#relationship trauma is to navigate and also heal from it's a fucking mess

[elytrafemme]

oh you know what it is actually. the reason that i’m way more willing to talk about me being a bad girlfriend is because i have done a lot to be a better partner and have fought probably the most brutal uphill battle trying to heal from relationship issues in the past so that i can like actually love people better. and i still stumble and fall but i really am trying to be a better friend and partner and everything. 

but i can’t like. say the same of my exes. because you know, i’m not them. which makes it a lot harder to talk about anything they did because, like. i want to believe that they’re better now to anyone that came after me but i don’t know and unfortunately i don’t know if that knowledge would even fix this feeling. 

[aboutnavi]

One of the things that pisses me off so much about AFTG relationships is whatever the fuck Nora decided to do with Kevin and Thea. For one, let’s start with the big elephant in the room shall we: Kevin was fourteen and Thea was eighteen when they met each other. Kevin was literally a child and Thea was not. When they slept together for the first time Kevin is - presumably - eighteen (Nora only said it was his first year at EAU) and Thea was twenty two/three and it was in front of everyone. We know the Raven’s mindset is fucked up at best but seriously… in front of the entire team? They never talked about themselves in a normal-relationship way when they were at Evermore. According to Nora, “Thea’s last words to Kevin–until she showed up at Fox Tower in TKM–were to get some more practice in with the girls so he’d be ready for her when he graduated.” Be for real… this isn’t normal. But let’s pretend we can put all of this under the “they are Ravens and Ravens knows no boundaries and never had any normal human interaction in their lives” belt.

Let’s do a time skip. Riko breaks Kevin’s hand and Kevin leaves EAU. He spends a year at PSU not playing and not once he reached Thea. Understandable because he was still afraid. Then he starts playing again, still doesn’t reach her. She found out about all of this - broken hand, leaving the Ravens, playing again - through the media. Then, she shows up at PSU out of nowhere and almost doesn’t give a chance for Kevin to explain himself. Except Kevin explain - at best he can, considering he couldn’t put her in danger at the moment - but still she saw how Jean was and she knew what Riko was capable off, right? WRONG. Because Nora goes on to say the worst thing possible about their future:

Be fucking for real. You telling me you saw your teammate an inch from death, saw that the supposed love of your life had his career almost destroyed - and Thea and Kevin got married, so she is aware of the amount of trauma Kevin carry from being raised with Riko at EAU - and still the hate edges off because “after all, Kevin’s playing again, so no harm no foul, right?” ???? Are we seeing this? As a fandom, are we collectively seeing this?

“But Kevin needs someone who can keep up with him and with his obsession with Exy”. Ok, but I’m pretty sure there are other women besides Thea playing Exy that would be able to keep up with Kevin and still have an ounce of sensitivity in their bodies.

Now my only logical explanation to this, which is where I always go back to is that Thea and Kevin weren’t supposed to happen if Nora had planned AFTG like a normal writer should. We know she wrote a thousand versions of AFTG - even versions where Kevin dies or where Kevin/Andrew/Neil were together - before publishing as a book and we know she had so many versions inside her head she made the books a fucking mess but there is no way someone didn’t warned her about this absolutely fuckery of a relationship. I can’t believe we as a fandom bought into this and still reinforce it as a hc.

Also, do we really think Thea helped Kevin navigate his trauma after TKM? During their lives? This is so incredibly unfair because Kevin deserved someone who could help him heal himself and understand life outside of Exy but no, Nora really had to give us/him this mess.

I needed to vent a little, anyway…

[jedusaur]

Recs: Clint/Bucky fics with 200-500 kudos

after going through the entire Clint/Bucky pairing tag on AO3, I did a recs post for my favorite fics with under 200 kudos (a range covering more than half of the works in the tag) and now I've decided to do one for fics with 200-500 kudos (another ~quarter of the tag). there are 36 pages of fic with more than 500 kudos, so I figure most people won't get to these on a casual binge.

What Spring Does With the Cherry Trees, by @bittercape (32k) Bucky moves into Clint's apartment building and starts working on figuring out what he likes. this one has that lovely chill vibe where they both kinda know where their relationship is heading and neither of them is in too much of a rush to get there, which is my absolute favorite kind of slow burn, and there's a lot of focus on reflection and healing and self-care and just hangin out being comfortable with each other <3

You Can Never Go Home Again, by @flawedamythyst (49k) Clint and Bucky get sent back in time to 1939, and Bucky slowly unlearns his internalized homophobia and realizes that the "just two straight buddies helping each other out" handjobs they've been exchanging are not actually straight. I did a literal double-take when I saw how few kudos this had, it is one of my favorite fics in this pairing and it has the single hottest first kiss I have ever read in my entire life

Delicate Tension, by @feedmecookiesnow (53k) beautiful, quiet, sweet, sexy road trip fic, with lots of pleasant imagery in Bucky's photography and a satisfying slow-ish burn that resolves about halfway through so there's some nice early relationship navigation too. the tags are accurate but don't really convey the vibe of it, the trauma stuff is fairly low-key and the general feel is uplifting. also, the choice of tattoo on Clint's ass is INSPIRED, just an absolute *chef's kiss* bit of characterization there

Days That Used To Last A Lifetime, by @there-must-be-a-lock (10k) in which Clint is a dog walker and Bucky is a shameless flirt and both of them are a hot mess and do a lot of recreational drugs and end up murmuring secrets to strangers at ass o'clock in the morning in someone else's apartment

Sequestered, by @lizabethl (38k) in which Clint and Bucky are separately sent off to the same beach house for a much-needed vacation, then hop back on duty just long enough to temporarily acquire a child. deals with some tough stuff but it's mostly about healing and connection and growth

Hydra's Bite, by @flawedamythyst (118k) Buffy AU with a long piney slow burn and great found-family vibes. Clint is the Xander who rescues Bucky from a nest of hydras, Natasha is the Slayer, Coulson is kind of the Giles except undead, Jarvis is the ghost butler, Bruce has a demon living in him, and Tony inherited leadership of the Watchers' Council from his dad. also there's a running joke about all the demons Clint has fucked XD

quickly dream away the time; and then the moon, by @cloud--atlas (16k) Clint is housesitting Tony Stark's mansion in the Hamptons when Lucky gets through a hole in the hedge and makes friends with the hot rich neighbor

Gonna Be My Girl?, by @mightymightygnomepriest (46k) Clint and Bucky hook up while Clint is dressed up as a schoolgirl for Halloween, then they both make some assumptions they shouldn't be making and Clint keeps fucking Bucky in girl mode only. I'm not generally a fan of this kind of miscommunication-based plot, but this one really worked for me

The Middle of the Story, by @lissadiane (13k) look. I know you're gonna read the tag "Clint is literally a unicorn" and immediately want to roll your eyes and close the tab. I know. just... *takes you by the shoulders and looks intensely into your eyes* just trust me, okay

Personal Security (Let's Go Steal Ourselves a Remix), by @supervillainny (8k) Clint develops an inconvenient crush on the head of security at the art gallery he and Nat are about to rob

Boris the Soviet Love Hammer, by @bittercape (11k) the title/tags/summary make this one sound way crackier than it is, it's just a fun get-together fic with a few shenanigans. the part where they're fighting bad guys and Steve goes "Hawkeye, NO" and Clint is just like :D "Hawkeye yes" :D made me laugh very very hard

Universal Constant, by @mariana-oconnor (16k) Clint gets knocked into another dimension where Bucky is a stripper, bangs him, then finds that dimension's Clint and bangs both of them together. A+ no notes

how do you want me, by @feathers-and-cigarettes and @sevdrag (6k) deliciously twisted hookup-turned-attempted-murder-turned-back-to-hookup

All Bark, All Bite, by @hawksonfire (6k) he was a werewolf, he was a vampire, can I make it any more obvious

[memorieow]

I'm putting memorie on indefinite hiatus

Content warning as I do discuss abuse, rape and trauma in general

TLDR: I have been enduring abuse since I was a teen and this latest traumatic event has affected me to the point of leaving the internet behind, including this musical alias.

I’ve been offline for a little while over Christmas and also recently been unable to get on social media and been reflecting on what I want not only for this project but just my life and happiness in general. The entire events of the past few months have been traumatic, and it’s such a slap in the face when I was on a path to being mentally healthy and healed from previous trauma. I remember how the relationships and friendships in my life used to play out and how inept I was trying to navigate the world being like 15, 16, 17 with all this shit going on in my brain, being isolated from all my friends in real life and just being in this deep depression, thinking everyone was mad at me, mistreating people close to me and self sabotaging my life. I mean my childhood was alright but since I was 13, I’ve been put through events that I can’t even bring myself to think about, just repress it as best I can. I think about how when I turned 17 I chose to get better and learned so much about how to just be a person again. I got beat up a few months prior and was wearing the same neutral outfit every day. I say neutral as there was nothing identifiable about it, it wasn’t even masculine or feminine, just neutral. I remember just feeling like I’d lost all sense of self, like no matter what I did, as long as I lived I was going to be put through traumatic events no matter what. The truth is, when you live in the middle of nowhere and grow up weird and sensitive and you think there’s just something wrong with your existence, you tend to just hang around whoever will hang around you. I put myself in situations to get abused, hurt, traumatized. But when I turned 17, I just decided to be “myself” and work on healing myself and so when I got into yet another relationship that year, I tried as hard as I could to do everything right, but ultimately, when you’re with someone who hurts you, it messes with your head, you do stuff out of character, they manipulate you into this weak shell of a person where you’re controlled by them. And when it gets really bad you just hide it. I just can’t believe that after how many times I tried to tell my friends I was being abused, they all didn’t believe me when I was essentially forced to come out about it. Like how many times did I say I wanted to get out, how many times did I call you from outside the house because I was scared to be in the house with her, how many times did I write a song and literally say in the fucking lyrics someone is hurting me, it’s killing me.

It’s crazy, after I finally left her I tried to give her a chance at being my friend, I never wanted to see her as only bad and I especially never wanted her image hurt, I’d be on the phone with her and she’d beg me to come back to her and live with her and when I said no, she’d threaten me with posting stuff on twitter about me, blatant lies, recounting a phone call where I was supportive, and saying me, an actual rape victim, tried to victim blame her. Combine that with discord messages that are literally 3 years old from the age of 15 (right after the most traumatic event of my life) of me reaching out for help (not in a healthy way, but again, nobody tells you when you get raped at 15 how to cope or how to act in the future) and that was enough for basically all of my friends to leave me behind. This is all to say, I don’t wanna be in this community, I don’t want more fake friends, I want to be appreciated by those around me for who I am, believed, taken seriously. I don’t even like making this music anymore, it’s been entirely ruined for me if I’m being honest. I just hope when I finally get the strength to leave, they leave me alone. If getting abused wasn’t enough, being reminded of it by the constant harassment and death threats from her and her friends is enough to send me off the internet. I don’t wanna do this anymore, I wanna work my job and go to school and then move far away. Thanks to anyone who read, this won’t be available to read soon I don’t think just due to google’s limitations. I just wanna put the mic down for now, I want to be okay, and this soundcloud serves as a reminder of what’s happened to me. I wanna heal and I don’t need this following me. I wanna say to anyone who’s been through physical or emotional abuse, especially alone, I’m so sorry for what you’ve endured. It’s not right or fair that this happens, it’s not right or fair when the people around you choose to not believe you, it’s awful and I can’t describe how bad it gets. But you can always rebuild and leave those shitty people behind and heal, become better and although trauma sticks with you forever, it gets easier. At least I hope so. 

Again thank you for reading and once I finish these last few paid verses/placements I will be deactivating my instagram/discord/everything else I can find that has my name attached and you will most likely not hear from me again unless we’re close.

Thank you so much to everyone who's supported me over the past year and a half, thank you to the people who came to see me live, I'm sure I will perform again some day, just not as "memorie", lol. Thank you everyone. Till next time

[bandofchimeras]

Re: autism, trauma and emotional labor of survival

I've beaten myself into a hollowed out anxious wreck trying to maintain a facade of being decent and likable and cool and what tbe fuck ever it would take for people to keep talking to me, include me in things. Mostly bc i live on the edge of poverty acutely aware of possibly needing to survive or get medical expenses paid via fundraiser. Maintaining lots of points of contact feels vital.

Itdoesn't work, and in fact backfired in then doing vulnerability oversharing honesty whiplash like hey actually, I am a MESS please don't leave me or Now I Really Need Help and like....

that's toxic, and its exhausting and I'm fucking sick of it. But I have to point this out:

when you're traumatized & autistic, "just be yourself" DOES NOT WORK THE WAY YOU FUCKING THINK IT DOES. you can NOT be yourself at work all the time, especially if you want to advance. You HAVE to control your moods, your tone, your sensory experiences, or advocate for yourself in advance. in many places publicly it is dangerous to stim or frolic or even to zone out, much less to meltdown. you don't just get to relax without experiencing a lot of literal uncalled for hate. you will be disliked and people will constantly find problems with you even if you mask. On the internet, you will offend or upset or confuse people.

Its literally inescapable.

