.

You didn't have to be reminded.

~

You sit upright. You scan yourself, head to toe. You were human. You quickly stood and ran to the nearest river. You fall on your knees to see your reflection.

There was nothing. Nothing but the moon.

You felt the sun just earlier. How many hours has it been?

So you're not awake. That wasn't just a big scary nightmare. It was all real.

You're dead.

You pinch yourself and you flinch from the pain. It doesn't seem like you are though.

But what are you still doing here? Unfinished business? What is the meaning of all this? You can hear something.

People.

You follow the sound, and soon lead you to a crowded town bustling with life as if the sun was still up. They were fixing their shops, going home, or calling the playing children back inside. You almost wanted to cry. The feeling of craving for something was gone. It disappeared. After so many years, you can finally look at humans normally again.

Are they willing to look at someone like you too?

Something was strange. So many things were unfamiliar to you. Were you no longer in the Edo period?

After some time, silence loomed over. No one was outside anymore. The only light that can be seen is from the moon and the dim lights from the houses. You walked to the middle of the town. It was so quiet and peaceful now. You look up to the moon, a little tug on your lips.

When was the last time you've smiled like this? A smile that was out of pure joy and ease, not a satisfactory of no longer feeling hungry.

Whatever the reason why you're still roaming the Earth, it wasn't going to last long.

"You signing up for a death wish?" You turn to meet the red eyes of a demon. "Isn't this the part where you run away and cry for help?"

You weren't listening. You're techinically dead, so do you still need to run? But you still feel pain. You have no reflection, you're not cold, and you have no footprints. But you can feel.

"Oi!"

The annoyed yell of the demon disrupted your thoughts.

"You've got guts for a hu--" he stops. He sniffs the air around him like a bloodhound. He snaps his attention back at you, an obvious confusion visible on his face. "What the hell are you?"

He can't sniff your scent. Well, you're dead so that shouldn't be surprising. Though it was obvious that you were clearly not human, the demon takes a stance.

"A slayer? That's some neat trick." he grinned toothily. "You can't possibly be a pillar. You didn't notice me."

You may be dead, but you can somehow feel pain. Fate is such a pain. You quickly run away. You have to get far from the town so he doesn't hurt anyone else. He's gonna outrun you. Where will you go? Where will you hide?

You kept running blindly deep in the woods. You weren't gasping for air or feeling worn out and tired. You can keep running all night.

That depends whether he can outrun you or not.

Then you hear a soft thud, along with a scream. You stop in your tracks and turned to see the demon's head slowly disintegrating along with his body.

You widen your eyes in horror. Flashbacks of your death came to you like a tremendous wave. You absently touch your neck. If you were still human, you'd probably be sweating and gasping for air.

Suddenly, a hand grabs your shoulder, startling you. Instantly, you were calmed down by the sincere and kind stare of a pair of burgundy eyes.

"Are you okay?"

° ° °

You were walking alongside a demon slayer.

A demon slayer.

You couldn't help but feel nervous around him. You knew he wasn't gonna hurt you, but the sense of fear was still there. You were a monster, after all. And monsters like you shouldn't be roaming the Earth anymore.

So why are you here?

"Where do you live? I'll take you to your home. It's dangerous to be alone at night." He gives you a soft smile.

You avoid his gaze. You continuously tell yourself that you're not a demon anymore. He won't hurt you because he hunts demons, not ghosts.

"You must be frightened." His smile weakened. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I don't smell any nearby demons, so you're safe."

You wore a bewlidered expression. "S-smell...?" Your voice came out as almost like a whisper. It's as if you haven't talked for ages.

He nods. "I have a really good sense of smell, so it helps me to detect demons. It's also helpful when a demon is mixed up in a crowd of humans." he explains.

Does that mean he can tell you're not human? If his sense of smell is that good, why isn't he saying anything about you? Can't he smell you?

"We should get you home before any more demons pop up. Where do you live? I'll take you to your home."

You rub your arm sheepishly. What the hell are you gonna say? You don't have a home. You doubt the house of your parents is still habitable, let alone exists.

"I don't remember where I live." You say softly, averting your gaze to the ground. You just wanted to run away right now. He can't believe such a cheap lie like that--

"Is that why you were roaming around the woods alone?"

You blinked and simply nodded. He fell for it?

He stops walking and begins to think, tapping his foot in the process. "I know!" he says, after a few minutes of thinking. "You can accompany me!"

"A-accompany you...?" You repeat, uncertain about the idea.

But he nids vigourously while his eyes sparkled. "Mhm! You can hang out with Nezuko! She really wants a new female friend."

"Who's Nezuko?"

Then you hear scratching noises from the wooden box he was carrying on his back. You assume that was Nezuko, whatever she is to fit in there.

"Oh, Nezuko is my sister." You blink. What.

At this point, you don't really want to question things anymore.

He reaches his hand out to you with a smile. "I'm Kamado Tanjiro."

You stare at his hand. The sight of his hands full of calluses was tragic to look at. Why would such a kind boy have these hands?

You look up to him, barely summoning a smile on your lips. "It's very nice to meet you. I'm [Y/N]."

° ° °

"TANJIRO, YOU SHAMELESS BASTARD."

Tanjiro lead you to where he was camping, and met two of his eccentric friends; a loud golden haired coward and a half-naked boar head.

Golden hair screamed, pointing his finger at Tanjiro accusingly. This made you jump in surprise and hid behind him.

"WE TOLD YOU TO BRING BACK SOME STICKS CAUSE THE FIRE'S GONNA DIE SOON. THEN YOU COME BACK ACCOMPANIED BY ANOTHER CUTE GIRL?!" he talked so fast, you couldn't make out what he said mostly. "ISN'T NEZUKO-CHAN ENOUGH?!"

"Who the hell are you? Can she fight?" Boar head was about to grab is dual nichirin swords, before the other guy took them first.

"DON'T YOU LAY A SCRATCH ON SUCH A CUTE GIRL."

"Z-Zenitsu, quiet down!" Tanjiro pleads.

"IF YOU'RE PROTECTING HER, SHE MUST BE REALLY STRONG." Boar head adds.

"I-Inosuke...!"

What did you get yourself into?

~

Soon, you learn that golden boy is Zenitsu and boar head is Inosuke. And Nezuko has come out of her box. Once she saw you, she shrank to the size of a toddler and stared up at you.

"Oh, so you're a demon...?" you ask.

"S-she won't hurt you! Nezuko has never eaten--" Tanjiro stops mid-sentence as you placed small Nezuko on your lap and started to pat her head with a smile. Tanjiro can't help but feel a slight tug on his heart at the sight.

Ever since, you've been accompanying the group on their missions. You didn't try to be a burden on them and helped out like cooking their meals, and care for their small wounds and scratches.

Tanjiro insists that you don't have to, but you very persistent and soon he gave up.

"Tanjiro," you say one night, cleaning one of his wounds. "I know you're a demon hunter, but don't risk your life too much." you say, genuine care and worry sounding visible in your voice.

He smiles reassuringly. "It's fine! As long as others are safe, I'm okay with risking my life just a little bit. I still have to turn Nezuko back to a human." his eyes flared with determination and passion.

You chuckle. You finished taking care of his wound and pats his head, his cheeks dusted with red blush. "I'll support you all the way." You smile warmly. You didn't know when you'll disappear, but you eventually will. And while you're still here, you'll help him in any way you can.

Tanjiro seemed to blush harder at your smile. Ever since he became a demon slayer, he has this sense of responsibility to protect those around him. Now, when he's around you, he feels like he's the one being protected. In your presence, he feels like he can let his guard down (though he tries not to) despite he's the one carrying a sword.

~

One night, he came back to camp covered in blood. He wore an empty expression, which was rare to see.

"Tanjiro?!" you rush over to and scanned him to see if he has any injuries. "Are you okay?"

"I wasn't able to save them, [Y/N]." he says. Your eyes softened. "If I arrived much earlier--"

"Hush." you whisper as you let his head rest on your shoulder. He wraps his arms around you tightly as you proceeded to rub his back. "You have to keep moving forward, you know that, right?"

He nods slightly. He was getting more and more used to your presence, your warmth. He feels guilty of getting too attached to you. What would he do if you leave him?

He breaks from your hug and stares down at your hand. For some reason, he's always wanted to hold your hand, even just for a little while. His hand that littered with his calluses against your soft and glowing one.

He got flustered at his own thoughts and looks up to see your incredibly worried face. An expression like that on your features breaks his heart.

He smiles. "Thanks for everything, [Y/N]."

° ° °

Tanjiro and the others were getting ready while you played with Nezuko. Zenitsu has been staring at him for a while now.

"Oi, Tanjiro." He says. Tanjiro turns to his friend. "Do you like [Y/N]?"

Almost immediately, his face turns bright red at the question. "I-I..."

Zenitsu wanted to face palm. It was so obvious, what was the use to hiding it. "I can hear it. You like her."

Tanjiro remains quiet.

"It's weird though. I don't hear anything from her. She doesn't have a sound...like a g-ghost or something." He shivered at the thought.

Tanjiro turns to your direction. You were laughing as you played with Nezuko. Your smile is now one of the reasons why he keeps going.

"You don't have to worry about anything, Zenitsu." he turns back to the frightened boy with a reassuring smile. "She's human, like all of us."

~

You wave at Nezuko as she crawls into her box. You close the door and stood to guve the box to Tanjiro. "Keep safe." you smile at him.

He smikes back with a light blush coating his cheeks. "You too! We'll be back."

You wave as as they set off. Their next mission wasn't far from your camp, so they shouldn't take too long to come back, depending on what kind of demon they'll be facing.

You can't help but have a bad feeling about this one mission though. You can't seem to shake the feeling off. You pursed your lips in irritation and just decided to follow them decreetly.

"Woah, that's amazing!"

A familiar voice says. You all stop in your tracks as you hid behind a bush. You were getting goosebumps. She's still alive? After all these years?

"They send out 3 demon slayers just to hunt me? What an honor!" The three quickly turned back to see a fenale demon with long black hair turning pink to the tips in an awfully small red kimono, emphasizing her hour glass body.

You gasp. She hasn't changed one bit from the day you first met her. And from the day she used you as a decoy.

She was the reason why you died.

All three of them took a stance, ready to fight. But she just smiled wider as snapped her fingers.

Your eyes widen in alarm. She's using her Blood Demon Art.

A straightforward attack, if you remember it clearly. The direction of the wind changed to east - directly at Tanjiro.

You jumped from your hiding spot and rushed to Tanjiro. He sees you in complete shock and horror as you jump in front of him with wide arms. The wind breezed passed you, leaving scars and scratches all over your body. Blood sprayed all over as you spit some yourself.

It was painful. It was agonizing. But you were still standing. You can keep going. Somehow, you weren't on the floor, crying in pain.

"What the hell?! How are you--"

"Hey! She's mine to kill!" Inosuke charges at her, keeping her distracted as Tanjiro carried you away from the battle. Zenitsu gave you one last look before fainting at the sight of your body littered with wounds.

"Why would you do that?!" he lies you down. "I could've dodged that! Why would you do that?!"

You sit upright, and it startles him. You only smiled warmly. "Because I wanted to protect you."

His eyes widened. He felt as if all the air was knocked out of him. Protect him? When you're aware he's the one wielding a sword? When he's the demon slayer? A scent. A scent he's not familiar with, and it's coming from you. Combined with the scent of blood, a fragrance of love and kindness.

Since the day you two met, you didn't have a scent. It was weird and it worried him that his nose was broken or something, but then as the days progressed you were gradually giving off the scent of a human. Day by day as you spent more time with them, the scent grew stronger and stronger. And tonight;

The scent of blood and love of a human. It was such a wonderful fragrance.

You snap him out of his thoughts. You wiped his face with your thumb. He didn't realize that he was already crying.

"Tanjiro, don't waste such tears on someone like me."

Someone like you? What do you mean? You deserve every ounce of emotion he's feeling right now.

The door to Nezuko's box was kicked open. Nezuko doesn't take notice of your oozing blood and just hugged you.

You pat her head. Tanjiro stands and leaves his box. "[Y/N], don't go anywhere. Nezuko, I'm counting on you." he says, before heading back to the battlefield.

You keot patting Nezuko's head with a smile. "You know, don't you?"

She looks up at you with big eyes with a muffled response.

"Why do you think I'm still here?"

She just laid her head on your chest once again. Truthfully, you didn't want to go. Inosuke's childish antics and challenges, Zenitsu's never-ending compliments, Nezuko's adorable actions, you'll miss it all. And Tanjiro. Tanjiro, who made you feel human. Who made you feel like your heart was beating peacefully. You've never felt more alive.

Soon, you see your hand patting her head start to fade away slowly.

You stare at it.

Finally, you understand why you're still here.

° ° °

The trio comes back to where you were, all bloodied and wounded. When Tanjiro saw you weren't there, he immediately asks Nezuko where you were. She points toward south. He asked the two to keep watch and ran away without giving them time to respond.

Body aching from exhaustion, he gasped for air as he ran. He finally sees you. But he just stands there, shocked to see your body transparent.

You turn to him as tears wouldn't stop falling. You ran to hug him, your arms carefully wrapping around his neck. He hugs you back.

"W-what's happening?" he asks as he breaks away from you. Tears were threatening to spill from his eyes.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

Then he remembers what Zenitsu said. "Are you a ghost?

"Sounds silly, but yes." you hold both of his hands. "So this is what kindness feels like..." you mutter to yourself as you massaged his hands.

"Y-you're leaving?" his voice breaks.

You nod. "Tanjiro, promise me something." those words only broke his heart more. You're leaving. That's the harsh truth. "Promise me that I see Muzan first before you."

He nods, burgundy eyes full of determination. "Thank you for everything."

You shake your head. "That's my line." you give his hand a soft kiss. You're fading away fast. "Thank you for reminding and making me feel human again. Remember that there are others who loves and are willing to risk their lives to protect you too."

In one breath, you were gone.

He smiles sadly. "I won't forget."

[hashtagartistlife]

Maybe fate was called fate because some things weren’t choices; some things were simply written into his DNA, woven into the very fabric of the universe. World orders. The sky is blue. The sun is hot. He is in love with Kuchiki Rukia.

Kuchiki Rukia is dying.  

Ten years after the defeat of Yhwach, it’s time Ichigo and Rukia started facing some truths— about the world, about themselves, and about each other. 

this is all i have of this fic for now (this and a tiny little bit of chapter 3), i guess it’ll be updated when i woman the fuck up and wrack up enough nerves to keep writing which im hoping will be sometime this decade :’/ but i might post chapters i have for other unfinished fics i have over the next few days so if you’re into unfinished fics (read: literally nobody) then stick around!!! 

premise for this fic | chapter 1 here | this is chapter 2

________________________________________________________________

f r a y

by hashtagartistlife

________________________________________________________________

Two 

.

.

.

