#queer people are supposed to stay friends this is what ive been told about queer culture plssss | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

newhologram · 3 years

Text

Now that I’m home, I expect Keith will be back to say that I only pretended to be sick for the dRuGs. Random hospital stuff:

(tw for suicide attempt mention a bit below)

This was my first time being admitted, surprisingly. I’ve never been hospitalized like this, only had short ER stays. I realized that it was the longest I’d stayed at a hospital since I was born and had to stay in the incubator. I took a walk with my IV and wondered what the halls of the hospital looked like in the late 80′s.

Two weeks ago during my first visit, the poor receptionist had to ask so many people to put their mask on. They’d just march right into a hospital with nothing covering their faces?? One of them put a mask on (wrong) and then sat to charge his phone and grumbled to the person next to him about “oOOooo we’re supposed to believe this place was just FILLED with dead bodies a few weeks ago” wat

These past two times the ER had some splashes of chaos that I had not experienced before. It’s usually quiet every time I go. The first time there was a teenage girl in so much pain and then having a screaming panic attack. I felt so bad for her. Eventually both of us were in wheelchairs in the lobby awkwardly facing each other. We were both so tired and slumped in our seats.

(TW suicide attempt) A while later two people brought their friend in. They couldn’t stay because of the patients-only rule for covid, but they were very thorough and provided pictures of bottles for the staff. This young man ended up in the same room as me and so I heard them pump his stomach. Sounded absolutely miserable. I hope he’s okay.

A guy was wheeled in at like 6am with a broken ankle from a skateboarding accident. I heard them behind the curtain getting him to sign a form so they could knock him out and pop the bone back in aaaaaaaaaaaa

The man next to me was admitted for hearing voices. He sounded very distressed and they brought in a remote robot-doctor to talk to him. They could barely get him to focus enough to talk about medication.

I was running to the toilet so much during the colitis attack the first visit so I had to unplug the IV/monitors constantly. The nurse said she could bring me a thing to go in (not the sample hat) but I was so worried I would make a mess or something. I’m sure they deal with that kind of stuff all the time but I didn’t want it to be me T_T

All of my nurses were awesome but especially the first and last ones. The first one very cheerfully got the blood thinner belly-shot ready for me. I was nervous because my belly is so sore already obviously but I asked, “this can’t be worse than a butt shot, can it?” and it wasn’t. But she was still apologetic and asked if I was still her best friend when she injected me. xD

This same nurse helped me with the enema before the scopes. It says a lot about how desensitized I am to having to constantly deal with butt stuff that we were able to do my enema, painful and bloody and all, while having the nicest conversations. She trusted me enough to ask about certain things like gender identity and vocabulary around queer stuff. It’s so nice to talk with adults who are accepting and supportive. She told me that she believes in things being meant to be and she expressed that she was happy that she was meant to be my nurse. BAW

I was having a hard time waiting in the GI lab for my scope. I was just feeling awful, physically and emotionally. But the team that did my scopes was awesome and instantly cheered me up. The doctor was like, “so I hear you’re a gamer?” and I was surprised he knew (learned from the nurse lol). He asked what my fav game is and he told me excitedly his was Pong. The anesthesiologist was getting ready to knock me out and she said regarding my pick, “aww, I never got to play that one, but I played 1-3!”

She also asked about my cervical spine issues since it was on my file and so she made sure that they were really gentle with my neck for the upper scope. I appreciated it so much, the last thing I needed was a neck flare up on top of this. They put my mouth guard in and she began zonking me. I said “byeeee... seeee yaaaa” and next thing I knew I was concerned about Anna Nicole Smith in the recovery room.

As usual I was incredibly raw and sore after all the biopsies. The swelling and abdominal pain persisted and so I was calling the night nurse a lot. Eventually he stopped waiting for me to ping him and just came in every 4 hours to give me more morphine which only seemed to give me like 20 mins of relief each time. It was a really rough night and I didn’t sleep much at all. Lots of night sweats and waking up gasping, which is a problem for me anyway, but I had hoped the drugs would help. I think the stress was just overwhelming.

Eventually I asked if they had toothbrushes because I felt nasty and I joked that I hadn’t even thought to bring my 12-step skincare regimen. The night nurse laughed and said “ohh, that’s why your skin is so nice, we were wondering about it. What brands do you use?” and so we had a nice chat about skincare which is always welcome :D

My last nurse was really spunky and fun. She kept my spirits high and even went out of her way to find me a heating pad which finally allowed me to get a much needed nap in.

Overall, unpleasant because hospital stay, but all of these good people really made a big difference. I felt heard and cared for.

#teku #personal #long post

7 notes · View notes

fragmentedink-archived · 4 years

Text

Hell to Pay: Part Forty

I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, IX, IX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XVIIII, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XXXIX

cowritten by @lux-scriptum

A/N: hey how about that! there’s no trigger warnings to look out for in this chapter :’)

Amara leaned against the bedroom doorway where Nik was staying. “Good afternoon, sleeping beauty.”

Nik rolled over, squinting at her. “You’re still alive.”

“What, a few days of nothing but Cameron supposed to kill me?” Amara snorted, and flopped down on the bed beside him.

“The fact he hasn’t killed you in your sleep says something.”

“Says he needs someone to take care of before he turns into a literal skeleton, is all. But if I said that to him, he wouldn’t let me stay, now would he?” She plopped a bag beside Nik. “I brought you a gift, and it wasn’t a conversation about your alpha’s issues.”

“And what’s in the bag?”

Amara opened it. “All the supplies we’d need to cut and dye your hair back to it’s former glory. I even brought you plenty of colors to choose from if you want something new and funky.” Amara patted his head.

Nik wrinkled his nose at her. “Have you ever cut hair?”

“Yeah, sure I have.” Amara grinned. “Or I wouldn’t offer to cut yours, you peacock. This is how I know you’re related to Nate, you know.”

“If you’re suggesting Nate would let you cut his hair, he’d break your fingers,” Nik said.

“Oh, no.” Amara gave a laugh. “I’m saying you’re both vain.”

Nik had the balls to look offended at that. “Pot meet kettle,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, we’re all pretty little birds. Now get pick some colors so we can go make you look presentable again.”

Nik glared at her, but sat up and started to rifle through the bag. “Were you expecting to dye my hair rainbow? I’m not Nate.” He eventually settled on a deep emerald green. “Here. This.”

“Good choice.” Amara pushed at him. “Now to the bathroom we go. It’s time for aggressive bonding to make up for the not being friends for months.”

Nik grumbled at her as she bullied him into the bathroom. She fully expected it when he went for the window, pushing it open. Amara set up on the clippers and dye while he got settled, and then turned to Nik.

“Put your pretty butt on the toilet so I can get to clipping,” She said.

“Make me,” Nik said petulantly.

“I will shave your head,” she threatened, waving the clippers in his direction. Her threats were empty, and she was sure he’d know it, but what was friendship if not a little bit of consensual bullying?

“Shave my head, and I’ll drink all your booze,” Nik retorted.

“Don’t have any. Reneé dumped it before she moved out, and I didn’t buy any more. Find a scarier threat or sit down so I can make you pretty again.”

Nik squinted at her, but eventually plopped down on the toilet. She hummed, pleased, and went to work. It was nice, being close to Nik again, and she knew, while he was here at Nate’s, someone was keeping an eye on him. Not that Cameron wasn’t, but Cameron was grieving too, in his own way. That might be impossible for Cameron to admit, but Amara knew it was true.

Nik sat through the trimming and the bleaching and the dyeing silently. She was gentle, and let him have his silence, even though the whole process took hours. Once or twice Nate popped in, but Amara didn’t call him out on his fretting. Nate had every right to be worried, even if Nik was in very good hands.

Nate poked his head in as Amara was finishing up. She turned off the dryer, and turned Nik around. “Well?” Amara asked. “What do you think? I do good?”

Nate looked Nik over, and then said with a smile, “He looks great.”

“I always look great,” Nik muttered.

“Yeah,” Amara said, running her hands through Nik’s hair carefully. “You do.”

Nik pursed his lips. “Don’t flirt with me.”

“Oh, Nate can compliment you, but when I do, it’s flirting?” Amara scoffed. “You of all people should know the difference between my flirting and my flirting.” She thought about ruffling his hair, messing it up, but instead she stood and started cleaning up her mess. “I should probably go. Cameron’s probably not gonna be happy if I miss dinner.”

Nik shot her an amused look. “Are you going to start calling him daddy too?”

“No,” Amara said. “But someone needs to keep him on his schedule, or he’s useless to me.”

Nik looked down at the floor. She squeezed his shoulder.

“Hey. He’s doing fine. But i’m also not gonna risk getting kicked out tonight.” She turned to Nate. “Get him in some sun. I don’t wanna see a day where I’m more tan than he is.” As if that were possible, but she really did worry about him cooping up in bed too long.

---

It had been several days now that Ash couldn't keep anything in his stomach. The dark magic cast that had clearly been a failure, had been soaked into the earth and he had spent the entire time in a cold sweat and vomiting his guts up regularly. It was only now that his body gave him a break.

He went to find Nate, who was holed up in his art studio. "So, I'm not currently dying," he said, leaning against the doorframe. "Wanna see if Lev's soul got shredded in that shitshow of a spell?"

Nate looked at him with a tired, irritated look, putting down his barely used paintbrush. “Tactful as always, Ash,” he sighed. “But, yes. If you’re up for it. I don’t want you dying on me. I’d rather not have another ghost haunting me. Especially you. Then I’d never get any sleep.”

Ash ignored that particular dig. “Then let’s get moving. The sooner we get any kind of confirmation, the sooner this ludacris business will be over with and I can move on with my pain-free life.”

Nate got up from his stool and moved to the center of the room to a paint splattered rug and sat cross legged. Ash watched from the doorway and he could taste the dark magic in the air- dark magic, but not… dark magic. Death was a shadowy world and Nate’s magic had the ability to snuff out life, even after death- to leave a soul nothing more than a forgotten memory.

Nate sucked in a sharp breath, eyes snapping open when he felt… something, a spirit ripped into space, nearly crashing into the floor.

“Well,” Ash said, “I’m guessing that answers that question.”

Nate reached over, taking ahold of the spirit, bringing it to a physical form. “Are you alright?” Nate asked, tiredly.

“What- happened?” Lev asked.

“Tried to bring you back to life,” Ash said. “It failed, dark magic made me sick for a week. Nik got his hair dyed, Cameron fainted because he didn’t eat for over a month. You know, normal things.”

Lev looked to Nate. “Is it supposed to hurt? Like this?”

Nate lifted his shoulder in a helpless shrug. “I don’t know,” he said, quietly. “Your soul just- disappeared. I was worried it got shredded.”

“How long was I gone?” Lev asked.

“A week,” Nate said.

“Spent the whole time vomiting, but you know. Like I just said. Besides, is your soul intact? Do you feel… something missing at all?”

“I feel whole… it just hurts. But it doesn’t.” Lev stopped, and gave a hysterical laugh. “Phantom pain.”

That got an unexpected snort out of Ash. “Okay, puns are my thing,” he said, feeling an uptick of a smile on his face. “But as long as your soul is intact, I see no reason why Amara would stop trying to bring you back.”

“She probably won’t,” Lev said, sounding very, very tired.

“Do you want to come back at all?” Nate asked, quietly. “If you don’t, I will make her stop.”

“What I want and what i should do are two different subjects,” Lev said, after a pause.

“Well,” Nate said, with that legendary patience. “I didn’t ask you what you should do. I asked you what you wanted to do.”

Stars, he could really tell Nate was Bay’s mate. They were both annoyingly similar sometimes.

Lev looked to him, looking very guilty. “I want it.”

“Well,” Ash said, rubbing his temples. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“I wish it didn’t hurt you,” Lev said. “It would make my decision a lot easier.”

“Don’t stop on my behalf,” Ash said, tiredly. “The others haven’t. You might as well join the majority.”

“What- Lev?”

Ash froze at that voice, cursing himself for not being able to hear Nik. He was too damned good at being able to move around like a shadow. Nik was staring at Lev, wide eyed. “What’s going on? And why am I never told a single fucking thing about it.”

