#the vibes take me where they take me

[transautisticmikewheeler]

@voydhund HERE YOU GO, I WAS INSPIRED

title: how could i ever give you up?

rating: teen and up

relationships: mike wheeler/will byers

additional tags: trans mike wheeler, autistic mike wheeler, periods, hurt/comfort, post season 4

summary: mike has never been excited about getting his period, but will definitely makes it better.

Letting a groan escape his mouth, Mike squeezes his eyes shut, body curled up tight despite his long limbs. He'd pushed his blanket off hours ago, feeling like he was overheating with anything on top of him. He can tell he's cramping bad this time, and without a doubt, he knows Will is going to ban him from the party meetup today.

He groans again, the realization hitting him. Too bad taking T didn't stop it, he thinks with a hazy mind.

He's still in the same position when his bedroom door opens minutes later, a hand falling on his arm.

"Mike? Baby?"

Mike feels like crying at his boyfriend's voice. "...Get the heating pad, please," Mike answers weakly.

"Period came early?" He can hear Will digging in his closet, looking for the heating pad his mom got specifically for him.

"Yeah," Mike groans, the pain hitting him again. "I really fucking hate this..."

Will hums, and seconds later he's pulling at Mike's arm. "C'mon, we gotta make sure you're not bleeding everywhere and get you some tylenol."

Mike slowly follows, wincing at how his skin pulls. One very good thing about getting your period early: not having the energy or willpower to get a pad. He's definitely not being sarcastic.

Will drops him off at the bathroom, turning the shower on when Mike asks.

"I'll find you some sweatpants and a t-shirt?" Will offers over the sound of running water.

And Mike kind of feels bad about this, about making Will do all of this for him just because his abdomen hurts. "Yeah, sorry about... all of this." He waves his hand like an afterthought, watching as Will's expression shifts in a way that Mike has trouble reading even after all these years.

"Mike," he starts softly, kneeling down in front of Mike. "I don't mind doing all of this for you. I love you."

Mike wrinkles his nose. "I know, but I shouldn't need you to drag me out of bed." He looks down, hands rubbing together, or more caressing, searching for softness. "I'm supposed to be able to take care of myself."

"Well," Will starts, reaching forward to push hair out of Mike's face and gently coax his head back up. "You're in pain and a lot of people wouldn't be able to either. I want to make it easier however I can. If that means I help you take care of yourself, then I'll do it."

Again, Mike feels like crying. "Thank you for being here," he murmurs instead.

"Of course." Will stands up, pressing a kiss to the top of Mike's head. "Now, you need to shower."

Then Will is gone, and Mike is wincing as he peels his clothes off, blanching at the blood. The warm water is soothing, and he can admit he feels better when he's done.

The clothes are on the sink when he gets out. He dries off and throws his underwear and a pad on first, grabbing the dark sweatpants next. Finally, Mike realizes that the shirt is one of Will's, and a smile splits his face.

Will is sat on his bed, a book in hand when he gets to the doorway of his room. He looks up, smiling, and reaches for the bottle beside him, standing to get the water from Mike's nightstand.

"Here." Two pills are set in his palm, and he wastes no time swallowing them, the dull ache already sharpening again.

Mike collapses back on the bed, curling up before Will passes him the warmed-up heating pad to place under his stomach. "Thanks," Mike mutters, as Will slides in behind him.

"No problem," he returns. "I told the others we won't make it today."

Mike hums, waiting for the medication to kick in. "And they're okay without us?" He tries not to sound worried, but he knows Will instantly sees through him.

"They just hope you get better, baby. They know you're in good hands."

Mike can't help the instant blush that covers his cheeks. "Okay." He snuggles back in Will's arms, content to know that his boyfriend is still here.

[beescake]

Sorry for the spam (^o^;) I just really like your blog

no need to apologize ayy!

in this corner we welcome all forms of enjoyment, regardless of whether you're a

happy to have yall here w me,

headin into homestuck 2024 :^)

[foxfinding]

That moment, when ***I*** am in a "Gender & Media" course, and we are nearing the end class and the instructor says.

"Okay, I'm gonna try and go fast, I know we're all tired, we've only got one thing left for today:

Fandom"

LMAO soz y'all. There is a ZERO PERCENT CHANCE of us leaving early.

LET ME TALK ABOUT FANDOM PSYCHOLOGY AND HISTORY OF FANDOM AND FANDOM CULTURE

in class.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Broken Roofs and Fixed Perspectives

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[rogersstevie]

lorelai and luke + pieces of each other (insp.)

- rachel's sweatshirt - william's hardware - max's daisy - the huppah - lorelai's heel - luke's truck - liz's earrings - the dragonfly inn - liz's matching necklace - the horoscope - william's boat - luke's flannel shirt - lorelai's dollhouse - luke's spatula - the character reference - liz's necklace 2.0

[socksandbuttons]

If Jack gains sentience, he shall cause more chaos :D.

If anything were to happen to jack we'll riot

[little-pup-pip]

Hey do you think you could make a moodboard for story time? Maybe with books and a bean bag chair. For a boy regressor with a paci but no deco. Thanks either way

Here you go!!

[mamawasatesttube]

the thing about kon's relationships is that, despite how much posturing he does about being a flirt and a ladies' man, he has only ever had three (3) relationships, two of which were with adult women who groomed and preyed on him, and the third was with a closeted lesbian who mistook her gender envy as attraction to him.

(to cassie, kon is literally the boy from the posters on her bedroom wall. she sets up that crush before she ever meets him, and by the time the two of them get together, he's already got the idea that relationships = a woman gives him a box to fit into and he does his very best to stay in it so he can prove he's good enough for her. this isn't cassie's fault by any means, but like, it's no wonder they break up and both immediately seem relieved about it, yknow?)

even when other people flirt with him, like when serling tries to ask him out, he turns her down because he's not in a space where he feels like he can be in a relationship. he's not actually the horndog and total flirt he pretends he is. i would posit that he just learned "this is how teenage boys are supposed to act" from all the media and pop culture downloaded into his head. that was the only standard or cultural context he had. it's how he tried to socialize in hawaii when he went to high school, too. he didn't know how to act beyond being a tv personality.

anyways, what i'm getting at is that i will never be convinced this guy has ever actually experienced attraction to a woman. it's posturing and comp het all the way down, babey. kon-el is a demisexual gay man, and in this essay i will

[non-un-topo]

All it takes is a wee little nightmare to make you too scared to step foot outside for fear of Bad Things happening, like it’s an omen lol

[milkbreadtoast]

o yeah btw i liked these guys from the latest crk update..... detective gays.... macaroni and cheese....🤭

[what-is-it-to-be-pk-esque]

Ok I know I'm heavily biased here but like I kinda love that Astarion's romance is one of the few in this type of video game where you basically end up canonically unmarried and childfree in his "good" ending? Just travelling the world??

Like it's honestly the millennial dream lmfaoo cannot believe i chose what would undoubtedly be my favorite option, first try

[satans-knitwear]

Lets hang out!! 🥺 Sleepover!!

I'll be getting on my fishnets, answering asks with lil videos and enjoying a sip or two this weekend! Lets have some fun with it 🥰

Treat me ~ Tip me ~ More of me

[lizard-dumbass]

so The World Of Mr Plant is actually rly cool

Image ID: a digital illustration of Mr Plant from the web series The World Of Mr Plant. He is sitting on a white bed and is looking at the "camera". Behind him is an open doorway cloaked in pitch black darkness. The room is dimly lit and the lighting has a distinctly purpley blue color to it.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[seajestic]

Another hell take us, heaven can wait sketch dump…. I’m so obsessed with this dang fic ugh…. Demi-Fiend Goro Akechi brainworms are too powerful 😩👌

Akira,,,, you don’t realize it yet, but you are about to be SUCH a monsterfucker in this au

[quietwingsinthesky]

“least favorite” isn’t anywhere close to bad. it just shows how damn hard the competition is going, but we’re talking about gold medals all around for each actor i’ve seen portray the doctor so far.