9:12 am 

Kurosaki Clinic

When Renji wakes up the next morning to find Rukia safely asleep beside him, he feels the tension across his shoulders ease somewhat. They’d both been a little worried about how her sleepwalking habit might fit into this visit (even though neither of them had voiced their concerns out loud), he more so than she for reasons he had yet to disclose to her. Her breathy sigh of ‘Ichigo?’ rings in his ears. He hadn’t seen a point in telling Rukia about that, not when she was still refusing to admit she had a problem in the first place. She’d just feel needlessly guilty and isolate herself even more. Renji knows how Rukia works. What he doesn’t know is how to break through that shell she builds around herself, how to draw her out of it and get her to face her problems head-on. 

No, he admits (and he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t a trace of bitterness in the way he thought it), that’s always been Ichigo’s specialty. He looks across the rowdy breakfast table to his friend, who is sitting uncharacteristically silent with a mug of something dark and unappetising in his hands. His eyes are shadowed, tired, and when he meets Renji’s gaze he starts almost guiltily before curving his lips into an uneasy smile. 

The hell’s all that about? Renji thinks, but then Ichika slams into his knee, shoving a glass of orange juice into his face, and he puts the moment out of his mind. The rest of the morning is filled with trying out some godawful beverage called ‘coffee’ at Orihime’s behest, wrangling Ichika into human world clothes, and sending the children off, along with their mothers, to go meet Sado. He and Ichigo stay back, Ichigo to tend to his clinic and he to go see Urahara. Since gensei visits were so few and far between, even on what was ostensibly a holiday they had been saddled with checking in on the shopkeeper to exchange news and technology. Renji figures he might as well get that out of the way first, and catch up with Sado later. 

At least, he figures that until Ichigo corners him just before he walks out the door, a dark expression on his face. He looks uncomfortable, standing in the doorway of his own house, a hand on the back of his neck, and Renji notes with a kind of detached surprise that if Ichigo hadn’t been slumping, they’d be more or less at a height now. He raises an eyebrow at him in a silent question. 

“A— about Rukia—” Ichigo stumbles over the syllables in her name, and stops, wetting his lips, looking nervous. A sense of foreboding settles into Renji’s gut; Ichigo hasn’t looked this worried in— well, a decade. He stays quiet, letting Ichigo finish his question. “Has she ever— has she ever sleepwalked before?”

He freezes in his tracks; frantically, Renji rewinds last night in his mind. It’s no use; he’d been out for the count for a solid eight hours. If he hadn’t been so tired lately, he’d have thought someone had spiked his drink. Try as he might, he can’t remember Rukia slipping out of bed at all. But she’d been back in bed by the morning, so someone must have intercepted her—

Ichigo. Rukia’s voice, ghostly in his mind, calling his name. Ichigo. Ichigo. Ichigo—

His breath leaves him in a long, long sigh, and Renji closes his eyes before gesturing for Ichigo to sit. 

. 

.

.

6:53 am

Ichigo doesn’t go back to his bed after the kiss. Instead he sits outside the clinic, on the cold hard asphalt, for one eternity— two— til the sun starts lightening the end of the street and the moon grows paler in the sky. He can still feel Rukia on his skin, in his veins, lingering like a drug that refuses to clear. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be empty of her touch now that he’s known it. 

When the moon finally disappears and the sun well and truly risen, he picks himself up from the ground and stumbles back into the house, feeling like he was the sleepwalker now. The sight of their children sprawled out together in their blanket fort brings the reality of what he’s done rushing back to him. He can’t help the reflex that brings his fingers up to ghost over his lips, like a lovesick teenager. The breath leaves his lungs like he’s been punched, and he turns away from the kids, sleeping angelically side-by-side. He can’t bear the thought of facing either of them, of facing anyone in this household any more. 

What does he do now? Does he go back to bed, pretend nothing ever happened— slip into his place beside Orihime and forget the fact that his heart is beating again for the first time in ten years? Does he come clean to her and beg forgiveness, tell her he loves her and it won’t ever happen again, or does he lock this away in a dark recess of his mind, just like he’s done with his shinigami powers and everything related to her for the last decade? His mind casts around frantically for excuses — he was tired. It was the middle of the night. Hell, he doesn’t even know if it really happened anymore — was everything a fever dream, triggered by the immense relief of seeing Rukia again? But his blood is thrumming in his veins, and the power he’d spent his entire adult life crushing down is once again swirling and eddying just under his skin, exactly like it had when he was seventeen. His hands are shaking, and his skin feels hot. He can’t lie to himself. Rukia was here. Rukia’d kissed him. He’d kissed her back. 

He drags his trembling hands over his eyes, down his face; slumps into a chair in the kitchen and attempts to evade the question that becomes more pressing with every second. What now? It was clear that Rukia had no idea what had happened. The weight of this transgression was his alone to carry. Even if she had remembered, the fault lay with him— she’d been asleep, but he’d been wide awake and had pulled her towards him. 

A part of him— the good part, the noble part, the part that had once forced its way through layers of hollow to tell his zanpakutou to fuck off out of his fight with Byakuya— is yelling at him to confess, to lay himself at Orihime’s mercy and take whatever comes from it. But a larger, more insistent part of him is asking, for what? What does telling Orihime accomplish, but the breaking of four hearts? He has never deserved Orihime, with her soft smiles and kind words to his rough edges; the fact that he is, once again, an awful person to her— for her— is not news. What is the point of ruining her spun-sugar smile with something that will never happen again—

liar

—especially when it doesn’t just involve him? If he confesses, it’s not just his head on the line; it’s Rukia’s, too, no matter the fact that she was asleep at the time. And he might be willing to risk everything he ever is or was for far less than this, but there is no way in hell he will do that to Rukia. Not for some one-off sleepwalking incident that she had no control over, and if it happens again he’ll just push her away—

liar

— and oh, god, was this a thing that happened often? Rukia’d always been a deep sleeper; she was, despite everything she insisted to the contrary, very clearly not okay if she was sleepwalking like this. 

As his thoughts spiral back to the cause of his turmoil, Ichigo becomes acutely aware of her reiatsu upstairs, thrumming rapidly like a hummingbird’s wings. It seems lighter and more unsettled than he remembers it being, and the tinge of instability to it as it flares and retreats irregularly unnerves him. Rukia’s reiatsu control has always been top-class, so this distinct lack of it triggers alarm bells in his mind. He swallows, and attempts to smooth down the ragged edges of her power with his; but wherever his reiatsu brushes against hers, it just flares brighter and more powerful and he has to give up, lest it disturb Renji or the kids.

It's been a while since he's felt someone else’s reiatsu like this, but he knows this isn't normal; concern eats at him even as it wars with an urge to ignore it and bury everything about this incident as deep as possible. Rukia isn’t an idiot, she would have gotten help if it was something serious—but would she, really? He knows better than anyone how stubborn she can be when she thinks she’s being a burden. She’d die before she let someone else take the fall for her. 

He closes his eyes. 

He scowls; ten years it’s been, and she’s still so— so— so her. Longer hair, a husband and child, a Captain’s haori, and nothing matters; she’s still stubborn, still a bitch who lives to help everyone else but won’t let anyone help her. It's evident in the way she refuses to say she’s tired, the way that Renji’s eyes follow her around everywhere, worried. She’s still the self-sacrificing idiot she’d been from day one, and he—

He is still the coward he’d been twelve years ago, when he’d watched her bleed out on the concrete before him and only then been spurred into action. 

This isn’t about him. If Rukia is ill, then he has to let someone know— someone who can actually do something about it. His feelings — whatever they are— does not factor into the equation. This is about Rukia—

— so, he needs to talk to Renji. 

.

.

.

10:18 am

“Has Rukia ever sleepwalked before?”

A moment of tension across Renji’s features, and then a long, long sigh; he gestures for Ichigo to sit, and the two of them shuffle over to the recently vacated kitchen table. Renji rubs his face tiredly, and Ichigo’s sense of foreboding grows. 

“... Last night, huh?” Renji says, and Ichigo almost jumps out of his skin; did he know? Could he see— was the mark of Rukia's lips on his visible, indelible, the way it felt like to him? Could everyone read it on his face, that he and Rukia—

Renji’s voice is weary as he continues. “Yeah. Yeah, she's sleepwalked before. The past few years, actually. What did she do last night? How did you find her?”

— kissed—  “She— she walked out of the clinic and I heard the door open. Renji, is she— is she okay—”

Renji leans his elbows on the table and buries his face in his hands. “I don't know,” he breathes, frustration dripping from every syllable. “I don't know, she won't tell me, you know how she is—”

Did he ever. Ichigo remembers with vivid clarity the time she'd sustained a stomach wound, back in the days before Soul Society; she hadn’t told him for three days, and had only agreed to go see Urahara when she'd finally collapsed in his arms. 

“ — don't think I've tried—? God, doctors, healers, we've tried everything, Kuchiki-Taichou’s worried out of his mind. But she won't have any of it, says she won't let us waste time fussing over her when there are better things to worry about—”

“That fucking idiot,” Ichigo mutters, and Renji barks out what is almost a laugh. 

“Right? Drives me up the fucking wall. Wouldn't be Rukia if she didn't.”

“Guess not.”

Renji cracks a strained smile before it fades away into seriousness again. “It wasn't this bad before,” he says, and Ichigo sits up straight. 

“Recent thing, then?”

“Depends what you'd classify as recent. I mean, she's never been a heavy sleeper—”

At this, Ichigo interrupts. “Wait, really? She's always slept like the dead—” 

Renji gives him a look, and Ichigo remembers who it is that is sharing her bed now. He shuts up. 

“ — as I said, she's never slept too well, even during our Rukon days, and it got pretty bad after the war, but it wasn't— wasn’t to this extent, you know? At least, not till she had Ichika. And then— it was like a switch flipped. She couldn't get to sleep at night, and she could barely keep her eyes open during the day. It started interfering with her work, and you know how that would have killed her; we started to go see a bunch of people for it but nothing seemed to help. And then she started sleepwalking—”

Something cold crawls up Ichigo’s spine.

“She— at first, we didn't know where it was that she was going in her sleep. she wandered the Kuchiki Manor gardens a lot, sometimes she just paced around inside the house. Sometimes she got out of the Kuchiki property and was well into the streets before we found her and brought her back. I didn't know where she was trying to go—” 

Renji breaks off, and looks Ichigo dead in the eye. 

“— till one morning I woke up, and found her at Sokyouku Hill.” 

Ichigo’s blood turns to ice. 

“It was bloody Sokyoku Hill, Ichigo. Every single time— inside the Manor, in the gardens, on the streets. She was always trying to get to Sokyouku Hill. North-north west from the Kuchiki Manor. I—”

Renji’s expression turns supplicating, as if asking him for an answer, but Ichigo has none to give; he’s rooted to the spot by the sheer horror he’s feeling, Rukia strung up against the Sokyouku vivid in his mind. That collar around her neck, a red slash splitting her throat open; her eyes, glazed over with tears. Her skin dyed orange and yellow from the heat of it all. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Ichigo, for fuck’s sake I can’t even get her to admit that there’s something wrong. I just—” 

Renji drops his head into his hands. Very softly — so soft that Ichigo is sure he isn’t meant to hear these next words— he says to himself: 

“Ten years. Ten years, and I’m still not enough.” 

Ten years. Enough to fell mountains; enough to dry rivers and move oceans. 

Not enough to change a heart. 

When Renji looks up at Ichigo again, his gaze is edged with steel. 

“She says your name.” 

“I— what?” 

“She says your name, when she walks out to Sokyouku Hill. She says your name.” 

A memory, in his mind: Rukia, ethereal in the moonlight. Ichigo? 

Yeah. Yeah, it’s me. I’m here. 

Ichigo doesn’t know what to say. 

Eventually, Renji breaks their impasse; he sighs and raps the table before getting up. “I’m not such a small man as to beat you to a pulp over that, Ichigo, stop looking like you think I’m going to bite your head off.” 

“I’m not—” he protests automatically, but Renji shushes him with a wave of his hand. 

“You are, but that’s not the point.” He ambles over to the door and looks over his shoulder at him, one hand poised on the handle. “If— if there’s anything you might be able to do for her—” 

“Renji—”

“Please,” Renji says, and even though this time, he isn’t on his knees half-dead before him, Ichigo knows what it’s costing him to make this request. “Please… help her.” 

Of course, Ichigo wants to reply, She’ll be fine, I’ll save her. Rukia’ll be safe—

But he isn’t fifteen anymore. 

“I’ll— try,” he says, lamely, and that is the best they can do. Renji nods. 

“Gonna go see Urahara. He might have some tricks up his sleeve,” he says, but he doesn’t look like he believes what he’s saying. Ichigo waves him off, and Renji slips away.

The sound of the clinic door swinging shut echoes in his wake. 

.

.

.

3:02 pm

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Click.

“...Hello?”

“Kurosaki-san?”

“...... Urahara-san?”

“Ah, Kurosaki-san, thank goodness you picked up. If you aren’t busy, I’d appreciate your presence at the Shoten as soon as possible.” 

“What? Me? Why?”

A pause; Ichigo finds, for no good reason whatsoever, that he is holding his breath.

“Ah, well. You see, that is—”

Between one accelerating heartbeat and the next—

“Kuchiki-san has collapsed.” 

[renegade-skywalker]

Out of the Abyss, Chapter 19

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2  / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Chapter 12 / Chapter 13 / Chapter 14 / Chapter 15 / Chapter 16 / Chapter 17 / Chapter 18 / Chapter 19: Missing Pieces

After years in exile, ex-Jedi General, Eden Valen (now going by Vale) continues to clean up after Revan and Malak’s mess of a war, only to find herself forever cursed with their unfinished business. As an ill-fated lead brings her to Tatooine, Eden finds that Revan’s mysterious plans go beyond the Republic, beyond the Outer Rim, and into the utter unknown. (A novelization of The Sith Lords and beyond)

Chapter Summary: Erebus unwillingly catches up with his former Jedi Master as Atris’ plans slowly fall into place. 

Also found on AO3 | fanfiction.net

3951 BBY, Hyperspace Erebus

Mical's eyes shuddered, moving rapidly beneath his closed lids as his fingers brushed the surface of the onyx pyramid that Eden left for Erebus. Not that she knew her brother by that name, at least not yet.

Erebus watched on intermittently, his gaze flickering between Mical and the sketches he had pinned to his workstation, sketches that roughly resembled the object before them all, granting the Republic officer with whatever visions it deemed worthy. Lonna Vash watched on unblinking, arms crossed over her chest, guarded yet somehow unfazed, as if none of this was news to her.

Before Mical could properly react, or even catch a breath, Erebus sighed with indignation and turned to Vash, his expression one of pure impatience.

"Now that we've completed your little pet project, will you finally tell us what this all means, pretty please?"

Vash met his gaze with an unwavering stare, her dark eyes deep and unyielding.

"I see nothing has changed," she answered curtly, her movements in contrast with her expression as she reached for Mical in what Erebus could only assume was meant to be an empathetic embrace. "What is it you saw?"

This last part she directed at Mical, whose gaze was middling, his eyes darting about Erebus' cargo hold yet focusing on nothing, as if reliving his visions once more before committing them to words.

"An empty hall on Coruscant, an unfinished data entry left unattended, forgotten… And then a desert stretching into the distance, endless, and it was somehow both night and day. I don't know how but I know that I was seeing the same desert over centuries, time passing… and then a flash and I was in the corps again, on the front lines at Jaga's Cluster, tending to the wounded when I heard that the Republic fleet commander was dead, that Cassus Fett had fled into deep space after severing his head… and then I was looking out over a deep chasm on Malachor, though I've only read reports, I-I've never actually been there. I don't know how I know it was Malachor, but something tells me that's exactly what I saw."

