#that post about meeting people in the wild reminds me what my therapist said

[gatun-gatunesco]

...

[deanssexplorations]

No Kissing, No Blow Jobs: The Cold Sore Encounter

I’ve always worked to foster friendships in cities to which I travel for business, and now that my post-lockdown travel is picking up again, I’m enjoying reconnecting with friends in distant places. 

One of the cities I travel to the most is Chicago, and long-time readers will certainly recall Calliope, my Greek Muse, who has been an inspiration for many fun adventures, including a three-couple dinner-and-sex party in February 2020 (that likely turned out to be a superspreader event - oops!).

What I haven’t blogged about yet is our friend Alana, who also lives in Chicago. Calliope introduced me to Alana, after I saw a picture of her on one of Calliope’s Facebook posts and said she looked cute. She did, and she is - with a shock of red hair (in both places); creamy white skin that’s prone to breakouts of freckles; a huge, radiant smile; and a very sexy body. 

Alana and I connected during Covid and spent many months enjoying the occasional texting, flirting, and sexting sprees. When things began opening up last summer I made a trip to Chicago to see Lollapalooza. And to see my friends Calliope and Alana. It was a great trip, and Alana and I had a fantastic evening starting with drinks and a bite at an elegant rooftop bar, followed by a wild, hormone-fueled encounter with crazy sexual energy back in my hotel room. It had been a long Covid drought for both of us and the animal instinct to fuck like rabbits was palpable for both of us.

Unfortunately on the several Chicago trips I’ve had since then, one circumstance or another has conspired to cock block our efforts to get together. Maybe the most heartbreaking of those was the time we had a firm date, were all confirmed and ready, and the afternoon we were to get together I came down with a 24-hour stomach bug. That evening and that evening only I felt absolutely terrible and I had to cancel. She was gracious of course, but I think we were both more than a little disappointed to miss our opportunity.

Finally, a few weeks ago, I was planning another Chicago trip and we picked an evening that we were both free. I was going to meet her after her last appointment of the day - she’s a therapist who spent the pandemic helping people maintain their sanity throughout the craziness - and we were going to enjoy a lovely evening of sexy time together.

But wouldn’t you know it, in what only makes me shake my head as par for the course for us, she texted me the morning we were to get together with news that her body was playing a cruel trick and she had developed a cold sore. It had just popped up overnight. 

I was grateful for her conscientiousness to let me know, and to put my health as her first priority. She was clearly disappointed and offered to cancel, but I told her that (being the glass half-full type that I am), instead of looking at it as a downer, I thought of it as a fun opportunity to be more clever and creative in our play that evening. She made it clear that kissing and sucking my cock were off the table - two of the things we were both looking very much forward to - but she also has tits, hands, and other orifices, and I thought that having to deal with Alana not being able to use her mouth might actually be fun to work around.

This whole situation reminded me a bit of my first date with my friend Eve who, I later learned, had a yeast infection that day that kept her from allowing me to get any pussy that night, but which turned into my hottest non-sex date ever. (And who was part of the three-couple dinner and sex superspreader in 2020).

So I was ready for the challenge.

Now, one thing I was conscious of, and that Alana and I discussed, is that not only is kissing sexy and fun and a great way to connect with someone you’re attracted to, but it also serves as a sort of general-purpose sexual lubricant. It’s what you usually do to transition from chatting over a drink to groping and fucking. It’s a way to connect during the play session itself. And it’s a way to continue the connection when everyone has achieved their orgasm(s) and you’re winding down the encounter.

It was going to be a bit jarring not being able to kiss!

When I arrived at Alana’s place, the evening started off ordinarily enough. She took my coat, offered me a drink, and we sat on the couch discussing music, politics, kids, and life. (We had timed it to be one of her kid-free evenings.) We even talked about her cold sore and the creative adventure we had in store!

We probably spent a bit longer chatting than we might have otherwise, for the very reason that kissing was off the table. But eventually I put my beer on the table and sidled up a bit closer, next to her on the couch.

Earlier in the day I had requested that she answer the door naked. She counterproposed that she would answer it “not wearing very much.” Which I gladly accepted. She settled on a cute little bathrobe, with bra and panties underneath. Sitting next to her I put my arm around her shoulders, reached down, and untied her robe, parting it to expose her stomach, legs, bra, and panties. I ran my fingers up and down her body and nuzzled her neck and shoulder, kissing them softly. 

I continued in this vein for a while, eventually reorienting her so she was laying on her back on the couch, while I continued to gently kiss and nuzzle her face, neck, and shoulders. I took her head in my hands, running my fingers through her hair and my fingernails along her scalp. I even brought my lips to a fraction of an inch from hers, as if I was about to give her a deep, passionate kiss, only to hold off at the very last moment. 

It was definitely a tease - for me as well as for her. But it was also hot as fuck and it definitely got my motor running. And I’d bet my lunch money hers as well.

From there I continued my gentle kissing and nuzzling, but began moving down her body, removing her bra, and spending time on her beautiful breasts and nipples. To go with her red-headed complexion, she has extremely light pink areolas. Which I find so sexy. And which, fortunately, did not have cold sores.

Continuing down her body, I spent time on her stomach, hips, and pubic mound. I removed her panties and moved my attention to her inner thighs, and, eventually, to her beautiful pink pussy. She moaned, fully into it now, arching her back, and allowing the waves of pleasure to course through her body. I inserted my fingers into her pussy and, enjoyed her lovely wetness.

From there we went into her bedroom and I got undressed. Another brief moment of awkwardness as we could neither kiss, nor move to the next (logical?) portion of our play date - a blow job. So I pulled out a condom and we went straight to fucking.

I’ve been in enough groups to know first-hand that many men, at least those in the lifestyle, don’t kiss their partners while fucking them. Pretty much at all. I’m the opposite. While I won’t spend 20 minutes straight with lips locked, it is one of the things I do quite a bit while fucking, especially if we are in the missionary position. It was weird not to be able to. So I took a page from earlier in the evening and - while my cock was easing in and out of her pussy - held her head in my hands, kissed her face and neck, and moved my lips tantalizingly close to hers, my hot breath on her cheek. 

That was fun, but I also like to mix up my positions so after a while I pulled her over to the edge of the bed and (yes, long-time reader, I do have preferences, lol) fucked her while standing on the floor. Partly I just like this position. It gives me a lot of control over angles and pace. Partly it parked our lips a good five feet away from each other so not being able to kiss became less of an issue.

Now Alana is very orgasmic, or at least she has been the couple of times we’ve been together. And even though she does have one or two other men in the mix at the moment, she has two young children and her schedule doesn’t allow her to get a TON of sex. Maybe for that reason, maybe just because she’s just that orgasmic, or maybe because of my fabulous skills (ha!) she was having orgasm after orgasm all night. She told me later that she had no idea how many times she came that evening, and it seemed to me at least like the orgasms were just coming one after the other. Certainly I could feel her pussy convulsing around my cock with a fair degree of regularity.

Eventually I felt the tell-tale tickling on the underside of my cock giving me notice that - if I was ready for it - an orgasm was on its way. We had been at it for quite a while by then - I’d guess an hour or more - and I so decided to go with the flow. The sensation continued to build, little by little, until I felt a giant wave overtake me. I let forth my usual series of loud, guttural vocalizations, and collapsed next to her, pulling her into my arms for a post-coital cuddle.

Enter the next/final awkward portion of the evening: not being able to kiss after sex. By now she knew what to expect as I ran my fingers through her hair and ran my hands lightly up and down her body. It was a tender, intimate moment, which was, if anything, even more charged by what was left off the table - that is, the ability to kiss.

We chatted for a few minutes, enjoying the afterglow, and appreciating the fact that I didn’t make her squirt. Which was something we could have easily done, and in fact we had briefly started down that path. But this was her bed that she would have to sleep in that night and in the end she was grateful not to have a giant wet spot to contend with. 

Maybe next time.

Finally I got dressed, gave her a goodnight hug (again - no kissing!!) and bid her adieu. We both agreed, me a bit more enthusiastically, and her a bit more reluctantly, that while of course we would have both preferred being able to kiss and give a blow job, it was actually fun, in a way, to have to be creative and figure out other ways to enjoy ourselves. Which we certainly did.

The good news is I have another trip to Chicago coming up this week and Alana and I will have a chance to do a do-over. I imagine we’ll spend our first 45 minutes doing nothing but making out. Kidding/not kidding.

But we did have a fun evening in which we overcame the dreaded cold sore, and lived to tell the tale. I often like to say you either have a good day or you have a good story. I think in this instance we had both; we certainly had a sexy and fun sexual encounter. And I like to think we got a good story out of it as well.

If nothing else, a blog-worthy story.

[mediocre-writerr]

for forever [toni shalifoe]

toni shalifoe x reader

request #1: pt. 3 of almost please!!

request # 2: can I please request another the wilds girls x reader where they visit her post island and turns out the smallest of the group has build up her walls and som much more quiet. Turns out being without them made everything worse and big sister Fatin, Leah and Toni are the first one to notice. Light angst with lots of fluff

*not my gif*

The place you wanted to be at most when you were stuck on the island seemed to be mocking you. The walls reminding you of what was, before all of the trauma and the heartache and the loss. How terrible, yet so simple your life was before the crash. 

And no one was around anymore. After our press tour for being the unsinkable nine and all of the interviews and the news stories. The court cases and the lawyer things. The girls weren’t around as much as you’d like. Even Toni, who was busy helping Martha’s family through this rough time. Shelby was also busy, trying to find a new place for her and Dot to stay and she created a place where everyone who’s a part of the church, who are also gay and lesbian can go to still believe in God and have a safe space. So even though they were only a couple minutes away, it still felt like worlds apart.

The only people who actually understood what happened and what you were going through were gone.  Sure, there was therapy and the meetings with social workers and the medicine they’ve prescribed. But no one can beat the PTSD and the loneliness you feel.

But they were all in your hometown and decided to pay a little visit. The doorbell rang and you could hear your mom answer it, guiding them towards your room.

You could hear the footsteps pattering towards you. Your door flew open and Toni ran straight to your arms. You held her close, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. 

“Hi love.” she whispered.

“Hey.” you whispered back, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible, but you kept falling short. You hoped Toni didn’t notice, but she did. She always did.

The rest of the girls gave you small hugs and you tried your best to smile back at them, but it was just hard. Everything was harder now, especially knowing that they were gonna be gone by the end of the day. And you’re gonna be all alone with your thoughts.

“How has everyone been doing?” you asked. Toni put her head on your shoulder. All of the girls scattered around the room and squished onto your bed.

“I’ve been great!” Rachel exclaimed, “I’ve been seeing a therapist for everything that happened on the island for my eating disorder. We’ve been making really great progress!”

“Fatin, did you ever end up fucking the guy with the biggest dick?” you chimed in and you all laughed. But as hard as you tried to pull out a genuine laugh, it just kept falling short.

“Yeah I did actually. And let me just tell you so worth the wait!” she exclaimed and we all chuckled.

“Hey, you?” Leah said at the foot of your best, trying to get your attention with her foot. You hummed in response, “What’s going on in that little head of yours?”

You shook your head, “Nothing, I’m fine.”

“She’s lying.” Shelby and Toni point out at the same time.

“Yeah, your vibe is like really off.” Fatin chimed in.

“Guys I’m fine!” you snapped and they all seemed to cower at your usual coolness finally snapping, “It doesn’t matter anyway because at the end of the day all of you are going to leave.”

“What do you mean?” Dot asked.

“I’m glad all of you are doing so well, but it makes me feel weak! I go to my therapy sessions and I can’t even talk about what happened to me without immediately breaking down.” you whispered, eyes tearing up, “All of you are out living your lives, but I can’t. I’m so alone all the time. And none of you are around anymore. The people who really understand me are gone.”

Shelby comes to your side, “You know I’m always here, right?”

“No! None of you are ever here!” you exclaimed and the tears started pouring from your face, “I’m sorry. I should be happy all of you are moving on and doing better. I’m so selfish, I’m sorry.”

“Oh Y/N,” Leah comes in and gives me a hug, “Just because we’re all doing better doesn’t mean that we’re not not okay.”

“There are good days and bad days. We all have them. And it doesn’t make you weak that you’re taking a longer time than others.” Rachel explained.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Shelby questioned, “I would’ve been here in a heartbeat.”

“I know, but look at me. I’m such a downer, today was supposed to be a fun day and I just ruined everything.” you said , tears slowly stopping.

“You’re not though. We’re the only ones who know about what happened on the island. And it’s a bigger struggle for you because you were tortured and interrogated for days.” Fatin added on.

“I wish you told me.” Toni whispered, placing a soft kiss to your lips, “You’re strong Y/N. We’re all gonna be okay.”

///

tag list: @hstoria @yourssincerelyj @shalifoestilinski @greysky22

[walkerwords]

“The Savior Sessions” Part 1 of 33 - Negan x GN!Reader

IMAGE CREDIT: Gene Page/AMC

SERIES MASTERLIST

Summary: This will be a collection of conversations set before the events of season 9 in which the reader speaks with Negan while in his cell as they recount events and memories from their time in the Apocalypse as well as stories of his own. 

Word Count: 2417

Warning: None

Song I Wrote To: “Open Season” by Josef Salvat

Note: These are going to be smaller stories that I will be updating randomly. Each fic will be a conversation/situation about Negan in his cell in Alexandria. Some maybe very short, others not. I am still working on the other stories, but I wanted to post this as I work on those as well. Thank you for your kind words about my family, I really appreciate it.

------

“I just don’t know why you’re asking me to do this, Michonne.” 

You stood across from Alexandria’s head of security in her kitchen. Michonne meticulously cleaned her Katana as you spoke, remaining calm the entire time. When she had asked you to meet her today, you never imagined this would be the reason. 

“Gabriel is worried about his state of mind,” Michonne said, “He thinks somebody should be speaking with him on a regular basis.” 

“Isn’t that already Gabriel’s job?” you asked. “He’s always the one who’s down there.” Michonne sighed, sliding the blade back into its sheath.

“He believes that he can no longer get through to him and that they’ve become too familiar with each other,” Michonne said, placing her sword down and bracing her hands against the kitchen counter, “I also think we can benefit from it and I suppose he can as well.” You frowned. 

“You’re asking me to become Negan’s therapist,” you pointed out. “How is any of that beneficial?”

“Whether we like it or not, Negan did run an entire community unchallenged. He may have insight into this world that we don’t and I have started to think that perhaps keeping him so isolated isn’t doing anyone any good,” Michonne explained. “I am asking you because you don’t have a relationship with him. The two of you never interacted during the war and you made sure to stay out of his line of sight for most of it. You’re not a total stranger, but he doesn’t know you like he knows Gabriel, me, or even Aaron.”

“So, basically, you want someone he can’t push around by pushing their buttons,” you concluded and Michonne grimaced. 

“You were also a teacher, (Y/N),” said Michonne, “that is something you two have in common. Maybe that will get him to open up or at least… God, I don’t know what I want the outcome to be, but Rick wanted Negan to be a symbol for how we can grow as a society. I don’t know if he can ever be redeemed, but if he can even a small amount, then it may start with you.” 

“You pulled out your Rick card,” you said with a sigh, “not fair.” Michonne smiled with a shrug. 

“I knew it would come in handy someday,” she said and you finally gave in. 

“Okay, I will be the big bad wolf’s confidant, but if he tries anything or pisses me off to a degree that makes me want to commit murder, that’s on Gabriel,” you said with a wink and Michonne visibly relaxed. 

“Thank you, (Y/N),” she said, relieved. “I’m going to let you run it the way you want to, but try not to piss him off if you can.” You smiled at her brightly. 

“Oh, you know me, Michonne, something like that is inevitable.”

-----

When you arrived at the cell an hour later, you dismissed the guard who stood out front. 

If you were going to be talking to Negan to gain insight and trust, you didn’t see the need for a chaperone. As the guard left, you pushed open the heavy door and sealed it behind you. 

“Gabe, if you’re here to give me another life lesson, you can save it. I’m not in the mood,” Negan said in the darkness of his cell. You had never been this close to the man before. You had fought against the Saviors of course, but always at an outpost or in a larger fight. Rick had also used your talents with the sniper rifle and kept you up high most of the time. This whole situation was alien to you and while it was unnerving to be so near to a killer, you didn’t let that stop you from stepping out of the shadows. 

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not Father Gabriel,” you said, dragging a chair from the wall and centering it before the jail cell. Negan, who had been laying on his bed with his back to the door, slowly sat up and turned towards you.

In the cool light of the room, you could see him clearly now. His hair was shorter than the last time you had seen him which was when Rick had dragged him into this cell about five years before. He still had the stubble on his face, but the cocky grin that you had gotten used to seeing through your scope was nowhere to be seen. 

“Have we met?” he asked, tilting his head in curiosity. You shifted slightly in your seat, trying to get comfortable. 

“Not officially,” you told him. “I’m (Y/N).” Recognition dawned on his face then. 

“Yes,” he said, sitting forward on the edge of his cot, “Little Miss Grimes has mentioned you before.” It wasn’t news to you that he spoke to Judith. Most people knew that she visited Negan often. The only person who probably didn’t know was Michonne. Judith had confided in you that she wasn’t scared of the man and that all she wanted was for him to know he wasn’t some kind of wild animal. You now started to realize that her reasoning was exactly why you were here. “So what can I do for you, (Y/N)?”

“I’ve been sent by the overlords of Alexandria to be your new best friend,” you explained, crossing one leg over the other. 

“Is that right?” he asked, leaning forward. “Gabe get too bored with little ole me?” 

“I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” you told him, “but I am here as a favor for Michonne so how about we just accept the new normal?” Negan bowed his head slightly. 

“Well then, what exactly do the big shots upstairs want us to do? Compare breakup stories? Organize a block party?” 

“I see you haven’t lost your wit,” you pointed out, leaning back in your chair.  

“We all have our things, (Y/N),” he said, “I am curious, though,” he went on, “where were you when your people were trying to kill all of mine?” 

“Usually on a rooftop,” you explained, “Grimes always had me up high with the guns.” Negan seemed genuinely thrilled by the thought of that. 

“And you never got me in your cross-hairs and took a shot? Damn, that is incredibly terrifying.”

