#my body and brain's reactions to stress are apparently to shut down and refuse to do anything which is not great

[readymades2002]

i am not sure what i’m doing right now artistically speaking besides the obvious issues i feel like my output is really uninspired recently...i’m working on more cohesive things but those take more time and i already work slowly and i have been in hell recently i kind of just don’t want to draw. i kind of don’t want to work hard on things i kind of just want to blow robots up with rockets

[silkenstarlight]

blackbird's lullaby

Summary: After a rough day, Bucky can’t sleep. Reader decides to help.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Warning/s: a bit of angst in regards to Bucky’s past, but the end is fluffy and sweet :)

Word count: 2.1k

Author’s note: something possessed me to write this instead of working on my finals, so here, enjoy the fruits of my academic negligence lol

My masterlist

Join my taglist

Do not repost or translate! Reblogs and comments are welcome and encouraged :))

Bucky’s side of the bed was cold when you woke.

You sighed deeply, wrenched from the arms of a dream, rubbing the heavy, lulling tug of sleep from your eyes. You were half awake, toeing the line between the violent brightness of a dreamscape and the hazy, blurred shadows of your bedroom. The warmth of the blankets wrapped around your limbs and threatened to pull you under again, but before you could succumb to their soft, enticing tangle, a singular thought rose in your mind from the murky depths of sleep. At first, it was quiet, a hushed voice in your brain whispering to you that you were alone. But then, the concern gained traction, and it blared in your skull with a deep, unnerving clarity, a nagging insistence that made your eyes snap back open.

Where the hell was Bucky?

You sat up in bed and looked at the alarm clock on your nightstand. 2:46 AM.

You frowned, turning to face Bucky’s empty pillow, and reached a hand out, lightly tracing the crisp, untouched folds. The sheets on his side of the bed were still flat and pristinely tucked, his pillow perfectly fluffed. He hadn’t bothered to try to sleep.

You knew why.

You peeled back the blankets and shivered, met instantly with the deep chill of night air as you unfolded yourself from your fleece and goose-down cocoon.

Bucky preferred to keep the apartment cold. You obliged, of course, bundling up in endless sweaters and blankets as he opened the windows wide and turned the rotary fan on full blast. You never questioned him about it, never asked if you could dial up the thermostat just a few degrees. You knew that keeping the apartment cold helped him to avoid the dreaded space of sleep, helped him to outrun the ever-looming specter of his nightmarish past. And, whenever he did come to bed, he gave you all of the blankets, covering his body with just the thin cotton layer of a bedsheet.

You knew that he rarely fell into a deep, nourishing slumber, so you tried to help boost his energy in other ways. Big, steaming pots of the strongest coffee you could brew, a fridge stocked with healthy snacks, and daily morning walks around the neighborhood together. He quietly thanked you for your efforts, pressing sweet kisses to your forehead and leaving fresh flowers in the vase on the kitchen table every Sunday. But, even though he preferred to stay awake, whenever you rolled over in bed to snuggle into his side and found that his eyes were still wide open, a hard lump rose in your throat and a worried pit formed in your stomach.

You swung your legs over the side of the bed and put on your slippers, grabbing one of Bucky’s sweatshirts and shrugging it on as you padded out to the kitchen. You just wanted to check on him and make sure that he was okay.

When he had returned from his mission earlier in the evening, he had seemed a little off to you. Usually, he was quiet, preferring to listen to you as ranted about your stressful workday or gushed about the newest book you were reading. He never wanted to talk much about himself, silently refusing to drag the horrors of his work into your home. It was where he felt at ease-- the plush pillows, the diffused, ambient lighting, the cloying scent of vanilla candles-- it was all so you. He didn’t want to taint the safety and warmth he felt when he was surrounded by your essence with the cold uncertainty and lingering shame of his work. Even though his missions nowadays were usually unrelated to his past as a clandestine Hydra operation, and even though the two jobs differed vastly in motive, he sometimes felt the creeping prick of deja vu traveling up his neck. Follow this person. Disable that vehicle. Shoot this opponent.

All of the lights in the apartment were off, so as you approached the kitchen, you used the bright white glow of your phone screen as a flashlight. You didn’t want to go directly to the living room and make it too obvious that you were checking on him. He would just shake you off if you did, insist that you go back to bed. So, you reached into the cupboard above the sink and grabbed a glass, turning on the faucet and filling it as you peered over the countertop, trying to pick out Bucky’s rigid frame amongst the inky shadows of the living room. You turned off the faucet and brought the glass to your lips, swallowing a couple of small sips.

“It’s late. Shouldn’t you be asleep?” The sound of Bucky’s voice coming from the couch made you jump, the thick glass of your cup clacking against your teeth. You placed it in the sink and walked over to the couch.

Despite the low light, you could see that Bucky was still wearing the clothes he had on when he came home from his mission. Gray tee, leather jacket, dark jeans. He hadn’t even taken off his heavy black boots.

You stepped slowly towards him, worrying your bottom lip between your teeth, fighting the urge to bury him in a hug and pepper him with kisses. Instead, you sat next to him, leaving a little space between your body and his. Now, you could see his clenched jaw, his jittery, tapping fingers, and the jumping vein in his neck that only pulsed when he was stressed. His gaze was fixed on some indeterminate point on the wall in front of him, as if he were lost in thought.

This wasn’t a normal sleepless night. Something was wrong.

“I… I guess that I should be asking you the same question,” you said softly, voice gravelly and low from sleep.

He didn’t respond, just took a sharp inhale that made it sound like he was staving off tears.

You couldn’t help it. It was like your body could sense his distress. Your hand jerked up to rest on his shoulder, a subconscious reaction to his apparent suffering. You let it stay there, though, stroking your thumb lightly along the cool leather of his jacket.

He stirred from his reverie and turned to look at you. It was so dark, the curtains shut tight, not a single ray of moonlight filtering into the room, but the blue of his eyes shone bright, glistening with the wet sparkle of unshed tears. Sadness swelled in your chest.

“You can tell me,” you said, voice barely above a whisper. “I’m here to listen.”

His gaze dropped from your face, silently weighing your words. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust you enough to open up. The truth was that he didn’t trust himself to speak. If he started talking, he wouldn’t be able to stop. And then, his demons would be given a voice, and the doors to this vanilla-scented, blanket-swathed haven would be wrenched open to the darkness that waited for him beyond the threshold.

But he could also see the way that his silence affected you. You frowned more on the mornings after he didn’t come to bed. You talked and talked and talked, trying to fill his ears with noise to distract him from the numbing static in his skull. And you were constantly touching him in some way, whether twining your lithe fingers around his thumb or draping your body on top of his in a warm, crushing hug. It was as if you didn’t want to let him out of your sight.

So, he let out a long exhale and reached up, taking your hand from its perch on his arm and twining his fingers tightly with yours. He idly stroked your palm with his thumb and decided to tell you the truth.

“I… I had a bit of a setback tonight.” He felt like he was wrenching the words from his throat. He couldn’t look at you, a deep sense of shame settling into his bones, but he stared at your hand held in his and felt the creeping self-doubt hesitate just a little.

“What do you mean?”

He dragged his eyes up to yours, blinking nervously. “I, uh--” he inhaled sharply and felt tears prick at his eyes. “Someone used my trigger words tonight. And it worked.”

Silence lay heavy between you as you digested what he said, but you didn’t pull away, didn’t pry your hand from his. You simply held his gaze.

“How is that possible?” He had gone through years of extensive mental treatment in Wakanda, the emotional scars that he suffered after years of lost identity and unwilling servitude seemingly healed. But, now, it seemed that one of those scars had re-opened.

“Ayo said that it was unlikely, but that it could happen. Relapse is a part of the process.” His voice was pained.

You nodded slightly, assenting to Ayo’s expertise. But Bucky’s next sentence made you fall apart at the seams.

“I thought I was different, after all these years. But I guess I haven’t changed. I’m still him.” He spat the last word, his face creasing into an expression of disgust.

You didn’t hesitate. “Come here.”

You gently separated your hand from his and reached up to his shoulders, guiding him towards you in a tight embrace. You wrapped your arms behind his neck and he pressed his chin into the notch between your shoulder and neck. As you began tracing your fingertips along his jacket collar, his chest heaved in desperate inhales, slow tears tracking down his cheeks developing into full, wracking sobs.

“You’re safe. I won’t let you go.” You pressed your mouth against his temple in a soft, soothing kiss.

“You were never him.” Although your voice was barely a whisper, it spoke volumes, your words ringing clear and true in the quiet stillness. Bucky shuddered, squeezing you close. You moved one of your hands up to cradle the back of his head.

You stayed like that for a long time, until you saw the blue light of dawn trickle through the gap beneath the curtains, but you didn’t say anything, waiting for Bucky to say what he needed. When his breath finally stilled into a regular rhythm, no longer halting and ragged, you pulled back and took his face in your hands, staring deeply into his eyes.

“I’m so tired.” His voice was flat and broken, but when you wiped a stray tear from his cheek with your pinkie, a small, grateful smile formed on his face.

You nodded. “Well, I know what will help. Come here.” You pulled back, shifting down the couch, guiding him with you with your hand wrapped around his arm. When he had enough space to lie down, you stopped, settling into your seat. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether he could risk falling asleep in his current emotional state, but he sighed, knowing that he needed to rest. He laid back, resting his head on your lap, and looked up at you.

You carded your fingers through his short hair, brushing it back from his forehead. He melted into the gentle gesture, relaxing into the couch, into the warmth of your body.

And then, you began to sing.

You were quiet at first, as if trying out the thought of singing him a lullaby. Your voice was tentative, trying out the feeling of the different notes in your mouth.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

All your life,

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”

You thought that your voice was nothing special, your untrained, warbling syllables rushing from your lips in a breathy exhale. But Bucky loved it. The way you let your words flow together, followed by a long, lilting end note and a pause to inhale-- it was sweet and soft and so very you.

“Blackbird singing in the dead of night,

Take these sunken eyes and learn to see.

All your life,

You were only waiting for this moment to be free.”

He could feel it already, the lull of an encroaching dream. His first instinct was to fight it, to blink the sleep from his eyes, but he let his lids shut, blocking out every sense except for the sound of your voice.

“Blackbird fly, blackbird fly,

Into the light of a dark black night.”

And, as he welcomed the embrace of sleep, your voice followed him, a glowing amber halo of warmth that pushed the dark away and lit his path into the space of dreams.

“All your life,

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.”

He dreamt of blackbirds and forehead kisses, of vanilla candles and forgiveness.

He dreamt of you.

[moon-spirit-yue]

Camp Choas

(See the description if you’re confused I put it under the Camp Chaos tag)

Part 5/5

Raya, weirdly enough, woke up with no alarm necessary. It wasn’t like her body to wake up by choice this early. The Heart girl groaned as her stomach churned painfully. ‘Oh so I get to deal with a random stomach ache on my last day of camp. What a splendid day this will be,’ Raya thought sarcastically. She popped a mint in her mouth and waited for the pain to subside. Once it finally stopped, she scarfed down breakfast before calling Sisu to tell her that Raya is up early and can head to camp.

“Wow what’s the occasion?” Sisu asked Raya as they walked into the car. “You would never be up this early. Especially not for camp.”

Raya sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know if I’m being honest. I mean I woke up out of nowhere and my stomach started hurting. I feel fine now, it was just a crummy start to the morning. God I just want this day to over,” Raya whined as her best friend laughed.

“Don’t stress it’s our last day! Besides, I’m surprised you want this week to end. You’ve gotten pretty close with Namaari these past five days,” the blue haired girl said rather smugly. Raya’s face heated up as she hastily looked away. “Sisu, you’re exaggerating. Besides I think I actually did something that made her upset yesterday, “ Raya told her, frowning at the way her dear rival acted around her.

Considering the fact that both Raya and Namaari were daughters of two chiefs in Kumandra, they always had a bit of rivalry, one always attempting to outdo the other. There was never any malicious intent, it’s always been closer to friendly competition. But ever since Raya accidentally took Namaari down with her during the relay race with the kids, Namaari has been acting Raya kicked a baby serlot.

Sisu rose an eyebrow at Raya’s reply but let it go since the girls just arrived in camp. Raya made eye contact with Namaari as she stopped out of her car and, just like yesterday, Namaari gave her a very cold shoulder. ‘You know what, I think I’ll just focus on getting through another day with the kids and I'll just talk to Namaari when we clean up camp,’ Raya thought.

The day went as slowly as the previous four, with Raya having to use her bitch voice way more than usual. The Heart girl’s throat was starting to croak because of how much she was having to raise her voice. Not to mention it was definitely the hottest day in all of camp. And naturally, the girls couldn’t swim today since the schedule was different. The icing on this absolutely horrendous cake was the fact that Namaari still refused to look her in the eye.

“Hey Miss Raya?” one of her campers called. “What’s up girl?” Raya asked. (she definitely doesn’t call all of her campers girl because she doesn’t remember their names or anything-)

“Can you grab my jacket from the closet in the office?” her little camper asked. Raya raised an eyebrow and asked, “Now what exactly were you doing in there?” The little girl shrugged and said, “I wanted to find a place to keep my jacket safe.” Raya sighed before nodding and going into the closet.

A couple of seconds later, the door opens again and Namaari walks through. Both girls are shocked seeing the other there, but then they turn panicked as the door shuts behind them and they hear a lock.

“Hey what’s going on out there?” Raya asked in a somewhat patient voice. “We need you two to stay in there until you stop having problems!” one of Raya’s campers told her. Raya sighed irritably and tried her very best not to scream. “Look Miss Namaari and I are just fine so please unlock this door,” Raya told her. Raya could practically see the brat shaking her head now.

“Believe me it’s for your own good!” called another voice. The difference is that this voice belongs to a little boy. Raya could see Namaari’s jaw clench as she said, “Aran, what is the meaning of this?” It became clear to Raya that the boy was one of Namaari’s campers.

“You two need to make up so that we can all play together again!” Aran told them. Namaari opened her mouth before Raya cut her off. “Well, I would like to know what’s up with the harsh treatment today. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about what’s wrong with you,” Raya told the taller girl.

Namaari sighed and shook her head. “Is now really the best time?” the Fang princess asked. Raya shrugged and said, “Well there’s no time like the present.” Namaari groaned at the response before sagging her shoulders. “Fine,” the girl relented.

“So why have you been acting up around me? I know we were always a bit competitive, but you’ve never been so cold to me. I already apologised for accidentally tackling you I just don’t know where else I went wrong,” Raya honestly told her. Namaari raised an eyebrow. “Wait, you think I’m upset because you pulled me to the ground?” the Fang girl asked.

Raya nodded. “Well yeah why else would you be acting up?” Raya wondered. Namaari couldn’t help but chuckle at her confusion. “Since I apparently haven’t made myself very clear, I’ll be more direct,” Namaari told her. The taller girl bent down lightly pecked Raya on the lips and oh wow. Raya.exe has stopped functioning please try again tomorrow.

“I-uh-what-huh?!” Raya exclaimed. Namaari let out a full blown laugh after seeing Raya’s reaction. “Alright, I’ll tell you why I’ve been acting so harsh towards you. I thought that I was making it very clear that I have romantic feelings for you, which is why I’ve been taking extra time to mess with you all week. I could tell you took great pleasure in returning the favor, so I thought it meant you liked me back. But when you denied any feelings for me in front of the campers it just…..it hurt. I thought it was your way of rejecting me,” Namaari told her.

Raya’s mouth stay open in shock. “Wait…..you were flirting with me?” Raya asked in surprise. Namaari snorted before nodding. “Have been for the past six years but yeah thanks for noticing,” Namaari grinned. Raya’s brain was having so much trouble trying to do the math. Thankfully, Namaari’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“In light of this news, I want to ask you directly...do you like me the way I like you?” Namaari asked with a hopeful tone in her voice. Raya got a surge of confidence and said, “Well maybe I would have an easier time deciding if you kissed me again.” The taller girl grinned and leaned in to press her lips softly against Raya’s. All of a sudden the doors flew open and their campers along with Sisu were cheering in happiness.

“Yes! I knew you two would get together!” Sisu yelled happily. Raya laughed before narrowing her eyes. “Wait…..you were out here and didn’t try to get us out of the closet? Sisu…..did you help plan this?” Raya aksed. Sisu gulped nervously and said, “well you were very sad this morning so I made a little scheme and got the kids to help me sooo RAYA PLEASE DON’T KILL ME I STILL HAVE SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR-”

Raya decided the best course of action was to throw a chair at her best friend. “I’LL SHOW YOU A LITTLE SCHEME ALRIGHT!” Raya yelled and began to chase her. Namaari smiled fondly at the sight. “Ah yes, my little murderer. Have you ever seen a more beautiful sight?” Namaari asked thoughtfully.

Needless to say, Namaari would inevitably see much more of Raya’s beauty in the days to come.

Taglist: @isitbussinjanelle

[wangxiangiftexchange]

Winter Solstice Gift for koikoipond

For @koikoipond <3

Read on AO3

*****

Call it Crazy, Call it Meant to Be

The morning of the second day Wei Ying met his soulmate, he rolled out of bed and made it halfway to the bus stop before realizing he’d pulled on his bunny slippers, a gag gift from Jiejie, and left his slip-ons haphazardly discarded by the couch. He’d still made it to the bus in time, though just barely, and had to call in Mianmian to take over the newbie’s shift. All in all a normal start to any day he had to open up the coffee shop.

In short, the universe had not prepared his poor heart for the man who strode into Latte Mugs Cafe at five after six, riding the crest of the crisp December air like some sort of angel in a white wool sweater. The door’s bell rang far too muted than was usual.

Wei Ying stared for what his racing heart later deemed a good five minutes before his gaze, somewhat distorted by the glass of the display he was arranging, rose to meet the man’s golden eyes. Oh, crap.

He shot to his feet, waved nonsensically at the man, shouted some rendition of “We’ll be right with you!”, and bolted through the door to the back room, whisper-yelling for Mianmian.

As soon as the door swung shut behind him, Wei Ying put a hand on his wildly thumping heart and paused to calm his breathing. Why is he here? When Mianmian emerged from the storage shelves (only one unit of which was used to stock non-perishables; the rest were filled to the brim with what the employees could only assume were the owner’s personal items, or else the remains of some poor, traditional tea shop, based on the sheer number of handmade tea sets), he ran up to her, putting on his best pout and swinging an arm around her shoulders. She glared at him and he carefully removed it and took a step back. Right. No touching.