Erebus winced.

"What did you see in that chasm?" he heard himself say, regretting it the moment he said it, "Describe the sky."

Mical blinked at him, his gaze still unsettled, unready to focus just yet.

"A blinding green light. Fluorescent green, sickly. From the chasm, I mean. Unearthly, almost. The sky was… stormy. Lots of lightning. I could feel the thunder in my bones."

Erebus nodded, his eyes firm on Mical's, bright and blue, knowing his own eyes mirrored the scene on Malachor - pale green, bright, and venomous, no longer the once-soothing sage of his youth.

"Sounds like Malachor to me."

Lonna turned on him now, an arm still cradled around Mical's arms, firm but unwanted judging by the body language Erebus witnessed beneath her hand.

"I would ask what you saw but I have a feeling I already know," she said to Erebus darkly.

"Of course you do, but why don't you ask me anyway?" Erebus said, plastering a sickeningly sweet smile across his face, the sarcasm dripping from his every pore. Lonna afforded him a glance but said nothing as she released Mical from her grip and let the boy sit down. "Or better yet, why don't you tell me what I saw? All this talk of visions and you've yet to tell us what it is you already know, and why you're putting up with me."

"I know that's why you're making this difficult," Vash sighed, "I get it, I really do. After all these years, the Force begins to...wear on you. It's mysterious ways, it's indignation to divulge further details, failing to tell you what possible futures will come to pass and which ones are already dead in your wake."

Erebus wanted to retort but found that he couldn't, suddenly in odd agreement with Vash. He felt like a child again, playing the brat to counter his own frustration than anything else, not quite making it hard on those around him with the intention to be difficult but to feel less alone in his vexation. Not that it made his behavior any better…

"You're right though, I should explain myself."

Vash lowered herself onto the same crate she had claimed as a seat earlier, easing the weight off her leg as she did then, too. She watched Erebus' gaze as he surveyed her, nodding as she continued.

"I know, I know, there's a lot to explain and that will come into it, too," Vash glanced at her leg and winced, as if acknowledging it made the pain flare up.

"Old injury?" Mical asked, noticing as well. "I was a medic for many years. Many veterans develop the same sort of difficulty, even once the leg has healed it's-"

Vash held up a hand to silence him, smiling despite Mical's efforts as she silently indicated that he need not speak further.

"I'm well aware, but I'm afraid not. In fact, there is no injury."

Mical cocked his head, much like a curious gizka.

"I guess I'll start there," Vash laughed, her voice hollow, "The reason I mentioned your sister earlier, Aiden, is because I never stopped thinking about her. But there was more than just what the record showed of her trial. We on the Council never admitted to what we truly sensed from her, at least not in writing. You know we were cautious of her uncanny ability to create Force bonds, no?"

At this, Mical paled, though Erebus was unsure as to why. Part of him wanted to pry into his mind again, either out of his insatiable curiosity or the odd sense of territorialism he felt at seeing a stranger react to news about his sister. Instead, he only nodded, eager for Vash to continue and for any of this to start making sense.

"Force bonds in general are not wholly unusual. They can often develop after shared traumatic events, or even occur between siblings."

Vash paused, watching Erebus for a reaction. Their eyes met, understanding flowing in their gaze, but Vash did not elaborate further. Erebus' own connection with his sister was not seen as unorthodox when they were children, in fact it was almost expected of them, especially being twins. But once the nature of his sister's abilities became clear, where Erebus had no such affinity for bonds outside of the one he shared with his twin, the Council's attention soured.

"As you may very well know, our most recent war hero had a special affinity for such a talent."

Erebus scoffed.

"Are you talking about Revan and her famous fever dreams or the Jedi pawn Bastila's Battle Meditation?"

Vash's eyes widened but Erebus only waved a hand at her, swatting away her surprise.

"I knew Revan's redemption was oft contested but I wasn't the aware the details had reached even the Si-"

"Word gets around," Erebus cut in before Vash could insult him further. "Jedi aren't as good at keeping secrets as they'd like to believe."

"I would argue, but…. You're right. And not only that, but there are plenty of things that the Jedi unfortunately keep from each other," Vash sighed with resignation. "Which will unfortunately play it's own part in this tale, eventually. And I have a feeling you have some idea of what I'm talking about."

Vash nodded towards Mical, looking meek as always, unsure of whether he should speak. The man didn't seem bashful, more respectful than anything, and Erebus wasn't sure if that made him more annoyed or if it made him respect the man more.

"Aye, Master Vash. I know I was meant to convene with you at the Temple though nothing quite went as planned. I am happy to finally make your acquaintance, but not like this. No offense."

"None taken," Vash laughed, the light returning to her eyes for a moment before flickering out and making way for what Erebus assumed was her now-usual weariness. "Though I am curious as to why a Republic recruit with a relatively clean record would sign up for such a job."

"Job?"

"Your senses failed to tell you?" Vash replied sardonically, "Mical here was hired by one of our old colleagues. You may remember a certain Lucien Draay? Some would call him a heretic, but others might be familiar with his Jedi Covenant, a covert operation that tried to prevent Revan's rise to Sith power but unfortunately only made way for Darth Malak."

Erebus paled though he tried to hide it, hoping that his normal pallor would mask whatever winded him.

"Ah," was all he managed to say, instantly brought back to Atris' archive chambers, hard at work with little sleep trying to track down lost Jedi artifacts to win her favor. "I'm quite familiar."

"I'm not surprised, really," Master Vash said, her tone changing now as she glanced about the cargo hold, her eyes flickering over his sketches, stacks of notes and datapads, her gaze lingering on each item as if she knew exactly what moment of his childhood predated his current obsessions. And in a way Erebus would not be surprised if she did. Master Vash was the instructor he had during his most formative years, at least before the tumultuously formative ones he spent studying under Atris and struggling to make her see why she had chosen him as an apprentice, initially. "This all must strike a chord for you."

"Oh, you think?" Erebus tried not to balk, but the truth of what was happening was as clear to Vash as it was to him. Mical watched, his eyes volleying between each of them as they stewed in their thoughts, waiting for one of them to respond.

"I'm afraid I owe you an apology," Erebus found himself saying after a few tense moments, standing now and looking Mical square in the face, "From one historian to another, I knew what you sought to recover from the temple. In fact, I saw before I'd barely landed on that moon. In a vision, granted by that thing, over there."

Erebus pointed to the artifact, demure and docile on his workbench, yet sinister in its silence, its all-swallowing blackness, a surface so smooth that it should shine but instead soaked in all light as if it sought to snuff it out entirely. A blackhole in miniature. How quaint.

"Why are you telling me this?" Mical looked to Vash as if for an answer, despite not trusting either of them it was clear the boy was more inclined to ask the Jedi for guidance.

"Because it's why we're all here, isn't it?" Erebus said, spreading his arms wide, as if to show off his stores. But his crates were sealed - Mical and Vash could not see their contents. Though he had a feeling Vash already knew what was inside each and every one of the boxes stacked within the room.

"I guess it's my turn to monologue?" Erebus asked cheekily.

"I was hardly finished, but please, do go ahead."

A ghost of a smile spirited over Master Vash's lips and Erebus almost wanted to smile back, if not sardonically. How often he'd hoped to impress her as a child, or Atris, only to come up empty. As if the Force wasn't already hard at work making him bask in his own regret, it was now adding irony to the pot as well.

"I have a feeling this is all connected, but you already know that."

Master Vash's eyes softened as she surveyed him, soaking in the sight of him for a minute before nodding sagely. Yes, you're finally getting it now.

"You may have noticed that I have sketches of the very same object all over this workstation," Erebus started, pointing towards the desk. Mical's eyes followed, as if just noticing the pictures displayed there, though Erebus knew he'd taken stock of them the moment he stepped foot on his ship. "I've been searching for objects of import, particularly Sith in origin, that can extend one's life. Perhaps, unnaturally."

He glanced at Vash, who only raised her eyebrows, obviously displeased with his choice of words but otherwise keen enough for him to continue.

"On the behalf of my… benefactor."

"I take it your benefactor is a proper Sith Lord," Mical mumbled, his eyes still fixed on the sketches pinned to the wall beside the desk with interest, though Erebus could hear the honesty in his voice.

"Proper?!"

"Just, go on - please," Vash cut in, eyes flashing despite the polite expression plastered to her face, "Aiden."

Still feeling the child, Erebus obliged, though the edge remained in his voice as he continued.

"After years of research into an ancient cult there's little evidence of ever having existed, I was brought to Tatooine, believing it to have once been an outpost of sorts. There were several others but nothing remained. All reports were the same, detailing an outlying village with no ties to any major cities, sustained mysteriously with limited trade, though their one export was that."

Erebus motioned towards the pyramid, still sinister in its silence upon his desk.

"That makes sense," Mical mused, examining the sketches again, but this time his gaze danced from the paper to the object in question, as if he were cross-referencing it now. "Tatooine was likely home to a thousand cultures over the eons, each one eventually swallowed up by sand and fast forgotten. Even outposts as recent as sixty years ago have sunk beneath the dunes, never to be heard from again. But that's sort of the nature of the Outer Rim, isn't it? Once a resource dries up, you just move on. Onto the next, without another thought. Because there's no room for anything other than survival. But sand can be a preservative, there's probably a thousand lost civilizations beneath the Dune Sea."

Erebus wanted to say something biting and smart in return but found that he came up empty. The man was absolutely right, even if he didn't have to go on at length just to prove a point.

"No better place to hide a secret Sith cult, no?" Erebus joked instead, though his demeanor was nothing but serious as he continued. "At least, I'm not sure the cult knew necessarily that the objects they worshipped were Sith in origin. Much like you said, this town popped up out of nowhere some eighty years ago and disappeared just as quickly. No one batted an eye. I checked the records from the Tatooine spaceports, and honestly? They could care less who lives and who dies beyond Anchorhead, or any of the other major ports. There was hardly any record of the place alongside a thousand other settlements that had mysteriously either moved in anticipation of an oncoming storm or disappeared entirely."

He stopped, realizing he needed to take a breath. He looked from Mical to Master Vash, surprised to find them both at rapt attention. His throat dry, he attempted to swallow and continue, his voice a rasp husk of what it usually was as he went on.

"I'd been studying this place for some time, unsure of where it was on the planet exactly, and yet when I arrived in Anchorhead…"

I found Eden again, he almost said, the discovery dawning on him as if for the first time, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. It wasn't so much a surprise as much as it was validation. He'd been irrevocably connected to Eden since their birth, their connection through the Force the first thing he'd truly felt coming into this world and the only thing that remained a constant in his life - until Malachor. But it was because of this tether that he knew - he knew - that if Eden had perished that he would have felt it, that he would feel that tether wrenched from him as she left this plane of existence. He would know.

"I waited. A disturbance in the Force held me back. I quickly learned that my twin sister was living in the city, but she was out of town on a job. I waited around, hoping to… well, I'm not sure exactly what I hoped, but when she returned she was only keen on leaving Anchorhead and Tatooine altogether. And with good reason."

"I take it this is about the bounty posted by the Exchange?" Vash peppered into Erebus' offered pause. He nodded.

"Precisely, which is another coincidence I don't believe to be quite the happy accident it seems, though I haven't figured that one out yet."

"Wasn't there already a bounty on Jedi?" Mical chimed in, clearly confused now as he pushed away from Erebus' desk and began to pace the small space shared between them.

"Oh, you may not have heard, being held hostage and all," Erebus said with a casual air despite his growing discomfort at Mical's growing ease to peruse his ship as he wished, crossing his arms as he leaned against the cargo hold door with a careful nonchalance painted heavily with passive aggression, "The Exchange posted a bounty on all Jedi, yes, but General Eden Valen's records and most recent whereabouts and aliases were posted to the holonet boasting a handsome fifty million credits if she was found alive."

"Found alive? And what, brought to the Exchange?" Mical asked, almost outraged at the news.

"Presumably."

"But for what purpose?"

"Who knows?" Erebus countered, exasperated, "At this point I'd like not to care, but I'm honestly probably just as afraid as you are at the idea. There were rumors during the Mandalorian Wars of a rogue doctor testing Jedi, though I don't know what ever happened to him or if he was ever brought to justice. But somehow, whatever it was Eden was doing out there when I arrived at Anchorhead, she ended up coming back with that." Erebus pointed at the black pyramid again as if they needed any reminding, almost jarred by how serenely it sat there despite everything. "I won't get into the boring details of how we managed to leave the city and end up on Space City, but she found the outpost I had been searching for somehow. I'm not sure how or what else she took from there, but she left one piece. For me. Perhaps she saw the drawings and left it as a peace offering, I really don't know. But when I touched that thing? I saw the Temple, but more specifically, I saw Exar Kun. He led me there. To you."

"Exar Kun?" Mical repeated, inching toward Erebus with a furrowed brow, "In the flesh?"

"No, no, the mural of him.The one that graces the city walls leading to the Temple like a warning."

"A warning of what The Great Sith War might wrought if the true threat was not destroyed," Mical mused, still pacing.

"I take it this is where you fit into all of this?" Erebus asked, this time actively trying to wring his voice of all bitterness, in an attempt to play nice.

Mical paused and locked eyes with Vash, who only nodded before dropping her gaze to the floor, losing herself in thought before Mical elaborated.

"I may be a Republic Scout but I have a history with the Jedi. I served with the Corps during Revan's war, made a few friends. There's a theory about some things they found during the Dxun campaign, as well as a few others, though Dxun being the most notorious. As you may know, Dxun and its history with the orbiting Onderon factor heavily in Exar Kun's fall to the… Dark Side." Mical said, his voice straying over the last two words as if he didn't mean to offend, perhaps not out of fear but out of confusion for just what their allegiances meant in close quarters like this, not quite enemies but still far from allies. "What with Revan's sudden change of heart and history repeating itself all over again, I don't think there's any coincidence about it. And the fact that there were skirmishes out on Tatooine, skirmishes that Revan herself fought in, not far from where you found that thing-"

"I didn't find it, Eden did," Erebus corrected, though his voice was almost whispersoft, afraid of growing accustomed to saying his sister's name out loud again - Eden, Ede - as if doing so might either summon or banish her, and he wasn't yet sure which was worse.

"Which is even more peculiar, I think," Mical continued, picking up his stride again despite the small space, "Considering there are reports of General Valen finding similar objects to this one on Dxun. Different in shape, yes, but with similar properties, similar makeup. Objects which were conveniently lost in transit. Revan, General Valen, the myth of Exar Kun, the Sith - it's all connected somehow. But, what I'm wondering is… why now? Exar Kun fell to the Dark Side and turned almost fifty years ago. But now the Jedi are vanishing, and Revan went missing earlier this standard year, the exiled General Valen suddenly re-emerges…" Mical shook his head, trying to make sense of it all. "There's something larger at work here."