“I was never ordered to,” you told him. “I was more surveillance than an assassin.” 

“Either way, my men never saw you watchin’ me,” he said and it sounded like a compliment. The way Negan was looking at you reminded you of kids staring at a lion in a zoo. Ironic seeing how he was the one in the cage and not you. Every glance was out of curiosity and you thought you noticed a bit of gratitude in his eyes. Perhaps Michonne and Gabriel were right after all. The man just needed someone to talk to.

“Okay, how about this?” you said, after a moment of silence. He waited for you to continue. “You and I are just gonna talk. You can ask me anything you want and I’ll answer and hopefully, you will return the favor when I want to .” Negan raised a single brow. 

“It’s that simple?” he asked.

“Do you want it to be difficult?” you asked. “I think I could add some really brash and annoying terms to the arrangement if you want."

"You are a very strange person," Negan said.

"I'm going to take that as a compliment."

"As you should," Negan said with a cheeky grin. "However, I am curious about one thing. Don't you hate me?" You mulled over his words for a few seconds before shaking your head.

"Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in this world, but has not solved one yet," you quoted easily. Negan's eyes lit up.

"Morrison?"

"Angelou," you corrected.

"Ah," he said. "Wise woman. So what you're saying is that hating me isn't going to solve anything, am I right?"

"Pretty much," you agreed, crossing your arms.

"But I killed your people," he reminded you. Negan was clearly trying to put you off, but you had expected this. 

"And I killed your people," you said. "Do you hate me?" Negan scoffed, leaning back on his hands as he watched you through the bars.

"You're good," he complimented.

"You didn't answer my question," you said. Negan licked his lips before shaking his head.

"No, I don't hate you. Although, I don't even know you so that could change." This time you let out a quick laugh that was pure instinct at this point.

"Fair enough," you conceded.

"Alright, (Y/N), if you are so inclined to answer questions, answer me this: how did you end up with this merry bunch of survivors?" 

"Simple," you said, "I saved Carl Grimes from a Walker." Negan's face dropped at the mention of the late teenager. You knew about the soft spot Negan had for Carl. It wasn't a mystery, hell, Carl wouldn't have lived long after he attacked the Sanctuary if Negan didn't like him.

"You saved him?" Negan asked, pulling you from your memories.

"Yeah, I met Carl and his mom, Lori, shortly after everything happened," you began, "They, alongside other survivors, were camped at a quarry outside of Atlanta. I was on my own, trying to make it to the coast when I came across their campsite. I was wary of people, of course, but I knew I wouldn't make it far on my own. I stayed around the edge of camp for a while, just gettin' a feel for the people when Carl ran off when Lori wasn't looking. He was running around with another kid from the group." You paused, unsure if you should divulge much more, but Negan was staying entirely focused on your story.

"Carl was with Sophia...Carol's late daughter." Slight surprise entered Negan's eyes, but he remained quiet. You went on, "The two of them got turned around and then Carl being Carl, decided to run off alone without Sophia. He was near me when the Walker came out of the trees and grabbed him. I didn't really think at that moment. I just ran for the kid. I shot the Walker in the head and the next thing I know, I had a crossbow pointed at my back."

"Let me guess, Daryl?" Negan figured. 

"Damn right. Son of a bitch thought I was shooting at the kid, but luckily Carl spoke up and explained. They took me back to their camp and Lori insisted I stay so that's what I did."

"And here you are," Negan said, impressed.

"Here I am."

"That kid was pretty damn special," Negan said fondly. "This world really does take the good ones, don't it?"

"I always think that it would have been easier if a person had killed him instead of a Walker, you know? At least then we would have an enemy." 

"What, you don't think the Walkers are the enemy?" 

"They're just a part of the new world," you explained. "Can't really call them an enemy if they didn't intend to be here in the first place."

Negan was quiet again as your words sank in. In fact, you were surprised that he hadn't spoken over you whenever he got the chance. According to the rest of your friends and family, the man loved to hear himself talk. You stored that new observation away for later.

"In your opinion," Negan said slowly, "what kind of person classifies as an enemy, or rather, just evil?"

"I've seen darkness, Negan," you told him. "We all have and it was before we even heard your name. If you're trying to ask me if I think you’re evil, the answer is no, I don't. Most of us here like myself, Daryl, Michonne, we've all seen what happens when someone has lost all trace of humanity. Seen what they do to other human beings and trust me, those are the evil people of this screwed-up world. You haven't lost your humanity, Negan, and I pray you never will."

Negan leaned his forearms onto his knees, rubbing a calloused hand over his bearded face. Something had clicked inside his head, that much was apparent, but you weren't sure what.

Yet.

"Sounds like you've been through hell," Negan whispered.

"And back," you finished. "Multiple times."

"You gonna tell me that story? About the loss of humanity?" His question wasn't overly eager, instead, it was all curiosity and you were starting to think that was the main characteristic of the man who once called himself the "big bad wolf".

"One day," you nodded. "If you'll let me come back again."

"I get to decide?" he asked, intrigued.

"Yeah, no point in coming down here if you won't talk to me. That would be wasting both of our time."

"Then by all means, (Y/N), feel free to drop by," Negan said, spreading his arms wide in a welcome gesture. You rolled your eyes but nodded.

"If it means anything," you said as you stood from your seat and turned towards the door, "Carl once told me that you were the only person he always trusted to tell him the truth, and coming from him, that's a lot."

Negan looked at you for a long moment before bowing his head. "Thanks for that," he said softly. You gave him a small smile, one more out of understanding than anything. Whether people hated him or not, nobody could deny that he cared about Carl Grimes and that the teen's death had affected him as well.

"I'll see you tomorrow," you told him as you pushed open the heavy door and stepped into the sunlight. Negan didn't call you back as you climbed the steps and began walking home.

You watched as Alexandria spun on, unaware of the emotions that ran deep through you at the moment. Gabriel and Michonne had been right, after all, Negan needed to talk to another human being, but perhaps that was exactly what you needed as well and you had a feeling this was just the beginning of an odd relationship. 

TAGS: @thanossexual​

[lightinalexandria]

Love, Men, Women, and LGBTQ+ Life in Egypt

August 13, 2021 اغسطس ١٣

A good friend posed the question to me this week of asking “Where are you local?” Instead of “Where are you from?” I might even tweak that slightly to “Where do you feel at home?” For most of us, and in fact for most other places I’ve lived, the equation is a simple line graph. More time, more familiarity, more comfort, more feeling like home. I’m challenged here, at the end of my second summer in Egypt, with a different calculus.

The more I speak with my friends and teachers in their “heart language” of Arabic, the more I see how deep the generosity, sociability, and collective spirit run. Not all my friends are Muslim, but I see these traits represented in the 5 Pillars of Islam beautifully, and I’ve been told so in many different ways.

That’s the part that feels more like home. But of course, if it was all sunshine this would be a different story. This is not a happy post. I don’t have any female friends here who are truly, uncomplicatedly happy. I don’t have any queer friends here who are truly, uncomplicatedly happy.

Of course that doesn’t mean there are no happy females in Egypt; my internationally minded, English speaking group isn’t representative, I know, and I’ve had many conversations with more conservative teachers and friends about the contentment that can come from living inside a more rigid structure.

But…I don’t know everyone in Egypt. I just know my friends. And many of them are desperately, painfully unhappy, stressed, in ways that I understand more fully the longer I’m here. I think “right and wrong” or “good and bad” are wildly unhelpful terms, so when I’m trying to understand how I feel about these societal norms and systems, the right to happiness of my friends is my bellwether. Systems that make more people happier without hurting others are ones I want to support, period, which also means my anecdotal circle can’t be my only data points. I’m a little nervous where those conclusions might lead me, dancing around big questions of class and culture and religion, but more nervous not to draw a line in the sand with the best metric I know and explore from there.

Apparently sexual harassment has decreased a bit since the government put some teeth into a new anti-harassment law a couple years ago and they made an example of a few offenders. That’s nice. The street -especially at night- still does NOT feel like a safe or friendly place, and I just get tiny glimpses of that walking near female friends. Life is lived in the streets here, the pedestrian density like Times Square, always, so the sheer volume of people quickly makes crowd thoughts and judgement evident. Sitting with a female friend at anything but a super upscale cafe, I see the glances and catch bits of the conversation as they pass judgement on her for hanging out with me. What a wild thought, that any conversation I have with an Egyptian women starts with the brave act of her choosing to engage at all, know the subtle pressures that will start in from all sides. One of my friends who wears a hijab told me that when she went to Cairo, she brought extra wide clothes to walk the streets with, and it didn’t matter. She got just as many comments as when she was back in tights clothes.

Who gets the blame? Young men have so few opportunities to interact with young women outside immediate circles, period, but are still somehow supposed to meet a potential bride and move her into the new house that he’ll buy with cash savings from the extended family? Old black and white Egyptian movies show women in skirts and t-shirts, and Egyptian music videos show Western dressed Egyptian women gyrating, but aside from a few pockets of wealth and international society in Alexandria, those images of women don’t exist in the real world here. Men are allowed and encouraged to date casually, but women are called sluts for kissing someone who may not be an eventual husband. Women are supposed to protect their virginity, while men want to fool around with lots of women but settle down with a virgin bride. The math doesn’t work. My heart goes out to the working class men in an impossible, frustrating position, society and politics conspiring against biology, but while they have to worry about their reputation, women here worry about reputation AND safety, always.

And LGBTQ+? First of all, it’s just so difficult to have intimate relations here -every lives with family, you can’t be intimate until you’re married, you can’t be married until you own a house, you can be arrested in public spaces for PDA, and no one will rent rooms to an unmarried couple-. That means there is a SIGNIFICANT percentage of the men here who sleep with other men, feel shame, would never consider themselves gay, and would only consent to being a “top.” Honestly, it reminds me of what I know of the sexual politics in prison culture, except no one’s in a physical prison here.

Sexual health is also a huge challenge; access to STI testing apart from HIV is impossible for unmarried women and hugely expensive for men. Someone in my circle here had complications from a “Plan B” pill and wasn’t able to go to a gynecologist as an unmarried woman. Someone else was hospitalized for an unrelated illness, and jubilant that as part of the hospital stay, insurance would cover the full battery of STI screening before surgery, the first time in a very active sexual life they’d ever had that. Someone else just lost a friend to HIV; they told the family it was cancer, but were too ashamed to seek the HIV treatment pills, and died in a few months.

Mental health has its own obstacles. Someone I know was told by a licensed therapist they were going to hell if they kept sleeping with men, unmarried. I heard that from women and queer friends as well. How do you establish a relationship of trust in the first place if licensed practitioners in the country are able to say things like that in the privacy of their sessions without consequences?

So, full circle to the beginning of the post. “Where do you feel local?” or “Where do you feel at home?”

I feel infinitely more familiar and comfortable here than my first few weeks, no denying that. 95% of the time I can make myself understood in daily life (very different than understanding 95% of what’s being said to ME in daily life, but progress). I can call businesses here to ask questions. I can tell meandering stories. I can cross the comically busy and chaotic streets without an adrenaline spike. I run into friends on the street most days, and my last 100 meters from my neighborhood entrance to apartment involves a dozen different greetings and little conversations. I have my favorite….everything; food carts, Syrian sweets, juice shops, rotisseries, beaches, bars, cafes, and a good rapport with the folks working there. I have a lot of lovely but more surface level relationships, and a few real and intimate friendships. All that DOES feel local, does feel like home.

If feeling local or at home here means giving any kind of tacit acceptance to the norms that make my friends so unhappy, though, I don’t want to claim the label. I also don’t feel like I have any right or power as an outsider to do much more than listen, affirm, connect to resources when I can. I left China after staying in Xinjiang province and seeing the government’s cultural genocide of Uighur society, and I haven’t been back since. (You can read my writings at the time with the link here) What’s my path here in Egypt? Love the player, hate the game? Can I come back next summer and complete my 6 months of study plan, knowing I float through a golden bubble of American male protection I can’t extend to my friends here? I really don’t know yet. No wise or pithy ending sentence here. Just a lot of hurt, a mixed bag of emotions, and a whole lot of people who deserve uncomplicated love and happiness.

[hufflautia]

Hope you’ve had a great day today 💛

funnily enough, i literally just stopped crying. today was a bad day, I don't know 

why but my anxiety was just quite bad today and I was panicking before school started. something happened in my first class and I overthink a lot, so my mind was like, “oh my god why did they write your name last, do they hate me, am I boring, am I forgetful, people are always forgetting about me” and “my teacher doesn't like me, why didn't he respond, I'm embarrassed, why did you have to say what you said??” my English teacher does these “mindfulness” moments in which we sit in silence for a minute and reflect on the day, and I literally started crying. after the minute ended, I just stopped bc I didn't feel like crying anymore, and suddenly my brain said, “ur so fake, ur just acting, why did u stop crying all of a sudden, u just want attention u crave attention ur such a faker!!” also I keep thinking about something that happened years ago with my dad, I don't rlly wanna get into it but I think it would be good if I just say it so that its not jammed in my head. basically, I was really young, like in elementary school; my dad asked me if i wanted to sleep in his room with him, and originally, my mom was sleeping with him and i shared a room with my little brother. however, i was like hmm maybe, and then my dad said, haha ill pay u 5 dollars. at the time, i said YAY OK but now i realized that's so fucking creepy, yall know what its insinuating right?? anyways, i said ok, bc it was just a change from the usual sleep schedule and i liked spending time w my dad, so my mom went to my brothers room (it was a king-sized bed so it was ok, it wasn't a small bed that we had to share or anything like that) and i went to my parents room. basically, what happened was that we went to sleep, and in the middle of the night, (the next part makes me feel so uncomfortable and i feel queasy writing it) my dad slapped my butt really really hard to the point where i woke up and i was like ?????? and then he rubbed it softly immediately afterwards. i didnt know what happened, and i told my sister the day after, and she was confused too. recently i was thinking about it and I'm still confused and a lot more uncomfortable with what happened. here is my theory and i was very upset by it bc no one would want to think things like this- maybe my dad likes hurting women during sex and it was a reflex that night, but once he realized it was me, he tried “soothing me” or some shit by rubbing my butt (i literally hate this, i hate the fact that this happened and i don't like typing it out). no one wants to think about their parents sex life so this was just disgusting to think about. also my brother and mom keep arguing and fighting with each other, and I'm sure i have trauma from hearing my parents argue all the time so i rlly don't like it when they fight. my brother has explosive anger and he literally screams at her, which is very disrespectful; however, she screams at him too and sometimes hurts him, which scares me. I'm not worried about my own safety, I just hate violence i hate abuse, that scares me. so much stuff has happened in my life, and it results in a lot of trauma and other stuff that i don't even know about. i just know im really fucked up, im damaged and it just all felt like crashing down on me today- like everything thats happened, i was feeling anxious for no reason, i was thinking about the past, and i started crying again while watching netflix after school, so i just kept crying and i talked to myself out loud about my day and why i was feeling the way i was. that did help to some extent, and after i did that, i stopped crying, and then my brain said “why do you shut off your crying so easily, you seem fake, you seem like you wanna be sad and cry just so that you can see your pretty little tears drip down ur face like an actress, ur so fake ur so fake ur faking it ur not actually sad”, and the hardest part was that i didnt even object to it bc i didnt feel like anything was real, i felt like i didnt know who i was. i was like ok bitch whatever maybe ur right maybe i am faking it. i dont even know how to explain it, but its like being tired of that nagging and negative voice that you just submit to it, and you say ok whatever sure i am faking it, but in truth, the sadness i was feeling was real and genuine. about 10 min ago, i saw that someone tagged me in a fanfic and while i was reading it, i literally started bawling. i guess it was bc i saw in my email inbox that people had sent me asks, and i was happy bc i thought that maybe the person who sent me the fanfic idea responded back with more details. i was anxious about that before, bc i was thinking, oh god what if they just never respond, what if they just dont care about u anymore. when i saw the asks notifications, i felt a lot of relief bc i thought to myself, oh phew ok people still care about u. when i was crying while reading the fanfic, i couldn't stop crying, it felt endless. i couldn't just stop crying like i had before, and it reminded me of the time when my mom was going out to meet someone that she met on a dating app, and it was in the earlier times when she started doing this; she had gotten involved with some terrible men in the past, men who catfished her and were rlly vulgar and gross. im sure this was somewhere in June, when i had just posted chapter 1 of the slytherpuff series bc when i was freaking out about the date, i wrote about it in my journal and i know that it was somewhere in June bc i wrote something like “mom is going out to meet someone and im nervous, please please please i hope shes ok and careful, im really nervous and scared, no one likes my writing, mom is probably in danger, oh god oh gosh”. it was just a whole bunch of negative and anxious thoughts, including how i was feeling about the whole situation with chapter 1, so that's how i know it was somewhere in June. anyways, basically i was really scared for my mom bc shes had a bad history with online men and i was scared that someone was gonna kill her. i read and listen to a lot of murder mysteries, so my mind was going absolutely wild. i remember on that day, i went to take a shower after writing that entry in the journal, bc showering makes me feel better. when i stepped into the shower i started crying bc i was really scared for her and i was hoping she was safe and ok but i was just feeling so scared so i was crying and i couldn't stop crying. that was the scary part because i just kept bawling and i couldn't stop like i usually do; my brain said ok that's enough, you’ve cried enough, but my heart just kept going on and on and my brain said ok ok jessica holy jesus that's enough and eventually i sucked it up and was kinda ok afterwards but still sad and numb. that was similar to what had happened about 20 min ago. also im sure i was also sad today bc yesterday, my mom talked to me about in-person college visits, and her demeanor was very rushed and controlling. she said, “ok jessica we’re gonna do the college visits, we’re gonna drive there, and your dad is gonna come home for that. tell him that you need to do that, ok? tell him we do the college visits together.” i said that colleges are doing virtual tours, and her facial expression was very strained, she was like “DO NOT TELL HIM THAT. dont tell him that, ok?!” and she was pointing her finger at me and everything. she said, “tell him we’re going to do the physical college tours, which colleges do you wanna visit??” and she kept telling me not to tell him about the virtual tours. it reminded me of whenever she told me to say this or that to my dad over the phone, and i was upset, like oh great ok so dad’s coming home and i dont even wanna see him bc i dont like him that much, and now im gonna have to lie bc dad is probably gonna already know about the virtual tours and im gonna have to pretend that none of the colleges are doing virtual tours. in essence, today was a terrible day. while i was crying my eyes out when reading the fanfic, i wanted to tell something, i wanted to reach out to lee and jolie, but my brain said that i would burden them, im always telling them about stuff that happens (concerning my family or other stuff) and its probably getting too much for them.  my brain said that they wont be able to help anyway, im still gonna have to deal with the stuff im dealing with, and no one can help. that's a sad thought, it seems so helpless and sad. sometimes i overthink the smallest things, and when i see a text from lee and jolie that doesnt seem “right”, i think, oh gosh they hate me now, why did i have to say that?? i usually see my therapist every Thursday, aka today, but we didnt meet this time bc her schedule is becoming busy so now we’re gonna do it every other week, so next week i shall see her. perhaps she can help. 

thank you for this ask, it seemed so out of the blue bc no one rlly sends asks like this anymore. while writing this, i literally thought to myself, shes like an angel sent from heaven

[thoughtsfromaclutteredbrain]

Wonderwall [Kai Parker Fanfiction]

OK guys, I feel the need to start this chapter with an enormous apology. I can't believe it's been over a year since I've updated this fic! That seriously wasn't my intention, and please believe me when I say that I truly never forgot about it.