Lev looked at Nate, a little stricken. “I’m not supposed to talk to him,” he said, almost a plea to not tell Bay; to not get in trouble with him.

“Yeah well,” Nik said, “Fuck what Bay says. He can get in line after you talk to me because everyone seems to get to talk to you except for me.”

“That would be because you’ve been a wasted train wreck who has been suicidal and nonstop drunk for the last four months while also taking heavy drugs, and oh yeah, overdosing on said drugs. So forgive me for not wanting to watch you have yet another emotional breakdown when your boyfriend must once again disappear into Ghost Land.”

“Ash,” Nate chastised.

Ash ignored him and kept his attention on Nik. “Be pissed all you want, but you know you would have gone even further off the deep end if we told you and you fucking know it.” When Nik looked moments from snapping back, Ash said, coolly, “Do not forget, I know when you’re lying.”

Lev gave such a quiet, “Ash please” that even he could barely hear.

Ash cut Lev a look. “Am I wrong?”

“No, but yelling isn’t going to make anything better.” Lev said. “It’s just hurting people.”

“Yes, hello,” Nik snapped. “You all seemed to have forgotten I am in this damned room and I am tired of everyone ignoring me and my wants. But hey, at least we’re all treading around me like I’m some delicate flower who needs their hand held. Lev. Talk to me.”

Lev slowly looked at him. “They didn’t tell me you dyed your hair green. It looks nice.”

“It’s queer coding for Nik is a train wreck,” Ash replied. “However, yes. It does look nice.”

Nik smiled just a little bit. “Four months and the first thing you tell me is my hair looks nice? I always look nice.”

Well, that was a lie, but whatever.

“Yeah but it’s a new nice. I haven’t seen green streaks in your hair before,” Lev said, to Nik.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?” Nik said. “Almost went for orange but… i don’t want that clashing with my skin… and my aesthetic… can’t ruin it. Won’t do it.”

“I think you would look very nice with orange streaks,” Lev said, loyally.

“Oh I’m sure you would,” Nik said, his smile growing just a little bit more. “Cameron, however, would not think your opinions on the matter are valid, considering you wear jorts. So.”

Nate had winced at that. Clearly Nate was on the same fashion spectrum as Ash and Cameron seemed to be.

“You’re bullying me again,” Lev said, petulantly, returning Nik’s small smile.

“Mmm. Am I?” Lev laughed a lil at that. He looked happy. Nik looked a shadow of it, not quite, but not the void he was. Somewhere in the middle. Somewhere between dead and alive. “Did- are you alone? Just watching us?”

“I have company,” he said. “Nate talks to me. I’ve been trying to not hover so much. It seemed to make you agitated.”

Nik’s face fell, seeming to fold in on itself. His scent changed, soured almost. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice more echo than true words.

Lev looked so guilty. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “I needed the space to think anyway.” When Nik didn’t say anything, Lev added, “Coming back is… complicated.”

Nik began picking at his bracelets and seemed to struggle with what to say. Nate looked to Ash meaningfully, and Ash chose this particular time to once again paint himself as the bad guy. “Alright,” he said, pushing off the doorframe. “I think visitation time is over. Lev tell your boyfriend goodbye.”

“Are you okay with that?” Lev asked Nik.

Nik’s breath was too shallow, and Ash didn’t think Nik was going to answer at all. Especially when he was still picking at his bracelets. He could tell Nik’s blood pressure was rising and he was going to damn well fight an anxiety attack to keep himself in this room with Lev. “No,” Nik said, tightly.

“Lev,” Ash said, sharply.

Lev looked from him back to Nik. “If you need me, Nate can get me.”

Nik didn’t say anything, Ash wasn’t sure he was capable of saying anything. The only response Nik had was blinking hard, tears slipping down his cheeks. He wiped them away harshly and turned on his heel, pushing past Ash and disappearing down the hall.

“I fucked up again, didn’t I?” Lev said.

“No,” Ash said. “Nik. Is grieving. You didn’t do anything.”

He didn’t wait for anything else from either Nate or Lev before disappearing after Nik. He found Nik in the kitchen and grabbed his arm before he tried looking for what he always did. “You. Cannot. Drink.”

Nik whipped around and glared at him. “And why not?”

“Because I said so?” When Nik tried arguing with him, Ash said, “Alright. How about because your alpha said so and one step out of line means you don’t get to go home. Nik. Please. Let’s go outside. Beach, maybe?”

Nik’s face fell faintly, but it was enough Nik stopped fighting him on it. He wiped at his face again. “Fine. But you’re buying me lunch.”

“Fine,” Ash said, relieved.

“Wherever I want.”

“Deal.”

----

Sorin poked his head in Cyrus’ study. It was even more a wreck than before. Where it’s chaos had been confined to the desk, now books lay scattered on the floor, and Cyrus was sprawled over piles of notes.

For days Cyrus had been cooped up, going over his notes repeatedly. Sorin had barely been able to drag him to bed. He was about ready to do so again, now, but watching Cyrus work, brow furrowed in thought as he chewed on a ring absently, made Sorin pause.

“I’ve stayed up too late again, haven’t I?” Cyrus finally said, looking up.

“A bit.”

Cyrus hummed, and then went back to staring at his notes.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Sorin offered with a wheedling tone. “I’ll make you breakfast tomorrow if you go to bed soon. Like, now soon.”

“That seems rather unfair. I get up earlier, and I cook the oatmeal better.” Cyrus smiled down at his books. “You’re going to have to offer better if you want a deal.”

Sorin snorted, but before he could figure out what to offer, Cyrus snapped his head up. Before he could process it, Cyris jumped up and kissed Sorin, hard. “You angry ginger genius,” Cyrus said, ruffling Sorin’s curls.

“I’m confused,” Sorin said. “What did I do?”

“Well,” Cyrus corrected. “I’m the genus, but you brought the inspiration.” He wandered to the desk, and pulled out a piece of paper. He scribbled a quick, ‘I have the solution. Bring Amara, either tonight or tomorrow’, and sent the paper away with a flutter of magic. “We need a better deal.”

---

Cameron had allowed AMara access to the front seat, provided she keep her mouth shut. He had the windows up for once, faint music playing, but that didn’t seem to stop her from sitting ramrod stiff like Nik did, except she was holding onto the safety bar.

“Would you like me to roll down the windows?” he finally asked, mildly.

“Won’t do anything, it’ll be fine,” she said. “I trust you to not crash the car.”

He did not want to sit next to this halfway panicked omega while he drove. “If you trusted that, then you wouldn’t be holding on for dear life,” he said. “What do you normally do to stop acting neurotic?”

“My instincts don’t always line up with logic,” she said. “Normally I drink, but I can’t do that right now. This is why I drive a motorcycle.”

“You have been in this car several times,” Cameron said. “And against my will at that. What do you do then?”

“Talk to Nik.”

“Then call him,” Cameron said, in a bored tone, digging out his phone, unlocking it, and dropping it in her lap. “I trust you to know his number by now.”

Amara did as told and called Nik. “What are you doing?”

“Amara?” he heard Nik, say a little bewildered. “...Why do you have Cameron’s phone. Oh stars, tell me you didn’t actually kill him.”

Cameron rolled his eyes.

“I didn’t tell Cameron I didn’t like riding in cars in silence,” Amara said, “And he doesn’t like talking to me.”

“Don’t like your voice, either,” Cameron said. “We must all make sacrifices.”

“Okay, but Cameron doesn’t like anyone,” Nik pointed out, not able to hear Cameron’s response.

“Just tell me what you’re doing,” Amara told Nik. “Distract me.”

Nik was quiet on the other line, just for a few seconds before, “Ash promised me the ocean. And food. I’m fucking hungry and apparently I’ve barely eaten in the last few days.”

Cameron sighed irritably. Maybe he should have nailed it into Nate’s head to make sure he fed his idiot brother as well. This is what he got for assuming Nate had common sense.

“I’d say I’d come and join you after we’re done, but you know how much I hate the ocean.”

“Well I didn’t say you had to swim, Mar,” Nik said, sounding petulant. “And just Ash keeping me company is going to make me drown myself. He’s trying to mom me.”

“You need to be momed,” Amara said. “You’ve been a wreck.”

“Okay, then come play the role of mami if you’re going to be like that,” Nik said, with the smallest hint of a smile in his tone. “Otherwise I’m going to slip the leash again.”

“I need you to hang in there,” Amara said. “I’ll be around more soon, I promise. I’m sure there’s something fun we can do that doesn’t involve alcohol.”

He heard Nik groan loudly at the other end of the line. “How soon,” he asked. “I’m all twitchy and you’re the only person i fucking know who doesn’t bother lying to me.”

“After I’m done with my field trip with Cameron, I’ll come over,” Amara said. She paused before adding, “Unless something dramatic comes up. Everything seems drama lately.”

“Fine,” Nik said. “We’ll be at the beach. Don’t forget sunscreen for your delicate skin. If you forget, we already brought some for Ash.”

“I’m offended,” Amara said. “My side of the family doesn’t burn. Well. Reneé does, but that’s because she’s a ginger.”

He could hear Ash scoff in the background.

“Mhmm,” Nik said. “I’m sure.”

They came up to the house settled in the woods. “We’re here. Tell Nikolas goodbye, Amara.”

“I gotta go Saint Nikolas,” Amara said. “Stay out of trouble and I’ll let you punch me for calling you that.”

Nik retorted something, but it was cut off as Cameron took the phone from her. “Behave,” Cameron said. “I’ll stop by later.” And with that he hung up and got out of the car.

He didn’t bother waiting for Amara to catch up with him before walking into the house and going straight to the study where Cyrus was waiting. “You summoned me?” Cameron asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“We didn’t offer anything in exchange.”

“Consider me shocked,” Cameron said. “Did you have something in mind? I’m sure Death doesn’t take monetary payment.”

“I figure it’s fair to give Death a life for a life,” Cyrus said. “Kill the man who killed him.”

“That would be my brother,” Cameron said.

“Well it’s not like Cameron’s going to do it,” Amara said. “When do you need him?”

When Cameron didn’t offer any input, Cyrus said, “I need to come with you. So I’d rather we wait until tomorrow, at the very least. I need to contain his soul so we can use it in the spell.”

“Anything else?” Cameron asked, mildly.

“Are you feeling up to helping me cast the spell?”

“I said I would,” Cameron clipped out.

“I didn’t ask if you would, I asked if you could.” Cyrus said. “I won’t do it unless you’re healthy enough to.”

“Well here I am,” Cameron said. “The picture of health. Anything else?”

“Is there anything we need to change about the spell? Setting wise? Process wise? Is there anyone else that needs to be present?”

“It will be done at my house,” Cameron said. “Nik will not be there. Neither will Nate or Amara, They’re both going to keep Nik away from here. Ash will be there to make sure his body is functioning, as neither you nor Sorin are healers, and Sazra is a demonic healer and Lev’s body will likely be too delicate to withstand demonic healing. Anything else you need to know?”

Cyrus shook his head. “Let me know when you guys plan on killing Destris so I can join you.”

Cameron picked at a nail, but nodded and turned on his heel and went to the car. He heard Amara behind him, and before she could start on her tirade, he said, “Backseat.”

“You’re not even going to discuss what I, a full grown adult, am going to do? I don’t mind keeping an eye on Nik, but you didn’t even ask.”

“No, I am not,” Cameron said, stopping at his car and looking her squarely in the eye. “As you keep reminding me, I am Lev’s alpha. You are not. Cyrus contacted me, and not you, making this my problem, and not yours. And since this will be done at my house, with my omega, you are going to listen to me, and if you do not, I will physically restrain you and keep you from stepping foot near me, Nik or Lev until everything is well done and finished. Understand?”

When she did not respond to him, Cameron got into the driver's seat and waited for her to obey him and get in the back. Only when she did, did he hear her mutter under her breath about this being her idea. Might have been her idea, but as soon as she opened her mouth, and her idea fai9led the first round, Cameron was taking it into his hands and not leaving this in the hands of an impulsive child who can babysit Nik for him while he made sure this went smoothly. “I will not be with you when you kill Destris,” Cameron said, pulling the car out onto the road. “And when you watch Nik, do not let him drink. Ash is very insistent on it.”