So stop pretending socializing can be easy for everyone if they just relax. That's so silly.

When you're autistic and traumatized,, you have to find your people. who understand, accommodate, and love you, who can be honest when you make mistakes without roasting you over the spit. y

To heal, you have to create a really nice and safe space in your own home to decompress and YOU and the other people in your family, chosen or otherwise, determine what that means. Not any arbitrary social rules about Good Behavior. You have to find a big support system.

And not everyone can or does. Not everyone gets there. Especially physically disabled autistic people. Especially trans autistic people.

There's a lot of abuse, codependency, getting stuck, falling in with the wrong crowd, while you try to figure out survival.

And while I don't mean to paint a bleak picture and its very very possible to create a beautiful loving life while disabled, autistic, traumatized....I wish someone had been real with me early on about the risks, and popped some of my idealistic bubbles. Given me a good schooling on red flags, on navigating welfare, on social rules and what to expect from people.

It doesn't just get better.

You have to fight to make it better and even then sometimes...it just is what it is. You're not immune from getting kicked down the drain pipe. Life's like that and yeah. It sucks.

Thats the whole reason WHY being kind is important but being kind all the time will also not always help you survive. Your soul needs protection too. And so....

Its okay to mask. Its okay to study NT society and get along. Its okay to live under a lot of pressure so you can keep yourself or loved ones afloat. Its okay to reconcile with the parasitic selves constructed by your pain. Its okay if you never fully heal because life doesn't stop beating you down. Its okay not to be where you thought you would be or have to make choices you don't want to make to survive. You don't have to be relaxed and full of pleasure and wonderful experiences even if you deserve them, you just have to keep going and carve out time and space for them when you can.

And I'm rooting for all of us to make it out of survival mode and find the goodness that can lift one another up. But it is hard. And for some of us, those very vital social relationships that enable survival are the hardest things to find and maintain while being ourselves.

Some days positivity and hope are nice. But tonight I need to be real. And its okay. It really is okay. If you're alive, fed, and relatively safe....you're doing wonderful. And there is always another chance to connect, or get to somewhere better. But its okay to just be where you are now, too. Even if its alone or in a life you never would have wanted.

Don't give up just because its harder than you expected.

Its not your fault.

[owletstarlet]

Ahhhh hello hello!! May I request 19 for either Tanuma and/or Natsume? :3

From this headcanon ask meme.  “19: what do they think about before falling asleep at night?” I answered for both! 

Regarding Natsume—from what we see, and from what I can surmise, he’s either thinking about the youkai-problem-du-jour, or about the people in his life that care about him. There’s a very telling scene that exists in both the anime in the episode “Through the Fading Autumn Wind” in the third season as well as in the manga, where Nishimura and Kitamoto come over to tell him in no uncertain terms that he shouldn’t have to do a school festival job that makes him uncomfortable. And then later, Sensei wakes to hear him crying quietly in his futon. While that was specific to the situation in a lot of ways I think it’s reflective of what’s going through his head all the time, probably especially before he goes to sleep in the house of the kind family that took him in—that he’s grateful to the point of being overwhelmed by it that he’s surrounded by warm and loving people, that he’s fully aware that he’s lying to most of them about some crucially important things, that he probably doesn’t think he deserves it and that he’s terrified of losing it, especially if it’s because something he fucked up and got someone hurt over. I think it improves as he begins to heal from trauma as the series continues, and as he’s able to be more honest about certain aspects of his life, and sees the Found Family™ demonstrate in practice that they love him fiercely and unconditionally.  But in the very back of his mind I think he’s got this old lingering fear of waiting for the other shoe to drop, that something will go wrong and he’ll be alone again, and now he’s got so much more than he ever had before to lose.

With Tanuma, there’s bound to be a lot of overlap, in regard to how much time he’d spend thinking about having friends who love him, after days spent with them. Like Natsume, this is virtually the first time in his life that he’s had friends, and it probably leaves him both feeling incredibly warm and also a bit wrongfooted and worried that he’ll do something to mess it up. I think it’d take awhile to sink in with him that Nishimura, Kitamoto and even Taki would want to be friends with him for his own sake and not just because he’s Natsume’s friend; and every time one of them does a normal, thoughtful friend thing for him such as bringing him homework when he’s sick, he is very touched by it, and very determined to be a Good Friend back, whatever that might mean; he’s still figuring that part out, and whether or not it’s something transactional. I think he’s got the sort of Anxiety Brain™ that plays on loop every single interaction he’s had with every single person throughout the day, even down to the most mundane ones with total strangers such as with a bus driver or a cashier, his subconscious making sure he navigated all social interactions Correctly (and subsequently informing him that he didn’t). With his friends, this tendency is probably ratcheted up by a factor of ten at least, and with Natsume, astronomically more. We won’t open the can of worms here that is his own estimation of his relationship with Natsume and what he thinks himself to be worth—it’s painful not being able to catch up with your friend, etc., etc.— but it’s safe to say that that eats up a lot of his headspace on any given night, the determination to be better and more and helpful. It sounds exhausting. (Equally exhausting are those completely canon nightmares he has about seeing Natsume getting gobbled up by some youkai when he knows that realistically he’d be helpless to prevent exactly that.) I think that as he develops his own sense of self-worth and realizes that he means so much to all his friends exactly the way he is, he’ll get a little more sleep at night.

Thanks for this, it’s a good one! Anyone please feel free to drop me an ask! 

[buildingrelationshipsinanarchy]

So I’m meditating on a new connection that I made since getting organized and being in community with other radical, poly, queer people of color.

It has me rethinking a lot about the ways I’ve done connection in my past, and how even this Queered Intimacy Model Project was a way to grope toward a better way of being in connection before really knowing how to embody it, me wanting to stick to the values I held and learning how to grow & mature into them.

I showed them the infographics I made to discuss this. (Here you go, enjoy them. I worked relatively hard on them; don’t they look really good tho!! Anyways...)

I’m finding myself wanting a connection with them that centers a certain level of emotional intimacy with that unfolds both slowly and all at once. It makes sense, I promise.

As a massage therapist, one of the things I’ve learned about bodies, energy, sex and healing is that when you take your time over certain collections of stress or tightness, or when you move slowly toward an orgasm, or give yourself time to emotionally process an intense experience, the process is long and sometimes laborious. But when you workout the root of the tension, or hit their sweet spots at the right angle, or drop that one phrase they needed to hear in those words, it all comes rushing or (gushing 😉) out.

It’s like when all the veggies in the wok are sizzling in the sauce you’ve prepared, because once it’s reached the right temperature, a few flips or stirs is when all the flavor becomes infused into your dish. Man, food & sex & touch & bodies & feelings & poetry; can you tell I’m a Taurus?

Anyways, let’s move on. I brought this up to think through how I’ve navigated connection with this person already who’s touched an interesting part of me so quickly since meeting them. And how being in a close-knit community with them affects this. I also get teach how this works in real-time, I guess?

It’ll be a week tomorrow since meeting them, having our lightening connection and having some truly amazing sex and shared emotional-energetic experiences. (This person is getting blog post about them, like I need y’all to understand I’m shooketh and in my fucking feelings).

Anyways, to translate this into the QIM language. I’ve hit all for corners of it pretty quickly. Part of it comes from both of us being actively anti-capitalist and being in community that is doing mutual aid. So here is me hitting some different moments in all of those categories:

Daekkonic moments of intimacy:

• I’ve held emotional space for them to cry, processing sexual trauma, parental abuse, and toxic last connections.

• We’ve spent whole nights talking about our personal approaches to spirituality and sharing some details of our practices. Both our fathers were theologians and musicians, so naturally there’s much to say there lol

• We’ve shared poetry, written excerpts, music they’ve recorded; in one of our car rides, they made up a song on the ukulele for me, and later I sang for them.

• They held space for me to cry sharing some of the ways I’ve been traumatized, abused, coerced and sexually objectified. They also touched on some of my vulnerabilities leftover from years of being bullied and publically embarrassed through middle and high school (👀👀)

Phadronic moments of intimacy:

• Our first evening, we shared a bed (and didn’t have sex, believe it or not), but a lot of that time was time spent touching.

• Holding hands while eye-gazing

• Being snuggled into each other

• Stroking their hair while telling stories

• Oh, and the forehead kisses! I love giving forehead kisses.

Serotic moments of intimacy:

• Ugh, fine; I admit it. To no one’s surprise, we also dry humped each other like high schoolers listening to old Chris Brown tracks (before he became problematic 😒).

• Our first real interaction was me doing an energy reading on them at the mutual aid food prep event their roommate was hosting and invited me to. It became very serotic, very quickly with all of the intensity of my attention on them.

• Many moments where meeting their eyes stirred a passion with all the energy they kept throwing at me throughout the evening

• I mean, like, after the first night, we shared tons of of really emotionally intense sexual experiences; the most serotic parts of those moments, was feeling all the parts of them my body wasn’t touching.

Mudship moments:

• Again, so being radicals in community with radicals, we share material resources. I dropped them off and picked them up from work for most of this week.

• They gave me their keys and I prepared them lunch to take back to work for them; I had made enough extra for dinner, for us and their roommates as well.

• I’m a licensed Massage Therapist, and did for both them and their roommate some bodywork and stretching and a little teaching.

• They’ve allowed me to sleep at their apartment the first night we met, and nights after, because my car is missing a headlight and driving while black could get me murdered by police (ACAB, in case you thought for a moment I felt otherwise).

So, this looks like a regular-degular ass relationship; what’s so special about this that I can’t just use regular ass language to talk about this?

Good question, but the only good answer I have, is that I don’t fucking want to. The point is to not think of this the same ways my culture does.

Which, makes me ask another question, I think is relevant for anyone reading this and thinking through my model: What are y’all (if anything)? Which labels fits best here, since your doing all of the things?

Another good question. The answer is none of them. The QIM exists not as a tool to label and categorize things. It exists as a framework, a way of being and navigating real-time connection and spaces, a radical relationship theory, if you will.

I believe it’s best offering is two-fold:

1. On the one hand, you get the validate all of the situationships, half-lovers, ‘more-than-just-friend’-ships, because we get to talk about intimacy in a way that is dynamic and fluid.

2. It’s gets be a way to catch all of the moments and experiences that impacts us but don’t have much of a way to talk about, or even validate as to help process what those brought up for us, or left us feeling.

So, this getting long, so I’ll wrap up here. But I’m thinking of what intimacy means when I get to stretch connections like this over time, similar to honey, every drop of it is viscous and rich. I feel both excited and unnerved.

I can still hear their voice over the ukulele in my car. I’m a mess rn, don’t @ me.

[echo-bleu]

Oct 19-21 is the Good Intentions WIP fest ( @goodintentionswipfest ), the time to let go of abandoned WIPs and post them as is. Given that I’ve written a lot in the last year and also recently moved fandoms, I thought it was a good time to clean up my WIP folder(s), so I’ll be posting a few things that I started and gave up part way through. This means that each snippet is unfinished and not meant to be a full fic.

RNM, Alex, 1497 words. This was going to be a part of my Lines of Fear and Blame series about Alex & Isobel friendship, titled Drive Until You Lose The Road. [depression, PTSD, mentions of war, death, amputation and explosions, survivor’s guilt]

Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that when their lives finally quiet down, it takes Alex so much time to get used to it.

He didn't have to get used to the violence. It crept up on him. His brothers have always played rough, as far as he can remember, rough enough to hurt each other, and he was the smallest. He got kicked and punched and fell a lot. His father's blows were a different kind of pain, but it was still pain. Violence was never strange to Alex.

He didn't have to get used to the war, because he's always been at war. The war outside is more deadly, more awful than the war in his family, but it was never more painful than the war inside him.

He had to get used to the pain, because you forget the pain. You live with the memory of the blows and the broken bones, but you forget the pain, because your brain simply can't handle the prospect of being in that much pain again. So when Alex loses his leg, and he discovers the kind of pain that never leaves, the phantom limb and the constant ache in the stump and his messed up shoulder and his broken neck vertebra, it takes him months to stop hoping, in that short moment just before he wakes up in the morning, that it will go away. It takes him longer to stop raging about it. But when it comes down to it, he adapts easily. He's never had trouble to adapt to the dozens of places he's lived in, even overseas−it's not like he has many friends to miss. He adapts to being back in Roswell and having only one foot and seeing his father seemingly everywhere.

He doesn't really have to adapt to the skin-tight sense of wrongness of his life being turned over again. It's not so much the alien reveal−what does it really matter, if Michael is a telekinetic alien on top of being bisexual? It's the seeing Michael again. Navigating their shipwreck of a relationship. Finding out what his father has done, and is doing, and how it connects again to the depth of Michael's suffering. But Alex has never felt anything that came close to settled, to home, to safe. So it's just another war to fight.

Fighting is his default mode. Constant hypervigilance, of his surrounding and of his own body. The problem with trauma, is that it makes your brain forget to switch off fight mode. So no, it shouldn't come as a surprise that when the dust finally settles down around them, Alex finds himself spiraling down.