Erebus looked at Mical square in the eye now, keen on making another smart remark about the Force and coincidences, but when their eyes met he found that he couldn't. Mical's bright eyes bore into his, almost pleading, and though it was in the spirit of making his case, Erebus felt as if he owed the man an apology - but for reasons unknown to him. If Erebus had not so easily succumbed to anger all those years ago, would he be anything like the man standing before him? Square jaw and sweeping blonde hair aside -

"Wait," Erebus said, the hair on his neck truly standing on end now as a memory took form in his mind's eye as he spoke, an image of the man before him morphing into something similar yet different - smaller in stature perhaps, and younger. Oh, so much younger. "I know you."

Though Erebus' eyes never left Mical's, he could see Lonna Vash smirk in his peripheral vision, though she remained quiet, watching.

"You came to the Archives, on Coruscant. You wanted to study under Atris, with-"

"With Eden Valen, yes."

The moment solidified as Mical confirmed it - a young boy of about twelve wandering into the Archives, bothering Erebus (Aiden, then) for an audience with the Master Historian, claiming to have a long-standing appointment, and Erebus arguing with him that it could not be the case because he knew every minutiae of the Historian's schedule down to the precise moment, only to find himself terribly wrong once Atris swept into the room to sweep the boy right back into her office without as much as a backward glance, much less an apology. Mical had been exceedingly polite then and almost as much now, circumstances willing, but back then he'd been Atris' attempt to keep Eden with the Order, a consolation prize meant to spur her onto Knighthood.

"You were meant to be her apprentice, her Padawan…"

I won't be bribed, Eden had said, If they wanted to make me a Knight they would have done it already, they would have assigned me to a proper Master and given me the same courtesy they did you. You didn't see what Revan showed me out there, Aiden, she'd pleaded, You have to believe me, it's worse than anything you could imagine.

All roads lead to Eden, he thought, laughing darkly.

"You knew this already, didn't you?" Erebus said, tearing his eyes away from Mical's equally surprised gaze, the words finding purchase as he looked Vash in the eye. "I think it's time you finish that origin story of yours."

Master Vash only looked back at him, the smirk she wore earlier fading slightly into something more serious. She brushed a strand of greying black hair behind her ear and reached into her robe, producing another black pyramid, this one smaller than the first, slight enough to comfortably hide in a closed fist.

"I was there when the Jedi found her," she began, her dark eyes fixed on the pyramid as she held it up to examine more closely. Mical's face paled.

"General Valen?"

Vash shook her head.

"No, Revan."

Neither Mical nor Erebus spoke, glancing at one another before awaiting Vash's response, a new kinship kindled between them in unknowing, the mystery unfolding before them both despite their past or their current affiliations. The Force would see to it that they were in this together, now, whether they liked it or not.

"We found her wandering the desert."

She didn't have to say which planet. Erebus already knew.

"She didn't carry anything with her. Only this."

Vash tossed the pyramid gently into the air, catching it gingerly in her palm, feeling the weight of it before she leaned over and set it on the desk beside its matching piece, the one Eden left behind.

"We brought her to Nespis, just as you had been, Aiden. I'm surprised this thing was still there."

"I take it the Jedi never discovered its true properties?" Erebus ventured. Vash shook her head.

"My Master back then saw a vision as well, when she first touched the artifact, though she never told me what she saw, nor did she let me touch it myself. Nothing indicated that she saw anything dark or disturbing. If anything, it validated her decision to bring Revan to the Jedi, to train as one of us."

Vash sighed, her eyes still fixed on the pyramids, now a pair.

"Your Master?" Erebus probed, uncertain whether Master Vash had ever mentioned any of the Jedi Masters that had trained her in their time together as teacher and student.

"Master Arren Kae."

A shiver ran down Erebus' spine at the name. Disgrace, he instantly recalled Atris saying, A traitor if there ever was one.

Master Arren Kae had not only gone on to train Revan but had also followed her to war, a grievous offense in Atris' book. She is the antithesis of everything it means to be a Jedi, a devout follower of the Light. Not only had she trained the next Exar Kun, but there were also rumors of Kae and an Echani General, whose name escaped Erebus despite how much it bothered him to forget something - regardless of how trivial.

Echani. Like the young women at the temple...

"My apprentice and I were scouring the old Temples for anything that could lead us to the new Sith threat, anything we could pass along to the Republic." Vash continued, interrupting his thoughts, "Lucien Draay had headed the effort years ago, but after what happened at Katarr, someone needed to take over where he left off. This pyramid was still sitting in the archives on Space City, unmarked, along with the cache you recovered, Mical, as well. I couldn't get to it once the Echani started watching the perimeter, much less when the Golden Company moved in."

The hair on the back of Erebus' neck stood on end as he followed Vash's gaze from the desk to the satchel Mical had brought aboard from the Temple. The cache so prized it was one of few objects set apart from the rest of the Archive's contents, let alone from any potential Dark Side users that might attempt to steal it - someone such as himself. But he'd glimpsed its contents when he had peered into Mical's mind, the mounting coincidences still not lost on him.

"Exar Kun's lightsaber," he breathed, almost reverent. Erebus almost expected Mical or Vash to make a face (A Sith? Fawning over the Dark Jedi Exar Kun? How cliché... ) but neither one reacted. It was the stuff of legend, but for Erebus is was both the dream and the nightmare. The famed object he'd coveted as a child yet feared all the same.

"I should have sensed the path you might take, Aiden," Vash said, her voice rasp with remembering, "You modeled your first lightsaber after this one, no?"

Erebus nodded, his eyes still fixed on the unopened satchel.

"What did you think of a Padawan fashioning his lightsaber after the weapon of a turncoat? Back then, I mean?"

He hadn't expected to ask, though he felt as if the question had been there all along, so much of his past coming to light that unearthing any more of it seemed only natural.

"I thought it was a coping mechanism," Vash admitted, "So many children were afraid, back then especially, but you most of all. The other Masters told me what happened when they first brought you to Space City, what you said about the mural. And despite whatever it is that brought you to where you are now, I suspect some of that still holds true."

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. You know the rest." Erebus wanted to laugh, though his voice was far more somber than intended in his sarcasm. Vash smiled and glanced down into her lap.

"Something like that."

"I don't mean to interrupt this meaningful catch-up or anything, but-" Mical interrupted, polite as ever, his face painted with pure concern, "But you said you were at the Temple with your apprentice? As in… your current apprentice? Just hours ago?"

Vash looked at Mical and nodded, the weight of her unspoken answer clear on her face and obvious in her apprentice's absence.

"I'm... so sorry," Mical said, shaking his head as he crossed his arms. "If there's anything I can do-"

Vash put up a hand, pleading "Please, I appreciate it but I think the best thing we can do is consider our next steps."

"Our?" Erebus butt in, "And is this when you tell us where your injury comes from, finally?"

She nodded, inhaling a bracing breath before regaling her audience with an answer.

"I've yet to figure that out, to be honest," Vash winced again followed by a sharp intake of breath, "Though it's worth noting that my apprentice, Korath-"

She paused, a lump forming in her throat as she continued, her eyes welling up..

"Korath was taken down in a rain of blasterfire when the Golden Company arrived, completely severing his right leg."

She swallowed the rasp in her voice away, or at least attempted to, looking at neither man as she continued.

"He'd been touching the artifact when they materialized, the visions likely overwhelming his Force sense."

"And where were you?" Erebus said, at least trying not to sound accusatory, though his voice betrayed him despite it.

"I was in the library when they attacked him, watching you."

The Jedi he'd sensed in the Archive, of course, Erebus had figured as much. "But that still doesn't explain how you know-"

"I saw it," she said, interrupting him, "In my mind's eye, through the Force. It was as if… as if I was seeing it through his eyes. As if Korath wanted me to see. To perhaps help him, I…" she trailed off, shaking her head a shaking hand reached up to massage the back of her neck. "I don't know."

She looked down, her hands having descended from her neck to now wring together in her lap. "But I felt it, too. The pain in my leg. It was as if I was being shot at as well, bleeding out on the floor. You can see why your sister plays a part in this, and I don't think it's a coincidence that half the galaxy's now on her tail, either. Especially after all these years."

Erebus shook his head, though in sage agreement, knowing there was more to why Eden was of particular interest to Darth Nihilus and could not explain, and knowing that he had so many questions for what Vash sensed from Eden the day she was exiled, understanding why the woman would be wary to deign him an earnest answer.

"Korath was still holding the artifact when I found him, his fist closed tight." Vash mimicked the movement, her knuckles turning white. "And that's when I saw it. All of this, the Temple collapse, this ship, you… and Dantooine."

"So that's how you knew to find us here?" Erebus confirmed, Vash nodding solemnly as their eyes met briefly across the room.

"And what awaits us there? On Dantooine?" Mical asked, his voice soft but soothing in the seething quiet that followed Vash's vision.

"The next piece of this puzzle, I imagine," Vash said, sighing, "I think it's worth noting that an unaffiliated group of otherwise unknown Echani as well as the most notorious mercenary group in this sector were interested in what was kept in that Temple is a start. And like I said, I don't think it's a coincidence that these objects link to Revan and Exar Kun both."

Vash and Mical, as if on cue, both turned to Erebus, watching him for a reaction.

"Oh, I imagine this is where you suspect I come in, then?" he asked, clutching his chest dramatically to show his offense, since their imposing presence on his ship wasn't proof enough.

Vash shrugged meekly as Mical crossed his arms, his expression unchanging, neither one of them elaborating on their stance, though their opinions seemed set in stone.

"Ah, I see," Erebus said, sucking in a breath through gritted teeth, "Not only have I studied these objects, but I'm now supposed to be your stand-in for traitorous Jedi? Since it seems neither Revan nor Exar Kun could make it. Busy schedules and all, being either missing or dead. Okay, sure, I'll play along…"

Erebus stood up straight, pushing his out his chest as he clasped his hands behind his back, his fingertips already tingling with electricity. Calming himself with a measured breath, he continued, making sure to look both of them square in the eye, one after the other and back again, as he spoke.

"I will warn you, though I assure you I don't have to," he began, his voice a chilling monotone, soft enough that both Vash and Mical were forced to lean towards him in order to catch his every word, "That my Master is likely on our tail if he's not already on Eden's. He knows we crossed paths, I can feel it. And if he sees fit to catch up with us - with me - and demand answers? I cannot protect you, even if I wanted to."

"And your Master… is he- erm, are they-?" Mical started, though the words died on his throat before he could finish.

"Oh trust me," Erebus interrupted, his voice harsh and unrelenting, and not because he wished to instill fear in his unwilling companions but because the most he could do for them as well as himself was tell the truth, "You don't want to know. And if you did, you'd wish you didn't."

If you even want to refer to Nihilus as anything that might make him seem human, Erebus thought, thinking it best if he not elaborate - at least not out loud - thinking on the horror that was his Master. But for Erebus, it was the horror that fascinated him most - the horror and the awe, the utterly unfathomable thing that he was, something and somewhere between being and nonbeing, hunger without end. Vash's eyes were steady on him, her expression unwavering, as if she knew that Nihilus was the one responsible for Katarr. Erebus could only hold her gaze, regardless of what conclusion she came to, before breaking away and making his exit.

"We have three days before we reach Dantooine," Erebus finally said, breaking the silence, though his voice was just as severe, just as sinister, "I suggest you get some rest. I can't imagine we'll get much in the eons to come."

And with that, Erebus left Vash and Mical in his cargo bay - along with his notes, his life's work, and a slew of other things he'd prefer to keep from prying eyes - and closed the door so he was finally alone in the cockpit with only the white-blue of hyperspace for company. As soon as the thing shut, his fingers exploded with static energy at his sides, muffled only by the fabric of his robes.

Seething still, Erebus steadied himself with a few deep breaths, trying not to reach out with the Force to watch as Vash and Mical undoubtedly proceeded to peruse his things or talk behind his back. Instead, he sunk into his pilot's chair and, propping his boots up on the console, figured it best he take his own advice, and sleep.

------

3951 BBY, Telos Atris

"We should be arriving within a standard day, Mistress," Orenna spoke into the transponder, her holo-visage a ghostly blue in Atris' chambers, "We managed to retrieve some objects of import mentioned in your manifest, but overall we were unable to recover everything before the mercenaries moved in. Would you like for us to pursue?"

Orenna, like the others, was so serene, so calm. A pool of water waiting in a glen, stirring only with a ripple at the mere hint of the breeze. Concentric circles forming one from another, an echo in endless chorus until… nothing. Stillness, again. Calm.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

"Not for the moment, no," Atris said, matching her voice to the Echani's timbre. She wanted them to pursue, yes, but she needed to study what they found first, her thirst for knowledge as insatiable as ever. The logs she'd retrieved years ago divulged most of Nespis VIII's stores, but it was different seeing the objects in person. It was different seeing an object through the Force - raw and rending, like tearing flesh straight from bone. Pure and untainted.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

"We will re-evaluate the situation once you return," Atris elaborated, "We still have the Exile to consider."

"Understood, Mistress," Orenna nodded, reverent.

"And how is your sister?" Atris asked, her voice brimming with unknowing as she spoke, though she did her best to conceal it.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

"She is stable, for now," Orenna responded, looking over her shoulder as if checking on Brianna herself, though they were clearly separated by the walls of the ship, "I don't believe she is in any state to report, however."

"There is no need, at least not for the moment." Atris smiled, her expression tranquil as the gesture scarcely graced her features, "We will speak when you return."

Orenna nodded, a similar smile overcoming her face. Echani took after the physical appearance of the parent whose gender they matched, and though Atris had never met the sisters' mother she could still sense a bit of Yusanis' regality in the girls, in the way they carried themselves and the way they spoke, even if they did not resemble him physically. It was what had drawn her to the sisters from the moment she met them, tasked with divulging the news of their father's passing on behalf of the Jedi at the end of the war. But Atris had met Brianna's mother once, the bastard sister bearing another woman's face… but she could no longer recall her name, nor what she looked like, Brianna's face now a similar blur in her memory. And Atris did not know why.

"Mistress-?" Orenna interrupted, her expression growing concerned, "Is there anything I can-?"

There is no emotion, there is peace.

"No, no," Atris laughed genially, an inner calm falling over her like fresh snow, "Just alert me when you have arrived."

"And of the ship we saw dock at Nespis?" Orenna asked again, this time uncertain.

Release her records, the woman had said. The Sith will follow.

"We shall devise a plan upon your arrival."

Orenna hesitated a moment before nodding in affirmation, signing off. Business as usual.

Everything was falling into place. But now… Atris would wait.

She would retreat to her study until the sisters returned, meditate on what she knew to be true and what she willed to be so, trusting the Force to set things right and avenge the Jedi that sacrificed their lives for the secret she now knew to be true.

There is no death, there is the Force.

The future of the Jedi rested on her shoulders alone, now. And she would shoulder the burden, no matter the cost.

