#which is a no. but would honestly be willing to pay up to 300....which is also crazy but im justifying it bc im not a big spender otherwise

[thinkingthingsthrough]

would it be insane of me to try and go see ed sheeran twice in detroit next month after already seeing him in toronto this month

[laf-outloud]

Hi,

Here is the European Anon (or Troll as I am called at the moment). I would like to clarify a few things. I am a fan. Of the show, of the characters, of the two J's. That's the reason why the info about the contract could hurt me so much in the first place. Because this time it affected me myself. I've worked with stars who showed up to work (con) drunk. Who spent more time on Grindr than signing autographs. Who treated their Händlers like crap, while up front they were the loving, attentive star. You learn two things quickly in the businees. The manager is always right, and the star is never the bad guy. We had two guests from an equally famous CW show. The managers had agreed to a duo shoot. The problem was that they hated each other. In the sense of, we had to separate the two spatially, because otherwise it would have come to fisticuffs. The managers of both parties tried everything to make the duo shoot possible somehow and while one star finally agreed to get it over with "professionally", the other remained stubborn. The end? The duo was canceled with the reason "unforeseen scheduling difficulties" Well, sounds familiar? (No it's not Vampire Diaries, Paul and Ian are really like brothers, lol).

What you also learn very quickly. The fans forgive everything and the star is perfect in their eyes. No matter whether stars were bad-tempered, bitchy or sometimes even downright unfriendly, the fans always found an excuse for them, or in the end made us organizers responsible for it. Well, we can live with that, as long as people still pay for their tickets. At the end of the day it is a business.

Why am I writing this? So far it has never really affected me. For me, most of them are just people like you and me and I could deal with most of the stars in a really friendly or business way. But I've been a fan of Supernatural since the beginning. And then such an info is no longer professional but hurts.

I want to make it very clear that no SPN star I have ever dealt with has been unprofessional or unfriendly. Even though Misha's manager is a terrible woman, he himself was always polite to us as employees. And even from colleagues who have worked with J2 so far, there has never been a negative word.

That is why I was so looking forward to working with them. To be able to experience this famous friendship directly.

I am not so high in the hirachie that I get to read a direct correspondence of the management. I also can't say which Con I work for without risking my job. I know it's easier to make me out to be a liar than to accept that I might be right. I realize that and I can even understand that.

I've been sitting on this information for weeks, but who am I going to tell? Who believes me? I've talked to two close friends about it who are also fans and they didn't believe it either.

The trigger was the first reports from Charlotte. I have friends who are on site and yes, probably their euphoria and two glasses of wine on my part made me write to two people. Patrick (TFW) and LOL Jackles . Who I have found through Tumblr several times to be relatively fair and interested in facts. But there was no response. I was honestly taken aback by this, because even if they won‘t believe me, why not share the info anyway? Or at least respond to it? If there is nothing to what I say, then it could be quickly invalidated or? Unless the two know exactly that I'm right and are afraid of when it comes out.

I have written to you days later. you can look it up. I read post that you and others wondered why jared and jensen only come to different cons. That's why I thought, okay I'll send it again. I found your explanation of not posting it understandable and at least you didn't immediately ignore it. Thanks for that. that's also why I'm replying exclusively to you.

Again, I understand if you don't believe me. After all, I didn't want to believe my boss either. I thought he was just not willing to pay the 300 K (And that's what they cost each).

But now exactly what he said happens.

If I am telling the untruth, then why is Jared actually appearing at the same promoters (Monopoy Events, Entertainment Events Etc) on a different date than Jensen and always including Gen? And look at the line up of the English cons and tell me that you could not have paid Jared‘s fee to run various duo shots! If I'm lying, why is Creation now releasing the second convention for 2024 with only Jensen as headliner but not with Jared? It can't be the money, because Creation takes the same amount for the tickets as usual. And schedule difficulties during an official strike ? Hardly. You can call me a troll, but I am a fan as well, I know that you want to believe until the end that everything is good. But I just think the fans have at least a right to hear the truth. And that is that Jared's management will get away from creation cons in the future and will favor cons that Jensen doesn't attend.

Thank you for writing in, again. I'm sorry that because of the multiple asks, you've been classified as a troll. I've been on Tumblr long enough that I've seen multiple copy/paste asks and they most often are a troll, but I can see your reasoning. (I will say that TFW2.0 is a fan of Jensen first, so anything that could put him in a negative light will be summarily dismissed.)

I decided to post this response since your original ask seems to have been seen by multiple other people despite not being posted and I'll allow people to make up their own minds about what they want to believe.

I will say that Jared's absence from the con in July could be due to other reasons, like his standard summer vacation or birthday stuff, and June could be because he anticipates that they might be filming Walker into the summer, depending on how long the strike lasts.

When it comes to doing cons with or without Jensen, I know my initial response was regarding Jared's mental health, but it could also be a strategic business decision. Jared may want to distance himself from SPN (and Jensen) to open up other acting/producing opportunities. It's not always advantageous to just be known as "one of those guys from SPN." He's said before that he enjoys producing and I'm sure he knows Walker isn't going to last forever. An actor/producer's career shouldn't be defined by one role. He may also be promoting Gen to help increase her profile if they plan on producing together in the future. I'm sure there are some who, if they believe it's true, will take it personally, but it really may just be a business decision.

Either way, thank you for sharing. And if there are people who agree/disagree and decide to write to me with their rebuttals, please remember to do so respectfully. I won't post anything with accusatory language, insults, or outright dismissals.

[darnellclayton]

Interesting tweet by @photomatt. I am thinking that @Tumblr could replace Twitter if they actually embraced Matrix & the Fediverse.

But then there is this:

Note: I am providing screenshots here just in case Twitter disappears!

Okay, so Automattic is trying to make Tumblr self sustaining by offering premium features that people would be willing to pay for.

Premium features that Tumblr currently offers are:

Vanity blue check marks

Premium custom themes

Tumblr Blaze (basically paying to promote your post to other Tumblrs)

Pay for ad free browsing

Apparently this is not enough, so what other features could Tumblr offer that users would be willing to pay for‽ Here are a few a few suggestions:

Actual verification (yes, seriously)

As people flee Twitter, they will look at alternatives & Tumblr will receive a massive amount of traffic (which will drive up the cost of the site). This includes celebrities, businesses, politicians, other government officials, etcetera.

Offer a real verification service that is open to everyone—celebrities, businesses & normal people—but would require:

A real world ID (passport, government ID, drivers license, etcetera).

An annual fee (between $100-$300 depending on the person or organization, government official, etcetera) in order to combat spam impersonation

A video phone call from Tumblr / WordPress staff (Facetime, Telegram, WhatsApp, etcetera) to confirm the person/organization is legit

Forget the checkmark (twitter ruined that) & use something else (maybe dancing emoji’s around the profile picture‽ Make it unique to Tumblr).

Federation with ActivityPub

I honestly would prefer that this would be a free feature, however the sad fact remains that people could easily be overwhelmed with spammers, trolls, scams, etcetera, outside of Tumblr & not know how to deal with it.

I solo host on Darnell.one & I have encountered spammers, trolls & scammers on Matrix & Mastodon (latter uses ActivityPub).

While I have the patience to deal with the unfettered interwebs attempting to harass me, most people will feel overwhelmed with spamtroll@armageddon.whocares sending them unsolicited messages on the daily.

Making it a premium feature would reduce the chance of spammers using Tumblr to harass the world (resulting in Federation blocks), as well as preventing people from being harassed by the world.

Price should be between $5-$10/month

Into The Matrix

I am already on Matrix (I am @darnell:shh.darnell.ooo for those interested) & I think integration would be key with one caveat: make it a replacement for messages on Tumblr.

So I could then use @darnell:tumblr.com to securely communicate to other people on Tumblr as well as Matrix users for free.

However, those who pay Tumblr could also use their Matrix/Tumblr messenger to communicate with other people on Facebook Messenger, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, etcetera, via bridging, which would appeal to power users.

Another bonus is that paying folks could also create their own mini zoom like video calls, without having to use Zoom (which would appeal to people on Tumblr). I would make it so that paying folks can initiate a call, but anyone else on Tumblr can join for free (in order to increase appeal).