“I know.”

“You will call me when it is done,” Cameron said, flicking her a look through the mirror. “And I will make the necessary arrangements. I trust you can kill a demon without someone holding your hand.”

“Destris would be dead within twenty-four hours,” she said. “Do you want proof?”

Cameron thought about that for a few minutes, quiet and not saying anything. “No,” he said, “I do not.”

---

Nik laid out on the sand, eyes closed while he took in the sun, the sounds of the ocean and the people around him. Even with the beach swarmed, and with Ash next to him, he still felt eerily alone. And almost like the perfect timing did his phone buzz with a text from Amara.

Mar: Hey, a job came up, but if you still need me, I’ll come

Nik thought about it. However, he had the feeling if she did show up, her brain would be elsewhere and it wouldn’t even be like she was there to begin with. Might as well let her get on her way so she could pretend like she was actually there.

Nik: It’s fine. Do your thing

He put his phone back down and folded his hands over his stomach, closing his eyes. He felt Ash sit down next to him. “Do you want to swim?”

Nik was silent for a few moments. “No, I don’t think I want to. Just sit here and not think for a while.”

Ash settled in the sand next to him and Nik looked over, raking his eyes over Ash’s frame. “You going to put on that sunscreen so your pale ass doesn’t fry?”

Ash cut him a glare, and made a point about how he settled with his eyes closed. “I’ll heal. Still want to get something to eat afterwards?”

“Yeah,” Nik said. “Withdrawal has been a pain in my ass so I’m trying to get something in my stomach.”

“Probably wise,” Ash hummed, slipping his fingers in Nik’s hair, pulling it out of his closed eyes. “Anywhere you’re wanting to go in particular?”

“Guelaguetza, I think,” Nik said. “Miss being able to taste my food.”

“Whatever you want,” Ash said.

“You’re being suspiciously accommodating,” Nik observed, sneaking a peek at him.

Ash twitched his mouth to the side, looking a little amused. “Well, I did say you could choose. And since you’re not being a pain in my ass at this particular moment of time, I thought I would give you a treat for behaving.”

“Hmmm. Fine.”

“Mhmm,” Ash said, settling back down in the sand with a heavy sigh. “Fine indeed.”

----

The restaurant was full of color and food and sounds. Nik seemed pleased to be here, even if they did have a rather long wait. Nik seemed happy enough and that was worth the time spent waiting for a table. The happy chatter around them was filled with laughter and the lovely waitress brought menus for both Nik and Ash.

He had Nik order his food for him since Ash had no idea what to get, but Nik seemed to know exactly what he would want. Nik traced lines into the brightly colored floral print decorating the tables, humming a song Ash didn’t know under his breath. It had been- quite some time since he heard anything like that from Nik.

Their food was brought out to them and Nik happily started digging into his food. Ash started on his own, and he was surprised there was only a faint burn in his mouth. Nik gave him an amused, dry look. “I got the mild. Just for you.”

“I’m touched,” Ash deadpanned.

“Anything for you, vato,” Nik said, with a sickening sweetness.

Ash rolled his eyes, but watched him carefully while Nik ate. After a few minutes, Nik closed his eyes, looking away from his food. “You alright?” Ash asked, mildly, taking a bite from his food.

“I think I ate too much, too fast,” Nik said, pushing his plate back just a bit. He seemed to wait, to see if his stomach would settle, but then abruptly got up and disappeared to the back.

A waitress seemed concerned and asked Ash if his friend was okay; if there was something wrong with the food.

“No,” Ash said. “It’s perfect. He’s just not feeling himself.”

She smiled at him, tan face bright and dark eyes sparkling. “I hope he feels well soon.”

Ash had the feeling Nik would not be feeling well any time soon, but he still offered her the same smile in return. “I hope so, too.”

Tagging: @incandescent-creativity @idreamonpaper @solangelo3088 @halstudies @alittleyellowdinosaur @caelisis

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #hell to pay #ch: cameron #ch: ash #ch: nik #ch: Nate

34 notes · View notes

incarnateirony · 5 years

Note

as an emerging lgbtq+ (i'm 'BT') guy i am so glad you're making the point you made in your last post. I've always gravitated towards Dean because he is so 'imperfect' in his queerness, like me. but he's not a uwu soft queer so apparently that bothers a lot of ppl on here? Especially younger queer women, I've noticed. But a lot of guys, cis and trans, struggle with being attracted to men so much in a way that is simply different (not better or worse) than (1/2)

being wlw, especially depending on one’s generation and region, etc. basically what i’m saying is a lot of the few queer men that there are in the fandom stay quieter as it is almost completely queer women dictating what is and what isnt, and not quite empathizing with the unique struggle many queer men have with internalized homophobia/being Unmanly for being attracted to men. hope this wasn’t too all over the place, ive had this on my mind for a Long time and i’m glad you brought it up. (2/2)

ps: I’m not trying to put down queer women for being a significant part of the fandom. I just really wish the environment of the fandom felt more like somewhere queer men’s voices can be heard better, considering the largest pairing is, needless to say, mlm

Well, first of all, welcome Nonnie. I take it you’re addressing this untitled post addressing intersectionality, representation vs tokenization, represented demographics and just general motivations of those in discussion, yes? (x)

You’ll find this is a longstanding topic of my blog, be it excavating creator commentary people have buried for their own motivations and talked down and around, or dual faceted issues.

(If you haven’t read the crosslinks on the post you’re addressing, you may want to read The Problem With Dreamhunter (x) It discusses exactly this issue, even if it was written over a year ago at that point, showing just how cyclic this issue is. It talks about MLM/WLW intersectional issues, migrating goalposts, a bunch of show stuff and some of Bobo’s sociopolitical commentary from 2003 about advancing LGBT representation through moderate incremental methods being proven effective at expanding the media presence/platform exponentially above liberal, or more severe/extreme styles)

But when it comes down to it, basically: Yeah, you right.

I didn’t just arbitrarily develop this opinion. I didn’t… just magically tune in to what the LGBT men that literally dodge fandom, for exactly the reasons you say, and know it’s because of the reasons you say – like that didn’t manifest. It came from leaving fandom (un)”safe” spaces. It came from engaging a great variety of LGBT males in real life, many of which engage the content. From observing how they spoke of the content in multifandom servers, or even *why* they chose to avoid speaking up.

And no, I personally didn’t get a read of you, like, insulting LGBT women for their part in fandom. Women engage social media for primetime TV fandoms at an exponential rate above men, so it’s almost unavoidable and it’s nobody’s fault really, but that says nothing for the perpetual habit of drowning out their voices to the fact that– well, they literally abandon engaging.

I’ve seen it enough times it *hurts* me. I shouldn’t *have* to pull my gay writing buddy out of holes to face this, and him still hide silently. I shouldn’t *have* to be the vein of news and information on the show to the bi male friend I have that refuses to touch this fandom. I shouldn’t *have* to even speak up about this. I really do want *you all* to speak up about this, because I can only speak so far, because you’re right: OUR JOURNEYS ARE DIFFERENT.

Hell, even a cis lgbt male vs a trans lgb(t obvious) male have entirely different journeys even though they’re both validly men. These battles are not the same. One community can speak up to defend another, and help hold them up and amplify them if there’s just not enough of them to project the way they need to, and this is something *greatly under respected* in this fandom. Nobody’s holding up the LGBT male voices when actually talking about representation. And you’re right, it’s mostly women, and you’re right, our path is different and our struggles and needs and wants and lives are different. But unless you take a considerable amount of time talking and sharing and learning personally the perspective of the LGBT male community, you’re not… really… helping them speak.

And let it be said, “holding up LGBT male voices” does not and should never equate to “despite having multiple LGBT men saying one thing, I found the one LGBT male saying the thing that matches what I want, who may or may not even actually be in the targeted demographic set of the character we’re discussing representation about, because it’s more than just being bi, it’s entire lives, paths and challenges– but you know, I found the ONE, so fuck the others.” That’s using your friends as tokens and cards. If you want to genuinely add to the conversation, what you do is you introduce your male LGBT friend to the other male LGBT friends and let them have a long conversation to talk out the sources of their disagreements before engaging in conversation.

But drawing a pretty base line collective from all people in the represented demographic, respectfully learning the majority wants and needs and struggles, and helping voice those is pretty key.

Women can sit here all day, and pass around things they’ve been told by other women are woke points, or things that sound progressive and good, and often sort of decontextualized from their purpose (be that the dresswear mentioned shortly hereafter, or what LGBT want/expect/SHOULD want or expect – but in the end, if you’re not sitting down and having dialogues – not just with one, or two, or even three LGBT men – but large handfuls and subsets, able to actually critically examine the differences in LGBT males of gen X, Y, or Z and their lives and stories – if you’re not doing that… If *that* isn’t the core of your discussion values, rather than pass-along buzz vibes– then you’re really not talking representation. You think you are. But you’re not.

There’s the uh. Thing. You noticed. About how women expect the men to engage.

When it comes to young queer women, I’m going to risk pissing some people off, but the long and short of it is (I could probably dig up the link but it’s been an eternity) a while ago they ran a psychological study to figure out why young women were attracted to yaoi, and gay porn, especially what is essentially stereotypical force-role type gay porn. It has to do with blooming attraction, primal fear, and trying to make the men more appealing in a way that does not intimidate them.

This later manifests into feminizing them, setting twink/bear roles that go beyond into top/bottom, and conflating it with penetration, position, power, dom/sub, fork/spoon, sometimes served with a dose of internalized misogyny being projected into the vessel of whatever twink/sub is positioned, and generally— like, kink culture. Often this is passed with narrowly progressive-masked arguments of “Men should be allowed to be feminine if they want!” rather than a genuine answer to, “Why do you perpetually heterosexually resize, or reframe, and enforce heterosexual structure onto characters that do not meet this mold, and why is that a personal gain to you?” because in the end– it’s a personal gain. And again, at that point it’s not about representation.

Now again, I’m not… shaming anyone for having a kink. But kink/fetish needs/wants have blurred themselves in as if to hedge on equal territory to discussing canon content. Or sprinkling the quite literal fetishized art (power to you if that’s your thing, I guess, even if I do bear discomfort over fetishization of any LGBT demographic, even by another LGBT demographic) and reasoning with dialogue that implies it as being representative, and inserting that into the representation discussion, which *literally* just makes the entire bog muddier, makes the LGBT men trying to speak more easily dismissed in a vat of “just women/fetishists”, it just– it’s Not a Good. I’m… personally not a fan of it. Like at all. A lot of it makes me angry tbh. So I don’t engage. I don’t browse fanfiction. I look at very little art.

Hell most of the people around here don’t even realize it’s actually a *minority* of LGBT men that choose to engage in penetrative sex, but it’s become a topic of outright obsession around here. There is so much simple… lack of awareness and discussion of the lives LGBT men lead, even by LGBT women because again – we don’t have your path. We can only listen to you. (And BOY have I gotten earfuls from my LGBT male friends absolutely going apeshit banana bonkers over fandom’s obsession with penetration culture, gender role enforcement while feigning it as liberation, and all kinds of other stuff. And that’s what I base most of my talking points on.)

Because if I’m going to talk representation, I’m going to talk about representing the demographic the character is supposed to represent, not molding him into a tokenized wash-over of every single person’s wants. If you’re an LGBT woman that can resonate with Dean Winchester, that’s great. Sometimes representation can be shared. But a character’s origin determines what demo he represents and not all of any given representative’s character’s attributes, methods, functions, anything – not all of it is going to meet any one person’s goals collectively, but the target demographic is inevitably closer to it.