He groans at the ache in his head and his leg when he wakes up from his vague slumber and vaguer nightmarish half-dreams for the third time this morning. This time, his phone buzzing is what broke the silence. Sighing, he reaches for the phone and squints at it.

“Hey, Alex,” the video message says. “The last few days have been amazing. We're heading out to the airport soon, we'll be back home by mid afternoon. Text me if you want me to come by, I miss you.”

Alex sighs and lets his head fall back against his pillow. He's glad that he bought Michael a smartphone, if it means that he can see his face like this more often, but today he just misses him. It's ridiculous, honestly. They've been apart for a whole three days. But after a decade of missing each other, it's like he won't breathe until Michael is in his arms again.

He hesitates before texting, then chides himself. I'll be waiting for you, he writes, overriding his fear. Michael loves to leave him random video messages, and Alex only replies through texts. And right now, given how amazing a wind-swept Michael looks in the sun of Houston, he's glad of that. It's ten a.m., but his bedroom is still dark and starting to smell stale, and he lying in bed in his boxers.

He doesn't want Michael to see him like that, but he knows he won't be over this depression spell by tonight. Not with what today is.

No more events today, the calendar on his phone states. Alex couldn't bring himself to put anything in, even Michael's plane back. He declined to make the round trip to Albuquerque with Liz to pick the alien siblings up at the airport, citing his leg's dislike for spending time sitting in a car, but that was only half of the reason.

Michael doesn't know, of course. Isobel threw a party for their shared birthday last Saturday, then swept her brothers away to Houston to the NASA center as a birthday gift, to celebrate Max's resurrection and the twins' new interest at reconnecting with their origins. It's also an occasion to air out their issues without humans breathing down their necks, Michael confided in Alex, and start the process of healing together. Alex is happy that it seems to have gone well.

His own relationship with Michael is slowly growing, since they started rebuilding it from the ground up. Michael spends most of his nights at the cabin now, and they've been going out together more and more, working on Alex's instinctive need to hide. It's been rough, in some ways, but they're settling into a pattern that works for them, and since Max's resurrection and Jesse Manes's death, things have been quiet on the government conspiracy front.

Which leaves Alex here, now, three days into Michael's trip away from Roswell, feeling like he shouldn't be this depressed. For the first time ever, his life is good. He has close friends, his relationship with Michael is the best it's ever been, and the shadow of his father is finally gone.

It's just that being away from Michael is so damn hard. It's just that his pain level have been through the roof for a week.

It's just that today is the anniversary of the day he walked onto a bomb.

Alex buries his face fully in his pillow, his eyes filling with tears again. He didn't want to tell Michael and ruin his family trip. Liz was here yesterday, also feeling a little bereft at Max's absence, but she doesn't know the date anymore than his other friends. His men will call him, probably. They flew in and threw him a party when he was discharged two months ago, even though they're scattered across the country. They'll mourn together for the two brothers who didn't make it back home.

There's a yap, and from the bedroom door, left open since Alex is on his own, comes a running bundle of fur. Alex barely has time to turn and see her before Ksenia jumps up on the bed and sticks her nose under his chin.

“Hey, girl,” he murmurs as she mercilessly tickles him with her fur. She proceeds to lick his face, without paying any heed to his efforts to push her away. Alex fights for a minute before he gives in, leaving her free reign over his body.

Ksenia just settles down, half on the bed and half on his chest, with her head resting against his. Her warm presence is comforting, as Alex's ticklish giggles turn into sobs.

“I miss them, Ksenia,” he hiccups. “I don't…I probably wouldn't even be talking to Karl if he was alive, because he was an asshole, but I still fucking miss them.”

Ksenia just gives him another lick. Alex feels like he's choking from the pain inside his chest, like he can't take another breath. It's not even a panic attack, he can recognize those from a mile away, just plain old grief. He weeps for what feels like hours−actually minutes, but he comes out the other side feeling dried out and exhausted, tears and snot mixing with Ksenia's saliva on his face. He feels disgusting, yet he can't quite bring himself to get up and go shower.

What's the point, when Dawson and Karl will never get up again? Sometimes Alex can't even understand how he's still living, still handling the day to day things, everything so inconsequential and unimportant.

Not when it fucking hurts so much, that he came back and they didn't. That he came back and doesn't understand why, doesn't understand how.

Suddenly he feels trapped lying down, the weight too heavy on his chest. He sits up with a start, disturbing the poor Ksenia who yelps and jumps off the bed. Alex wants to apologize, but words are beyond him right now. He wheezes, throwing back his duvet until he can see his stump, and not the metal beam that crushed his leg and trapped him inside the crumbling building.

Ksenia must not be too angry at him because she doesn't give up and tries again, this time wrapping herself into his lap. Alex breathes out and hugs her tightly. “I'm sorry Ksenia,” he rasps out.

[appleciders]

personally, im also deep in the station 19 muck but like you i wish i wasn't. randomly watched it because pandemic and maya bishop is just so compelling, even with all the bad writing i still love her sm. is there anything you would want to see for season 4? your hair cut fic was so good and i cant stop thinking about how much better the season would have been had it ended like that instead.

first off, sorry to both of us for being here! but i guess let’s take escapism where can get it, hey. second, thank you so much for reading the fic!! i’m super honored you liked it <33

as for what i would want for s4...whew. a lot, lmao. i’ll put in under a cut to save my poor non-s19 followers.

mostly, i want them to please slow down the pacing. let story arcs breathe and build and develop. last season was so rushed—ryan’s death and rigo’s death and pruitt’s death all crammed in, andy and sullivan having a shotgun wedding out of nowhere, maya and carina fastforwarding to i love yous with only 30 second scenes and not a real date to be seen, vic hardly getting to process ripley—i could go on. it’s cheap and messy storytelling. cut it out. 

i also really want them to let relationships do the same. i want to see the friendships that were so strained last season to grow again. show me andy, maya, and vic being friends and supporting each other!! for the love of god!! (show me andy and maya being friends, period. for the whole season. the whole goddamn season. no drama between them, only supporting each other through outside drama. if i have to see another season where these ‘best friends’ are at each other’s throats half the time, i swear to god.) 

show me more team-as-family! a) i eat that shit up, and b) that’s supposed to be the underlying theme and premise of the show. show them laughing and goofing off together, show them holding each other up when things get tough, show them teasing each other to hell and back while they cook together in the beanery. invest in that again.

for the romances....develop that shit. honestly, i really hope andy and sullivan either break up or really do the fucking work to fix their relationship, because as-is, it’s a hot mess. and not a hot mess i particularly care to watch. i liked them fine in season 2, but the sullivan arc in s3 (which...not to out myself as having watched chicago fire, but which is a blatant rip-off of severide’s s1 arc in cf) puts him in a place where he’s not really ready for a relationship. and with the amount of shit they put andy through, she’s not, either. i know it’s impossible on a drama, but i would really like andy to be single this season? idk, i’m tired.

maya and carina better not be all sunshine and rainbows. they need to do the work! they need to show the work! after that rushed-ass ‘forgive me’ scene (where carina was...pressured into forgiving maya like the day after she cheated on her??? and that was framed as a good thing?? make it make sense), they deserve to show them actually navigating that broken trust and rebuilding something real. and as someone who doesn’t watch grey’s, i really don’t know carina very well? 90% of her scenes were her supporting maya through her ongoing breakdown (though a  totally understandable breakdown! not criticizing maya for having trauma), so i’d like to see more of a balance of support in the relationship and more development of her as an individual apart from maya. she’ll be sticking around, and that will be much more interesting if she bonds with other members of the team.

dean and vic...look, my hands-down #1 wish for season 4 is that they treat vic hughes well, with respect, with screentime, and with a good arc. she’s the absolute best. and as much as i love dean miller (hint: a lot), he needs to start guzzling his respecting vic juice if the writers are gonna try to set up anything. personally, i’d really like to see them move past it? awkward crushes between friends happen. putting myself in dean’s shoes, living with one of my best friends who i’m also secretly crushing on, watching her play with my baby...it’d be a lot too!! but that doesn’t excuse being a dick, so i’d really like to see them take some time apart, and then start their friendship back up on a foundation of honesty and communication. because they’re so good, guys.

individual character notes!!!

well. i want every person at this goddamn station to go to therapy. they won’t, but i want them to.

andy needs to go to serious grief counseling after season 3. compounded by what’s bound to be a shitstorm from the discovery that her mother is alive? please. in regards to the whole mother arc, i really don’t want it her disappearance to have been like...gang-related. i’ve seen that posited as a theory, and that’s just a whole bundle of stereotypes we don’t need to get into. i also want the mom reveal to be the main revelation that takes up the majority of her arc the first half of the season, just to have time to process it. the captain’s race took up all of season 1—you can give this twist time to marinate properly.  

vic hughes, my moon, my stars! i really loved the snippets of vic’s backstory that they gave us in s3. as someone who lost a family member to early-onset alzheimer’s in november, 3x09 was...oof. a lot. i love how they committed to fleshing out her past and her backstory more and i love the emotional depth barrett doss always brings to the screen. for season 4, i’d love to see vic get to process ripley and jackson properly. (and here i repeat my forever adage for female characters lol: let them be single for a hot sec.) i want her to move in with maya, because i think that dynamic is so fun and ripe for exploration, and then i’d love to see her digging in to her issues and getting help—going back to the firefighter group, actually talking, spending time with her found family. (sidenote: would love to see her help out with some like youth community theatre classes on her days off? developing connections with kids who have gone through losses, supporting them and in turn realizing the support she needs herself...tell me vic singing with kids wouldn’t be the cutest shit). anyway, i just rly want her to get a good storyline. but i’m not a screenwriter so like...hope they come up with one!

i’ve already written much more than i’m sure you wanted, so i’m going to condense the boys into one paragraph lol. i want jack gibson to heal himself and stop sleeping with taken women! his new found family is super sweet, so i really hope he gets to keep it throughout s4. i want travis montgomery to get only good and happy things, and the same goes for warren. actually, i’d love to see warren step into his new role as team Older Person a bit more? i think that would be a really fun and heartwarming dynamic to play with all the other characters. dean i think i already touched on, but i’d love him to take a breath, apologize to vic and explain, and lean on the rest of his found family. he’s gonna be such a good dad and i’m excited to see more of that.

finally: maya. oh, maya. she needs therapy. you can’t have a character say she’s been dealing with suicidal ideation and anxiety for nearly 20 years and just...magically make it all better. she deserves to get to unpack all the shit with her dad, and all the ways that’s impacted her. on some level, i kinda wish she’d not stayed as captain—i love her scenes so much when she’s allowed to be just chilling on the same level as her team. since that’s not the case, finding a right balance of her as captain and her as friend is gonna be super important. i want her to open up to her friends and lean on them. i’d love for mason to come back, too? i think her trying to heal herself, establish herself as a team member and leader, and rebuild her relationships with her brother as well as her found family and girlfriend would be more than enough material for an arc. it won’t always go great! this stuff isn’t an easy fix! but that’s why it’d be worth writing. plus, so many members of the team have shitty relationships with their parents that even though they won’t understand what maya went through, there’s some really fertile ground for compassion and cathartic ‘fuck our dads’ ball-busting i’d love to see seeded. bonus father’s day episode where literally none of them are happy and they decide to like...go play laser tag or something.

anyway, i’m sure that’s more than you wanted!! but thank you for the q lmao apparently i had a lot to say

[millennial-ring]

Can we get more info on 5-7?

             5. Dear God

So this one is ANCIENT (2012!!!) and idk why it’s still in my WIPs folder because I do clean it out/reorganize it every few years or so (which is why that unfinished powershipping christmas fic wasn’t on the list, cause I moved it to a different folder). Sadly the title makes it seem more interesting than it actually is - it’s just a few paragraphs and nothing really happens at all. 

Russet eyes were glazed over as they watched the rain pelt the ground, each drop making tiny indents in the dirt, puffs of the still-dry earth floating up with each splash before settling down again, the process repeating over...and over... Rain drummed against the body of a beaten up jeep, the only prominent sound within miles, save to the sound of the rain falling in the grass, and the dirt, and the leather jacket Bakura wore. 

The man blinked as water ran down his face, following the curve of his brow and rolling over the crease of his eyelid, flowing into his eye. The water pooled between his lids, blurring his vision for a few moments until he blinked again, and the water was squeezed out to mingle with the rest on his face, like a single, solitary tear. He inhaled slowly, then let the breath out in a quick huff, turning away from the long stretch of dirt road in front of him. Behind him, another long chunk of drivable desert. He growled under his breath and began to pace, wet sand squishing under his boots, gravel shifting with each step. 

How could be trapped here, in the middle of fucking nowhere, with a flat fucking tire and no spare? 

It was inspired by this Avenged Sevenfold song and I vaguely remember that it was going to be thiefshipping, about the various trials Bakura goes through to get back to Malik after a fight or something but... 🤷

              6. Domestic Disturbance

This one is also super short, more fleshed out in my mind than on paper, and I started writing it after we had to call the cops on our neighbors because they were having a very loud and long argument (like, over an hour of yelling). Inspiration comes from the dumbest places with me, haha, but this is another one of those “why is this still in my wips” documents because I don’t have any intention of finishing it. After writing what I did I kinda had a “maybe these kinds of situations shouldn’t be your inspiration for fanfics, weirdo” moment and I scrapped it. But anyway! 