Price range would be between $10-$20/month (as this tech is not cheap!).

LiveStreaming

Instead of relying on YouTube, Tumblr should offer this feature for free—with a catch.

People should be able to live broadcast in standard definition for free, but if they want the broadcast in high definition as well as saved then they will have to pay for storage (otherwise the streamed video is deleted after 24 hours).

Premium users could also have the “broadcasted on Tumblr” watermark/label removed, as well as the ability to automatically upload their video elsewhere (VideoPress, Vimeo, YouTube, etcetera).

Price range should be $10/month

Tumblr Prime‽

Tumblr should also offer a combination package on all of the above except verification (for obvious reasons).

Call it Tumblr Prime or Tumblr Pattycakes for all I care, but for around $20/month they should offer:

ActivityPub federation

Matrix Integration for messages (including bridging, video conference calls, etcetera)

Live-streaming services

Of course Auttomattic should look at the economics of these features to see if they are feasible, but I think they can come up with a workable solution that is deemed valuable.

That is all folks!

Those are my suggestions, & if you made it this far after reading this post, congratulations! If you have any suggestions, refutations, or questions feel free to comment below or message me via Tumblr.

[fraks]

i hate making posts like this, but i am honestly at a loss as to what to do, and maybe someone here has an idea. for the record: i live in germany, so solutions that might work in the united states probably won't work for me.

i'm the child of a mentally ill mother and a neglectful father. growing up, i was systematically abused, both psychologically and emotionally, by my father's girlfriend while he stood and watched, and still to this day denies it ever happened. i developed c-ptsd and social anxiety disorder as a result. i had two rounds of cbt years ago, which, while good for me, didn't "cure" me, and all the meds i tried didn't help either.

that's not even the problem though, only necessary background info. in august of 2020, my partner of 13 years suddenly up and left me for someone else. unable to sleep or eat, i was put on sick leave for a few months, which cost me my job and, subsequently, my apartment. with the housing market being what it is, plus the covid situation, i wasn't able to find a new place and have been officially homeless since march 2021. i stayed with my little brother for a bit, but my "family" eventually abandoned me, too, when i didn't get better fast enough, and threw me out.

none of my "friends" were able or willing to help, either, until i reconnected with an old internet buddy on the other side of the country who, without any hesitation, offered me her guest room for however long i needed it. i hate having to rely on near-strangers (we hadn't been in contact for years), but i was in no position to refuse. so i am currently staying in said guest room. the problem? my friend and her husband are ultra-religious evangelical nutjobs. as in, if they knew i was queer, i would be thrown out immediately. and as in, they hit their toddler when she doesn't obey them because proverbs say it's okay to hit your kids. and of course my friend isn't vaccinated, just to complete the picture.

i don't know how much longer i can survive being here. my friend lives in a tiny village (population of 720), so there's no public transport and i'm stuck inside this house (and mainly this one room) nearly 24/7. my social anxiety disorder makes it impossible for me to just apply for unemployment benefits—i'm trying, but the system isn't meant for people who are unemployed and homeless at the same time, and i'm falling through the cracks. i need to get back to my hometown of berlin (so i can finish my engineering degree), but to get an apartment there, i need to prove i have an income, and to get an income, i need a proper place to stay. i also need to prove i've paid my rent for the past three months, but as i haven't lived in a rental place of my own since march, i don't have that proof, which means my application for apartments automatically gets thrown out for being incomplete.

and amidst all this chaos, my brain has decided now is the perfect time to relive all the childhood trauma and i get at least one major panic attack per day. i don't remember when i last spent a day without crying. and ofc i can't see a therapist because i need to know where i'll be staying for a few months before i can be put on any therapist's waiting list. oh and i'm about to lose my health insurance cause unless i get unemployment benefits or find a new full-time job, i'd have to pay nearly 300€ a month, which i simply do not have, especially given that i'm already paying 500€+ a month from my meagre savings for a storage unit that has all my stuff in it.

until now, i've survived by talking to online buddies like @justplainsalty and @leliesblou and @cminerva and others in the mfmm+leverage fandoms in particular, and reading posts by @wilwheaton and @furiousgoldfish on abuse and trauma to reaffirm i'm not crazy, but i am so profoundly lonely in this place, and i honestly don't see myself surviving long beyond the new year.

so if anyone has any ideas or advice on what to do, please reach out, and feel free to reblog or share in other ways if you know anyone who might be able to help.

[prorevenge]

He punched me over a fender bender, I destroyed his life.

I was working as a civilian with the US Military Overseas and I lived off base in an apartment complex popular among the US Military. One morning I accidently hit another soldier's vehicle.

Upon exiting the vehicle I noticed that both our vehicles were what you could call a Hooptie. A Hooptie is a old car that is pretty beat up that has been passed around from service to service member and they generally sell for $1,000-$2,000. I also recongized that I was at fault for the accident. It was a very minor accident. His rear bumper was dente din slightly. But I could hear both our cars still running

I approached the driver who had already gotten out and he was in uniform and I apologized and said if it was alright with him I'd like to negogiate a payment that I will pay him in cash and we don't involve the authorties. I wanted to keep this simple. I'll be honest the accident was so minor I honestly expected him to say "Nah man it's good" but even if he wanted some money I'd have paid him. I have always been of the opinion if you have a fender bender and can negogiate agreeable terms between both the parties its best to not involve insurance/police.

He told me he wanted to the call the police, I said we could call the police or we could go on base together and I could give him $300. He said that wasn't enough. So I upped my offer to $500. He proceeded to punch me in the face. It was a sucker punch, he got into his car and took off and in the process nearly ran me over.

Now I had a black box in my car which recorded everything. I went to the provost marshall office on base (The police station) and reported the accident and the assault and showed the MP the footage. Which they used his license plate to track him down. I was also asked if I wanted to involve the local authorties/press criminal charges off base.

Honestly I felt like the soldier would learn his lesson if I let UMCJ (the Military Court basically) handle this and I said "Not at this time" I was told it was an option.

The end result was the soldier in question got 60 days of extra duty, reduction in rank, and and forefeited a portion of his paycheck. Essentially if he dealt with that, this would have been the end of the whole ordeal. Honestly at this point I assumed our little ordeal was over.

Well a few days after his punishment was decided on, which was not long after the incident itself I was in the commissary (Grocery store on base) shopping when the soldier who assaulted saw me and began to insult me. I told him he needed to clam down, that he should learn his lesson, he told me I was a pussy who didn't know how to take a punch I reminded him that I held back on destorying his life he told me he's already been punished and I can't touch him again.

He left me be

A store employee witnessed the entire encounter and I got the employee detail and reported this interaction to his command. His commander told me he had been ordered to not interact with me and would take action. His commander also recommended me I involve the local authorties since this soldier obviously isn't learning his lesson.

So I did. I contacted an attorney. The attorney was unsure if we could succesful sue the soldier and said he would need a cash payment to take the case. Honesetly I was mad and I wanted to teach this guy a lesson. I agreed, it was not cheap.

To keep this story short, we ended up in a court off base. We presented our evidence. The solider in question had decided to represent himself. Several times in the court he had outbursts. The Judge ended up granting me a judgement of approx $50,000 USD. When the judgement was given the soldier called the Judge a son of bitch, and that the Army would cover for him.

So the Judge changed his judgement to $80,000 and the Judge then asked me if I also wanted to press charges aganist this soldier in criminal court. Honestly it was obvious this guy wasn't going learn a lesson, I told the judge I wanted to persue criminal charges in addition to the judgement.

My lawyer later advised me that if I ever wanted to see the money I should persue an international hold. With my judgement its likely that a judge would grant me an international hold. An international hold is basically where this soldier would not be allowed to leave the country until I was paid my $80,000. Also he told me that according to the agreement between the US Military and the host country the US Military would honor the international hold. Basically the US Military would not protect him or move him out of country to avoid punishment.

Honestly by this point I had paid my lawyer thousands of dollars, and I honestly didn't feel like paying thousands of dollars and getting nothing for it. So I said yes I want to go forward with the international hold.