“Mianmian!” he panted, eyes swimming with both remembered beauty and mortification equally, “The man- the bell- his eyes- and he just came in!” His voice was rising dangerously, and Mianmian thankfully stopped him before the taco place next door banged on the wall again, or worse, Lan Zhan, heard him.

“Wei Ying. Bi Disaster. Whichever you prefer,” her flat voice cut through his panic and grounded him, like a mother forcing her child into a life jacket against his will. Mianmian was great. “First off, my name is Grandmaster Luo, as per our agreement if I won the bet. Which I did.”

An exclamation of protest came from Wei Ying. It was ignored which was completely unfair because the bet had been who could last the longest without getting drunk, and sure, technically, Wei Ying got drunk first, but Mianmian had just been sipping the same cocktail the whole night!

“Second, who are you talking about and why does it involve me?” Mianmian had closed last night, too. Usually, she was much more pleasant than Wei Ying was in the morning, but today he’d taken one look at her and offered to work the counter. He’d rather not have to file a witness statement for a murder he’d seen committed at six in the morning, thank you very much. His memory was bad on a good day. He contemplated for a moment if Lan Zhan would be able to handle her and vice versa, but he hadn’t seen so much as a wince from him when the man was literally blackout drunk, so Wei Ying was willing to chance it. Who could get mad at such a perfect face anyway?

“Luo-jie,” he whined, “it’s Lan Zhan.”

“What, another ex?” She looked unimpressed.

“No! I haven’t dated anyone since the guitarist, you know that!” The guitarist—Wei Ying had blocked his name, which he remembered to be just as sexy as the rest of him, out of his mind—had been a mistake to begin with; a summer hope that turned out to be all riffs and no harmony.

She just looked confused, now. Well, guess she wasn’t lying when she’d said she tunes him out.

“No, no! Luo-jie, this is Lan Zhan . From the bar. Last week?” He winced at the memory.

“Oh. Your soulmate,” she said, as if this was common knowledge to the man waiting outside.

“Shh! Not so loud, what if he hears?”

The look she gave him this time was beyond tired, the sort of look his old government teacher used to give him when he derailed the discussion for the third time. Fond memories.

She appears to give up on the conversation entirely, brushing past him and moving toward the door. “Wei Ying, we’re talking about this. Later.” She pauses, and before he can embarrass her for caring about him, she says, “I saw him. A man that beautiful doesn’t deserve to be stuck with a soulmark he can’t remember. Even if it is to you.” Ah, there was that smirk he knew and loved!

Mianmian informed him when Lan Zhan left only a few minutes later. Apparently, he had asked for a lemongrass tea and nothing else. He hadn’t said a word about Wei Ying, or even The Insane Barista. Wei Ying was not upset by this, truly. All it meant was that the call he’d received the morning after their...escapades...had been honestly meant. His mind drifted back to Saturday morning as he mindlessly retook his position at the counter and finished his shift.

Wei Ying bolted up, his cheap twin bed creaking in protest as his phone blared the opening bars of Britney Spears’ Toxic—his ringtone—far too loudly. (If he let it keep ringing, it was just the first, really annoying bars, repeated over and over. He was unbearably smug about it.)

He reached over, trying to ignore his pounding head, and nearly dropped the phone before managing to accept the call. He mumbled out, “Hi this is-” before a deep, slightly groggy voice cuts him off.

“I have called to apologize for last night.” Apologize? Wait, was this- “I do not know what I said or did after drinking the alcohol-” Lan Zhan? “-but my brother informs me that you brought me home.” It must be. Though, technically, Jiang Cheng did the actual driving. He, after all, had not been drunk.

“Well, actually-” he was cut off again. Funny, Wei Ying thought sardonically, he remembered Lan Zhan being more polite than this. Even when they’d vandalized  the dumpster together, he’d insisted they leave room for future law breakers.

“I am grateful for that.” There was a pause, evidently for Lan Zhan to gather his thoughts. Wei Ying decided not to test his luck and gather his own as well. His brain typically didn’t wake up till at least nine on the weekends, but here he was—he checked his phone—at seven AM on a Saturday trying to have a conversation with a guy that refused to listen to a thing he said.

He didn’t remember much about last night, but that was normal for him. If past experiences were to be learned from, most of it would come to him later in flashes and pitfalls of regret. Still, he’d thought… He freed his left hand from where it was tangled in the sheets and—just sat there and blinked at it. Yeah, that was a fully-colored soulmark, to be sure. Which was—something he’d never had before.

Just yesterday, the twisting lines that covered his left palm and creeped though his knuckles were black and lifeless. Now, his hand looked like some sort of moving painting. The dull, monotone patterns had shifted, forming blue and white elegant clouds and delicate red lotus petals that swirled around each other as if moved by wind. He bent his fingers to trace the lines.

He hadn’t dreamed it then! He and Lan Zhan were soulmates and he was talking to his soulmate (or his soulmate was talking to him) and take that Jiang Cheng!

Lan Zhan was speaking, “-we should not contact each other again. Goodbye.”

No. No! Lan Zhan didn’t know! “Wait!” but the call had already ended.

He’d needed the whole weekend on his jiejie’s couch with ice cream and soup to feel better about the whole business. See, the thing was, he wanted to talk to Lan Zhan about it. Mianmian was right; it wasn’t fair that the man now had a soulmark and no clue who he was tied to for life—literally. Once found, soulmates lived and died together, unless a powerful enough rejection broke the bond.

Every time Wei Ying opened the contact he’d created on his phone, he found himself shying away, a knot of anxiety coiling in his stomach and threatening to boil over into panic as it bound his hands and prevented any communication with Lan Zhan. He’d studied soulmates before, had taken two elective classes on them his freshman year of college. He knew the fear of a severed bond was merely psychological, a flight reaction to rejection.

Severed bonds were permanent and caused by verbal or otherwise evident rejection of a relationship between soulmates. Physically, soulmarks kept their color but stopped swirling across the skin, an obvious sign which led to the Unmoving’s ever-shifting status in society. Emotionally, the soulmates often sank into depression. And so it was ingrained into the body that such experiences should be avoided. Wei Ying’s worry, the possibility of never seeing Lan Zhan again, the fear that his soulmate didn’t want him, pushed his body to such reactions. The whole thing made it frustratingly difficult to just talk to him.

Mianmian remembered to catch him just as he was leaving. She’d spotted him while on her way to her old mustang and had flagged him down like he was speeding in a school zone.

In typical Mianmian style, she gave him a once over, noted his stressed and slightly shaky appearance and declared, “You need to call him. I know you have his number.” Maybe she did listen, sometimes.

He sighed, a burst of warm air that puffed out before him and chilled, disappearing as surely as his prospects with Lan Zhan. “It’s not that I don’t want to.” A look. “I’m not being evasive! I really, really do want to tell him. I know he doesn’t-” a pause, and he continued quieter, “doesn’t remember me or our bond but he’s so kind, he might accept it anyway. He did seem enthusiastic when he was drunk. But…”

Mianmian’s eyes softened and her face looked completely different. “I know I don’t tell you because frankly your head is usually too large to make it through the door in the morning, but you’re not bad-looking or mean or stupid. I mean, maybe you are sometimes and you can’t expect to match your Lan Zhan for beauty, but it’s not like you don’t have a chance.” The last time he’d heard this tone from her was when he’d had a breakdown in their walk-in refrigerator. It was strangely calming, bringing to mind his sister and her gentle touches.

He smiled, chuckling softly. “It’s not that. I know I’m a catch! Though maybe a ten where Lan Zhan’s off the scale,” he joked, “But I just physically can’t confess or whatever to him. He- he almost rejected me once, though he didn’t know about the bond. And maybe it’s not fair, but I can only picture a still soulmark whenever I consider calling him.” He hated revealing that about himself, but he knew Mianmian. They went out for drinks most Fridays and she could sniff out a lie from him while drunk and flirting with a different dude. Besides, despite her thorny words and genuine annoyance with him, she did care. She’d even treated him to drinks on his birthday.

Mianmian looked at him consideringly and nodded. She understood. “You’re scheduled for most of the morning shifts now since those two students were hired. I’ll try to join you and work the counter for a while.” She turned decisively and got in her car, accepting his thanks with a nod. ”Don’t be late.”

*~*~*~*~*

During the following week, they established a routine. He and Mianmian would arrive at the coffee shop, baking and preparing together until six when they opened. Wei Ying would disappear into the back room, getting blends together and cleaning until Lan Zhan left at around 6:30. He showed up at 6:05 most days, give or take a few minutes. On one notable occasion, he had walked up (he walked! When it was literally freezing outside!) to the cafe at 5:55 and Mianmian had graciously let him in while Wei Ying made himself scarce.

Strangely, not once had Lan Zhan ordered coffee. In the coffee shop! Instead, he asked for infuriatingly healthy teas and protein bars which unfortunately did not include Wei Ying's prized creation: sweet habanero bars. Wei Ying had started to wonder why he even came. Their tea wasn't even that good! Not that Wei Ying liked tea, particularly, so he had to admit that he was perhaps not the best judge.

Still, he wondered if the punctual ringing of the bell had anything to do with the pull in his own hand, in his own mind, that wanted him to be closer to Lan Zhan. That wanted him to touch him, to talk to him, to accept him. Soulmarks, after all, did not care if one knew their soulmate or not. They were connected anyway.

One day, a week after the near-disastrous second meeting, Mianmian had to take off. She'd been applying for jobs recently, hoping to find a secretarial position with stable enough hours and pay to allow her to continue her schooling in law. A place nearby had allowed an interview and she didn't have time to take the morning shift.

So here Wei Ying was at six in the morning, working the counter as an exhausted student he wasn't letting within ten feet of the espresso machine stumbled around in the back room. He was stressed himself, but for once it seemed to work in his favor, tiring him out so completely that he'd fallen asleep while the clock was still on PM. He figured if he had to see his soulmate today, at least he wouldn't look like the zombie he normally did.

Wei Ying watched as a figure in a blue the color of his soulmark— their soulmark, as he'd learned the patterns and colors of pairs tended to be mirrors of each other—strode, sure and steady, through the door right as the grandfather clock in the corner struck 6:05.

A flicker of something passed through those golden eyes—surprise, maybe?—as he approached the counter. Just like before, Wei Ying's heart began beating wildly, echoing loudly in his ears and nearly deafening him. This time, however, he could also feel a slight tug, like a silk string had wrapped itself around his heart and was now gently pulling him closer to its other end. His soulmate.

A deep, quiet voice cut through his thoughts, and he quickly lowered the hand, his left one, that had been slowly reaching out. As he came back to awareness, he was suddenly beyond grateful for the gloves he'd decided to wear today. His mark would be a dead giveaway. "Good morning. Is there a certain tea blend you would suggest?"

For a moment, Wei Ying was taken aback, distracted by the man's voice and lost in his eyes, not completely comprehending the question. "Wh- What?" he stammered. "Oh, um, I'm more of a coffee guy myself, what do you usually get?" He spoke quickly, the words tumbling out of his mouth. Was he revealing too much? Now Lan Zhan knew that Wei Ying knew he was a regular customer! Should he have just said Citrus! Tried and true ?

Lan Zhan's brow furrowed, a minuscule movement that would have been lost had Wei Ying not spent the last eternity staring at his eyes. He opened his mouth and Wei Ying decided that it was best if he focused on something else, in the interest of his own health. "I will take whichever coffee you prefer."

Wei Ying was speechless, a feat not many had achieved. Over the last week, he had used Mianmian as a spy, asking detailed questions about everything that Lan Zhan did. She was a surprisingly good sport about. The point was, Lan Zhan had always ordered tea, a different blend each day, and never anything else.

Lan Zhan turned around, unbothered by Wei Ying's confused and flustered state, and sat down at a two-person table next to the bookshelf. He pulled out a laptop from his bag and began typing away. Wei Ying squinted at the screen in disbelief, but couldn't make out the words from this angle.

He shook himself and went about preparing the mocha, opting to skip over the spice he liked to add. A memory of a truth-or-dare game in which Lan Zhan admitted disliking spicy foods provided a hazy warning. A shame, if you asked Wei Ying, but he hadn't. Wei Ying had told him anyway.

He paused before bringing the drink over to his soulmate. It just looked so sad, both the drink and Lan Zhan, sitting quietly in an empty coffee shop as the sky only just began to awaken. He still didn't think he could properly talk to the man if his performance earlier was anything to go by, but maybe he could...

He reached into the display case, wrapped his gift in a napkin, and delivered Lan Zhan's drink, a little addition tucked neatly beside it. He turned and just about ran to the counter, pulling out a rag and cleaning non-existent spills until Lan Zhan left.

When he finally heard the door close, Wei Ying straightened up from his bunker and drifted, dazed, over to clean Lan Zhan's table, finding only an empty cup. Wei Ying smiled. His heart-shaped ginger cookie hadn't been abandoned, despite the bold way it was offered. Perhaps he wouldn't be, either.

Emboldened by his success, Wei Ying called Mianmian and resumed his position at the counter, a plan formed and ready to be completed. He wasn't sure if it was caused by the civil and promising conversation yesterday or sheer eagerness, but he thought, just maybe, that he'd be able to get himself to talk to Lan Zhan. Hopefully.

*~*~*~*~*

At 6:05, Wei Ying was doubting his chances. He watched as Lan Zhan walked up to the counter, just as confidently as he had the day before, steadily getting closer. As Wei Ying had found tended to happen when one moved. His breathing quickened, the now expected response to his soulmate's presence, and he responded to the sharp tug in his chest by stepping back, just slightly. He was distinctly reminded of a prey animal trapped by a predator.

Instead of biting his head off, Lan Zhan simply stepped up to the counter and examined the fresh pastries sitting in the display case, for whatever reason ignoring the barista's slightly gaping mouth.

Wei Ying swallowed, stood up straighter than he did when he visited Madam Yu, and summoned up this morning's courage that had so suddenly abandoned his poor self.

"Welcome to Latte Mugs Cafe! What can I get you?" There, his voice barely shook!

Lan Zhan hummed—wow, that was way hotter than it should have been—and tilted his head just the slightest bit to glance at the menu on the wall. "I will have a mocha."

He'd liked it then! Wei Ying hadn't pegged Lan Zhan as a chocolate person, but he supposed he might have a secret sweet tooth. "No problem. It'll only take a few minutes. Would you like to make it a Mexican mocha?" He couldn't help but recommend it, not after he'd worked so hard to get it on the menu. He'd written an essay to the owner. Besides, he'd taken Wei Ying’s mocha suggestion and eaten his cookie. He wondered what Lan Zhan would do with something Wei Ying knew he didn’t like.

His stomach turned a little at the thought that he was getting to know more about Lan Zhan and he wondered idly if he could really blame all of this on their soul bond or if he should take responsibility for his traitorous heart. He dismissed the thought. If anything, Lan Zhan should be the one taking responsibility merely by virtue of existing. That thought twisted his insides even more. Ugh .

Lan Zhan gave a little noise that Wei Ying chose to interpret as assent before sitting back down. He stared in surprise for a minute at his turned back before carefully preparing the drink. When it was done, he once again paused before rounding the counter. Surely, Lan Zhan needed to eat something with his coffee. Who knew if he'd even eaten breakfast? He bent down, scanning the available treats, and plucked one from the shelf, placing it carefully on a napkin before bouncing over to Lan Zhan's little table by the bookshelf, trademark grin in place. Courage, don't fail me now.

"Hello, Sir! One mexican mocha right here!" All of his best (and worst) decisions had been made by following his instincts. He pulled the chair around from the other side of the table, scraping it loudly across the rough tile, and decidedly sat down, holding out his bright red offering with only a moderate heart attack. "It's a habanero bar! I made the recipe and it pairs perfectly with the Mexican mocha, trust me. Oh, and I'll pay for it, of course." Technically untrue, but he didn't think he could steal something he'd made.

Lan Zhan looked a little surprised if Wei Ying had interpreted the meaning of that blink correctly. Was he regretting his spicy choices? Still, he reached out a hand and took the treat with an appreciative nod. "Thank you, Wei Ying."

What. "Eh? How'd you know my name?" Oh please for the love of all that is beautiful, don't bring up the bar. Lan Zhan had forgotten. He had! But if he hadn't, then...

"Your name tag."

Oh. Maybe the three coffees he'd had this morning in preparation had...altered his cognitive abilities. At least, that was the story he was going with.

"Well! You have me at a disadvantage, then!” Yeah, because he’s hiding a night of crimes and a soul bond from you. “What might the name of this handsome one be?" Should he be flirting? Where was the button to turn it off?? Then again, Lan Zhan was his soulmate . If there was one person in his life he was supposed to flirt with, surely it was him.

"Lan Zhan." Were his ears red? Was he hot? Was he blushing ? The rest of his face maintained its pale composure, but his ears were gently dusted pink. Lan Zhan had been inside too long to attribute it to the biting wind outside. Wei Ying's grin widened. Not even when the man had woken up wasted had he seen him blush!

"Lan Zhan, Lan Zhan," he rolled the well-worn name in his mouth, a teasing lilt to his voice as he tasted how his tongue completed a pleasant circle around the syllables. This time, their flavor was not regretful or drunken or stressed. Simply Lan Zhan.

Wei Ying did not leave. Instead, he just started talking about all sorts of things—his job, his siblings, Mianmian. As he fell into the familiar pattern of rambling for as long as people will listen, he found himself relaxing.

"You'd think we wouldn't be that great of friends. We're coworkers in a coffee shop! But even though she claims I'm an annoying gremlin who wouldn't know his head from a rock in a lineup, she still comes out to get drinks with me—at Marco's, a few minutes away—every Friday. Sometimes, she even brings her new boyfriends! Which is like taking your partner to meet the weird relatives. I think she might use it as some sort of test. I drink them under the table nearly every time, though, so I hope they failed." He realizes, belatedly, that he'd accidentally mentioned the bar. One of literally two subjects to avoid. He discreetly eyed Lan Zhan's face, but there was no reaction, no indication of familiarity, just two golden eyes, gazing at him with interest as his soulmate listened.

