#obviously these are silly little internet competitions so no one is obligated to do this that or the other

[foxxsong]

Some people... really should not be running these poll competitions.

[poorlilbeans]

Keep Fighting (through this damn fic) (part seven? i think?)

i’m so sorry this took so long and it’s not even that long >.< idk man i struggled so much with this section i’m sorry. there will probably only be like two more parts after this one so like thank god you’ve almost survived my long ass fic good job <3

“Skater Katsuki Yuuri appears to have hit the wall on his winning streak, sustaining a significant leg injury after falling at the first competition in this year’s Grand Prix series. Fans marvel at the rapid rise and fall of the late bloomer, while others speculate about the fairness of his success. Many wonder if his sudden bout of sickness was due to a drug, or rather, a steroid overdose, supplied by ‘coach’ Victor Nikiforov to solidify last year’s success. Will this be…”

“Fuck off!” Yuuri yelled, chucking his phone across the room. No one cares about this article. It’s not even well-written. I am not going to let this silly gossip get to me.

He was letting this silly gossip get to him.

“You okay?” Victor poked his head into the bedroom, perturbed by the sudden shout.

“Yeah, I was yelling at the Internet again. Ignore me. Sorry.” Victor made the obvious decision to not ignore him, but rather retrieved the wayward phone and climbed into the bed beside him.

“I saw that article too. You know no one’s going to take it seriously.”

“Still stings though.”

“Yeah,” Victor sighed. “You’re just going to have to get used to that bullshit. Do you want to post online today? Calm down the rumour mill?” Yuuri wrinkled his nose.

“I guess. Then I’m going to have all these random people tweeting at me and trying to talk to me.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Yeah, kind of.” Victor chuckled at that.

“You don’t have to answer them if you don’t want to.”

“Yeah, but then I look like an asshole.”

“Or like a person who has better things to do than sit on twitter reassuring strangers of his well-being.”

“Except that’s not true. I absolutely do not have anything better to do, I just don’t want to because I’m an antisocial dickhead.”

“Hey! Don’t talk about my Yuuri like that!” Victor silenced Yuuri with a kiss before he could come up with any more self-deprecating comments. “You,” he whispered, pressing their foreheads together, “are not obligated to talk to random strangers online. You are not obligated to respond to every single message and at-reply. And, most importantly, you are not a dickhead or an asshole. Understand?” Before he could answer, Yuuri rolled away from Victor to cough, letting out a strangled groan as pain shot through his body. When the coughing fit ended, Yuuri didn’t move, afraid of the venomous, panging ache that would attack him if he tried to return to his previous position.

“I should grab you some ice packs,” Victor observed, stroking Yuuri’s shoulder.

“Heat first. Please?” was Yuuri’s choked response. “It hurts so bad.” He was facing the other way, but Victor could hear that he was holding back tears. It stung to deny him.

“Ice to bring down the swelling, and then heat to relax muscles. It will feel better that way.”

“How many hours ago did I take the acet-um… pain relief shit?”

“Four. We have to wait two more before you can have another one.”

“Fuck. Okay, fine. Ice. Anything.” Victor kissed his head before getting up to retrieve some ice packs, feeling irrationally guilty for not giving in and letting him do the heating pads first. It was so frustrating taking care of someone when everything hurt him. It felt impossible to make things any easier for Yuuri, especially when Victor had to put so much effort in to not letting on how worried he was. Yuuri would undoubtedly find a way to feel guilty about that, and working himself into a fit of anxiety was definitely not what his body needed right now. Still, it was incredibly hard for Victor to act cheerful when he hugged Yuuri and felt every one of his ribs, or when Yuuri described himself as feeling “relatively okay” while he was vomiting with a forty degree fever. He’d only been discharged from the hospital a day prior, but Victor was getting seriously impatient with the slowness of Yuuri’s recovery. Thinking on that, he slammed the freezer door just a little harder than he’d intended and brought the ice packs back to the bedroom.