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

ok well i originally drafted this while thinking about this post, but it’s relevant to what i wanted to say about (my tags on) this one too so i’ll just post it now, how ‘bout that.

i mean, Getting Used to It (and thus expanding your definition of “i’m fine”) isn’t always as dramatic as your brain completely turning off its pain response to an event, so that you don’t realize you’ve injured yourself until some other clue tips you off. that’s certainly happened to me? (and w/ smaller injuries it happens to healthy people too, as when you cut yourself on paper without noticing, and it doesn’t start to hurt until you see it bleed.) but the more everyday/pedestrian forms of this phenomenon are, like. that the level of pain i rated as an 8 in 2016 now reads to me as, like, 5. and that when you’re depressed (or at least when i am), pain goes up but interest in that pain goes down, because of depression’s tendency to normalize negative stimuli.

i think these are two manifestations of the same thing: your brain removes fear from the equation, and since fear makes pain more intense, most pain experienced in fear’s absence seems like no big deal. and that goes double for painful stimuli you once associated with fear but no longer do? in a sorta feedback-loopy way. or at least it does for me. less fear-->less pain-->even less fear the next time something similar happens.

if i sit in nearly any given position too long, one or more of the joints in my legs will sometimes... well, i think subluxate is technically the right word?* but it’s not like a sudden pop: it’s like, as the muscles around them relax my joints slowly slide out of place. as you can imagine (given the low bar required to achieve it), this happens A Lot; i don’t keep track, but probably once a day on average? i know it’s not every day, but also that some days it happens many times, and that both these latter and the days when it doesn’t happen at all often strike me as a change from the norm. so, yeah, probably a mean of once per day. but until sometime in 2019, it used to freak me out—a lot—every time.

it’s often one of those above-mentioned doesn’t hurt until you notice for other reasons scenarios, too, like the paper cut. so i’d be like innocently sitting there, then look down or attempt to adjust position and suddenly OH GOD MY LEG(S). and every time it happened i’d think, “oh god, is this the time i really and truly get stuck and have to be scooped out of this position on a stretcher. fuck, please, no, that would be so humiliating, there’s no way the paramedics would believe me, strangers must not see me like this,” &c., and the more determined i got to prove to myself that i could move, that i wasn’t stuck, that i could get myself out of this, the more horrifically painful these attempts became—partly because fear of pain leads to greater pain, and partly because when you’re panicky you don’t tend to move with much patience or care.

but, of course, every time i would eventually get out of it. it’s hard to say how long it took, because, again, i never timed it, and also because time does weird shit when you’re freaking out. (plus i have adhd, so my estimates of how long things take aren’t the greatest to begin with.) i want to say though that the longest i ever took unpretzeling myself in this way was an hour and a half—and i usually took way less time than that. (it’s hard also to estimate because these days exceeding ten minutes marks an especially long battle of this kind.) iirc, the ~90-minute incident was like, my right hip already felt not quite right, and someone on the internet recommended W-sitting as a way to reduce a subluxed hip, and i tried it because i either didn’t know at that time or had forgotten that when i W-sit for more than a few seconds i often misplace several toes, up to two joints per knee, maybe an ankle, and/or at least one hip. some of these will reduce themselves automatically as soon as i move; others i can only move passively until after i’ve reduced them. so like, that endeavor was a fucking jigsaw puzzle, and good luck figuring those out when a. every wrong move doubles the pain and panic you’re in, but b. leaving the puzzle unfinished is also agonizing. most of the time it was not that bad.

…what was my point? oh yeah: this sat-wrong-now-my-leg’s-stuck business still happens a lot, and it’s n o t like sitting on a pen, where your brain eventually gives up on signaling your discomfort.** nor like when you’re running on adrenaline and your brain doesn’t bother to tell you you’re hungry. nor like what tumblr user bibliosphere described, where her brain evidently just… prioritized other tasks over the “hey please fix this leg” alarm that pain would have signified. but incidents like this do, literally, hurt less the tenth time they happen than they do the first time, and it’s not because your body Toughens Up or whatever either (that only works w/ exercise-related muscle pain); it’s because your brain learns that this event does not pose imminent danger. a subluxation you know how to reduce will hurt less than one you don’t.

that’s what the “i’m always subluxing” version of the hulk meme means. most chronically ill people describe this whole phenomenon as more like the argument from “shot in the knee theory.” as like, you stop screaming because you learn screaming doesn’t help. and i mean… yeah? but ime it’s more that you stop screaming*** when you learn what does help. the OP in that post asks rhetorically,

Are you going to scream and cry the entire time, or are you going to come to grips with reality and accept the fact that freaking out isn’t going to make the ambulance come any faster?

and jesus christ, OP, are you kidding? in real life? definitely the first one! if you literally got shot in the knee, you wouldn’t just scream because it hurt—you would scream also because holy shit, am i gonna die of blood loss? why did they shoot me? are they going to shoot me again??? and pain you’ve had for years, or an injury you’ve sustained many times before, is nothing like that. if it scares you at all, the content of your fear is more like, oh, crap. what’s this gonna feel like tomorrow. will i have to cancel my plans again?

*n.b. i’ve never had this confirmed by a doctor. i just assume that’s what’s happening because 1. the sensations’ non-pain components are very similar to what the subluxations i have had confirmed feel like; 2. if it’s a joint i can see from my position (e.g., the ankle pressed against the floor when criss-cross-applesauced), it usually looks a little fucked up; and 3. it behaves quite differently from regular stiffness, joints in this scenario feeling not so much too tight to move properly as like i keep aiming for and missing the lever that moves them. (and each failed attempt HURTS like my soft tissues are pumpkin guts and my bones are knives trying to scoop them out.)

**i’ve never actually tried this experiment, though, and i’ve heard it doesn’t work on some autistic people. hopefully this goes without saying lmao but my sensory perceptions are Weird in General, so, any hypotheses i build upon them should be salted liberally

***well, whimpering, anyway. for me at least, if i literally scream at an injury it’s not from the pain, it’s from the surprise. i’m more likely to scream when i stub my toe than when i try to bite and my jaw crunches sideways, because the latter is a possibility i sign up for every time i put food in my mouth, whereas like. ob…viously you wouldn’t have stubbed your toe if you’d already known the object you accidentally kicked was there. (except i guess in movies when people kick objects to express rage, forgetting that this will hurt them. in that case i suppose they scream partly from surprise and partly because negative stimuli encountered in “fight” mode reinforce preexisting anger. wow i digress lmao sorry.) but reactions like whimpering, clenching your teeth, &c. only partly come from surprise; they’re also stims, i think, tho clearly not ones unique to ND people. the woman who pierced my ears when i was a kid told me to focus on tapping first one foot and then the other, so i wouldn’t shrink away. i think it’s kinda like that: it releases nervous energy, gives you a competing stimulus to focus on.

[travellvogue]

Meant To Be

CHAPTER 8- By Your Side

(was listening to Survivor- Destiny’s Child when writing this and felt like a bad ass bitch lol)

What was he doing here?

-

You weren’t even aware of the fact that he was home from Dubai. Wishing he would just stay there forever so you’d never have to see him again. His smug little grin as he walks in making you want to throw up the bacon you’d just eaten. He was tanned, something you always envied about him, his ability to catch the sun after 20 minutes outside was the polar opposite to your skin, but it was something you no longer admired, you didn’t admire anything about that man anymore. Praying your evil stare would make him turn around and leave the building. Jesse Lingard, even the sound of his voice made you feel physically ill. 

And if you didn’t feel sick enough, your ears pricked at the sound of heels following his footsteps, large chunky black stilettos following him in, who the fuck wears heels to a cafe, the two of their hands interlocked as you watched them strut in together. It hurt the most that he was bringing his blonde bimbo to where the two of you had your first date, only to mirror that day with the person he’d cheated on you with. You examined her intently as Trent’s eye-line followed your own, resting on the fake blonde, black roots in desperate need of a dye, lips plumped up so much they could burst at any second, eyes barely able to stay open from the weight of her excessive lash extensions. “Fuck” Trent whispers under his breath, knowing no part of this could end well, looking back at you as he examines your expression, nostrils flaring as you lips sit in a tight line, and if looks could kill the two of them would be dead.

“Why the fuck is he here?” you hiss, another sip of your orange juice swallowed as you push your plate forward, not being able to eat anything since the wicked witch of Manchester decided to swoop in with his new toy to play with. “Don’t let it get to you” Trent whispers softly, in all honestly he had no clue what to say, when he invited you out to get some food the last thing he expected to happen is for Jesse and his whore to come waltzing in. He wished he could turn back time and change what restaurant you ate at, or even spin the clock hands backwards so he could actually tell you he loves you on that sunny Thursday when you bumped into him on your way to pick Jesse up from National Team Training. He revised that day as if it was a diary entry, he remembered what you were wearing, the smile you gave him, the light was still in your eyes back then, a light that flickered away with the reduced amount of contact between the two of you. He knew it was Jesse getting jealous, he’d made sly comments towards him about “stealing my missus” which he and Marcus found hilarious. Maybe if you never fell for Jesse’s charm this would be a regular occurrence, eating together at your favourite cafe as a date, he’d treat you like a princess, and secretly he was aware of the fact that you knew that as well. 

“Fuck he’s seen us” his day dream is interrupted by your rushed tone as you fiddle with a strand of hair around your pointer finger, acting as if you weren’t sending daggers with your eyes towards Jesse and Miss No-Name. A slight panic running through Trent’s body, Jesse had always been possessive of you, especially when it came to the two of you hanging out, so this situation isn’t one he particularly wanted to get caught up in. “It’ll be alright, you’ll be alright, I’m here for ya- right by your side” he smiles, a simple smile settling your nerves as you realise you could deal with any shit that Jesse brought your way. And talking about shit coming your way, along came Jesse. Feet dragging along the floor until he reached the end of your booth, a dominant stance as he placed his hands on the table, distance between the two of them as his shoulders hunched over- covering his neck when he leaned forward.

“Y/N” he nods at you, charming, ignoring Trent through the process of looking you up and down, you never knew a look could be manipulative, but he proved you wrong. “Jesse” you reply back with a matching cold tone, not letting his greeting have an effect on your confidence. “And this is?” you continued, nodding towards his little friend that had followed him to your table like a lost puppy. There’s an awkward silence before Jesse clears his throat and introduces you to his new lady-friend. “Uh, this is Lola“  his smug, powerful tone had left, now a nervous state as his fingers tapped against the wooden table, a habit he picked up when he was nervous, you’d learnt that over the past two years. “Thought you’d be with me eating your favourite” you almost laugh in disbelief at his comment, eyebrows raising in complete shock. How could someone be so blind to the heartbreak they’ve caused. “We’re not together Jesse”. Simple, yet effective. A statement that was only true but left him somehow confused, expecting you to crawl back to him after he treated you? Absolutely not. “Since when did we finish baby?” What the actual fuck?! Is he actually serious? You look to Trent, only to be greeted with an equally confused expression. “Since you met that” you point to Lola, she goes to defend herself but Jesse holds up his hand to silence her, an action he’d done to you before, which you had tolerated, now seeing it from an outsiders point of view made you want to cry for the person you once were.  “A real man ends a relationship before he starts looking for another one” Trent spoke his first words, shocking Jesse a little, not expecting him to take your side. A scoff coming from Jesse’s mouth as he mastered up a poor comeback. “A real man doesn’t take someone else’s girlfriend for a date to where they first met” “Good job she’s not your girlfriend then” you smile at Trent’s reply, a small smile from him directed towards you as Jesse grows more and more angry. “Listen here Trent” Jesse’s fists slammed against the table making your cutlery shake, body jolting at the sudden intrusion. Trent stands from his seat at the threat of Jesse’s voice, heart rate increasing as you watch the anger grow in Jesse’s eyes, taking a threatening stance, trying to make himself a level height with Trent but failing to do so. “Enjoy her whilst it lasts… she’s shit in bed anyway” Jesse’s voice was loud enough to draw the attention of the other people in the cafe, his finger poking at Trent’s chest. Studying Trent’s reaction, his eyebrows knitting together as he breathed heavily out his nose, licking his teeth, feet in a position that suggested he was ready to launch himself at Jesse.

“Not here” you interrupt, quickly trying to calm the two of them, desperately not wanting to do this in public, the paparazzi already gathering outside the small cafe. “Then where Y/N? I don’t want you to talk to this cunt ever again” Trent speaks, voice angry but his anger not aimed at you, he could control his emotions and aim them towards the deserving person, unlike Jesse. The two men stood face to face, your arm reaching between their bodies as you pushed Trent away, giving him a soft look, silently begging him to remove himself from the situation, “don’t lower yourself to him” you whisper to him quietly making him nod. The two of you backing up away from Jesse and Lola, feet only taking you a few steps away from him as you jolt to a stop, Jesse’s tight grip on your wrist stopping you in your movements as you spin to face him, inspecting his face as you follow to where he’s looking. Fingers tracing the bracelet he’d gifted you. You don’t know why you still had it on, a good part of you wanted to burn it and post him the ashes. “Still wearing it, knew you still loved me” his self-approving grin was repulsive, power surging through your body as you ripped your wrist from his grip, yanking the bracelet off your body- shattering the clasp- and throwing it towards Lola, something that was clearly meant for her in the first place. It didn’t take an idiot to realise that the ‘L’ charm stood for ‘Lola’. “Here, you have that” you spat, bracelet hitting her chest and then falling down to the ground. “And you-” you pointed at Jesse, “have that” your sentence was finished with a splash of orange juice, unfinished glass of liquid flung across his Gucci jumper, drenching his poor excuse of a beard. Bewildered expression on both of their faces as he stares in dismay. And for once you thought he was left speechless, but once more he proves to be more of a twat then you thought he ever was. “Run off with that cunt that loves you” Jesse spits, index finger pointing at Trent, “at least one of us loves her” Trent replies back, you’re anger now ignored, a proud smirk growing on your face as you look at Trent and wink, the two of you strutting out of the cafe hand-in-hand, leaving Jesse and his whore behind.

[krumbine]

Thoughts on 35: Birthdays in the Time of the Pandemic

The pandemic has taken T-Rex Cafe from me on my birthday.

It was a fledgling, two-year-run of a tradition but I honestly don’t give a shit. And not because I was ‘just’ there earlier this year for a much-needed dino/LEGO-themed catch-up with an out-of-town friend.

This would have been the year that the T-Rex Cafe tradition evolved into the Dinosaur World tradition (DID YOU SEE WHAT I JUST DID THERE?!) — Dinosaur World is an extraordinarily out-of-place Florida attraction found in a corner of the Sunshine State that’s closer to Tampa than Orlando. The Plant City (actual city name) location is great, because it might just be far enough outside the bubble of the Plastic City (not the actual city name) that it wouldn’t be suffocated to death by His Holy Mousiness.

Not that any of that matters.Dinosaur World is an open-air attraction with paths that weave through a foliage-dense park. It’s home to a single animatronic set-piece tucked away in a sad-looking museum that’s not winning any awards (the animatronics or the museum).

Please don’t think I’m underselling it. Dinosaur World is glorious.

It’s clear that the animatronics aren’t the star of the attraction — that designation goes to the massive dinosaur sculptures that litter the jurassic park. These dense, solid constructs have been fabricated across decades and it’s a joy going from a modern, somewhat realistic representation of a dinosaur to an older, derpy sculpture that just so happens to be the exact, anantomicaly-incorrect image you conjure when you find yourself thinking the words ‘Dinosaur World’.

Again, I am not bullshitting you even in the slightest: it is glorious.