Wei Ying’s heart stuttered, dangerously close to giving out altogether.

Eventually, Lan Zhan had to leave, quick movements revealing just how late he was for music lessons—he taught children to play the guqin! For a living!—and Wei Ying smiled brightly as he watched him disappear down the street. See , he thought to himself, there was nothing to be worried about.

The plan had gone off without a hitch. Not only had he managed to talk to Lan Zhan, but he'd also been able to get several responses from him, filling up the part of his memory reserved for the man he wouldn't ever forget.

These new pearls of knowledge he kept close: Lan Zhan was a music teacher and occasional performer with a local traditional music group. He taught and played the guqin most often but had played the violin in his high school orchestra. During his studies for university, he had learned several other string instruments and the french horn. He had an older brother, Lan Huan. He liked rabbits.

During the course of the next week, he learned these things and protected them: Lan Zhan and his brother had been raised by their uncle. They were not religious, but his family was traditional. Lan Zhan had gone to a private school. He hadn't liked it. Lan Zhan's mother was dead. He spoke of his father in the past tense. Both of his parents were Unmoving, their soul bonds broken. Lan Zhan hadn’t known if they were meant for each other or not. He despised lying in all of its forms.

There were also these things which laid soft and fond in Wei Ying's heart: Lan Zhan did not, in fact, like spice. He enjoyed drinking tea and reading a book in the park when it was warm outside. He preferred mysteries. He did not mind Wei Ying's chatter. He adored his students, one of which had little natural talent but had gone to region-wide contests. He was a lover of poetry and a hobbiest composer. He said "Wei Ying" as if the world spun around his name.

Talking with Lan Zhan was an experience greater than words. Many things Lan Zhan meant, he did not say. None of the things he said were to be taken for granted. With him, silence was just as comforting a companion as the loud atmosphere Wei Ying tended to create. It settled peaceful and honest around them. They sat, drank, and ate together as if they were friends of many years and not relative acquaintances. Like there wasn’t a secret resting between them like a viper waiting for its prey.

*~*~*~*~*

A week after their first meeting, it snowed. Flakes drifted down beneath a grey sky, piling up in the cracks on the sidewalks, on the windowsills, dusting the beanie of a certain Lan Zhan that strode in slowly even as he shivered from beneath his coat. Rosy cheeks and ears adorned a normally pale, jade-like face, tousled hair falling down to frame it as he removed the beanie. Wei Ying fell in love a little more at the adorable scene.

Once he’d made Lan Zhan's spiced apple tea, Wei Ying drifted over with his own latte, a chocolate chip cookie in hand.

"Do you own a car, Lan Zhan?" Wei Ying was curious. Surely he could have simply driven here, or even gone straight to work and skipped the weather entirely.

"Mn. I have lessons all over the city and we often perform hours away from here." Then why , Wei Ying thought, would you come here when it’s below freezing outside? He did not voice the question, though, because Lan Zhan's jaw had shifted just slightly, the difference a clear declaration: his mind could not be changed about this. Fine. He’d let Lan Zhan live with his choices.

Wei Ying laughed and changed the subject, reaching out to draw patterns in the cream of Lan Zhan’s coffee with his straw . "When's your next performance?"

Lan Zhan sat for a moment, thinking. "We do not have one lined up. We've been practicing to release an album recently."

"Oh really? Why? Just earlier this week you mentioned that the group didn't have the resources for it." He really hoped they would, though. Maybe with a solo piece from Lan Zhan? He hadn't heard him play yet, a true shame.

"Mn. I found a sound artist." His voice was sure and steady as he stared at Wei Ying, who looked away and chuckled awkwardly.

"You should have told me that was all you needed! I would have done the job for free, as long as you played for me. I have a bachelor's in audio engineering, you know!" To be honest, Wei Ying was a little hurt that he'd not been considered, or else Lan Zhan had tuned him out during one of the times when he had just spewed whatever came to mind.

Before he turned around, he felt a hand on his through his left glove and he flinched at the sensitive contact on his mark. Still, he longed to grasp Lan Zhan’s hand and never let go .  "Wei Ying. It is you," he paused, and slowly removed his hand, the echoes of his fingertips burning trails on Wei Ying's skin even through the fabric. "If you choose to accept." He takes a breath, and says, quieter, "I would like it very much if you did."

Like a lightbulb turned back on, Wei Ying brightened immediately, an obvious flush of embarrassment darkening his cheeks. He leaned forward, throwing his arms around Lan Zhan in a hug both to hide his face and to just get closer. Wei Ying mumbled into his shoulder, "Of course. Of course I accept. Thank you so much!" He leaned back after a too-short moment, looking Lan Zhan in the eyes and smiling. "When do I start?"

They settled all the details. Wei Ying would be attending their 6 PM practice three days a week for a month before recording and editing the final tracks. He would, actually, be paid, though they couldn't afford the usual rates. That was fine with him. Really, he just needed to put something in the ‘Experience’ section of his resume. Well, plus his overwhelming desire to hear Lan Zhan play his guqin.

When Lan Zhan opened the door to leave, Wei Ying called out for him to stop. He stepped forward exactly one step, in a completely normal and not-at-all-nervous way. He opened his mouth, closed it, and blurted out before he could change his mind, "Doyouwannagetdinnerwithme?"

Lan Zhan gave him a flat look, but the mischievous glint in his eyes betrayed his understanding. Wei Ying took a steadying breath, fought the urge to glare, and stated loudly and clearly, "Will you go out with me later tonight?” His face felt like it was on fire. “As thanks for the job?" No one would ever guess the stone-faced man had a sense of humor, but Wei Ying was living evidence of it.

Finally, after a beat of silence during which Wei Ying mourned his stolen heart, Lan Zhan nodded once. "I will pick you up at your house at seven. Where do you live?"

The pure excitement that filled Wei Ying at Lan Zhan’s acceptance prevented any protest about how he was supposed to take Lan Zhan out and gave the man his address. As the ever-present bell marked Lan Zhan's departure, all Wei Ying could think was that he had a date. That he had a chance .

His palm tingled in anticipation as he ran to the back room to tell Mianmian the good news, filled with all the details she couldn’t get while eavesdropping.

*~*~*~*~*

Five minutes after getting in the car, Wei Ying regretted letting Lan Zhan drive. He should have risked his unused license or else simply called a cab because they were nowhere near the restaurant he had suggested, and he didn't know what to tell Lan Zhan if the man picked a nicer place. A barista was only paid so much!

Still, Lan Zhan refused to turn the car around or even explain himself when Wei Ying asked. He simply kept his eyes fixed on the road, staring at it as if it might disappear if refused Lan Zhan’s attention (Wei Ying sympathized). That determined set to his jaw was firmly in place. His eyes narrowed, and Wei Ying had the distinct impression that he was a man on a mission. Wei Ying just wished he'd been given a briefing.

Cars passed in pools of red and white that blended well into the background of a late December metropolis. Only about a week was left until Christmas and the trees were adorned with brightly glowing lights that bathed the streets in a familiar mix of artificial fluorescence and beauty.

He liked this time of year, enjoyed how his apartment complex decorated its buildings, smiled when the granny next door brought him homemade cookies and hot chocolate. He didn't even mind the cold that much, not when branching frost framed the windows and Lan Zhan's cheeks flushed red.

They were stuck in Friday night traffic for longer than he suspected Lan Zhan had planned, based on the finger softly tapping on the wheel, but eventually, Lan Zhan drove into a parking garage a good distance away from any restaurant Wei Ying knew and got out.

They walked a few blocks, glad for the several layers of clothes (Wei Ying actually had a reason to wear gloves, for once), before stopping at the entrance to one of the city's parks. A stone path twisted through the trees, a canopy of a million white stars enclosing the area and welcoming the two of them.

He grinned, turning to Lan Zhan and teasing, "I think we skipped a step. Romantic walks through the woods go after dinner."

A drawn-out, "Mn," the one that meant 'ridiculous', was the only answer he received. Instead, Lan Zhan smiled , which—wow. Illegal.—and offered Wei Ying his arm with far too much confidence. He blushed, hoped it wasn't visible in the lighting, and took it, only feeling slightly like some sort of flustered Victorian maiden.

Did Lan Zhan know what he was doing? Did he take every friend and business associate out to fairy gardens when they asked him to dinner?

Thoroughly confused but aware that Lan Zhan wasn't going to answer any pointed questions, he decided to enjoy the evening and pester him about the food instead.

"Lan Zhaaan," he whined, staring at the way the lights gave Lan Zhan's face an ethereal glow, " “When are you going to feed your poor A-Ying?"

At this, Lan Zhan put his other hand on Wei Ying's where it was nestled in the crook of his elbow in a comforting gesture and reassured, his voice calm, "We are almost there."

Wei Ying spent the rest of the walk as he was accustomed to doing around Lan Zhan—talking his ear off. He admired the lights, expressed his appreciation for Lan Zhan's outfi—a dark blue coat over Wei Ying's favorite knitted white sweater—and asked about the songs his group had chosen for their concert.

He couldn't wait to hear Lan Zhan play. He suspected music was the quieter man's true outlet for expressing his feelings, a language without the burden of words.

Lan Zhan spoke too, not as often or as loud, but he answered and asked questions of his own. Did Wei Ying play an instrument too? He had—flute in high school, though he preferred the piccolo, all the better to annoy people with. Portable, too! Why did he like alcohol? It was the experience, more than the taste, especially at a cheap place like Marco's. Was he planning on getting his Master's? He wasn't sure. He wanted to pay off some of his student loans before getting deeper in debt.

The easy conversation made Wei Ying relax, happy as always to be around Lan Zhan. It was strange to think that a week ago, he’d never met the man. He didn’t think he could live without him now.

Finally, they took a smaller, branching path, and Wei Ying gasped at its end; a white gazebo bathed in soft purple lights sat like a fairy house among gleaming trees.

He released Lan Zhan's elbow and took a step forward before looking back at his companion with an open mouth.

"You...you arranged all of this?" he asked, wonder coloring his voice.

Another "Mn," accompanied by a self-satisfied tightening of the mouth.

Wei Ying had long since given up trying to understand any of Lan Zhan's actions, but he was hopelessly endeared all the same. He grabbed his arm again, this time pulling him up the wooden steps and squealing in glee.

To one side there was a table laden with all sorts of foods, including, he was overjoyed to note, many dyed deliciously red. On the other side of the gazebo, a long, low table sat, a intricately carved, dark guqin resting atop it. A cushion, metal heater, and blanket were laid before the instrument, ready for use.

Impressed, Wei Ying went to inspect the dishes closer, his growling stomach refusing to wait any longer. He wondered at what time today Lan Zhan had time to set all of this up. Had he canceled some of his lessons?

Sitting down, he voiced his question, mouth watering at the appetizing smells.

Lan Zhan filled both of their plates, picking out for him nearly exactly what Wei Ying would have chosen, and answered, "I reserved the gazebo, but my brother set this up less than an hour ago." Wei Ying was incredibly grateful for Lan Huan. His food was still hot!

The meal passed mostly in silence. Though Lan Zhan had no problem talking over tea, he did not like to have a conversation around bites of food. For once, Wei Ying was happy not to say anything, simply appreciating the companionship and good meal.

He tried not to think too much about why Lan Zhan was doing all of this. He wasn't stupid, was in fact painfully and adoringly aware of the romantic setting, but that fear he had thought long since gone crept around his heart, daring him to hope and be crushed in its vindication. So he swallowed his words and ate his food in borrowed peace.

By the time they finished, Wei Ying's stomach was pleasantly full and he beamed at Lan Zhan, thanking him for the meal. Lan Zhan nodded and stood up, helping Wei Ying to his feet and leading him to the waiting cushion and—Wei Ying hoped—the performance.

"You really prepared!" He teased, pulling the blanket over himself.

Lan Zhan turned on the heater—the quiet, expensive kind—and hummed.

Then, he lowered himself onto his own cushion (sans blanket) and reached out to his guqin, warming up for a moment before glancing at Wei Ying, a suddenly hesitant edge to his eyes. "Are you ready?"

Wei Ying's smile softened and he nodded, fondness for the talented man before him almost unbearable. Lan Zhan returned his focus to the instrument and began to play.

It felt like the constant tug around his heart, like the many words that lay behind them and the greater part left unspoken, like 6:05 in the morning and laughter that tastes like coffee beans.

He closed his eyes and let the music fill him, heart thrumming in time with the music and creating  streams of pure feeling that branched out through his body until it reached his left palm. Wei Ying curled his hand in on itself. He wanted to memorize the sensation, its slight pain magnified and singular, but still a pull, a tug on his very soul. The feeling that encouraged him, warned him around Lan Zhan, his longing.

Wei Ying opened his eyes, simply gazing at where Lan Zhan kneeled behind his guqin, the gazebo’s lights framing his form as his graceful hands plucked at the strings, playing a song straight from his soul. He breathed in the cold air, letting it calm him and douse the burning in his veins.

As he played, Wei Ying felt his fear melt in the face of the pure emotion Lan Zhan channeled through the strings, felt his guilt harden into resolve because Lan Zhan didn’t know.

He kept silent for the moment, though. He needed to let Lan Zhan finish the piece, not only because silencing those strings now when all of Lan Zhan’s soul shaped the notes seemed cruel, but also because Wei Ying was greedy, and selfish. He wanted to keep this last, perfect memory, wanted to lock it in his heart like a golden thorn, a stolen parting gift if his words were not welcomed.

And so Lan Zhan played.

Wei Ying could not say how long it was before the song ended, could only center his mind around the swirling clouds that he knew curled across his palm, hidden like a shame when they were anything but. Finally, the last notes faded like acceptance into the cold night, and Wei Ying breathed in, and out, and longed.

“Lan Zhan.” It came out as a whisper, a ghost of a declaration. He needed a barrier between the song and his precipice of honesty. “What-” he stalled, biting back the hope, the despair. “What did you name it?”

Lan Zhan raised his gaze from where it had been fixed on the instrument, seeking out Wei Ying. He stood up in one smooth motion and crossed to where Wei Ying sat, pinned beneath golden eyes filled with something . An emotion he hadn’t seen, hadn’t categorized.

Carefully, Lan Zhan lowered himself to sit on the large cushion. He slid his gaze to Wei Ying’s left hand clenched on his knee, lifting his own and gently taking it, seeming to gauge Wei Ying’s reaction, but he only tilted his head in confusion. Why..?

Lan Zhan began pulling off his glove.

Wei Ying yanked his hand back. He couldn’t- why would he? He was going to tell him about the mark, but why did he want to know? Did he suspect he was Unmoving? Would he hate him if he knew the truth? That Wei Ying had played him for a fool, too cowardly to tell him about their bond?

At the stressed, almost wounded look in Lan Zhan’s eyes, Wei Ying made an aborted movement, reaching to comfort him. “Oh, Lan Zhan…” he breathed. He didn’t touch him, but after a moment of hesitation, offered his hand to his soulmate, palm up. Lan Zhan had merely been braver than he had, after all. The result would be the same.

Lan Zhan’s eyes softened and he carefully tugged off the glove, revealing the incriminating, promising, honest pattern. Twisting designs of blue clouds and red lotuses covered both their palms, side by side, blurred together as his throat closed and breath hitched. He made to move away, to leave Lan Zhan with the knowledge of his lie, but his wrist was gently but firmly held in place.

He sighed. Lan Zhan wanted him to say it, to confess, and suddenly the courage of a few minutes ago seemed out of his reach.

“Lan Zhan, you’re so good. Too good. Too good for me.” His breath caught. “I- I’ve known. This whole time.” He looked Lan Zhan in his clear, gentle eyes. “Lan Zhan. We’re soulmates. We have been since you got drunk at the bar.” He let out a shaky laugh, the first tear making its way down his cheek. “Well, I suppose we’ve been soulmates forever, but I found you then, and fell in love a little. You don’t remember, but you said you were happy. You went around showing random people your mark.” He was rambling again, but he couldn’t stop and nor could he leave.

He released it all, all of the caged words he should have laid at Lan Zhan’s feet a week ago. “I was so excited when you called me that morning. I thought you wanted to talk, to form a real relationship, but then you- you wouldn’t listen and it wasn’t your fault , you’d been drunk for the first time in your life, had a killer hangover I’m sure. But I- I thought if I called you, you’d just do the same thing again and leave me but then we became friends and I didn't want you to leave so I didn’t tell you and-”

“I am not.” Lan Zhan cut him off, voice quiet and pained, but firm.

“What?” he sniffled.

“I have not left you. I am not abandoning you, Wei Ying.” His eyes were pleading, filled with sincerity. He looked—so earnest and Wei Ying froze, uncertain.

“But—you hate lying.”

“I do not like hypocrites either. Wei Ying-” He looked away for the first time and Wei Ying panicked for a brief moment, what did I do wrong , before Lan Zhan spoke again, ears a deeper shade of red. “I knew too. This whole time.”

“What.” What?? Whatever Wei Ying had been expecting, it hadn’t been this.

“My brother was there at the bar. He...told me the next morning, but I did not handle the news well. I am sorry. I was simply surprised, and nervous. I did not remember you.”

Wei Ying was reeling. Lan Zhan knew and didn’t tell him but that was unfair because Wei Ying hadn’t told him either, so they’d both known, separately, and here they were, taking each other on a date and Wei Ying laughed, crazed at first, and desperate, but then an exclamation of pure joy. The atmosphere was romantic, after all.

He laughed and laughed and like a guqin string worn from loving use, the tension broke. He threw himself at his soulmate, at Lan Zhan, and hugged him until Lan Zhan hugged him back, until their eyes stung from tears and their voices grew hoarse from repeating the other’s name.

Wei Ying pulled back, cheeks flushed in the cold and eyes shining as he looked up at a soft smile. He reached out, cupping Lan Zhan’s cheek and resting their foreheads together, the contact burning, melting the longing that had become a permanent fixture  inside of him. Breaths mingled, puffing out in this warm space between them for a timeless moment.

With confidence born not from instinct or daring, but rather a heart securely held, he closed the distance between them, brushing winter-chapped lips against Lan Zhan’s soft ones, his last confession a raw whisper, returned with the same gravity it was given.

From then on, he held this warm truth in his heart: Lan Zhan loved Wei Ying, his soulmate.