Yuuri hadn’t moved from his awkward position. He was lying half- on his side and half- on his belly with his head hanging off the side of the bed. His face was still twisted in pain.

“I’m going to move you, alright love?” Victor breathed. “The ice will make it better. I promise.”

“Bathroom first,” Yuuri moaned, pain and frustration clear in his voice. It was a routine now. Victor would carry him as far as the bathroom door, and place him down on one foot, closing the door behind him. Yuuri was adamant about maintaining his privacy. He was perfectly capable of using the goddamn bathroom on his own. Today, Victor made a point of keeping his face as neutral as he could manage when Yuuri dissolved into pained whimpers at being moved. He was carrying a skeleton right now. A sweaty, shivering skeleton.

Just like always, he pretended not to hear the pained groans coming from the bathroom, and opted not to ask any questions when Yuuri shakily emerged nearly ten minutes later. He didn’t say anything as he laid him back onto the bed, elevating the broken leg and placing the now slightly melting ice packs on his joints. Finally, when they were situated and relatively comfortable, Victor spoke.

“What are you thinking about right now?” he asked, gently flicking a stray tear from the corner of Yuuri’s eye.

“Practice,” was his shaky response. There was a stretch of silence before he continued. “I want to go to the pharmacy as soon as the fever breaks. I need to find a small enough brace that will fit in my skate.”

“You should plan on healing before you get back on the ice, eh?”

“I know, I know, but like… there’s no way I’m missing this season. I’m getting the cast off in three weeks, and then I’ll have seven weeks of solid training to get myself competition-ready again.”

“Okay, so you have a game plan. Good. Just…”

“Just don’t freak out if it falls through,” Yuuri finished. Victor was ready to agree, but Yuuri wasn’t done. “Because it’s not the end of the world if I take some time off. Because lord knows as soon as I don’t suck anymore I have to get sick and hurt myself. I can never be good; I have to be sick or crazy. One or the other. As soon as I get better, if I get better, I’ll probably lose it again. That’s what has to happen, right? That’s the rules. That’s…”

“Enough.” Victor even surprised himself with the intensity of his voice. He certainly startled Yuuri, who paused his rant and choked on a couple of tears in shock. “I can deal with you being irrational. I can deal with you being a pessimist. But where did these rules come from? Since when do you blame the universe for things that happen in real life? That’s not like you.”

“Not like me? No, lying here covered in ice packs and sympathy, THAT’S not like me. Being carried everywhere is not like me. Freaking out over missing a season? That’s like me. Freaking out is definitely like me. Maybe you didn’t realize that- that I’m kind of an asshole that way. Maybe I’m just not as good as you…”

“STOP!” He shouldn’t have yelled. Shit, he shouldn’t have yelled. Yuuri was obviously delirious- Victor could practically feel him heating up by the second- and so much attention was being put toward his physical health that his mental health had gone pretty well unchecked through this whole ordeal. It wasn’t fair to yell. He had successfully stopped the rambling, but he assumed it was all still going on inside Yuuri’s head. He had curled up on his side, knocking off the ice packs. He always did like to be as small as possible when he was upset. “Okay,” Victor whispered, placing a light, hopefully comforting hand on Yuuri’s back. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to sleep for a while, and get down to a safer temperature again. I’m going to stay with you. If you still feel this way when you wake up, we can talk about it then. Alright?” Yuuri unravelled the ball he’d made himself into just enough to nuzzle into Victor’s waist, and Victor felt hot tears soak through his shirt.

“Can I have the heating pad now?” was Yuuri’s barely audible response. The rawness of his voice was like a punch in the stomach, and Victor bent down to kiss him. He tasted of mint, having insisted on brushing his teeth every time he was sick.

“Okay. I’ll get it.” Victor resolved to heat the sore muscles, but still place ice packs on Yuuri’s neck and forehead.  He settled into bed with Yuuri, bringing a few tissues to wipe away the leftover tears.