The best part, by any measure of bestness, is the gift shop — and this is speaking as a dude who lives in Orlando metro, the global epicenter of that other pandemic afflicting the globe: gift shops. It’s so bad here that new strains of gift shops have evolved that no longer require a host attraction. In the Orlando area, you can find gift shops that are located at the exit of other gift shops.

Again, I am not bullshitting you even the slightest: the Dinosaur World gift shop bests all other gift shops with its tiny, useless clappers-not-slappers arms tied behind its back.

Generally speaking, I stand immune to senseless purchases of molded plastic that, generally, serve to only collect dust.

But in the Dinosaur World gift shop? I laugh in the face of budgets.

I’ll take this massive Spinosaurus. And that ill-fitting Dinosaur World cap. And that ridiculously amazing piece of framed lenticular art where the T-Rex foot LITERALLY LEAPS OUT OF THE PICTURE. Oh, and a couple of plush. Okay, sure, a few more plush for the niece and nephew, too.

This gift shop is big, unreasonably so. It has all the staples: dinosaur toys of every stripe, t-shirts, decorations, books, and even jewelry.

It. Is. Glorious.

I’m not going to Dinosaur World or its gift shop for my birthday, but on the other hand, I’m not going anywhere for my birthday. And I honestly don’t give a shit.

I’m personally in Week 4 of The Great American Quarantine but Florida as a whole only officially went into lockdown last Friday. This has created a fascinating dichotomy in the state — people like me who are old hats at this thing (yes, I know others have been in quarantine for long) and those who are just now experiencing life-stuck-at-home.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never felt stuck. I bought my house for a reason and I’m more than happy to work from it and avoid leaving it. Don’t get me wrong, my new-to-quarantiners, there IS an adjustment period. And depending on your life and who you are, maybe you never get out of the adjustment period.

Me, I usually take about two-to-three weeks to adjust to anything.

So as newcomers reach ‘peak quarantine’, I find my emotional self mostly equalized to pre-pandemic levels of dyspeptic misery and abject hopelessness, occasionally sidelined by the pure undiluted joy of creating a cool video or losing myself in a cathartic piece of writing.

I am not a ‘happy person’ and the mere notion abhors me. Not in respect to your own happiness, of course — you should be whatever flavor of happy you want, rock your-goddamn-happy socks off and go nuts. But me? That’s not my baseline and never was in 35 years. 

Life can be a miserable shit show and some people just needed a pandemic to see it.

Those moments of pure bliss I sometimes get to enjoy? Here’s what comes next: I finish project — which is a postpartum shit show in itself — and then I put that moment of bliss online where, generally speaking, no one seems to care.

Okay, look, I know it sounds like I’m sitting here on my 35th birthday complaining that nobody pays any attention to my creative work, but I’m not. I’m sitting here I’m on my 35th birthday complaining that nobody pays any attention to my creative work AND FOR SOME REASON THIS STILL SENDS ME IN A FUCKING SPIRAL DECADES INTO THIS GAME probably because the spiral was immediately preceded — as mentioned — by that fleeting moment of actual bliss, a genuine happy distraction for the professional unhappy person.

Really, I’m not complaining. Just sharing a little bit the depressed psychosis I call home.

It’s just me, myself, and my abyss. That’s the title to an unfinished song I was writing for the ukulele. I’ll get around to it.

But here’s the point: for me (and all those millions like me — you know who you are) the abyss (*cough* MY abyss) is always there. Always has been. Old buddy, old chum. I’m not always in it and most days it’s not even a passing consideration …. but I know it’s ALWAYS there.

Kinda how the abyss works.

So I don’t know whether to laugh at or feel bad for all those happy people in quarantine who are crashing down and just now getting a good glimpse at the dyspeptic misery and abject hopelessness of the world. 

For a lot of us, this gets worse. Maybe emotionally. Maybe physically. Maybe economically. 

For some of us, it’s always been this bad. Maybe emotionally. Maybe physically. Maybe economically. 

The advice from this professional unhappy person: figure out what brings you bliss, that thing you can lose yourself in, even if briefly, and commit. Be unapologetic. For me, it’s dinosaurs, animation, video editing, technology, and LEGO. If I can combine all those things, that’s a pretty happy distraction from the looming abyss. At least for a little while.

On the other hand, if you still have positivity exploding out of your asshole right now …. um, okay? Good for you? I don’t know if you’re stubbornly blind to reality or if we’re just wired that differently, but whatever. You do you, just don’t expect us unhappy people to get on your level. There aren’t enough spoons in the world for that shit.

A few more bits of advice from your future depressed quarantine avatar: fix your personal relationships and be selfish as shit. I’m 35 and twice-divorced, which means I’m lucky enough to be stuck at home right now with someone who understands every single beat of this post. I’m trapped inside with someone who adds to those moments of creative bliss, as opposed to being indifferent to them or — worse still — detracting from them.

Whatever your relationship issues, rip the fucking bandaid and deal with your shit because if you don’t, well, you’ll be quarantined with it. So sayeth the 35-year-old twice-divorced, professional unhappy Krumbine.

Life’s good. Sometimes. Mostly it’s a shit sandwich. But that’s okay, too. Because dinosaurs. And LEGO. And creating cool shit.

And donuts.

Yes, I think today would be a good day for donuts. 

Stay quarantined, my friends.

Love, Krumbine

###

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jordan Krumbine is a professional video editor, digital artist, and creative wizard currently quarantined in Kissimmee, Florida. When not producing content for the likes of Visit Orlando, Orlando Sentinel, or AAA National, Jordan is probably yelling at a stubbornly defective Macbook keyboard, tracking creative projects in Trello, and animating quirky videos with LEGO and other various toys.

Leave a dollar in the Tip Jar: https://ko-fi.com/krumbine

Short stories: https://bit.ly/2XY5D7I Books on Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3bsqK5Y YouTube: https://bit.ly/2W41nSG Twitter: https://bit.ly/2VH0Vbu Facebook: https://bit.ly/2VpnylZ LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2xnmk1e

http://www.krumbco.com

[dynamic-instability]

In one of my classes we have to write weekly personal narratives about an experience with illness. This week, mine turned into this. It’s probably too personal, and too... immediate?? to turn in to a professor without cutting out a lot of stuff, but not too personal to post online I guess lol

_____________________________

It’s November again.

In 2009 the lights were too bright. Mid-October one morning I woke up to my dad turning on my lights and it was like having to look into the sun while posing for a photo—my eyes wouldn’t stay open, if I forced them to, they couldn’t stay pointed in one direction, they spasmed and hurt. When the light was dimmed, I still saw double. That morning, I showered in the dark, and I remember being scared. They gave me eyedrops that paralyzed my accommodative muscles. In November my pupils were giant discs and I wore reading glasses over sunglasses to look at the computer, and when it was all said and done, the lights were still too bright, and I still saw double.

In 2011 I was tired. There’s fatigue and then there’s fatigue, I learned that Fall. In May of that year I had pulled two all-nighters in a week, and that was the only other time I’d felt this kind of tired, a sensation in about the 30th hour of the second time where it’s like my brain itched. I once saw someone else online describe it as “nausea, but in your head and eyes instead of in your throat and stomach” and that’s the closest anyone else has come to describing it. By November this was happening more and more often. I remember laying down in the corner of the room during a break of Citywide choir and thinking what the hell is wrong with me? I got a cold the next week, and I thought that maybe that was all it was. It wasn’t.

In 2013 I went to the ER for the fifth time in three months of college, and when I wanted to leave before waiting another couple of hours to eventually see a doctor who would tell me once again that they couldn’t do anything to help me, the woman from student life who was there to drive me back to campus made me call my parents on speaker phone and get their permission to leave before she would turn on the car. I had missed more chemistry labs than I could afford to miss without failing, passed out in a voice lesson, was asked by the director to drop out of choir because watching me was distraction when I looked like I was in pain, and if I passed out it would have ruined the concert for everyone. I remember leaving calculus in the mornings mid-class to go to the bathroom and lay on the floor and cry. I remember not being able to lift my hand off the mattress of my dorm room bed. I withdrew from half of my classes on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and took the Spring semester off.

In 2014 I had made a promise to myself that I would come back to college full time for that Fall semester just to see if I could do it, and then if I couldn’t I would drop out for good. There was one week where I thought that might be happening. Mid-November. The girls in my dorm had made a fort in the lounge out of sheets and blankets and colorful scarves and I remember laying on the couch through the green-filtered light and feeling the world spin and thinking oh god I still can’t do this. The door opened with a rush of cold air and my friends came in with food for me, since I’d been too sick to go to dinner. They sat with me and helped me with chemistry, offered to type up a paper if I dictated it, told jokes and made me laugh. I took an incomplete in one class, but I passed everything else, just barely scraped through, and came back in January.

In 2015 I just wanted to sleep. I passed out in an elevator and heard familiar voices, concerned voices, as I came to, and I stayed there laying motionless for another minute longer, because as long as I wasn’t awake I didn’t have to keep pushing. I wrote whole pages of completely unreadable ochem notes because my hand wasn’t working any better than my brain, and woke up on the floor and was wheeled out on a stretcher crying. It was dark all the time. My cane slipped on wet leaves and I felt my wrist crunch and there it was, one too many missed organic chemistry labs. I couldn’t stand for an entire choir rehearsal because breathing to sing made me lightheaded. I slept for 16 hours a day. The week before Thanksgiving, I called my mother to tell her I had decided to take another hardship withdrawal, and she sighed. I had applied to transfer schools during my much more optimistic Spring semester and Summer, and the week I left was also the week I found out I’d been accepted.

And so okay now it’s 2019, and it’s October and now November again, semester plan again, dark again. My reading is piling up again, feeling overwhelmed again, laying on my kitchen floor again. But here’s the thing—my health is… fine? Midterm week I didn’t sleep, and yes I passed out twice, but no ER. For the past 18 months, I can count on one hand the number of mornings I’ve been unable to get out of bed because of fatigue. My heart still pounds too hard but my head doesn’t swim every time I sit up. I walk the streets of New York City like mobility has never been a problem. I always take the stairs. My brain doesn’t itch until it’s been 30 hours no sleep.

I couldn’t go to class last week. I lay on the floor of my kitchen and stared up at the ceiling and tried to get up, tried to type out an email to my professors, and I couldn’t do it. I was not too tired. I was not too weak. I was not in pain. I could not move. I try to write and try to write and try to write and the words don’t come. I eat instant oatmeal at 9 PM because I haven’t been to the store in a month. I have lost nearly 15 pounds since moving to New York. I clean the stove for two and a half hours but can’t bring myself to take the dead spider off the side of the bathtub. I check the door lock one-two-three times, pace the floor, sit back down. I do not read Austerlitz. I write a Canvas post for Self and Other but it’s nonsense. I do not write a Canvas post for Accounts of Self. I do not write a Canvas post for Applied Writing. I write a Canvas post for Illness and Disability and somehow forget to post it, the one thing I’ve actually done, because I’m too busy feeling sick at everything I haven’t. I shadow a doctor for the clinical witnessing assignment and everything is fine but when I try to write it up I have a panic attack that leaves me sobbing on my couch and the assignment nine days late and counting. It takes me eight hours to write two pages. I watch 18 hours of YouTube video essays discussing drama about creators I don’t even watch and play a stupid game on my phone for an entire weekend until I’ve spent $25+ in a labyrinth of microtransations and every time I close my eyes I see the moving dots.

In November of 2015 I had three overdue essays for Global Literature, and two more due in the next two weeks. More than half were on books I had not read. My pre-lab wasn’t done for organic chemistry, and I wondered for a moment, if I pretended to pass out, if that would be easier. I stayed up until 4 AM laying on my floor and listening to Hamilton. I was sick, that much is true, but when I felt okay I still sat at my computer and could not bring myself to write.

In 2011 I had so many unfinished assignments for my college-level English class that I resigned myself to failing and I went to school the morning of the final class, but I hid in the stairwell by the choir room until I heard the bell, and I never went back to that class.

2009 was the year my dad stopped being able to yell at me for not doing my homework, because no one, including me, could tell whether it was actually my eyes stopping me.

In 2008 I wrote 6 essays in the 5 days of Thanksgiving break because I had not done any work for Intro to Lit all semester. I pulled it off, somehow, even aced the class because of an unusually lenient late work policy, but what I most remember is the sick feeling of dread as I lay on the floor in the living room staring up at the Christmas tree and feeling invisible sand slip through an invisible hourglass and a vice tightening in my chest.

In 2006 I stayed up almost all night writing a paper and crying my eyes out because I couldn’t find the words to explain to anyone why it had been so impossible for me to get the work done, that I wasn’t being lazy or distracted, I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t necessarily reading YA novels or watching TV or IMing my friends instead of working, I could sit and stare at a blank word document for 6 hours straight and still it would not get done. Everyone talked about potential, talked about how smart I was, but a gradebook that is half 100’s and half 0’s still averages out to an F. No one, including me, could explain the discrepancy. The logic of that simple math was not lost on me, the knowledge that turning in half-finished or not very good work was mathematically better than not doing it, but that didn’t mean I could do it. Words failed me when I tried to explain the illogic of my particular suffering.

I didn’t hear the term executive dysfunction until I was in my 20s. In retrospect I was tentatively told at 16 that I had “probably some ADHD and OCD”, but that psychiatrist was someone I’d been sent to by a neurologist because he thought she could fix my eyes, and when she said she couldn’t, I stopped making appointments. After I got sick, physically sick, the lines blurred between what was causing what, to the point where even I have no idea. Two of the Novembers missing here are ones I spent at CC, on the block plan where I only took one class at a time. My physical health arguably improved a little after transferring in January of 2016, but mostly it didn’t, not until Spring of 2018 at least. And you can see that evidence in dropped blocks, concussions from passing out onto hard surfaces, a couple of incompletes taken when viral illnesses (or concussions) compounded my other problems. What the block plan changed was the way things pile up, lessened the struggle of constant task switching between classes. (Admittedly, I also had fewer papers when taking mostly science classes. Writing takes much more energy, and it’s much harder to convince myself it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth submitting.) At CC nothing ever really reached the level of catastrophe. Some of that is purely the ability to drop a single block, meaning when it was my physical health that was the problem, I didn’t lose a whole semester, just one class, then reset. But I should have realized sooner that the block plan wouldn’t account for the level of improvement if my physical health had really been the only barrier.

So we’re back to now. Grad school. November again. Dark again. Semester plan again. Too much writing again. Crushing dread again. Dysfunction again. Panic attack in the middle of the night increasingly elaborate organizing rituals scream of the subway tracks in my mind can’t stop can’t start can’t breathe can’t move burnout again. This time without the explanation of chronic fatigue to fall back on.

I have my tricks, have actually learned somewhat to cope in the past 18 years. Schedules help, break tasks into pieces that are as small as possible. Mindfulness meditation. Forgive yourself when it’s not perfect. Get started with something easy, set a timer for 20 minutes and only work for those 20 minutes and then let yourself stop if you want to (and surprisingly often, you won’t want to, sometimes that momentum is all it takes). If you work better in the night, work in the night, who cares what society says your sleep schedule should be. When switching tasks, physically get up and move to a different location. Allow yourself to procrastinate on work with other work if that’s what you have to do. Delete the stupid games from your phone. One or two missed assignments are not actually the end of the world, if you let yourself view it as piling up, you won’t be able to get anything done, so if you absolutely have to, just move through and move on.