Breathless and overwhelmed, he entwined their hands, bared patterns moving against each other, together. Nothing lay between them now, no confessions and no secrets. Only these: a prayer, a completed promise, and a bright future.

Extra:

“So, how did you know?” Wei Ying asked, exploring Lan Zhan’s purse.

He hummed, amused. “You told me yourself.”

“I did not! I’m pretty sure that was, like, goal number one. ‘Don’t tell Lan Zhan!’” he recited, voice playfully serious.

Lan Zhan brushed the hair out of Wei Ying’s eyes and took his left hand, fingers tracing the evidence of their bond.

“You waved.”

“But I had on gloves- oh.” He hadn’t, not yet. He only started wearing them after Lan Zhan had walked in the first day. “So you walked into some random shop and saw your soulmate who immediately disappeared.”

“Mn.” Lips brushed the top of his head.

Wei Ying laughed at himself as he went back to the purse. You could learn a lot from what a person kept in theirs! He pulled out a piece of paper, a half-composed score, handing it to Lan Zhan and looking deeper. Some chapstick (no wonder his lips were so soft!), several pens, a book on music theory, and—what was this? He grabbed it and brought it to the light. One of the cafe’s napkins, something wrapped inside. What? He peeled away the months-old paper, a breath caught in his lungs as the object was revealed.

It was the cookie, the heart-shaped ginger crisp he’d given Lan Zhan the first time he’d taken his order.

“You! What am I going to do with you!” he laughed, the sound bright and joyful as he tackled his soulmate in a hug.

“Marry me.”

“WHAT?!!”

[zombriekid]

The Devil Takes Care of His Own 3/?? [Alastor/Gender Neutral Reader]

Series: Hazbin Hotel

Chapter Name: Checking In?

Chapter Summary: you’re faced with a dilemma as the happy hotel opens its doors to you

Text from: The Boss

“WHAT. THE FUCK. DID YOU DO, NEWBIE?”

Oh no...

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

Fuck... oh fuck, oh god no, please.

“WHY ARE SO MANY OF MY CLIENTS COMPLAINING ABOUT YOU?!”

The drop of your stomach echoes with a fluttering impression, while a surge of heat, abrupt and uncomfortable, licks at the lining of your throat all the way up to your jaw and it bleeds into your ears; the burgundy walls all around you begin to shrink.

“SOWBELLY SAYS YOU BROKE SOME SHOT!”

“*shit you broke some shit”

“AND THAT COFFEE SMELLIN HIPSTER FUCK SAYS-”

With a resounding clack, your phone slips from your grip and plummets to the sturdy countertop below, a noise that makes the three people around you flinch (you notice distantly), but your brain- your outermost awareness- doesn’t even bother. Because your entire world is now summing up to the blurbs of rapid fire notifications assaulting the LCD screen. Message after heated text message just filled to the brim with expletives and threats and perpetual capslock until this massive wall of verbal abuse blurs your vision; makes your head throb in sync with the increasing thump-thump of your heart.

The device vibrates against the bar and its screen lights up with another message alert, this one demanding your immediate response before declaring you a “useless piece of shit”, and then not long after comes a voice mail about a minute in length.

You’re not gonna listen to it though, you’re gonna grovel.

A tap from your right middle finger brings the digital keyboard to the glass, and your digits begin dancing across the letters to formulate what you consider to be a heartfelt apology, and you beg forgiveness for your transgressions as a lowly delivery person.

But three paragraphs in your hand forces a sudden stop; typos in need of amending due to the constant use of the backspace key, an entire sentence underlined by red squiggly lines with no break between the nonsense letters, and without realizing it at some point you accidentally pulled up the emoji list and now thirty percent of your sniveling is made up of a bunch of cartoons. It’s an odd sensation, you think as you stare back at the jargon, a backlog of muscle memory for modern technology yet you can’t even design coherent text messages in order to save face.

In order to save your fucking job.

All because your goddamn useless hands won’t stop fucking shaking.

Suppose it’s a futile effort at this point- your ass is one hundred percent absolutely and totally fired now.

Meaning no money for bills, no money for food, for utilities, for clothes... Here comes your eviction notice- goodbye lumpy mattress, and a fine greeting to the filthy streets of Pentagram City. A steep price for your compulsive philanthropy, go figure that that’s how things operate down here. How bass ackwards.

But that’s alright, that’s okay, you’ve been through worse you think- you’ve been- you’ve...

You’ve suffered through worse before. Homelessness? Ha, nothing compared to the shit you’ve seen willingly, a temporary setback, maybe a coworker will let you sleep on their couch. The new girl, what was her name? Stacy? Yeah, she’s pretty eager she’ll let you crash with her- it’ll give her more of an excuse to “befriend” you but that’s alright. Sacrifice comfort for survival, right?

“Newbie.”

Not the first time, definitely won’t be the last; life in a concrete jungle is such a fickle bitch, especially here in-

“Newbie!”

-here in Pentagram City.

Present time. Post death. Hell. The here and now.

Impossibly small hands are pulling the apples of your cheeks into fleshy bulbs, folding your lips as a pout, and the darkened corners of your vision dim until Niffty’s lone ocular takes precedence in sight; a triad of quick blinks help anchor your focus.

Oh. How wonderful. Yet another episode... how many does that make today? Certainly way more than usual.

You blame the stress.

“Newbie, you okay?” Niffty asks with a tight throat, and a bob of your head delivers your response.

“Just havin’ a... moment. But I’m alright now.”

She glances down to her right in the direction of your phone, still glaring at you from the grainy surface of the bar, and it’s as if you can literally see the gears in her brain start to rotate. You’re fairly certain that she’s about to put two and two together and get four.

“That’s just my own bossman, Mr. Terry. Well, pretty sure he’s my former boss now.”

“Is it cause of today? When you helped me?”

Your knee-jerk reaction is to mindlessly blurt out a response that would confirm her suspicions, but luckily whatever humanity remains in tact notices her pitch- not necessarily concern rather something akin to it paints the undertone- and it clamps your mouth shut with an audible click of your teeth. Because what you were about to do, what you were about to say, be it directly or indirectly that was going to shift at least some of the blame on to her, and that would be completely unfair. The fault doesn’t lie with her. It’s entirely your own. First off the little lady didn’t even ask for your help, she didn’t beckon to you she didn’t plead for interception, you swooping in to “save the day” was your body’s reflexive need to act, to just do something instead of perpetuating the stereotype of morbidly curious bystander. Second, the manner of which how you saved her was incredibly, stupidly sloppy- a path of damage shadowing your trek and all you left behind was a substantial cost of repairs and replacements. Since when was charging through a line of stores ever a good idea?!

No, you made the decision to do something about Niffty’s situation, so you could’ve found a better way to engage it- actually you should’ve found a better way, but your lapse in judgment cost some people tools, resources, products, and even some clientele, thus costing you practically everything, and now Hell is demanding its pound of flesh from someone’s hide.

Don’t let her believe that it may come from her.

“Nah, I accidentally pissed off some clients recently,” you say as you gently take hold of her hands and remove them from your face. “No need to worry about it, kiddo.” Which none of that is a lie in any capacity, sometimes your cleverness does in fact shine through.

Niffty doesn’t seem to think so, though obviously there’s no way for her to know without some form of mind reading, regardless her face falls into a displeased frown complete with round, bulgy cheeks. “I’m not a kid, Newb. Besides you’re younger than me!”

Oh, she’s so friggin precious, you’re gonna miss this youngen. “In terms of dates, sure. But my, uhh, ‘departure time’ so to speak-” you decorate this with air quotes “-gives me some years on ya.”

“Yeah, by a few at most.”

... No? By, like, ten-ish years? Are you missing something?

“Dude I’m pretty sure I died somewhere in my twenties.”

“Okay? And?”

Okay, yeah, you’re definitely missing something. The tingles on the back of your neck prove this.

She’s not a child, is she?

“... Niffty, how old were you when you bought the farm?”

“Twenty two.”

Alright, okay, that’s dope- how long until the next extermination? That’s a thing you’ve heard about, and you’d really love to volunteer yourself to be first in line right about now. The sooner the better, really.

From pit in his stomach comes an eruption of raucous glee, such an intense reaction that it forces Angel Dust- long forgotten until now- to bend until he’s bracing himself with two hands on his knees, the other pair clutching around his heaving abdomen, as he cry-laughs at your expense.

Meanwhile, the feathered feline fellow manning the bar makes a sound in the back of his throat loud enough to reach your ears, and when you give him your attention he deems the conversation relevant enough to glimpse at you from the corner of his amber eyes; there’s a deep green bottle entrapped in his massive paws and with a tip of the neck he takes a hearty swig before he finally mutters whatever is on his mind. You catch a whiff of the unmistakeable odor of bitter, cheap booze.

“Didja really think Niff’s a kid?”

...

Ten minutes.

Ten whole arduous minutes spent enduring rigorous taunting and not-so-light-hearted ribbing from all three demonic compatriots; statements such as “not so bright are ya, smooth talka?” ala Angel and “no wonder you’re so weird” courtesy of Niffty force the tips of your ears to sear with your cheeks quickly following the same trend.

In your defense, Niffty’s rather small stature and youthful disposition makes her seem much younger than she actually (apparently) is, and sincerest apologies to the court but she’s the most humanoid individual you’ve encountered downside- other than Charlie, of course- so how were you to know that she wasn’t a child in danger solely based on the information you were given? It’s not like you had the time to stop and ask!

And if this trio of assholes would take a few moments to consider your perspective then maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to jump straight to mockery, so until they do they can just suck your bits.

____________________________________

Some time passes, you’re unclear on how much for you refuse to even so much as think of your phone right now, and though you’ve yet to receive anything further from Mr. Terry- no more text messages, no more voice mails, no more notifications- and though the hotel’s three residents have retired from their cruelty and are seeking entertainment elsewhere- Niffty on a dusty painting, Husk at the bottom of a bottle, and Angel Dust... doing whatever in another room- still you find no peace.

No respite from this fuster cluck of a situatio.

And you don’t know what you’re going to do about it.

But you gotta do something, can’t let this continue to fester, so take a deep breath: one, two, three, four- and let it out: five, six, seven, eight- and repeat. Clear your head. Think about this logically.

The first step should be an apology, of course, but your gut tells you that a simple “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to, won’t happen again” just wouldn’t suffice- not for a group of pissed off demons at least. And your employment with Mr. Terry is a measly two weeks young, nowhere near enough to build up some sort of history of positive work ethic, so starting with him is practically a fool’s errand already.

After all, your enigmatic boss isn’t known for his mercy.

... maybe...

Maybe you’re on to something with that assessment.

Maybe you shouldn’t apologize to him first but rather save him for last. Work up the list of priorities instead of down.

Starting with the demon you pissed off first: Mrs. Sowbelly.

Two pokes at your back.

A delicate, graceful exclamation of “FUCK!” comes bellowing out of your mouth as the abrupt shock nearly sends your ass careening to the floor, your hands scrambling upon the bar in order to hook stability.

Mere seconds later and you find Charlie over the slope of your shoulder with her right index finger pointed in your direction; the look on her face suggests that your squawking startled her. In this moment your mouth works much faster than your brain and an apology is already leaping off your tongue... that is until you notice the person standing next to her.

Now, not to be rude about it, but there’s nothing inherently striking about this individual; gray tinted skin, long white hair pouring down the length of her spine, a few inches shorter than the blonde at her side, and a large pink eye staring straight at you with something like irritation. For the most part, she looks human- not humanoid like Charlie and Niffty, but like you.

Human.

And that’s why she’s stealing your attention.

“Hey Newbie, I want to introduce you to the Happy Hotel’s manager and my partner, Vaggie.” Charlie says with a somewhat forced smile, likely residual from your outburst.

With your eyes trained on the gal in question, you blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “Howdy, pleasure to meet you.”

Vaggie doesn’t say anything back.

Luckily, however, Charlie keeps the conversation rolling.

“The two of us actually wanted to talk to you about something important. Is... is that okay?”

For your anxiety? Anything that even remotely parallels “we need to talk” is a near guarantee to sending your heart to the racetrack, so no it’s not okay in that regard. That being said, given her response earlier, before Mr. Terry battered you with derisive texts, and the fact that she called the manager/her girlfriend over is... well, you’d be lying if you said that you aren’t intrigued. Skeptical, maybe even paranoid, but intrigued. So you give your consent.

“Cool beans! So, umm, I think I’m just going to cut to the chase here,” she clears her throat, “we want you to stay here. At the Happy Hotel. To be rehabilitated.”

...

....

“I’m sorry, fucking what?”

The question is out before the rest of your body has time to process Charlie’s words, but even when you fully digest the information you’re still left feeling perplexed. What does she mean “rehabilitation”, what all does that entail, why did she have to call her girlfriend for this?

And, oh, how her patience seems to know no bounds for the smile that curls on her lips is soft, and her brow pulls together in what you can only call generosity. Like she understands your confusion; makes you wonder how often she goes through this schtick.

“Allow me to explain our predicament since you’re still new.”

And she does, in great detail, weaving a copper-scented tapestry with threads dyed the shades of suffering and heinous sin. In less pretentious terms, she regurgitates material you’ve only heard in passing. Hell is bursting at the seams with its substantial over population issue, one that only grows more exacerbated with each newcomer, and with limited real estate and even more limited resources the powers that be reached the conclusion long ago that a percentage just... has to go. Enter the exterminators, a team set out from the tippy topside whose sole purpose is to literally slash some numbers in half once a year.

Charlie doesn’t like this, in fact her exact words are “it kills me inside knowing that my people are being systematically annihilated” and honestly they kinda make you equate this to that of a speech from some representative- an authority figure, someone with power, which makes sense if this is her hotel. It’s pretty, the way she feels about the annual genocide, but you’ve yet to hear her alternative solution if she has any to begin with.

As the saying goes, actions do speak louder than words.

That’s when she genuinely explains the hotel’s purpose: to purge the demons of their vices, purify their souls, make right their wrong doings from when they were alive so that they can walk through the pearly gates as a reborn person, faultless and whole. Redemption. Rehabilitation. Because a hotel is only a temporary pitstop between two destinations.

The idea... makes enough sense, you guess.

“I mean, that’s neat, super admirable, and the whole idea of reforming demons instead of just- ya know- offing them sounds way better in comparison. But uhh- what does this have to do with me?”

“Well,” Charlie looks over at Vaggie before advancing her explanation, “you’re new. You haven’t regained your memories yet, your body hasn’t adapted yet, you still have your humanity- I mean you helped Niffty out of a tight spot without any expectation of a reward!”

“Nah, I just did what felt like the right thing at the time.”

“Exactly! We need someone like that here!”

Ah.

Now the picture has clarity.

What Charlie said earlier, “... if I can help just one demon find redemption here then everyone else will believe too!” that was merely another way of saying “we haven’t succeeded yet.” And judging by the way the hotel’s current residents, this motley crew of friends(?), they’ve been trying with people who have been here a lot longer than you have- you, a newbie that hasn’t gone through “the Change” yet, hasn’t full acclimated or been assimilated into the disgusting system of eternal suffering. Like they have. If redemption can be had here it’s more likely to be found with a newcomer like you, and if you can be saved then it’ll prove possible for anyone else.

At least that’s what you’ve surmised from the situation.

It doesn’t sit right with you though.

You did something topside to warrant your arrival here, or maybe you did a lot of things, or maybe you didn’t do enough, you don’t know and that’s the point. You don’t remember. There could be a mountain of skeletons shoved into your closet that you’re completely unaware of and until further notice that’s where they’re going to remain if they even exist.

You. Don’t. Know.

There are way too many unknown variables regarding your past- no, you’re very identity, and though you’ve been reassured on numerous occasions that that’s actually the standard here for newcomers... that doesn’t mean you deserve a second chance. Because who you were may not deserve it.

So don’t waste the room on a potential lost cause, is what you tell them.

“All the more reason to try it now before your memories can influence you.” Vaggie says in a firm voice, the very first you’ve heard her speak. 

And admittedly the logic is sound, you’re not trying to dispute that, it’s just... 

Not you- a clattering racket against the bar top- anyone else may deserve this opportunity- disrupts the conversation- but not you- and it takes all of two seconds to determine the source. It’s your phone, probably Mr. Terry announcing you officially dead to his business.

“Do you have a place to stay?” Still Vaggie.

As of right now, no, you really don’t.

“Residents can board here for free, you just have to stay clean- no sinning, at least as best you can.”

That’s not too bad, you think. Maybe you should-

No! No, one “good deed” doesn’t merit a shot at atonement. It’s not going to negate whatever it is you did to topside to leave you downside.

...but you’re more than likely out of a job now, one that barely paid enough to cover expenses to begin with, and losing your apartment is trailing not that far behind.

“What do you say, Newbie?”

“I-” the sudden dryness in your throat drags forth a minor coughing fit. “I don’t know if I deserve it.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Sacrifice comfort for survival, right?

You take a deep breath. “O-okay. Where’s the check-in sheet?”

____________________________________

a/u: mental health has been a bitch to deal with so i’m sorry that this took longer than i expected. i have half a mind to scrap this and redo it again but i’ma do this funky fresh thing where i stop overanalyzing it and put it out there for y’all to read. still no beta, and still no al yet, but we’re definitely getting c l o s e r, got this bitch all planned out and everything. y’all know the deal by now: like, reblog, and comment; the engagement makes my lil queer kokoro go doki doki

tagged: @kryptum-one @itz-kira @peachesandkats (i’m in love with all three of y’all, just letting you know)

[espressotw]

The Truth is... (thoughts)

Humans are an interesting existence. A living, breathing creature yet simultaneously a story taking up space in this universe. A complicated story partially self-created and partially dictated. Perhaps mostly dictated. But the stories are so fundamental to the reality of our existence that they become invisible to our own eyes, like the reality of blood cells taking in and distributing life-giving oxygen. Really, the vast majority of what keeps us alive is entirely invisible to our own eyes.