In this time that I haven't updated... Welp, it's been a year. i got a huge career opportunity that I jumped on, that suddenly crumbled very badly very fast. i had made friends during this time that completely stabbed me in the back, and I fell in love with someone who I thought was a friend, but it turns out that that give a damn about me. I got a new job recently that completely stole all of my writing time, but now I think I've figured out how to manage my time enough to start posting again, even if it's not as regularly as I would hope. I am still working on pursuing that career opportunity again, since it's a dream and I miss it, so I'm hoping when the opportunity comes again, it won't mess up my writing time this time. But I can't be sure, so please be gentle with me and know that I'm trying my best.

Anyway, that was a long thing just to say that it's seriously been a year, but I honestly do appreciate all the comments I've got on this fic while it's been sitting seemingly abandoned. I love each and every one of you, and I can't put into words how happy I am that you love this fic, and how grateful I am for all your comments.

With that said, this is the second part of the fic, where we time jump a bit. The chapter is a little different because of that, and the next one will be different too. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and don't forget to leave kudos and comments. I read and respond to every one, and I really hope to be able to write and post the next chapter very very soon. Love you all. <3

You can read it on AO3, or you can read it here. Comments and kudos are very much appreciated, and I respond to every anon and comment.

[Table of Contents for the entire fic can be found here]

CHAPTER 11: VISIONS

"I think I'm losing my mind."

I couldn't deny my words, but they tasted like failure in my mouth.

Eighteen years. I had survived eighteen years without reaching this level of helplessless, without feeling so out of control, without feeling like my grip on sanity was slipping.

I thought I had put all of that behind me. I went to anger management for years, trying to reconcile my anger and learn how to control and silence it. I spent years rebuilding my relationship with my mother; it was nowhere close to the bond that we used to hold before everything had happened, but it was something I could live with. We had moved from Oregon to Pennsylvania, moving us across the country in the hopes of giving ourselves a clean slate and a fresh beginning. Therapy had become as normal to me as breathing; going every week to try to work through two lifetimes of baggage and dirty laundry, with the hope of getting to a place where I felt like I was me again. And with those words, it felt like everything, all of those years of self-work and effort, was for nothing.

Mina looked up from her clipboard at me, and I noticed that she had stopped writing to study my face. Her silky auburn hair was falling over her shoulders as she looked at me, her head cocked to the side and her eyes squinted ever so slightly, giving me a view of the winged eyeliner adorning her monolids. My answer had caught her off guard, that much was for sure. After being my therapist for as long as she had been, she was probably just as surprised by my backslide as I was. I had been making such good progress, as she liked to say.

She didn't ask anything else, still processing my response to her standard opening question of how are we feeling today?

I forced myself to look away from her, the weight of her judgment too much to bear at the moment. My eyes landed on the door to her office, tracing over the letters of her name plaque instead.

Mina Lee had been one of the volunteers at my anger management meetings, and once I had been deemed "okay enough" to not have to attend anymore, she had offered to take me as a client for continued therapy. She had been a lifesaver for me, dealing with my breakdowns and anger and years of pain. She was young and a natural at getting me to open up, something I was grateful for. Unfortunately, she was human, not a witch or any other fancy supernatural creature, so I had to hide the details of some of my trauma from her. I felt guilty for doing it; I surely wasn't making her job any easier by withholding information, but it definitely made her much safer. I tried not to let myself care too much for her, despite the fact that she was probably one of the people I was closest to in my life. I had learned years ago that nothing good ever came from getting close to me.

My attention was drawn back to her when she tapped the back of her pen on her clipboard. My eyes shifted to her again, and then down, trying to get a peek at her clipboard. She was used to me doing this though, and was holding it at just the right angle to prevent me from seeing anything.

"I'm not judging you, if that's what you're wondering," she said, knowing me way too well. I knew that she took notes every meeting, and I had told her once that I tried to look at her papers to see if she was pitying me, but I was astonished by her memory nonetheless. She always seemed to remember every detail that I told her, no matter how small. Kai was the only person who had managed to do that before, but I found it easiest to attempt to push his memory as far down as I could. It was better that way, when my memories of him were pushed so far down that I could recall them if I wanted to, but that I was still somewhat shielded from the pain they brought me. But it was getting harder to do that by the day, especially with everything I had been experiencing recently.

"I was just wondering what you meant by that," she continued, her features soft and open, but still looking at me with a hint of an analytical gaze.

I stayed quiet, and the room lapsed into silence again. I knew that she was waiting for my answer, but I was still too rattled by my own confession to answer her.

She let out a quiet sigh, one that she probably didn't want me to hear. I had become a lot more willing to share my feelings in the past year, to the point where therapy felt less like an interrogation and more like a conversation.

But not this time. Not with this.

"Okay..." she started, measuring her words. "Did you have another incident?"

"No."

Incident was her polite way of asking if I had let my anger run wild again. I had never fully disclosed to her the details of my previous 'incidents', but she knew that they were bad and that people had gotten hurt, and I'm pretty sure she was able to figure out that I caused the fire that burned down my childhood home. That was all that she needed to know.

"Well, that's good," she replied, flashing me a quick smile before she made a little note on her clipboard. From what I could see, it looked like she made an x, but I couldn't be sure. I had the urge to use my magic; cast a spell that would allow me to see from her eyes and see what she was writing, but I resisted. It wouldn't feel right to do that to her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she prompted.

Not really, I thought, but now that I brought it up, there was no way she'd let it go, and she always managed to see straight through my lies.

I grabbed the tips of my hair in between my fingers, playing with the strands as I thought. This had become a habit of mine ever since I had dyed the ends aqua again. The roots remained brown, and faded into the blue color. It had felt like a good way to blend the old and new me, reminding me of the people I had been while still giving me room to become someone else. Seeing this always brought me a strange sort of comfort.

I sighed before I managed to get my words out.

"I've been having... These dreams," I started, and already I was lying. Vision was a better word for what I was experiencing. Dreams don't hit you in the middle or the day, paralyzing your body and clouding your mind with nothing but it. Dreams weren't so terribly vivid that you felt like you had become someone else, were seeing things through someone else's eyes.

Her features faltered as she looked down at her notes for a second, so quick that I could've missed it if I wasn't looking straight at her. It felt like she was trying to remember if I had ever mentioned anything about dreams before.

I hadn't. This was definitely a new experience.

"Something tells me you've been dealing with this for a bit?"

I stayed quiet, forcing myself to tear my gaze away from her and look down at my shoes instead. She could always tell when something was off, and in this case,  she knew that the only reason I was bringing this up was because it was becoming too much to bear. I replied with a soft nod.

More pen scratches on her clipboard. I didn't even try to look this time, not wanting to know what she was thinking about me in the moment.

"What is it about these dreams? What has you rattled?"

"They... Aren't me," I started, knowing that the words coming out of my mouth didn't make any sense. I wanted to have more time to think over what I was saying, but knowing Mina, she would continue to push until I answered her. I was sure she was already judging me, so I decided to just go for it. "Like... it doesn't feel like me. I'm seeing people I don't know, places I've never been before, having reactions that I wouldn't have. And..."

I cut myself short, not willing to finish the sentence. I could feel the cracks in my heart starting to open up just thinking about it. I feared that if I spoke it, it would make it real.

"I hear him. In my head."

Her expression faltered for the quickest of seconds, flashing momentarily into surprise before she regained her stoic posture. She didn't even dignify that with an immediate response. She just immediately went to scribbling down notes onto her clipboard.

I wanted to snap that pen of hers in half, but I resisted.

"Okay," she started slowly. I could tell she was tiptoeing now, not wanting to say the wrong thing and trigger me even more than she knew I already was. "I'm going to assume here, that when you say him, you mean you're hearing... Kai?"

"Yes," I whispered, scared of the quiver my voice would hold if I spoke above that volume.

Years of sessions had been filled with stories about the mystery boy Kai from my past. I had never given her enough information for her to identify him, and tie him to the murders of the Parker family years ago in Oregon, but I had told her enough about the trauma that had been left in his wake before he left me and died.

The love I had for him. The fear I had for his safety, day in and day out. The pain he caused me. The abandonment I felt the last time I spoke to him. The shock at finding out about his death. And the trauma that finding out about his crimes caused me.

Mina nodded, and in that simple movement, I could tell that surprisingly, she wasn't judging me. I had been her client for years, and somehow, she still managed to shock me. I was sure this wasn't a claim she heard every day, and with the progress I had been making in her care, surely she wasn't expecting me to suddenly be hearing the voice of a dead man.

But she didn't ask any of that. Instead, she capped her pen and placed her clipboard facedown on the table between us. I could reach out and snatch it up before she even had a chance to reach out for it. But we both knew that I wouldn't. She leaned forward, directing all of her attention to me.

"And are these memories?" She asked. "Are these things that he had told you before, echoing in your dreams?"

I was shaking my head before she had even finished her sentence. "No, this... This is different. He had never said any of these things to me before. It's completely new. And, the people I'm seeing... I don't know who they are."

That was the part that was most troubling to me. I could chalk Kai's voice up to my mind finally betraying me and playing tricks on me, but I couldn't explain the images I was seeing in the visions.

She grabs the clipboard again, rearranging it so she had a fresh page. "What do they look like?"

"A blonde girl. Wild curly hair, young face, blue eyes. She was bleeding. Screaming."

As I describe the girl, my mind recalls the visions I had with her. She was on the floor, clutching at her head and bleeding from her nose, as if someone was hurting her with magic. Her scream rang out through the air, coupled with his voice ringing in my ears.

I get my emotions mixed up.

"A girl. Dark skin, short hair, sad eyes. Beautiful. She was in a club."

The red and white lights flash across my vision as I describe her. She was staring at me with glassy, wide eyes, and looked absolutely terrified, like she was seeing a ghost. The faint sound of music played in the background, but I wasn't able to make out the song. It didn't matter anyway. I was more concerned about his voice. The words I heard then were different.

I wanted to apologize for anything I did that hurt you.

"A guy. Blue eyes, dark hair, sharp jawline. Looked shifty."

He was in a dark room with stone walls surrounding. He was in a dark leather jacket, and nerves were filling his features. The words didn't make sense with the image to me, but they seemed to anger the man in the vision.

Not if she were like you.

"A guy with long blonde hair. Short. He was far away. I couldn't make out his features too well. It was nighttime."

He was standing far away, but squared up directly at me. His posture looked confident in himself, and like he was trying to challenge me in some way. The voice sounded just as confident.

I always win.

"A girl. Tan skin. Lots of brown hair. She was in chains. She looked tired."

She hung limply from the ceiling of what looked like a high school. Her hair was falling over her face in waves, but it did nothing to hide the exhaustion evident in her features, nor did it hide the terror in her eyes. The words that coupled the image sent a chill down my spine.

Anyway, do you mind if I try to turn your blood to acid again?

"Young boy. Long brown hair. Dark eyes. He looked angry."

He was in a house I had never seen before. The walls were made of a dark wood, and there were ornate furnishings all around. I had a feeling that there were other people in the room that I couldn't see, and that the words I heard were directed at all of them, not just him in particular, but that didn't help them to make any more sense.

I tried every method in the book.

"Short blonde hair. Older guy. Rage in his eyes."

He was standing in a doorway, and from the look on his face, I couldn't imagine how he hadn't slammed the door in my face yet. His entire face was set in an expression that couldn't make his disdain for me any clearer. His voice echoed the sentiment.

I know you hate me.

"Black hair, blue eyes. A girl with super pale skin. I think she was sick. She looked like she hated me. She looked familiar, though."

I found my brain replaying this one the most. The person I saw had a weird sense of familiarity to her, like a memory that had somehow fallen through the cracks. Behind the hatred burning in her eyes, I could sense a bit of concern. This vision was stronger than the others, his voice booming louder in my head.

Could you please fix me? Like now?

Mina stayed quiet as I spoke, not even looking up at me, keeping her focus on her paper as she scribbled down everything I was saying. We fell into another silence, but this one felt emptier. It felt like my claims were hanging between us, making the air heavy and thick with my insanity.

"I feel crazy,"  I continued, desperately wanting to fill the empty air. "But it's real. I know it is, and I see it, and I don't even feel like me when it happens. It feels like I'm in someone else's body."

I let out a chuckle, but it was devoid of humor. "I know it sounds crazy. I'm sure you have a lot to write from that, But yeah."

At that, she looked up at me. I couldn't place the look in Mina's eyes, but it looked pretty damn close to pity. I hated the sight.

A knock sounded through the room, tearing our attention away from each other and to the door. We both knew what that meant; session over. She was always fully booked, and so even if I wanted to get some more time with her, I could never manage to. She had given me her personal cell number to text if I ever needed to talk more, but I felt guilty using it. I already threw enough onto her plate. I didn't need to add more when she wasn't even on business hours. Plus, texting her about my problems would make my brain start to see her as less than my therapist and more as my friend. I needed the buffer there; I needed to see her as anything but my friend. Bad things happened to people who got close to me.

Mina sighed again, a sound she seemed to constantly make around me. She rose to her feet, and despite not wanting to, I followed her lead, standing up as well. She took one last look at her clipboard before once again placing it facedown on the table.

"I, for one, don't think you're crazy," she told me, and I could see that she was sincere. But it did nothing to ease the sick feeling in my gut when I thought about the visions.

"I just think that you have... A lot of trauma. And maybe something we did in one of our previous sessions triggered trauma that you had buried before. Things you wished he would have said, fears about his mental state towards the end."

I nodded slowly, processing her words. It was possible, but it felt like something bigger. Something... Less normal, but I couldn't tell her that. "And the people?" I asked instead.

"I think that's something we have to dig deeper into," she said simply. Which, to me, meant she had no freaking clue either, but I nodded anyways.

She came around the table, placing a hand on my shoulder. I flinched at the contact.

"You've made great progress," she said, her voice soft. "Don't let this make you forget it, okay?"

I nodded. I couldn't bring myself to look into her eyes, and I couldn't bear to be there any longer.

I rushed out of the office, letting the cool night breeze hit my face and blow my troubles away. I closed my eyes and tried to take in the serenity of the night. That was, until I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around to face the person. Mina.

The streetlamps bounced her honey skin, almost illuminating her in the darkness. She stepped closer, until she was by my side.

"Let me walk you to your car," she said, and as I looked at her, I didn't see any judgement on her face. What I saw was genuine care for me. It shocked me, but I allowed myself to nod and fall into step with her.

Being near Mina was easy. It was normal, the closest thing I had had to normal in quite some time, especially since everything that had happened with Kai. I knew that she didn't see me as anything more than a patient and a friend, and it was for the best. I tried to avoid moments like this with her, moments where my mind could run wild and think of us as anything more than patient-client, but I let myself indulge today.

I'd put my walls back up tomorrow.

Conversation was effortless with her. It was ever flowing and natural and made me feel like I didn't have to take myself too seriously, and it was no different this night. It was a feeling I hadn't felt in a while.

I wasn't sure if I had been so lost in conversation that I didn't notice, but two men appeared in front of us suddenly.  We both stopped, shock filling us as we looked at the two guys in front of us.

The first had light brown hair standing up all over his head. His features were soft, with sad, old eyes, and had a backpack slung across one shoulder. But it was the second man who gave me pause. His features were sharp, a stark contrast to the features of the other.  He was wearing a leather jacket, and his blue eyes looked determined but also mischievous.

Sharp jawline. Leather jacket. Shifty eyes. It was him. One of the men I had seen in my visions.

"You..." I whispered, too startled to say anything else. Mina was silent beside me, and I prayed she was seeing him too, and that my visions hadn't upgraded to full blown hallucinations.

"Hi," the familiar guy said, waving his hand to dismiss my words. "Which one of you is Halyn Chase?"

I didn't reply, my brain still too busy trying to process the events happening before me. Mina took a step forward, blocking me with her body, and stepping to the man. It gave me relief.

He was really here.

"What do you want with her?" Mina asked him, her voice protective and stern.

"Oh okay," he responded, sounding sure of himself. "Then it's not you."

He stepped forward and placed his hands on her shoulders, locking eyes intensely with her before I could say anything.

"Go home," he demanded. "Forget this ever happened."

He removed his hands, and she started to walk away, as if in a trance. I tried calling out for her, but she didn't even acknowledge my voice.

"What did you do to her?" I asked. My voice rose as I felt anger building in my chest. Who did this guy think he was, and why did I see him in my mind?

"Good, now that you're alone," he said, completely ignoring my question, and sounding so smug that all I wanted was to slap him. I resisted. "You need to come with me."

"Like hell, I will."

"Well, I tried. Time for the easy way," he said, and started to take a step towards me, before the other man grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing, Damon?" the other asked him. "You can't just compel her."

Compel?  Where had I heard that word before?

"Well, if you have another idea, I'm all ears. We don't have time to convince her of things."