Another point to raise is that it feels like people have lost track of *what* the representation battle is about. It isn’t just about any one person attaching to any one character. It’s about developing a TVscape that looks more representative of the real world, with a fair presence of PoC, of women, of LGBT people of all types, of the disabled community, of people that are even more than one of these, of people with different stories: people. About, well, normalizing it, because it should be normal. About saturating television enough that one day, and that day will not just be tomorrow per convenience, that people won’t be desperate for representation even vaguely in their wheelhouse, that they can turn on and see people of any intersectional type and go– wow, the world finally realizes we’re real. And that in that wide, realistic menu, yes, being able to turn a channel and eventually see someone *just like you*. A day when any show turned on has at least *someone* in your wheelhouse because every show eventually should have some sort of realistic spread, but if you find the *right* show, *there you are.*

That’s how it’s built. We don’t start by footstomping and tokenizing everyone to be vaguely representative of everyone or it doesn’t count because it didn’t work for *them*. We start by sharing truly diverse narratives, each unique to their own, just as diverse as straight stories are, maybe even more. That’s the only way you’re actually going to end up with a TVscape full of The Gays, and full enough to find *explicitly yourself* in there.

Deleting normalized, non-sensationalist text for lacking either visibility or flavor, even if you weren’t the intended demographic for it to speak to, is quite literally contrary to the entire fight.

and tbh?

This shit is why I hate shipping culture.

And I say that as someone who presumably “ships” Dean and Cas, if it’s shipping to address canon bullshit happening in front of you and just watch the show as it folds out without going into denial for *whatever* personal reason.

There’s a lot of well intended people, most shipping fandom is full of good beans, but as a collective group – skewed by sociopathically manipulated dialogues we can literally track the origins of – have been driven into much of the above while genuinely believing they were doing the right thing, in a long chain of being told this was what and how to fight for, without really stopping and critically examining the nuance of the conversation. Because why would you? Seems to be the popular gay thing to do – while a lot of bisexual people currently hide their commentary via reblog hashtags or hedge awkwardly into an anon box sideways.

That all said, it continues to be my focus. It will never change on this blog. I will never surrender to being pressured, be it by antis or bitters or people just wanting to argue, into pretending things that were text are subtext. I will not move that goalpost. You are real, and you are valid, and you are welcome in my inbox any time, Nonnie, confidentiality guaranteed. Like, DM too.

but lmao like shit, dawg. There’s a reason the LGBT guys I’ve had as writing partners as Dean literally refuse to play with another Cas. That’s not just because I’m a *super aweSOME auTHOr*, it’s because they recognize I do not come from the wing lost to fanfiction, to troll wars, or even to shipping culture, love of a ship be damned. I don’t try to force gender roles on them. I listen when they speak, and often, surprise many with the angle I ever enter discussion or listening from to begin with, because of spending so many years listening to begin with. It’s an intrinsic understanding of why they resonate with the content, not what I can pull some transformative art stuff on or wanting to *make* it into anything else to fit *my* molds. It’s because of being someone engaged to the male perspective, without the need to twist or change a character to be content with it, and being WILLING to hold those challenging conversations.

Listen first. Talk later. But never in front of or over the people you claim to be talking for.

33 notes · View notes

whatbutandreil · 5 years

Text

i had an ask sitting in my inbox for a couple of months bc i didn't really know what i wanted to say, but i lost the ask:/

unfortunately, when i tried to save my response to my drafts, tumblr just,, fuckin deleted it, so im sorry to whoever asked it:/ but i have my response now. the ask said "what(or who) got you into tfc?" to the person who asked this question, thank you. this has been a really great reflection. so uh,, here's my answer:

i kinda hate the way i came into tfc bc it was in a way that didn't respect the wishes of my, now friend on twitter, ziegenkind.

basically, i was scrolling on pinterest, as you do, and i fell into a hole of like,, gay fanart? (not a question, just a little self-reflection on how fucking queer i am. how did i not fucking know?)

anyway, so, i was scrolling, as you do, and i found @ziegenkind 's stunning painting of andrew and neil on the bottom bunk of the dorm bed (y'all know the one) and i was like "whooooo,, the fUCk are these two cuties (ʘ‿ʘ)??"

PSA : DONT REPOST PEOPLE'S ART WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION, ESPECIALLY IF SOMEONE EXPLICITLY SAYS NOT TO. THIS COUNTS AS REPOSTING IF YOU POST SOMEONE ELSE'S ART TO PINTEREST, INSTAGRAM, TUMBLR, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, ANY SOCIAL MEDIA. DO NOT QRT PEOPLE'S ART ON TWITTER IF PEOPLE SAY NO. YOU ARE NO EXCEPTION. AND DONT FUCKING ERASE PEOPLE'S WATERMARKS AND DEFINITELY DONT REPLACE THEM WITH YOUR OWN. DONT FUCKING DO IT. to the lovely ziegenkind, (it's julian from twitter (^o^)丿) it's so fuckin unfortunate that i found your art through reposts and it's fucking horrible that people don't listen, but thank you for being my bridge into this fandom and im very grateful to have found you and been able to talk with such an angel. you quite literally changed my life forever and i can't thank you enough:') im eternally grateful for that. BUT DONT FUCKING REPOST DIPSHITS

anyway, so, naturally, i sat in my bed for 3 hours at 1am on a school night, as you do, scrolling through andreil fan art and trying to figure out who the fUCK they were and what they were from. i found tfc and immediately downloaded it on my phone

i didn't get to reading it for a bit tho:/ abt a week later, i was brought to the emergency room bc i was planning to kill myself. id been diagnosed with depression for around a year, who knows how long i was suffering before that, and i was hitting my lowest. it was abt 2 weeks after new years and on new years eve, i was planning on ending it bc i couldn't fathom dealing with it for another year. another year of feeling nothing or everything all at once. but my mom had called me downstairs to go to a new years party, so i didn't go through with it. abt 2 weeks later, i had seen my therapist again, and i was deflecting hard core, and she saw it, and she sent me to the ER. i was evaluated all night, but i wasn't kept for observation since i told the nurse that the thoughts had passed. i was taken out of school and put in an outpatient program where id have group for 4 hours and school for 2. every morning for abt a month, i would get picked up at my house in a minivan and id have a good 20-25+ min drive to program.

every. single. morning. on the van, i would read tfc. every morning. i was going through, what i thought to be the worst time of my life (i now know that it in fact DID get worse and now we're going on a new level of bad, but then it was the worst id experienced) every morning i was reading about neil and him running from his father, something ive wanted to do for years. reading about andrew struggling with depression and self harm like i am and despising most touches bc of people in his life that ruined it, similar to how someone ruined it for me and doesn't understand that "no" means "no". reading about nicky learning to love and accept himself for being gay, for being who he is like ive been trying to accept myself being a queer ace trans boy. reading about kevin trying to cope with his anxiety, even if it's in an unhealthy way, the same way i do. reading about renee growing up one way and wanting to become a better person, something that i want to do every day. reading abt matt overcoming his addiction and loving his friends with his whole heart. reading about dan standing up for herself and being proud of who she is. reading abt allison cutting away the people in her life who wanted to hold her back. reading about aaron and andrew work through their differences to try and salvage their relationship. reading about neil taking his life back and living it the way he wants, on his terms, like i so badly crave to do. reading about neil and andrew finding a respectful and loving relationship, one where all boundaries are respected, not crossed, where there is comfort in being together and a certain understanding on a level that others could never wrap their mind around. the kind of relationship that i have always, always, yearned for, where i feel safe and loved and respected.

these books taught me not only to die for the ones i love or kill for them, but to live for them, and to me, that is a much more daunting and difficult task.

All For the Game gave me hope, something i never thought id have again. it gave me hope for tomorrow. and the day after that. and a month after that. and it gives me hope that one day, i will get away from my father, i will be comfortable with who i am and love myself for it, i will find ways to cope with my anxiety properly, i will be proud of the person i have become, i will have friends who i love and who love me, i will stand up for myself and be proud to be the person ive become, i will surround myself with good people and cut away those who treat me wrong and hold me back, i will work to repair and maintain good relationships.

it gives me hope that i will finally break away from the pain and start to live my life the way i want, as the person i was meant to be, the way i was meant to live my life.

it gives me hope that i will overcome my depression, that i will find the strength to stop harming myself to cope, that i will find the strength to push through, even after ive been given every reason to just give up.

it gives me hope that one day, i will find a person who will love me for who i am, love me despite my past and the scars i carry, love me in a way that i'll never be able to explain or understand. that i will find someone who respects my boundaries, who asks "yes or no?" before touching me, who respects if i say "no" and still fucking loves me regardless. someone who can feel like they can be completely themself around me, and that i can feel the same around them. someone who will fall in love with me a little more every day. someone who i'll fall in love with a little more every day.

it gives me hope that one day, hopefully someday soon—but i think im willing to wait—i will be happy.

All For the Game quite literally changed to course of my life, and i can say with confidence that without it, i would not be here right now.

people say that books and shows and movies change there life all the time, but i know that i wouldn't be here without it. these books saved my fucking life. i wouldn't have experienced those mornings, walking into program with a goofy smile on my face, practically vibrating with what i now know was joy, blabbing to every person i ran into that morning abt a boy with scars and a sharp tongue on the run and the small, depressed and angry blond who told him to stay. or nights when i sobbed and sobbed for those boys who deserved better. and i wouldn't have gotten black armbands to cover my scars and match with my two biggest inspirations. or when i have a bad impulsive thought, i wouldnt have a voice in the back of my head going "what would andrew say? what would neil say?" and the vivid image of the small blond giving me a stare, face carefully blank, yet eyes swimming with a mix between disapproval and hope, and the boy covered in scars tentatively giving me a hug, a bit awkward at first, but he's a lovely hugger and eventually, awkwardness turns into comfort. without it, i don't think id know what pure, honest love is supposed to look like.

sorry, i suppose this got quite a bit off track from what got me into aftg, but once i started writing, i couldn't stop.

TLDR; i saw fanart on pinterest, DONT REPOST ART WITHOUT PERMISSION, and my life was saved and changed for the better by a book that i stumbled upon, purely by chance.

i don't believe in fate, but i do think that i found these books for a reason, and that my life changed because of it. i suppose you could call it the butterfly effect.

66 notes · View notes

short-origins · 5 years

Text

Stay Safe.

(Fun fact: I had no idea I was queer when I wrote this. How I didn’t know is beyond me, but whatever.)

So, you’re heading out?

The bubbly scrawl appears along my left arm. A small smile works its way onto my face as I read the white script. I am not supposed to communicate with anyone outside of my command at this time, but screw it; freedom of speech and expression still apply, yeah?

“Hey, could I borrow a pen?” I turn to my friend Jonah, who gives me a ‘really?’ look. “Yes, really. Now may I borrow a pen or is that a no?” I ask.

“Yeah, yeah. Here you go,” he sighs as he reaches into his pack to pull out a black pen. “I need this one back, L.”

“Yes sir,” I say with a lilt in my voice as I snatch the pen from his grasp. “Thanks.”

Yeah, planned patrol. Shouldn’t be too bad.

“Pen away, Liz,” Commander Zolt orders gruffly. “We’ll be out of this stinking truck in five minutes, you’ll live.”

“Yes sir,” I say as I yank my sleeve down over my olive skin and hand the pen back over to Jonah. “Thanks again,” I say. Wordlessly, he takes the pen back and puts into his pack and pulls out some jerky to snack on.

“So, what’d you tell ‘er this time?” he asks while peeling the wrapping open. He wiggles his eyebrows and I just roll my eyes at him.

“It’s not like we had a ton of time to chat and it was just about our day; nothing ‘juicy,’ you idiot.” I say.

“Rats.”

“Shut up.” I smile and lean back into my seat. In the back of the truck are three people besides me and Jonah. Commander Zolt, who has never seemed to like me, along with the siblings Colt and Bel. who mostly chat with each other, but they are good people to hang with otherwise.

As the ride to Quintar continues to draw out, my mind thinks to the writing on my arm. I find myself focusing on the faint pin-pointed pressure of Tiana’s response. Despite how tempted I am to look, I can almost feel Commander Zolt watching and waiting for me to slip up, which keeps me from doing anything of the sort.

I’ll read it later, when I get the chance. Tiana and I have been chatting for almost fourteen years now. She reached out to me first.

Does this work?