Remember when you were a kid, laying alone in your bed, unable to sleep. What sort of stories did you tell yourself in those moments when your brain refused to sleep? For me, it was stories of ghostly creatures sneaking around the house. I was safe, as long as the door was closed. The door was somehow impervious to the brainspawn ghosts. So real were these stories that one of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories was a time in which I sobbed tears of such intense, genuine fear that I was unable to move. That story, based on some misunderstanding of physics, told me that the door swinging open and slamming shut, seemingly of its own accord, could only be the result of some dark or evil force trying to threaten me. My confused mother, holding me tight, tried and failed to explain the forces of air pressure that acted on the door in my dark bedroom that night. 

Perhaps you didn’t think of this as a story, but I think it's important to call it what it is. As a child of six or seven, there was simply no way I could have understood the existence of air as real matter with mass and volume that could act with significant force on the more visible, solid things in my reality. So my brain did what it’s best at, perhaps, if I may be so bold, even what it is meant to do: it told a story. In this case, my associations of apparently self-animating inorganic objects caused a physiological reaction of fear, leading my brain to unfold a scary story of some six-year-old version of demonic forces beyond my perception.

I’ve become so good at telling stories over the years, as many of us have, that it is not only unintentional, but almost unrecognizable. More recently, I told myself a story of redemption. It was a narrative in which I, the morally-matured-and-on-my-way-to self-actualization young adult, felt I had come upon the way I would finally bring myself back to the table with my estranged mother. I finally saw how I could give her the tools to see me on equal terms and simultaneously learn the way of mindfully maintaining my own higher ground rather than sinking myself into the “reality” that was her story. Yes, I’d done it. I’d finally found the way. After more than half a decade of waiting, avoidance, reflection, and growth, I’d finally found the path. 

I was going to teach her about stories and storytelling and about how our interactions were subject to the stories that she was telling herself- and to be fair, the stories I was telling myself- and then approach a reconciliation with a bulwark sensitivity and mindfulness. It all seemed to make sense. It all flowed along the storyline, in narrative pattern. A hook, a time of work and growth, building tension through confrontation until a great climax where she would inevitably- since my methods were correct this time- come around and accept me followed by the happy comedown that follows the reconciliation of long lost loved ones. 

That was the story I told myself. I was so sure of it. I’d matured. I’d grown. I’d been thinking about it for years. How could I be so wrong after so much time and work?

But I was. I was so wrong I’m ashamed to even admit any part of this story. What was I asking her to accept, really? Me? Well, yes, in a sense. But more than that, I was asking her to accept my story. My story that so fundamentally contradicted every aspect of her reality. My story of a genderless, sexually queer, psychadelic, impermanent, internet driven, and most importantly, godless existence. 

My mother, you see, is more or less what we might consider an American Christian Evangelical. A special breed, being of the Mormon tradition, which is in some ways easier and some ways more difficult for me to embrace. Her story is built around ideas like permanence, specifically of the individual and of familial structure. By extension, patriarchal structure and hierarchical structure of god and subject, priesthood holder and disciple. Really, a story with more rigid structure in a sentence than in my entire chapter. 

I’m starting to get a little too big picture here, so I’ll try to reign it back in for the sake of mutual understanding. One example that is perhaps relatable to a vast majority of us by this point. A cough. What does it mean? I had a little bit of a cough today, even a slight headache. This is it, I thought. I have the virus. Everyone in my school will get it. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I just manifested symptoms faster. Either way, I have it and our school will shut down. We'll have hundreds of cases in the next couple weeks because I work in a school. I’ll be out of work, so will my colleagues, my friends, the parents of my children. I’m going into the grocery store to buy a few more food items to prepare for quarantine. I walk up to the clerk scanning temperatures as people enter, fully expecting to be just a little over the limit. I make it through. 

But that doesn’t fit my story, so I have to justify it. How? I can change my story by remembering that my family has a quirk where we develop a cough when we’re physically exhausted. That would make sense, I haven’t been sleeping well for a few days. I’ve been working hard. I’ve been stressed. Sure. But I’m a pretty healthy individual and I know my body pretty well, and I just couldn’t convince myself. A cold? No, not like this. There was no other good story. And so my brain found every reason to validate that story. I forgot to wash my hands when I got to school that one day. I opened the door to my apartment building with my bare hands yesterday, maybe I touched my face. I’ve been eating at a local restaurant fairly often. I don’t know their food cleanliness standards, maybe it was there. 

It’s a story we’ve probably all struggled with in the recent past, if not currently. And how much energy have we put into proving or disproving that story? A colleague of mine recently stayed in home quarantine for travel reasons, only to end up fighting this story by himself half the time in what he described as a nightmare of a week (he’s fine). Those of us who have wrestled with this story know how draining it can be. 

But really, it’s no different than any other day. Some stories I live with sound like, ‘I’m the youngest and least experienced at my school, so my ideas are unworthy of sharing.’ Or sometimes, ‘I notice I spend more time prepping than my colleagues, so I must be less capable since I need more time to do the same work.’ These stories are the reason I show up to work at least an hour early every day. They’re the reason I deal with Sunday night anxiety for the first time in my life. They’re the reason I don’t ask for help when part of me knows I should. They’re the reason I finish assignments late. 

The hardest part is that sometimes I’m right! Sometimes I look at a lesson plan or a script written by my colleague and it is objectively of higher quality than my own. And so my brain will confirm its theory. But if I have an idea for a lesson and my colleague says, “Hey, I like that, can I have your template?” No, that’s just a fluke. It’s because I’ve done something similar before at another school. Discard the evidence; it doesn’t fit my story. Thing is, I might not remember the discarded evidence later, even when I should. Even worse, sometimes I get comfortable with a story. Sometimes I want the story to continue, not because it’s good or I like it; no, because it’s familiar. It’s consistent. I already know that story. I know how to cope with it. Anyway, I’m getting a little too big picture again. 

So what stories are you telling yourself?

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

We’ll Carry On - Chapter Fifty Six

We’ll Carry On Tag

General Content Warnings: Sympathetic Deceit Sanders, Substance Abuse, Abandonment, Minor Character Death, Transphobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociation, Bullying, Homophobia

September 30th, 2020

“Hey, Pat? Can I talk to you?” Virgil asked before either of them could leave the room for the morning.

“Uh...sure, Virge. What’s up?” Patton asked.

Virgil shuffled his feet. “I don’t think therapy is helping me as much as it used to. Or at least, my anxiety is getting worse, not better.”

Patton’s eyes widened. That was a thing that could happen? “Have you told Dad and Ami? They could probably help you.”

Virgil shrugged. “I don’t know...I can always ask, I guess. But I wanted to tell you first. You’re my brother who I’ve known since forever. I kinda want you to know before they do, just because I trust you a little more than them still. Does that make sense?”

Patton nodded. He understood, although he wished that Virgil would go to Dad and Ami right away about this predicament.

October 14th, 2020

Patton was roused from his light and fitful sleep in the middle of the night, feeling like his chest was being crushed. He managed, with great difficulty, to open his eyes, and if he could have screamed, he would have. There was an old woman sitting, hunched over, on his chest. Her hair was silvery and almost matted. She was staring right at him, and he thought in that instant, he was a dead kid. Her clothes were ratty and all in black, and she had a weathered witch’s hat on as well. She sat on him, not moving, not blinking, and he screwed his eyes shut tight and whimpered. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed she would have mercy on him and not kill him in the dead of night.

He kept his eyes shut even as he heard Virgil move around the bedroom and leave. Just as well. If Virgil wasn’t in here maybe this woman wouldn’t kill him. Patton kept his eyes shut tight until he felt a hand touch his arm, and he shrieked, eyes flying open as he flung himself up against the wall away from the hand.

Ami backed up in surprise and Virgil had covered his ears from the sudden noise. Patton looked around. Was the woman gone? Where did she go? For that matter, how did she get in their room in the first place? His breathing was shallower than it had been when he had first woken up and seen the woman on his chest, and he was feeling light-headed.

Virgil had come over and started talking slowly to him, but Patton couldn’t make out the words for the blood roaring in his ears. Apparently, Virgil knew this, because he took Patton’s hand and placed it on his own chest as he took a deep breath. Oh. Yeah, deep breathing made sense, he supposed.

He tried to suck in air, but it kept being shoved out of his lungs half way through. He managed to get a small amount of air in, and held it until Virgil exhaled, his chest falling back down. Virgil took another deep breath, and again, Patton did his best to imitate the action. He wasn’t entirely certain it was doing anything, but Virgil was smiling, so Patton would keep trying.

After some time, Patton felt like he could finally breathe normally, and he looked around the room curiously, holding his bedsheet to his face, as if it could protect him if the hag came back. “Is she gone?” he whispered.

“Is who gone?” Virgil asked.

“Her,” Patton said. “She was sitting on my chest and I couldn’t move, and she was gonna kill me.”

“Oh,” Ami said. “Patton, she wasn’t real.”

Patton looked at Ami uncertainly. “I saw her. I felt her. I couldn’t move...how isn’t she real?”

“It was a hallucination,” Ami said softly. “It’s a pretty common one when it comes to sleep paralysis. This is one of the things I remember researching when I was in college, because I just found it so interesting. But the long and short of it is, your brain woke up before your body did, so you couldn’t move. Your brain tried to explain that sensation of not being able to move by having something sitting on your chest. But it wasn’t real, Patton. It was a dream.”

Patton took a deep breath and lowered his bedsheets. “You promise?” he asked.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Ami vowed. “I can’t promise it won’t happen again, but she wasn’t real. I’ve had that happen to me once or twice in my life, and it’s not fun. It is interesting, though, that you had something like this happen to you this early in your life. Usually sleep paralysis doesn’t start until your teen years.”

Patton felt like he could breathe a little easier just as Ami explained everything. He reminded Patton of Logan, because when both of them got excited about something they had learned, their eyes lit up and they became more animated. Not to the extent Dad did, though Patton wasn’t sure anyone could get as excited as Dad did over anything, not just cartoons. And Logan was able to keep all the boogeymen away, no matter how real they seemed. He didn’t realize Ami might have the same effect.

Virgil slowly crawled onto Patton’s bed and gave Patton a hug. “You haven’t been sleeping well lately,” he murmured. “I figured the least I could do is help you if you were having a nightmare.”

Patton tentatively hugged Virgil back. Then, Virgil was moving away, back to his bed. Ami nudged Patton and murmured, “C’mon, we can talk more where your brother isn’t trying to sleep.”

Well, that was a little scary, but Patton was pretty sure Ami wasn’t mad at him, so he followed Ami down the hall to his and Dad’s room. Dad was propped up on one arm and blinking blearily at Ami. “Pat okay?” he asked.

“Sleep paralysis,” Ami said. “A little shaken, but he’ll be okay. I’m letting him sleep in our bed tonight if he wants to, though.”

“Would you like that, Pat?” Dad mumbled.

“Yeah,” Patton said softly.

Ami ushered him onto the bed, next to Dad, and then Ami climbed in and pulled the blankets over all of them. Patton felt a bit like a sandwich, but not in a bad way. Dad was snoring within a couple seconds of letting himself collapse back on his pillow. Patton squirmed on the bed, and Ami murmured, “Still a little scared?”

“A lot scared,” Patton admitted. “It went away for a bit, but I don’t wanna wake up and see her again.”

Ami ran his hand up and down Patton’s arm, and Patton felt himself growing sleepier, which he wasn’t entirely sure was a good thing. “I can’t promise you won’t,” he murmured. “Because I don’t know whether or not you’ll get it again, and that’s not fair. But I can promise you that I’ll be here if it does happen.”

Patton felt a few tears escape. “She’s not the only thing I’m scared of,” he admitted.

Ami sighed. “Yeah, I figured. What’s going on?”

Patton just shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I keep getting really vivid bad dreams and it’s not fun. Sometimes I don’t remember them, but when I do it’s the worst of the worst of the dreams. Sometimes it involves you guys dying, or getting hurt until I can’t recognize you.”

Ami continued rubbing Patton’s arm and Patton felt tears well up in his eyes. “The worst ones are with Virgil. He’ll...he’ll be eaten up by bugs, or Mom and Charles come back and hurt him and make me watch, unable to do anything, or he’ll be hurt any sort of way and he’ll yell that it’s my fault. I don’t want him to think that I’m trying to hurt him, because I don’t want to! That’s the last thing I want to do! But here he is, constantly getting hurt because of me!” he sobbed.

“Hey, shh, it’s okay, Patton,” Ami soothed.

“It’s not!” Patton cried. “He keeps getting hurt and I can’t help him!”

“Patton, it’s a dream,” Ami said. “You’re right, it’s a really bad dream, but a dream is all it is. You can be scared, you can be worried, but when it comes down to it, if it’s affecting your sleep you need to figure out how to calm yourself down, or ask for help to calm down. Preferably not Virgil, though, because he needs his sleep too. But you saw him tonight, right? You know that he’s okay. He’s alive, he’s not hurt.”

Patton nodded. He knew that Virgil was okay every morning, and he didn’t get hurt, and he certainly didn’t blame Patton for it, but Patton couldn’t stop the dreams, meaning he was up at all hours of the night.

Ami hummed. “Patton, what do you know about Virgil’s anxiety?”

“He told me it was getting worse. That therapy was helpful, but it wasn’t doing enough, not anymore,” Patton said softly. “Did you and Dad know?”

Ami nodded. “He said you told him to tell us because we might be able to help, and we’re looking into child psychiatrists. If Virgil has an anxiety disorder, they can give him a small amount of non-addictive medication to help with the anxiety attacks.”

“How long is it gonna take?” Patton asked.

“We have a few people, and Virgil was looking at the different options, and the ones he likes, we’re going to call and see what their openings are,” Ami said. “Point is, he’s going to get help. You don’t have to stress about it. Furthermore, he took your advice to tell us. He’s going to be okay. The only way he would get more hurt is if he refused help, and he’s not doing that. He’s actively looking for help. It’s no worries, Patton, okay? No need for you to get stressed.”

Patton let out a breath and nodded. He didn’t know that Virgil had went to Dad and Ami already. Usually it took him a while to build up the courage to admit something like this to them.

“Also, Patton?” Ami asked, gathering his attention again. “Virgil is not your responsibility, okay? Whether or not he decides to get help is not on you. If he told you his anxiety was getting worse, but to not tell us because he didn’t want us to worry? Whether or not you followed that instruction, Virgil’s reaction would not be on you. In that situation he would have liked it to be kept quiet, but he couldn’t blame you for not telling anyone because he told you not to, and he couldn’t blame you for getting worse because you’re not his therapist. You’re not the one who gives him tips to manage his anxiety and to ask him to look at it from a different perspective.”

“But...but he told me,” Patton said. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Yes, it does. It counts for you being a confidante, and someone he trusts. But, and this is a big but, it still doesn’t make you responsible. You can’t set up appointments for him, you can’t buy his medication if he needs it, you aren’t responsible for anything he does,” Ami said. “The only one responsible for Virgil’s actions is Virgil. The only one who can control his emotions and thoughts? Also Virgil. And yeah, you can’t necessarily control what thoughts and emotions come into your head, but as Virgil has been learning, you can control which ones you listen to and act on. None of this falls on you. It can’t be your fault because you can’t control him. Understand?”

Patton bit his lip but nodded. “It doesn’t mean I’m not scared.”

“Well of course you’re scared, he’s your brother and he’s hurting,” Ami said softly. “You’re allowed to be scared. But you can’t hold the weight of Virgil’s world on your shoulders. It’s just not fair. To him or to you.”

Patton sighed and nodded. He knew Ami was right. It didn’t mean he wasn’t still worried, but he knew he didn’t have to be. Ami kept rubbing his arm and Patton could feel himself getting pulled into sleep. He was, admittedly, still a little scared about having another nightmare, or waking up before his body did again. But Ami and Dad were both here to help him if he needed it. So he burrowed into the blankets and let himself fall asleep.

The next morning, Virgil tapped Patton’s arm at breakfast. Virgil opened his mouth, then paused. “You still good?” he asked.

Patton smiled softly and nodded. “Yeah. Better than I was last night, actually. Ami and I talked, and I feel loads better.”

“Good, that’s good...” Virgil said, biting his lip and looking away.

“Hey, don’t worry, Virge,” Patton said. “I still trust you with the world. I just trust Dad and Ami now, too. Less weight for each of us to carry that way.”

“I guess you’re right,” Virgil said with a sigh. “I’m glad you feel better.”

Patton smiled. “I hope you feel better soon, too.”

[gaycrouton]

Horny

Words of Lust 8/27 [”If you need a stress reliever, let me be your vice instead”]

Horny: (adjective; slang) sexually aroused; provoking or intended to provoke sexual arousal; sexually eager or lustful.

She was ashamed of it, but Scully was a stress smoker. It was very, very, very rare that she would succumb to the temptation, the last time she did it was on the Detective White case a year or two ago. Ironically, she was stressed out about a similar issue to then. The memory of today’s events causing her to place the cigarette back to her lips and take a long drag. Mulder was such a fucking flirt and he didn’t even seem to notice or care.

Granted, she added to the situation. Their irritation with each other was like a dog chasing its own tail; Mulder hits on a woman in front of her, she gets hurt, she lashes out when she’s hurt, she won’t tell Mulder why, Mulder thinks she doesn’t trust him, Mulder seeks out someone who will talk to him without biting his head off, that someone usually tends to be the woman he initially flirted with, rinse and repeat.

Mulder always is kind to women, it’s one of his best traits, but what could she say? She’s a modern day women with plenty of insecurities, and she’d seen the women of Mulder’s past. Long legged, brunette, busty. They were all a far cry from her. She was short, had bright red hair, her breasts pretty much grew once during puberty and then stopped, and she always was turning down his ideas. Whenever they got to a case, like this one in particular, where they are met with a cute, young, beautiful woman who just seems to think the world of every word that comes out of Mulder’s mouth, she gets jealous. She knew she was being ridiculous. He didn’t treat the woman any differently than any other woman they came into contact with, but her insecurities got the best of her and she snapped at him all day.

She wasn’t the only one to blame though. He was plenty rude back to her throughout the day. Of course, he was probably doing it as a defense mechanism like she was. She knew Mulder thought highly of her opinion of him, and getting mad at him for, seemingly, no reason probably really hurt his feelings. However, no matter how petty she had been, there was absolutely no excuse for him to pull rank on her, especially when he knew that was a touchy spot for her. They prided themselves on being equal, a team, reiterating his seniority made her feel like that was something he always thought about. Their last conversation earlier tonight rang heavy in her ears.