The story goes that Bakura was playing some Wii game, lost grip on the controller, and accidentally chucked it and broke a vase because he wasn’t wearing the wrist strap. Malik hears the crash and comes around the corner, lecturing him about “how many times have i told you i s2g bakura why are you like this” even as Bakura’s already beginning to clean up the mess. Bakura gruffly tells him to chill out because nothing important was broken anyway, just “that ugly ass vase” and he holds up a piece for Malik to see. The tension thickens immediately and Malik speaks with measured anger instead of the usual screaming, so Bakura knows He Fucked Up. “That was a gift from my sister.” Bakura panics a bit on the inside, but outside he scoffs and he’s all like “even better, tell her she has awful tastes” because ykno. He’s like that. Doesn’t wanna admit he fucked up, doesn’t wanna take responsibility or acknowledge he hurt Malik’s feelings. At this point I’d stopped writing it, but still have the basic outline. The regular bickering becomes a super intense all out screaming match about basically anything and everything, all the tiny little things they’d been burying for as long as they’d lived together finally coming out, start demanding why they ever thought this would work and they’re just about to get to that great crescendo where they're about to break up (”Well then maybe you shouldn’t have brought me back!” “At this point I’m inclined to agree!” Bakura’s shocked. “Well...then is this going where I think it’s going?” “I think it is.” “Then say it.” “...” “Say you want to break up!” “I...Bakura, I...” when someone knocks on the door. Heyo, it’s two cops, saying someone called in a domestic disturbance. Malik snaps that they’re fine, still pissed from the fight, but obviously like no Malik that’s not gonna help. So one officer brings Bakura out into the hall to question him and the other stays with Malik. Cop asks if they’re together, how long, what the fight was about, etc etc, and then if the fight had been physical at all. Bakura recoils in shock and practically screams “No!” “You never hit Malik?” “I would never!” “And Malik wouldn’t hit you?” There’s a few things there, bc I wasn’t sure how I wanted Bakura to respond; make an “only if he asked wink wonk” joke that the cop rolls his eyes at, or stammer that “i mean he’s smacked my head once or twice but it never hurt and i was being super annoying at the time and it was more like playful slapping” but either way the cop asks for a more direct answer or for Bakura to elaborate and Bakura gets pissed, says Malik would cut off his own hand before he hit Bakura because obviously. Cop seems taken aback but nods, and then lectures Bakura a bit about volume, tells him maybe one of them should pack a bag and stay with friends or family for a few days. Their partner comes out soon after and the two cops leave. Bakura goes back inside, where Malik is standing with his arms crossed, looking shaken with red rimmed eyes. They look at each other, feeling awkward, but then they make tea, sit down, and have a calmer “are we really like that?” conversation. they admit a lot of their fights are pointless and stupid and they’re just fighting to fight because it’s Their Thing and aha, aren’t we so cute and quirky, arguing is our foreplay - which it is, but they admit they’ve taken it too far, gotten too used to snapping at each other when something happens, and some of their issues (like Bakura disrespecting Malik’s siblings, and Malik’s control freak attitude) really need to be sat down and talked out, not screamed out. They apologize, foreheads pressed together, and Malik thumbs a tear from Bakura’s cheek. Bakura strokes his fingers through Malik’s hair. Malik makes a “well you know the best part about fighting, right?” and Bakura laughs, and then it ends.

               7. But he came back

So if y’all didn’t know I recently commissioned a(n amazing) fic from @/sitabethel (not properly tagging cause i don’t wanna bother them). In it, Bakura promises Malik he’ll come back after his final showdown with Atem, but ten years pass and Malik gets engaged to Seto. It’s corporate theifshipping and obviously I recommend reading it - but it’s based on an RP I did with a friend of mine years ago. In the RP, Bakura was pissed Malik hadn’t waited for him and does the whole “why did I even bother coming back I literally only came back to be with you?????” and Malik being like “Sorry? But you took a long fucking time and I had to do something to stop the loneliness.” We never finished it, but when we dropped it Bakura was starting to heal and move on and we had plans to end it powershipping and tendershipping - and Bakura catching the bouquet at the wedding and Ryou immediately being like >:) but anyway. The concept stuck with me and I really liked the idea of Bakura coming back to that situation and more so rolling with it - maybe a touch bitter at first, but hey, he’s nothing if not adaptable, and he absolutely invites himself into the relationship in the clunkiest way possible. 

“But he came back” was the start of my own attempt to write something with that kind of plot. When I write a fic, I start with a vague collection of ideas or scenes I want to write, and then when I have enough to work with, I begin organizing them into an outline. This doc is just a very small collection of ideas and dialogue, mixing some things taken from the RP and my own ideas. It’s mostly things like how Malik and Kaiba get to the marriage point, starting with an impromptu kinda tipsy make out session hidden away in the kitchen during a party Yugi’s throwing, and how they navigate each other’s trauma and fumble their way into a genuine romance despite everything. I’ve never managed to sit down and work it out into an outline of any kind, and the way I wanted to explore Malik and Bakura’s relationship before the show down, Malik and Kaiba’s relationship building afterwards, and then the relationship building with all three of them meant 30 chapters, at least (the original rp is over 2,500 pages and again, we had only just started with Bakura wanting to ask Ryou out and going to Malik for advice adjklj, when we dropped it) and well. yall know i’m bad at writing multi fic chapters 

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

25. Not Fine, But Better

Previous

Word Count: 6239

Simon went to his father’s to recover. He was on an official break from school (hopefully, no longer than a year), and because of the nature of his injuries, was forced to move back home temporarily. His former employer was reluctant about giving him another position, though they worked out a few things for him to be involved in a freelance capacity, that way they were hiring him for certain projects, but not keeping him on their regular payroll. He planned to enroll in some online studies in the fall, and in the meantime, focused mainly on his ongoing project - the virtual reality social media.

A few things happened. Aside from regular visits to the doctor, because he was doing too much and reopened stitches, or for the extensive treatment that some of his more severe wounds were going to take, not to mention the healing of his spleen, which he was supposed to be taking extra care not to upset, but he was just so restless in bed and so anxious at the house, he kept getting up. The first night, he was content to lay down, primarily due to physical pain and exhaustion. 

The trauma doctor had suggested not getting on a plane, which meant that Mr. Laurent would have to stay at Simon’s and take care of him… which meant to Simon that his father would be in his personal space, contaminating it and his thoughts of it AND, he would know where he lived. He absolutely rejected that notion and said that he would hire someone for in-home health… Then he thought about the upcoming legal fees of his fights, potential jail time, even, the way that he abandoned his job, and he decided that maybe he would just go back to the Bay with his dad, against the doctor’s suggestion, because that seemed to be the least agonizing solution for him.

Of course, he re-injured himself, and spent all day in an ER, to receive word that his treatment would take longer and was ordered to bed rest for the spleen healing. He laid down in his old bed, as uncomfortable as it was and fell to sleep almost immediately. Outside of the hospital, where the medication and immediate professional help were, his nightmares became blatantly strong. He kept dreaming of laying in a pool of his own blood, on the cold ground, looking at a manhole, ready to die… and then the Void came out of it, about to swallow him whole and everything went black. He jumped up and immediately held himself. Maybe he needed to be strapped to the bed, as to not hurt more. He took a deep breath and reached for the cane that he would need to walk for a bit… and there was a white cat, resting on his old desk.

“Samantha?” He looked around the room, wondering if this was another dream, about his teenage years or something. But, he came closer and touched the cat and she pleasantly allowed it. It abandoned the cane to pick up the animal and nuzzled her. “Is it really you or did that jackass go find another white cat?” He snuggled her and limped out of the room to go get some water. He froze whenever he got into the kitchen and both of his parents were sitting at the little table. 

“Simon!” His mother said. She looked… different than he remembered. She looked younger, somehow, but extremely tired. She came over and tried to take Samantha from him, “Sorry. She must’ve snuck…” He jerked away and almost lost his footing. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Your dad said that you were here, so I stopped by and brought Samantha.”

He glared at her, “You’ve had Samantha this entire time?”

She chuckled and shrugged, “She’s MY cat, Simon. Whenever I was a little better, I stopped by and picked her up one day.”

“And you didn’t think to let me know? Leave a note? Nothing?? I thought she was dead!”

“You seem to be more upset about losing a cat than you’ve ever been about losing one of your family members,” she said. There she was. He knew that tone. He knew those eyes. She hadn’t changed. She was just better at seeming normal. 

“Don’t,” his father warned her.

Simon kept Samantha in his clutches as he went to pour himself some water. “When are you leaving?” 

The woman sat back down and looked at Mr. Laurent. “Your father thinks that you need us here. That us not being there for you is how you got to be this way.”

“What way is that, Faith?” he asked.

“Don’t,” his father warned the woman whose anger appeared to be rising, again.

“A little shit,” she hissed, despite the warning.

“Goddammit, Faith!” his father said. Simon snickered, wickedly. “Can’t you see that he’s just a hurt kid, acting out?” Now, Simon frowned. 

He wanted to storm over and punch his father in the face. He’d done so before, whenever he was a teenager and his father was drunk and complaining about his stupid memorial or whatever. But, Simon was in too much pain to even walk straight, much less, fight. He started angry crying and muttered, “Fuck both of you,” before taking Samantha back into his room, shutting the door (which hurt his side to do) and climbing back into bed with her nestled against himself. “I can’t believe that bitch took you away from me.” 

His mother was gone back to her mom’s by the time he got up again. He panicked whenever Samantha wasn’t there and rushed out of his room, clutching himself and neglecting the cane again to question his father about her whereabouts. Then, he heard her meow, excitedly, like she had something to tell him. Many things to tell him! He collected her and brought her back to his room. He kept her in there with him, scared that if she went outside, his mother might steal her again, even though his father assured him that it wouldn’t happen. “I won’t let her,” he had said. When the hell had he ever stopped her from doing anything?

He called “Dick for Brains” and asked if it was possible for him to use video conferencing to schedule an appointment. Dr. Richard was more than willing to accommodate this and seemed genuinely pleased that Simon had decided to try to resume therapy. 

However, in their first session back, Simon babbled on about this idea that he had for work. Of course, the therapist was going to let him speak about what he wanted to. It was a huge thing for Simon to even seek out help without being forced, and he was uncharacteristically excited about something. “A VR that serves as experimental experience based therapy. The premise is that you would be able to take these pick your adventure journeys, but each of the decisions would have either rewards or consequences and every choice that you make would take you down certain paths, giving you certain training to deal with your problems and conditioning your decision making, even one day could grant you diagnosis based upon your choices and solutions to said diagnosis…”

“So… you want to replace actual therapy with a virtual reality video game?”

“NO! You do the therapy to help you get better at the game. It’s like… it goes with it… unless you’re not so bad off that you NEED therapy, and then it’s just a tool in character education…”

“Okay. That sounds interesting. How is that coming along for you?”

“Ugh. It’s shit. You know… I don’t have the best gauge for reasonable decisions. So, I’m trying to program a lot of things, but I’m depending on various algorithms, and the things that I need to be more specific about, well - I’ve been reading a lot of psychology stuff to sort of help me out. Also, Grace had SO MANY resources available in her featured links on her website…” Simon’s eyes glossed over whenever he started talking about Grace.

“How is your relationship with Grace, Simon?”

He gave a sad smile and shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t have a relationship with Grace. She gave me another chance at life and I told everyone about all the messed up stuff I did to her. We haven’t spoken or seen each other in the weeks that I’ve been out of the hospital.”

“I read about that. It was really big of both of you to make the decisions that you made…”

“This isn’t about Grace,” Simon said. He began typing on one of his other laptops. “I’m not going to do that this time, Dr. Richard. I’m trying to think about treatment, but in a way that appeals to people more like me. I’m not one to sit in a room and talk about my feelings. You know how much I hate that. I AM one to sit in MY room, for hours, playing the same computer video game for weeks. As a kid, I used to create these figures. I have a ton of them at home. More recently, I’ve done robots…” Simon sounded all over the place, but Dr. Richard didn’t interrupt him. “In most games, there is a specific goal, and people tend to think… This isn’t anything that I’m used to, but the principle is fine. I want people to be able to feel like they are walking into their own worlds, and that their adventures are things that they can navigate to practice existing in the world. To get things out of their system that they should never do here, or to give them options that their minds might not automatically compose! You’re a therapist… do you think this sounds stupid or crazy or… just impossible?”

“It sounds like you’re enjoying your work and exploring more empathetic aspects of your talents. This project could be extremely good for you.”

“Okay, yeah, sure. But… do you think it would work? Do you think it would help somebody?”

“Are you making this to help other people or to get better at helping yourself?”

“DO YOU THINK IT WOULD DO EITHER?”

“There’s not enough information for me to know if it will help other people, but I think it’s already helping you and that’s the most important thing that you need to focus on. Getting better, yourself.” That was all that Simon needed to become completely obsessed with his project.