“I love you.” Yuuri’s voice sounded so desperate, like he was afraid Victor might forget and leave forever. Victor took his shaking, sweaty hand and was as serious as he had ever been when he said, “I love you too.”

[frightfullyfantastic]

Lazy

By Tim Kreider

If you live in America in the 21st century you've probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It's become the default response when you ask anyone how they're doing: "Busy!" "So busy." "Crazy Busy." It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: "That's a good problem to have," or "Better than the opposite."

This frantic, self-congratualtory busyness is a distinctly upscale affliction. Notice it isn't generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the ICU, taking care of their senescent parents, or holding down three minimum-wage jobs they have to commute to by bus who need to tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It's most often said by people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they've taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they're "encouraged" their kids to participate in. They're busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they are addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in tits absence.

Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren't working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with their friends the way 4.0 students make sure to sign up for some extracurricular activities because they look good on college applications. I recently wrote a friend asking if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn't have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. My question had not a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation: This was the invitation. I was hereby asking him to do something with me. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he as shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

I recently learned a neologism that, like political correctness, man cave, and content-provider, I instantly recognized as heralding an ugly new turn in the culture: planshopping. That is, deferring committing to any one plan for an evening until you know what all your options are, and then picking the one that's most likely to be fun/advance your career/have the most girls at it -- in other words, treating people like menu options or products in a catalog. Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half hour with enrichment classes, tutorials, and extracurricular activities. At the end of the day they come home as tired as grownups, which seems not just sad but hateful. I was a member of the latchkey generation, and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon, time I used to do everything from scouring The World Book Encyclopedia to making animated movies to convening with friends in the woods in order to chuck dirt clods directly into one another's eyes, all of which afforded me knowledge, skills, and insights that remain valuable to this day.

The busyness is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it. I recently Skyped with a friend who had been driven out of New York City by the rents and now has an artist’s residency in a small town in the South of France. She described herself as happy and relaxed for the first time in years. She still gets her work done, but it doesn’t consume her entire day and brain. She says it feels like college — she has a circle of friends there who all go out to the cafe or watch TV together every night. She has a boyfriend again. (Sh once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone is too busy and everyone thinks they can do better.”) What she had mistakenly assumed was her personality — driven, cranky, anxious, and sad — turned out to be a reformative effect of her environment, of the crushing atmospheric pressure of ambition and competitiveness. It’s not as if any of us wants to live like this, any more than any one person wants to be part of a traffic jam or stadium trampling or the hierarchy of cruelty in high school; it’s something we collectively force one another to do. It may not be a problem that’s soluble through any social reform or self-help regimen; maybe it’s just how things are. Zoologist Konrade Lorenz calls “the rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has precipitated himself” and all its attendant afflictions — ulcers, hypertension, neuroses, etc. — an “inexpedient development,” or evolutionary maladaptation, brought on by our ferocious intraspecies competition. He likens us to birds whose alluringly long plumage has rendered them flightless, easy prey.

I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter. I once dated a woman that interned at a magazine where she wan’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’etre had been obviated when Menu buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. Based on the volume of my email correspondence and the amount of Internet ephemera I am forwarded on a daily basis, I suspect that most people with office jobs are doing as little as I am. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor or a worm in a Tyrollean hat in a Richard Scarry book I’m not convinced it’s necessary. Yes, I know we’re all very busy, but what, exactly, is getting done? Are all those people running late for meetings and yelling on their cell phones stopping the spread of malaria or developing feasible alternatives to fossil fuels or making anything beautiful?

The busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness: Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. All this noise and rush and stress seem contrived to drown out or over up some fear at the center of our lives. I know that after I’ve spent a whole day working for running errands or answering emails or watching movies, keeping my brain busy and distracted, as soon as I lie down to sleep all the niggling quotidian worries and Big Picture questions I’ve successfully kept at bay come crowding into my brain like monsters swarming out of the closet the instant you turn off the nightlight. When you ty to meditate, your brain suddenly comes up with a list of a thousand urgent items you should be obsessing about rather than simply sit still. One of my correspondents suggests that what we’re all so afraid of is being left alone with ourselves.