It’s not a catastrophe, this November. It’s a fight, but it’s not a catastrophe. I read Austerlitz and forgive myself for skimming it. I write a Canvas post and forgive myself when it’s only 500 words and doesn’t make complete sense. I read Toni Morrison and Édouard Louis and classmates’ discussion posts about Deaf culture and identity and remember why this matters in the first place, that it’s not just a series of assignments to overwhelm me, it’s a series of interesting complicated exhausting important thoughts and questions. I get it done. Some of it. Most of it. I let myself sleep. I breathe. I remember to be grateful because I can get out of bed in the mornings and take the stairs. I am okay.

[gaymirajane]

the lion’s mark

Happy Valentines Day @jinx13gxa2!! 

It’s so funny to me that I got you for the exchange, and I do sincerely hope that you enjoy this, as well as the dumb little edits I’ve added at the bottom. I love you, sweetheart, and I hope this does not disappoint!

Also thanks to @gaysquaredwrites for being my beautiful beta <3

It was cold inside, which was not unusual, and yet both boys were curled by the fire, shirtless, inspecting each other’s bare torsos.

“Mine is way more impressive than yours!”  Lyon smirked, and Gray smacked him in the arm, irritated. Still, his azure eyes were wide, and full of awe; he had never seen anything as beautiful as the tattoo on Lyon’s pectoral before.

The lion head was a mere outline, and yet it sat poised, majestic, in deep golden swirls across Lyon’s body. He had a tattoo too, of course, but the black Chinese dragon that curled around Gray’s forearm was more simplistic, less memorable.

These markings were all they had been able to talk about since Ur had explained their origins, sitting them down and talking in smooth, hushed tones. It was rare that all three of them were calm and together, but Gray’s pain had made him insensitive, and he had mocked Lyon’s lack of knowledge on the subject matter.

“You don’t even know what your tattoo is?” Gray had sneered, and Lyon blushed furiously, indignant that the younger boy could know something so fundamental to their society, and yet he did not. Growing up on the streets had not been kind to Lyon, and he had had nobody to speak to, or explain these matters to him. The peculiar lion’s head was a mystery to him growing up; but when Ur took in the two orphans, she was agreeing to take care of them mentally, as well as physically.

Ur stretched her limbs, threw some more kindle on the fire, and smiled gently at the two boys. They leaned forward, eagerly, and she rested a hand on both of their cheeks. She had never been more of a mother to them than in that moment, sitting there and explaining an ancient magic to her two adopted children. Gray had heard this story from his parents, but still he sat there tentatively, his penance for being rude to Lyon earlier. He had never had a brother before, and it took some getting used to. It wasn’t a bad feeling to him, though; far from it.

“Back before our time, when dragons still roamed free, there was a great wizard who had a large family of daughters. Each of these daughters had their own personalities, their own pain and heartache, and he wanted to protect them. The thing was, the wizard was old and did not know how much time he had left on this world. So he did all he could do; he enchanted his family to always be able to tell when they met their soulmate, so that they would never be hurt by somebody who was wasting their time. To do this, he gave them markings that were symbolic of their loves, and as they married and had children, families grew and spread, and so did the wizard’s magic; not long after, generation after generation were experiencing the magic marks, and it just became our norm.”

Rolling up her sleeve, Ur exposed her own mark, a series of deep blue swirls covering the pale expanse of her wrist. The boys had seen it during training, of course, but had never thought to ask. Ur smiled at it, like she was seeing something that was not there; or rather, someone. Her thumb ran across the mark, and there was a redness to her cheeks that made her seem younger than her years, somehow vulnerable.

“I lost my love when she was still young. This was before Ultear was born, of course. They always say that the greatest pain a person can know, but…”

The sentence hung in the air, heavy and unfinished. Lyon looked down at his hands, and Gray sniffed loudly. Both boys knew how it ended:

But it does not compare to the pain of losing a child.

Standing abruptly, Ur cleared her throat, hands on hips as she stared down at her two disciples.

“Right! Who’s for hot chocolate?”

Both boys grinned, jumping up and racing to the kitchen, and Ur watched them go, grateful that they could not see the single, lone tear that slipped down her cheek.

She took one last glance at her mark before she pulled down her sleeve and followed the boys into the kitchen, relieved that they were discussing everything from species of lizard to if they could lick their elbows, the weight of the previous conversation already forgotten in their young minds.

~’*’~

Magnolia baked in the heat of the summer, and the wizards of Fairy Tail felt it more than most. Gray was naked by midday, threatening to peel off his skin just to be rid of the suffocating warmth, and Lucy was pressed against the bar, where Mirajane had set up a fan to rotate around the guil, allowing short breaks of respite.

“Someone… put potatoes on me, I’m cooking, I swear it,” Lucy groaned, and Mirajane laughed at her, but it lacked energy, and the barmaid soon slumped against the wall in defeat.

“Well, you lot are certainly lively today,” Loke grinned, and Lucy barely managed to lift an eyebrow at his sudden appearance.

“You’d better not be using my magic to come here,” She muttered, and Loke slid into the next to her, laughing. The small breeze his movements created were bliss, and Lucy sighed happily.

“Your concern is touching as always, Princess, but I’m using my own magic to be here and see my guildmates.”

“Are you even a member of Fairy Tail anymore?” Lucy rolled her eyes at him, and he stared at her. There was a hardness to him then that contrasted his usual bravado, and it was enough to have Lucy sitting up, giving him her full attention.

Loke removed his jacket, loosened his tie, and began to unbutton his dress shirt, much to Lucy’s ardent protests.

“Why are you doing a Gray, Loke?” Cana questioned, taking a swig from her barrel. Gray protested this, but nobody had the heart to point out that, as nude as he was, he did not have a leg to stand on.

Soon enough Loke had lost his shirt, and before Lucy had a chance to admire his impressive chest, he turned so that his back was facing her. In the middle of his back was a lime-green guild symbol. But that was not what grabbed Lucy’s attention; on his forearm was the outline of a snowflake, and Lucy almost fell from her stool in her haste to stand, to touch the marking.

“You have a match mark? I thought spirits were immune to that, not being human and all!” Her eyes were wide, and it was the most animated she had been all day. Sweat beaded on her forehead, slipped down her neck, and she fell back onto her seat.

Loke shrugged. “I guess because of the amount of time I spent in the human world, I became the exception? We’re not sure on that front, but I definitely have one. Mine’s a snowflake, Princess. What’s yours?”

She blushed, and Mirajane chuckled behind her hand.

“Um... it doesn’t matter. Forget I asked.”

Lucy crossed her arm over her chest in discomfort, knowing the tarot card that covered the majority of her left breast: the Lovers. Two women stood in front of the ocean. Mirajane had seen it, had commented on how it matched Juvia’s, only instead of the ocean, Juvia’s lovers were stood in front of the moon. It was reminiscent of Cana’s mark; the moon pulling the tide, and the meaning was clear. That did not mean that Lucy was ready to accept it.

Idly, Lucy wondered about Loke’s mark. The obvious link was to Gray, but Gray had found his dragon in Natsu; Loke was a lion, so it did not match. She did not ponder it any longer, the heat and the questions causing a headache to form in the front of her skull.

The guild went back to melting in peace, Loke tried to pick a fight with Gray, and the conversation was forgotten.

~’*’~

Lyon, no longer fearing his mark, pushed it to the back of his mind. Life passed, simultaneously over and underwhelming to him, and the next ten years were a blur of poorly suppressed emotions and guilt. Ur’s death, Galuna Island, Zeref, Deliora; he was ashamed of his heritage, but it was all he had.

Life improved, of course, once he joined Lamia Scale. The guild became his family, and he could keep track of Gray without actually having to speak to him. In many ways, it was perfect. Everything he had ever wanted, besides surpassing Ur, was coming true, and whether Lyon felt that he deserved it or not was irrelevant; this was his reality, and he was determined to live for it.

“The Masters have decided to combat the threat of the Barram Alliance once and for all, starting with the most prominent threat, the Oracion Seis. I’m sending Lyon, Sherry, and Jura. If you brats fail, I’ll spin you!”

The old woman was eccentric and tiresome, but in a warm way; like a great aunt that, no matter how she yelled, there was a fondness for. Lyon felt it then, in the trust that she was placing in him and Sherry despite their respective pasts. A second chance was something that Lyon was grateful for, something he had found within the guild, and he knew that Fairy Tail would be participating in this battle. With any luck, he would be able to fight alongside Gray again, prove to his brother that he had changed; that things between them could improve.

He got his wish.

The Oracion Seis were formidable; nothing like Lyon had encountered before; their resources alone were enough to terrify him. Gray flanked him on one side, Lucy and Sherry on the other. The women bickered, and Lyon wanted to point out that the midst of battle was hardly the time nor place for such pettiness, but he and Gray had been the same, had lost their shirts in the heat of their argument. Fighting with Gray, their match marks exposed, creating ice in beautiful, magical sculptures, made Lyon feel like a child again; as though none of the pain and suffering and tears had ever happened at all. But there were scars along the left side of Gray’s body that told a different story, and Lyon swallowed his guilt down at seeing the after-effects of Gray’s failed Iced Shell.

They were surrounded by lesser magic guilds, mere lackies; but their numbers were incredible, and even weak, they were slowing the group of wizards down.

“We need to reduce their numbers, and quickly!” Lyon yelled, sending an ice eagle flying through the crowd, picking up and dropping criminals onto one another.

Sherry animated the trees around them, Gray made shields and geysers, blocking attacks and separating the group of evil wizards; and Lucy stood grasping her keys. She found the one that she desired, and smirked to herself.

“Open, gate of the lion: Loke!”

Light exploded from Lucy’s hand, bright and golden and a familiar, a hue that Lyon had seen every day of his life. His step faltered, eyes darting to the tattoo on his chest, a bust of a lion.

Open, gate of the lion.

A man appeared, smartly dressed, grinning like a cat.

“Always a pleasure to serve you, Princess.”

He turned, and his gaze caught Lyon’s; they both halted. The man was beautiful, with a mane of ginger hair and sharp, shining teeth. He had two sets of ears, which was odd; but Lyon found that he did not mind. It added to the feline sense of lithe strength, and Lyon was surprised with the urge that passed over him, to touch those lean muscles and that soft hair.

An enemy ran at him, and with one hand he produced an ice panther that leapt on him, taking him down with ease.

“You’re an ice wizard?” The celestial spirit yelped, and Lyon nodded slowly, quizzical.

In a second the man had stripped, his muscles defined and pale and so close that if Lyon just reached out--

But then he turned to the side, and his match mark became apparent. A snowflake, indigo, the same shade as Lyon’s guild mark, and Lucy let out a nervous laugh.

“No way…”

Gray noticed next, and the horror that darkened his features was fitting for the middle of battle, but maybe not this situation.

“My brother and my best mate? No fucking way.”

“Lyon-sama…” Sherry blushed, eyes wide, and Lyon cleared his throat.

His heart was racing, heat crawled over his skin; but there was a mission to do, a job to complete. Being a guild wizard meant putting yourself second, and his personal life came long after protecting Cait Shelter; still, if Lyon’s destined match was a celestial spirit, that brought more questions to mind than he had time to answer. There was no doubting it; he had to survive this battle to get to know the man with a lion’s mane, and take the next tentative steps towards his future, whatever that may be.

[mst3kproject]

809: I Was a Teenage Werewolf

Kind of a strange title, isn't it?  I Was a Teenage Werewolf. It seems to imply two things: first of all, the word was ought to suggest that this is all in the past, that the speaker has been cured of his lycanthropy and good for him!  Second, and even stranger, is the fact that the title is in the first person.  A title that begins with the word I implies that this is a retrospective, a story the main character is telling to us after the fact like Helene DeLambre telling her brother-in-law how Andre ended up with the head of a fly.  Yet in the movie itself, Tony dies, still a werewolf!  He clearly isn't sitting around remembering these events.

Actually, this whole movie is pretty weird.  It's one of the more mainstream-ish films ever to be featured on MST3K (my Mom says she remembers seeing it when it was new), but the longer you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Tony Rivers is a pretty ordinary kid with a bad temper.  After getting into a series of fights, he is sent to see Dr. Brandon, a psychologist who can supposedly hypnotize him into conformity.  That sounds like the plot of a horror movie all on its own, but it gets worse.  Dr. Brandon has apparently given up hope on the human race and decided that the only solution to our economic and nuclear woes is to regress us all back to the stone age and let society start over.  He dopes Tony up (on an anti-nausea drug for some reason) and starts the regression process, but instead of Tony turning into a club-wielding caveman or something, he becomes a *dam wirwulf!

In terms of production values, I Was a Teenage Werewolf is one of the better movies to make the MST3K cut.  The actors are competent, the pacing's not bad, cinematography works, and the werewolf makeup is no better but not appreciably worse than anything else on offer in a late fifties cheapie.  You could watch this on its own, but as an episode it's okay.  Mike and the bots make jokes about the care and training of your werewolf and about thrown dairy products that are very funny, and 'jokes' accusing Tony of abusing his girlfriend Arlene that are never funny in the slightest.

The plot, however, is baffling.  First, there's its use of hypnosis.  Between this, The Undead, and The She-Creature, I'm starting to think hypnosis was one of those Magic Plot Coupons in the 50's, like radiation, that could be used to explain just about anything.  The Great Vorelli transfers souls into puppets using hypnosis.  Quintus in The Undead goes bodily back in time, literally vanishing and leaving his empty clothes in his chair.  Dr. Carlo Lombardi manifests a giant lobster monster and makes it kill people by hypnotizing Andrea.  I swear the most plausible use of hypnosis I've seen doing this blog is Vorelli raping Marianne!

MST3K did three werewolf movies: in The Mad Monster Pedro became a werecoyote through a transfusion of coyote blood, and in Werewolf you could either cut yourself on the teeth of the werewolf skull or be injected with blood from somebody who had. These both sort of feel like they make sense according to 'rules' we're already familiar with – lycanthropy is spread by biting, which implies an infection of some sort.  But hypnosis?  Being hypnotized does make the subject more open to suggestion, to the point where people have become convinced that they were abducted by aliens or members of non-existent satanic cults.  If Tony merely believed he'd become a werewolf, hypnosis as an explanation would work, but the movie makes it clear that his transformation is a physical reality!  It can't be the drug that did it, since Tony transforms without it on at least two occasions.  No, it seems we're meant to believe Dr. Brandon literally talked Tony into being a werewolf.  Pepe the Latino-Transylvanian janitor's theory of the evil eye and possession would actually work better, by invoking the supernatural instead.

Why a werewolf, anyway?  Dr. Brandon says he wants to regress Tony to a more primitive state, but human beings did not evolve from werewolves.  If he wants to make us better by divorcing us from our technology, why does he try to do so by turning his subject into a mindless killer?  A world full of werewolves would definitely mean an end to civilization as we know it, but it doesn't seem like there'd be anything much left to start over from.  If Tony's condition were in any way an unexpected result of the treatment, this might work better with what Brandon says he's trying to do, but he behaves as if were-Tony is exactly what he wanted.