“Why are we even here? To look for a few missing cows or so you can leer at young, pretty police officers?” She almost regretted being so blunt when she saw the look of hurt flit across his face before quickly being replaced with indignation.

“We’re here because I’m the senior officer and I chose this case, and as the junior agent you do as I say.” Apparently she wasn’t the only one immediately regretting what they were saying. The words hurt as if he had physically slapped her and she took a step back. She could see he had to restrain himself from reaching out to comfort her. Letting out a sigh, he continued in a calmer, defeated voice, “I don’t even understand why we’re fighting. I wasn’t leering at anyone and I would have thought you knew me better than to assume that.”

“Looks like we both overestimated each other.” She didn’t even look to see his reaction before storming into her room and slamming the door.

She let out a long puff of smoke remorsefully. Slamming doors? What was she twelve again? Shorty after their fight, she heard Mulder slam his door shut and take off in their rental car. Yet again, abandoning her. Not having anything to do, she went to the vending machine and saw, next to it, they had one of those old fashioned cigarette machines that you usually only saw at bars. Without a fleeing thought, she got a pack of green Morley's and went to sit on the cheap patio furniture outside of her room.

She was on her second cigarette now, and feeling more shame than anger at this point. Just because she had a childish crush on Mulder didn’t mean she should force him to live by her expectations of him. He was a grown man, and he didn’t treat her any different than the other women. She needed to get over herself and move on and let him live his life. She came to the decision that she would apologize to him when he came back. However, she hadn’t seen him arrive a moment earlier, too lost in contemplation, and as soon as she announced himself, her tranquil state vanished.

She felt him before she heard his voice. She had been sitting cross legged in a patio chair in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, one hand resting on her knee while the other was poised to her lips, taking in a long drag. Out of nowhere, Mulder’s hand forcefully ripped the cigarette out of her hand and waved it in her face, “What the fuck, Scully? I thought you were smarter than this.”

Instantaneously, all her fury came back in full force. He was currently bent at the waist so that his face, expectantly waiting for an answer, was right in front of her own. She knew it was rude, but in the moment she just wanted him out of her personal space. She opened her lips, as if to answer, looking him dead in the eye, before pressing her mouth into a little ‘o’ and blowing the last stream of smoke right onto his lips. He coughed a little bit, wafting the smoke away as she stood up to get more leverage. “What do you care?” After the question left her lips, she turned and opened the door to her room, not expecting to get a reply. As she turned to close the door, Mulder’s hand slammed onto the other side, keeping it open and allowing his body to slide inside before shutting it himself.

“What do I care? You’re my partner, Scully, whether you like it or not. You just had a cancer scare, and yet, here you are smoking . What, brain not good enough? Wanna try lungs this time? You’re a doctor Scully.” She was glaring at him openly and he knew he was treading on thin ice.

“I know that, Mulder. I also know occasionally smoking one or two cigarettes to alleviate stress won’t give me lung cancer. You’re not a doctor, so don’t go around giving half-assed diagnoses,” she spat back at him. The tension in the room was practically crackling from the charge.

“Do you care to share what exactly has you so stressed out, Scully? You’ve been in a piss poor mood all day, but have refused to explain why. I can’t read your mind.”

“You haven’t been listening to me all day! I tell you my opinions, but since they don’t align with yours, you instead turn to the biggest pair of tits staring at you with the widest eyes and seek validation there instead.”

He was silent for a few moments, his eyes flitting across her face as if he was reading a new book, before taking a few steps closer to her. Advancing with an amused, predatory gleam in his eye. “Scully, are you jealous?”

She felt her face flame up in embarrassment and she jutted her chin out in an attempt to seem unfazed. “In your dreams, Mulder,” she spat, her voice shaking a little bit at his ever nearing proximity.

He was about a foot away from her when he stopped, lowering his voice, though she couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not, “Most definitely.” His casual admittance made her heart skip a little, but she would be damned to let him know that. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“There’s nothing for me to be jealous of. She fits your type, it’s perfectly natural you’d pay attention to her.” That sounded weak and she knew it. She felt like an animal being backed into a trap.

His eyebrow quirked up in curiosity and, even though his feet were firmly planted, she still felt like he was continuing to get closer. “My type? Scully, please enlighten me. I didn’t know I had a type.”

Keeping her voice even, not letting her nerves betray her, she stated, “Brunette, tall, busty. Usually they seem to be smart, but love to inflate your ego. So to answer your question once more, no I’m not jealous. I’m not even your type, it would be ridiculous for me to get jealous.” She thought she was being convincing, but the gleam still hadn’t left Mulder’s eye.

He chuckled lightly, muttering “I can’t believe you have no idea,” before taking another step towards her, she instinctively took a step backwards and felt the back of her knees ram against the edge of the bed, sending her toppling down on the mattress so she was on her ass, looking up at him. She could feel her heart practically hammering in her chest in hopeful anticipation of what his next move was. He leaned down so he had a hand resting on either side of the bed next to her thighs, and he moved his mouth so it was right next to her ear.

She felt his soft breath move the hair near her ear as he built up the courage to say his next words. “Do you really think I don’t want you?” He nipped at the delicate skin of her earlobe and she inhaled a quick, shaky breath, earning a chuckle from Mulder that tickled the sensitive flesh of her neck. “I couldn’t look at someone else even if I wanted to, all I ever see is you.” He placed a few kisses down her neck from under her ear to where her should began. He stopped his ministrations, much to her distress, and pulled back so they were face to face again. “I want you to tell me why you were smoking.”

The voice that came out of her mouth sounded foreign to her, a desperate want tinging the words in a way that only her bedroom walls had heard before, “I-I told you. I was stressed. I smoke when I’m really stressed. It’s very rare.” She could barely focus on the words she was saying as Mulder was slowly, tantalizingly, nudging her legs apart with his knees, making it so that he was poised between her spread thighs.

“Be honest, why were you stressed?” He asked, acting like this was a situation they found themselves in all the time. Her eyes darted up to his and as she opened her mouth to speak he cut her off with another, “Be. Honest.”

“I was jealous about the way you were paying attention to that officer,” she whispered, her arousal taking the sting away from her pride.

His hands slowly crawled their way up the bed, inadvertently lowering her body down on the bed since she was caged underneath him, he stopped when her back was flush against the mattress. He moved one hand to move a tendril of hair away from her face, letting his knuckles linger against the soft skin of her face. “Scully, I don’t know what you thought I was thinking of back there, but all I could focus on all day was how hot you looked in your short little skirt.” To emphasize his point, his other hand slowly made its way up her thigh, trailing against the smooth expanse before reaching the hem of her shorts. He slipped his hand underneath the edge, but instead of going up higher, like she desperately wanted him to, he let his hand linger there on her upper thigh, tracing small circles into the uncharted territory.

“You only wear that skirt when we’re going to be alone on a case for a long period of time. Too short for the office, but not for me.” He leaned down a bit more so she was forced to look at him, “Yeah, I noticed. You have no idea what it does to me.”

She was still spread eagle at the edge of the bed, Mulder’s body in between her thighs as his eyes raked over her body like an unexplored canvas. His eyes lingered an extra few moments on her chest, as if in disbelief that she wasn’t wearing a bra in front of him. Her nipples tightened under his gaze, peaking the fabric which made Mulder involuntarily lick his lips. She was so wet. But all she could do was stare up at him and wait for what he was going to say, or hopefully do, next. “I just want you to know, you will never have anything to be jealous of. Also, if you really need a stress reliever, let me be your vice instead.” To emphasize his point, he closed the distance between them and ground his erection into her eager arousal, causing her to arch her back into him and cry out.

“Do you feel how hard I am?” It took her a moment to realize he was actually asking her, she looked up and nodded, trying, and failing, to resist grinding against him. He smiled at her sexual anguish. “It’s all for you, it’s always for you.” Then, in a move of pure torment, he leaned away, taking away the sweet friction with him and she almost cried at the loss. Standing up, smile still on his face, he stated, “All I need is to hear you say this is what you want.”

She nodded vigorously and he tsked at her, “Use your words.”

“Mulder, I want you so bad, please,” she was genuinely begging right now, but she was too aroused to care. Her words made a coy smile break out on Mulder’s face and he resumed his position in between her legs. He leaned down over her once more, using one hand to cup her face while the other played with the hem of her shirt. He leaned down to kiss her, but when his lips ghosted against hers, instead, he whispered in a taunt, “Please what?”

She had no idea Mulder was such a fucking sexual sadist, but she needed him and was done playing around. She used one hand to grab the back of his neck and used the other to grab his rock hard erection. “I want you to fuck me right now,” she practically growled before crashing her lips into his. He practically melted into her touch, his mouth eagerly opening to mash with her tongue as his hips helplessly bucked into her grip.

She couldn’t have predicted it, but she was glad to see their talent as partners continued into this dynamic as well. They didn’t even need to communicate as they danced on the bed. They broke off the kiss at the same time, their lungs crying for oxygen, and immediately, Scully raised her arms so Mulder could yank off her shirt, immediately grabbing and fondling the newly exposed flesh. Somehow, he had rolled onto the bed and pulled her with him so she was straddling his lap, his erection almost painful against the flesh of her ass.

She moved to undo the buttons of his shirt, and while doing so, sinfully rocked her hips against him, causing him to grab her hips with unadulterated force, grinding her against him manually on top of her own ministrations. His mouth was practically agape with pure ecstasy as she finally rid him of his shirt. As soon as he was free, he pushed her down so she was on her back and he was taking off her short, grinning at her lack of underwear, before removing his own pants, with her help.

When he was free, she kneeled in between his legs, naked as the day she was born, and grabbed his rigid cock. She reached between her legs and scooped some of her own lubrication before spreading in up and down his length, wetting him from base to tip. “Fuck, Scully, that was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he panted. She sent him a coy smirk before flipping her hair to one side and leaning down so she could take him in her mouth. Before her lips even touched him, he placed his hands on her shoulders, lightly pushing her back. “Scully, I would come in an instant if you did that. I want to be inside you.”

She wasn’t about to argue with that. “Sit with your back against the headboard,” she commanded, switching their roles from earlier. He did as she asked and she swung her legs so he knees were on either side of his hips and she was perched on top of him. She cupped her fingers under her chin and let some saliva drop down, then moving her fingers to add some extra lubrication to Mulder’s throbbing head. Mulder moaned at the sight and squeezed the flesh of her ass where his hands were resting.

She placed her hands on the headboard for leverage, kissed him on the lips once more, and then slowly lowered herself onto his length. He was desperately gripping her hips to keep himself from bucking into her, letting her have time to adjust to his invading girth and length. She spent a few seconds resting on him after making her way all the down until they were pubic bone on pubic bone.

Then, without giving him any warning, she started riding him like it was the last thing she’d ever do. Keeping a sweaty grip on the headboard, she bounced up and down on his length, undulating her hips, and grinding into his pubic bone. He was keeping pace with her as he thrust up and it was creating a sinful friction. Their moans were pretty much constant and melding together to become one.

Mulder, being the ever generous man he is, licked the pad of his thumb before resting his hand on her moving hips, circling her clit with his thumb. She had never felt such unabashed pleasure before and she knew she was close. “Please, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.” The words tumbled out of her mouth almost like a religious chant and Mulder was more than willing to oblige.

“I want you to cum on me, Scully. I want you to look at me when you cum,” he commanded in a groan. She didn’t know if it was the ministrations, his words, or a combination of full stimulation overload, but the world ceased to exist around her. The only points of focus were her, Mulder, and the best orgasm of her whole damn life. She froze instantly on top of him and screamed his name on top of him. Her body was literally trembling with convulsions and it only made Mulder buck into her faster and harder, all inhibitions long forgotten in the haze of pleasure.

She was just coming down when he moaned out her name, violently grinding his pubic bone into hers, causing an unexpected second orgasm to rush through her veins. They looked into each other’s eyes as they both came. In this moment, she didn’t know where her body ended and Mulder’s began. His pleasure was hers and hers was his. It was pure bliss.

They collapsed onto the bed, her body resting spent on top of his, and they tried to catch their breath. The pleasure had knocked them both out, but not enough for them to overlook the new development in their relationship. He looked towards his chest and her peaceful face and wiped her sweaty hair from her face, placing a kiss to the top of her head.

She looked at him with a sated, sleepy smile, and teased, “Yeah-that’s a lot better than smoking.”

[meddows-taylor]

Doze Off - (also on AO3)

Finals week finds the four members of Queen bunking together in Brian and Roger’s flat, and an stressed Roger climbing into Brian’s bed. Unable to fall asleep because of his racing mind, Brian lends a hand to his friend to get him to relax, and Roger tries not to think about what it actual means besides a mere physical attraction.

Pairing: Roger Taylor/Brian May

Rating: Mature

Words: 2757

This mess came to me in the midst of my own finals week, insomniac and maylor starved. MAJOR thanks to @a-belladonic-haze, clever friend and life savior for reading over this and providing two types of feedback: the teacher, editing type and the encouraging “they are so awesome but dumb and in love” type. I owe you so much !

Although he was trying to be as silent as possible, it seemed like all of his surroundings plus his body were conspiring against Roger to make the biggest mess possible - almost tripping on some discarded shoes on the kitchen floor, running into scattered furniture,  knocking books off their table. His legs were numb from sitting for hours and his headache was so strong it was on the verge of making him dizzy.

Hearing the floor creak with every step he took towards his room, Roger tried to listen carefully for any sign of life in their flat. Having Freddie and John bunk with Brian and him for finals week seemed like a good idea at the time. They could rehearse or finish a song whenever they had a minute free—or they desperately needed a break—but with only two beds, finding somewhere to sleep was an every man for himself situation: the last one up simply had to look for a spot to crash in. He peaked through his bedroom door and there, in a mess of limbs, were Freddie and John. Roger missed his bed but knew better than to nudge Deaky awake. Freddie’s soft snores indicated he was also lost in a deep slumber, and John looked so peaceful he finally resembled the 20 year old he was.

He turned around and made his way across the hall, where Brian had gone to sleep hours ago. Roger’s body still seemed to be in its peak clumsiest state, but he tried his best to open the door carefully, relishing in how the atmosphere in his friend’s room was always so different from anywhere else - calm, secluded and safe.

When he finally reached the bed he threw caution out the window and just flopped next to Brian. He was too exhausted to keep being careful, and the pale light peeking through the blinds threatened the imminent sunrise.

Still, Brian didn’t move. Roger figured burying his nose even deeper than usual in a book had also taken a toll on him. He could hear his soft breathing; for a moment Roger let it wash over him, calming his anxiety about exams. He tried to lull himself to sleep with it, like he did when Brian hummed mindlessly while diagramming star clusters, while Roger power-napped between flashcard sets on their couch. But soon he found that while he was comfortable and much calmer than before, luxuriating in the change from chain-smoking in their living room and trying to memorize protein interactions, sleep simply refused to come.

3.00 am

If he fell asleep right this second, it would mean four hours of sleep.

3.17

Three hours, forty-three minutes.

3.18

His mind seemed determined to keep spinning. Diagrams of cell evolution, metabolic reactions, quarters over semi notes on their new song, lyrics scratched out and re written, formulas mixing up with the thump of John’s bass, dates of exams overlapping with pub gigs—no matter how tight he shut his eyes or how he shifted under the covers, his thoughts wouldn’t settle, louder than any crowd they’d ever played for or song they’d performed..

He turned again, his back to Brian’s peaceful, sleeping frame…

“Lucky bastard”, Roger muttered.

The heat of the room was suffocating. Roger pulled the blankets down with a huff, rolling onto his back to stare at the ceiling. Brian’s room was always tidy and welcoming, but he usually felt like a kid in a fancy store, the imminent risk of touching something valuable and fragile and breaking it hovering over him. The little glow-in-the-dark stars that he and Freddie had stuck on there as a joke winked down at him.

3.40

Barely over 3 bloody hours. He was practically falling asleep on top of his notes when he called it quits, and now he felt like he might vibrate out of his own skin.  He just needed to sleep. They’d planned to get up at 7, for an hour of band practice before class, but at this rate, he’d sleep right through his alarm.  Probably he’d be sleepwalking around work this afternoon, if he couldn’t sneak a nap in one of the dressing rooms and risk his boss scolding him.

4.05

He just needed to fall asleep—

“Are you going to keep tossing around like that?”

Roger startled at Brian’s low voice, rough with sleep and irritation. He was taken aback by the closeness of it, and by the fact that his friend was awake, apparently also lying on his back staring at the ceiling, finally disturbed by the wreckage Roger was causing.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. And then, “I just can’t sleep.” He glanced at the clock sitting on the dresser across Brian’s bed. “4.06, that means a bit less than three hours.”

“You know you’re not gonna sleep if you keep counting like that.”

Roger remembered Brian also had to get up at 7 and felt a pang of guilt for crashing in his bed instead of on the couch, even if that meant waking up so tense he could barely sit straight behind his drum kit.

“Just relax. I dunno, what do you usually think about when you can’t sleep?” Brian said, the usual gentleness back to his voice.

Roger really didn’t want to get into what he thought of when sleepless night plagued him. Not here, not in his mate’s bed.

Of course, telling yourself that you shouldn’t think about something always resulted in thinking of nothing but that. So there he was. Counting down how many hours, minutes of sleep he’d get and unable to stop thinking about jerking off. And that was out of the question. He supposed he could get up and walk all the way to their bathroom down the hall, but whereas his mind was racing faster by the second, his body was so tired he couldn’t get his feet to move. Even if he’d been alone, he was so burnt out that he couldn’t lift his hands a millimeter.

“You’re still tense.” Brian sighed in frustration next to him. “Is something bothering you?”

Other than his sudden and completely inappropriate hard-on?. “Just a bit worried about my exam, that’s all.” He was aiming for a whisper, but instead he ended up with something closer to a groan. A flush crept up his neck.

“Relax, you’ve been studying a surprising amount for your standards.” Brian chuckled, and boy, that didn’t help - how Brian’s voice resonated in the quiet room and how the bed moved because of his laugh. It all went straight to his groin, and Roger squirmed uncomfortably next to him. “Seriously, not sleeping is not gonna do you any favors.” At least Brian had attributed his fidgeting to pre exam nerves.