So, what happened was that he began to work on it a lot and neglect certain things he needed to do during his recovery. His father had to remind him and sometimes try to physically force him to let him check his healing, cleaning wounds, and getting ready to go have bloodwork done, etc. He was extremely irritable whenever Mr. Laurent would interrupt his work. Whenever it was more pressing medical concerns, Simon got a call from Grace.

“Hey,” she’d say casually. He’d smile immediately when he heard her voice, then frown, because he knew it meant that his dad had bothered her.

“Grace… I don’t know WHAT he’s said this time, but you need to stop doing this. How does he manage to even get to call you anyway?”

“Hazel gave him her phone number for emergencies. That is now the backup phone. Had to get her another. She’s too damn friendly, but I’ll never discourage her. She’s gotta be herself, you know. Listen. So… I’m told that you need to have an angiography. I looked it up and sounds like you gotta do this thing, and yet… Your dad can’t get you to stop playing video games?”

“No! That’s not what’s happening at all! I’m working and he just barges in! Doesn’t even knock. He’s obnoxious.”

“Orrr… you’re tired of being on somebody else’s timetable, and that’s understandable, but whenever I was in the institution, I was constantly on a formatted schedule that I had no control over. It was one of the downsides of getting myself in there. One of your downsides of starting fights that get you stabbed is doing whatever you’ve gotta do when you’ve gotta do it to get better. I’m gonna be pissed if your dad calls Hazel again because you’re acting like a child.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Thank you. Have a good day.”

That was the last time he was cantankerous with his dad about appointments. He just had to suck it up and go when it was time. He had to listen, because he knew Mr. Laurent wouldn’t hesitate to bother Grace, as unfair as that was. Simon was furious that his dad did this. He called it harassment. Mr. Laurent didn’t seem to mind, even when Simon yelled aggressively about how Grace was always the person picking up his pieces when they were kids and he’s coming to a better understanding of how unfair that was to both of them, plus he has Samantha back and he is guilty about imposing on Grace. He sent her a message asking her to promise not to come running again for his father calling but agrees for her sake that if a real emergency comes up that she’s welcome to check in on him. She never replied, so he didn’t know if it was sent and he didn’t want to keep bothering her in her inbox. So, the months passed and he did what his father needed him to do to get better. Whenever he was able, he travelled back home, taking Samantha with him.

He was working full time and enrolled back in school part time, at a less prestigious college, but one that was comfortable for him, at this point. He still got up to MIT to see Professor Hughes and talk engineering with her. She was impressed by how well he seemed to be doing, but she would never tell him that. And he never missed an appointment with his therapist, or his physician. For the most part, he recovered. There was a little lasting damage that he would have to deal with, such as multiple surgeries to correct various problems connected to disrupting the body’s normal with multiple stab wounds, but it was manageable and he was… feeling okay. Whenever he wasn’t, he had better ways of coping than before, most of the time. Every now and then, he’d definitely lose it and break things and rage… but… it wasn’t as frequent as it used to be, so he at least felt good about that much.

Plus, he got to see Grace be SO happy with Hazel online and he wasn’t blocked from everything, so anytime anyone tried to give her trouble about him, he was able to step in and take whatever blows that they tried to throw her way. That was another thing… He had been diligently sticking to the truth about her, no matter what people asked or how guilty, ashamed, weak, cowardly, or whatever else these things made him feel. He went onto shows and conducted interviews and made videos to counter any negative feedback that Grace had ever done anything wrong. “Besides being a neglected kid with some issues related to that, Grace was a really good friend and I was a bad friend to her. Turned out my neglect issues were much deeper and I made her suffer for that, but she shouldn’t have to anymore.” 

.

Grace woke up with the sun most mornings. After she and Hazel returned to New York, it occurred to her that they had barely started living there before their little adventure in Mass. SO, they immediately made certain to try to start setting their routines and building their home style. Hazel’s room was the fanciest room she had ever had, excluding the chambers at the Monroe Estate. Grace let her have her own TV in her room, with a system that she had access to most of the apps, several games, and her favorite movies and shows. There was a housewarming plant that Grace’s friend had bought for Hazel whenever she moved in (and had to come over to look after whenever they were out), and that was in Hazel’s room, right by the window, for its sunshine. 

Hazel had gotten to the point where she was no longer sure if she wanted to hold on to having a leaf in her hair, so Grace bought her some cute hair accessories that looked like leaves - hair clips, headbands and stuff… and if Hazel ever wanted to stop, she had options, to sort of keep with her tradition that was sort of a large part of the identity she had carved out for herself. Now, though, she had a changing identity. 

She was Grace’s daughter and she didn’t know if keeping a leaf meant that she was holding on to a parent or parents that abandoned her when she had one who had fought to call her her own right in front of her. The last thing she wanted to do was possibly hurt Grace’s feelings, and she knew that Grace probably wouldn’t tell her if she did. She would just smile and make her feel good and meditate later or something. Hazel kept the hair leaf, for now. 

The room had bookshelves with Hazel’s favorite books, toys, and keepsakes, her jewelry rack and a very large quartz crystal sphere that Grace bought her “for good energy” whenever she was at her last home. It sat on a little sphere holder and Hazel generally set her singing Tuba right near it, whenever she wasn’t carrying it with her or sleeping with it. There was a framed photo of the Monroe trio - her, Grace and GlamMother, on her wall, as well as a mirror with her name on a plaque against its expensive wood. All of the furniture was well made and personalized in some way. 

For instance, her dresser had a cartoon stylized version of her smiling face on the sides and her name in lights across the top of the vanity. The colors of the room were hazel, ivory and green, and her headboard had a turtle magnificently carved into it. Grace got her the same type of products that she purchased herself. She still used the same natural beauty brands that she swore by as an influencer (and recently was reconnected with many of them) including a rebirth campaign for her own line of products. It really was like rebirth, but this time, she was living on her own conditions. She also was building for her daughter, as well, but in a different way than what her mother did. She would always ask Hazel her opinion of things, what she wanted to do, if she liked or approved of certain things that she wanted to do for her. The emblem on Grace’s products would be from a drawing that Hazel did of Grace as a tree, sitting in a lotus position, her hair as the leaves and Hazel falling from the tree into her outstretched arms. It was a pretty good drawing for a 10 year old, and Grace wanted it to stay just as it was for their emblem. 

Grace made meal prep for if Hazel had turtle days. Half the time, Grace wound up throwing the greens into a smoothie, because Hazel was fine for the most part. But, she would keep up this practice of being prepared for a long time. 

She generally saw Hazel off to school herself, instead of putting her into a car with a driver or getting her to learn public transportation like she often saw kids doing while she was out and about in the city for her first few years. She wanted Hazel to be as protected and seen as she could without being that over sheltering type of mom that she sometimes felt like she was probably being. But, Hazel liked the attention. It was nice to have somebody always having her back and ensuring her safety. It was nice always having someone waiting for you when you step out into the world, to guide you back home. 

They’d had most of the summer to settle in and the new school year was Hazel’s favorite EVER. She was finally going to be somewhere that she was getting herself to believe wouldn’t be temporary… she might actually make friends! She met a couple of people that were really cool the first week - Lucy and Lindsay. They knew each other from before, but Lindsay had recognized her from the internet and invited her to sit with them at lunch. Lucy wasn’t allowed to get onto the internet, but Hazel noticed that she had a Tuba watch and they admitted that they both still watched/loved The Mighty Tuba and Her Musical Friends. Lindsay made fun of both of them, but it was in that way where Hazel could tell that she still liked them and was gonna be their friend. Hazel LOVED it and asked if she could invite them over soon for a tea party.

Of course she could. Grace rarely told Hazel no. If it was doable, safe, and harmed nobody, she didn’t see any reason to refuse her things that she was interested in. Plus, Mrs. Monroe had bought a very expensive tea party set for the girl that Grace had to get assembled on the balcony, because she had no idea where to put it in her place… which meant that the balcony basically belonged to Hazel’s tea set. Getting that woman to understand that her space in New York is nothing like the space that they had in California was almost impossible. Her mother couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just seek out a bigger place. Like… just because I have my own money, I have to like… spend it like that?

But, Hazel began having her tea parties the second week of school. Mrs. Monroe wanted them to come to visit the weekend of the 23rd of August. “Mom. We’ve only been gone a couple of months. I told you that Hazel and I aren’t going to be coming back and forth like this.”

“I’m thinking if you catch a flight in the evening on Wednesday, Hazel won’t have to miss school that day. But, you definitely need to be here by Thursday evening’s dinner.” 

“Ugh. Mom.”

“Grace, this is important.”

She sighed. “Fine. But you aren’t seeing us again before Christmas break. Hazel has limited days off and I have things planned for my 23rd.”

“Yes, well… Julia or Gabriel, or whatever the hell this assistant’s name is will send you the list of things you need to pack.”

“Why would I need to pack things?”

“We’re going to take you to Belize, since you won’t be here for your birthday.”

“Ugh… I wish I could argue with a free trip to Belize… okay, fine. Tell ADRIENNE to send me the information.”

“Adrienne? That doesn’t sound right… oh, really? Huh. She says that is indeed her name. Well, she’s sending it. We’ll see you soon.”

Grace hung up and stretched, sputtered air through her lips and peeked out at the girls at their tea parties, with their hats and some of Grace’s good tea. “Hey, Haze… GlamMother wants to see us next week, so I’ll be packing our stuff and I’ll email the school to get your work for Thursday and Friday in advance so we can turn it in on Wednesday.”

“Yes, Mother,” Hazel said in her tea party voice. “Will we be seeing Mr. Laurent and his Sad Sorry Son Simon when we go to California?”

“I’m not planning on it. Just giving you a heads up.” The three girls raised their teacups to Grace and she smiled and went back inside to pack. Simon was back in Cambridge, as far as she knew. She had seen him around online, but never hovered, so she couldn’t be sure. But… that week was the week of his birthday. She wondered if her mother had remembered that information, or if her body was simply falling back on old habits of the season by wanting to do something around this time of year. It was a very random time to Grace for them to just want to go to Belize… though, usually Simon’s birthday was paired up with hers. The significance of his actual birth date would only matter to Grace, not her parents, as the things that they did typically occurred AFTER August 22nd. Grace shook her head and opened the email of things to pack, so that she could prepare early.

.

The Monroes had some guests, Grace could tell. Not a lot, so she wondered if this was like some politician’s immediate family or what, and she resigned herself to the thought that if for one little second her mom even tried to give her hell about taking a flight today, instead of last night (to come in all late in the night and throw off hers AND Hazel’s sleep schedule), she would take her ass right on to her old bedroom and wait for the call to go to Belize. She didn’t play that mess with her mom anymore. Hazel ran to the door and tiptoed a little to use the knocker. There was a doorbell, but something about that fancy old knocker always intrigued her.

A butler opened the door and tried to take Grace’s bags, but she struggled with him, knowing that she could do it herself. “If you won’t let him, let me,” she heard a familiar voice say. Simon. She froze. He was standing. Obviously in good enough health. He was smiling, but it became worried when she stared at him. He put his hands up and she noted that he was in some type of… weird coat draped over his arms, instead of wearing it, that she could see the top of his apology tattoos, and that his parents were at the table with hers.

Her mother got up and rushed over, “Don’t be silly! It’s his job.” She collected Hazel into a tight hug and Grace still stood there, in the open door as Hazel rushed to the table, hand in hand with her grandmother, to pass hugs around. “Surprise!” Mrs. Monroe cheered. “It’s Simon’s birthday dinner… and a therapy idea thing…”

“Therapy told you to surprise me by bringing me here, with these people, under the guise of a free trip to Belize?” Grace asked, very much not okay with this.

“No. We’re having a sit down, between all of us, as adults, to settle everything once and for all. There’s cake!” 

Hazel cheered, “Yayyy! Cake!”

Mrs. Monroe sighed and folded her arms, “My God, Grace, we really ARE going to Belize. Just sit down and enjoy dinner.” Grace pouted her way over to the seat next to Hazel. Simon returned to the one next to that one. His parents were across the table from them, and Mr. and Mrs. Monroe were on the opposite ends.

“This is messed up,” Grace muttered.

“All of us are messed up,” Mr. Monroe said. “It took a while for us to realize it. We spoke a few times when Simon was in the hospital, and we thought that eventually, both of you needed apologies from us and attempts for us to do better. Now, Grace… you had some things to say to Mr. Laurent the last time you were together…”

“I said it all. Nice to finally meet you, though,” she said to Mrs. Laurent, and her tone indicated that it wasn’t nice to meet her at all. Simon reached out and rubbed Grace on the back. She smiled a little at him, then looked confused and wondered why they were acting like nothing had ever happened. Then again, they had “gotten over” what did happen, and she guessed she was kinda touch starved, because it was nice to get physical comfort from somebody that wasn’t Hazel, for a change.

“Simon had many things to say to his parents before you arrived, too. Now that we’re all here, really… say whatever is on all of your minds. Simon… you’ve been sulking for two hours, but whenever Grace walked in, you immediately brightened up.” Simon blushed as Mr. Monroe made this extremely embarrassing announcement. Hazel cackled about it and ate a mouthful of potatoes. 