Brandon's assistant Hugo points out that the whole scheme is stupid and that Brandon doesn't exactly have Tony's informed consent, only to be answered with a sneer of, “and you call yourself a scientist!”  I guess scientists just decide to make monsters and come up with the rationalization later, ethics be damned.

In a way, Tony's treatment kind of seems to do him some good – his grades improve and his principal comments on how he's much better at getting along with his peers, to the point where she wants to offer him an honours certificate and a letter of recommendation.  This seems like good news, and if that were the extent of Tony's personality changes we might be tempted to conclude that being a werewolf is beneficial!  Maybe his lycanthropy allows him to work out his urges to violence through murder at night, leaving him quieter during the day? There's more to it than this, however – Tony's friends note that he's 'not himself' and that the difference runs deeper than just not punching everything in sight.  He has become anxious and withdrawn, and no longer wants to hang out with them or with Arlene.

To this day, a great many people refuse to seek treatment for mental illness because they fear the medication will leave them a sort of zombie, able to function but with their personality gone.  Others refuse to get help because they don't want to be thought of as a 'mental patient' – Tony refers to this when he says he doesn't want to be considered a 'flip'.  The police, his father, and his girlfriend all encourage him, but to no avail until the incident at the Hallowe'en party makes it clear that things simply cannot go on the way they are.  Then when Tony does seek treatment, it turns out to be worse than he feared.  Dr. Brandon not only leaves him a shell of his former self but in a very real sense makes his condition worse. Human Tony committed assault.  Werewolf Tony is a murderer.

As in many werewolf movies, the werewolf himself is not the monster but the victim.  The real villain is the monster-maker, who here represents all society's fears not about mental illness itself, but about the attempts to help those who have it!  Shame on AIP, shame on director Gene Fowler, and shame on writer/producer Herman Cohen for villifying psychologists.  Surely there's enough stigma surrounding mental illness without adding that!

Another part of the generally unfavourable view of psychologists in this movie seems to be inherent in the bell triggering Tony's transformations.  This is kind of confusing when it happens, since Dr. Brandon never rang a bell for Tony and the first werewolf attack, on the boy walking home in the woods, doesn't seem to be related to a bell.  But it's a bell that prompts Tony to transform and attack the gymnast, and a ringing phone that makes him attack Dr. Brandon.  I think this may be intended to invoke Pavlov's dog, which was taught to salivate when a bell rang.  The fact that it was a dog in the experiment might even make this an intentional joke, on a similar level to Mike and the bots' comments about flea collars and leashes.  But Pavlov's experiment was, of course, a psychological experiment, exploring the brain's associations between stimuli, and so this once again serves to throw a poor light on the psychologist.

As a movie, I Was a Teenage Werewolf feels a little unfinished.  There's only the one victim in the woods before Tony is 'outed' when he attacks the gymnast, so there's no chance for the story to build up a sense of suspense and danger.  We want to see the teens start to wonder if their 'Haunted House' hangout really is haunted.  We want to see Tony narrowly avoid transforming and killing Arlene.  The script wants us to both fear and pity Tony, but there's never enough done with the monster to really inspire either.  We get such a brief and perfunctory introduction to the victims that their deaths mean nothing to us.  The only really poignant thing in the movie is when Tony goes to Dr. Brandon begging for help while we know this is the last thing he ought to do, and as a result the only really satisfying thing is that Tony kills Dr. Brandon at the end.

It's frustrating to watch a movie waste so much of its potential. It feels like the script was written in an awful hurry, and the audience leaves feeling like the movie could have been so much more than it was.  The lack of care and thought that went into this story is a terrible shame, because I Was a Teenage Werewolf has a good cast and acceptable monster makeup, is competently directed and decently scored.  It had everything it needed to be a pretty good werewolf movie... it just wasn't.

[banditywrites]

Fever Days

Created for Voltron Whump Week

Prompt: Day 1- Fever

Summary: Keith was always good at being alone, a fever didn’t change that.

Notes: Kind of an expansion from my fic, Disappear Completely, but you don’t have to read that to understand this. Please excuse mistakes.

Warnings for illness (Nothing graphic). This is mostly just fluff. Also, unhealthy/ obsessive coping mechanisms, grieving and nightmares.

Fever Days

Keith ignored the tightness in his chest for days. He was fine. Perfectly fine. It was just a cold. No need to panic.

It wasn't until he woke up shaking with chills that he realized he had spiked a high fever.

He was then irritated more than anything. In frustration, he kicked off his blankets. He wanted to just curl up in them and keep sleeping, but he wasn’t a child and he knew it wasn't good to wrap up with a fever. He needed to stay hydrated, try not to get too warm and rest.

With no blankets, he let himself drift in and out of a troubled sleep for a long time. Eventually, he forced himself out of bed and reached for a water pouch. He usually had a few unfinished ones that sat by his bed. The water tasted warm and stale, but it was better than nothing.

Ignore the way your arms hurt, ignore the pain in your neck, your headache isn't that bad, you have to drink fluids, you have to keep going. Keith collapsed back onto the bed, empty water pouch dropping to the side. Sleep now. Sleep and hope that it gets better by the time you wake up. In the morning he would find painkillers and he would carry on as usual. He just needed to sleep a little bit longer.

0-0-0-0

Keith awoke to the feeling of a hand on his forehead. Through blurred vision he saw a familiar figure. Shiro was there, sitting on the edge of his bed, checking his temperature.

He thought he could hear Shiro telling him something. He sounded worried. Shiro cared so much sometimes. Keith had a hard time understanding how deeply someone could care about others, about him. Though, if Keith stopped to think about it, he worried for the rest of the team too. The depth of his concern and protectiveness of the others ran deep. He would do anything for his team. He was sure of it.

"You'll be okay. Just rest now," Shiro's voice faded in and out like an old, ill-tuned radio.

Keith's eyes drifted shut again. Surely he would be okay now; Shiro would take care of it.

0-0-0

The next time he awoke it was because someone had plopped a freezing cold hand on his head and then started swearing profusely. He didn't even realize Pidge could talk like that.

"Whoa, is he dead?" Lance's voice cut into the profane tirade.

"He better not be," Pidge said in warning. As though she could threaten Keith back into good health. Her tone softened slightly as Keith's eyes fluttered open.

"Keith, why didn't you say you were sick?"

"’m...fine."

"You're not fine. You're burning up," Pidge said in exasperation.  

"Shiro said I'd be fine," Keith's eyes drifted shut again and he turned his head away from Pidge's icy hand.

"Shiro said?" Pidge's voice had become too quiet. Keith wondered why everyone sounded so far away.

"Pidge..." Lance sounded upset suddenly.

"I'll go get Coran. He'll know what to do."

Pidge quickly left, leaving Lance to watch Keith suddenly start coughing roughly into his pillow.

The fit soon passed and Keith gasped in great gulps of air. Lance could hear it rattling in his lungs and he wondered how long Keith had been fighting to seem well in front of all of them. Though… he had said he was tired yesterday, but that wasn't anything new. They were all tired.

Lance absently reached down to pick up a discarded water pouch. Finding it empty, he pushed it to the side to throw away later. He noticed the edge of another pouch sticking out from underneath the bed and he picked it up and set it on the edge of the mattress. Curious, Lance slipped down on the floor and looked to see if there was more under the bed.

There was a pause while Lance's eyes adjusted to what he was seeing.

"Oh, Keith," Lance lamented as he pulled out several other pouches and a collection of ration bars. He also found what looked like a chunk of bread, wrapped in a cloth and on its way to going stale.

"Man, you could have said something. You didn't need to start doing this." Lance set his chin in his hand as he studied the hoarded food. He glanced over and actually jumped to see Keith’s eyes open and staring at him. Keith was still bleary eyed, but he definitely looked more aware.

He sat up partially, saw that Lance had uncovered his food stash and he frowned deeply. He looked up at Lance and just stared at him.

"Keith," Lance cleared his throat, "You told me you didn't hoard food anymore."

Keith let himself fall back into the mattress and threw one arm over his eyes. Honestly, he had a headache and he wasn’t feeling up to conversation.

"Can you just leave it? Just... leave it alone."

"Well, wait. Did you just start doing it again? I mean… are you alright?"

Sometime ago, Keith had mentioned hoarding food as a child, he had said it was a means of comfort, but that he didn't do that anymore. So Lance figured that Keith had either been lying or he had just started up again.

"Please don't tell anyone,” Keith muttered, sounding miserable.  

"I won't. But Keith... is it... is it because of Shiro?"

Instead of answering, Keith groaned and began coughing roughly. Lance quickly swept most of the secret rations back under the bed and handed Keith a water pouch.

Keith drank the water greedily, it helped ease his scratchy throat. Lance carefully perched himself back on the edge of the bed and watched him intently.

"Stop thinking about it. It's not worth thinking about,” Keith mumbled.

"But if you're doing it because you don't feel safe or… or grounded or something, I just want to help."

Keith groaned at the pain in his chest. He didn't want to talk about it, he felt horrible and he just wanted to be left alone in his misery. Couldn't Lance just let it go? Was it really the time to talk about a weird compulsion that Keith couldn't explain, even if he wanted to?

Keith resolutely rolled over, away from Lance. He dully stared at the wall and hoped Lance would get the message.

"Keith?" Lance tried to get his attention. Keith didn't respond and Lance wondered what he should say.

A moment later, Keith felt the blanket he had discarded earlier, gently placed over him. Lance was tucking him in like a little kid. Keith scoffed at the idea.

"Not good for the fever," Keith muttered.

"Just one blanket. Just one blanket shouldn't be too bad. You look uncomfortable without it."

Keith could sleep with or without a blanket, but Lance probably felt the comfort was necessary. Well, it did make him feel less exposed. It was nice...

"Keith," Lance suddenly spoke too loudly. Keith grimaced as Lance's voice cut through his headache. "I'll make you a deal, okay?"

Keith groaned in response and Lance took it as a sign of agreement.

"I won't tell anyone about you hoarding food, but..." Here, Lance paused apparently for dramatic effect, "... the next time you start feeling bad, you have to let someone know. Alright?"

Keith didn't respond.

"And I don't just mean like a fever and stuff. Y'know? If you're... sad. You can talk to us. Pidge or Hunk or Coran or Allura or me. You could talk to me about it. I know it's not the same without Shiro, but you don't have to do everything by yourself. Okay?"

There was a pause while Keith just took in a few raspy breaths.  

"Hey, did you fall asleep? Did you hear me?" Lance leaned forward, getting ready to jab Keith in his side with an elbow.

"I heard you."

"Okay, do we have a deal?"

"Yeah," Keith breathed the word out as though it was a sigh.

"Alright." Lance only let the silent go one for another few ticks before he spoke up again. "Hey Keith?"

Keith didn't respond right away, deciding his head hurt too much for any more conversation.

"Keith?"

Keith finally grunted in response. Lance sounded like he wouldn't leave it alone if he didn't answer him.

"Did you really see Shiro?"

"It was just a dream, Lance."

"But, I mean, maybe he was really trying to talk to you, maybe, I mean if there was a way, he would… wouldn't he?" There was a moment of silence while Lance shifted his weight. "Keith?"

"My head hurts."

"Alright,” Lance said slowly.

At that moment, Pidge returned with Coran.

"You're burning up," Coran said with a hand on Keith's forehead. "That's not a safe temperature for humans," he remarked in an offhand way. Keith was soon given a pain reliever, fever reducers, a cool cloth for his head and fresh water to drink.

"If you don't improve in a varga, we'll look into some different medicine. Just rest for now."

Keith had remained compliant as he was prodded at and given different medicines to take. He didn't like having this many people in his room. It was starting to feel claustrophobic. He shut his eyes and willed himself to go back to sleep. Just go back to sleep and when he woke up he would feel better. Hopefully.

-0-0-0-

Keith awoke sometime later to hushed whispering. As his mind drifted to consciousness he recognized the voices of Pidge, Lance and Hunk. Seriously. Why couldn't they just let him be miserable in peace? Why were they all here?

Keith must have frowned because the chatter in the room died down suddenly.

"I think he's waking up."

"Maybe he's just having another nightmare."

"But his fever went down vargas ago."

Wait. How long had it been? Had he been having nightmares? Had they really been here the whole time?

Keith blinked his eyes open, squinting in the room's light. His team was standing around him, they were blurry around the edges, but he could see their looks of concern.

"He’s awake!" Hunk exclaimed.

"Welcome back," Pidge smiled.

"Yeah, you look a lot better than before," Lance added with a grin.

Keith just blinked. He felt a lot better. Though his skin felt a bit clammy and his shirt was still damp where he had sweat through it at some point.

"Why are you all here?" Keith was still bewildered by it. It had just been a fever. They hadn't needed to stay at his bedside.

"I made soup. Are you hungry? I can bring some up," Hunk was already starting to head out the door.

"No, I'm fine."

Lance was giving him a disapproving look. So, apparently, that was the wrong answer.

"I mean, in a little while. I will eat. I just need to wake up first." Keith glanced to Lance and the boy nodded at him in approval.

"Hey, so you've been asleep forever," Lance complained. "But I guess you needed it."

"You all didn't have to stay." He really didn’t understand why they would all camp out here.

"We've been taking shifts." Pidge explained.

"Didn't have to."

"Keith, we don't mind, man,” Lance sighed.

"Yeah, come on. Nobody should have to be all alone when they're sick.” Hunk was still hovering by the door, ready to go get the soup if he was asked.

"It's nothing I'm not used to," Keith responded. When he was met with an odd silence, he looked up to see them all giving him weird looks.

They looked sad.

Keith realized he had said something wrong again. Something to make them all look at him like that. It had only been the truth though. Keith had become used to being alone when he was sick. He could take care of himself. He was okay.

But now they were all looking at him like that.

"Keith..." Lance started and he became worried that Lance was about to tell his secret. They had made a deal hadn't they? Keith's brain was a little foggy but it was something about talking to people, telling people if he was sad...

"I think I can eat that soup now."

Hunk jumped at the mention of his creation.

"You got it! I'll be right back!" Hunk quickly took off to retrieve the food.

"Did everyone else eat already?" Keith asked, glancing at Lance. Lance nodded.

"Yeah, everyone is taken care of. You just need to worry about yourself."

"Okay, good." Keith was beginning to feel fatigue pull at him again. It was surprising how easily his energy left him. He leaned back in his bed and shut his eyes. Before they knew it, Keith had fallen asleep again.

"He's really overdone it lately," Pidge commented. "This is just going to keep happening, if he keeps it up."

Lance only nodded in response.

"Think he'll be alright?" Pidge asked as she replaced the cool cloth on his forehead.

"Yeah," Lance smiled softly. "I think he'll be okay."

When Hunk returned to the room with a warm bowl of soup in hand, he was only mildly disappointed that Keith had fallen back to sleep. They all settled down to continue waiting for him, their quiet talking and poignant concern filling the room with a warmth that was often missing while they fought out in space, so far from home.  

Keith sighed deeply in his sleep. Lance grinned to himself, thinking it sounded a lot like contentment.  

  The End