“If I fail, then I’ll have an excuse to drop out and just focus on playing music all the time,” Roger half-joked. “Or I’ll just quit the band too and move back into my mum’s basement. ” He bit his lip, regretting how vulnerable he sounded as soon as the words left his mouth.

“Hey. Don’t talk like that.” Brian scooted over so that his back was against the wall and he lay on his side, facing Roger. “You are an amazing drummer and a…pretty decent biology student. I can certainly see you as a biologist more than a dentist.” He laughed.

Oh, God. Roger had heard Brian laugh a thousand times before, sometimes even this close to him, pilled in the back of a car or leaning over his shoulder to peek at a song he was writing. But in the dark of that room, surrounded by heavy silence as they were, Brian’s earnest, throaty chuckle was turning Roger’s semi into more serious business.

“You just need to relax,” Brian said, lightly tapping his hand over Roger’s stomach. When he moved to pull back, Roger’s hand grasped his wrist, almost without his permission. He didn’t know why—all he knew was that he had instantly felt better when he felt his friend’s warm touch. He told himself he needed to let go now, but he couldn’t. Through his shirt he could feel Brain’s fingers, the same that worked tirelessly over his guitar and that were always getting paper cuts from the heavy books that he carried around. He just knew he wasn’t ready to let go. So he moved his own hand above Brian’s, feeling Brian’s fingers press to the middle of his ribcage.

The only thing breaking the silence was the pounding of Roger’s pulse in his ears.  He closed his eyes to keep from looking at the damned clock across him. Brian’s words kept repeating over his head, filling the space recently taken by annotations and chords.

“Just relax.”

It was probably close to 5 anyways.

“Just relax.”

He could always take a nap after lunch before his shift at the market.

“Just relax.”

Brian was wrong, he would make an awful biologist.

“Just relax.”-

And you need to let go, you idiot, he told himself. But Brian hadn’t moved his hand either. And without realizing how, but not surprised by it either, Roger found himself slighting pushing Brian’s hand down, guiding it with his own.

He shivered slightly when Brian’s fingers brushed over his navel. They stopped right at the hem of his worn-out shirt. Only then did he hear Brian’s voice.

“Rog..”

“Shh. You said it yourself, I just need to relax.” Now Roger did surprise himself. It was one thing to have his friend’s hand travel right above his hip bone; he could write it off as a somnolent action. This was another thing. Another completely different thing.

He pushed Brian’s hand further down, running it over the elastic of his boxers. He felt Brian’s fingers moving on their own underneath his, slightly digging at his flesh and grazing the trail of hair. Everywhere those long fingers touched him felt like he was burning up. Roger was suddenly and embarrassingly aware of just how hard he was. He lifted his hand from Brian’s, tracing an almost phantom touch all the way up his elbow. He could feel goosebumps emerging on Brian’s arms—made him catch his breath and stir involuntarily in his underwear, Brian’s hand going painfully still.

He suddenly felt as awake as he’d ever been, alert and almost tingling with it throughout every part of his body. While Brian’s fingers just pushed deeper into his lower belly, tracing the indentations his tight jeans had left from side to side, a small part of Roger’s mind scrambled to come up with excuses for the next morning: “it’s just a common thing, just a friend helping another friend, it doesn’t mean anything, every stressed guy went through this and they could laugh it off”, “probably some band bonding, same stuff every group deals with”— he was thinking up justifications because he knew there was no way he could stop this from happening, or that he would ever want to. The running loop of justifications helped him to ignore the idea that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t about relaxing and getting some rest. Maybe this was about something else all together.

Suddenly, every thought other than pure, unadulterated need flew from Roger’s mind. Brian had removed his fingers from where they were tugging at his elastic band, but the blonde didn’t have time to mourn their absence, because one second later Brian was tracing the outline of his shamelessly hard dick over his briefs. Roger heard his own gasp as if it was uttered by someone else, and when he involuntarily bucked his hips up to increase the friction that wasn’t light but definitely not direct enough, he could have swore he felt Brian growl next to him.

Roger squeezed his eyes tightly shut as Brian cupped him, hollowing his palm to rub him just a bit faster. Little dots of color appeared in the blackness before his eyes; he knew he had lost control completely over his panting breathing and the twitches his cock made from underneath Brian’s hand. When he took his thumb and swiftly rubbed over the tip, Roger’s eyes flung open and he let out a long, incomprehensible groan, followed by a single “fuck…” as he caught sight of Brian beside him.

Some part of Roger was sure this was going to break the spell, that the delicious feeling he was experiencing was detached from the person causing it—and that seeing one of his closest friends getting him off was going to ruin everything. But the moment Roger’s eyes met Brian’s, the moment he saw the intense concentration and hunger there, well,  couldn’t deny the fact that it was one of the hottest sights he’d ever seen. As if thinking the same thing, Brian squeezed the base of his cock once more before reaching into his boxers and focusing on the tip that had already dampened his underwear. Roger closed his eyes once more, not to block out the image before him, but because the sensation of Brian’s fingers against his skin was too overwhelming for him to keep steady.

He’d never been lacking for female company—a cute brunette had given him a handjob and some quick head after their last gig, just a few days go—and he certainly wasn’t touch-starved or anything., And yet, somehow, he wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to last or why he couldn’t help the primal sounds that were escaping him. Nothing he’d ever done before had felt like this, like every nerve ending in his body was on fire. For a few seconds, he thought about Brian lying on top of him, pressing his whole body down to keep him in place, sucking at his neck, instead of clumsily propped by one arm on his side next to him like they were right now.

The picture he was painting in his mind—one where both of them were enjoying this, where he could see Brian’s face twist up in pleasure as he was sure his own was at the moment—made him let out a shaky, “B-Brian…yes oh fuck,” that echoed in the empty room.

This time he clearly heard Brian mumble, “god, Roger,” in a deep voice he had never heard before. The mention of his name combined with the fast pace that Brian was now leading edged him closer to the end. He forced himself to open his eyes and tilt his head sideways slightly so that when he came seconds later he was biting his lower lip and looking directly into Brian’s eyes, pupils blown wide with arousal. He had no idea why he had done that, but it made every moment from his release to his comedown so much more intense, something intimate and strangely sweet lurking under the wave of pleasure washing over him. He registered Brian rolling to his back and trying to calm his breathing as well and hazily took notice of a mop of curls brushing against his shoulders. He was beyond excuses now, but he knew his brain was going to rush to come up with some the moment he woke up tomorrow..

But that would be a problem for awake Roger, the same that would have to deal with looking at Brian when they were rehearsing in the morning. Right now it seemed like his friend was correct—all he needed was to relax and sleep would come on its own. He felt all of the day’s exhaustion flooding through him, and as if from far away he thought he heard Brian say something, but for the life of him, Roger couldn’t figure out what. So before he could make out what maybe were words of doubt or rejection—something he dreaded thinking about—Roger took a chance and rolled over so that they were lying exactly opposite as before, with Brian on his back and Roger turned on his side, facing him.

The last alert part of his brain registered his sleeping shirt being damp and sticky, so he pulled it over his head and tossed it onto the floor, Then, he threw his arms around Brian’s waist and settled on top of his chest. The warmth of Brian’s chest and the subtle movements of his breathing, mixed with his post-orgasm calm meant he could finally feel sleep approaching. The last thing he felt was a slender hand toying idly with his hair and caressing the back of his neck as he drifted off into darkness.

[heavenlydreamerblog]

In Too Deep

Hey everyone, I’m back after a slight break. Hope you all enjoy this latest chapter. I love getting your feedback, so please let me know what you think of this latest instalment of the Jared, Shannon and Lexy story xxxx

Check out In Too Deep on Wattpad: 

https://www.wattpad.com/user/HeavenlyDreamerBlog

@letsbeautifuldisaster @llfd1977 @nikkitasevoli @letojokerownsme @wolfgirl624 @beautorigin @jaredlxto @i-writeandread @darlingdiary87 @reikihealermary @msroxyblog @lifeonmars30 @myxtina @pixieriding

 If anyone else wants tagging, just drop me a message x

Chapter 16

One week later........

I’m counting down the days to Shannon’s party and I can feel a knot of dread building from deep inside. For the past few days I’ve survived on the bare minimum of sleep, either locked in the office with my head buried deep in accounts or – as I am now – pacing around Jared’s home, dealing with all the last minute preparations.

“Stop,” I shouted, motioning for the electrician to halt work for a moment. “Those lanterns are for outside not in here.” I sighed, wondering when someone would listen to my instructions. “Jared wants the smaller lights decorating the kitchen and this area,” I pointed to where we were standing in a vast hangar-like area. I could tell he was pissed, so I rushed off, letting him get on with the job.

Everything was coming together but I could feel the stress building as my phone vibrated constantly with questions, demands and people letting me down at the last minute. I huffed as it vibrated once more but decided to let it go.

Instead, I walked towards the sunlight at the back of the house, letting my bare shoulders brush against the cool white walls. It wasn’t hot outside but neither was it cold, just a soothing early morning hint of warmth. I made my way to the poolside, gazing at the water and remembering Jared wrapping his shirt around my shoulders. What did he say about me being his to tame? God the guy had some nerve. A sudden breeze sent a shiver through my body and I turned to reach for a blanket on a nearby chair. I sat there cocooned, lost in my thoughts for a precious moment. My phone vibrated again. “Hell fire,” I muttered. “Can’t I just have a moment’s peace.” I had two texts, both from Jared. I cursed myself for ignoring the earlier one.

Jared: How’s my party planner?  Hope everything’s working out. Call me back please.

I  felt the blood rise to my cheeks, knowing how he felt when I didn’t respond to his messages. I clicked on the second text he’d just sent.

Jared: Good to see you’re hard at work babe. You look nice and warm there.

I shot out of the seat, the blanket falling from my shoulders and landing in a heap on the ground. I could feel my cheeks burning and was glad my sunglasses hid my sleep-deprived eyes.

Jared was leaning against the door frame, hair tied up in a messy bun while those blue eyes burned holes through me. His lips curled into a smile and I knew he was revelling in my apparent discomfort.

“How long have you been watching me?” I asked, turning to scoop the blanket off the floor, busying myself folding it, avoiding eye contact.

“Long enough Lexy, long enough. I was worried when you didn’t call me back as I asked .... “ He pushed himself away from the door and padded over, bare feet on the cold paving slabs. I watched him move gracefully, his muscled body just visible under a tight fitting shirt.

He bent over and picked up the blanket I’d just discarded. “Come over here,” he motioned to me, holding out the throw. “I can see goosebumps,” he smiled, wrapping it tight around me.

“Jared, thanks but I’m OK,” I whispered, snaking my arm out and placing it against his chest. I needed some distance between the two of us. My night with Shannon was still too vivid and my emotional attachment to him was growing as fast as I tried to shut it down. “Let’s go inside. I’ll make you some tea,” I suggested, moving to put some distance between us. I hurried back into the kitchen, the blanket now trailing in my wake. I filled the kettle while opening and closing cupboards trying to find cups and plates to prepare breakfast. This was not in the remit of my job but anything to keep myself at arm’s length from him.

I raised my head up, sunglasses misting from the steam pouring from the boiling kettle. “I think you’ll have to remove them now.” The voice came from behind me and I felt his hands slide through my hair, gently pushing the misted spex from my face. “You need 20/20 vision handling something this hot Lexy.” I could hear the smirk without even turning round to face him.

“Could we please keep things professional  Jared,” I pleaded, aware of various people coming in and out of the building (at times it was difficult to call something this large a home). My back was sandwiched against the warmth of his chest as he pressed my hips against the counter top. “Stop,” I muttered, pushing back against him to create a little room. “I have a job to do and you’re not helping at the moment. Look,” I gestured out to the poolside. “Nothing’s been set up yet. No lighting because the electrician messed up. They’ve yet to construct the bar area and I haven’t heard from your DJ friend who pissed me off a few weeks ago. So, hands off me.”

I stomped off down the hallway but then cursed myself for forgetting he still had hold of my sunglasses. Taking a deep breath, I marched back to the kitchen, holding out my hand. “My glasses.”

His eyes held mine, before roaming down my body. “That’s no way to ask for something baby girl.”

I could feel my cheeks turn pink. “Don’t make me beg Jared. Just hand them over and let me go.”

“What do I get in return Lexy?”

I took a deep breath and met his gaze. God those blue eyes would be the death of me. “If you’re lucky Jared, in return you’ll have a party for your brother. But if you continue behaving like you’re doing, that’s looking less likely by the hour.” I held out my hand. “Glasses ... please.”

********************* 

Jared got the message. He knew how important this party was and at last gave me the space I needed. The day was spent in a whirl of details; some small and some so large they were giving me brain-ache after a few hours. The good news was the ambient lighting was sorted. I couldn’t wait to see what it looked like when the sun went down. But I wasn’t hanging around for that today. I called the office to check on things there. Jess answered, as usual on the first ring. “Hey it’s Lex,” I giggled, listening to Carrie cursing in the background. “Normal service resumed now she’s back in LA then? What’s flipped her lid?” I asked, at the same time directing some guy in tattered jeans and a ripped T with a tool box outside. “Sorry Jess, what did you say? I’m talking to you while trying to run a military operation up here.” I sat down, propping my back against some cool tiles and spent the next ten minutes catching up on office gossip. A text pinged on my phone and we said our goodbyes with promises to catch up later. I clicked on the message.

Shannon: I miss you x <3

I smiled, realising how much I’d missed hearing his voice and feeling his arms wrapped around me, hugging, soothing and massaging away my worries. I didn’t bother returning the text and hit call instead.

“Hey, I miss you too,” I whispered as soon as he answered. “Where are you?”

“Home. What about you?”

“Working still. It’s been a bit hectic and ... look sorry I haven’t called.” It’d been a week since we were last together and there hadn’t been a waking moment when I hadn’t thought back to how our bodies reacted to each other, the sexual spark ignited by promises we’d both made. “Look, I’ll be finished in an hour, how about taking me out for a walk somewhere quiet. I need to escape ... with you.”

“Who are you escaping with?” The voice was curious. I hadn’t heard Jared approaching, so lost was I in my brief conversation with Shannon. “One moment,” I whispered, covering the phone with my hand.

“Don’t  let me stop you Lexy.” He crouched down on the floor next to me, his eyes watching as I hid the phone beneath my hand. “Have you something to hide from me baby girl?” A smile curled his lips, watching as I squirmed under his gaze. My cheeks were burning. I gripped the phone. “I’ll call you back,” I muttered before ending the call and shoving the phone into the back pocket of my jeans.

“Do you think, just for one moment, you could afford me just a degree of privacy.” I glared at Jared, who was  squatted in front of me, balancing on his toes. “I’ve finished for today,” I continued. “You have a list of things completed, things still to be done. The latter I’ll be back to work on tomorrow. Now, Jared, I’m leaving.” I pushed myself up from the cool floor, angry that he’d interrupted my chat with Shannon.

“Who were you talking to?” His voice was curious, maybe tinged with a hint of jealousy.

“None of your bloody business.” I stomped back into the kitchen where I’d left my bag. I grabbed my car keys and turned to leave. Jared was watching my every move. I knew I’d have to return in the morning, so I closed the distance between us. “I’m tired J,” I explained, searching his eyes for a hint of understanding. “I have to go meet someone.” Against my better judgement I allowed my lips to brush the corner of his mouth. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  ********************* 

“So who is this mystery client?” Shannon watched my reaction closely as he took two bottles of water from the fridge, placing one of them on the breakfast bar in front of me. “Baby girl? That’s some term of endearment for a business meeting.”

“Shan, it’s not what it seems, please listen to me.” I took his hand and pulled him closer, close enough to let my fingers trace the outline of the triad tattoo on his neck. “It’s a job, that’s it. It’s a well paid job, the client is demanding and you will understand – soon, I promise.” I felt myself holding my breath, refusing to break eye contact until he spoke. I remembered last time we were together telling him there’d be no second chances. The question was, would he give me a second chance?

His hand moved to the nape of my neck, his fingers tangling into my hair. His muscled arms pulled me tight to his chest, my head buried into his shoulder. Then I heard the click of a shutter.

“Stay there, don’t move, I love feeling you so close.” I knew he was on his phone behind my back.

“Who are you texting Shan?” I tried to swivel round, but he held me tight.

“Nobody, nothing for you to worry about.” His lips brushed across my cheek, finding my mouth. “It’s been a long time since I felt this way about anyone, so I decided to quash all those rumours about my love life.” His tongue traced across my teeth before he nibbled my bottom lip. “I can’t believe what I’ve just done.” His hazel eyes were as alive as I’ve ever seen them. I laughed, feeling a warmth spread through me.

“OK, what have you done?”

He looked away, biting his bottom lip. “I just posted a photo of us on my Instagram account.”

Stay tuned for what happens next. It won’t be long x 

[weabbynormalblog]

Be best, OMG- delayed grammatical reaction much? Yes!

~ Cindy Crawford apparently said "Life is where you're at. Whatever you're doing is enough. You don't need to do everything well all the time. When you live your life like that it's a huge relief." I thought some Asian diety said that, oh well.

When you live your life like me...

The bar of excellence, who decides? Where do I start and stop and go go go?

Depending on your disciplines lots of people will test and criticize you throughout your life. That's not where I live anymore. I'm not teaching business standards or photoshop.

I can't live a life in waiting to get better either!

I'll draw the line at health, let's say. Yes I'm healthy considering all my issues. I am handicapped. I'm not totally physically independent and that does bother me for lots of reasons. To even go for a walk takes time to get ready. There's braces, supports and crutches. I do try my best all the time!#!+@??#&$!=/. Yoga🙌.

The reality is I can't just jump in the car or walk out the door and go off somewhere last minute. I suppose I could, but I don't see the point in going anywhere, getting lost for no reason or wasting precious time and energy on negative pursuits. I always need a reason, plan and route since the accident. I need brain aids for all kinds of things and sometimes physical support too. I'd be 1 hand out of the grave before I actually ask for help. Darn brain, I love you, hang in there!!! It's physically painful to go for drive between neck/back issues. I'm limited. There I said it. Like today, my head can not turn left(pinched nerve) add that Vertigo and Anxiety; it's not a smart move on my part. If I am angry? I'm already too impaired with my brain to drive. I must be realistic and thoughtful of others. Lives can be lost ~ RIP my peeps. Unfortunately there's people on the road that probably should not be driving. It won't be me. I know when I am at risk of injury. I listen to my body. I know when I've reached extended maxium capacity. I have to stop or my body will just give out right here.