Simon shook his head, “I’m not sure what you mean by saying this, Mr. Monroe.”

“Just that we never really discussed the night that you came back into our lives, wanting to see Grace and apologize… You didn’t actually apologize until a while later and… we’re all curious about the journeys it took to get from where you were to…”

“No, Dad.” Grace shook her head. “No. Simon and I used to be best friends. I loved him. There was nobody in the world more important to me. When we broke, I broke. You don’t get to just have reflection on what led us all here, to possible health and contentment. Just… No. Where is the cake? I’m having some on the terrace. You want in, Si?” His eyes widened and he got up to follow her. The butler was bringing out the cake, and she took the whole tray. “Momma’s got you, Haze,” she said without breaking her stride. She went outside and Simon smiled as she set the cake down. “Cut my baby a piece of cake. I’ll get her dish.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Grace rolled her eyes at everybody in the room, grabbed Hazel’s desert plate and the bottle of wine from the table. She went back out and Simon was ready with Hazel’s slice. Whenever Grace gave it to her, she said, “I’ll be right out there if you need me.” Grace was… tired. She had been on a long flight, and to be faced with the Laurents AND her parents? And to have them acting like this was just okay to spring on someone? “They’re still messing up, but I guess at least they’re trying,” she glanced around. “I didn’t get glasses.” She frowned.

“S’ok. I don’t drink.” 

She smiled and said, “Neither do I, but remember whenever we were 14 and we said that we’d have our first drink together?”

“Yeah. We said on your 21st birthday.” He smiled and she felt warm in his gaze. She set the bottle down. “At any rate, they don’t need any wine. They’re being weird enough.”

“RIGHT?” Grace and Simon laughed awkwardly. “To be honest, I think that they realized that the only way to get me here was to hide their intentions from me. I wouldn’t have showed up if they had told me that they wanted to have dinner with your family.”

“Funny… I wouldn’t have come if they hadn’t told me, “Grace will be here for your birthday,” Simon admitted and leaned on the balcony rail. “All I wanted was to see you again. It’s all I could think about all month.”

“You’ve known about this all month? My mom called me last week!” She leaned next to him, her back against the rail, so that she could keep an eye on Hazel. For a moment, she had a flashback of the last time that they were out here together. The pain stung, but there was a numbness there… like that part of her that hurt was more like a limb that fell to sleep. “Hazel is the same age as we were when we met. I’ve been so paranoid about her running into trouble because I’m not present enough…”

“Is that what you think us meeting was? You running into trouble?” Simon asked. He didn’t seem offended, like he might have normally been. Just… curious.

“Don’t you think so? For both of us…”

He frowned and looked out at the Monroe yard. “I think that the people who messed up the most are all surrounding your kid right now.” 

“She loves them, though. I want her to have a good relationship with them. Not just because I didn’t, but because they’re the only grandparents she has.”

“Yeah, well… at the moment, MY parents are there too…” Grace stood up and folded her arms, looking at Hazel. Her parents had arranged for her and Simon to have their first joint birthday celebration since they were 16, and even arranged a sit down with the Laurents about everything that went wrong… Simon was also thinking about how messed up this was, because he added to her thoughts, “I feel weird about our parents finally talking, when we ourselves have finally gotten to good places in our lives and development.”

“I think it’s… A good thing, but just for them. For me… I think that the best thing has been that I survived. I thought that I was gonna die after everything. Nothing felt real. My whole life was just staring into nothingness and crying. I really did become the void…”

“No. You were NEVER that!” Simon said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You always mattered. I was just too toxic to see that. The best thing for me has been that I realized how wrong I was…” Grace threw her arms around his neck and Simon relaxed in her arms and held her close. Every time was like the first time, but this was DIFFERENT different. This was the first hug that they had in some time and maybe even the first genuine one that they’ve had. Simon was caught up in his emotions, but quickly tried to keep them in check, “Wanna grab the kid and get outta here?” Simon asked, looking at her. They were still in the hug, but let some space in between their bodies.

Grace chuckled, “I mean… you know that my perfect birthday celebration is lowkey, with the closest people to me, some dogs and a walk around the creek. But, it’s not MY birthday.”

Simon turned and leaned back on the terrace this time, “If I had just done that with you for our 16th, things could have gone very differently.” 

“I think things would have eventually gone wrong anyway. We were both… beyond our own help. You seem fine now, though.”

“I’m not fine, but I’m better.” He shrugged his shoulders. 

“Grab the cake, I’ll grab the kid,” she said with a smile. Simon obeyed, as she went inside and he followed. “Haze, grab your bag. We’re headed out.

“Headed out?” Mrs. Monroe asked. “To where?”

“Simon and I are taking Hazel to our old stomping grounds.” Hazel jumped up excited. All four of the parents exchanged worried looks, which Grace ignored and put an arm around Hazel to guide her towards the door. “Hopefully… the rest of you will get whatever you need out of… this…”  They checked out early, giving their parents time to sort through their guilt.

The trio left the mansion, all three laughing and talking. Hazel about how she had heard so much about their adventures, though Simon was certain she only heard the sweet and not the… other stuff. He was just glad that Grace was willing to spend time with him again. It was the best birthday present he could’ve gotten. He didn’t deserve it, but he was going to be grateful.

Neither Simon or Grace had revisited much of their old places, so they wound up spending time well into the night taking Hazel to their childhood spots from when they were her age. Eventually she got so sleepy that she dozed off on the train and Simon had to carry her around. Grace told him that she could do it (she was pretty practiced in it and Hazel was a tall 10), with Simon still technically being in recovery for his injuries, but she guessed that his pride was still stubborn, because he insisted. 

They caught a cab back to the mansion, he put Hazel to bed, and Grace offered to walk him out. “Your parents have us in the guest house,” he said. 

“Excuse you?”

“We’re going to Belize… They didn’t tell you that EITHER?”

“What’re they trying to do? Get us back together??” She joked. 

He laughed, “Like you’d ever do that. You didn’t want me the first time.”

“That’s not true. I actually liked you way more than you liked me, because my feelings were selfless and pure.” He stared at his hands and nodded. She sat down in front of the front door and he sat next to her. “I wasn’t kidding whenever I’d say that I had the perfect relationship already, or whatever the hell I said that day. I can’t remember word for word, but I remember that all the words were true.”

“Yeah… If only I had been better.”

“Well… You said earlier that you’re better now.”

“Yeah…” He turned to look at her and she smiled and took his hand into hers. 

“We don’t have to talk about it. We can just live in it,” she said. That was always how she had been about them. No questions or comments about their feelings for each other, titles, etc. They were together and enjoying each other’s company again. The rest of the details were background noise. No things were not fine, and she didn’t know if things would ever be fine between them, considering the stuff that happened back then. But… things were better.

Next

[ywhiterain]

i must confess... i'm not opposed to d*therine as a thing? maybe that's because i hate damon though. him getting what he used to want. or, what he still wants (pre-series). or, him still into his brother's girl but settling for katherine. and him being miserable in all of these scenarios. d*therine is the perfect relationship to make sure he will be miserable for eternity. <3

haha that’s not what I want. My ideal Datherine is season three with frienemy vibes and occasionally being forced to admit they still care about each other. Like my read of Katherine/Damon is that she cared about him. Not like with Elijah or Stefan. But he meant something to her, it’s just he didn’t mean everything to her. I kinda like the idea of Damon confronting that Kathrine was never the goddess who’d save or damn him, but like a person. Though Damon’s ability to see anyone as a person instead of an object for his own means is really hard to buy with later developments tbh.

My feelings on Damon are this: he should have died with Katherine after saving Stefan and never getting to see Elena again. The writing for Damon was always shit, but this was a hobbled together ending that mostly worked. Damon actually sacrificing himself and his deepest desires so that Stefan could get the human life he’d always wanted is about as good as they could ever get without lots of therapy.

In terms of fanfic, I either want Damon not really redeemed and in an incestuous threesome with Stefan and Elena that spans centuries and continents with blood and death and trauma everywhere. As for a potentially redeemed Damon, I really only think that’s possible if he gives up on getting what he wants from Stelena (Elena as his lover, Stefan as his devoted little brother) and rebuilds it into something else or lets them go all together. Or at least Stefan and Elena being allowed to break things off and come back to him on their own terms after they’ve done some major healing.

And this is not about who ~deserves forgiveness and redemption for all the shitty things they’ve all done. It’s about how Damon refuses to actually treat Stefan and Elena as anything other than objects for his pleasure outside of a handful of moments here and there.

And I love Bamon. But I’m gonna be real. The reason I’m trying to see if I can pull off a Bonnie/Damon relationship that lasts in my stupid mpreg of doom because the chemistry between Ian and Kat was so potent that I’m mad they never kissed. I mean the narrative is basically the same as his relationship with Stefan and Elena but like Ian and Kat really wanted to make out as Bonnie and Damon and they weren’t even hiding it in later seasons and racism is the only reason it didn’t happen on some level at some time and I do think Damon at his best could be good for Bonnie. You can make the same case with Stefan and Elena, but Nina as Elena always looks uncomfortable or afraid with him. And season eight of TVD was such a terrible hot mess for Stefan that I actually wanted him to have a happily ever after with Elena when I’ve never really been super pro marriage and babies ever after but after that hot mess I was like D::::::::: just let this horrible man rest with his wife a la Davina/Kol pls. And like Steroline was such a hot mess I actually started shipping Klaus/Caroline because at least Joe and Candice have this peppy. Sure it doesn’t fit their their story but you know at least Caroline was alive and motived around him and Stefan’s inability to smile on his fucking wedding day almost made me mad at Stefan? Wtf happened there?!?!?? Let them stay friends. They were great together. Their romance should have been them having slumber parties and scheming to destroy Damon’s room not whatever they became. 

er like I don’t know if I’d classify my feelings as Damon as hate because he’s interesting with my favorite characters (Stefan, Elena, Bonnie and god help me he and Elijah are fun to watch together). But like my true ideal Damon ending would have been him dying in season two and Elena and Stefan navigating trying to survive that while everyone else around them cheered because Damon is a cockroach they all stopped trying to kill for some reason.

ALSO I’M STILL ANGRY THAT STEFAN NEEDED TO PAY FOR KILLING OFF ENZO, WHO IS A WALMART BRAND OF DAMON SALVATORE AND DAMON SALVATORE IS TARGET BRAND KLAUS BUT DAMON KILLING TYLER? TYLER WHO IS ONE OF THE FEW SHITTY MEN IN THIS SHOW WHO GOT HIS ACT TOGETHER AND BECAME A GOOD MAN? TYLER WHOSE LIFE WAS WRECKED OVER AND OVER BUT SOMEHOW STILL MANAGED TO CRAWL OUT OF THE DARKNESS AND BECOME A LEADER AND MENTOR FOR WEREWOLVES? DAMON KILLS HIM BUT NO ONE CARES FUCK THAT!!!

like haha. yeah. Damon killing Tyler and getting off scott free while Stefan agonized over killing Enzo of all people and was punished so heavily for it was just me being So Over This Hot Mess That I Mostly Find Funny Because It Was So Bad But That’s Some Extra Bullshit.

err like not Bonnie’s part. She was practically a saint about it because she’s not allowed to be angry. But the writers being all oh no Stefan can’t ever be redeemed because he killed walmart Damon is just so???? No. Stefan can’t be redeemed because he a fucking serial killer you morons. Either give Stefan his happy ending or punish him for the shit he’s actually responsible you asshats. 

true story: i wrote out enzo of my mpreg of doom because I hate him and resent that he’s apparently Bonnie’s true love. Either give us Jeremy/Bonnie, Damon/Bonnie, or develop a proper love interest with her that plays to Kat’s strengths or go the fuck home. And when I truly loathe a character my choice is to ignore and erase him. 

also true story: Damon and Stefan will get a better place in my mpreg of doom because I love @ruthseriouslydothis and she deserved a better defan. 

[losille2000]

Hoot and Howl, Chapter 1

TITLE: Hoot and Howl CHAPTER NUMBER: 1/? AUTHOR: Losille2000 CHARACTERS: Actor!Chris Evans/OFC GENRE: Paranormal Romance (more on the magical realism side?) FIC SUMMARY: Chris goes on a camping trip to calm the noisy anxiety in his head, but it ends up leading him into his own messed up version of a Disney movie. When he said he wanted to be a Disney prince as a boy, this was absolutely not what he meant. Especially considering that the princess is also, well... about that... RATING: M (sex, language) WARNINGS:  Nothing. AUTHORS NOTES: This is the second story in the Seasons of Magic series, so the same “world” as Home is set in. I will continue Home, but this needed to get out. Also, it has obviously been a very long time since I’ve updated and/or written anything of great substance, so please be kind. That said, I do appreciate any concrit if you have it. You do NOT need to read Home to understand this story.

Also a quick message to my readers who are coming back: welcome back! I appreciate you all so much. I know it's been a long, long time since I've updated. A lot has happened in 2 years (for one, I am now teaching full time, and teaching eats all of your extra time). A lot is still happening. But this unprecedented time at home has given me an opportunity to try to write again. Enjoy!

Previous Chapter - Also available on Archive of Our Own!

Chapter 1

The speeding truck, rusted out and sputtering, navigated over a narrow gravel driveway and through dense pine forest for a quarter mile off the main highway until the path opened into a clearing. Inside the clearing was a simple country farmhouse with hunter green shutters and aged white siding, sedate and quiet, but for faint white smoke curling out of a tall stone chimney. A vibrant forest behind the house was aflame in brilliant autumnal colors, cloaking the mountain in shades of kingly red and gold as it reached into a stormy sky.

 Chris only wished he could truly appreciate nature’s beauty, rhapsodize on it, photograph it, consider how, even when it seemed like the world was going to shit, there was still… this. But he couldn’t; rather, he kept his eyes keenly affixed on the narrow drive to assure that he and his passenger reached their destination in relative safety.

 Relative, being the operative word.

As though to test him, the truck bounced over a particularly uneven patch of gravel. The rear swerved and his heart jumped to his throat, but he was able to right the vehicle with a steady shift of the steering wheel and a determined clamp of teeth on his lower lip. Only belatedly did he remind himself to breathe, to calm the heart once again beating a heavy tattoo in his chest.

 Chris inhaled deeply, twice, and instantly regretted it. The cabin reeked of wet dog and man, mud, and the metallic tang of blood. His stomach clenched. Giving in, he took his eyes off the road for just a moment to glance at his companion, who had curled up on the truck’s bench seat beside him. The red and blue plaid flannel he used to wrap Dodger’s mangled paw had soaked through and now just looked dark brown.

 “Just a few more seconds, buddy,” he murmured, more to hear himself speak, to reassure himself, to connect again with the world instead of spiraling into another panic attack. He’d been doing so well avoiding them recently, too. “We’re almost there.”

 Chris hadn’t seen it happen, really, the incident that led them to this enchanting farmhouse with the green shutters. They’d been out on the river, he and Dodger, two days into a two-week solo camping sabbatical.  Dodger skipped between stones and barked at random creatures scurrying around the banks of the river while Chris adjusted the nylon fishing line on his pole, attempting to catch dinner. Then he heard a yelp and a splash; when his eyes darted in the direction of the sound, Dodger was already struggling to swim in the swift river current.

 Chris jumped into the icy river immediately, without considering the toll it could take on his unprepared body—the river was just a few feet deep, but it was certainly deep enough and cold enough to freeze every vital organ for a split second and prolong the rescue of his precious friend.

 Fortunately, he’d plucked the pup out of the rushing water by the collar just before Dodger was out of reach, and then trudged slowly back to the embankment through thick muddy riverbed, thinking all was fine now and Dodger simply needed to dry off. Other than struggling in the current, it wasn’t a rare occurrence that Dodger’s natural mischief led him to fall in a body of water—be it natural or manmade, like the swimming pool back in LA. Dodger would fall in, get out, Chris would dry him off and then the dog would go lay down, the natural consequence having fully chastised him for being silly.

 But this wasn’t like that at all. Only when they made it back to dry land did Chris notice the blood dripping freely from the canine’s front paw, made all the worse from the water saturating his fur. Somehow, Chris had kept it together long enough to rip a piece of his flannel shirt off and tightly tourniquet Dodger’s leg; never mind that he had a stack of towels and blankets in a duffel bag a few feet away, which might have been useful—also—to warm a shivering, scared animal.

 Then the anxiety hit him, literally knocked him on his own ass, as he scrambled through his fishing tackle box for the emergency burner phone. The one that could dial out for emergency services and receive calls from his mom, because his mom was the only one with the number.

 The phone still had a charge and the old crappy mobile internet had come through for him when he searched for the closest veterinarian, even all the way out in the middle of the Massachusetts wilderness. He’d practically thrown Dodger into the truck and sped away from the campsite, with the fishing line still dangling in the river. 

 Now that he thought about it, or at least, now that the adrenaline had subsided a bit, he realized the mistake he made. If he even made it back to camp tonight, that pole would probably be long gone. And so was any chance of eating because it would be too dark to do any fishing with the other poles he brought with him. The energy bars and backup rations he packed would only go so far to fill his man-sized stomach—and they were supposed to be provisions to last two weeks. He didn’t want to go back into civilization for at least that long.

 Chris grumbled. This was why he didn’t have kids—he could barely handle his dog’s injuries, let alone anything worse. How would he ever react with an actual human child? Leave another fishing pole in the river? Or, if they were at home, leave the stove on and burn an entire house down?

 The thought was absurd!

 Him having children of his own was a ridiculous idea. He absolutely was not qualified. The fact that his girlfriend was pressuring him to commit to that—to finally settle down—only made matters worse. There was nothing he wanted more in the world than to settle down to have a family, but the other person in the relationship had to understand the difference between wanting something and knowing one’s personal limitations. His level of anxiety, despite all the work he had done learning to manage it over the years, was not at the point where he could contemplate children.

 This trauma was a perfect example. Fuck. He probably wasn’t even qualified to have a fur child, now that he thought about. He certainly didn’t feel like he was worthy of the companionship of this perfect spirit lying beside him and whimpering in pain because he hadn’t been paying attention.

 He glanced at Dodger again, but the dog didn’t even pick his head up this time, so he reached out to place a reassuring hand on his back. They’d get to the vet, and everything would be fine. It had to be. He couldn’t lose him.

 A few seconds later, Chris pulled into a parking spot alongside a tiny Toyota Prius, which he found completely incongruous to the rustic storybook farmhouse sitting before it. These places were made for old beaters like his, or something with a little more substance—even if he did appreciate the owner’s care for the environment.

 His old truck creaked to a stop, the noisy clunking machine rattling until it finally fell silent a few seconds later. Dodger whined again and tried to stand on his bad paw, only to slide back down the vinyl seat with the wet shirt rag. He scooped the dog into his arms and pressed his lips to the dog’s head—a completely illogical thing to do at a time like this because it clearly wasn’t going to make Dodger’s paw heal instantly, but it made Chris feel better—and bound up the three front steps toward the second door on the other end of the large porch with the small plaque that read “Dr. Bird, DVM.”

 Grateful the door had been left partially ajar, he nudged his shoulder against it and stepped into a room that looked like any other doctor’s waiting room—human or animal—except for the fact that he was the only person staring at a space he wished were filled with a reception desk with a receptionist. Someone… anyone… who could help Dodger. Immediately. All he found were worn vinyl-cushioned benches, magazines piled on an end table, and lamps glowing soft yellow light into the four corners of wood-paneled walls.

 There was also another door, this one presumably leading further into the house, but it remained firmly shut.

 His anxiety clawed back up his throat and began to strangle him—should he have instead gone to the other vet in the other direction, though another half hour away? Had Dodger lost too much blood? The dog seemed limp in his arms. Was it… was it too late? Should he just barge in through the other door to look for help?

 Chris opened his mouth to yell, but his entreaty died on his lips when the closed door creaked open. A massive cat with a fluffy white coat loped into the room, clearly unphased with the seriousness of the situation. He frowned at the odd creature as it stopped just in front of him, looked up and slowly blinked large jade-green eyes. The proximity of the feline made him uneasy; not only was Dodger uncaring of an animal that he would have otherwise had a real problem with staring up at them, but Chris felt the cat was assessing them frankly, and not in any typical cat-like way.

 The cat made a soft chittering sound, as though trying to communicate with him. Chris’ frown deepened. This was getting them nowhere, fast. And this cat gave off some really fucking weird vibes. And if he weren’t mistaken, it felt like the animal was rolling its eyes in disgust that he, a human, had not been able to understand Cat.

 Was this a dream? Was he hallucinating this? More importantly, what kind of medical professional allowed a cat to be the welcome committee to a place of business, never mind that it was a veterinarian’s office?

 The cat “receptionist” blinked again and sat down heavily, flicking its long tail before emitting a rumbling and, if Chris were being honest, perturbed meow. It echoed in the barren room, but the sound was finally enough to pique Dodger’s interest. The dog turned his head quizzically with perked ears.

 Dodger yipped twice at the animal but didn’t struggle like he wanted to get down and chase the cat. In response, as though they—the dog and the cat—had somehow communicated the problem to each other, the cat stood back up and trotted back to the door and disappeared.

 Chris tried to speak again; a blur of feathers stopped him this time as a large grey bird soared into the room and landed on a perch affixed to the opposite wall. He’d not noticed the protrusion there, as it was made of the same wood as the paneling and blended in with the walls.

 The grey parrot with crimson tail feathers turned to look at him, clucking a few times then saying in a strange parrot voice, “Just a minute! Just a minute!”

 Chris considered turning around and leaving. This was too strange, and his canine companion was too precious to be dealing with a doctor who didn’t have a proper staff and left the care up to a weird fluffball cat and a parrot. When he turned toward the door, the bird suddenly sounded like a Star Wars droid, booping and beeping and trilling like R2D2, then changed to words. “Don’t go! Don’t g—”

 “I’m so sorry!” A new voice—a feminine one, smooth and alto—broke into his periphery. “I was in the middle of something that couldn’t be put down.”

 He whipped around to come face-to-face with a blessedly human figure standing before him, all wind-tousled jet hair and large obsidian eyes. Concern etched an otherwise blemish-free face of smooth tawny skin. She was probably the most beautiful woman he’d ever beheld, but that notion, too, was immediately forgotten like the beauty of the landscape outside, in favor of the creature in his arms.

 “My dog, he—” Chris began, snapping out of his momentary trance.

 She swooped into action, flicking her eyes down to Dodger. She hummed and reached for him. “Let me take him back and have a look.”

 “Can’t I go back?” he asked, reluctantly handing Dodger over.

 She cradled the dog to her chest; Dodger didn’t struggle as she spoke softly. “It’ll be okay, Dodger.”

 “You look as white as a ghost,” she said then, her voice now firm. “You need to sit down and calm down. You’re not going to be any help to your dog or to me if you’re freaking us both out during an exam. Let me look at the injury and stop any active bleeding. Then we’ll talk.”

 And with that, she was gone so quickly he could have sworn she had kicked up a cloud of dust in her wake. However, he did what she’d instructed and collapsed onto one of the old benches, then covered his face with his hands and prayed. He didn’t do a lot of it these days, preferring other forms of soul searching, but he did say a few silent words. Dodger needed to be okay. He couldn’t lose this one constant in his hectic, always changing life. At least not until the dog had lived a long, fulfilled life at his side.

 If only his anxiety would let him think positively.

[hiatustohitdice]

On Nivanfield, my writing, and finding place in fandom (Personal):

Nivanfield day was yesterday, and I posted up three things that I am proud of.  I made something for a fandom I love, and I got to participate in a day that the fandom designated.  It felt good, and I love the ship, and the characters, so it made me insanely happy.  My friends bought me pastries and lunch to celebrate the boys (I may or may not have inadvertently gotten some friends that know nothing about Resident Evil very on board with Nivanfield through shear force of will).

Two of my friends helped me craft my content.  That support was amazing.

My stuff never explodes or anything.  I’d consider it a bit niche, but I’ve been talking with a friend I’ve really been reconnecting with (she’ll probably read this and know who she is), and I said something that I hadn’t really considered before.  Nivanfield is a ship about navigating PTSD, disability, and chronic illness.  People have retconned Piers’s death and given him a lifelong infection that he learns to cope with or a prosthetic limb after the infection was cured.

That’s fucking cool to me.  Trauma and Disability and Chronic Illness and Mental Health aren’t things that are often treated as just a fact of characterization in a lot of the fandom I see, not often.  Sure, ‘Hurt/Care’ fics exist, and there are other ships where people deal with these difficult issues and discussions, but Nivanfield is absolutely about these things at it’s core, and that’s so fucking dope.

Anyway, this got me thinking (back to the bit about the thing I hadn’t considered while chatting with my friend) is that probably, part of the reason why I love Nianfield, is because I can write in my own fear about having bipolar disorder, the way in which that’s affected my relationships, and actually work through some of it through my writing and through the ship.  My bipolar is the reason I broke up with my first boyfriend.  I couldn’t cope and take care of him at the same time.  I got a bit invested in Nivanfield again.  I got out of the fandom for a bit, but really reentered it in a big way in December, and it’s been wonderful.  

Sometimes I don’t get to be in control of my thoughts and actions (or I’M the small voice in my head while my body is just on autopilot), and that loss of control is something I can really explore with Piers Nivans.  It’s a way for me to work those insecurities about how that affects the people I’m with.  It’s important and helpful to me.

They were the first pairing I ever wrote fic for, and it was a space for me to understand my own queerness.  I’d come out of the closet about a year prior, and I still didn’t know what that meant for me or how some of the people in my life would react.  I got to take time to plot out stories of two characters I absolutely love dealing with hard shit and having a supportive network of friends and family help them navigate everything that came their way.  It was truly a space for me to figure shit out.

I wrote a post when I was writing my fic a few days ago and rambled about my latest work and about how it fit into fandom, how I fit into fandom, and what fandom even really meant when my stories are often targeted to one very specific part of what Nivanfield is.  In that post I questioned if people would like the fic I wrote for Nivanfield day, and, essentially, if I should even post it at all.

I did, and I edited it several times, and I finally reached the point where I realize it might be one of the absolute coolest things I’ve ever written.  I’ve never seen a fic like it before, nor have I seen other media do the literary device I attempted.  I’m really trying to steel myself.  Despite the fic having six stories, and at least a story for each aspect of what people look for in a Nivanfield fic (fluff, action, hurt/care, body horror, canon/fanon, romance, etc.) it’s not for everyone.  It’s just not.  It’s structure and the literary device at the end might not land or make sense, and I’ve got to be okay with the fact that I LOVE IT.  It’s a hulking, stupid, disparate beast of a thing, and I love what I attempted.

That’s fandom to me.  Not the big mess of people.  It’s what you carve into it.  It’s what you sow.

At first I was embarrassed of my Nivanfield jacket.  That it was the item of someone that was TOO invested, but fuck it, it brings me so much joy, and my friend did such a stellar job on it, I can’t stand it.

My script is another one of those ‘wow, I actually spend a few weeks writing that, lol’ and like, yeah, fucking LOL dude.  I spent time researching different viruses, PTSD, the amount of time it takes to heal from shoulder surgery, how quickly Sheva could get from South Africa to Spain, virophages.  I wanted that script to be as scientifically accurate as it possibly could be in the realm of magical science that Resident Evil occupies.  I worked on that shit.

This ship means so fucking much to me.  My friends realized that and sent me messages to say happy Nivanfield Day.  We joked about doing something next year to pour one out for poor dead Piers.

I’m still going to be upset when my fics don’t get as many notes as the cool kids.  I’m still going to be sad when my tweets don’t get the retweets that all the cool kids get.  

But I’m also going to be proud of my work.  I’m going to be proud of how dumb I am for these dummies.  I’m gonna keep carving out my space in the fandom.  I’ll make it as niche as I want, and even at my most upset, I’m still going to be proud of the work I put into it.

[foxpunk]

// vent thing, int if u read

been listening to Landslide a lot lately but not in like...the context it was written in?? and more like. applying it to my own struggles, esp regarding abuse n shit. which! probs isnt entirely healthy but my minds stuck on it so hopefully spewiing it all here will get it Out of my mind for now

its a good song for like. growing past something traumatizing. esp when youre very. very young when the trauma starts (n keeps goin).

like. can definitely relate to being scared of changing cause i was forced to build my life around an abuser for most of my life. and not knowing if this Me is Really me or just. something Else something Other. not having anything solid and not really knowing who *i* am cause if you take away what i built myself around wont i just be a shell? if you strip away the fence that the vines grew around, wont they just fall and die? all i know is what im Not n what i Cant be and thats no basis for a healthy identity but thats all ive got aside from longing to be something else. acting on that longing is terrifying but i gotta take the first step if i wanna know the answer right?

and while my reflection being washed away in a landslide is terrifying, and not knowing who or what ill see looking back at me in the mirror every time i look is terrifying, and feeling like im crumbling apart and taking everything around em down with me is terrifying, and having a constantly shifting n fuckt up view of myself/my body due to abuse (on top of like, trans stuff) is terrifying, its also kinda like. it Could be uplifting if i ever took control of that landslide and decided for myself yeah enough w this im starting fresh and like a new layer of snow slowly smoothing out the previous landslide i can heal. maybe

and the whole. “mirror in the sky what is love?” not knowing what love is is!! big oof!! even now that ive surrounded myself with support i Constantly Doubt the love i give and recieve. especially the giving part. just questioning Myself cause what if im so twisted i cant really love? what if i cant give back what i get? what if im doing it wrong, what if im just hurting others, what if its not enough, what if they dont feel appreciated cause i cant love them enough or properly or Whatever the heck. constantly questioning my own ability to love and be loved because i didnt receive actual love for Fucking Decades almost and didnt grow up around a n y healthy relationships What So Ever and its! Wild! its not great!! i dont wanna do that!! i wanna be able to trust when my friends and chosen family and boyfriends tell me they love me! like Actually trust and hold onto that happy feeling it gives me, and not lose it to some!! messed up doubt every time.

and o o f “can the child in my heart rise above?” hoooo boy. wow. yowza. ouch! that line is. real big for childhood abuse. especially cause part of me always feels. Stuck back then. in my earliest memories of my abuse. which. isnt a Lot cause theres Huge gaps in my memory cause Trauma and also cause it started when i was. SuperYoung so memory retention aint great anyways. but. digress. like. can i get past this, can All of me eventually grow past this, can i ever adjust? its so scary to navigate n all so turbulent and it feels like its too much change!! but!! i Want to change and in this case the change would be towards somethng Good so even if its scary to even try i Gotta

anyways!!

if you read all that damn rip ur eyes cause my thought process was not sorted thru At All this is 100% pure vent i just spewed out n didnt stop typing til i finished cause i needed it Out of me, so it makes like, little to no sense to whoevers reading this probs cause it jumps around a fair deal

theres no conclusion to this so yeah, yee haw, bye

[ravenvsfox]

Can you do pynch for the ship thing please

YOU BET YOUR SWEET ASS I CAN 

(god FINALLY)

SEND ME A SHIP AND I’LL TELL YOU…

who is more likely to hurt the other?

I mean. Adam doesn’t usually get hurt by ronan so much as he gets annoyed. disappointed. pissed. He never lets ronan’s venom actually get to his veins, he’s too busy telling him how unnecessary the flash of fang is. ronan on the other hand. like. he’s easy to hurt. adam would never in his life want to hurt ronan (it’s his honest to god nightmare) but I think ronan works himself into such a despair at the smallest jealousies and perceived injustices that adam could make one careless comment and ronan would fixate on it

who is emotionally stronger?

ohhhh adam. it’s adam. He’s been dragging so much emotional rubble for so long that he’s built up a tolerance. strong is like The Most adam adjective that I can think of. ronan never had to get to adam’s level of detachment and dissociation bc the first 15 years of his life were gorgeous and easy, and he’s still growing into his protective shell. Adam had to be born in his

who is physically stronger?

it’s ronan tbH he has the upper body strength of a boxer and the broad shoulders of a lynch (but also adam has clever hands and muscular thighs from years of biking everywhere and he can handle himself)

who is more likely to break a bone? 

ouch. They’re both capital R Reckless when they’re together and they have some brutal years under their belts. adam has some poorly set knobbly fingers and ronan has an old snapped clavicle that took forever to heal and constantly bruised knuckles so like. idk. In the future, when adam parrish has escaped from his childhood prison, I’d like to think that they both get ugly minor injuries from doing joyful ramp and dolly and shopping cart type activities only

who knows best what to say to upset the other? 

surprisingly difficult question to answer bc I mean. It’s ronan. but is it? he systematically winds people up and adam is so deeply irritated by him that he straight up walks away, but also adam can be ice cold?? it’s so easy to get to ronan. They both fumble and call each other mean names when they want to compliment each other it’s a big mess

who is most likely to apologize first after an argument? 

holy shit would you believe neither??? the most stubborn humans on this earth!! record holders!! we got some emotional repression folks! hooooo boy

adam never starts arguments for no reason so he’s always thinking it through and coming to the conclusion that he’s in the right?? surprise he ain’t apologizing

meanwhile ronan can’t stop being cruel even though he knows it’s hurting people, it’s this vicious self-protective instinct that hurts so good and so wrong. and then his pride gets in the way once he’s cooled down. but he will come to st agnes on his knees and grab adam’s hand and try to make it clear that he’d step on his own pride on the way to adam’s door

who treats who’s wounds more often? 

sad & unfortunate :(( adam treats ronan’s solely bc ronan doesn’t know how the fuck to treat an injury and also ‘none of them wanted to hurt adam parrish’, so ronan’s got his stupid pointless anger related scrapes and adam’s got his anti-bacterial gel and they are a dream team

who is in constant need of comfort? 

neither of them come out on top here man. They’ve had some shared harrowing experiences, and some separate trauma that they’re trying to tell each other about (if their stories could just stop. sticking. when they try to say them out loud). in v different ways, neither of their families are families. Ronan doesn’t let himself fall asleep, and he doesn’t let himself go through things, and the repression starts to calcify into cruelty like it did right after his father died. adam can’t stop thinking about gansey on the roadside, and he can’t be touched some days, most days. he can’t stop swimming or he’ll die. He can’t keep swimming or he’ll die. The gangsey is a critical support system made of so many weak beams

who gets more jealous? 

are u fucking serious,,, it’s both of them pal. remember when every combination of his friends that didn’t include him made adam like. sick with jealousy. remember when ronan saw gansey talking on the phone with adam and wanted to put his hand through a wall. or when adam brought blue along on their quest and he spouted nasty shit the whole day. they both deeply want each others attention and they don’t seem to realize that they already have it? always?

who’s most likely to walk out on the other? 

ohh god. oh man. oh boy. Here’s the thing. adam’s gonna walk away from ronan, but he’s not gonna walk OUT on him. he’s going to walk away because he’s not on a leash, he’s gonna spread those beautiful fucking self-made wings. And ronan is too!! in his own time he’s gonna build his own spaces that aren’t the barns and he’s going to realize what home means to him and they’re both gonna walk out the door and back but never close it behind them

who will propose? 

a controversial topic! I’m on team adam for this one pals. I was on team ‘adam’s gonna kiss ronan first’ for a while before trk like a FOOL and I realized the error of my ways bc ronan is physical as fuck! and a risk-taker! of course he kissed adam smh. But a proposal? That’s a contract. That’s a speech. That’s a chess move. Ronan wouldn’t corner adam like that. Adam knows how ronan feels and more importantly he knows how HE feels himself, and I think one day ten years into their relationship the practicalities are gonna beckon and he’s gonna look ronan in the back of the head while he’s sleeping and roll over into the curve of his spine and tell him he wants a ring on his finger 

who has the most difficult parents?

omg... fuck off

who initiates hand-holding when they’re out in public? 

tactile bastards! both of them! ronan especially wants adam’s hands...., any which way he can get them. I mean. He will kiss adam’s hands when they’re at dinner at nino’s and he’ll hook their fingers together even for the 20 second walk from the BMW to monmouth’s front door like he LIVES FOR IT (adam feels nervy and exhilarated every time it’s gay)

who comes up for the other all the time? 

i mean they’re always together so they don’t really bring each other up. if they’re not together they’re with gansey/blue/henry or even fox way babes/vancouver crowd etc and those ppl get real tired of it real quick. adam usually keeps his ronan related musings to himself though like he has self-control unlike... R.N.L. himself

who hogs the blankets? 

ronan does tbh adam has never hogged anything in his life and ronan is a shit

who gets more sad? 

an unfair Q, man. They’ve both had a super rough time, especially right post-trk?? those few months are hard. Ronan cries a lot. Adam gets numb and far away a lot. They have a lot to be sad about. (But more to be happy about. They made it. They honestly just stare at each other and laugh breathlessly and touch foreheads and hands and scars and can’t believe their luck)

who is better at cheering the other up? 

I sorta said this with ronsey but I think ronan is THE BEST at doing dumb shit to take his mind off of things. Like all that stuff about making adam quiet and turning off the lists and anxieties in his head so that they can do smth mindless and dangerous? yeah that. memes and songs and poor decisions. depression whom?

who’s the one that playfully slaps the other all the time after they make silly jokes?

this never happens wtf they’re not really ‘playful slappers’ HOWEVER adam will glare at ronan so hard that it probably feels like a slap

who is more streetwise?

it reeeeally depends on your definition of streetwise?? Like if we’re talking survival it’s unquestionably adam. He can fix your car and bandage your wounds and figure out your taxes and make himself invisible and blend his accent into whoever’s around him. He’s wicked sharp and fast on his feet. But i mean. he can’t quite drive stick. and he wouldn’t be caught dead in the sort of underground that ronan ends up in. ronan is streetwise in terms of the actual street, and he knows the most brutal avenues a person can end up on, the real life nightmares that feel closest to the ones in his head. Ronan is smart enough to navigate the chaos, but adam is smart enough to avoid it altogether

who is more wise?

adam. easily. ronan is intelligent and instinctive and talented (or adam wouldn’t get him as well as he does) but adam is a genius and that look behind his eyes..... he’s lived about 1 billion times more than he should’ve by age 19

who’s the shyest? 

neither of them are shy exactly they’re just buried under 9 surface level personalities that you have to crack open with your bare fuckin hands

but if you met either of them in the hallowed halls of aglionby you would think adam was shy and ronan was a rampant fuckwad so based on appearance?? adam. he keeps his head down.

who boasts about the other more? 

as soon as adam is officially his bf ronan takes a ten year long victory lap he’s so embarrassing

who sits on who’s lap?

y’all. we all know ronan sits in adam’s. it’s a fact of life. he probably had a sexy dream about it when he was 17 and took his morning shower in holy water