The pale blue color had bloomed on my arm. I remember running to my mom immediately after. “Mom! Mom! Look!” I’d said. Seeing the messy scrawl for the first time had been a happy surprise. “Look! They wrote. What do I say back?” I’d asked her mother.

“Well say hi to them at least. Talk to them,” she said.

The feeling of the truck suddenly slamming on the brakes snaps me back into focus as our bodies jerk towards the front of the truck. “Alright, buzz-cuts and ponies, time to move!” the commander orders us as we begin to pick up all of our items. I pack up any material I took out of my pack and grab my gun from behind my seat as I stand.

“Three years. We’ve been doing this job for three years. Last run for you, L,” Jonah says as we get ready to go. “You lucky shit.”

“What can I say? I don’t want to be away from home any longer than I have to be.” I laugh and punch his upper arm, “Plus, once I’m back, I plan to finally meet Tiana in person, rather than over a video chat,” I say as I glance towards my left arm. “But we’ll have to meet up once you’re out. You are out soon too, yeah?”

Before he responds, we are pushed out of the truck into the dry, dusty heat of Quintar. The truck takes off to make room for the next truck as Jonah speaks. “Three more months. Better no forget about me in that time, L.” he says, securing some of gear to his belt.

“Yeah, yeah.”

We are all corralled into a group once the rest of the command gets out of the other trucks. We split into groups of six and spread out along the surrounding area. Major Beth leads our group based off of her mutt’s nose.

We arrive to a mostly deserted part of the town as we keep watch outside of each building while the mutt tries to sniff out any bombs, drugs, weapons, and other dangerous material.

‘Clear!” Major Beth yells out as the mutt sniffs out another crumbling building. As we transition to the next building and continue our check, I lag behind a few paces and pull my sleeve back to see what Tiana wrote.

Stay Safe.

The clumsy handwriting makes me smile, as it always has since she accepted my position.

Why the HELL are you doing that!?

I could practically hear her screaming at me through the bold marks on my skin. She knew that I had been thinking about doing this, and had voiced her concern many times prior, but when I told her that it was going to happen, I could feel her anger radiating from the lines on my skin.

I’m calling.

Moments later my phone rings loudly. I take a breath, before deciding to answer. I deserve any anger she has. “Hey.”

On the other end of the line I hear her strained voice as she asks. “Dammit, Liz. You’re going to get yourself killed out there,” her normally soft and happy voice sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking. “Of all times to go into service why-” she pauses for a moment, swallows and continues, “why now? Why not community service, policing, fire fighting even. Why would you go work in a war zone?”

I understand her concern. “No one else will by choice. I’m not going to be away long. I’ll be back before you are out of college, and when I come back I’ll have the money to meet you so you don’t have to leave your studies. I’ll be fine. Plus, when I get back I’ll be able to get veterans discounts,” I say, half honest, half joking. Tiana lets out a breathy scoff.

“Fine. Stay safe.”

“Liz! We need you to check this out,”Major Beth calls out.

“Yes Ma’am!” I jog inside the building Major Beth and her dog are in. “What is it?”

Major Beth gestures towards three cabinets, two of which were opened. “We found a variety of weapons which were modified.” Major Beth opens the third cabinet and turns to look at me. “You’re the weapons specialists, what do we have here?”

I take that as a cue to begin pulling out the weapons and inspecting them. The first cabinet and much of the second are full of semi-automatic rifles with additions which were added with basic supplies, mostly duct tape. Most of the guns had added on knives and various blades to make basic bayonets. Other guns, though appearing ordinary on the surface, were modified to shoot ammunition other than bullets. Pistols are limited to small rocks and pebbles, but larger guns were altered to use things such as stones and incendiary cartridges depending on each gun.

“Besides the obvious attempt at recreating bayonets, the guns were modified to use more mundane things as projectiles, so they wouldn’t run out of ammunition,” I say, sparing her the details as she comes over to inspect the weapons. I walk over to the third cabinet to find it full of explosives. I hesitate in picking up anything from the third cabinet before walking back towards her. “It’s full of bombs and the bottom has a layering of of gunpowder. I recommend that we use any spare water we have and douse the powder,” I say.

She nods and I begin to walk towards the door to get a jug of water, but I am interrupted when a loud banging sound ruptures throughout the area. Pulling my gun out, I quickly turn around to try to locate the sound. But I see nothing. The sound was of a gun going off, but I can’t tell from where.

Another banging sound goes off, and suddenly the cabinet full of explosives is set off. The gunpowder lights on fire and then there is an explosion.

My body is pushed back into the opposite wall, and my vision blurs to black.

Clunk Click.

The sound of a door rouses me from sleep. My bleary eyes open and I have to blink a few times to see clearly. I turn my head to the right to see a nurse changing what my IV is connected to.

“Your awake. How do you feel?” he asks.

“What?” I ask before comprehending what he said. “Oh, I- uhh- good? Where am I?” I can feel parts of my body secured by bandages and the air smells too clean,

“You are in a hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan,” he says. “You were injured while in Quintar, and since it was so close to your release date, it was decided that once you were stable you would be sent here,” he explains upon seeing my confusion. He walks to the door and just before he leaves he adds, “There will be a doctor here to check up on you in a few minutes. Until then, you have a visitor.” He walks out the door, and I can see his silhouette pause to say something to someone just outside the door through the hazy glass.

A moment later the door opens, and a girl walks into my room. Her hair is an auburn color and her skin is fair. She has many freckles spattered across her nose and cheeks, and her green eyes light up when she sees me awake.

“You never listen? Do you?” she says as she walks over and sits down in the chair next to my bed.

“Selective hearing.” I smile up at her. “You were able to convince people to send me here, I’m impressed.”

She shrugs. “What can I say? I’m majoring in English, I make the best arguments, and I wouldn’t stand for any more delays. By the way,” she stands and slightly leans over the side of the bed to hold out a hand, “it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Liz.”

I smile and take her hand, “I wish this were under better circumstances. I am happy to meet you in person as well, Tiana.”

#Hint: its gay #I didn't realize before #but #its gay #lgbtlove #Lesbian story #lgbtq+ literature #LGBT literature #Lesbian Short story #science fiction #Lesbian Fiction #Mentions of war #Mentions of violence #Lesbians in the military #Oh no #What will the government ever do?#Short story

4 notes · View notes

boojersey · 5 years

Note

VIC DO ALL THE ASKS BC I LOVE U AND WANT U TO HAVE FUN

*SWEATS* AYE AYE CAPN

cw for like some common lgbt+ topics such as dysphoria violence discrimination etc just. tread carefully if u get triggered easily by bad lgbt experiences

What do you identify as and what are your pronouns? -im a gay trans man and my pronouns are he/him but they/them is also acceptable!

How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?-oh wow i originally thought i was a lesbian because i didnt even know what transgender was i just thought wishing i was a man meant i was butch and then i met my friend donnie in eighth grade who told me he was trans and it was kinda a huge slap in the face but with a sack of gay bricks? and i found out i dont like women through actually having sex with cis women and finally realizing it. really wasnt for me so now im just a gay man as opposed to queer as an umbrella term but i periodically refer to myself as such

Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?-oh yea i literally was misgendered today i just kinda brush it off but it can be hard sometimes especially when people know im trans and do it

Who was the first person you told, how did they react?-i first told donnie about my gender, it was a thing where i went to bed the night i met him and was like .. wait holy fuck and then the next day i was like BRO HOLY FUCK but sexuality? i dont really know???? it was so long ago it was honestly probably my group of friends on kik that i had in 2013 (u were included in that mister!!!!)

Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?-im not actually fully out but the first time someone who was an adult knew about my trans-ness was what really set in for me the fact that i could come out one day; my friends mom referred to me as seance (and like. obviously she respected my gender she has a trans kid) but it was just super jarring bc no adult had known yet abt my identity in any way and as a result i was rlly glad it was nighttime in that car bc i cried almost immediately; the first time i came out on my Own was to my cousin and he laughed in my face so that was pretty damn awful and its kinda funny cuz the bastard is bi so u would think hed have been accepting but n0pe!

If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?-im out to my friends now ! and the reception was generally positive bc i think i do an ok job at picking ppl to be around in terms of morals so there was little bad reception

What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?-i hate when ppl ask if im gay as in for men or gay as in for women because im trans, i am a man so when i say im gay i feel like that should be easy enough to put 2 and 2 together but when they ask that i feel as if they still view me as a woman

Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.-emo of the gods themselves it is absolute scene and emo vomit and i love it; its seriously hard for me to wear dresses and skirts without dysphoria and just general discomfort but i own a couple anyway bc theyre cute i just. never wear them

Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?-my main thing at the moment is gerard/frank/grant morrison bc i love poly fics very dearly and gerard/bert because bert mccracken deserved better than gerawrds internalized homophobia lol

What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?-makeup to me is an androgynous thing so i wear eyeshadow a lot and lipstick sometimes, eyeshadow is easier on my eyes than eyeliner bc im allergic to a lot of makeup thats on the heavier side so if i put on eyeliner my eyes will water and burn throughout the day but with eyeshadow im mostly ok; other opinion is that makeup on Anyone can be sexy as hell if they do it for fun and wear literally what they truly want and not just what they think is accepted or what they Should wear

Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?-oh yeah my dysphoria is pretty debilitating if im gonna be honest; i used to have very little problems with it because my hold on reality was loose at best (before i was medicated to clarify) but now that i am almost completely Here my dysphoria is pretty bad and even just like. the knowledge that i have breasts is pretty awful; a few weeks ago i put on an outfit that i have to wear a victorias secret bra to fit properly in and just one look in the mirror had me sobbing and i had to change my clothes before i could leave the house and i havent worn a bra since because just the thought of showing off my chest makes this stark fuckin dread shoot through my veins but i also have dysphoria in regards to my voice that i discussed at my last trans therapy group meeting actually ; my voice has a tendency to bounce around my octave range so sometimes ill be like. excited then hear what i sound like. and ruin it for myself immediately u kno? im not even gonna talk about my dicksphoria bc thats just. awful.

What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?-ohhhhhhhh my god u know what? ive heard..so much .. that im gonna instead take this opportunity to mention my mother genuinely thinks dnd is satanic

What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?-the fact that were so strong. we are so fucking strong we deal with violence and opposition constantly and at staggering rates yet we stay strong and we continue loving through all of it, whether its in dark corners in secret or loudly in the streets we continue loving and do so with all of our beings because we know its our own truth and well gladly go to hell if it means we got to love on earth (not that everyone believes in hell or the idea that us gays go to hell but my point stands)

What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?-we have this audacity to create divide (to the fault of mostly cis white gay men thank u very much) when what we need to do is love each other because we are different but at the end of the day we all need to remain in tandem and as a family or we will never get to where we need to in terms of acceptance and that means being uplifting and protecting our trans sisters of color, our disabled lgbt members, our autistic lgbt members, our anything past cis white gay man because we all need recognition, we all need love, and to exclude any letters of lgbt is to tear ourselves down and set ourselves on fire

Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?-no :((( no one would drive me in the past and i dont think ill have a way to get there this year either

Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?-brian molko! my bisexual, androgynistically-inclined father who birthed me at the tender age of 16 when i found placebo

Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?-ya theres been a few and i dont rlly like to talk abt my relationships with anyone unless theyre online relationships so im just gonna leave it at that

What is your favourite lgbt+ book?-pantomime by laura lam! its one of if not my favorite book to this day

Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?-y a every damn day bitch ! example is when i was deadnamed by my psychiatrist while she knows full well what my name is the other day; another is the countless times i get called a lesbian ???? and when strict lesbians ask me out i get a very bad taste in my mouth (i understand full well that sexuality is fluid, these are lesbians that spit the ‘penis is gross blegh’ rhetoric)

Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?-uh im just gonna say preacher bc its my favorite show altogether n cass is bi/pan/something similar

Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?-@ble3dmagic is my boyfriend in crime (not rlly thats a joke) and @musicalsense is my sunburnt Brother

Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?-queer! i also use f*ggot a lot when talking about myself and my friends that are ok with it

Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?-i went to a drag show and it was so amazing and one of the first times i felt accepted in my own community that i cried