This is my life now. I know it will only cause me more grief and heart ache to continue the comparison of the old me vs the new me. New" is purly a starting point. Not a physical improvement in any shape way or form. " Friends and family seem to compound these identity issues that I'm having. Ah to be a horse with no name. Like any good story. I was this amazing person, great life, wouldnt change a thing and now I'm like a ghost of a shadow of what I once was. In pain and tiered all the time, grumpy, walk down the stairs take a rest, over to the fish tank, hobble hobble. Feed the cat, sweep, eat maybe; I'm still very depressed. I know it gets better but meanwhile...It can be a challenge getting dressed.

I lived it once, the dream. There's satisfaction in knowing I was very successful at the stuff that mattered to me most then. I know I didn't get to that final destination by worrying over what I couldn't do.

I'm pretty sure no matter what I choose to do today, there's going to be some kind of physical mess to be cleaned. I have animals. There's always dishes, laundry, dirt no matter how often I pass the broom. Living for whatever I can right now or even for the possibility of going out and playing music. I know sometimes I'm resting up just to stay in. Besides the big picture, I recognize that I'm still fruit, perhaps bruised and sweet. I can appreciate what I can and do have. I'm not jealous of others, good for them! For the new me being alive feels like work and not always good. Lots of room for improvement by others standards; not mine. Ahh to emit blob behavior every moment. Sorry to disappoint, just moving slow, I'm still alive.

Yes I want to be at my best and for that to happen I have to let go of the past. I've sequester myself into a corner but feel more like a fish out of water. The drama. A mire existence of toggling rest, chores and activity. If I'm up to it maybe 1 social outing a month? I'd rather go swimming than out, but sadly swimming is just out of my physical reach again. Could be worst. I could still be in bed. Instead I'm standing while typing this. I am managing my daily routine on and off. Big on self care bare minimum, the house with the roommate's help. He drives me crazy sometimes (I know I cause issues too). He also drives me everywhere I need to go just about. He helps with the grocery, does the yard work,snow removal. I don't know what I would do without him. He's made himself indispensable to me. He lives here rent free so it's convenient for him too. It seems to be working for us 90% of the time. It's a good thing that I'm not one to succumb to social pressures. Right now it's eye on the prize= energy management. Yes I will recover to be, do something else one day. It's a big step in your life when you realize there's no going back only forward.

This is it ! The "me" now. This is where I toss in my Hakisac. I'll keep at things that matter to you as much as I am able to. To those reading who do not suffer as we do. Please know and understand that it's super rough for us especially on the bad days. Reserve your thoughts of improvement, judgement, kind wishes or comments to days when we are feeling more outgoing and receptive. All we hear when we're feeling at our worst is how we dont measuring up. When other people's expectations are nipping at my heels, its very stressful and draining. Most people suffering from CFS, TBI, Mental illness have similar issues. Be Strong! Meanwhile my brain shuts downand the body refuses to work. No choice, I take a small step back, rest and keep trying till I can communicate what's needed or it gets better or falls to the wayside of stuff forgotten or too difficult. Unfortunately people will judge you on that and it's emotionally detrimental to what's going on with bodies. Be gentle with us, our minds and bodies in a world Trumps that belittles a female student for standing up for climate change.

The infirmed and injured need empathy and understanding not to be labeled crazy, lazy and stupid. This is a real physical, medical thing we are experiencing. The literal weight of the world stands on my shoulders most days.

I've always have been a bit different, unique. Now is no different except I know more about the world, people, expectations, beliefs. I have my own measuring stick. I love you my indispensable friend I know you mean well. I forgive you for judging me based on your fears! I'm the one that's living like this here, got a problem there's the door. I'm not afraid of being on my own. It's the figuring out of shit that might take a while to get some stuff done, but I'll get it done eventually. My fish tank, it may not be a pretty sealant job but it's holding. I am capable of some things, like I crunch those measuring sticks! Just gotta be me! It's ain't pretty most of the time. It is what it is and what it is, is a new beginning!!!

Remember to thank and forgive ourselves and our bodies. I've been so rough on myself trying to get back to something that doesn't exist anymore. Instead of embracing something new. It's some what freeing to let it go! It is ok that there's no where I need to get today. I just gotta be me right now whatever that is. There is relief and healing against the mountains of to do lists, there's loss and a sense of moving on. I cry, I grieve, pick up and move on.

Then logically theres more space for new things to come along and bloom too. We need suport our bodies for doing what it's doing, let your brain and heart off the hook, it's no one's fault. It just is until it isn't anymore.

So Here's to 20/20 vision and special thanx to my offspring.

Into the unknown with you.

We step over the divide together!

Have fun and play safe!

[ionecoffman]

The Meat Cleanse

“I know how ridiculous it sounds,” Mikhaila Peterson told me recently by phone, after a whirlwind of attention gathered around the 26-year-old, who is now offering dietary advice to people suffering with conditions like hers. Or not so much dietary advice as guiding people in eating only beef.

At first glance, Peterson, who is based in Toronto, could seem to be one of the many emerging semi-celebrities with a miraculous story of self-healing—who show off postpartum weight loss in bikini Instagrams and sell one thing or another, a supplement or tonic or book or compression garment. (Not incidentally, she is the daughter of the famous and controversial pop psychologist Jordan Peterson. More on that later.) But Peterson is taking the trend in extra-professional health advice to an extreme conclusion: She is not doing sponsored posts for health products, but actively selling one-on-one counseling ($75 for a half hour) for people who want to stop eating almost everything.

Peterson seems to be reaching suffering people despite a lack of training or credentials in nutrition or medicine, and perhaps because of that distinction. Her Instagram bio: “For info on treating weight loss, depression, and autoimmune disorders with diet, check out my blog or fb page!” The blog says at the top that “many (if not most) health problems are treatable with diet alone.” This is true, if at odds with the disclaimer at the bottom of the page that her words are “not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.”

I told her I’m surprised people need further counseling, in that an all-beef diet is very straightforward.

“They mostly want to see that I’m not dead,” she said. “What I basically do is say, hey, look at all the things that happened to me and brought me to where I am now. Isn’t it weird? And then let people draw their own conclusions.”

Peterson described an adolescence that involved multiple debilitating medical diagnoses, beginning with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Some unknown process had triggered her body’s immune system to attack her joints. “I was unable to hold a pencil, could barely walk, and was in constant pain,” she writes on her blog, which is called “Don’t Eat That.” The joint problems culminated in hip and ankle replacements in her teens, coupled with “extreme fatigue, depression and anxiety, brain fog, and sleep problems.” In fifth grade she was diagnosed with depression, and then later something called idiopathic hypersomnia (which translates to English as “sleeping too much, of unclear cause”—which translates further to sorry we really don’t know what’s going on).

Everything the doctors tried failed, and she did everything they told her, she recounted to me. She fully bought into the system, taking large doses of strong immune-suppressing drugs like methotrexate, prednisone, leflunomide, and humira. “Despite being on multiple heavy-hitting meds, I was still struggling with basic day-to-day tasks,” she writes on her blog.

Her story takes a dramatic turn in 2015, when the underdog protagonist, nearly at the end of her rope, figured out the truth for herself. It was all about food.

Peterson adopted a common approach to dieting: elimination. She started cutting out foods from her diet, and feeling better each time. She began with gluten, and she kept going, casting out more and more—not just gluten or dairy or soy or lectins or artificial sweeteners or non-artificial sweeteners, but everything. Until, by December 2017, all that was left was “beef and salt and water,” and, she told me, “all my symptoms went into remission.”

“And you quit taking all your medications?”

“Everything.”

There is so much evidence—abundant, copious evidence acquired over decades of work from scientists around the world—that most people benefit from eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and seeds. This appears to be largely because fiber in plants is important to the flourishing of the gut microbiome. I ran this by some experts, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that might suggest a beef-salt diet is potentially something other than a bad idea. I learned that it was worse than I thought.

“Physiologically, it would just be an immensely bad idea,” Jack Gilbert, the faculty director at the University of Chicago’s Microbiome Center and a professor of surgery, told me during a recent visit to his lab. “A terribly, terribly bad idea.”

Gilbert has done extensive research on how the trillions of microbes in our guts digest food, and the look on his face when I told him about the all-beef diet was unamused. He began rattling off the expected ramifications: “Your body would start to have severe dysregulation, within six months, of the majority of the processes that deal with metabolism; you would have no short-chain fatty acids in your cells; most of the byproducts of gastrointestinal polysaccharide fermentation would shut down, so you wouldn’t be able to regulate your hormone levels; you’d enter into cardiac issues due to alterations in cell receptors; your microbiota would just be devastated.”  

While much of the internet has been following this story in a somewhat snide way, Gilbert appeared genuinely concerned and saddened: “If she does not die of colon cancer or some other severe cardiometabolic disease, the life—I can’t imagine.”

There are few accounts of people having tried all-beef diets, though all-meat—known as carnivory—is slightly more common. Earlier this month, inspired by the media conversation about the Peterson approach, Alan Levinovitz, the author of The Gluten Lie, tried carnivory, eating only meat for two weeks. He did lose seven pounds, which he attributes to eating fewer calories overall, because he eventually got tired of eating only meat. He missed snacking at coffee shops and browsing the local farmer’s market and trying out new restaurants around town, cooking with his family, and just generally enjoying food.

“I was psychologically exhausted,” Levinovitz told me. When he returned to omnivory, and he regained the lost weight in four days.

Peterson told me it took several weeks for her to get used to the beef-only approach, and that the relief of her medical symptoms overpowers any sense of missing food. If even a tiny amount of anything else finds its way into her mouth, she will be ill, she says. This happened when she tried to eat an organic olive, and again recently when she was at a restaurant that put pepper on her steak.

“I was like, whatever, it’s just pepper,” she told me. Then she had a reaction that lasted three weeks and included joint pain, acne, and anxiety.

Apart from having to exist in a world where the possibility of pepper exposure looms, the only other social downside she notices is that she hates asking people to accommodate her diet. So she will usually eat before she goes to a dinner party, she told me, “but then I’ll go drink and enjoy the party.”

“Drink, as in, water?”

“I can also, strangely enough, tolerate vodka and bourbon.”

The idea that alcohol, one of the most well-documented toxic substances, is among the few things that Peterson’s body will tolerate may be illuminating. It implies that when it comes to dieting, the inherent properties of the substances ingested can be less important than the eater’s conceptualizations of them—as either tolerable or intolerable, good or bad. What’s actually therapeutic may be the act of elimination itself.

For centuries, ascetics have found enlightenment through acts of deprivation. As Levinovitz, who is an associate professor of religion at James Madison University, explained to me, the Daoist text the Zhuangzi describes “a spirit man” who lives in the mountains and rides dragons and subsists only on air and dew. “There’s an anti-authoritarian bent to pop-culture wisdom, and a part of that is dealing with food taboos, which are handed down by authorities,” Levinovitz said. “Those are government now, instead of religious. And because they are wrong so often—or, at least, apparently wrong—that’s a good place to go when carving out your own area of authority. If you just eat the ‘wrong’ foods and don’t die, that’s a ritual way to prove that you go against conventional wisdom.”

Peterson’s narrative fits a classic archetype of an outsider who beat the game and healed thyself despite the odds and against the recommendations of the establishment. Her story is her truth, and it can’t be explained; you have to believe. And unlike the many studies that have been done to understand the diets of the longest-lived, healthiest people in history, or the randomized trials that are used to determine which health interventions are safe and effective for whom, her story is clear and dramatic. It’s right there in her photos; it has a face and a name to prove that no odds are too long for one determined person to overcome.

The beneficial effects of a compelling personal narrative that helps explain and give order to the world can be absolutely physiologically real. It is well documented that the immune system (and, so, autoimmune diseases) are modulated by our lifestyles—from how much we sleep and move to how well we eat and how much we drink. Most importantly, the immune system is also modulated by stress, which tends to be a byproduct of a perceived lack of control or order.

If strict dietary rules provide a sense of control and order, then Peterson’s approach is emblematic of the trend in elimination dieting taken to an extreme: Avoid basically everything. This verges into the realm of an eating disorder. The National Eating Disorder Association lists among common symptoms “refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food.” In the early phases of disordered eating, as with bipolar disorder or alcoholism, a person may look and feel great. They may thrive for months or even years. But this fades. What’s more, the temporary relief from anxiety may mean that the source of the anxiety goes unsought and unaddressed.

I asked Peterson about the possibility that she may be enabling people with eating disorders. She said she would draw a line if a client were underweight or inducing vomiting. Otherwise, “it’s extremely disrespectful to people with health issues caused by food to be lumped into the same category as people with eating disorders. More of the same ‘blame the patient’ stuff that doctors and health professionals already do.”  

The popularity of Peterson’s narrative is explained by more than its timeless tropes; it has also been amplified by the fact that her father has occasionally cast his spotlight onto her story. Jordan Peterson’s recent book, Twelve Rules for Life, includes the story of his daughter’s health trials. The elder Peterson, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, could at first seem an unlikely face for acceptance of personal, subjective truth, as he regularly professes the importance of acting as purely as possible according to rigorous analysis of data. He argued in a recent video that American universities are the home to “ideologues who claim that all truth is subjective, that all sex differences are socially constructed, and that Western imperialism is the sole source of all Third World problems.” In his book, he writes that academic institutions are teaching children to be “brainwashed victims,” and that “the rigorous critical theoretician is morally obligated to set them straight.”

It is on grounds of his interpretation of income data, for example, that he has spoken out against the idea of a wage gap between men and women being unfair, as it can be explained away by biological factors associated with certain personality traits that are more valuable in the capitalist marketplace. From arguments from social-science evidence, he has expressed uncertainty that lesbian couples can raise children without a male father figure. And it is academic evidence that leads him to write in his book that “the so-called patriarchy” is “an arbitrary cultural artifact.”

Yet in a July appearance on the comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jordan Peterson explained how Mikhaila’s experience had convinced him to eliminate everything but meat and leafy greens from his diet, and that in the last two months he had gone full meat and eliminated vegetables. Since he changed his diet, his laundry list of maladies has disappeared, he told Rogan. His lifelong depression, anxiety, gastric reflux (and associated snoring), inability to wake up in the mornings, psoriasis, gingivitis, floaters in his right eye, numbness on the sides of his legs, problems with mood regulation—all of it is gone, and he attributes it to the diet.

“I’m certainly intellectually at my best,” he said. “I’m stronger, I can swim better, and my gum disease is gone. It’s like, what the hell?”

“Do you take any vitamins?” asked Rogan

“No. No, I eat beef and salt and water. That’s it. And I never cheat. Ever. Not even a little bit.”

“No soda, no wine?”

“I drink club soda.”

“Well, that’s still water.”

“Well, when you’re down to that level, no, it’s not, Joe. There’s club soda, which is really bubbly. There’s Perrier, which is sort of bubbly. There’s flat water, and there’s hot water. Those distinctions start to become important.”

Peterson reiterated several times that he is not giving dietary advice, but said that many attendees of his recent speaking tour have come up to him and said the diet is working for them. The takeaway for listeners is that it worked for Peterson, and so it may work for them. Rogan also clarified that though he is also not an expert, he is fascinated by the fact that he hasn’t heard any negative stories about people who have started the all-meat diet.

“Well, I have a negative story,” said Peterson. “Both Mikhaila and I noticed that when we restricted our diet and then ate something we weren’t supposed to, the reaction was absolutely catastrophic.” He gives the example of having had some apple cider and subsequently being incapacitated for a month by what he believes was an inflammatory response.

“You were done for a month?”

“Oh yeah, it took me out for a month. It was awful ...”

“Apple cider? What was it doing to you?”

“It produced an overwhelming sense of impending doom. I seriously mean overwhelming. There’s no way I could’ve lived like that. But see, Michaela knew by then that it would probably only last a month.”

“A month? From fucking cider?”

“I didn’t sleep that month or 25 days. I didn’t sleep at all for 25 days.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“I’ll tell you how it’s possible, you lay in bed frozen in something approximating terror for eight hours. And then you get up.”

The longest recorded stretch of sleeplessness in a human is 11 days, witnessed by a Stanford research team.

While there is debate in the scientific community over just how much meat belongs in a human diet, it is impossible for all or even most humans to eat primarily meat. Beef production at the scale required to feed billions of humans even at current levels of consumption is environmentally unsustainable. It is not even healthy from a theoretical evolutionary viewpoint, the microbiome expert Gilbert explained to me. Carnivores need to eat meat or else they die; humans do not. “The carnivore gastrointestinal tract is completely different from the human gastrointestinal tract, which is made up of a system designed to consume large quantities of complex fibers.”

What the Petersons are selling is rather a sense of order and control. Science is about questions, and self-help is about answers. A recurring idea in Jordan Peterson’s book is that humans need rules—the subtitle of is “an antidote to chaos”—even if only for the sake of rules. Peterson discovered this through his own suffering, as when he was searching the world for the best surgeon to give his young daughter a new hip. In explaining how he dealt with Mikhaila’s illness, he writes that “existence and limitation are inextricably linked.” He quotes Laozi:

It is not the clay the potter throws,

Which gives the pot its usefulness,

But the space within the shape,

From which the pot is made

Dietary rules offer limits, good or bad, that help people define the self. This is an attractive prospect, and anyone willing to decree such rules—dietary or otherwise—is bound to attract attention. Fox News recently declared Peterson “the Left’s public enemy number one” in a segment where he discussed with Tucker Carlson “why the Left wants to silence conservative thought.” Though to have lived through the last year is to have lived in a world where Peterson and his ideas have enjoyed near-constant amplification.

The allure of a strict code for eating—a way to divide the world into good foods and bad foods, angels and demons—may be especially strong at a time when order feels in short supply. Indeed there is at least some benefit to be had from any and all dietary advice, or rules for life, so long as a person believes in them, and so long as they provide a code that allows a person to feel good for having stuck with it and a cohort of like-minded adherents. The challenge is to find a code that accords as best possible with scientific evidence about what is good and bad, and with what is best for the world.

Article source here:The Atlantic