The familiar man, Damon I guess, pulled his arm free of the other and stepped towards me, locking eyes with me in the same way he had just done with Mina.

"Come with me," he commanded.

I waited for a spell to activate, for something to happen... Nothing.

So I did my own spell.

Damon went flying, my spell throwing him across the park until he hit the back of a tree stump. He looked taken aback, but not completely surprised at my use of magic. I walked forward with my hand still outstretched, the gesture keeping him securely pinned to the wall as if my hand was around this throat,

"A witch? Seriously?" He sounded more annoyed than bewildered at the discovery.

"Who the hell are you guys?" I asked.

"I should be asking you that," he countered. "Why on Earth are you on vervain?"

Vervain? Vervain was one of the first things I had added to my routine once I got my memories back. My mom had worked to help me to better control my powers, and to protect me from the darkness that had threatened to consume me, the darkness that bubbles under the surface when I'm not careful. I had been wearing an anklet laced with vervain for years at this point, remembering her warning of how it protected my magic from getting into the wrong hands. But most of all, I remembered what exactly she had told me vervain would protect against. Or who, for that matter.

"You're a vampire?" The question was more rhetorical than literal, but with the way his face blanked, I knew I was right. "I've read all about your kind. The dangers."

"Says the girl who's has me pinned against a tree."

I didn't say anything to that, instead just rolling my eyes at how he could still sound so sure of himself and cocky when he clearly didn't have the upper hand in this situation.

I muttered another spell and slowly started to close my grip, watching as the effects of the magic started to run its course, tightening my magical grip on Damon, pulling him off of his feet and lifting him into the air a bit.

He groaned. "You psycho," he breathed out, the tightening obviously impairing his ability to speak. But it did nothing to prevent me from hearing his next words.

"No wonder Kai knew you."

My jaw dropped at the mention of his name, that name I hadn't heard in so long. The name that had echoed in my dreams whenever I closed my eyes. The name that's been on my lips for eighteen years. The name that could instantly make me breathless.

My focus faltered, and the spell was broken. My hand fell to my side limply as Damon followed suit, crashing hard to the ground as he sputtered for breath.

"Thanks for the help, Stefan," he rasped out when he got his breath, scowling at the other man with him, who had done nothing to prevent me from suspending him in the air. For the briefest of moments, I wondered what that was about. But I was too preoccupied to let myself be concerned with that.

"How do you know that name?" I demanded,

"I wish I didn't," the man replied from the floor. "He's been a real pain in my ass. Making everything a lot more difficult."

"What are you talking about?" I growled at him, taking big strides until I had closed the distance between us. "He... he's dead."

Saying those words never ceased to send a chill through my body. After all this time, and after all the therapy I had went through, I still could never fully come to terms with what had happened. How everything could've been so much different. After everything he did; to his family, to me, I still couldn't help but long for more time for him. I couldn't help but wonder what would've happened if we had more time.

Damon scoffed from his spot on the ground, the sound turning into a cough as it left his hoarse throat. "Yeah, see, he's not dead yet."

"What..." I started, but the word died on my lips, coming out as a breath. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see that the man addressed as Stefan had come over to me. His eyes were full of concern.

"Kai isn't dead, Halyn." He stated with confidence. At my reaction, his voice softened. "He's in Mystic Falls, and he's about to do something terrible. We need your help to stop him."

My brain couldn't process any of his words. How? How was it that Kai could be alive? Josette had told me herself. He was gone. But I couldn't help the ache in my chest at his words. I wanted so badly to believe him.

"Why should I believe anything you say? And how did you find me?" I asked him, my voice coming out small.

"Why would we drive hundreds of miles to trick some random girl?" Damon questioned as he rose to his feet, his voice dripping with sarcasm and annoyance. I ignored his words.

"A friend did a tracking spell for us. It led us here to you" Stefan responded.

He swung his backpack around to his front, and I watched in a daze as he unzipped it and rummaged through the contents for a second. He passed me a map, showing the trail of blood that led them to me, emanating from the spot that reads Mystic Falls.

With what? I wanted to ask him. I was so in my head I wasn't even sure if I had voiced the words or not. My thoughts were still running at lightning speed, trying and failing to make sense of any of this, desperately wanting it to be true almost as much as I was trying to disprove their words.

My eyes were still fixed on the map when Stefan removed another item from the bag, and I felt it before I even saw it.

The unmistakable pull of Kai overtook me, drawing a gasp from my lips and leaving me breathless. The wave of energy was so strong, or maybe it just felt that way after eighteen years of it lying dormant. My bones began to buzz immediately, and the feeling of pure light in my veins was something I hadn't felt in a long time.

I looked up at Stefan, gasping for breath as my gaze fell from his eyes down to his outstretched hands. His words sound muffled in my ears, as if the energy is drowning me and he's speaking to me from above water.

"We found this with Kai's belongings. It seems important to him, but..."

His words trailed off as he extended his arms even further, practically putting the item into my hands. My whole body felt numb as I recognize it immediately, lightly letting it fall into my hands. There was no denying it, but my brain couldn't help but turn it over in my hands. This entire thing was impossible. I had to make sure it was real.

But there it was, my old black scarf back in my hands. The material was worn and thin, and looked more gray than black at this point from years of wear. There were some holes in the fabric, some blood, and a stain that I knew was made by someone wiping pork rind crumbs onto the fabric. It smelled partially musty, the way that old material starts to smell over time, but there was another scent mixed in that was undeniably Kai.

My breath got caught in my chest as I found what I was looking for. I felt tears begin to fall from my eyes, but I was too preoccupied to even attempt to wipe them away. My heart seemed to stop as I looked down at the tag, where I had written my name in Sharpie pen many many years ago. The letters were faded from time, but there was no mistaking my penmanship.

This was it. This was the scarf I had given to Kai all those years ago, and with it, I felt him again. Our connection. Our magic calling out to each other.

My mind was screaming at me, drowning out the millions of thoughts I was thinking with one phrase, repeating over and over again.

He's alive. He's alive. He's alive.

When I found my voice again and spoke, the words came out clipped, leaving no room for debate, and full of determination.

"Take me to him."

If you would like to be tagged in future chapters, or removed from the taglist, let me know.

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@faemae00​

[chanbangblog]

ive only felt religion when ive lied with you- 1

A/N: (smut, Chan x reader, Canon compliant, fan/idol)

The sun peeped in at you through the small slit in the curtains. Your eyes fluttered open and then closed again. You laid there in a beautiful mix of sleep and awake when suddenly you realized you were late for work. You sat up and became perplexed at your surroundings, this was definitely not your room.

Wait, where am I… you started to wonder.

You looked over to see Robyn lying next to you, still asleep looking quite peaceful and hugging her Chimmy plushie. Then you realized you weren’t at home, and this wasn’t just any day, this was the day you were going to meet Stray Kids.

Your heart began to speed up at your sudden realization. You looked around the room and empty cans of hard cider littered the bedside table. Last night’s pad Thai was sitting on the dresser, probably harboring god knows how many bacteria after sitting out at room temperature all night. You felt a tinge of nausea at the thought of it, or any food for that matter.

Oh god. Am I going to be able to eat today? I have to eat, I’ll never be able to stand in line and make it through the concert if I don’t eat. Let alone have the strength to survive MEETING THEM at hi-touch.

You pushed your hair behind your ears, closed your eyes and focused on your breathing.

Not today, anxiety. It’s too early for this bullshit.

Your therapist had taught you to talk to your anxiety like it was a person. Speaking of him, God bless that man for listening to you over the past several months preparing for this day. You had drilled him for an endless amount of coping mechanisms in order make sure that you, quite literally, didn’t faint when you met the nine boys who seemingly occupied your every thought.

You rolled out of bed as cautiously as you could, so you didn’t wake Robyn. You walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Your hair was stuck to the side of your head and you had sleep still in the corners of your eyes. You decided to take a shower and think about what to have for breakfast.

The hot water beat into your skin and steam began to fill the bathroom. You inhaled deeply. Trying to focus on the present and not psych yourself out about the night ahead.

You’re just giving them a high five. Hundreds of fans will get to do the same. They definitely won’t remember you, you’ll blend in with the millions of other girls who are desperately in love with them.

 This thought calms you for a moment. Being rational in situations of stress wasn’t particularly your strong suit, so you were happy with this little victory.

When you got out of the shower you checked your phone. You had several notifications from Instagram from realstraykids. Hyunjin was posting selfies and talking about being excited for the concert tonight. Swiping through the pictures he took with other members, Chris got your attention. His hair was a golden blonde and was starting to grow so long, it looked like a borderline mullet with the way it was styled.

“Chris with a mullet steals my soul!!!!” you commented on the picture and then put your phone away.

You walked back into the room and Robyn was awake. You took one look at her and burst into the most high pitched squeal you could manage.

Well. Being calm was nice while it lasted.

“Good god, y/n. Are you gonna be like this all day?” Robyn asked, already looking done with your shit.

 Robyn didn’t originally stan Stray Kids. You introduced them to her after you got the tickets. You had been to kpop concerts with her in the past so she seemed like the obvious choice to go with you. You had invited Robyn over a couple months ago and had a “hard intro to Stray Kids” Youtube watching session. Which had included videos like “stray kids on crack” and “a super shitty and unhelpful guide to stray kids.” She eventually chose two biases, Minho and Jisung. When she had told you later that night you were overjoyed because you had predicted who she would bias.

“NO WAY!!!!” you had screeched, “I texted my friend earlier and predicted you would bias them! Just so I could show you when I was right!”

What could you say, you love Robyn, but she has a certain type that always wrecks her. Pretty baby faces and strong vocals. You couldn’t blame her though, they were both an excellent choice.

You snapped back to the present.

“Uh no. I’m calm, I just, uh… yeah I’m gonna be like this all day.” You confessed.

Thank God I have a friend brave enough to put up with me.

The morning went by faster than you thought it would. You all ordered breakfast and spent the morning watching Jinyoung’s new kdrama. You wanted to get to the venue early-ish because even though you had good tickets, you were still GA and didn’t want to be shoved completely to the back of your section.

 You had spent months picking the perfect outfit that you would feel confident in to meet them. It was May so you weren’t sure about the weather, but you decided to bank on it being hot outside. You chose a sleeveless shirt that was metallic gold, with a bow that tied around the front and buttoned down. You had also chosen a skort set that looked like a black mini-skirt but actually had shorts underneath and low-top combat boots to complete the look. You curled your hair and tried to give it as much volume as possible. Not that it would matter, you knew it would be matted to your head with sweat by the end of the concert. But hey, you gotta look good for the pics for the ‘gram, right?

 You arrived at the venue and was baking outside under the morning sun, it was sweltering, you didn’t expect this for May. Your skin was baking under the late spring sun. You definitely had a sunburn and had only been in line for an hour.

Why on Earth did I wear a tank top...I’m not gonna be able to raise my arm to high five them without the smell knocking them down!

Suddenly an image of Jeongin falling backward at the smell of your body odor made you laugh out loud. You could see the headlines now, “kpop fangirl’s body odor causes singer to faint.” I mean, it would be hilarious, mortifying, but hilarious.

The concert was a blur, as always. You sang along to all the words you knew and your voice felt hoarse towards the end. You couldn’t believe how close you were to them. The venue was much smaller than you had anticipated. The light was shining off of them and their sweat made them glisten. You were so close you could see their muscles rippling under their denim when they danced.

Felix began talking to the fans about how much he loves us and wants to keep performing well for us. Felix and Changbin are my biases so I was completely engulfed in his cute Aussie accent being spoken 40 feet from me. It was almost too much. The members were fanned out across the stage while he talked and Chris drifted over to the side I was on. The girls and boys around me went wild trying to speak to him but he probably couldn’t hear them.

Rude. My baby Felix is having a moment and y’all are acting like idiots trying to talk over him.

Robyn elbowed me hard in the rib.

“Y/n,” she breathed, “Chris is staring in our direction.”

 You looked over and locked eyes with him. You froze. You always thought you knew what you would do if you came face to face with one of your idols. But you were wrong. You didn’t feel the way you had predicted at all. You thought your knees would buckle. You thought you would scream or perhaps cry. But you didn’t. You couldn’t describe the feeling that came over you under his gaze. You couldn’t describe it other than feeling totally confident and empowered for the first time in a long time. You realized you needed to react before he looked away so you winked and attempted to look sexy. Then he raised an eyebrow at you, kept your gaze and went back to get in line for the next song.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT! WHY DID I WINK? WHO DOES THAT OH MY GOD.

You were going though it inside and Robyn could tell.

“Um, what was that?? Girl, you just had an interaction with him!” Robyn whispered in your ear.

 You looked around and none of the concert-goers around you seemed to notice. No one was looking at you. You began to wonder if you imagined it. Your cheeks were burning a fiery red and your stomach felt like it was being assaulted with a swarm of butterflies.

How am I going to face him at hi-touch after that?? God y/n you were supposed to try to blend in.

You told your inner voice to fuck off, just like your therapist had taught you. But the rest of the concert, you couldn’t keep your eyes off Chris.

   You were standing in line for hi-touch and your knees were buckling. You felt like your entire body was on edge and your insides were being electrocuted.

“You’re going to pass out if you keep holding your breath, y/n.” Robyn quietly reminded you. You suddenly realized you had been holding your breath.

“How did I get here? Maybe we should just run.”  You said in a panicked voice.

Robyn looked you up and down like you had just spoken another language.

“Y/n, we’re not being marched to our deaths, we’re meeting this band that you have been obsessing over for months! Get it together! Breathe!” Robyn said while starting to shake you.

She’s right. What the hell is wrong with you. You paid so much money for these tickets and your bank account is still recovering. You’re doing this.

The line was starting to move faster than you would like. You got closer and closer to where you knew the boys were standing. You saw them in the distance and suddenly realized how tall they were in real life. You should’ve anticipated this since you already knew you were shorter than the shortest member.

They’re just people. They’re just boys. You talk to boys all the time.

You started to calm down. Until you locked eyes with Chris in the distance.

What was it about his gaze that made you take on a totally different attitude and mindset? Five seconds earlier you were contemplating running again. Now it felt like all of Earth’s gravity was holding you here in this one spot, like this was the only place you were ever supposed to be at this moment in time. You felt confident under his gaze, you felt bold.

You’re still not sure what possessed you, but you broke the gaze to start searching through your purse. You found a receipt and quickly ripped a small piece of the end. The line was moving and you were forced to walk while ransacking your purse. You finally found a pen. You tried to be as nonchalant as you could so you didn’t attract attention from other fans.

As sneakily as you could, you quickly scribbled: Kakao y/n0325.

Good god, why did I put their debut date in my name on there…I’m such a psycho. That’s so embarrassing.

But you didn’t have time to ponder on that because it was almost your turn. You didn’t have a plan. You didn’t know how you were going to get this to him without being noticed, but you did know that it felt right and you wanted to do it. Chris was the last member in the lineup.

 Woojin was first. You had already planned out what you were going to say to each of them. You got up to him and his chocolate brown hair was gleaming in the fluorescence. Your hands met and you felt your mind go blank, he was smiling at you as you grappled with your words in your head.

“YOUR VOICE IS LIKE HONEY,” you blurted out, half-yelling at the poor man.

He just laughed and said thank you as you moved on.

Minho was looking at you smiling with his hand up. You didn’t struggle as long with finding words this time.

“I’m so proud of you, I love you to death,” You said as you passed by.

He laughed and said thank you in the cutest accent you’ve ever heard.

Changbin was next. Your bias, which made your thoughts become even more erratic than they had been before. You just started smiling uncontrollably and said “Hiiiiii, I love you Changbinnie” and he looked back at you fondly and said he loved you too.

You were face to face with Hyunjin before you realized it and my, was he good looking, it was like an angel was literally standing in front of you.

“You’re even cuter in person,” you said as fast as you could while touching hands with him. He just laughed and nodded in response.

You couldn’t think of anything else, your mind was at overload when you met Felix, Jisung, Jeongin and Seungmin. So you just told them you loved them as fast and as many times as you could.

When you got to Chris, you finally looked up at him and felt a shiver rip through your core. Your heart felt like it had dropped into your stomach. You felt like you were in an elevator that was falling down with reckless abandon. You raised your right hand up to give him a high five. Your hand was empty. But at the last second you switched and raised your left hand up as quickly as you could and the piece of paper was between your hands. You moved your hand slightly so he could feel it and finally spoke.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you, but this just isn’t long enough.” You said with all the confidence you could muster.

His eyes sparked as he realized what you were doing. He moved his hand and quickly closed it and put it in his pocket.

“Oh yes, I agree,” he said, very coolly with that unmistakable smile that he always shows the world. The smile that you had become so fond of over the last several months. The smile that gave fans hope all around the world and now, at this moment, he was smiling because of you.

  For the second time that night, Robyn looked at you in disbelief as you rounded the corner in the hall way exiting the venue.

“Y/n, you’re the smoothest human alive,” she said with a shocked expression on her face.

You suddenly busted into cackling laughter. It overwhelmed you and wracked your body. Bubbling up from your core. You couldn’t control it. You’re sure you were unnerving everyone near you with your maniacal laughter. Everyone knows, nothing comes good after maniacal laughter. You laughed until your abdominal muscles ached, and tears were spilling down your cheeks.

“That was the best time of my life,” you said in between bouts of laughter.

Robyn started laughing too and you two called a cab to head back to your hotel.

 You tried not to dwell on your interaction with Chris. He had been nice and a bit flirty, but he was like that with all Stays. You had watched countless youtube compilations of your idols flirting with fans. It was normal. It was nothing special. That’s what you told yourself when you arrived back in your hotel room and your heart was still fluttering in your chest, refusing to return to its normal pace.

Hey, I’m going at my own pace, Chris would at least be proud of that.

You suddenly started laughing again at your own thoughts and told Robyn you were getting in the shower. She was probably very thankful for this, after the events of the day and the copious amounts of sweat you had shed. You turned on your slow kpop playlist and once again let the steam fill up the room while the water beat down on you. You put your head up against the tile wall of the shower and let the water envelop you.

 I had an interaction with Chris. Fans have interactions with their idols all the time at concerts. He was very charismatic, you already knew that. Stop overthinking it and just be happy you made these memories with them, y/n.