How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?-well i identify as a man with no leaning towards womanhood or nonbinaryhood in any way, its just . man . but in terms of Expression i am quite androgynous bc i can rlly appreciate femininity (NOT the same as womanhood) and being a man to me means just that ive always wanted to grow up with that “gender role” like i always wish i was raised as a stereotypical parent would raise a son and ive always been more interested in stereotypically masculine things and people since i can even remember and i feel like puberty was just this unpreventable spiral into something i didnt want. i didnt want it at all . this is tmi but when i got my first period i cried my eyes out bc the idea of being called a Woman repulsed me so much and since i didnt even know that being trans was a concept i was just this scared puppy full of confusion and fear aimed at myself because all the stuff i heard i was supposed to be proud of the change but i wasnt i was so ashamed of it and the idea of being called a woman made me sick to my stomach and i just wish i could go back in time and hold myself and tell me itll be alright

Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?-absoLutely not i hate kids (and by that i mean i hate being around them and the culture that surrounds having children; i do not treat kids like shit and i do not act like hating children is a personality trait; i get migraines and usually the second a child starts screaming or crying i am on the floor of my brain writhing in dire pain and i have absolutely no desire to support another human life when frankly i cant even support myself; its also just not a lifestyle i want to live)

What identity advice would you give your younger self?-god so fucking much. so fucking much. so many things i wish i could say to myself

What do you think of gender roles in relationships?-i think if someone wants to adhere to them then hell yea go ahead just dont expect others to do it or try to tell other people its a Norm or something; theyre for the most part christian in nature so i dont have any desire to follow them myself, i want a relationship (if any) thats more of a coexistence if that makes sense, like. roommates plus dick

Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?-i always used to anxiously chew on the idea that my chest dysphoria is just me holding disdain for the shape and size of my breasts but let me tell you. the second i put on my binder for the first time i immediately started crying because i was so overwhelmed by the fact that i was looking at something one step closer to myself and i know full well i am never going to have that doubt again. this week has been exponentially cathartic and therapeutic for me

What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?-i want the cisheteros to know that nothing they learn about us is new. everything about us has been around for so so long but has been silenced and erased to the point where a lot of us dont even know many things about our rich and beautiful history

Why are proud to be lgbt+?-honestly? its hard for me to not just straight up say im not proud of my identity. its taken me years to stamp down the plain grieving toward my identity and wishing i could have the easier path but frankly? the fact that i am choosing this path of hardship and hell on earth just to be who i truly am i think speaks volumes of my pride in my identity at this point; further back in my archive by a few years my posts are littered with sentiments of bitterness wherein i stated that i hate being trans and not just cis but i like to think ive finished hating myself for my identity. i like to think im proud now. to ask me why is to ask too much of me, all i know now is that i am proud and thats enough for me right now.

#LONG POST #KAY I LOVE U BUT HOLY SHIT MY FOLLOWERS ARE GONNA GET MOTION SICKNESS FROM SCROLLING PAST THIS AT LIGHTNING SPEED #saltwaterfox

5 notes · View notes

dykedykegooses · 7 years

Note

i'm askin u every single even numbered question for the lesbian ask game

at least you didnt bother with the algebra this time, for which i am thankful

Femme or butch?

i’m more femme but i try to act butch sometimes and i just end up failing hopelessly. ‘look mom i know how to put air in a tire!!’ ‘peyton thats like… not even right’ or ‘oh SHIT look at that blitz!! that was cool’ ‘peyton that was a sack’ ‘oh’

Do you have a “type”? If so, describe it

not really, mostly just like… humor. if u funny we click

Plaid button-ups or leather jackets?

why not both?

no but seriously plaid tbh

Describe your style

um yes

converse, (ripped? sometimes) jeans, and whatever top i feel is appropriate for the Big Aesthetic today

Describe your aesthetic

yes

ive tried going more punk but its just kinda , not worked

my physical aesthetic is very adultolescent. i got chub and look like a freshman but ive been told i pass as a college senior so like

my Big Mood aesthetic is yes

Favorite article of clothing?

either my converse or my “”combat boots”” (theyre not and it makes me sound like an edgelord just saying that) (can you tell im gay)

OH WAIT I FORGOT ABOUT MY JEAN JACKET its like baggy and light and ive started sewing patches from my favorite bands on it (super punk right)

Favorite pair of shoes?

^^^

oh my black strappy heels, theyre surprisingly comfortable

Current haircut?

ive got a bleached bob rn

Any haircut goals for the future?

i kinda want a pixie cut bc i cant handle long hair however long hair is so PRETTY and wow

Describe the best date you’ve been on

iiiiiiiiii dont really know. ive been on very few. i have a Perfect Date in mind, and i guess my favorite was my first date with my ex. we had gotten back from a successful science competition (HAVE I MADE IT OBVIOUS IM A NERD YET IM A BIG OL NERD) and it was like midnight by the time we got back and we were both starving so we went to taco bell and just sat there talking and laughing and i know we were pissing off the staff, but we stayed til like two in the morning and we went home and honestly we both considered it a date but we didnt like… tell each other it was a date? if that makes sense? idk honestly im triggered

Describe the worst date you’ve been on

ugh oh god i went on a tinder date and this girl like in the DMs was like ‘hey do u smoke weed’ and im like ‘lol no’ and then like we made plans to meet up at a coffee shop and she asks me AGAIN if i smoke weed and im like……………. no and shes like ‘oh right lol’ well THIS BITCH sleeps through the time we were supposed to meet, completely stands me up, and then texts me back like an hour later and was like ‘omg im sorry i overslept!!!’ and it was like….. noon but ok so we meet up after my class and we just sit there really awkwardly trying to make conversation and she asks me AGAIN if i smoke weed im like ‘honey no i dont’ and we just talked about drugs for a while and when i left because i had to gtfo she like gave me an awkward hug and like i sent a text later that night bc im courteous and im like ‘hey i had a great time today’ (i didnt) ‘lmk if you ever want to meet up again!!’ and she just. ignored me lol.

Single? Taken?

im currently in a polyamorous relationship with myself and my anxiety

If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife!

If single, what are you looking for in a potential girlfriend/wife?

someone who’s able to make me laugh and deal with my bad ideas and will let me cook for her and wants to travel the world with me

Describe your dream wedding

its small. outside. maybe in a field or in front of a lake. i dont personally want a big ballgown, just a short white dress will do. lavenders everywhere. R A I N B O W C A K E. reception where we slow dance to all the sappy romance songs. its great.

Do you want kids?

not really, but ive considered being a foster parent. i feel like im here to do good; i don’t want to have my own biological children, and im not sure i want to have the permanent responsibility of adopting a kid, but i feel i could handle fostering once we’re financially stable and have the room to accept children into our home.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

spain, definitely. somewhere in the north. i want to have a small farm with goats and chickens and vegetables and i want to be away from this american mess.

Favorite lesbian movie?

well ysee…………. the only two explicitly lesbian movies ive seen have been ‘all about E’ and ‘blue is the warmest color’ and i didnt like either of the lmfaoooo i prefer watching lesbian television shows tbqh (or, most commonly, just rewriting all the female characters in my head to be sapphic sooooooo dont @ me)

Favorite lesbian novel/story?

i mean same as above, i dont read as much as i like to. however, i did read “georgia peaches and other forbidden fruit” and that was Really Good and i did read another that was slightly better, but i forget the name but it was about a pakistani (?) girl who was struggling to come out to her parents bc they were very traditionalist but she joins the theater and her like really elite school and the girl she had a crush on basically outs her and is a bitch about it and GOD i wish i could remember it because it was really good

Favorite lesbian song?

ummmmmmmmmmmm i just recently listened to ‘honey’ by kehlani and that was pretty good and pretty gay, but my personal favorite is ‘girls’ by beatrice eli bc holy shit what a Mood

Favorite lesbian musician?

i love mary lambert and beatrice eli.

What lesbian stereotypes do you fit into, if any?

ummmmm now that im thinking of them i cant think of any. i used to play softball and soccer? i love cats. i immediately start planning out the next five years of our lives together anytime im remotely interested in a girl?

Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal?

i mean………………. no

If a woman wanted to woo you, what would a surefire way to accomplish that?

well bake cookies w me and lets go for a walk & go out and watch the stars at night in the bed of a truck

Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian?

I LOVE LOVING GIRLS!!!!!! I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT BEING A LESBIAN!!!!!! GIRLS ARE FANTASTIC!!!!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!

Are you more of a cat person or a dog person?

why not both

idk ive never had a cat but i know i lov them

Turn ons?

i.......... dont know

yes

im gay

Turn offs?

long nails youch theyre pretty to look at but i mean at what price

not having anything to talk about

putting yourself down like a lot (i went on a date w this one girl and that was all she did like the entire date like......... im sorry ? :(???)

Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you?

if im being honest i would love for someone to ask me out but since that is Very Unlikely, i tend to be the one to message first and initiate dates and stuff

What is your dream career?

i want to be a psychological researcher in the field of social comparative psychology how sick is that!!!!! just play with dogs all day and record whether or not they boop their noses on a screen

also i wanna be a farmer and a bookstore owner but thats Farther down the line like , when im 50

Talk about your interests or hobbies!

im honestly such a psych nerd i love psychology what the fuck!! its so interesting like ppl are weird man idk brains are weird

im also having a really big green day phase like billie .. he so smol... and also anyone who wants to bash warning or the trilogy can fight me ok those are like My Favorite Albums

im going to a concert in february to see declan mckenna, a Giant Meme

im getting a tattoo w some lyrics of declan’s actually its gonna be sick

What is the most attractive quality a woman can have?

yes

idk for me its being able to have quick, witty, skillful jokes i just love listening to girls talk and tell stories and jokes like wow im gay

also long curly hair? thats always a Solid Look

Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone?

i mean. do we really wanna open this can of worms rn

too late, its open

i get those microcrushes where you like see a girl and youre like ‘WOW IM GAY DATE ME’ however once it comes to actually being in a relationship i throw my full weight behind it and worry that im being too suffocating or that im pushing my boundaries etc and ive been told that makes me come off really cold and uncaring so lol choose ur own adventure, you decide

Ever fallen for your best-friend?

unfortunately

Ever fallen for a straight girl?

can you even call yourself a lesbian if you havent

The L-Word: yes or no? (love it or hate it?)

i havent seen it, im such a fake lesbian

Favorite comfort food?

mac n cheese

or pizza

or cheesy potatos

OR CHEESY TOAST

scientific conclusion: im a fatass

Coffee or tea?

coffer

Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above?

im vegetarian!! have been on and off for like two years now

Do you have any pets?

i have one pup sittin right next to me and shes the prettiest girl in the world

Early-riser or night-owl?

yes

idk i get up at like 9 which is early for me but not as early as like. 5. so

more like night-owl. thanks teenage hormones!

What is your sign?

pisces

Can you drive?

yes

can i drive well?

but i do have a sense of direction so thats cool

Who was your first lesbian crush?

tbh.................... my best friend, but i didnt realize it was a crush at the time

the first Gay Crush i had that i knew was a crush was on my close friend at the time, now my ex girlfriend

At what age did you know you were a lesbian?

uhhhhhhhhhh lesbian specifically, like 15-16. queer, i knew in like fall semester freshman year (so like 13??)

At what age did you come out (if you have)?

i mean, i come out to people all the time. first time i came out explicitly as a lesbian was when i was like 15 or 16 (actually i came out to a close straight friend and my ex and they both said ‘congrats’ like it was weird but very nice) and the first time i came out as queer/questioning was to my then-best friend at like 13 and i came out to my mom (involuntarily) at like 17? ish?

Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)?

yes im crushing on every girl simultaneously at all times

just kidding

(not really)

i dont really have any explicit crushes that i can think of im just really gay

Talk about how your day went

it was fine. got free froyo so that was cool. found out i made an A on my bio practical, so that was cool too. however, i wore a crop top and it was like 55 degrees out and raining so i looked like a total Idiot but yk follow ur slutty gay dreams amiright ladies

Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future

most of mine are career-centric, but a few are personal.

i wanna go to costa rica in may, i wanna go to yale over the summer, i wanna go to NYC pride in june, i wanna go to spain after i graduate, i wanna go to grad school, i wanna be a psychological researcher, i wanna move to spain or england or hell even france, i wanna have my own farm with the woman i love, i wanna own an LGBT bookstore/library, i wanna just live a quiet life near the sea and not have to worry so much after a while.