I’ll say it: I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know. Like most writers, I feel like a reprobate who does not deserve to live on any day that I do not write, but I also feel like 4 or 5 hours is enough to earn my stay on the planet for one more day. On the best ordinary days of my life, I write in the morning, go for a long bike ride and run errands in the afternoon, and see friends, read or watch a movie in the evening. The very best days of my life are given over to uninterrupted debauchery, but these are, alas, undependable and increasingly difficult to arrange. This, it seems to me, is a sane and pleasant pace for a day. And if you call me up and ask whether I won’t maybe blow off work and check out the new American Wing at the Met or ogle girls in Central Park or just drink chilled pink minty cocktails all day long, I will say, “What time?"

But just recently, I insidiously started, because of professional obligation to become busy. For the first time in my life I was able to tell people, with a straight face, that I was “too busy” to do this or that thing they wanted me to do. I could see why people enjoy this complaint: It makes you feel important, sough-after, and put-upon. It’s also an unassailable excuse for declining boring invitations, shirking unwelcome projects, and avoiding human interaction. Except that I hated actually being busy. Every morning my inbox was full of emails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I had to solve. It got more and more intolerable, until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this.

Here I am largely unmolested by obligations. There is no TV. To check email I have to drive to the library. I go a week at a time without seeing anyone I know. I’ve remembered about buttercups, stinkbugs, and the stars. I read a lot. And I’m finally getting some real writing done for the first time in months. It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what that might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again. I know not everyone has an isolated cabin to flee to. But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence, or a vice: It is an indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done. “Idle dreaming is often the essence of what we do,” writes Thomas Pynchon in his essay on Sloth. Archimedes’ “Eureka” in the bath, Newton’s apple, Jekyll and Hyde, the benzine ring: history is full of stories of inspiration that came in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbrickers, and no-accounts aren’t responsible for more of the world’s great ideas, inventions, and masterpieces than the hardworking.

"The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was in fact Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write Childhood’s End and think up communications satellites. Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income form work, giving each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage, and 8-hour workdays. I know how heretical it sound in America, but there’s really no reason we shouldn’t regard drudgery as an evil to rid the world of if possible, like polio. It was the Puritans who perverted work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment. Now that the old taskmaster is out of office, maybe we could all take a long smoke break.

I suppose the world would soon slide to ruin if everyone behaved like me. But I would suggest that an ideal human life lies somewhere between my own defiant indolence and the rest of the world’s endless frenetic hustle. My own life has admittedly been absurdly cushy. But my privileged position outside the hive may have given me a unique perspective on it. It’s like being the designated driver at a bar: When you’re not drinking, you can see drunkenness more clearly than those actually experiencing it. Unfortunately the only advice I have to offer the Busy is as unwelcome as the advice you’d give to the Drunk. I’m not suggesting everyone quit their jobs — just maybe take the rest of the day off. Go play some see-ball. Fuck in the middle of the afternoon. Take your daughter to a matinee. My role in life is to be a bad influence, the kid standing outside the classroom window making faces at you at your desk, urging you to just this once to make some excuse and get out of there, come outside and play. Even though my own resolute idleness has mostly been a luxury rather than a virtue, I did make a conscious decision, a long time ago, to choose time over money, since you can always make more money. And I’ve always understood that the best investment of my limited time on earth is to spend it with people I love. I suppose it’s possible I’ll lie on my deathbed regretting that I didn’t work harder, write more, and say everything I had to say, but I think what I’ll really wish is that I could have one more round of Delanceys with Nick, another long late-night talk with Lauren, one last hard laugh with Harold. Life is too short to be busy.