Your heart rate began to slow and you focused on the water and the steady hum the shower made. Tomorrow you and Robyn were going into the city and it was going to be a good day. You were going to have a good day with your friend and recount concert memories. Life was good.

You stepped out of the shower and grabbed your phone to turn off the playlist. Butterfly by BTS was playing and you were about to sing along for a few words when you checked your notifications.

You had a few comments on your Instagram posts but your eyes glazed over when you saw what was next.

A notification from Kakao, a notification from none other than Christopher Bang himself.

[yourtransgendersocialworker]

12.31.2019, On an Inside Scoop of a Mental Health Crisis

I’ve been thinking, lately, about how a person who is in the middle of a mental health crisis may have a very different perspective than those watching. I wonder what it may look like when those who experience a crisis together debrief the sequence of events. I tried to piece together my memories of my last mental health deterioration and verbalize how I felt and what I remember.  I experienced the entire thing. 

Before the night, I had been bad off for a couple weeks. I had a few triggering events which led me down a shame spiral. Over the course of about two weeks, I started to lose touch with reality. I felt very confused and embarrassed. I was struggling to pay attention and I couldn’t remember anything. Bad thoughts ran rampant. The voice inside my head was loud, non-stop and confident with suicidal ideation. 

It started when I posted a Facebook status. It was cryptic and vague, something like, “I don’t belong here anymore.” I don’t remember much about that night anymore, but I can imagine what it might have looked like. I posted that status and then I paced around the house in a panicky daze. Pacing around the house in a dissociate state was becoming a nightly routine*. My mind was on fire, so loud and certain with bad thoughts. I was in so much pain. 

People reached out on Facebook, asking if I was okay, but I didn’t respond. It was comforting to see the love and support but it was too overwhelming to engage with it all. Ryan called me and I didn’t answer his call. Theo’s mom texted me after I was asleep asking if I was awake. I didn’t see that until the morning so I did not answer. When I woke up, my friend texted me asking if I was okay, saying they didn’t want to have to come over if I didn’t answer. I texted back saying I was okay and they got mad that I posted that status online. 

Later I wrote a blog journal about how bad I was feeling and I reflected on my poor decision to post that Facebook status. I wrote about how it felt to be told to not post shit like that, about how it hurt and about how I shouldn’t worry people. I quoted what the friend had told me but I didn’t say her name. I wrote that I agreed and I talked about the right and wrong ways to ask for help and how scary it is to ask for help. 

Meanwhile, I am still in the middle of a mental health crisis. 

I go to the therapist’s office on a Friday. I tell him how bad I am feeling and I tell him how I would want to die. He tells me I can’t leave his office until I make safety plans with him. I texted my friend asking if I could stay the night at their house, or if they or their boyfriend would come stay the night with me because I was in my therapists office and he wouldn’t let me leave. My friend stopped texting back when I asked that. I made plans with Ryan to meet halfway between us, in Lexington, Kentucky. We both drove around 5 hours and stayed in a hotel for the weekend. We played Bible golf. I told him my thoughts about mental illness as a terminal illness and he spent the weekend trying to convince me to stay alive. I was so sure of myself and referred to myself in the past tense. Ryan said he felt like he was already grieving my death. I was happy we could do that together. 

I saw that my friend deleted me from Facebook. My other friend texted me the next day saying they were glad I was able to make a different plan. My family here was suddenly gone. I just continued to spiral. I left Lexington still determined to kill myself. I made it about a week.  I went to work but I couldn’t work and people were taking me on walks and I talked openly to my coworkers about my suicidal thoughts. Words would pour out of my mouth before I processed them, startling the both of us. The coworkers started talking to each other. Gwen and I hid in my office for a couple hours while she gently warmed me to the idea of seeking help. I was determined to kill myself. I couldn’t think straight but I knew things were bad. I eventually agreed to go. We went to my house and prepared a bag and prepared me for what was next. Gwen took me to the crisis center and we joked about the decorations on the wall and she came back for the assessment and reminded me to tell them my theory on terminal mental illness. 

I got sent to the same hospital I went to the first time. Staff remembered me and I remembered them. I spent 32 days in the hospital watching people come and go, 32 very lonely days without many visitors. I recognized the hospital kinships as structured and contained. I tried my hardest to understand what exactly had happened up until this point. I couldn’t wrap my head around losing my friend family and I began to question everything. Was I toxic, causing more pain than pleasure in my relationships? Was I worthless, worth leaving when I needed help the most? The only relief from self-interrogation was the anxious peace of my impending death. I realized I was living my last days and that was comforting. I did 16 rounds of shock treatment and didn’t feel any different. 

I came back home and tried to piece my life together. Nothing had changed. I couldn't trust myself or anyone else. I still had no idea what was real and what wasn't real. I still didn’t understand what warranted the abrupt abandonment of my support network. I read a lot of books and prepared myself for death. I stopped telling people my plans. I did research. I cried hysterically to the Nurse Practitioner and she hugged me and referred me to an outpatient program.

I started intensive outpatient treatment and I told them about my terminal mental illness and they cried and increased my time to partial hospitalization. I made a couple friends and got along well with the staff. I made connections and I made granola and I made a mask. It felt good but I knew it wasn’t the real world. I talked a lot about suicide and the therapist tried to respect my thoughts while also trying to convince me to stay alive. I thanked the therapist for trying so hard and I told them how I was going to kill myself. People reminded me that a couple weeks ago I said I was doing okay but I couldn’t remember that. 

I started back at work. I didn’t arrange any more therapy. I have done enough and I know another person isn’t going to change my life. I am here now. I am tired. I sleep most of the day. I don’t move very much at all. I worry that my friends feel obligated to reach out to me. I want to be a kind friend but I don’t want to spread my dark energy. I am more calm than usual. I'm moving a lot less so there is less about my reality to question. I still feel the same. I'm not talking about it as much because there is no point.

————

Since writing that last paragraph, I was in a bad car accident. The morning after, I called the numbers I had memorized, my mom, Ryan and Theo, to ask for help getting a ride home from the Emergency Room. I was covered in blood and positioned casually in the waiting room for someone to come claim me. My supervisor picked me up and I vomited in her car and dribbled blood onto the passenger door. Friends showed me they cared for me. Kiley drove from Illinois and stayed with me over Christmas. Her presence in the midst of my hardest time reaffirmed my ability to connect and share loving-kindness. The news of a suicide brought reflection and pain. The lens shifted. 

2019 was incredibly hard. It’s right up there with 2009 as the hardest times so far. I’ve learned a lot about family- the word, the concept, the reality. I’ve learned about true friendship and true love. I’ve learned I’m not always to blame. I’ve learned that despite all of the dark, I am still filled with love. I’ve learned that growth isn’t a synonym for progress. You can grow into an ugly thing. I know one thing to be true- I have not turned ugly.

This decade tried its hardest to destroy me and towards the end, I eagerly chipped in. I’m not one to hold weight to the date changing, but it feels like the right time for me to try again. 

_____

*Try to explain the spiral of depression and dissociation. 

It usually starts with feeling ashamed or embarrassed about something.

You come home from work and you start to panic. You think to yourself, “Be gentle with yourself. If you’re tired, just sit on the couch.” You sit on the couch and feel like a waste for not being productive. Your mind is on fire and you can’t think about anything. You are overwhelmed with static noise. Your legs shake and you scroll through your phone so much that it tells you there is nothing left to look at. You start to think about dying. You get up but you don’t know what to do so you smoke a cigarette and look at your unfinished projects. You wash your hands and stumble back to the couch, the cigarette being just enough of a distraction to trick you into thinking you actually did something. You zone out. You watch the house dirty around you, let things pile up. You start to move through space differently. The air feels thick and your body moves in slow-motion. You start to feel like you are looking at a “Magic Eye.” Your eyes are out of focus all the time and they blur and shift throughout the day. You cry often and uncontrollably. It does not feel like a release, but like you are made of clay and you are cracking. You realize you’re not paying attention to anything anymore. You think about killing yourself every free second you have. You think about the act of killing yourself, you think about your funeral, you think about your dog, you think about your family and your friends. You think about everything you’ve done in the world. You think about everyone you love. You think about the idea of a good future. You know what you’ve got to do. You think things through and come to the same conclusion after each hypothesis you try out. You can’t hear your friends speaking to you anymore because you are thinking through everything. People are talking to you but you are wild inside and trying to hide it as best as you can but you can't hide your suicidal ideations when you are telling everyone goodbye. You surprise yourself with the things you let pour out of your lips. You aren’t answering messages anymore. That's too much. You feel a sense of peace and determination. You know you need to be brave and you are worried about that. And that is where it whisks off.

[little-wintry]

To The Stars - A Miniseries I Feel Like Posting Somewhere

Summary: In a world not too different from this one, Humanity has achieved space travel. The International World Bureau of Space now has a program where the average person (after passing a series of tests) can travel into space with the aid of a Veteran Space Traveler. Valerie Rink has, by some miracle, won the lottery and now gets the chance to see distant planets, all with the aid of Liz Conar, an exceptionally young Veteran Traveler. 

**Note: I’m not sure how much more of this I will write, if I’ll post it, or what. Honestly I just had this idea a full 48 hours ago and feel the need to write it. It’s... romance? Sort of? With science-fiction grounded in actual science.**

Don’t panic, don’t freak out, don’t panic, don’t freak out-

I quickly shoved more clothes into my bag. Pack light, they said. That’s a good piece of advice until 3 months in you’re completely out of underwear and socks, and you’re next destination is still two weeks away.

I tried to remember my breathing exercises. I tried to remain calm. But every nerve in my body was screaming in terror.

I zippered my bag up, staring at it blankly.

“Attention,” A robotic female voice echoed in my room. “Units A-25 to A-39, please report to the loading dock.” 

I felt my throat close up, but I grabbed my bag anyway and started heading towards the dock, my strides surprisingly steady. Everything felt loud - oppressively so, to the point where I thought I could feel my ears ringing.

I reached the small terminal. A bored looking 50-something year-old woman glanced up. “Your card?”

Sticking out a small slip of plastic, plastered with my name and image, she scanned it, glanced lazily at the results, then handed it back. 

“Enjoy your journey,” She muttered in a monotone voice. “And remember: Human future lies in the stars.”

I continued my brisk pace, brushing past business men with earpieces and families with luggage rolling behind them. Large screens were everywhere.

“Welcome to the Utah National Space Station,” A voice blared. “Where you’re future lies in distant planets. Sign up today for-” My foot caught on a tile that stuck upwards. I almost lost my balance before I kept going. 

A second terminal - the crowd was thinning now. A giant banner ‘NST MEMBERS ONLY’. 

I passed through. I could feel my heart jump a little bit with each step.

Finally, I passed through a set of sliding doors, and into a blank white room with chairs arranged neatly around tables. Each table had a placecard, and a handful of people sitting at each.

A man dressed in neat navy blues met me with a smile. “Hello! Name, please?”

“Valerie Rink,” I said, my voice wavering more that I had hoped.

“Great! Nice to meet you, Valerie.” He used his pen and ran down a list of names on a clipboard. “Alrighty, you’re at that table right over there,” He pointed to a small table with two red-headed men and a dark haired woman. “You’re Veteran should be with you soon.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “But who is my Veteran?”

“Hm? Oh, Liz Conar. She’ll be here in 10.”

Liz Conar, Liz Conar, Liz Conar… I know her, don’t I? Or I should?

I was shoved by someone behind me and I shuffled over to my table.

The two men were engaged in a fierce argument. One had his hair cut short, with wild curls flying everywhere, and the other had it even longer, long enough to make a small ponytail.

“A gravity assist from Jupiter could get you there in less than a decade,” The long haired one said.

“Yeah,” The other said. “Only if you could time it right.”

The woman peered up from her book and noticed me, nudging the other two.

“Uh,” I croaked. “Hello…?”

The woman sat up, smiling. “G’morning. You must be Valerie, right? After all, there’s only one place left at the table.”

I nodded sheepishly.

She stuck out her hand, which I noticed was covered in charcoal smudges. “Caroline, Caroline Vellino. I’m the ship’s certified therapist.”

I turned my attention to the men. The long haired one grinned at me.

“Felix,” He said. The freckles on his cheeks were scattered and easily noticed against his pale skin. “Nice to meet you.”

“Edward,” The second one said, more subdued. “I’m his older brother.”

“Great,” I muttered. “I’ll just-” I slid the chair out and sat down, hugging my luggage to my chest as I tried to calm myself down. Caroline buried her nose back in her book - sketchbook, maybe? - as Felix and Edward stopped their argument.

“So,” Felix said, leaning forwards. “Why do you want to go to space?”

My brain paused. “Well… I don’t know, it’s always been fascinating. My mom also works with the Stations, so she wanted me to go, too.”

“Cool!” Felix said. He was beginning to remind me more and more of a 3rd grader hyped up on Pixie Sticks. “I mean, I’ve always found space cool, and I’m a little sad we won’t get to see way out in deep space-”

“It would take several decades to get there,” Edward interjected.

“But I’m still excited! I can’t wait to see Jupiter, mostly. And Neptune. And Eris, that dwarf planet beyond Pluto, but I doubt we’ll get that far-”

Edward cleared his throat. “Caroline? What about you?”

“Space has always been an interest of mine,” She said, rubbing the pencil dust off of a page. “A muse, you might say. And, of course, interstellar journeys can be hard on the mind, so I thought it would be good if I tagged along.”

The intercom blared overhead. “Attention, your Space Veterans are entering. Please remain seated.”

I craned my neck, trying to see over the ocean of heads. People passed by the crowds, the Veterans. Thomas Toan, Quinn O’Malley, Lily Zhou - all the heroes of my childhood, gathered inside one room.

“Ooh,” Felix pointed. “I think that’s her.”

A woman walked out of the crowd. Liz Conar.

I had seen posters. I had seen her face plastered on billboards and TV screens and on lunchboxes and backpacks - she was an icon, and I felt embarrassed I hadn’t even recognized her soon. I had grown up seeing her face everywhere, but I had never seen her in person.

She walked like she was on clouds, like gravity didn’t even affect her. Her hair was this light, caramel brown, and she beamed at the faces around her as she walked by, just like the superstar everyone knew her as. A low-cut V-neck, a pair of dark jeans - she hardly even looked like she was trying.

Her eyes landed on our small little table and she came over, grinning from ear to ear.

“Hey,” She said, leaning on the table. “Liz Conar. You probably know me. Everyone has their luggage?”

I lifted my piece off my lap, Felix and Edward showed off their backpacks, and Caroline tapped the luggage at her feet.

“Great,” She said. “Let’s get going. It’s always best to launch first.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“So,” Liz came up beside me, a good head taller. We were standing just outside of the spaceport, the clear blue sky and the endless plains of Utah stretching out beyond.

“You’re Valerie, right?” She asked.

“Mmhm.” I nodded. “Rink. You might know my mom.”

“Name rings a bell.” She turned around and leaned on the railing, with a smirk that gave me butterflies. 

Stop that, or you’ll never get through this trip. Just be normal for once.

“You seem like the type that’ll like space,” She said. “Some people just aren’t well suited for it, but I got a good feeling about you.”

I could only nod - my throat had gone dry.

There was a siren, and Liz tilted her head up. “Sounds like that’s us. Strap in, and get ready for those G-forces.”

I was not ready for those G-forces.

Lying parallel to the ground made things worse. I could almost feel myself trembling. Liz was directly to my left, a foot away, Edward and Felix were sitting behind me, and Caroline was in the far back.

Liz tapped her earpiece. “Strapping in now. Ready when you are.”

There was only the blue sky above us. This might be my last view of Earth for a long, lone time. I tried to enjoy it.

There was only a light rumbling, and suddenly we were off.

You know those carnival rides, the one where you’re in the dark room only lit by horridly bright primary-colored lights? And you spin faster and faster until you’re plastered to the walls, and when you come out you can’t tell if you’ll fall on your face or throw up?

Imagine that, times ten.

My vision started to go gray. That I counted on. My heart felt like it was going to come out of my chest, and my panicking didn’t make things better.

Remember your training, and you’ll be fine. Just don’t be an idiot you normally are.

The gravity grew greater, to the point where my vision started to dim. I was just starting to see the dark blue of space when my head rolled to one side, and I passed out.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

“Huh,” Liz tilted her head just a little bit to see Valerie unconscious.

Felix squeaked. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’ll be fine once we get to microgravity. High G-forces are a pain.” Just as she said that, her vision tunneled - a sensation she still wasn’t quite used to.

A minute or two later, the gravity lessened, and lessened, until finally Liz’s body began to float against her safety restraints. She unclicked the latch and turned back to the rest of her newfound crew.

“Welcome to microgravity,” She said. “And welcome to Earth orbit. We’ll reach the moon in  2 days or so. Feel free to make yourselves comfortable, there are small rooms behind you.” She watched as they all unbuckled themselves, awkwardly hovering in zero-gravity before finally getting the hang of how to move.

Liz turned towards Valerie, undid her harness, and started preparing a makeshift bed. If she was going to wake up in an unfamiliar place, she might as well be comfortable.

She secured Valerie to the wall of the ship, not an unusual place to take a nap. She groaned, a quiet noise like a sigh, and Liz almost had to laugh. She could still remember when she was the new kid, passing out every time they reached high g-forces.

She began to think she would enjoy being the teacher this time.

Carefully, she pulled herself towards the cockpit of the ship, put in the coordinates for the Moon, and relaxed back in her home away from home.

[onewhoturns]

fictober.23.: the first appointment

#Fictober19 Prompt: 23. You can’t give more than yourself. Fandom: Oxenfree Characters: Jonas, Duke (OC) Rating: T (no warnings apply) Tags: Angst-ish, emo Jonas, mental health & therapy Word Count: 2802

So... I'm posting this in order to maintain Fictober, but in all honesty this is actually a side scene/side story to a previously mentioned project that is still in the works and has yet to be posted. There may be some spoilers for the beginning of that fic. This is more an exploration of who this AU's version of Jonas is, how he's been affected by the things in his life- I'm calling it 'emo Jonas' but it may not be the type of emo you're expecting, I don't know.

If you want to read it when it comes up in the fic, it's looking like that would be anywhere from chapter 6 to chapter 9 (we're still in the midst of writing at the moment), and I'll update the summary and add it in as a related work when that becomes applicable.

For now, if you still want to read now (and it's cool if you don't), enjoy Jonas's first meeting with Duke, with no context to the rest of the story.

-

An appointment. ‘Like a doctor’s visit.’ Yeah. Well, maybe.

“Hey. You want to come on in?”

Jonas holds his breath for a second, standing from the waiting room to follow the man inside. The guy is in his early 30s, brown hair with a bit of gray starting in, just barely this side of messy, with glasses that look like he should be drinking craft brews at some gastropub in Portland. Duke. That’s a name, alright.

“Nice to finally meet in person.”

Jonas just nods. He’s not great at speaking to new people. Took him a couple weeks to start talking in intake. But he has kinda met Duke before. A pretty long phone interview, not to mention emails. They wanted to find a good therapist, and Camena had options. He’d settled on Duke.

“It’s nice to have all the paperwork out of the way already. Kind of a waste of session time, really.”

Jonas’s brows raise as he tips his head in acknowledgment and agreement.

Duke has a leg crossed over the other, and Jonas realizes, in retrospect, that the guy is actually his height. Maybe an inch shorter, but pretty damn close.

“How tall are you?” They’re the first words out of Jonas’s mouth, but they do their part.

“Six three. On a good day, anyway.”

“Nice.”

“Shoe size?”

“13.”

Duke winces audibly. “Damn, you beat me. 12 and a half.”

Jonas smirks a bit. And the ice is broken.

“You came from school?”

Jonas’s eyes wander to the side table between his chair and the unoccupied couch. He reaches for some kind of adjustable wire toy, turning it inside out and flipping it into different shapes. “Yup.”

“What’s your electives?” It’s a better question than ‘how was your day,’ at least. Duke’s foot is bouncing idly, as well.

“Gym and weight training; shop.”

“At CHS, right? Wilkinson still teaching wood shop?”

Wilkinson? “Yeah, I think that’s his name. Old guy, wears a lanyard with a whistle on it even though I don’t think he does any sports stuff?”

“Yep. He’s not too bad. Get him talking about baseball, that’s a thing. Does he still have that slugger in the workshop?”

“I… don’t know?”

“He’s got two, actually, I think. Louisville Slugger wooden bats, one official and one he made. If he still has it. I heard one year some kids stole it for a prank.”

“Kinda a dick move, the guy’s gotta be at least 70.”

“Yeah. Kids can be idiots. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Technically an adult, and I’d agree regardless.”

“When we talked before, you sounded kinda meh on the Individual Studies thing. How’s that looking?”

“It’s…” Jonas pulls a face. “Still meh on it. Some of the other kids are… ehh. Remind me of guys from North Valley, thinking they’re the shit. And the teachers - or whatever they’re called, aides? They’re a mixed bag. This one girl - woman, I guess - she seems pretty cool. Darcy. Good attitude, even if she seemed kinda fake at first.”

“I’m not sure I totally get what the course is, to be honest.”

“I mean, I’ve got three periods of it, it gets old fast. Though— I mean I guess they’re not all the same. First period for me seems more like… learning skills?” Jonas winces. “I dunno, it’s kinda cringey sometimes. And then third is gonna be assessment stuff— kinda miserable, just packets of standardized test questions and shit like that. Last period is chill though. Basically like a study hall for me, working on the stuff from the tests. And I’ve been getting out a little early, so I can-” He stops.

Duke waits a second for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, he lifts his chin from looking at the pad of paper in his lap (where Jonas can see little geometrical doodles as well as his illegible scrawl of whatever he’s noting). “A reminder; mandatory reporting doesn’t include stuff like truancy, just plans to harm yourself or others. And I consider ‘plans’ to actually mean plans.”

“So… there’s this girl, right?”

“A friend?”

Jonas hesitates. “Yyeahhh…”

“Or… sounds like maybe not just a friend?”

He shakes his head, “No, definitely just a friend, just… kinda insane.”

“Fun fact; ‘insane’ is really a legal term.”

Jonas rolls his eyes. “Kinda wild, then. Her and this other guy, too. They kinda like… adopted me?”

“Is that a positive or a negative?”

“I think it’s a positive? But— right, my point was, it gives me time to dip out the back and then meet them in the other parking lot.”

“Why the other parking lot?”

Jonas shoots Duke a flatly skeptical look. “Well they’re not gonna come meet me over in the ‘special’ wing.”

Duke huffs out a short laugh. “Wow, okay, strong feelings about IS are still there I see.” Even as Jonas is rolling his eyes again, he goes on. “So the wild duo. What kind of wild? You think they’ll get in the way of treatment?”

That makes him think for a second. “Um… no? I dunno. The guy is kinda stupid rich and somehow has a line to a shit ton of weed, apparently. Which could be a problem.”

Duke’s brows have risen high. “Could be, yeah. Does your JPPO do random testing? Think being around them could mess with your results?”

Jonas shakes his head. “Nah, they’re scheduled. Every other two weeks. And that should be done by the end of June, and the testing might be ditched entirely when we go down to only meeting once a month. Plus apparently he’s more of an edibles guy, so I’m not super worried about anything accidental. I can always just keep away for a few days before testing, shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Even though you’ve been adopted?”

He snorts a bit at that. “Guess I can’t know for sure. Not too worried, though.”

“That’s good. How exactly did you manage to get adopted?”

“The girl was my tour guide first day. I guess she thought I was cool, ‘cause she introduced me to her friend and… I dunno. We exchanged numbers and stuff. Texted. They’re kinda high energy for me, but also-” Jonas hesitates, rolling his eyes before continuing. “It’s weird, ‘cause Alex is kinda… popular? She’s a total dork, constantly jokes about being a witch, but it feels like everyone knows her? And likes her? It’s weird.”

“Huh. Are you saying you think they shouldn’t?”

“I’m saying…” Jonas shrugs. “Eh. She’s nice enough, I get that. But like… I feel like at North Valley she would’ve been… I mean, not disliked. Considered annoying, maybe, in large doses. Not exactly a class clown, but that same idea. More of a subject of entertainment than friendship.”

“That’s an interesting way of seeing things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Analytical.”

Jonas considers that for a second. “…Maybe? It’s just kinda how the world is, I’m not complaining about it or anything.”

“Are you unhappy about it?”

He shrugs. “No? Like I said; it’s just how it is. People offer certain benefits, right? Sometimes that’s, like… like someone who always knows the homework. If we’re thinking concretely here. And then there’s the one who always has a pencil you can borrow. —It’s like a study group sorta analogy. There’s someone who’s able to get everyone together at once, and someone who can talk to the teacher and argue on your behalf, but who you might not want to spend time with outside of class ‘cause they argue with everyone. And there’s a class clown type, who’s really entertaining but can sorta get in the way if you’re trying to be serious.” Jonas pauses again. “I mean, there’s a lot. But everyone kinda has their strengths and weaknesses, right? It’s like a teamwork thing.”

“So where do you fit in this?”

He thinks for a moment, still playing with the wire cage. “I dunno. I have a car.” That’s part of it at least, even if other things come to mind as well.

“You think that’s what people see you for? Your car?”

Jonas’s lips pull. “I’m not saying that’s my only redeeming quality, I know I’m not just some dude with a car. That’s just, like, the prime benefit.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your other ‘redeeming qualities.’”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m— I know I have them, okay? I’m- I have skills. But they aren’t- y’know, like, my function in a social group.”

“What if you didn’t have your car? You can’t give more than yourself— what qualities do you think you’re bringing.”

“…Alex seems to think my height is a benefit.”

“She obviously has not been 6’3 and attempted to sit in a compact sedan.”

Jonas cracks a smile. “Yeah it’s cute, she’s not tiny but both her and Ren are like… she said it before, I don’t remember what it was 5’5 or 6 or something. Joked about needing me to retrieve pickle jars or whatever.”

“So you’re the guy with the car and the pickle-getter.”

“Sure.”

“That all?”

“Well- I mean, the tall thing is also like—” he waves a hand, “-y’know, the other tall stuff.”

“Can’t say I know what you mean, apart from reaching things and being asked about the weather.”

“You know.” Jonas fidgets slightly. Duke has to know that part of things. “The kinda… intimidation thing.”

“How do you mean?”

Jonas’s lips pull again in that vague passing annoyance. “You know. Being tall and looking— not scary exactly, but like… imposing, I guess. Basically looking like someone you don’t want to mess with.”

“And that’s what you think you bring to a friendship?”

“Yeah. Like… like a bodyguard or something.”

“You think your friends are in danger you have to protect them from?”

“No- well.” He lets out a short sigh, a rueful smirk hooking his lips. “Not yet, anyway. And once they are, I’m betting they’ll have put themselves into it.”

“What does the whole ‘bodyguard’ thing mean, then?”

“Um.” A few images pass through Jonas’s mind, and he hesitates, face impassive for a second before he shrugs again. “Trying to keep her from getting hurt. I guess.”

“…That doesn’t really sound like something based solely on height.”

His fingers twitch, and Jonas’s ears feel warm. “Look, I spent a year in juvie for physical assault. It might not just be the height.”

“You think she wants you to fight for her? Is this like… an American Gladiators kinda thing, or…?”

The laugh is just a huff of breath, but the corners of Jonas’s mouth are lifting. “I don’t think she wants me to fight. I’m just— And I don’t want to fight!” he assures Duke. “But like… there’s probably some element of ‘this guy makes a good meat shield’ or whatever.”

“You ever think they might just… like you? Like just, as you?”

He snorts. “I— I’m not saying they don’t! I mean, at the very least they tolerate me, and I assume they must like me, otherwise we wouldn’t text all the time. It’s really easy to ignore someone’s texts and make excuses.” Jonas isn’t even mad about the question, it’s so far removed from how he feels. “I’m just saying that there’s this fringe benefit for them.”

“And is that how you see them, as well?”

He shrugs a shoulder. “Honestly, they’re my allies right now. Not in a bad way - I like them, they’re fun - but at the moment their function in my social circle is connecting me to my new community, right? They’re transitional aids, like a kinda PREP thing. Or IS. I mean, she was a tour guide.”

“Sounds kinda dehumanizing.”

“It’s not meant to be. I’m— Look, we talked all the time about support systems and community engagement, and buying in, right? So, I’m building a support system of peers.”

Duke cocks his head, looking mildly bemused.

“What?”

“It sounds like you know the words pretty well.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t talk much. Mostly listened.”

“Is that really how you think about the people around you? As… I don’t know, bricks in your support structure?”

“I mean, it’s not the only thing I’m thinking. I like the company, I like the distraction, they’re fun. But…” Another one-shouldered shrug. “I dunno, man, call it a justification if you want.”

“What do you mean?”

Jonas sighs. “Gives me a reason to keep trying.” Again, it’s not said in anger, or even in sadness. Just a straightforward factual statement.

“What would you do if you didn’t think of things that way?”

“Can’t know for sure, obviously. But— I dunno. Call it distress tolerance. Giving them a function gives me a reason to tough it out. Like—” He pauses. “…Yeah, no, I can’t figure out an analogy for the brick thing. Sticking with people instead of being— transient.”

“Transient.”

“Kinda drifting around. Moving through things.”

“You think you’re transient?”

“I think I’d survive without friends. Until shit started to go wrong, I guess.”

Duke is quiet, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to parse the statement, considering. “…I’m not sure I get it.”

“I like people, but all the— politics, I guess. It stresses me out. I’d rather just… not. At least, in group things. School, juvie— the social dynamic is this constant thing where you’re maintaining. Don’t shit where you eat and all that. Don’t fuck it up, you’re stuck there. All this work to not make things worse for yourself. Honestly, I’d rather just see people when I see them. All day every day is… a lot.”

“…Can I ask you a question?” He’s leaning forward, and his tone is a different kind of curious than he has been.

“I mean… that’s literally all you’ve been doing.”

“Your residential center, your stepdown stuff— they had GED programs. Why come back to high school?”

Jonas is spinning the little wire toy around one finger steadily, keeping an eye on it to avoid having it fly off, even as he picks up speed. “Dad wanted me to.” His stomach dips, and his voice is a little quieter. “Mom would, too.” He’s silent for a second, still spinning. “And it’s supposed to be good for me. Community engagement, support structures, all that.”

“Why do you think they wanted you to do school?”

“I mean, my mom was a teacher. My dad… just wants me to be well-adjusted. I think he wants me to feel normal again.”

“What do you think?”

Jonas’s gut has been steadily, gradually, slowly but surely filling with lead. He breathes evenly. Too evenly. Actively making the attempt. When he speaks, it’s a low mutter. “Not sure that’s possible, if we’re being honest.”

“Why not?”

He shakes his head. “I dunno. Things just— changed. Can’t really undo that.”

“…I mean, I agree that you can’t live in the past. Things happened, you can’t undo them, but you also can’t spend every minute thinking about them. I know mindfulness tends to get a bad rap ‘cause it’s sort of trendy in the mental health field right now, but there’s definitely a ton of upsides to it.”

“I’m… vaguely familiar.” Jonas’s voice is a bit wry.

“So you know the whole idea of where you’re living. The goal is being present. So not living in the past, or in the future, but in the here and now, without judgment.”

“…Okay…”

Duke is still bouncing his foot a bit. “What do you think? Like— really consider it for a second. What that means.”

“What, living in the present?” Duke shrugs in a casual kind of confirmation. Jonas sighs, fixes his eyes on the therapist, and tries to do as asked. “…I guess I just feel like that’s asking for trouble.”

“How so?”

“I mean… thinking about the future is kinda important. Otherwise you fuck things up and can’t undo them.”

“Who says you can’t?”

Jonas snorts. “You? Like… a minute ago?”

“I guess— maybe it’s just the use of ‘undo.’ You can’t rewind and make something not have happened, but you can control how you handle the consequences, how you potentially repair the situation, your reactions to things, all of that. But if you’re constantly fearing every possible outcome of anything you do… you do nothing.”

“So you’re saying not to think of consequences. You want me to just go party and violate parole and not care what might happen?”

“Well, no.” Duke actually rolls his eyes. “Hell— it’s a delicate balance, right? But some part of that has to be just allowing yourself to exist without judgment.”

“O…kay?”

“Or analysis.”

“…Ah.”

“I mean, it’s not like I’m advocating underage drinking or drugs or truancy or anything, but… You’re out, y’know? You’re in this do-or-die headspace, but your situation has changed dramatically. Now’s your chance to go back to being a kid. Live a little.”

[source for AO3]

[swiftdec13]

Meeting Taylor 7/27/2018

Ok... Get ready for a WILD ride.

Flashback to May 25, 2018. I flew to Denver to see Taylor with my best friend. He moved across the country after high school and we always make sure that we see a show wherever he is living at the time (he moves around a lot) and where I am, which is always Upstate, NY because I’m a homebody!!!

SO, this is where life started to take a downhill for me. Before getting on the plane, I had a panic attack and I wasn’t even sure if I was going to make it to Denver. I kept reminding myself, it’s for Taylor, you have to go, it’s for Taylor. I was SO sick the entire time in Denver from anxiety. On show night, we found out that our seats were right at the barricade that Taylor was going to walk through and naturally, I was balling my eyes out, I could NOT believe that I was going to be THAT close to Taylor. I have seen Taylor live 8 times altogether throughout the years and NEVER have I EVER been able to be standing within an arms reach of her!!!! 

The show was rough. As I mentioned before, I was feeling SO sick. At one point I legit thought I was going to have to get security to help me out BUT I kept telling myself, you are NOT missing the chance of being able to grab Taylor’s hand, NO WAY NOT HAPPENING. So it was time for her to walk through the crowd and Mitch got mine and his reaction on tape, which was actually really hysterical so I posted it on Tumblr in hopes that Taylor would see it because seriously ya’ll it was priceless. 

So, fast forward to June 15. I was laying in bed minding my own business, reblogging my posts as per usual and ALL OF A SUDDEN, my Tumblr starts BLOWING up. Taylor had liked the video of Mitch and I... not only that, she straight up LURKED me and liked 7 things, including a selfie and I DIED. I called Mitchel and was BALLING, I’m pretty sure that he thought an emergency was happening but once I told him, we were both FREAKING out, we couldn’t believe it. Taylor and I have been mutuals for like 4 years and this was the first time she properly noticed me and I was living a dream. 

Alright, fast forward again to the beginning of July. I was sitting in the movies with Mitch while he was visiting and my entire body started shaking for no reason. I could not calm it down for the life of me. It continued to shake all night and I felt SO sick. The next morning, the 4th of July actually, I told my Mom for the first time that I thought I was suffering from an anxiety breakdown. We went to on call wondering if maybe it was dehydration but, everything checked out normal. I called my Dr. straight away and the office was closed for 5 days straight. For 5 days, I laid on my couch, sicker than I have ever been in my entire life. So nauseous, my body shaking off and on, it was literal hell. I finally got to the Dr’s. and explained to her that I believed I was suffering from major anxiety that just popped up and overtook me. She agreed and I started to see a therapist and began medicine. Ok, the first night on the medicine, I about DIED, I was so sick, getting sick in the trash can, with a non stop shaking body and I was so scared. I called my Aunt and cried and told her I needed to go to the hospital. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t move, I just wanted to die. My Aunt came over the next day and we sat down with my Mom trying to figure out what to do and I went to stay with my Aunt for a week because she has been through something similar. That week, was the scariest week of my life. I couldn’t go out in public, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I felt nauseous 24/7 and all I did was cry. 

OK, FAST FORWARD AGAIN, so now I’m like 2 weeks into my medicine and the Dr. said about 10 days things should start improving but you don’t see full effects until about week 6. SO, I still feel nauseous daily and my appetite is just starting to return. It’s still difficult to go out in public and my hands pretty much shake non stop, which is really annoying. I keep making myself go out every day because I know that it will be beneficial. SO, it’s a week before the Gillette shows and I had tickets to all three nights. I knew that there was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to be able to go with how sick I’ve been. I called Mitch and sadly told him that I had to call everything off, and when I say sadly, I mean, SADLY. I was so depressed. That weekend is all that I was looking forward too all summer and I wasn’t strong enough to go. Mitch being the great friend that he is only cared about my health so he understood completely. 

FAST FORWARD to Tuesday, July 24th. I was leaving my therapist appointment and ALL OF A SUDDEN, around 12:30 in the afternoon, I have a DM from Taylor Nation. SO, I try to remain as calm as possible, because, anxiety, and I called Mitchel and staying calm didn’t work out so well. I was SO sick waiting for that phone call. Around 6:45 in the evening, I got a phone call from a New York caller and I FREAKIN’ REJECTED THE CALL BY ACCIDENT. I called back over and over and left a voicemail and talk about SICK. I couldn’t sleep the entire night, and my stupid body was shaking again, and I thought that was my one chance to meet Taylor and I freakin’ BLEW IT.

SO, the next morning, Wednesday, sick as shit again, I just prayed to GOD that they called me back. A little after 11 in the afternoon, I got a call again from a New York number and it was Taylor Nation and PHEW thank you LORD. SO I gave her all of my information and she was super nice. Later that day everything was confirmed for meeting Taylor Friday and WOW what a DREAM. 

Now the nerves set in. I had no idea how I was going to survive this trip. The night before, Thursday, I was a nervous wreck. I was so sick, legit like leaning over toilet dying and I was so scared. I was just praying that somehow I could myself together because I could NOT miss this opportunity. The next morning, I was feeling pretty calm and I was READY TO MEET TAYLOR SWIFT. I picked Mitch up around 8 am and we set off to Massachusetts. As the day went on, my anxiety started popping up here and there but it was manageable, I just kept reminding myself that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I’ve been waiting 12 years for and my stupid anxiety was NOT going to ruin it for me.

So we had to pick up the meet and greet paper at will call between 4-5 pm on Friday. This is when the nerves really started kicking in because other people were waiting for the paper too and it just wasn’t coming and we were all freaking out. FINALLY the paper came closer to 5. So, we went through security and the paper said to ask the guards for help. I went up to a group of security guards and they kept telling me, were told there was no meet and greets for this show, where did you get this paper? I was trying to explain and the guy TOOK MY PAPER AND WALKED AWAY and I wanted to DIE. He came back and goes yea, no meet and greets, after using his walkie talkie, So, I SNATCHED THAT PAPER SO QUICK AND SAID, I’LL FIND IT MYSELF THANK YOU!!!!!

I’m FREAKING out at this point because neither Mitchel or myself know where to go or what to do and we had 20 mins. at this point to get there. I ran into amazing Tumblr people who literally ran around the stadium trying to help me. I’ll be forever grateful to that group of girls because not only did they help us find the meeting spot, they stayed with us the entire time until we went backstage reassuring me that everything would be ok. At this point, the stadium is legit SPINNING and Mitch just kept telling me to breathe and take a minute to myself.

We finally get backstage and I CANNOT BELIEVE that I’m standing inside of the REP ROOM. There was polaroid cameras that we got to use and water and sodas for us. I’m not sure how long we were in there before meeting Taylor but, it felt like a lifetime and I was slowly sinking ship. FINALLY it’s time to start lining up to meet Taylor. Mitch and I were called second. We had talked in the car about what we wanted to say, etc. and keep in mind that originally I wanted to ask Taylor to sing Change, I’ve been posting it on Tumblr for months, but I told Mitch to forget about it because I was like, she never will. Before going into REP ROOM I ran into another Tumblr Swiftie and Taylor had told her the night before that she was thinking about singing Change for Friday night and I ABOUT DIED CRYING BEFORE EVEN GOING IN TO MEET TAYLOR. I COULDN’T BELIEVE??? DID SHE SEE MY POSTS??? HOW WAS MY LUCK FALLING INTO PLACE LIKE THAT??? THIS NEVER HAPPENS IN MY LIFE.

SO, it’s our turn to go in. I pushed Mitch in first because I was legit SCARED LOL. Mitch walked in and I followed closely behind and Taylor goes, oh heyyyyy, like she knew us forever. She hugged Mitchel and then hugged me. She goes, look at you guys, you look so good, I love the snake vibes you have going on!!!! Mitchel goes, WOW you’re so tall!!!! Are you wearing heels??? Taylor laughed and was like I know right, I am so tall, but yes, I’m also wearing heels. Mitch then proceeded to remind me to give Taylor the snake ring that I had for her, mind you I have yet to say anything because I was just IN SHOCK. She is so beautiful, and WOW like in person she’s not even real??? So, I hand her the ring and she puts it on and says oh my gosh thank you so much!!!!! SO there was like an awkward silence and finally I turn to Mitch and I go, I’m going to start crying, and I turn back to Taylor and I am full on UGLY CRYING SOBBING at this point. She was looking me in the eye, like she genuinely cared about what I had to say, and I said, I’m having a really hard summer and I just wanted to thank you for wanting to meet me. Taylor goes, aw of course, and I said, I just sit and listen to Change and I know that things will get better, your music helps me so much. Taylor’s eyes, I can’t even explain her facial expression like she genuinely felt my pain and cared so much. She hugged me and she was like I’m so sorry that you’re having a hard summer, I hate hard summers. Then when she let go she goes, would you like me to sing that song for you tonight? I was like yes thank you so much... she was like yea? That would be good? I haven’t played it in like 8 years but I can make it happen. I’m still full on sobbing guys. 

She goes should we take a picture?? So we walked over to the picture spot and Mitch goes, what side Britt, and Taylor laughed and goes, yea get your good side girl. At this point I’m so zoned out, I couldn’t even remember what I did for the picture. I don’t even remember Taylor’s head leaning on mine hahaha. SO, after the picture, Taylor hugged Mitch again and then came over to me hugged me for SO LONG GUYS. Like, legit I start sobbing again over her shoulder and she was like, I hope that your summer gets better because you don’t deserve this. It will get better, because these things will change, right? and I said right... and still full on sobbing. So we said bye and I said thank you, and I honestly can’t remember what I last said. I just remember I heard Taylor like sigh, a sigh like oh my gosh, poor girl, LOL. I never even once said I love you and you mean so much to me??? What’s wrong with me!!!!

ANYWAYS, flash forward to the show. At this point, I’m really losing steam. I can feel my body so tense and so nervous and the nausea started to return but I kept telling myself, you need to make it to the surprise song, there’s NO WAY you can miss this. So, FINALLY it’s that time. I had NO idea that Taylor was going to legit CALL ME OUT ON STAGE and basically dedicate Change to me but I was full on SOBBING AGAIN. I looked around the stadium and felt like 60,000 people were telling me to keep fighting because these things will change and I can’t even describe the feeling that went through my body.

There are NO words to express how grateful I am that Taylor did all of this for me. I don’t know what I did to deserve this all but, it was worth the 12 years of standing on the sidelines wishing for that moment. I still have a long battle to fight but I’m never giving up because these things will change, can you feel it now? Thank you so much, @taylorswift this night meant SO much to me. I love you!!!

[missblanchette]

Hippocratic Oath [4/4]

Series: Hypnosis Mic

Characters: Jinguji Jakurai/Kannonzaka Doppo

Rating: G 

Summary: The fact of the matter was that a relationship between a doctor and a patient was unethical. Sooner or later, one of them had to speak up about it. (Or: Jakurai and Doppo work out their Feelings™.)

Words: 2100

Notes: Final chapter, yay!! Very Sappy, Very Fluffy lol

ko-fi // Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | You can read this on AO3! Thank you all so much for reading, I hope you enjoy~! ❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ )

Ch 4: Post-Treatment for Two

Déjà vu was a fascinating phenomenon, Jakurai mused as he took a seat across from Doppo. A week ago, they had met in this very same restaurant at this very hour on this very day with the waiters hustling and bustling around the tables and the white noise of the other patrons filling the space between them. Doppo fidgeted about, his hands balled into fists, just as he did during their last meeting and if Jakurai had to be honest, the pounding of his own heart and buzzing of his own mind were no different either. Indeed, the scene playing now was the same as the evening of Jakurai's confession -- except tonight, the air between them had changed.

While Doppo exhibited his usual nervous habits, his eyes gleamed with determination rather than dread and apprehension; his posture sat looser and freer though his shoulders hunched up; and his tongue poked out between his lips as he did when he was deep in thought, not pursed into a straight line when cornered into a tight situation. As for Jakurai himself, his steepled fingers tapped away at each other and he focused on the present instead of what would happen next.

One would think that the familiarity of it all would settle his worries, but even someone like him could not escape anxiety completely. Though, for as much as his confession weighed heavily upon him -- and surely it must have had weighed equally as heavily on Doppo as well -- he reminded himself to think positively, much like what he would tell Doppo again and again whenever he berated himself. Their encounter two nights ago put most of his doubts to rest, but to err on the side of caution was what Jakurai had been taught, so prepare himself for any outcome he would.

"Thank you for coming, Dr. Jinguji," Doppo said, not quite looking his way. "I know you're busy, so I'll try to keep it short."

"Don't worry about that, Doppo-kun, I always have time for you."

Doppo inhaled sharply, his cheeks turning the same red hue as his hair. Despite himself, Jakurai couldn't help but smile at the sight.

"Would you like to order something first?" Doppo asked, handing him a menu. Briefly, their fingertips brushed against each other and Jakurai willed himself to stay calm. "It's on me, since you covered me last time."

Out of instinct, Jakurai readied an excuse to decline his offer but stopped short as he saw Doppo peeping up from behind his menu, surveying his every reaction and move. Doppo was conscientious among many things, and if he had an image as to how this night would play out, Jakurai would gladly follow along with it.

"That's very kind of you, Doppo-kun," he said instead, skimming through the pages.

The corners of Doppo's mouth quirked up. "You've done so much for me, Dr. Jinguji, it's the least I can do for you."

"You've done plenty for me, Doppo-kun. Words can't express how grateful I am that I met you -- that alone is enough for me."

Chewing on his bottom lip, Doppo averted his gaze. He took a deep breath as the seconds passed, straightening his back and rolling his shoulders like something had clicked within him. Setting his menu down, Doppo began speaking.

"I'm really happy to hear that, Dr. Jinguji, it... it means a lot to me." Wobbly and shaky, his voice faltered as he finished his sentence. Clearing his throat, he continued on: "And that's why I wanted to talk to you today."

"Ah, that's right, you mentioned that. What is it that you wanted to tell me?"

Doppo's mouth hung open, lips parted as if the words had gotten stuck in his throat. Eyes downcast, he loosened his tie and the silver cross they shared clinked against the chain that held it in place.

"Like I said, you've done a lot for me. Your treatment has really helped me with my anxiety and insomnia and joining Matenrou has been the best decision of my life. Honestly, I don't know where I'd be now without you." Doppo wrung his hands, his knuckles white from the pressure. "I really can't thank you enough for everything you've done for me. But... I don't think I need your services any longer."

Jakurai tilted his head, letting out a amused hum as he remembered what he'd said the other night. "Oh? How come?"

"I guess because somewhere along the way, I started to admire you and then that became something... more." Doppo spoke quickly as if what he was saying would fall onto deaf ears but Jakurai had always valued everything he said, making note of every utterance and intonation. "What I'm trying to say is that --" Doppo’s eyes met his, cyan irises glistening with grit and flaring with ardor. Jakurai's heart skipped a beat. "-- I like -- no, I love you, Dr. Jinguji! I love you more than a patient should love his doctor!"

Three simple words that Jakurai had been hoping, praying, to hear and yet he couldn’t have possibly been prepared for them. Admittedly, hearing them was nothing new; a number of people had confessed their feelings for him throughout his life, but to each of them, Jakurai could not return the sentiment. While they had all been good people in their own right, none of them had been interesting enough to capture his attention. As such, Jakurai had long accepted that perhaps no one would be able to, that perhaps he would dedicate himself solely to his work for his entire life -- until now, that was. Doppo had said but those three simple words, and here Jakurai found himself forgetting how to breathe.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you that sooner. I'm sorry that I left you hanging. I-I know I'm not the greatest guy out there and I don't deserve you, but --"

Jakurai placed a finger on Doppo's lips, immediately shushing him. Doppo gawked at him with his brows raised and nose scrunched up.

"You are dear to me, Doppo-kun, and it pains me to hear you say such things about yourself.” As gently as possible, Jakurai cupped Doppo's face with his palm. Underneath his touch, Doppo’s jaw clenched, to which he stroked his thumb across his cheek until it loosened ever so slightly. “You are worth much more than you think you are; in fact, I would say that you are priceless."

His initial intrigue with Doppo had simply been that of a doctor for his patient, the curiosity born from the concern about the man who lived the paradox of wanting nothing more than to sleep forever but being forced to work twenty-four/seven. As Doppo sought him out for help other than his physical ailments, that intrigue developed into a genuine interest. While not a therapist by any means, Jakurai grew to care about Doppo as a person as he heard about his daily complaints; underneath the tired man who wished for a break was a man who worked his hardest and tried his best despite everything, a man who survived the harsh ordeals the world threw at him. With the formation of Matenrou, Jakurai soon came to see many more different sides of Doppo; how driven he was when he set his mind to something, how wild he got when he delved deep into their raps, and how radiant he became when he allowed himself to shine.

Over the course of their relationship, Jakurai found that he wanted to do more for Doppo -- more than what a doctor could provide, more than what a leader could do. In the ailing city of Shinjuku littered alight with neon, Doppo illuminated the dark as only the moon could and Jakurai intended to keep that light glowing close by.

Leaning forward, Jakurai pressed his forehead against Doppo's. Doppo stiffened but did not do anything to push him away.

"You deserve the world, Doppo-kun. If you'll have me, I promise I'll do everything I can to give that to you."

His breath heavy against his face, Doppo peered up at him with his cyan eyes. Jakurai’s heart drummed against his chest, roaring and thundering in his ears so much so that it drowned out the rest of their surroundings. In that moment, it was the two of them -- and just the two of them alone.

"Do you mean that?" Doppo’s voice was small, yet to Jakurai’s ears, it pierced through the clamor of nerves he faced.

"I do," Jakurai said with no hesitation. "Every word of it."

Doppo stared at him, studying him in search for any hidden lies. For a minute, Jakurai feared that he'd overstepped his boundaries and spoke the wrong words once again, but then Doppo leaned into his palm.

"I... I want to do whatever I can for you, too, Dr. Jinguji." Fingers slowly unfurling, Doppo reached out for his free hand, the tips of his fingers barely grazing his skin as if waiting for permission. Jakurai bumped his fingers against his and after one, two, three beats did Doppo grab onto his hand. Clammy and trembling he might have been, but most of all Doppo’s touch was warm. "I'll try to change for you, so I can be someone worthy of being by your side."

Jakurai's face softened as he heard Doppo speak. He didn't expect anything less nor anything more from him.

"Please just continue being yourself, Doppo-kun. That's all I need." After all, he would not have fallen for him in the first place had he been any different. To see him embrace himself, to see him become the best version of himself was all he wanted. Entwining their fingers, Jakurai squeezed his hand.

A sigh escaped Doppo's lips -- not the long, dreary ones he usually gave after an inconvenience or a day of work, but a contented one. His shoulders dropped, the tension leaving the rest of his body, and his trembles lessened into quivers. In return, Doppo squeezed back.

"I think I can do that."

"It's what you do best, hm?" he said, a teasing lilt in his voice.

Cheeks growing redder, Doppo stifled back a noise. Nonetheless, he didn't break eye contact as he lifted his head.

"Dr. Jinguji, is it okay if I say one more thing?"

"Of course, Doppo-kun, it's more than okay."

"I've relied on you a lot, Dr. Jinguji, so please rely on me as well!" He took both of his hands in his, tugging them close to his chest. He could feel Doppo’s heartbeat at his fingertips, the rhythm racing as quickly as his. "You've given me everything, so I'll try my best to give you all that and more."

Coming from one man filled with so many burdens of his own to another so used to taking on everyone else's, Jakurai's heart fluttered. For someone so hard on himself and lost in his negativity, Doppo failed to see how much of a blessing he already was in his life. He would have to work on remedying that.

Raising their entwined hands, Jakurai looked up at Doppo and when he made no protest, pressed a kiss atop Doppo's. "I have no doubt that you will, Doppo-kun."

Throughout his years, Jakurai had learned that loss was a natural part of life; people came and left, people gave and took, and so it came to be that people hurt each other other and bonds broke at any given moment. But with Doppo smiling back at him -- a true smile that filled his cheeks and reached his eyes -- Jakurai knew only one thing then: that he couldn't let anything happen to that smile, to the precious man who sat across him. A doctor who'd seen the wages of war and a salary-man who waged war against himself; indeed, they'd be able to work out anything that came their way -- together.

bonus

"Oh, Doppo-kun."

"Yes, Doctor?"

"Now that we're in a relationship, I don't mind if you call me by my first name."

Body hitting the back of his seat, Doppo's eyes bulged wide open. "D-Don't you think this is a little too soon?"

"We've known each other for some time, no? I think it's all right."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you really sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you really, really sure?"

Giving him an amused smile, Jakurai patted Doppo's hand. "Yes, Doppo-kun, I'm very sure."

"Okay... if you say so, Doc -- er, J-Jaku... Jakura.... J-Jinguji-san...!"

Jakurai blinked. Then, he let out a laugh. While not exactly what he was going for, "Jinguji-san" had never sounded so angelic to his ears.

[queen-asante]

ejucated immigrant

((AUTHOR’S NOTE: @eene-fangirl For the Fanfiction Weekend Challenge! I should probably wait to post this for Rolf Appreciation Month, but there’s a lot of Jonny backstory/headcanons in here, so I thought it would count. Basically, it’s a poem from Rolf’s POV but it’s technically about Jonny, or rather, Jonny was my muse for this.

I haven’t written a poem in Rolf’s ‘’voice’’ since 2014 but believe it or not, that one little line that Edd says in ‘’A Case of Ed’’ inspired the poem (you know, the one), and as I was reading Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, it produced said result. A turnip for your thoughts? I don’t normally write Rolf like this, it’s actually more like Rolf emulating Ntozake Shange for those familiar with her style. As an Indian Immigrant girl who’s considered suicide, that book changed my life, she’s my idol. Hence, the poem is written in ebonics and all lower case to pay homage to Shange (and I consciously dropped third person redundancies, it wasn’t a mistake). Three non-EEnE characters are briefly mentioned: the first one is Vanessa, my friend who’s half African-American and half Haitian. The second one is Ice, who belongs to my friend, Dani. Ice, in her world, is a black and white cat who becomes Double D’s pet. Rolf fears him because he’s not only black and white, but he shares the name of Immigration and Customs Enforcement by pure coincidence. Dani didn’t plan this, as she created Ice before she met me but she liked the idea of giving Rolf a reason to fear the cat, and so we came up with that story together. The third one is Dr. Feelgood who was my therapist, it’s not her real name, it was an affectionate nickname I coined for her in my years battling Bipolar Disorder Type 3.

As a closing thought, much apologies for the length, also tumblr’s going to mess up the format.))

‘’ejucated immigrant’’

dear gods,

i be 14 wit skin as rough as treebark & hands dat look old

i waz the dark skined immigrant wanting to bathe in bleach

Brown Black / Blue Black / Amber Beige / Bister Brick Bronze / Chestnut Chocolate Cinnamin

Copper / Drab / Dust / Ginger / Fawn / Ochre / Coffe Colourd Caramel

Tawny / Terra-Cotta / Henna / Sepia / Umbre

lookin in the thesurus eddward wit two ds give me when i come to dis country

everything spell Brown but nothing spell White

White sound nice like pearl like snow like milk like golden skined white skined light skined

honey dipped / lemon kissed / but begging for ivory / fair frosted silvery ashen boy jimmy

your white hands on my brown skin

i waz the dark skined immigrant botherin to drag you round

you stand there like a closed mouth statue & you insult my way of life

think you know everythin / rolf just some ignorant third world peasant or somethin

but we be livin dis way longer than the foundin of your land

your country young my country old

numbers & poppy / it just to give you illegitimately born breeds of donkeys

somethin to hee-haw over / science say there no gods either but who know dat

you cannot contain lightning bugs in a jar

i waz the dark skined immigrant dreamin of shakin the mr presidents hand

the former mr president wit eyes like a tired old man & Brown his Brown like a mud bath

it really too bad you know / rolf like your former president

dat black man who dont check dixtionaries for validation of his blackness

he not so bad / he waz sympathetic to the plight of the immigrant but his hands tied

not blame him / he not god he not have all the power in the world to fix dis weather

dis cloud dat hang over your land & who the hell is perfect?

it really such a shame / i dream to see the Hill / see the pearly house painted white the place where he live meet him shake his large brown hand / one brown hand to another

cept i not black / rolf not have to be / not pass / rolf european he is white not bloodless

he not pass he not be white enough for your country

cept i be white on the inside look coloured on the out but i aint no coloured

under my skin i am more than a colour

whoever herd of white passing for person of colour

but suddenly i get to dis country & i be treated no different than jonny

so alls i got is coloured dreams

poor grate nano lived & died on silly dreams / well they not exist

there be only reality & reality not kind to the dark skined indigenous immigrant

no one know what i supposed to be / take a wild guess

indian pakistani mexican romani rolf herd it all & none suppose right

they only looking at my face / the outside the outside not matter

cuz i waz the dark skined immigrant not italian not irish but the other kinds

& no one will see unless rolf cut open his veins & bleed

a Wood Nymph have my colour & if i check off the box dat say caucasian i get a funny look

from the lady sittin behind the counter wit the yellow nail polish & beaded eyeglass

spose if jonny do the same they wont believe him neither

jonny be good

yous see him dancin / wearin his stomach out / dark skined bare feet / swayin his hips

& grate thin arms but he not care dat he gots splinters in his fingertips

his nails turnin all black & blue & those chapped lips look like eyes starin out atchu

the gods make dis child the way he is

wit skinted knees & all & elbows pointed outwards readin you like a map

always wit the label on the left side

but he bootiful & he know it / beauty sometime come in the empty coffee can

not in the paper lillies or plastic pearls

you cant make a silk purse from a sows ear / even if dat ear be made of wood

of wood widda crayon drawn smile

jonnys mother the madwoman in the attic

rolf be certain jonny the wood boy some kind of elf from the passage of Valhöll

the mother of the Tree Sprite she not like rolf / well she not like any child it seems

weepy jimmy-boy & rolf invited to jonny-boys abode for a meeting of the Urban Rangers

& tho his mother never says so we feel she not like us very well

she never ast us to stay for lunch

even tho rolf personally would not eat a morsel of what these people eat

& we always been so polite to her but still she build walls

rolf believe she jealous of us becuz jonny likes us

she come out to the parlour / barefoot / flowers in her wild tangled mess of black raven hair

like yoko ono & wearing a long paisley skirt / she bootiful in an earthy sort of way

but she has a wild look in her eyes like a tigress

a violently insane expression like a german vampire dat make rolf think of bertha mason

she looms over her son like a dark older sister becuz they look so alike

altho her skin much darker / a deep chocolate brown / her complexion remind rolf of vanessa maybe she is haitian / she like the demon in nanas stories the one we all have widdin us

who comes out when we try too hard to be good children

she look at white as snow jimmy & myself like she disprove

either she not like us the uniforms or both

rolf forget tho these hippies wit their anti-establishment

they think every uniform represents what jonny calls ‘’the Man’’ & dats what it is rolf think

she not want jonny in the organisation

becuz she think it goes against their opposition to social norms

rolf could tell she wanted to ast us to leave / she not like jonny spending so much time wit us

becuz then he not at home meditating wit her or whatever it is they do

jonnys family is strange / they not eat meat & walk around shoeless

rolf has been called a gypsy by the children at school but flower child jonny seem to rolf more of a gypsy if there ever waz such a thing

he is almost ethereal / his family must be from a clan of faeries the kind nana warns rolf about but brown-skinned jonny seem harmless enough

i watch his mama put a daisy in the pocket of his jeans

i not know if his daddy be white or black but what difference does dat make

rolf understand it is important for a child to love their family no matter their faults

i know The Giving Tree still love his mother

even if she would prefer him to leave the Urban Rangers

of us three jimmy be the whitest of white jonny the blackest of black & i somewhere in between

but any one of us can walk into a puerto rican bar & start speakin spanish

& no one would know what we are

race too complicated & people too narrow minded / want everything boxed in

one day we waz layin on dat grassy knoll / jonny & i

where the trees whisper to us & we whisper back

cuz you know the boy talk to trees & i listen to his voice / & i be lookin at our hands you see

cuz we waz layin inches apart a flower between us & i tuck it behind his ear

then i look & see my skin only one shade lighter than his

tho the sun make me browner than i really be

out in the sun for hours & hours plowing & plowing the fields

by sundown i roasted coffee bean brown / as black as the inside of a chimney

& if i stumble into town any passing stranger would think i waz Black i mean African

id have to stay out of the sun for days to get my old colour black lest i wander round wit only the whites of my eyes visible on my sun burnt dyed rust brown brown skin

& hair so course youd suppose it come off a horses ass

lookin more like an American Indian than a White

i holdin the back of my hand up to jonnys now

how bout dat two brown hands one dark & one light but whos to say i not be a dark white & he not a light skined brown

dont you dare tell me what i am & am not

bitch dis aint no south africa where yous all can reassign us based on what you think

i aint no sandra laing but sometime i wouldnt mind bein black if it meant for you to leave me be

in fact ill gladly be whatever you want me to be but i am what i am

not black enough for black not white enough for white so what am i?

dont box me into Black & White / cuz in dis world brother dat not exist

im sorry as hell but i gettin real tired of bein called

an illegal / an alien / a wop / a gypsy / a guinea / a brownie whatever you want to call us

all your bigoted slurs clumping us together like we one & the same

dat fine but papers or no papers not define who i am

so uncle sam can take it & shove it

welcome to america!

i be having a long love affair wit your country & people

i also be having a war wit em

mama told me there are limits for dark skined immigrants stuck in dis light skined first world

we come over the border wit all the rest of them

wit all them people from central & south america

wit all them refugees from africa & asia

guess what we blend right in we look no different

look just like any other brown faced ‘’illegal alien’’

border patrol take one look at us & think we just like the rest

cuz yesterdays europeans are todays mexicans & middle easterners

coloured Sons of Shepherds gots few chances

what it like to be bilingual / to speak in two tounge

ah but to be fluent in one & not the other tryin to find any definishun in the dixtionary

in which i drop third person redunduncies cuz i only one person not three

& i only speak two language

you speak spanish?

no habla inglés

you speak english?

i dont speak spanish

one day the hat & head as one edd boy say oh rolf! youre so unejucated!

i think my ears deseeve me but i know what i herd

i wish to strike his milk honey cheeks full of nonsense

& say to him i am the ejucated immigrant you be warned about

dont talk to me bout ejucashun

i sale cross the oshun

i wash up on your shore

i lern another language

it wasnt easy

what you know bout ejucashun

all you know come from books & theories

at least i know where i stand

you are a child & i am old old old my hands notted thick wit veins like the roots of a tree

you say i sound angry / yea i angry but not as angry as you

cuz there nothing they fear more than a minority who knows what up

i used to be fraid but not no more

i used to fear the plainclothes agents in Black & White uniform

of immigration & customes enforecement / of ICE police

of eddwards Black & White cat name Ice on ICE

he must be making fool out of me to call a domesticated beast after homeland security

a cat in uniform because the gods make him so not by choice

like there be some purpose to it / i waz the dark skined immigrant you made fun of

i see what they do to the undocumented immigrant on the telly  

but now i not be fraid / becuz you cant touch me

so the grapefruit widda red ugly mouth & bleached hair sit in office now

damming all them people from ‘’shithole countries’’ / just as well but we here to stay

it not what i ast for but no use fighting it

& i will gladly pull the bookmarks from my english dixtionary

the one double d edd boy give me

no longer will i bathe in bleach / only use to washing dishes & floors

i not some bloody floor

‘’immigrant’’

at least i can spell dat  / i look it up in the dixtionary

websters dixtionary / who the hell is webster?

but now it marked up used copy wit yellow post it notes

i use it a lot to lern your tounge

i not smart but i sho as hell not unejucated / papa can tell me dat

i be in your country in first place to reseeve ‘’best ejucashun’’ like grate nano wanted

grate nano waz an adventurer / a dreamer wit big goals

he travell far & wide seeking fame & fortune

when he a very young boy immigrants from every cesspool in western & eastern europe set sale for The North / it waz always grate nanos dream to travel North

everyone say he more insane than a bovine wit mad cows disease

there no room in dis life for dreams they tell him / he prove our village wrong

when rolf eight years of age grate nano briefly left the Old Country to set sale for america

everyone say he be too old / he never too old for dreams

he wanted to find dat American Dream he hear so often about

spoken wit fondness by the tinkers who visit our land

he returned from his valiant voyage wit stories about what he seen

in the North  he said everyone has cars & money & television & running water

no one listen / The North the North they say dat is all you ever talk about

he waz a man who dreamed of a new life for his family & so he decided to send for us

& make a better life for ourselves after the plagues of the land had haunted our family for years grate nano promised us america he said youll soon be eating apple pie from off a china plate white picket fence / coca cola / santa clause / marilyn monroe / empire state building

it sound like a fairytale he spun a legend dat the streets waz paved wit gold

& we believed him for shining in grate nanos eye waz a dream & so here we are

rest his soul he wanted so much to buy us light & sun & clean wind of the oshun

‘’immigrant’’ waz a new word for rolf when he first come here

did not know after hearing the stories from grate nano dat he would soon be one himself

rolf not know what dat mean & still really dont

the dixtionary definishun say \ ˈi-mə-grənt \ noun. a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence

\ ˈi-mə-ˌgrāt \ verb. [to go or remove into; in, into, and migrate, to remove.]

to come into a new country, region, or environment in order to settle there: opposed to emigrate.

oh sorry dat definishun not say we unclean people / flea invested vermin

sickly serpents who not speak english / greaser / sheenie

contagions of american society / incredibly dirty tramps fresh off the boat

so pervasive / such nonwhite filth / staring back at pitch black faces

not blonde haired & blue eyed / nonwhite skin only fit for dirt & waste work

mama papa kiss me goodbye i going to haiti

but it is what rolf is now it part of his identity just as much as the colour of his skin

just as much as bein a pagan / just as much as bein a male

just as much as bein the Son of a Shepherd

now rolf a new man living in the New World

i am an immigrant

sometime i wish i waz shug avery / bootiful fictional dark skin harlem singer

half man half woman / wit my large glittering masculine thighs i make an animal of men

maybe i have the courtesan complex

so i ast dr feelgood what my diag-nonsense

& she say poor soul you suffer from Stressed Shepherd Syndrome

okay so we all crazy in one way or another / it alright for some

of a mannequin in tears / of personal prejudices

im an unejucated farm boy from No Mans Land

im a poet who write in english

neisatnaf i isatnaf ne / ttim tetrejh dem gnyalp re lesgnel og gem tolrof nuh

rettenremmos i sirb ne mos rav ed / gem etlatrof nuh dro retsem nadrovh

etted tal eddejks rofrovh? / enneh lit gem trekided gej og enneh teksnø etrejh ttim

senneh enenyoø ås gej etted tla eddejks rofrovh

& this is for Sons of Shepherds who have considered suicide

fin

[twseok-blog]

hiyaaaaa !! itsa me... eebee... again lol. i’m just making a separate intro post so i can keep track of who im supposed to msg on which account !! that being said -- THIS IS MY GLOOMY soft boi, eeyore. you can view his about & his bio!

pls view more facts under the cut nd as always...

please ( LIKE ) this and a wild eevee will pop up in ur dms for plottins!

is actually a stuffed toy donkey. pls don’t bring it up he will be in a mood. he likes his human form “it looks cooler... nd ppl like humans more than donkeys”

went through som college for psychology- wanted to be a therapist. ...lasted 2 days in the field ( “this this and this happen today so i’m sad i don’t know what to do” ... “that’s just how life is sometimes” ... “hOSEOK THATS NOT--” )

got a job as a waiter bc he can work night times nd also no one cares about his attitude or lack of bubbly personality there... works there occasionally even after he opened his shop bc he meets interesting people

decided to go the route of flowers bc he’s got a green thumb and he doesn’t have to interact with ppl all that much ( that’s what he hired other ppl for )

said shop is also a pottery studio! in which he sells mugs nd bowls nd will teach kids how to sculpt ( provided either winnie or piglet brings them by... he doesn’t hang out with kids normally )

he tries to be encouraging -- will withdraw when he feels like he’ll be discouraging in any given situation

loves to take naps

likes smol pets like bunnies, guinea pigs, and hamsters

has a pink bow tattooed on his ankle to remind him of his tail-- his tail was alright but he loved his pink bow

will feed u endless amounts of tea of diffrenet kinds of flowers

is not scared of confrontation-- outwardly. is quite blunt, can be very sarcastic/cynical as well

he is a bit on the unfriendly side-- but he rly does like to make friends nd will do his best to do so pls plot wit dis lil tootsie roll thank u !

[butyouknowiwont]

"I was reminiscing just the other day, while having coffee and, Lord, it took me away...tonight I'm gonna dance for all that we've been through, but I don't wanna dance if I'm not dancing with you." (Holy Ground)

Let me preface this by saying that I do know this song is about a romantic relationship, and this story is not. As I said in my last post, I don't believe that this is any less of a love story because it's not a romantic one. For me, almost all of this song (save for one lyric, but I'll save that for another day) is about my best friend, C.

We met the first day of my freshman year in Algebra 1. He was funny as hell, and took the whole thing far less seriously than our teacher would have liked. I remember frequently leaving math class wishing it wasn't over yet. For someone who dreaded going home, I could have dragged those moments of smiling and laughing with him out forever.

Soon enough, we became close friends, and I introduced him to my best friend, K. They quickly got starry-eyed and I ended up the 3rd wheel...for a second. C introduced me to his best friend, B, and we began dating soon after. There were so many double dates, so many best friend sleepovers where K and I would giggle about how we were going to marry best friends one day. It's funny to think about now, how none of us could have predicted it'd all turn out like this. We all thought those relationships would last forever, and the only one that did was C and I's friendship.

I could spend so much time dancing around with those memories in my mind. They are some of the most incredible moments of my life. If you ask my therapist, it's because C was the first truly secure relationship I'd ever had. If you'd ask me, I would have said there's no way to put my finger on what caused the magic.

There is a certain magic to our friendship. We loved each other when we still had pure love to offer. Before the relationships and heartbreak. Before our parents' divorces. Before life tore all our optimism away. There is almost no one left in my life who knew me before I lost myself. But C did.

It's like he knows me, who I was before the world made me something else. He is my true north when I get lost. He is the one person who can center me again and remind me where we came from. He was the first person to raise a red flag when I off-handedly mentioned how my father treated me. He has always been the person I can call, early morning, the dead of night, or any far more godly hour in between, and he will always say he's free to talk (even when he's not).

I do believe soulmates, but strictly non-romantically. I believe he is one of mine. He is an often unkempt fire in all the ways I am. We are compulsive in the same things. We are wholly wild and unbalanced people. We both desperately need people to hold us down and be our voice of reason. He has this magical way of understanding exactly what I'm saying before a sound has escaped my lips. He is somehow more myself than I am. I don't know what fabric they cut souls out of, but him and I came from the same bolt, of that I'm sure.

I once read that the deepest desire of every human heart is to be both fully known and fully loved, at once. He is the closest thing I've ever known to that.

He shows off photos of my sons to people who don't even know me. He was my Made of Honor (spelled that way on purpose), and he walked me to meet my husband for our first look. He gave a beautiful speech about giving me over so my husband could serve as my forever best friend. He loves who I love almost as fiercely as I love them. I can't wait to party when he marries his future wife, and visit their beautiful babies when they make their appearance. I can't wait to watch the dreams he told me about 9 years ago come to life in front of my eyes.

I don't know that I believe in forever anymore. But I do believe that one day when we're 80, we'll be sitting on a front porch somewhere, probably sipping on cheap wine, and laughing about all the chaos we caused together over the years. We'll reminisce about all the people that traipsed in and out of our lives since high school and be forever grateful we stuck together. And I hope we'll still be able to dance the way we did at Swing that first summer, just like the nights I'll never forget. We may have been through hell and back in the last 9 years, but we've always done it together.

@taylorswift