Least favorite gay celebrity?

this is a weird one to end on, but iiiiiiim not sure i have one? i can tell you ellen page is probably my favorite, but i cant think of many i dislike so

#grabsthesun #lesbian ask game #i love and hate you

2 notes · View notes

thestuckylibrary · 7 years

Text

Mods’ Reads: June 2017

New mods, new features!

We know we are very behind on our recs, so by the suggestion of a lovely anon, we’ve decided to compile a list of fics we’ve read this month. This fandom always gives us amazing stories to gush about, which we are very thankful for :D

From new fics to old ones, our picks are under the cut:

Mod Karin

And we’ll be slow, honey lovers (‘til the clocks go forward again) by stellam_ignem

But he knows he wants to stay, because he can’t stand not hearing Steve’s voice, or not seeing that smile on that face, or that solemn look of kindness whenever he hands over a few dollars to the homeless veteran on the side of the street. He can’t stand not making Steve laugh. He loves the the subtle smirk in his dares and the snark in his jokes, and the jerk in his brow when he’s lost in thought, or the way he smiles whenever they kiss and thumbs across Bucky’s lower back. Bucky chokes a little, on air, and gently wraps his arms back around Steve’s neck to kiss him.

or: bucky’s a boxer/writer and steve’s the english teacher who walks in on his life.

Fortunate Resolutions of In-Field Complications a.k.a. Dumb Luck by Katharoses, Lasenby_Heathcote

The mission was simple. The mission wasn’t anything at all. We didn’t have to fight, we didn’t have to break in or steal anything or blow anything up - or at least nothing specific. The mission was simply to create a lot of bluster in the wrong direction. But then, the mission doesn’t always go according to plan.

If They Haven’t Learned Your Name by silentwalrus

Steve gets out of the hospital in two days, but just barely. “I’m fine,” he tells Sam, Nurse Eunjung and the phalanx of doctors assigned to make sure Captain America didn’t bleed out and die and get bad PR all over their nice clean hospital. “I have an advanced healing factor. It’s fine. See? I’m standing.”

“That is not standing,” Sam tells him.

“You’re bending the IV stand,” Nurse Eunjung adds pointedly. “Let go and sit down, they don’t grow on trees.”

aka Steve and Bucky’s Global Honeymoon Revenge World Tour.

Pieces Were Stolen From Me by perfect_plan

Steve Rogers is drawn to the mysterious man who has started to frequent his gallery but has no idea how is life is about to change just by being his friend.

Werewolf? There Wolf by leveragehunters (Monkeygreen)

After the car accident that cost him his arm and the endless rehabilitation that got him his shiny metal Stark Industries replacement, Bucky’s happy for a break from people. The house in the forest is peaceful, town’s a fair distance away, and he’s got no neighbours…except maybe a blue-eyed wolf and possibly a naked guy named Steve.

(PS: Steve is the wolf.)

Mod Blue I (re)read a lot so I’m just going to list them without their summaries or we’ll all be scrolling forever.

The Way Out Is The Way Down by Speranza

Coming and Going by Speranza

20th Century Limited by Speranza

What We Asked For From Each Other by Speranza

Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Speranza

All The Angels and The Saints by Speranza

Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes by Speranza

Coming Out Party by Speranza

the nightmare from which I am trying to awake by Speranza

Dishonor On Your Cow by mandarou

The Avengers Hate Club by notebooksandlaptops

Nietzsche is Dead by mambo

Kiss the Cook by mambo

half awake in a fake empire by idrilka

Behind closed doors: collected oral histories of queer community in New York, 1930-1945. doi 10.1999/journal.amhistqstud.32557038 by wobblyheadeddollcaper

back seat drive by silentwalrus

Workplace Hazards by AggressiveWhenStartled

Mod Julia

broken people (living under loaded gun) by obsessivereader, Slaughter_Me

“It’s him, Nat.”

“He may look like Steve, but that’s not Steve.” Distress mars her calm, professional mask, a sign of how shaken she is. “You saw how many men he killed, the way he did it. That’s not Steve.”

Until You Wear a Groove in the World by rohkeutta

Steve saves him.

In a way, Bucky wishes he hadn’t, because at least then Bucky could’ve pretended that those letters from Spokane and Tucson and Philadelphia never arrived. Bucky could’ve died imagining that Steve was safely in Brooklyn, clinging to life with the skin of his teeth, maybe taking Rebecca and Alice out dancing.

And Shadows Will Fall Behind byleveragehunters

The world was full of things no one could have expected.

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes never expected to fall from a train into decades of torture and killing.

HYDRA never expected their perfect Winter Soldier’s programming to shatter.

And Bucky, who’d once been the Winter Soldier, who was now an auxiliary to the Avengers, never expected to look down from a rooftop in New York City, where he was keeping watch over the world’s most ineffectual aspirant supervillains, and see a tiny ball of angry sunshine. Fierce and fearless, he loosed feelings in Bucky that he’d thought were gone forever.

we are the things that we do for fun by Nonymos

Going to a professional Dom may be one of the weirdest things Bucky’s ever done. Especially since this skinny Steve Rogers guy doesn’t really look the part.

But hey, they might just find a way to make this work.

let’s see where we wake up tomorrow by kblaze2

Steve’s gone on his second tour. Bucky gets a dog. There is no correlation. Really. Shut up, Nat.

Feeling I’ll Forget, I’m In Love Now by smithsonianstucky

Five years after the events in D.C., Steve and Bucky are living in Brooklyn and working through Bucky’s last stage of recovery: refamiliarizing himself with touch. At the suggestion of his therapist, they adopt a cat and wonder what changes the pet will make in their lives.

a trip to the grope zoo by mwestbelle

Bucky spends some quality time with Steve’s quality tits.

The Joy of Little Things by obsessivereader, Sealcat

or, how Steve ends up working for a dragon with a very odd sense of humor

Korpimaan kutsu by Feanor_in_leather_pants, rohkeutta

The Wise Man teaches him sometimes if he catches Steve puttering around the woods: how to read the trees and the moss, when to listen to the birds and when it’s better to leave their advice untaken. He teaches Steve about the bears and why you’re never supposed to call them by their real name; tells him grittier and truer stories about the woodsfolk than the old ladies in the village.

Dark Lights of Brooklyn by jwdish98

Steve Rogers is a private investigator who is barely skating by. He spends more time in his office than his apartment, and he continues to watch all his friends live out their lives while he sits on the sidelines.

However, when a case falls into his lap that dredges up past mistakes Steve’s life starts to veer off course- in a good way. Probably.

(He’s not entirely sure yet.)

Send Nudes! by DizzyRedhead, TrishArgh

When Steve decided to cosplay Captain America, one of his favorite TV characters, at a convention, he didn’t expect to meet a Winter Soldier cosplayer who looks like he stepped right off the screen (and has a great ass). He didn’t expect to hook up with Bucky, or to find out that they live in the same part of Brooklyn. He definitely didn’t expect the sexting, or the continued hooking up, or the dinner dates.

Steve didn’t expect any of this. Especially not the feelings.

Magic Fingers by lillupon

Steve is just a simple hairdresser.

The Only Familiar Thing by brideofquiet

Steve takes a breath, steels himself, and asks, “Where are we going, Buck?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one driving, Steve.”

so pop the hood, see what’s good by Bellakitse, ravyn_ashling

While celebrating his birthday Steve meets a charming guy with beautiful blue eyes and an easy smile, going home with him for the night should be the end of it. Instead it’s only the start when his boss and friend hires him as his new mechanic.

Mod Dee

Someone get this boy a drink by fingersnapstothat

Sam recommends Steve get a Tinder. He does. It proves to be the best and worst idea ever.

An Idiot’s Romance by captainsthve

So. Steve’s not the smoothest person.

Which is why he’s currently knocking on Sam Wilson’s door and groaning, “Sam, I’m hopeless.” as soon as the door swings open.

Sam just rolls his eyes and lets Steve in. “That is not new information. What happened?”

So Steve recounts the events of the morning with Sam listening patiently and only teasing a little bit. “You know Steve, I’m going to write a biography about you one day and I’m gonna make millions because no one will believe that Captain America is so hopelessly in love with his best friend that he turns into a middle schooler with a crush.”

aka the one where Steve realizes he’s in love and also realizes he’s horribly bad at flirting.

only one my arms will ever hold by wearing_tearing

Like most stories about Bucky Barnes and his questionable and sometimes terrible life choices, this one starts because he decides not to listen to Natasha’s cryptic and mostly annoying advice.

He decides not to listen, and he hunts down and kills a deer during that month’s full moon run with his pack and leaves its dead body on Steve Rogers’s front step.

Steve, the man Bucky kind-of-possibly-maybe-absolutely is in love with.

Bucky would try to smother himself after that one, but he’s learned that werewolves are hard to kill.

Or: the four stages of courting Steve Rogers.

Dishonor On Your Cow by mandarou

“Sergeant Barnes?”

“Oh, hell no, don’t call him that, man,” Sam warned.

“Captain Fuck Off!” Barnes shouted over him. “Fight me!”

Steve didn’t know whether to laugh or just slink away. He managed to combine the two by pacing two steps and snorting instead. Like a bull.

“I’m gonna need you to calm your ass, Barnes,” Sam said as he went limp again, obstructing Barnes’s struggling under him. “This is so undignified. That is Captain goddamn America.”

“Captain goddamn America!” Barnes repeated, louder. And angrier.

Steve cleared his throat again. “I’ve been looking for you,” he told Barnes.

“I hope you brought lube this time!” Barnes shouted.

perhaps it is to avoid some great sadness by onibi

Steve: I took an online quiz and it told me I’d be a cup of black coffee. It says that my good qualities are that I’m friendly, adaptable, and low maintenance.

Bucky: and what did it say you were at your worst a lazy jerk who harasses his boyfriend with inane bullshit online instead of coming in and talking to him face to face

or: in which steve gets really into online personality quizzes, everybody suffers, and steve is a huge sap about how much he loves his boyfriend

I love you like rlb by tolieawake

I love you like rlb has become a well-known, accepted and valuable component of American vernacular. The meaning of the letters 'rlb’ is unknown, but is uniformly considered to be a statement of a great romantic love, commitment and sacrifice.

It was Dernier as first said it. Steve never imagined that something like that could have survived the war and all the years in between.

In which Tony goes insane trying to figure out why that phrase affects the Cap so much, Bucky teases the press, and Steve and Bucky love each other like rlb.

#mod picks

144 notes · View notes

viralhottopics · 8 years

Text

The 16 Most Beautifully Touching Love Letters From Famous Writers And Artists

1. Allen Ginsburg to poet Peter Orlovsky:

Dear Petey:

O Heart O Love everything is suddenly turned to gold! Dont be afraid dont worry the most astounding beautiful thing has happened here! I dont know where to begin but the most important. When Bill [ed: William S. Burroughs] came I, we, thought it was the same old Bill mad, but something had happened to Bill in the meantime since we last saw him…but last night finally Bill and I sat down facing each other across the kitchen table and looked eye to eye and talked, and I confessed all my doubt and misery and in front of my eyes he turned into an Angel!

What happened to him in Tangiers this last few months? It seems he stopped writing and sat on his bed all afternoons thinking and meditating alone & stopped drinking and finally dawned on his consciousness, slowly and repeatedly, every day, for several months awareness of a benevolent sentient (feeling) center to the whole Creation he had apparently, in his own way, what I have been so hung up in myself and you, a vision of big peaceful Lovebrain…

I woke up this morning with great bliss of freedom & joy in my heart, Bills saved, Im saved, youre saved, were all saved, everything has been all rapturous ever since I only feel sad that perhaps you left as worried when we waved goodby and kissed so awkwardly I wish I could have that over to say goodby to you happier & without the worries and doubts I had that dusty dusk when you left Bill is changed nature, I even feel much changed, great clouds rolled away, as I feel when you and I were in rapport, well, our rapport has remained in me, with me, rather than losing it, Im feeling to everyone, something of the same as between us.

2. Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera:

Diego:

Truth is, so great, that I wouldnt like to speak, or sleep, or listen, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, outside time and magic, within your own fear, and your great anguish, and within the very beating of your heart. All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion. I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. Id like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love.

3. Oscar Wilde to Lord Alred Bosie Douglas (Wilde’s eventual muse):

My Own Boy,

Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days.

Why are you alone in London, and when do you go to Salisbury? Do go there to cool your hands in the grey twilight of Gothic things, and come here whenever you like. It is a lovely place and lacks only you; but go to Salisbury first.

Always, with undying love, yours, Oscar

4. Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickok (Eleanor’s long-speculated lover):

Hick, darling

Ah, how good it was to hear your voice. It was so inadequate to try and tell you what it meant. Funny was that I couldnt say je taime and je tadore as I longed to do, but always remember that I am saying it, that I go to sleep thinking of you.

5. Emma Darwin to Charles Darwin:

I cannot tell you the compassion I have felt for all your sufferings for these weeks past that you have had so many drawbacks. Nor the gratitude I have felt for the cheerful & affectionate looks you have given me when I know you have been miserably uncomfortable.

My heart has often been too full to speak or take any notice I am sure you know I love you well enough to believe that I mind your sufferings nearly as much as I should my own & I find the only relief to my own mind is to take it as from Gods hand, & to try to believe that all suffering & illness is meant to help us to exalt our minds & to look forward with hope to a future state. When I see your patience, deep compassion for others self command & above all gratitude for the smallest thing done to help you I cannot help longing that these precious feelings should be offered to Heaven for the sake of your daily happiness. But I find it difficult enough in my own case. I often think of the words Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. It is feeling & not reasoning that drives one to prayer. I feel presumptuous in writing thus to you.

I feel in my inmost heart your admirable qualities & feelings & all I would hope is that you might direct them upwards, as well as to one who values them above every thing in the world. I shall keep this by me till I feel cheerful & comfortable again about you but it has passed through my mind often lately so I thought I would write it partly to relieve my own mind.

6. English poet Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf:

…I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldnt even feel it. And yet I believe youll be sensible of a little gap. But youd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it should lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shant make you love me any more by giving myself away like this But oh my dear, I cant be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I dont love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defenses. And I dont really resent it.

7. E.B. White to his wife on the occasion of her pregnancy, “written” by their dog:

Dear Mrs. White:

I like having Josephine here in the morning, although I suppose I will get less actual thinking done as I used to do my thinking mornings in the bathroom. White has been stewing around for two days now, a little bit worried because he is not sure that he has made you realize how glad he is that there is to be what the column writer in the Mirror calls a blessed event. So I am taking this opportunity, Mrs. White, to help him out to the extent of writing you a brief note which I havent done in quite a long time but have been a little sick myself as you know. Well, the truth is White is beside himself and would have said more about it but is holding himself back, not wanting to appear ludicrous to a veteran mother. What he feels, he told me, is a strange queer tight little twitchy feeling around the inside of his throat whenever he thinks that something is happening which will require so much love and all on account of you being so wonderful. (I am not making myself clear I am afraid, but on the occasions when White has spoken privately with me about this he was in no condition to make himself clear either and I am just doing the best I can in my own way.) I know White so well that I always know what is the matter with him, and it always comes to the same thing he gets thinking that nothing that he writes or says ever quite expresses his feeling, and he worries about his inarticulateness just the same as he does about his bowels, except it is worse, and it makes him either mad, or sick, or with a prickly sensation in the head. But my, my, my, last Sunday he was so full of this matter which he couldnt talk about, and he was what Josephine in her simple way would call hoppy, and particularly so because it seemed so good that everything was starting at once I mean those things, whatever they are, that are making such a noise over in the pond by Palmer Lewiss house, and the song sparrow that even I could hear from my confinement in the house, and those little seeds that you were sprinkling up where the cut glass and bones used to be all starting at the same time as the baby, which he seems to think exists already by the way he stands around staring at you and muttering little prayers. Of course he is also very worried for fear you will get the idea that he is regarding you merely as a future mother and not as a present person, or that he wants a child merely as a vindication of his vanity. I doubt if those things are true; White enjoys animal husbandry of all kinds including his own; and as for his regard for you, he has told me that, quite apart from this fertility, he admires you in all kinds of situations or dilemmas, some of which he says have been quite dirty.

Well, Mrs. White, I expect I am tiring you with this long letter, but as you often say yourself, a husband and wife should tell each other about the things that are on their mind, otherwise you get nowhere, and White didnt seem to be able to tell you about his happiness, so thought I would attempt to put in a word.

White is getting me a new blanket, as the cushion in the bathroom is soiled.

Lovingly, Daisy

8. Charles Eames’ marriage proposal to Ray Eames:

Dear Miss Kaiser,

I am 34 (almost) years old, singel (again) and broke. I love you very much and would like to marry you very very soon.* I cannot promise to support us very well. but if given the chance I will shure in hell try

*soon means very soon.

What is the size of this finger??

as soon as I get to that hospital I will write reams well little ones.

love xxxxxxxxxx

Charlie

9. Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir:

My dear little girl

For a long time Ive been wanting to write to you in the evening after one of those outings with friends that I will soon be describing in A Defeat, the kind when the world is ours. I wanted to bring you my conquerors joy and lay it at your feet, as they did in the Age of the Sun King. And then, tired out by all the shouting, I always simply went to bed. Today Im doing it to feel the pleasure you dont yet know, of turning abruptly from friendship to love, from strength to tenderness. Tonight I love you in a way that you have not known in me: I am neither worn down by travels nor wrapped up in the desire for your presence. I am mastering my love for you and turning it inwards as a constituent element of myself. This happens much more often than I admit to you, but seldom when Im writing to you. Try to understand me: I love you while paying attention to external things. At Toulouse I simply loved you. Tonight I love you on a spring evening. I love you with the window open. You are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around me and the things around me alter my love.

My dear little girl, as Ive told you, what youre lacking is friendship. But now is the time for more practical advice. Couldnt you find a woman friend? How can Toulouse fail to contain one intelligent young woman worthy of you*? But you wouldnt have to love her. Alas, youre always ready to give your love, its the easiest thing to get from you. Im not talking about your love for me, which is well beyond that, but you are lavish with little secondary loves, like that night in Thiviers when you loved that peasant walking downhill in the dark, whistling away, who turned out to be me. Get to know the feeling, free of tenderness, that comes from being two. Its hard, because all friendship, even between two red-blooded men, has its moments of love. I have only to console my grieving friend to love him; its a feeling easily weakened and distorted. But youre capable of it, and you must experience it. And so, despite your fleeting misanthropy, have you imagined what a lovely adventure it would be to search Toulouse for a woman who would be worthy of you and whom you wouldnt be in love with? Dont bother with the physical side or the social situation. And search honestly. And if you find nothing, turn Henri Pons, whom you scarcely love anymore, into a friend.

[]

I love you with all my heart and soul.

10. Honor de Balzac to Countess Ewelina Haska (June, 1835):

MY BELOVED ANGEL,

I am nearly mad about you, as much as one can be mad: I cannot bring together two ideas that you do not interpose yourself between them. I can no longer think of nothing but you. In spite of myself, my imagination carries me to you. I grasp you, I kiss you, I caress you, a thousand of the most amorous caresses take possession of me. As for my heart, there you will always be very much so. I have a delicious sense of you there. But my God, what is to become of me, if you have deprived me of my reason? This is a monomania which, this morning, terrifies me. I rise up every moment say to myself, Come, I am going there! Then I sit down again, moved by the sense of my obligations. There is a frightful conflict. This is not a life. I have never before been like that. You have devoured everything. I feel foolish and happy as soon as I let myself think of you. I whirl round in a delicious dream in which in one instant I live a thousand years. What a horrible situation! Overcome with love, feeling love in every pore, living only for love, and seeing oneself consumed by griefs, and caught in a thousand spiders threads. O, my darling Eva, you did not know it. I picked up your card. It is there before me, and I talked to you as if you were here. I see you, as I did yesterday, beautiful, astonishingly beautiful. Yesterday, during the whole evening, I said to myself She is mine! Ah! The angels are not as happy in Paradise as I was yesterday!

11. Napoleon Bonaparte to Josphine de Beauharnais:

I am going to bed with my heart full of your adorable image I cannot wait to give you proofs of my ardent love How happy I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf a la creole. You know that I will never forget the little visits, you know, the little black forest I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the moment I will be in it. To live within Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields. Kisses on your mouth, your eyes, your breast, everywhere, everywhere.

12. John Keats to Fanny Brawne:

My sweet love, I shall wait patiently till tomorrow before I see you, and in the mean time, if there is any need of such a thing, assure you by your Beauty, that whenever I have at any time written on a certain unpleasant subject, it has been with your welfare impressd upon my mind. How hurt I should have been had you ever acceded to what is, notwithstanding, very reasonable! How much the more do I love you from the general result! In my present state of Health I feel too much separated from you and could almost speak to you in the words of Lorenzos Ghost to Isabella

Your Beauty grows upon me and I feel A greater love through all my essence steal.

My greatest torment since I have known you has been the fear of you being a little inclined to the Cressid; but that suspicion I dismiss utterly and remain happy in the surety of your Love, which I assure you is as much a wonder to me as a delight. Send me the words Good night to put under my pillow.

Dearest Fanny, Your affectionate J.K.

13. Lord Byron to Teresa Guiccioli (August, 1819):

My dearest Teresa,

I have read this book in your garden;–my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them,–which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love.

In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours–Amor mio–is comprised my existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel I shall exist hereafter,–to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent. I love you, and you love me,–at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events.

But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, –but they never will, unless you wish it.

14. Voltaire to Olympe Dunover, written while in prison for their affair:

I am a prisoner here in the name of the King; they can take my life, but not the love that I feel for you. Yes, my adorable mistress, to-night I shall see you, and if I had to put my head on the block to do it.

For heaven’s sake, do not speak to me in such disastrous terms as you write; you must live and be cautious; beware of madame your mother as of your worst enemy. What do I say? Beware of everybody; trust no one; keep yourself in readiness, as soon as the moon is visible; I shall leave the hotel incognito, take a carriage or a chaise, we shall drive like the wind to Sheveningen; I shall take paper and ink with me; we shall write our letters.

If you love me, reassure yourself; and call all your strength and presence of mind to your aid; do not let your mother notice anything, try to have your pictures, and be assured that the menace of the greatest tortures will not prevent me to serve you. No, nothing has the power to part me from you; our love is based upon virtue, and will last as long as our lives. Adieu, there is nothing that I will not brave for your sake; you deserve much more than that. Adieu, my dear heart!

Arout (Voltaire)

15. Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn:

TO MY MISTRESS. Because the time seems very long since I heard concerning your health and you, the great affection I have for you has induced me to send you this bearer, to be better informed of your health and pleasure, and because, since my parting from you, I have been told that the opinion in which I left you is totally changed, and that you would not come to court either with your mother, if you could, or in any other manner; which report, if true, I cannot sufficiently marvel at, because I am sure that I have since never done any thing to offend you, and it seems a very poor return for the great love which I bear you to keep me at a distance both from the speech and the person of the woman that I esteem most in the world: and if you love me with as much affection as I hope you do, I am sure that the distance of our two persons would be a little irksome to you, though this does not belong so much to the mistress as to the servant.

Consider well, my mistress, that absence from you grieves me sorely, hoping that it is not your will that it should be so; but if I knew for certain that you voluntarily desired it, I could do no other than mourn my ill-fortune, and by degrees abate my great folly. And so, for lack of time, I make an end of this rude letter, beseeching you to give credence to this bearer in all that he will tell you from me.

Written by the hand of your entire Servant, H.R.

16. Leo Tolstoy to Valeria Arsenev (November, 1856):

I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever previous your heat, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings.