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hyunebunx · 2 months ago

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˖˙ ᰋ ── i didn't hear what you said, i just want to kiss you

﹙ʚɞ˚﹚. genre: fluff

﹙ʚɞ˚﹚. a/n: this is for all of my perfectionist students lmao. kind of self indulgent and super inspired by hyunjin's latest live. enjoy!! <3<3<3

For years now, your boyfriend has been your favorite study partner. Always patient, kind, and considerate of your needs, helping you tackle every difficult subject with a smile on his face. Bringing you snacks, urging you to take breaks whenever he sensed you needed it but most importantly, never pressuring you in any way. Despite your stellar marks, he always says:

“Don’t stress too much about it. Grades aren’t everything.”

And you believe him, you really do, yet the overachiever part of your soul is always louder, and never lets you rest, yelling in your ear until you comply and spend your whole day cooped up inside, studying.

You need to get the highest grade possible, otherwise you’ll shrivel up and die.

Hyunjin keeps you grounded, that’s why there’s no better person alive than your boyfriend. An angel in disguise who has somehow fallen from grace, lost his wings, and is now trapped on earth, forced to mingle with mere mortals like you.

And mingle he does. But unfortunately for him that’s not enough – he also has to teach you statistics.

“See? The difference between descriptive statistics and inferential statistics is quite simple. It’s easier to tell them apart now, right?”

“I guess…” You yawn, setting your glittery pen aside before stretching your arms above your head. “I need a break.”

Hyunjin cocks a brow, amused. “We just started.”

“Half an hour ago!” You point towards the clock on the far wall, hidden behind endless amounts of bookshelves.

“Exactly, we barely managed to scratch the surface.” He pouts, running a hand over his buzzed head in slight exasperation.

You have to resist the urge of squishing his cheeks together, not wanting to make a scene in public. Cuteness aggression was a real thing you fought with every day. “I’m not going to lie, my love. I stopped listening to whatever you were explaining 15 minutes ago.”

“What?”

You nod. “I didn’t hear anything you said.” Then, you scoot closer, gluing yourself to his side as your voice drops several octaves. “I just want to kiss you.”

Hyunjin’s eyes widen slightly at your confession, swiftly looking around to ensure the nearby tables are still vacant. Then, he tongues his cheek in the most attractive way you’ve witnessed, a smirk hanging off the corners of his mouth as he shakes his head.

“After you finish this chapter.” He eventually breathes out, allowing one of his hands to rest on your upper thigh and squeeze in encouragement.

Your head falls back with a groan, frustrated. “Come on, Hyun!” the way you drag out his name has him chuckling lowly, eyes sparkling. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“Suffer?” He laughs, poking your forehead. “You’ll only suffer if you fail this test.”

“I won’t fail.” You huff, jerking back. His hand then slips off your thigh and the lack of warmth has you scrawling right back, wounding your arms around his neck to bring him even closer, hoping he’ll cave.

Hyunjin’s eyes fall to your lips, and you know it’s a matter of time before the spell you got him under works its magic. “Of course, you won’t. I won’t allow it.”

Your bright smile snaps his attention back to your eyes, which he seems to get lost exploring, absorbed by the beautiful color. Without missing a beat, you lean forward to connect your lips, eager to taste the cherry chapstick you applied on him when he complained about his lips being dry.

You guess even angels can get dehydrated.

Making out at the library on a Thursday night was never on your bingo card, but with Hyunjin as your partner in crime, you wouldn’t mind doing anything. He makes you feel safe in any situation, but especially when you have to get out of your comfort zone, tackle life head-on when putting things on hold is no longer an option.

You manage to peck his lips, once, twice, and then three times before he brings you closer, big hands sliding down from your waist to your hips and squeezing, needing to feel your flesh between his fingers.

His tongue brushes against your lower lip, and as your mouth opens to allow him access to every part of you, a low moan escapes you both simultaneously. Alcohol was overrated – you’ve only ever gotten drunk on each other.

“We don’t even share a major.” He gasps as he pulls away, and your lips find his jaw.

“I know.” Another kiss graces the beautiful mole under his eye.

With the way you’re kissing him, your lips trailing down his throat, Hyunjin has trouble speaking. “I-I’ve never taken this class before.”

“I know.” You nod, pecking the base of his neck.

A shiver runs down his spine, and his hold on you tightens, almost like he’s ready to lift and place you on his lap, deeming you too far away. “So why do I keep helping you like I’m some dean’s list student?”

“Because you love me.” You finally stop to look into his eyes, heart fluttering at the way his chest is already weaving up and down after a few minutes of innocent kisses. Your touch has always had that effect on him, so you were never confused about his feelings towards you. Hyunjin wore his heart on his sleeve, body reacting faster than his brain could process, never failing to show you how near and dear you are to him. How much he adored every one of your endearing quirks, loving you unconditionally like it was a duty he never wanted to be free of. “As much as I love you.”

With a cocky smirk he barely manages to muster, he replies while tucking some hair behind your ear. “I think I love you a little more than you love me, actually.”

“That’s impossible, Hyun.”

And you were certain of it. Nothing could be bigger than the love you held for this angel.

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edenspoem · 1 month ago

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𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝: 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. (𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐞)

summary. | next chapter (tba). you're expecting—and ellie is sick in love. one thing inhibits her: she thinks it isn't requited.

reader discretion is advised. mdni. fluff. a punch of angst: one instance of abuse. mentions of previous. pregnant!reader. jackson!loser!ellie. damaged relationship with a man explicit (for the plot.) the pining creeps in. strangers to lovers (in the future). requited but assumed unrequited love. cheesy romance scenes. evident undertones of addiction: substance mention, cannabis, strained relationships (ellie and joel common occurence. reader and their scumbag bf too). a realistic motherhood. depression. apprehension. you get it. wc: 4.3k. series masterlist.

note.

based on this anon i got. shoutout to @serqphites fr. art in header creds to @nramv. thanks to @s-4pphics for proofreading this one for me! join the discord to see content such as this in creation.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐬

It is the thought that stomachs you.

“Shit,” you curse and bite the mouth that does. Mindless thing. “He’s gonna murder you, damn idiot.”

Control is contraception. You kneel your head to the faucet, its trickle the thing that embraces your ears; if you could crawl out of one, you would. Here is said to be simple. Here is an embellished free port. These people, neighbours and founders—elders, to be exacting for spiteful whims, sold the idea that you would have support and homes to crash in outside your own if it did ever crumble to the ground. Bandages to bleed in. But the shameful wound is open, unclosing. No one wants to account for a burden that isn’t their consequence.

You had a dream in the palm of your hand.

But what is wanted—is not for sale. You just assume control over disorder. It happens to a girl at least once, right? That dreadful blue in the sound once you learn for sure that you lost to it: to nature.

You wash the vacant spot.

Fucking pregnant.

It felt possible the first run to the toilet. Then, too terrible to be a lie the third roundabout. Vomit litters the porcelain basin.

Cat figured something was up before you caught this nauseous spell. She mentioned and argued that your constant trips to the bathroom were irregular, and you made light and nodded in a sunlit direction. Capering under its false pretense. “Yeah, what about it?” you segued, but not without heel-stumbling. Frou-frou foxes in Midsummer fires, your all-differentiating, all-time repeat from the Cocteau Twins; the radio thrummed with its rounding lulls and ethereals around a crowded living room, a whirling concoction for your hapless intoxication. Bird without its wings.

So is it the alcohol, or the condition—hurling you over the toilet bowl?

Either consequence creeps up from intestinal serpentining, as you pull apart your own single-headed carelessness. Who to blame, other than the carrier, right? Shit, well, a condom was used. You made with that precaution. So, are you the luckless one percent, or is the old-world hiding something important about fucking contraception? Can one girl be—ill-fated to this? You cocoon against the cupboards, slipping down the hinges, the knobs and indents. “Shit,” repeats your stunned mouth, quieter this time.

The walls seem to listen; a disagreeing wind quivers the window.

Even if you weren’t a statistic: the abandoned alcohol, now advantaged and emptied, returned to its fine-china neighbors in your father’s parlor, is evidence. Chastisement waiting to scream. He hates parties—and with much less than a tolerant grunt, hates girls who attend them. It seems sensible; Cat is a regular host, and he chastises your friendship.

Not her. You, being her friend.

Cat sighed, mashing the butt of her cig into a bisected can. The nutritions label was faded. “You’re a damn wreck,” within amusement, she scolded. But it was not without a heartstopper. She laughed, “If you end up pregnant, ‘m not watching the little shit. Get enougha’ that out of daycare to take it home with me as well. Damn it.” and it tore your stomach open; the organ pummeled into your serpentine guts, and the deafening throb frightened itself higher. You could taste what wanted to come up.

You swallowed. “Pregnant?” Concentrated on the purple under sienna-brown eyes. Distraction meant the world, in that moment.

She nodded—and shrugged, an unsure note. “Just a hypothetical.”

Fuck you, psychic.

The guilt was beginning to make itself felt. You relapsed, in a heartfelt confession, to a state of adolescence this evening. “You’re so goddamn selfish!” It is one thing to be treated as innocent; Mateo could be condescending at times, but to be spoken at like a cruel, bird-brained and intentioned child, and with innocence, crushed you. He argued that wanting to keep this pregnancy—after you gave him the boot—was not your moral to preach while consequences were afoot. “Do you really think you have it in you to be a mother?”

Fetal termination exists, still, in the apocalypse. At life-threatening costs. That was reason enough to let nature take its pathological course.

One tremble. “Yes.” You are a child again.

You can see it in his lineaments. He flinches his person in disgust, hundred somethings held under his tongue. “If you want to believe that.” The air is too pure for him. He rifles the cartridges on his wardrobe for a lighter, joint in the opposite hand. He takes a drag, hides his face with the pungent result, and espies the resentment shining your under-eyes with less care than before; these are just crocodile tears to him. “Sure,” he shrugs.

Then his attention drops a little lower than your chest, a brief change of heart. You feel the need to crawl inside your arms. More than ever.

He points with the smoldering dog-end. Silence snaps. “Not mine.” Flicking it to enunciate himself. The discarded state of him, and his disclaim, leaves a bitter taste in your mouth—if not the entire esophageal hole. Your lungs: filled with his exhaust. “Go find some other dude to blame. M’sure you had a couple who..” The joint finds its purpose again. “Might happen to look a little more identical,” he accuses.

You left before the air became his.

Time does not bring relief; the emptiness in your bed does anything but suffer silence. The growing hours are loud, and Jackson is still a paradise to some who are convinced it has its comforts.

You all have lied.

𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐞 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐭𝐡

“Of course he went and narced on her to her father!”

Jackson is outside the rest of America. Yes, it craters in national alpines, but it was a roadside seedling at the end of the last generation. Wood rotted to cordyceps in its neighbors; this place was given a second life. The standing tables here in the one and alone bar—the famous, aliased Bison—are so red, so wood-strong, so anointed with caring hands, you can catch a glimpse of yourself in it.

Cat treats it with the same purpose as if it were decades ago, and nothing ever happens here; she slams her lighter and pint glass down on it—pissed to express the least of the most. “Who else does shit like that?”

Despite the fact that Cat is virtually your sister from another mother, you went to Jesse about the argument first. He isn't a volatile pipe bomb with ears and earful intentions that create more harm, not good; she absolutely fucking is. One mention, and her fingertips are spitting fire. Cast iron doesn't even get near hot enough as the hands that share a piece of her trouble-starved mind.

But, she found out regardless. Not that you should ever stop her from; on some occasions, she has the right.

Jesse left your big news out of it, though. Not his right to tell.

“His corner of the town,” Jesse adds, his soft fingers around his glass, and up to his splitting mouth. He glances round the booth in search of all attention. Sure of it, he piled on. “Got a lotta assholes with the same notions in mind.” Chuting a sip of wine—a drink which lost its romantic significance to casual consumption, on par with beer—down his gullet.

Slow, agreeing nods pass around until another lip chips in. “Fucking dick.” Ellie, with the fullest glass, and untethered fingers tapping about the rim, has her head resting low on one fist, doubled over the curl-leaf surface.

Jesse scoffed. “Tell me about it.” Sardonic sort of response—to her short, but symptomatic one. He leans in his corner and trains the attention on her, a question in his squint. “Say, Ellie, you dealt with him on occasion, right? When he collaborated with Eugene. All that weed?”

She hates to hear it. “Just one time.” In her head—her head when it escapes out here into social wilderness—she was a good girl. Clean, rectified, an adolescent state of mind, and it has the whole world to do with Joel and learning to forgive. It is the least bit detectable on the outside, but she really is doing better than before. Rough-faced or not. “What about it?” She looks up, at last, the perfect shrug to her cross-question.

“Was she even there?”

Ellie crumpled up having to account for that one time; wrinkles in the brows, a snagged or yawning mouth, post-insomniac ripples and redness in her optic profile. Imagine an irate basset hound.“Reno?” She means your given alias: Reno, or Nevada, your origins. And she is Boston, or Massachusetts. “No, not at all.”

“See, he makes that shit up all the time,” Cat interludes. “First it was Justice, then it was me who he ratted out to Maria. Stopped trading with him after.”

Jesse has not traded once, or thought to smoke pot once, but he agrees. “Mhm.” A man of no judgement—when it comes to friends.

Sunset is climbing and pushing to stoop in the apertures of the table. The lithe, gold tadpole-ends creeping in, beating over faces, and so the restaurant had its lights switched on to make up for those recalcitrant pockets; soft, water-black mottles in the deeper corners. Ellie laced fists, cupping one around the other, and a particular string of light dug for this vulnerable formation. She has a heap to process in her own head; the sudden silence, deafening.

Shifting to his elbows, Jesse rests his well-slept eyes on her—a sore sight. “Gonna finish that?” He points, withheld fingers stretching for his own glass.

She clicks her tongue to her teeth. “Nah,” responding with whatever is left in her, a breath or a reaching-more. The glass grates as she hardly straightens her fingers to push it aside. “Tastes different.”

The claim draws out the doubt from their faces. “Tastes the same as before,” Jesse professes as he rolls the last droplets of his wine past his lips and along the columns of his throat, replacing his grip with the full glass of scotch, sunlight streaming through the liquid with blonde lines against nectar-gold. Her choice of spirits. “I best be joinin’ Seth in the kitchen. Have fun, ladies.” He crawls knee-first from the booth.

Cat shoots an astonished sneer, one he cannot see or sense in his bones as his legs were haste to vault the counter.

Ellie does, though. And she is too low-spirited to guess what for and laugh; a strange demeanor. “Hmm?”

“He'll be drunk on the job,” she clarifies. “But, I guess it's up to who cares. Not enough for me to keep watch.” And she, too, sidles out from the cornered booth, leather brushing against denim. Watching Jesse vanish behind the crowded bar made her suppose it's that time; the fading sun calls you home, and when it does, you go home. Nothing more to it in Jackson. “See ya, geek.”

She waves with an unprepared hand. “Yup. See you too..”

The jog home was not without its usual discomforts. Paths, loved still by a residual winter, were hard not to slip on. The unhesitating side-eyes were too common to dash out of their sight. Ellie is aware of what has them wringing their necks just to look at her, but as it continued, she just accepted it.

Her hoodie is half-sufficient. “Fuckin’ warm up already,” she curses, digging both fists into her pockets for warmth outside the steeple church. She notices three distinct paraphernalia in her pocket when her knuckles hit the seam: the larger, thicker one is obvious—Joel's watch. She inherited it on her own terms when he wasn't there. “Ow! Shit!” The cracked dial case nicks her for her mindlessness.

Second one is a mechanical lighter. Last time she wore this hoodie, she was squinting back the tears after telling Joel she didn't need his fucking help.

Ellie pinches the thinner, paper-textured item, and pulls it out with no clue to what it might be. This should be a simple guess.

Old feelings rush when she sees it in-between her fingers.

“Fuck.”

The word goes quiet in the night. Surrounding sycamores rustle, listening, and they respond with the eerie wind that rouses through their crown-shying bough. Invisible hands dislodge the strand from behind her ear.

Something shifts in her to listen in return.

She raises her chin. Gazes into pitch-blackness with a racing heart; her trees are there somewhere. Under the hole of light up there.

Ellie believed, from a very naive and insignificant age, that she was born and fell from the bough of a tree. The idea has some flesh and blood to it; her mother is unknown to her. She has the head of hair of the autumn sycamores, burning oranges, and delightful greens. Too green yet; left without the hour to decide what living meant and what her reason was to begin doing so—to live. She was given a gun before she was given a purpose. At least to her, matured and ripened, that is how it seems. Little bit careless considering her important condition; did Marlene think it through? Looking up into the same blanket of nothingness, she ponders whether reigniting this bad habit would still get her to the moon or not—if the world ever returned to pre-apocalypse.

From the hour you're born, you begin to die.

Simone de Beauvoir.

“Make it seven?” quoting herself, she slots the pointed end of the joint in-between her fresh-licked, rose-kissed lips and hopes she suffers no bite from it in the future. “Fuck it.” The watch becomes the last thing in her pocket. Flick, flick.

Her lungs fill with nostalgia.

“Ah..”

And puff.

She purses her mouth into an open ring, the somber, but lit against its will, night stolen from her sight in a cloud of white. It ebbs the stress in her she had not noticed was beginning to pulse again, searching for her heart with a pair of circling fingers. She palms her chest down. Maybe this is what the wind was telling her.

Ellie is nowhere near stoned, but swears she can feel it slowing. Easing her into something good, this time around. It feels good to have faith in something true.

Silence bends, not snaps. It fits in the gentle start of sobs, a dreadful blue sound, enough to interrupt her star-watching. She pierces around the grassplot for a source and sees the woman of the hour.

Guitar strums pick up in the wind.

She recognises who it is.

The sniffles reel her over. You see a pair of slow-strolling converse, scratching the ground upon steps, before you see the person. She stands an illuminated silhouette under stelliform, globe-string lanterns, the same ones from the winter dance a week ago that no one has thought to disassemble, several feet from your place on this bench.

Her heart has no reason to be thumping.

Strange, the smoke coming from her mouth, like a gun, is not unsettling—it should be. It parts when it clears. “Hey.” Her hesitant voice pricks your skin with goosebumps. Thinned-out, mint eyes at first glance harsh, but gentle at the second; the tired under-beds of purple is a prevalent stigma, but the shining pupil crawling over her iris struck this overwhelming sense of being understood. The soft structure of her face clasps them.

She looks at you like she has no clue what you are, but in the same glance has been raptured with an idea of what you could be. Creature to creature.

Watching, for a long time.

You wipe the cold under your nose onto your sleeve. Hesitant as she is. “Oh, have I taken your spot?” The first thing that comes to mind rolls from your tongue. You begin to collect yourself without an answer.

She stutters, her mouth ahead of her thoughts. “No, n-no! You're totally fine.” Hand freeing from her pocket to pause you.

She seems sweet.

Her curious eyes drop to where your arms are tangled—sheathed around yourself. You haven't moved them since.

Ellie cannot handle these lingering pre-spring conditions, even in her getup. The white avenues are gone but the winds have fought abating, the worst of the weather at night. In your case, a thin cardigan, she can only imagine.

She thumbs her hem. “Are you cold?”

You register that it might seem that way shooting a once-over glimpse of her collar—blue plaid poking through. To be honest, the cool air slipping under and around the hemlines hasn't occurred to you until she made a scene of it.

“Here,” she quietens, rustling in her layers. The slate-grey hoodie is folded outside-in and being offered before you can protest your independence. Nothing but misunderstandings have come between you and her. Charitable ones. “Keep it. I need to clean out my wardrobe, as others would say, anyway.”

It is a small, nothing-much distraction, but you wonder who others are to her. Good, or damaged too?

Someone once said: it's more trouble to refuse help where it is cost-free. You decide to trust that sentiment and crawl from your arms, reluctant to reply. “Too many hoodies?” Letting a glint of light peek through, you let something slip identical to a laugh. It sounds so unfamiliar.

Hers sounds perfect. “No, uh—sneakers, actually. Been told I have too many pairs.” She laughs again. You adjust the hoodie around your waist.

Your ears ride on the grace of that laugh. Replay, replay, and replay it in your head to the point your eyes are staring absent-minded and the colors on her person begin to remind you of a sycamore in autumn. Her deep-auburn burns with the lantern glow, the collected bundle of mane under the hind of her head an incurious shadow still. You wonder if it comes from her mother, or her father: the fire. “Yeah, been there.” Your answer has no substance to it either; you have nothing but a couple worn-out pairs. Your mouth is just saying things—the mindless thing.

Her mouth line shrinks from its last laugh. She now smiles small, with a feature she can't wipe off curling. “Yeah.” She catches your timid voice and echoes it, glancing down before she releases the joint in her fingers to the ground, squashing it under her sneaker. She twists it around, a mix of earth and ash scraping.

It blows a kiss of smoke.

Reminds you of those stump puffballs—mushrooms, bubbling in the depressions of dead or decaying wood, that puff green when puttered at by an early curiousness. One enveloped the tip of your shoe with it when you were little: stretching your underdeveloped leg that managed to reach once through a metal fence peeled at the sides, making squeamish cries when the thing of nature fumed. Memories do return full circle.

She leans an inch on her toes, still absorbed with the ground. The orange roots of her lashes catch that same fire.

Who is she?

For a small town, you should know; there are a few hundred faces in Jackson. But hers is not one you can remember. It seems misplaced. Her brown freckles are symptomatic of the sun. She lets quiet drapings of stress hang from her tear corners to her anti-brows, not so conventional for her age, but unafraid. Her stares are soft, and don't make you feel like a gullible child or a faithless woman.

She looks like she was born in the springtime, but made for October.

“Thanks, again.” You tire restless from that word. Said too often, heard too often. When will there be more?

You notice her half-arm tattoo right as it gets concealed, the strange comfort pulling her ruched, blue sleeves to her wrists. She pins the hems into her palms with her fingers. “It's nothin’,” she humbles. Her lips and nostrils are redder when she abandons her focus from the ground. No doubt she burns without trying in the summer. “Uh, I should be going—now.” She sidles in a direction and you feel urged to follow with your eyes. She uses her arm in a nervous toss to demonstrate where she is headed. “Do me a favor and get home safe, yeah?”

“Of course.” You watch with a farewell smile, a sweet shape creeping on your lips you can't stop. Maybe, you don't want to. Then, remembering one thing important to you, the so-called sweet mouth curses again. “Fuck, her name!”

You hope the two of you stumble into each other again, on some distant morning or near night. And learn her name, just not at your lowest.

Those guitar strings stop with no one around.

𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

Late night dislodges from the space ahead and is punctured with light. Slipping through the door, closing it behind, a home of damaged goods that should feel familiar and smell of floral nothings repulses you at the entrance. You catch it as soon as it hits—alcohol, marijuana.

Mateo.

Your throat burns from the scent.

His presence becomes known through a sharp shout. “Fuck took you so long?” It stabs through the house, the walls thin enough to not be considered in this, or his, material world.

His rage begins to beat, one foot after the other, on the hardwood floors, and your hand returns to where it felt it was needed. Hoodie fabric—that smells nothing like here, or him—is palmed in-between. Your heart pumps with fear and knowing; God is not restless to punish, but a darker, closer, corporeal counterpart is and he steals you from this life on earth, and he tells you that you have not suffered enough. The stranger in this hoodie is your tether.

But, after that fleeting conversation with the girl in the common acres, you feel you have known her for ages—and you're dating a stranger.

Swallow your pride and knowledge. He will smite you for it. “Um, Cat.” Quick, quick, the lump goes. But slow, slow, the lie creeps and is hesitant to be heard, afraid of its flaws. You turn to the kitchen before his ugly, three-headed emergence, running a hand over the budding holes of flowers. Jesse cut them from his garden, a secret congratulations from him and his mother. “She went to Bison and called me along. Time gotta-'head of us in there. Sorry, baby,” you stall, trembling.

The drunken stench gets worse. You cough but the air is all the same.

His footsteps take a pause at what you sense to be the fridge, a thimble distance. The kitchen, entrance, and couch are all subsided into one long room and aren't interrupted with inessential walls. Trailer gradient. It is not so glamorous as it is discreet; months into the relationship you noticed its perfect usage for taboo practice. The earth tries to return to itself as paint peels from the walls.

He converges with the eerie silence.

It is his discontinuation that turns you around. Otherwise, his hands fallow and large would be and in each press would be apologies you have heard in timeless befores. This time—out of all times—he just stares at you, head to toe, without one. Checking, like, to see if you're all there.

No. He is looking at you like you have done something wrong.

Scrunching up, you blurt. “What?” Quiet. Weak. But you regret your tone as it leaves your throat. The gestures blow your cover wide open.

He knows. “Somethin’ up?” And that is his cue to creep with inertia, his unwillingness to confront a potential problem, his face you cannot read. His alcohol kisses are disguises and his blows to your soul are the realest emotions he has stirred in you, post-beginning. Your nights begin with expectation.

He will either be enraged or lethargic.

But he stops crawling too close to the sun and reaches the rest with his hand, pinching the sleeve of the hoodie, rolling it together. His face shifts and unfortunately—you can read it.

Fuck.

He has his idea. “Where did you get this shit from?” You wish he drank himself to bed; his breath is hot, biting and in your senses and he does his part to fill each nerve. He has your arm, but he could very well have your heart, too. In his grasp. “No, better question—who did you get it from?”

Cold sweat. You answer on high alert.

“Cat!”

He chews it up. “No.” Shakes his head, pins the sun closer in on itself. The counter pinches your lower-spine. “She doesn’t do weed no fuckin’ more. This smells of it. Who does it belong to, huh! One of mine?”

Yelling is nothing compared to his gaping volume.

Your eardrums wobble. “No,” refuting, you open yourself to him. Open to his open-ended judgement. He out-reprimands—until it clicks. “Are you sure it isn't just you?”

He is just projecting.

Where did that come from?

Mateo fumes. His seams come apart. “Yeah, is it just me?” His rhetorical disturbs the somehow sound of nothing, but the hope that it would be yelling and nothing else—bangs against the cupboards. He holds your head in the side of it.

The impact disorients you from this kitchen.

You expect to meet a floor next.

As soon as the sharp pain leaves, it returns. He uses the lightheaded silence he created as a second reason to wrangle you a sweep over, aiming your head—or the whole, his anger is extensive—into the fridge. “Stupid bitch!” The door handle gets you in the stomach before he can.

It escapes your throat with a bubble of nothing to come out.

“Hope that solves your morning issue.” And it stops there. On the cold, slate tile. You have been here before.

Made swollen sounds.

You clutch for the floor. The floor that exists in your mind; too flat for any percievable grasp, your fingers find themselves in your palms, indenting. You press and tighten, searching for pain, but her sweatshirt is long and loved enough to protect those parts of your hands.

You regret having a mouth.

Small room, big conniption. You feel a little too seen retrieving your tears through these wordless-oath, congested inhales. Being in here is suffocating. Outside was bigger; omnipresent, not so wall-to-wall, not so focused on your problems.

But you catch her scent. Not the thing he smelled. Her scent.

Unnostalgic.

Wearing a little bit of some-stranger-else does have a coalescing effect. Some chemical change. Rewiring.

Does she?

fic taglist: @sabrinathewitchh982 @baptismbaby @acidblum @naomqq @mariesmagix @azteriarizz @violetszn @morticeras @angitial @futac00chi3 @raid-ar @monki-nat

perm taglist: @whore4abby @tlougrl @mina-281 @beabeebrie @fleshunger @elliewilliamsisactuallymygf @nicolicht @xinyaya @sawaagyapong @reinersbigolboobies @brunettedolls-blog @syrenada @p4ison1vy @nil-eena @hi2647 @rarestdoll @narieater @hrtmal @eudaemoniaaaa @ellie-07063 @luvfaeri @carleenaelaine @kissyslut @beemillss @elsmissingfingers @maleelee @seraphicsentences @ravyaryn @sunnsh1ne

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dolphin-diaries · 4 months ago

Text

Who Gets To Talk Detransition?

Originally published on Dolphin Diaries

The story is supposed to go like this: a trans cult, or maybe the medical establishment, steals a young girl under its ghastly wing. A wounded girl, a scared one, desperate for reprieve from a violent world that has whipped her into self-hatred. The kidnapping cultists promise an escape. A cure to the horror of her body. Then, mutilation follows, which a brave few will eventually try to undo—only they never quite can.

No, wait.

The story is supposed to go like this: some people are trans men. They are assigned female at birth, but they are men, and so some want to make their body male. But sometimes, a select few regret their transition. They aren’t trans men. They’re actually cis—in agreement with their sex—but they’ve made a mistake for whatever reason. They are very scarce. A statistically inconsequential minority to which we ought not cede ground. After all, why should a society be concerned with a statistically minuscule people?

Regardless of which way you tell it, two constants remain. One: the trans and the detrans are antagonistic; the detrans have been hurt by transition care and now threaten its existence. Two: those that detransition are seeking to correct a prior mistake. Be it from the right or left, the story is always that of failure and regret.

Part I: When Your Worst Fears Come True

September 2023 marked the eighth anniversary of me starting testosterone. Getting HRT was something I’d fought for with great difficulty and determination: I’d burned bridges with an abusive family; I’d come out a year prior to the entirety of my university class and had already lived as a man; I then dropped out of university so I could work a full-time job to afford HRT. I did all this with full knowledge that I could not access the legal transition system in my country. I’d be unable to change my gender marker and would have to deal with that fact in a place where most people barely know what ‘transgender’ is, let alone accept it. But I was willing to weather all of that, and to my luck, I had no trouble passing for a man, and the vast majority of friends and acquaintances accepted me.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic to start testosterone. In adolescence my masculinity had been denied to me, the feminine traits of myself and my body forcibly exaggerated to put me in my (woman’s) place. Now, it felt like having all the features I’d come to despise overtaken by new growth. Like a ruin reclaimed by fresh ivy. I wasn’t entirely content—I wanted to be indistinguishable from a cis man, untouched by any insidious womanhood whatsoever. Only I found most cis men either uninspired-looking or repugnant, so… a pretty cis man? Androgynous, but not too androgynous, so I don’t get gay-bashed?

The real end goal I wished of my body was nebulous. There was no man I could cite as the Ur-Man for me, trans or cis, neither in character nor appearance. It wasn’t for lack of the much maligned Good Male Role Models in my life; I simply resonated with none of them. But there was life to be lived anyway. So I put one foot in front of the other, and sometimes, I knew my steps were dictated as much by fear of transphobia as they were by my own desires.

There are many things to fear while living as trans. One of my most personal anxieties was detransition. A forced one would be most horrid; to be put in a position where my bodily autonomy, so hard-won, could be stripped away as if it never existed.

But my strangest fear was that I would want to detransition. Not from some cruel necessity or right-wing brainwashing or what have you; genuinely, rationally, actively want it.

I knew why I feared that. Whenever I met another trans man or heard of their stories, some jigsaw puzzles would simply not fit. I never once desired to be a man until I learned of trans men’s existence. Never sought to play the role of a man and only half-enjoyed them now, if at all. Never, not even now, dreamt of myself as a man. At times another trans man would have the same ‘odd’ pieces, but then something else would find itself amiss again. On and on that list went.

One might call this a foregone conclusion in retrospect. Shouldn’t I have known? Shouldn’t a doctor have known? But this rather ignores that the psychology and study of transsexuality are hopelessly warped with attempts to eradicate it. My country’s procedures were dated. The questionnaires I took to have my doctor conclude I’m transsexual? Those were lousy with decades-dated misogyny (do you like housework? do you get aroused by housework? or maybe by cars?) and with voyeuristic, invasive questions (how do you have sex? how do you masturbate?) There were correct answers; there was no variation, which is only allowed for the cisgender. That procedure has since improved, especially in the West, but the traces remain. How does one introspect on one’s gender when that was the model for it? How does one even attempt to unravel the relationship between misogyny and desire to abandon womanhood when to do so threatens access to medical care? What sign ought I have looked for to distinguish myself from trans men when it was demanded no distinctions exist?

One does not exit a hostile care system with a healthier, more stable identity. That is nothing short of a miracle.

September 2023 marked the eighth anniversary of me exiting hostile care with a coveted prize in my grasp. It also marked the moment I looked in the mirror and saw exactly what I’d sought to win in that hellscape: an indisputable man. Not a cis man, of course, but one bereft of all the features that had haunted me to the point of self-harm. I was free, I had won; no one would ever look at me and think me a woman—no one ever did, those days.

I had won. And in my victory, I felt nothing at all.

Part II: Failure and Regret

The Right invests much bombast into transition regret. Loud ring the warning bells: this could happen to you! Your child! A girl with so much to live for, rendered barren, flat-chested, a misshapen man-thing! You, too, will live to regret it!

It amuses me. Queerness and butchness had marked me long ago; I was never particularly buxom or fecund. Never, in the heterosexist sense, something worthy of desire. I was a misshapen man-thing far before I asked people to call me ‘he.’ The people who made sure I knew I was a monster man-woman were precisely the kinds of people that now warned me away from turning myself into what—according to them—I already was. The sheer parental panic with which I’d been forced into makeup and dresses, you’d think I transitioned already.

Even more amusingly, sometimes the Right claims to care about butch lesbians. Tomboys are being mutilated, they say. It’s an imposition of gender stereotypes; women can be masculine!

But if the Right believes women can be lesbian and masculine, what’s with the whole fixation on ruined femininity and birthing wombs?

Indeed, the Right’s acceptance of detransitioned women is full of little caveats. They are to be paraded as damaged goods at conservative rallies. Their lost breasts and ovaries will be ever-ogled, figuratively if not literally, and the ‘irreversible damage’ left by testosterone examined with morbid fascination. They are the Right’s Magdalenes. They’re proof there’s good in the transgressive—that is, that the enemy can be pitied, assimilated. As an underclass, of course. They’re never to truly cease being damaged, for they must be proof that sex can only be ruined, never changed.

For a detransitioner, there is temptation in the Right’s conditional acceptance. It offers an easy answer to their current pain. The past choice they may regret or suffer under—why, it should’ve been prevented! If only you listened to the right authorities, all would’ve been well. Not altogether different than regretting a marriage or college major. Many an adult decries stupid choices of youth—and those certainly happen—but what’s scariest of all is the notion you weren’t making rash or ill-informed decisions. I know I wasn’t. And if that is so, then it means the current self—the mature one, the one with 20/20 hindsight—could make a mistake, too.

Right-wing detransitioners take for granted there exists a guardian angel that could’ve healed them of the gendered distress they once felt and showed them a path to contentment. That is a very tall order, considering how misogynistic and hostile psychiatry and psychology are, historically speaking. And that’s to say nothing of religion. But at least they would’ve been prevented from transitioning; misery averted—right?

My guardian angel, you could say, was lack of funds. I wanted top surgery—double mastectomy—but there was no way I could afford it, not in many years’ time. Now I realise I would’ve come to regret it and would’ve likely sought to reverse its effects. So I’m all good, right? I benefitted from how flawed trans healthcare is, didn’t I?

Perhaps. But there was a reason I wanted a mastectomy, and not a frivolous one. Every time I needed to see a doctor for a respiratory infection, I did so in fear of transphobic malpractice. I would minimise the time I spent in places where my chest could be exposed—gyms, pools, beaches, goddamned corporate retreats. And then there was the way my body, breasts included, had been used to prove to me I was not just a woman but Woman, a biodestined vessel for coy giggles, cookware, and pregnancy. And how that made me feel.

Indeed, I would later find out there are women and nonbinary people that do not identify with manhood yet seek the exact same top surgery I once wanted, for similar reasons. With no regrets. They wish to take control of their body and do so. And I know that, had I been able to get top surgery in the past, it would’ve made me happy for a good while.

So what’s more important: years of constant anxiety, or lack of hypothetical regret?

The right-wing detransitioner assumes one’s current self to be the ultimate judge of one’s choices—but take that principle to its logical conclusion, and it will seem like no decision should ever be made. There is always a prospective Future You which possesses more knowledge. Always the possibility of regret. Of course, decisions in life are sort of inevitable, but don’t worry about that—the powers that be will handle that. Ancestral tradition, or a caring authority figure. That’s also all humans with exactly the same issues, but don’t worry about that either. Maybe God is speaking through them. You never know.

In the end, the prescripts of the Right march to the same grim conclusion. That the only decision you can ever make with total certainty is death.

Part III: Death, the Tarot Kind

Queer culture delights in tales of transformation. We were all once larval—in the closet, often abused and scared. Trapped in a world of rigid roles and brutal dominion. But one day, we hope to metamorphose into our true shape and to take flight above a blissful, lawless, ever-shifting sea of change.

Most queer people are cisgender, and more still do not seek to transition, but the nature of all our transgressions is intimately entwined with gender anyway. We’re all doing it ‘wrong,’ by the wider society’s definition, even the most masculine of cis gay men or the most feminine of cis lesbian women. Unsurprising, then, are the queer community’s various attempts to embrace gender variance and to lay bare the plasticity of sex.

There is nothing per se about detransition that does not fit this mould. If gender is to be fucked with, why not take it for a swing? Indeed, in my experience most queer people would agree it’s entirely possible to detransition without weaponising transphobia or lapsing rightward.

But that’s usually a hypothetical thought exercise that ends exactly there. Maybe that queer person knows a detransitioner, maybe they don’t; regardless, the lives of the detransitioned do not interact with queer ideas of sex/gender, or indeed queer ideas about anything. The only time the detransitioned are really remarked on is only to state our statistical insignificance—or rather, the statistical insignificance of transition regret. I don’t personally regret my transition for the most part, so I wouldn’t even count there.

Whereas the Right sings lyrical about all the motivations and trials and tribulations of the detransitioned (and deftly twists the verses to fit the chorus), the Left does not usually consider the lives of the detransitioned at all. Mistakes happen, they suppose. Kind of funny we ‘failed at gender’ twice. Too bad we’re so miserable, they guess. What, ‘the patriarchy made you do it’? BuzzFeed feminism is so-o-o 2010s, bro.

It would be accurate to surmise the queer community has ceded the concept of detransition to the Right. The queer stance is, in effect, ‘it doesn’t matter anyway’—a defensive and reactive one.

That is not to say the Left as a whole is to blame for grifting detransitioners or the Right itself—the blame is always, first and foremost, on the ones that actually do the harm. And the negligence of the Left doesn’t really harm those that happily push others under the bus—sadly, some people are just assholes. No, the consequences are felt instead by detrans people that have no desire to participate in the transphobia circus, and after that, trans people themselves. The Right’s deathgrip on the detransition narrative means detransition itself is conceptually tied to the Right. Because there is no alternative trans-positive narrative, there is no way to exist as detrans and not affirm someone else’s transphobia, no matter how many times you say you don’t hate trans people. After all there is only one thing people think of when they hear ‘detransitioner.’ And now you are it, whether you like it or not.

I feared I would detransition because, on some level, I knew I might. But why fear it? It’s hard to be trans. There are clear privileges to socially presenting as your birth sex. Doctors will readily help you undo transition. I didn’t want to grift—well, fucking fantastic. Easy enough to not do something. What’s the problem?

I feared it because it’s soul-crushing to know your existence hurts the people you love most. Your friends, partners, mentors. So many cis people in my past knew me as The Trans Person—and now what? How much of the good I had done would be ruined? And by what possible example could I imagine my life as a detransitioner? What is there to even aspire to? And what about everything I’d sacrificed to transition in the first place? All the strife and ridicule I endured, only to have it whispered to me from leering faces: “See? We were right all along.”

All that, to face alone.

At a certain point my resistance to the idea of detransition was motivated only by this. Only by what others would make of me against my will. Not my personal desires. Nothing else at all. To be turned into such a spectacle, a public property of a person, felt like nothing short of death.

Part IV: Afterlife

I decided to start this substack after listening to every podcast appearance by Lucy Kartikasari I could find. She is a detrans woman with a similar yet different story; she transitioned much younger, but went through a similarly arcane approval system and years of waiting; she is not a lesbian; she has detransitioned, and she speaks in favour of trans healthcare and trans rights. The name Dolphin Diaries also originates with her—or rather, with a different, anonymous user, whose idea she broadcast on her TikTok. A dolphin as a symbol of detransition; a mammal that evolved from the ocean to walk on land and then returned to an aquatic life. I find it an appealing and pithy comparison, one free of unnecessary gendering or judgement.

There are precious few voices that speak of detransition in a positive, non-right-wing light. It’s a perspective fraught with thorny, uncomfortable questions. A perspective which is easier to ignore—unless you can’t. If for no one else, I write this for people that felt the same way I did. Trapped, not by ‘mistakes’ or by ‘gender ideology’, but by the image others have painted of them before they could even protest.

I do not write this for the Right. There is nothing I can say that would sway you, and there is nothing you can say that would sway me—and believe me, I have listened more carefully and with far more good faith than you ever have. Feel free to comment how much you pity my womb, or something. I promise to leave its fertility a mystery. I’m a tease that way.

As for other potential readers of this blog: while I do believe it a failure of queer rhetoric to adequately synthesise detransition into the overall gender politic, I don’t believe it’s everyone else’s job to create that synthesis. Who better than a detransitioner, after all? I ask not that you solve my problems for me.

I ask only that you listen.

#transfeminism #detrans #detransition #essay #material feminism #lesbian feminism #feminism

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