About a month later the international hold was granted, and the US Military was informed of this. 2 months after that the criminal case was over and the soldier was setenced to 90 days in jail. By this point the soldier had been moved onto the base into his barracks by his commander. I remember the day I was informed the MPs handed him over to the local authorties to begin his 90 day jail setence. Did I mention he still owed me $80,000?

I heard nothing for a year, and then one day I get a call from his commander, his commander wants me to make a statement in regrads to the case. I go in and make the statement. During the statement I find out the US Military was in the process of chaptering the soldier out of the US Military. The commander also informed me that he was close to coming up with the money to pay me so he could have the international hold lifted. The commander also asked me if my lawyer would be willing to make a statement.

I contacted my lawyer who also made a statement about the facts of the case.

A few weeks later his ex-wife contacted me, when this all started I knew he was married, guess his wife decided to divorce him. She informed that his ex husband had the money and needed the details on how to pay me. I provided her the details, and a few days later I got the payment and contacted his ex-wife to inform her I had been paid. She then asked me to send a reciept so he could have the international hold lifted and return to the states. I asked her how he got the money, she said he maxed out his credit, and also had family help out. Also during this conversation, I had found out the Army had chaptered him out of the Military

I sent her the reciept and that was the last I ever heard from his side.

TL:DR I get into a fender bender with a soldier, I try to resolve things with him he punches me, he gets UCMJ action, a civil judgment, 90 days in jail, a divorce (I actually do not know if the divorce is connected, but I imagine this case didn't help his marriage) , a ton of debt, and a loss of his career.

I took his $80,000 and bought myself a brand new car and used the rest of the money to put down on an investment property.

(source) story by (/u/LordSThor)

[well-shit-im-a-morosexual-now]

After the whole 100 DV for new players thing, I swear people are using any reason at all to shit on the devs. People are hating on how much you have to spend to get rewards on the Go Go Goldie event but like??? Duh?? They cannot give you more devil points than you spend?? That should be?? Obvious?? And it's not even like this is a new event. They've done the Go Go Goldie event several times before in the past. People just need to chill. The devs couldn't give you more free stuff if they tried.

Honestly obey me is one of the games where you just get a lot of free things? Like after playing games like Love Island where even with the reward after each ep. you still need to spend money if you're going to choose all the paid options or games like The Arcana where you have to be patient and rack up coins over months to be able to get the paid options. Obey Me is just so good? Because:

1.) You don't have paid options within the main storyline

2.) You can replay parts of the main storyline whenever you want without having to use keys or anything

3.) You can easily earn grimm

4.) You can use 27,000 grim on that one x10 nightmare pull and get parts of UR & SSR cards that you can eventually assemble

5.) Free x1 pulls that actually give UR & SSR cards every once in a while

6.) Frequent Levi's boot camp where you can win vouchers and points

7.) Frequent events where you can win points and vouchers (if you play without cheatcards you can get past the first part in like 9days this means each time there's an event you can win 10vouchers without spending vouchers on cheat cards)

8.) Daily login bonuses, two of which are points

9.) Can level up cards/unlock spaces using only Grimm (which is easy to earn) & the little token things (which you can easily win by replaying levels)

10.) YOU CAN WIN 18 POINTS A DAY!???

11.) You can win 1 key a day to unlock devilgrams

12.) Each time there's maintenance (which is pretty frequent) devs give you a gift (just got a voucher????)

13.) Devs listen to complaints and fix problems?

14.) You get two chances a day to get additional AP and get AP from your friends

15.) Unlike with games like mystic messenger there's no consequences of missing calls/messages and you can just call them back/reply later

16.) Even if you don't win a certain card to unlock a Devilgram you still have the amazing art of the Devilgram in your game (which in most games once the event is done and if you don't get the card that's it. You don't get the pretty art)

17.) None of the Devilgrams have any effect on the main storyline so you don't need to get them. The Devilgrams that do contribute to the backstory are all the ones that you can just get on nightmare on a normal day/get the parts of and assemble in your own time

18.) You can get through one whole lesson on the AP you have and don't have to only play like five parts and then wait hours to get more keys/tickets like in wizardess heart+

19.) You can win feathers through guest interactions, having them work jobs, through event & boot camp rewards

20.) Obey me is an otome game, it's whole purpose is to earn money so you shouldn't be surprised when they have sales or events or whatever to try and get money from the people who are willing to pay

One of the reasons I stuck with obey me is that the game is so much more generous than usual otome games?

Would I like 100 vouchers? Yes. Would I like it to be easier to get to the third part in events? Yes. Am I gonna harass the devs, who are already giving more than an average otome game, about it? Nope.

What I do to win Devilgrams is this; pick a brother. Focus on getting his Devilgrams so you can save up vouchers and points during events that don't have SSR or UR cards for him. I also don't bother trying to get outfits? Like I see the appeal but also at the same time I'd rather use feathers to buy vouchers than spend 300 on an outfit

If you have multiple favs (which is fine): have friends who play obey me & exchange screenshots of the Devilgram stories you get. If your friends don't have the cards & you cant find anyone on tumblr who does try YouTube. I've read Mammon's Bunny, Vampire & Idol Devilgrams all through people who posted them on YouTube.

ALSO the fact that each card has 10 skill up levels but we only get the chance to skill them up to level 2 during events probably means that there's a chance that these cards will appear again in nightmare. (This already happened once with a few cards and it's how I got the Lucifer Butler card despite not having the game when the actual event was happening).

Overall, I think it's fine to bitch and complain and rant whenever you get frustrated during the game (like it's something I do when I really want a card but know I'm not gonna get it cause it's on the third page and I don't have enough vouchers/points) but don't go and harass real people (whether it's new players or the devs) over a game, none of them owe us anything. Chill guys.

[purplesurveys]

1262

o1. With which one of your friends do you spend the most time? With which friend do you spend the least amount of time? Would you like to change this in any way? I don’t really get to...spend time with my friends, in that sense. For very obvious reasons. But I talk to Angela and Reena the most. Andi and I talk a lot too, but not everyday. 

Among my friends, I probably talk to my college group the least these days, but that’s mostly because 2/3 of them are pursuing law school, and the 1/3 have jobs and are as busy as I am. We’re still as tight as ever and our group chat becomes active at least once a week.

o2. What four states in the USA would you most like to visit? Which four countries would you most like to visit? States: Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Utah. Countries: Malta, Switzerland, Thailand, South Korea.

o3. If you have one, how often do you watch your favorite television show? How long has this show been your favorite? I’m not a big TV person, tbh. The closest thing to my favorite would be Friends, which I rewatch at least one episode of once a month though I used to watch it FAR more often than that, hahaha. I think I first hooked to it...I wanna say 2018?Or 2019. Sometime in between those years. o4. Would it bother you if your boyfriend hugged other females (think hypothetically if you don’t have one)? Why or why not? No. He’s allowed to have girl friends. The only reason it bothered me when it was Gabie was because we were both aware that her guy friends were genuinely into her. I never channeled my annoyance towards her though; I was definitely more pissed off at those guys for not learning how to back off when needed.

o5. If you had snow-days as a kid, how did you spend them? Do you like the snow, in general? We don’t have snow, but our equivalent would be days off school because of a typhoon. Anyway, I just spent them lounging around and mostly watching stuff on YouTube. In college I was a bit more diligent and would use the extra time to catch up on readings.

o6. Do you know anyone who does hard drugs? Would you ever befriend someone that did? Not that I am aware of. I probably wouldn’t befriend someone who did if we weren’t already close, because there’s no telling what kind of influence they would be on me.

o7. When was the last time that you were afraid for your life? Did this incident change you in any way? When I was really sick back in May. Not really, I just wanted to recover as quickly as possible.

o8. Do you enjoy taking pictures? Is it just for fun, or do you make an attempt at actual photography? I didn’t then, but it’s something I’m trying to do more often now. I’ve realized I have very few souvenirs from the last few years because I barely took photos then, so it sucks not being able to revisit memories and ending up forgetting others completely. I definitely don’t plan to take it so far as taking photography lessons; taking pictures from my own perspective and in my own style suffices.

o9. Have you ever had low self-esteem? How is your self-esteem now? Yeah, sure. I had a recent phase of it because of the breakup, but I’ve recovered from it. My self-esteem is a lot healthier and more stable these days.

o1o. When you see someone sickly-thin, what is your first thought? Nothing for the most part, but I would obviously be concerned if that person was starting to show worrying signs of malnutrition. Idrk what you mean by sickly-thin.

o11. Do hospitals make you nervous? Why or why not? Do you have any bad hospital experiences? Not really, only because I’ve rarely had to go there.

o12. What did you dress up as the last time you went Trick-or-Treating? Who went with you? I went as Sofie, my old best friend from high school.

o13. What is one thing you miss most from your childhood? What do you miss the least? The part about having less responsibilities and more time to just have fun and do whatever I want. But I didn’t really have a picture-perfect childhood either, so my list of things I don’t miss for sure trumps the list of stuff I do miss.

o14. What would be the biggest challenge involved in raising a child at your age? How to send them to a good school because I don’t make nearly enough to afford tuition for another person.

o15. If you happened to get pregnant before you were ready for children, how would you cope? Do you think your parents would support you and help you out? I don’t know, honestly; and the thought kind of scares me. I know my parents wouldn’t provide support whatsoever, so I’d have to claw my way to find it from other people who would be willing. I’d probably need to take an extra job to earn enough money to support us both.

o16. Have you ever had unprotected sex? What would you tell a young teen thinking about having unprotected sex? Yeah, but I was also with a girl, so...idk. I don’t have a lot of sexual experience either so I dunno what sort of advice to tell a teen other than ‘don’t do it,’ lmao.

o17. What are some gender double-standards anger you? All of them. < Yes.

o18. Other than the usual qualities (honesty, respect, etc), what are some attributes you want your BF/GF to possess? Patience in the sense that I tend to be sensitive, so if they crack a joke that I ended up getting hurt or offended by, or if I get triggered by something minor that would otherwise be normal for anyone else, I hope they are patient enough to ride the wave out with me. I didn’t experience that with my past partner, and was often told to just stop being sensitive.

o19. Do you still talk to the first person you ever dated? If not, would you want to? Why or why not? No, because doing so is detrimental to my well-being.

o2o. Five years ago, what was the most important thing in your life? How about the most important person? My relationship, barf. Gabie, another barf.

21. How would you describe your sexuality? Have you ever wondered whether or not you might be homo/bisexual? I’ve stopped caring about it. I say asexual to people just so I have an answer to say.

o22. Do you think that homosexual couples should be able to raise or adopt children? Why or why not? Yeah...because I don’t see why they can’t be granted that right?

o23. Think of your worst fear. What would you do if you were confronted with it right now? Hyperventilate.

o24. If you were to become a vegetarian, what meat-product would you miss the most? Have you ever been or wanted to be a vegetarian? Chicken wings or sandwiches. I’ve thought about it before, yes. It’s too expensive a lifestyle where I live, though.

o25. Do you think that someone’s sexuality is something that they can control? No.

o26. What do you like most about your favorite animal? They’re very friendly and always down to play. :)

o27. What is your favorite way to eat your favorite food? How often do you eat your favorite food item? Eating burgers by hand is always the best. I have one maybe once a month.

o28. What is something you are craving? Will this craving be satisfied? KFC’S DOUBLE DOWN. I’ll get one next week, when I get my next pay lol. The rest of my budget this week is already allotted for my mom’s birthday/JK’s belated birthday dinner tomorrow.

o29. What is the largest number of texts you have sent in a day? Do you often text this much? Ooooh, I dunno. Maybe around 200-300 in a day? My ex and I primarily communicated through text whenever we weren’t physically together, which was often as we were both students in different schools.

o3o. Do you like the holiday season? Why or why not? What could be better about it? Some parts of it I like, some parts of it I don’t. The latter mostly stems from insecurities I will feel from seeing other families on social media, who always seem to be having a better and fancier time than I am. It’s why I usually deactivate during Christmas so I don’t get to see posts that can affect my disposition.

[savrenim]

I’ve got to say there’s something kind of depressing about only having 7 folks following my patreon just bc, like.... I put so much work into it! I have really cool posts every week! and cool longer posts every month! it’s really cool content that I really want to share and it’s, like. kind of depressing that only a handful of people are getting to even see that content! to the point where honestly I’m mildly tempted to make my patreon be “all content for paying patrons is early release that following patrons will get after a month” just to see if more people will follow me, but, like. mildly worried that even that won’t happen!

but, like. more than that it mostly solidly feels like my work isn’t valued?

like. I started publishing ifmlam in dec of 2015, which was kind of me re-entrance since high school into publishing things onto the general internet. ifmlam is 204233 words. that is two full-length novels. it was meticulously researched to the point where most end-of-chapter notes basically have a works cited, and needed to be meticulously researched because it was in a field that thoroughly was not my own I had not had a US history class since high school type deal. I worked on it during my last year and a half in college, in time that I could have spent studying for GREs, applying to grad school, and writing my thesis-- all things that certainly would not have been hurt from extra time spent. people left comments going “if this were a physical book I would buy it.” which, like!! mostly was just flattering!! it was a labor of love that I started out writing for myself and didn’t really expect anything to come from it! but it did kind of transform into a burden that I kept writing because it had a following, and, like. any future work that gets put into it is mildly coming from a sense of obligation to finish for the people who care about it, and it kind of makes it feel in hindsight like I was creating a product and it was a product put out there for free and the only thing that resulted is a lot of people who want more of that free product that is no longer a labor of love, it is meticulous research and meticulous writing and meticulous editing and time out of a graduate thesis and job applications and writing papers in my field and things that are so intrinsically more important than when I was writing it in college

and, like, I have boundaries, I’m only going to write when I have the time and inspiration to write, but gods has ifmlam turned into a burden and was a burden for a fair portion of the end there of writing it and it’s a mild bummer that it’s a burden that people do not care about throwing me $1 a month or, like. hell, people have bought me two ko-fis in the entire five years I have been writing. and I know I haven’t advertised a lot. and I know that mostly I haven’t needed the money. but, like.

I have published 387735 words on ao3 in the last five years, and certainly have more than 20k of drafts that, like. honestly should be ready to post in the next month or so. so, like, round up, that is more than four full novels length. and back when it was just fanfiction that I was working on, like, yeah it’s just fanfiction and that is not the sort of thing that I hell even would feel comfortable making money from. and I know nothing is published so people can’t see it now, but, like. my primary writing isn’t fanfiction anymore! it’s an actual proper full novel! draft 1 will be done and going out to betas in the next week or two! that I am going to be putting out there for free!. and my patreon really isn’t about “support me bc I’ve been writing fanfiction”, it’s a “hey you’ve seen my writing samples over the course of five years and wordcount of four novels so you trust that I’m a good writer, right? do you maybe want to hop on the bandwagon to try to support my original work too?”

I’ve run the costs from cover to ISBN to copyright filing to actually setting up a personal website to getting print drafts of the book and, like, esp given that I decided screw it I’ve been saving up for years I really want to commission one of my friends to make a professional cover, Opus I is going to cost me out-of-pocket more than $1000 to publish. and it’s being released for free. even if thousands of people read it, as I have set this up, I will not make a single penny from it. and that is okay, I knew that going in. but I definitely can’t afford to pay $1000 out of pocket to publish Opus II, or like. any of the dozens of books that I really do want to publish and have them look polished and professional going forward, that even cutting out cover art carry a price tag of ~$300 for me to do on my own.

and I guess I just...really hoped that there would be enough people either that went “yo your work is cool we trust you on this” to throw what comes out to $12/year, which, like. is the cost of a more expensive ebook if the goal is to be able to release about a book in the Opus series per year, or even just who are enough interested in the content that I have to put out that hey $1/month really is not a lot and the thought process behind my writing is interesting and valued.

and it feels like I’m being dumb and whining complaining in the first place and I’m stupidly lucky to have any sort of following at all or anyone willing to read even the fic I put out or comment on it, like. it’s super cool that my work is acknowledged and read period end! and honestly I think it’s mostly bothering me because, like. I am super self-conscious about “is anyone even going to bother to read Opus” and the fact that this thing that I set up to lay the foundations for and support my original writing only has seven people following and five of those people are close personal friends really does not bode well for feeling like there is any sort of interest in what else I can produce other than the fanfiction that I already have up, but, like

my patreon is cool!!! my content is cool!!! my book is going to be cool!!! and I just really wish there were more people seeing it!

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #397

“you’re my religion, you’re my reason to live  /  you are the heaven in my hell”

Do you think that you’ll always love who you love now? Even if we're never together again romantically, I will ALWAYS love her at least as a best friend. Have you ever made out with a random person? Yeah, no. If you could do your first kiss over, would you? No. I'm lucky that my first kiss was honestly cute as hell. Do you like your country’s president or prime minister? Well I voted for him, so I obviously can't hate him. He seems to be doing fine so far, though take that with a grain of salt seeing as I don't keep up with politics. Even before voting for him, I just did a small bit of researching on his values. What color is your house? Yellow with white accents. Do you listen to Christmas music during the holiday season? No, I don't enjoy it. Man, Jason's mom sure did, though... I loved how in the spirit she'd get and always played Christmas music in the car during that time of year. I miss that woman and I sure as hell hope she rests easy now. Do you like ginger ale? Solely if I have a stomach bug, and I can only ever sip it. What are you listening to? "Electric Sugar Pop" by Jeffree Star. What’s the last thing you watched on TV? The TMS office has the TV on, and the woman who overlooks it (I have zero idea what her position is called) tends to have it either on a cooking channel or a home improvement one. Today was a cooking one. Is your favorite author the author of your favorite book? I don't have a favorite author. Describe someone you find really attractive: M-Mark Fischbach. *___* If you HAD to look like someone else, but could choose who, who would you choose? Hm... maybe my friend Alon. I've mentioned I feel like a million times that she is like, ethereal with how gorgeous she is. Have you ever seen someone get a tattoo done? If so, what was it? Did they cry or were they in a lot of pain? Yeah; it was a watercolor feather with "ohana" written below it. She didn't cry at all, but she grit her teeth a few times. Do you have anything you couldn’t go a day without? Some form of technology. Have you ever gotten caught doing something illegal? No. What’s your favorite flavor of Vitamin Water? I don't even think I've ever tried it. Is there someone you wanna date right now? Yeah. What first attracted you to the last person you kissed? If we're talking the very first, our vast similar interests. How many brothers does your father have? None. Does your best friend have any tattoos? No. Do you like Ben + Jerry’s? Yep. Man, I want their Phish Food ice cream now. Would you ever wish to be the opposite sex? Nah. Do you think you’re attractive? Nope. What is your favorite card game to play? Magic: The Gathering. I really miss my PS3 where I had Duel of the Planeswalkers installed on it, it was really fun. Do you own a globe? I don't think we still do. What is your favorite wild cat? Perhaps clouded leopards. If your bedroom had three portals to anywhere, where would they lead? South Africa, Sara's place, and maybe a nice little cabin in the mountains for when I'm feeling a peaceful getaway. You can ask any author one question about their story. What do you ask? I have zero idea. What’s a place you have a strong emotional connection to? The pond behind the local community college. Jason and I took our first prom pictures there. Do you take yoga classes? No, but I'm actually considering it since they offer those at the YMCA Mom and I now go to. What is a decision you’ve made that changed your entire life? To let Jason go. It's pretty great, my PTSD has been less of a bother lately! Have you ever made any money from a side-hustle? Could you consider being paid to take pictures once in a blue moon a "side hustle" when I don't even have a main job? Do you ever wonder what kind of person you’d have turned out to be if a certain event never happened to you? Ugh... it's incredibly painful to wonder how life would be if Jason never left. If you could have anyone’s singing voice, whose would you choose? Adele's or Amy Lee's, probs. What are your top 3 favorite genres of music? Metal, hard rock, alternative. Do you think Mars will be colonized in your lifetime? No. Have you ever been homeless? If so, what led to your homelessness? Technically, yes, because Mom couldn't afford the rent. She, my little sister (who still lived with us at the time), and I each were accepted into the homes of willing, kind people, though. Have you ever been on a ship? No. Who was Van Halen’s better singer - David Lee Roth, or Sammy Hagar? David. Which fictional character has the most memorable quotes? Heath Ledger's Joker is quoted all the time, so probably him. What do you think of the "Healthy At Every Size" movement/philosophy? Before I answer this, I want you to keep in mind that this is coming from someone who is obese, so I would positively love to agree with that for my own self-confidence, but I don't. I believe it's a very dangerous mentality. I think you should cherish your body unconditionally, like it's an amazing machine, but I firmly believe you should have an active interest in becoming what is physically healthy. You couldn't pay me millions to convince me that, say, a 300 lb. person is healthy. What was the name of the first person you ever had a crush on? Why did you like them? I think my first *real* crush was this guy Sebastian my freshman year of high school. I thought he was very sweet, funny, caring, and attractiveness was a bonus. What food will you absolutely not, under any circumstances, eat? Sashimi, caviar, raw eggs... Which famous person would you like to be BFFs with? Bindi Irwin, for one. What kind of natural disaster is most common where you live? Hurricanes. Have you ever had an animal get into your attic? No. Have you ever been bitten so hard that there teeth marks were there after? I mean I've had hickeys before if that's what you're asking. Ever gave one? Oh, I guess you were. Yeah. Do you think its weird if guys wear make-up like eyeliner? Not at all. Would you ever date a disabled person? (Be honest) Yes. Would you rather adopt or have your own child? IF I wanted kids, I'd rather have one myself because I'm well aware I personally need that special connection. Stepkids count, too, because they'd be my partner's and therefore very important for me too. What is the most personal question you have ever been asked? Probably TMI, so here's your fair warning, but I've been asked before if I "touch" myself and I was absolutely repulsed that someone would ask me that. Were you abused by your parents? No. If you’re not straight, who was the first person you came out to? Sara. Were you one of the smartest in your class? Up to finishing high school, modestly, I was. Where did you meet your first crush? Art class my freshman year of high school. Do you ever go places with wet hair? Yeah, idc. Who is your favorite little girl? My niece Aubree. She's such a wonderful girl. Does your best friend have kids? No. If you were pregnant, would you want a boy or a girl? Hypothetically, a girl. What place outside of your own home do you spend the most time at? Um, maybe my older sister's house? Have you ever participated in a medical study? No. Do you have any family members who are cancer survivors? Yes, including my mother. Twice. Are you allergic to any medications? None that I've tried. Do you have any licenses other than your driver's license? I don't even have that. If you’re atheist, would you raise you kids believing in God or not? No; I wouldn't intervene with their own spiritual (or lack thereof) journey. They'd learn what they'd learn and decide themselves what they believe. Do you like reading self-help books? No, I just can't get invested in those. What is your opinion on sex change? If you're unhappy with your body, you're more than free to surgically change that with no judgment from me. Do you have any goals for this summer? If so, what are they? Yes, to lose weight. Can you get a strike at bowling? I have before. There was one occasion where my first go was a strike RIGHT after saying I sucked at bowling, hahaha. Do you ever take pictures of negative moments? Well, I photograph roadkill, and that's one hell of a sad moment. I actually wouldn't mind broadening my horizons of photographing negative moments (with permission of course), because I actually find these very impactful and even builds empathy. I will never, ever forget this one picture I saw sometime of an emaciated boy huddled in the dirt with a vulture close by watching him... like fuck, it made me want to sob. No one should ever have to live like that, especially a child. Would you ever post a picture of yourself crying on social media? No. I know that sounds contradictory to what I just said, I just wouldn't be able to do it myself. Have you ever held a newborn baby? Once, when my last niece was born. I'm terrified of holding them because they're just so fragile. Do you know anyone who has twins? My friend just had triplets. What is your favorite country in Europe? Germany. Are you thriving in your life right now? BOY HOWDY- Do you remember to water plants? I don't keep plants. Name three YouTubers you aspire to be like. 1.) Markiplier in a vast plethora of ways; 2.) Jeffree Star for his incredible work ethic; and 3.) Shane Dawson for his incredible compassion. Yes. I know the controversy, but regardless, he cares a lot about people. Who is your favorite character from Harry Potter? I wouldn't know, given I haven't read the books or seen the movies. Do you watch PewDiePie? Not anymore; his content doesn't interest me anymore. I watched him religiously back in the day when he was a serious let's player, though. Do you have a Steam account? Yes. Have you ever played Five Nights at Freddy’s? No, not personally. I like watching LPs of it and I find the story fascinating, but it's not the kind of game I'd enjoy playing. Have you ever tried Akinator? Yes. I don't think I ever beat it, except maybe once. Are you wearing socks right now? No; unless I'm wearing closed-toe shoes like sneakers, I never do. I hate the feeling of them. Can you twerk? Haven't tried, don't wanna. Do you like dabbing? No, it looks stupid. Do you like fishing? I honestly do think it's fun with all the anticipation and thrill of seeing how big the fish is, however I don't support it anymore unless, like hunting, you genuinely need it for food. The only case where I'd go again was if my dad asked me, because that's always been our bonding experience. Do you have a Spotify account? Yes. Have you heard of Blizzard Entertainment? Well, they're the company behind World of Warcraft, so obviously. Do you like bananas? Yes, but only for a VERY short window of time. I am beyond picky with the ripeness of bananas. Are you addicted to anything? Caffeine and technology. Do you know your phone number? I actually don't. Do you swear in front of children? No.

[allthelittlelostgirlsgrowup]

Love is History

*taps mic* is this thing on? (I stole that from Obama. He was still in office last time I posted my writing). 

So fun thing I did - write an angsty sequel to Love is Fiction. If you’ve never read it, it just got over 300 notes this past week. I figured it was time to dust this off from my drafts and complete it. 

I hope you like it and my voice sounds similiar to the last election year when I put this out. Honestly I’m so different now and I think this captures the changes I’ve gone through and the way I view relationships now opposed to four years ago. 

Love is History

“Art imitates Life right?” Belle closes the folder encasing a rough draft of her first few chapters.

“All good things come to an end.” Emma shrugs as if the concept of him being just a ‘good’ thing ending doesn’t devastate her. He was the best thing.

She thought she’d never write their break up.

“What’s the history?” Belle squints her eyes, nose crinkling as she watches Emma. Belle has been Emma’s ‘Editor’ since college. Now more official. She gets a paycheck, as Emma gets advances from a publishing company that started as a small mom and pop establishment. In the last four years, this little wagon wheel of a company is now a fleet of office buildings all over the US.

“You read book 3: “Wind’s Ally”” Emma leans back in her chair, studying Belle right back. “You know their history.”

Belle keeps her eyes on Emma, relaxing the tension in her face and suppressing a smirk. They’re at a bit of a stalemate here because Emma isn’t sure what more info is needed and Belle isn’t sharing her thoughts at the moment.

“Emma, I knew their history. They finished book 3 in a ‘happily ever after’ kind of way. What underlying issues could have brought them to this point? Why did Alysandra leave?” Emma considers the question. Why did she decide to destroy the happiest relationship she’s ever written? Why would a character who fell madly in love just change their mind? “Maybe, ask yourself why you left.”  

-/-

The sun is setting over the Manhattan skyline when she gets back to her apartment. She doesn’t know where she went after the meeting but her mind just got back to the present and she’s pissed.

Emma flings her keys across the kitchen island, kicking her heels off in a huff before stomping over to her bar cart. She pours his favorite whiskey into the anchor-etched old fashion glasses he got her one Christmas.

“History is a stupid word” she grunts to no one but a tilted glass, muffling the sound as the amber liquid meets her lips a second after. She’s taken up talking to herself these last few months. The first four were spent crying and avoiding her reflection. The loneliness finally set in one night and she made herself her own best friend. So she asks her best friend ‘why did you do it?’ as she feels the tension in her shoulder blades ease. Why? Why did Emma Swan leave Killian Jones seven months ago?

“Wouldn’t we all like to know?”

-/-

The nightmares finally stopped and she no longer wakes with a startle when she finds her bed bare of him. Its been 216 days. She’s cried herself to sleep at least 180. She’s been broken before, boys have left in more ways than one, and she has managed to wake up one day finding herself less damaged than all the others. Today might be that day for the Killian Jones saga.

Today is they announced the upcoming film and casting begins in a few weeks. She knows she needs to finish this novel, but she hasn’t finished much. She barely finishes lunch on most days, barely finishes a thought that isn’t dripping in Killian. It’s been seven months and he is everywhere, in everything. She thought progress was a slowly-operated escalator but she was finally on her way.

And then the congratulation calls come through. Text after text, email, voicemail and she’s sure in a week or two, she’ll get a card from Mary Margaret. She sorts through them looking for something she’ll never find and she has to rewind.

She left him. It wasn’t mutual and it wasn’t obvious. He had no clue. All the calls and texts he was going to send her were sent months ago when he was breaking down in voicemails and begging her to just tell him she was okay.

Congratulations, Emma, you saved him...from ever having to care about you again.

-/-

She doesn’t leave the apartment again until the 245th day. It is easy to stay inside with the modern advances in technology. People will bring literally anything to your front door. Except, maybe inspiration. That she has to go out and find.

She finds herself in Harlem. The Harlem Public Library. She has to get back to her roots. Sure, this isn’t Storybrooke, and no, she’ll probably never meet a pair of eyes as blue coconut as...but her work needs her to find a way to write.

She thinks of his face.

Three hours pass and all she has in a google doc is ‘why?’

-/-

Despite the first failure to launch, she finds she quite likes that library. She’s giving herself a pep talk this time, before she finds herself staring at a blank screen wondering why again.

“I left because I had to.” She looks at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. That’s the only statement she’s made to anyone, herself included. When her friends, her agent, her editor, and her heart ask, she tells them she had to.

She makes her way through her apartment, recounting the moments, hours, days leading up to it. There are very few things her mind makes enough sense to share. Everything else is so convoluted, so tangled up in self-loathing and years of agonizing loneliness, the average person wouldn’t get it. Some days, as she’s matured and healed, she finds even she has trouble understanding it.

There’s not a day that goes by she doesn’t spend half of it feeling nothing but regret. That’s the healthy part of her, the well-adjusted adult who grew from the little lost girl. She’s sane enough to know she threw away the best relationship she’s ever had. She’s sane enough to know she saved him from future hardships with her.

The sound of the empire striking back stirs her from her thoughts. Regina gets the Darth Vader theme as a ringtone so Emma never forgets who really owns her career.

“Hey,” Emma answers as she reaches her apartment door.

“Nice of you to finally answer your phone.” She can hear the glare in Regina’s voice. “You know you pay me to do this right? Not the other way around. Get your money’s worth, why don’t you.” Emma rolls her eyes as she packs her laptop in her messenger bag.

Regina Mills is a fierce woman, as charming as she is aggressive. She can pretty much get anyone to do anything she wants. Emma doesn’t practice in the ways of the force, but she’s certain Regina knows a Jedi mind trick or two, and as her agent, that comes in handy.

What doesn’t come in handy is her tie to Killian. Regina’s husband Robin happens to be Killian’s cousin. Emma avoided Regina’s calls for months after the break-up, afraid she’ll have to answer the same question she’s been asking herself all afternoon. Once she finally started accepting calls again, it seemed Regina had moved on to bigger and better things: A movie deal.

“Right” she sighs. “What’s my money bringing me today?”

“This isn’t money related, so much as a word of warning.” Regina’s tone doesn’t seem as sass-filled as before, so it’s clear she’s not the one wielding the threat. She actually sounds a bit sympathetic. “Belle and I pulled straws to see who got to break this to you, and I, unfortunately, pulled short this time around.”

“There’s a point here.” Emma urges, feeling ill-fated all of a sudden.

“Killian just moved to NYC.” Like ripping off a band-aid. Emma braces herself for pain, but is met with an absence of feeling altogether. Her knees buckle and she finds purchase against her kitchen island. “Emma?”

“When?” She whispers.

“Just a couple of weeks. He took a job with the NYC public libraries, he’s actually doing really well and has just approached Belle with an idea to get the youth excited about writing. There’s a chance you’ll run into him at the office, so I just...we both thought a heads up was necessary.”

“Which library?” because Fate is a nosy bitch and has no business showing up and guiding her to the man she ran from.

“Emma?”

“Which library”

“I think...if I recall correctly, his home base is in  Harlem.”

“I’ll call you back.”

-/-

She thought about leaving the country. At the very least, the state. She is overwhelmed, without a question just so damn overwhelmed. She has gotten so used to tears these days, she’s a little shocked she didn’t cry the minute she heard his name.

Her body had other ideas, because although she definitely meant to get on a train going the opposite direction, she found herself in Harlem 25 minutes later.

She sits in the middle of the library at an open table, clickity clacking as loudly as she can. Part of her really believes that maybe if she saw him, she’d remember why she left.

Another part is certain that masochism is her new favorite hobby.

He never appears.

-/- “Hey” Emma answers her phone going off for the eighth time today.

“Emma?” Belle sounds more relieved than usual. “Where have you been, I’ve been calling non-stop since 3.” Emma rolls her neck to view the time on the DVR.

7:45 pm

“Sorry, I’ve been reading all day.” she hasn’t talked to anyone for another two weeks. She does this far too often to still have a support system. Emma’s not sure she’d pour the same amount of effort into anyone who went radio silent every other week.

“We had a meeting at 2:30.”

“Sorry.” She shrugs, because honestly, nothing even matters.

“I’m coming over,” Belle says decidedly.

“No, Belle, you don’t have to do that.” Emma regrets answering on the eighth attempt. “Let’s reschedule.”

“We just did, I’ll see you in thirty minutes. Open the door.” Sure, she’s a small, sweet, meek-looking woman, but what most people don’t know about Belle is she could slay dragons with pure determination alone. In a battle of wills, she's even got Regina beat.

Emma peels herself off the sofa for the first time since noon, snuggie falling to the floor as she heads for the shower. If Bella can make the journey to her apartment, Emma can at least shower. Sure enough, 30 minutes later she’s greeting Belle at the door, a pizza in hand.

“Are you okay?” She sets the pizza on the kitchen island and wraps Emma in a hug. Emma tries to pull her head far enough to keep her hair from wetting Belle.

“Yeah, just...the creative process. Ya know.” Emma trails off as the hug ends. Of course, she’s not okay. ‘Okay’ people don’t stop answering their phones for weeks, they don’t stare at blank pages until their vision blurs. They don’t behave this way. This was her first shower in days.

“He was in the office yesterday,” Belle says after a long silence, just a full 3 minutes of her studying Emma from head to toe. Do her eyes just scream ‘Killian’ every time someone looks at her. “He said he called to congratulate you on the screenplay adaptation.”

“No, he didn’t.” She’s quick to dismiss. She scoured her missed calls for days looking for his name, he never called.

“How would you know, you never answer your phone, Emma.” She sits on a counter stool, tugging Emma to join her. “He’s going to be in every day next week, and I think…”

“No.” Emma cuts her off.

“Let me finish.” Belle opens the pizza box, sliding it toward Emma. “I think you should take a vacation. Get out of the city for a while, maybe visit Storybrooke, since you know he’s not there to run into.” Emma grabs a slice of pizza, not sure when she last ate but too preoccupied with the idea of leaving the city for a while. She ran to NYC. Now she’s running back to Storybrooke. Is he just going to chase her back and forth?

“Did he say anything else about me?” she hates the desperation gnawing at her.

“He asked me why…” Belle sighs “I told him we’ll all find out in book four.”

-/-

God only knows what compelled her to do the exact opposite of what Belle suggested and show up at the publisher’s office. Probably the same thing that led her to the Harlem library a few weeks ago. She bought a new outfit. She realizes she’s barely even worn jeans over the last eight months, and now she’s in a dress and heels like she has an interview to work here. She’s wearing makeup and perfume. She’s trying her best to cover up and signs of the wreck she’s been for months.

The office seems busier than it has ever been, many new, young faces bustling about. She keeps her features calm as she scans every inch of every room she enters for him.

“Emma?” Belle is hurried as she crosses the main floor to meet her. “What are you doing here?”

“I know.” Emma returns the hushed tone Belle is using. “I reworked some chapters, delayed the breakup, and gave more of Aly’s history.” and Belle nods, but is evidently not listening.

“He’s here.” Belle looks almost frightened. “So if you want to reconsider, I would do it now. Otherwise…”

“Swan?” no one calls her Swan. She’s paralyzed. What did she think was going to happen? How did she think she was going to react? When she paced around her apartment for three hours this morning, did she think she was going to just be okay? He would be here, he would see her and suddenly everything would be okay? “Emma…” He tries softer, less shocked, more timid.

This is the moment. In every love story, angst finds its way in, rips the reader’s heart out and although they’ve been bleeding for chapters now, they can feel nothing at this moment. Time is still, the lights are dim, and all we see is Emma and him.

He looks like himself, just more professional. He’s in well-fitted gray slacks, a navy dress shirt, his hair is longer though. He’s got more scruff on his neck than normal. His eyes are too blue, truly, for anyone to notice another inch of him. They stare at her, the same shade that’s been haunting her dreams, and she still struggles to define it. Everything. They’ve always been everything, no matter if it’s more cotton candy than blue coconut.

“Killian.” She swallows. Her throat makes this awkward gurgling sound and she wants to melt into the floor. Why is she here?

It’s suddenly so quiet but so loud. She can hear her heart hammering in her eardrums. No one says anything for a long stretch of time, maybe 2 seconds, maybe 3 hours, she can’t be sure. She just knows there is so much said in the silence.

“How are you?” She asks without thought. The look on his face is devastating.

“Sorry?” He mocks a laugh. “How am I?”

She’s not completely delusional. This is a thing humans say to one another, no? Why does it feel so foreign all at once, like she’s attempting English for the first time with a local?

“Killian” she sighs, releasing the most dizzying breath.

“I’m good” he grits, suddenly covered in constrained anger. “And you?”

And now they are strangers, all dressed up and nothing to talk about.

“Me?” Her tongue drags along her lower lip to buy time. “Good.” She nods.

“I’m just pleased everyone is good.” Belle smiles sweetly. “Now, Killian and I have a brief meeting, and afterward, if you’re still available, we can go over your rewrite.”

An exit strategy. This is quite possibly the only thing she could have hoped for.

“Swan was a bright young writer once” Killian grins, wickedly. “Why don’t you attend the meeting. We’re talking about a youth writing program.” He’s obviously bating her. How dare she show up on a day he’s here and act like she didn’t destroy him…

“Sure” she agrees. Partly because she’s too stubborn to back down from a challenge, and mainly because she did destroy him and there’s that whole thing about masochism she recently discovered about herself.

Belle looks beside herself. Her eyes narrow and she puffs her chest for a moment before leading them to a meeting space. Two more individuals join them, laptops ready to jot down notes and ideas. Her meetings are only ever with Belle so, for Emma, this seems like red carpet treatment.

He has amazing ideas. He loves the idea of bringing an artistic outlet to the children of Harlem. He was always so much more than a shelfer. He was always a dreamer, with these brilliant, compassionate ideas for helping everyone feel less alone, more encouraged.

She was always a fence, holding him back from the best parts of himself.

-/-

When the meeting concludes, Belle graciously thanks Killian for coming, makes promises of action, and attempts to say goodbye.

Killian, as good-natured and kind as he can be, has always had a persistently obnoxious side. He invites himself to the next meeting.

“This is only fair, Swan.” he smiles, though his eyes are full of darkness.

They regroup in Belle’s office after a bathroom break.

As much as Emma is dying on the inside, Belle looks absolutely disturbed by this. She can’t imagine the discomfort in being the third wheel of a breakup reunion.

“So...when we uh, when we left off, you were telling me why they broke up.” Belle sighs, knowing how awful this is. Emma smiles, hoping it lets her off the hook a little. After all, Belle told her to leave town. Emma decided to torture herself.

“Right.” Emma takes a large breath in, holding it while she pulls out her folder. Only releasing once its in Belle’s hands. Killian is studying her like he has a Chemistry final to take tomorrow and she’s the only hope. “Alysandra left Atlas for his…” She’s said it to herself. She’s made hints to others, but Killian has never had a clue. “For his own good. She’s derailed him from his journey. She’s made him less of a pirate, more of a…”

“More of a what?” Killian’s breath is sharp as it floods in through his nose and out through his mouth. “What did she do to him?”

“She reduced him to a caregiver,” Belle answers from what’s written in the text. “Alysandra took over the journey of discovery. She was suddenly the main character.” Belle looks up at Emma with a look she’d only be able to classify as “delayed understanding.”

“In a story about Atlas, Aly becomes the focus. Everything he does, he does for her.” Emma can feel herself losing composure, eyes stinging with tears, throat drier than a desert. Somehow, someway, she finds her way to Killian’s eyes. “He wasn’t living for himself anymore. He had no purpose but to love her. And it was destroying everything.”

She’s not sure if it’s understanding she expects, or maybe gratitude, for saving him from the needy monster that she is. She knows neither is what she received.

“Did you ask Atlas, perhaps… perhaps that’s what made him happiest?” Killian’s eyes are drilling into her like nails, pinning her against a wall.

She is less.

Speechless, motionless, hopeless…

Less sure she did the right thing. Less firm on her decision. Just so much less than she was the day before.

There’s movement after a long pause, not by her, but Belle, gently setting the files down and moving to leave them alone.

“Aly is an orphan” Emma explains and she can see his head start to shake, but she has to be firm. “Listen. She is not the strong-willed, rebel without a cause she pretends to be. Some days the sadness from being alone for so long stunts her. She spends hours upon hours laying awake wishing she could sleep forever. She can be a wreck, a mess, an impossible woman to love.”

Does it make it easier to talk about herself as if she’s someone else? She’s been doing it for so long, all the catharsis from writing herself into stories, just to unpack the things that plague her? Maybe she can have sympathy for anyone but her, maybe its the only way she can recognize how her behavior impacts others. Maybe the book is why she left in the first place.

“You make it impossible to love you, Emma.” She’s never seen his jaw trembling like this before. “And against all odds, through resilience and patience, I’ve found a way to do the bloody impossible. You can cover it up in characters you’ve based off of us, but this isn’t fiction. I was real. What we had...what we had was real. It wasn’t easy, but when you finally let me in, it was simple. We were happy.”

“You were happy?” She brushes tears from her cheeks as she shakes her head in disagreement. “Was it simple? To come home and find I hadn’t moved from my spot on the couch? Was that the ideal relationship you dreamt of, to see all of your energy, love, and time wasted on someone who couldn’t get themselves off the couch?”

“So you got yourself off the couch now.” Killian stands, eyes frantically scanning Emma from head to toe. “Well done, it only took the motivation of ending a relationship to do it.”

“I did it for you.” and she believes that, with everything in her, she left for his own good.

“Did you now?” He seems so out of breath for standing still. “Or could you have possibly woken up one day and realized the weight of a relationship was what was pinning you to the couch. Was it that Atlas cared for Aly too much, or was it the expectation that Aly would have cared for him in return? Was breaking my heart easier than just trusting me with yours?”

And all at once in the middle of the ocean, she can see Aly waking up all alone in the captain’s quarters, searching the whole damn ship for a man who did what the men she loves always do.

“Maybe there were days you thought I was miserable” he kneels before her as the ocean finds its way to this office. His eyes are ocean blue, always changing hues depending on if the sun is shining, or a storm is brewing or they’re in the deep. “But you weren’t afraid I’d die that way, always miserable, no...some part of you thought I’d leave before I let that happen. That’s the orphan I loved. You were never a mess. You were a survivalist.”

So maybe that’s their story. Aly watched Atlas change his life for her, and realized he’s going to live to regret it. Did the last seven months hurt less because it was her choice? If he would have pulled the trigger, would the bullet do that much more damage?

“I would have died miserable.”

-/-

The history she’s writing is hers and hers alone. When she was younger, when her heart was stolen and broken, when she always ended up alone. She was writing an escape plan.

This was the first time she was the one who left, and to quell the guilt of being her own worst nightmare, she forced herself to believe she was doing it for him. How many people have left her for her own good? How many times did she think that they were doing her a favor?

She’s been sitting motionless for who knows how long when Belle comes back. Killian is long gone but his words linger like those dizzy stars after a concussion. Her head is throbbing trying to make sense of it. This wasn’t just seven months spent believing the lie. Now she’s searching for the truth.

She gets anxious in monotony, like a stench in stagnant water, she is repulsed by the concept. She’s never wanted to do the same thing every day. She doesn’t want a picket fence, she wants…She does like a cute cottagey feel with a nice picket fence, she could…she could deal with a picket fence.

She definitely does not want a husband though, or to be barefoot and pregnant, or…

There were times, she’d look at him fresh out of the shower, or in his sleep and he’d look so much younger, she’d wonder what their kids would look like. There have been times she’s searched her fingers as they moved across her keyboard and realized her ring finger would look nice with a natural stone set in some brass band. It was never anything he did that scared her. It was that she thought about more. The concept of more scared her, and the fact that she was greedy and foolish enough to want it.

Four years is a long time to not talk about marriage, but after they moved past her initial anxiety attacks over having a boyfriend, he never really pushed for much again. Moving in together was her idea. He kept enough stuff at her place and with Elsa moving abroad, it made sense to do it. That’s as far as she was going to take it. Another few years piled up and she was busy writing and he was busy being supportive of that, she recognized she was his sun. When he made sure she ate during the weeks she barely left the house, when he kept her house plants alive, when he did her laundry, reminded her to shower, and told her he’s proud of her too often to quantify, she knew she was his ship. An inanimate object, something someone can love so much and not receive the love back in return, and sure, he’s as silly as a pirate to believe a ship that holds itself together while he’s sailing on her loves him, and that’s just her role.

Hold yourself together Emma, that’s always been your role.

She started to get bitter and insecure. What is she contributing to this relationship? How is she making him any better? Has he even written many songs since they moved in together, has she gone to see him perform, has he performed? Some days she was so enthralled in her writing, she didn’t realize he wasn’t home all day. It was his day off and he was gone for longer than a workday. He could have been having an affair for all she knew. For all he did, he deserved to be having an affair, falling in love with someone who would be there for him, encouraging his dreams, and dedicating herself to him.

After that day, she started her drafts. Killian, you’re so much more than I deserved…Or Killian, your life paused the day you met me. And finally, after months, she left him with I need this to be over.

She’s a writer, a published author, an English major and an avid reader yet, through years and years of literature and just terrible romcoms, she never learned how to break up with someone. She never knew the words to say to him, so she said nothing. He called for three-five days, she’s not sure as she was in a sobbing-induced coma.  He sent texts, he sent freaking carrier pigeons, and she locked herself in a hotel room with her laptop and her broken heart. Finally, an email came in.

Emma, I’ve moved out. Everything I’ve left is yours…among the worn t-shirts you liked to sleep in and the novels we’ve collected over the years is my heart. Goodbye Love.

“Emma,” Belle brings her back to the present after a very long, painful trip into her past. “Are you okay?”

Why is that word even used to describe how ‘good’ something or someone is?

“No.” She glances over at Belle, she thinks to ask if she talked to him in the hall after he left, if he said anything, if he seemed ‘Okay’ himself but she settles back to a business mindset. Work is the only constant. “Aly left because she didn’t want to get left again.”

“And that’s how it ends?” Belle hands her the folder back. “You can do better.”

-/-

“The concept of fiction isn’t a lack of reality, it just hasn’t happened exactly that way yet.”

She hears his voice cascading down the ramp she’s sitting at the bottom of. It's been a week since Belle’s meeting and she made her way back to the library. Back to their roots. There’s so much history in this building, but the history she’s looking for lives within her. There’s a group of teenagers huddled together like they’re on a tour. Her fingers shake as she looks back down at her laptop.

“Don’t be afraid to use your own daily vernacular. It’s just as likely as any well-researched, powered by thesaurus dialogue, but it will come to you much more easily. That’s your voice.”

His voice sounds increasingly close. She wants to look but if they lock eyes now, while he’s busy, she’s back to being the center of attention. Why did she come here? Does she want to get back to being the center of his attention?

“Swan?” her stomach flips violently. She really didn’t think this through. Her neck trembles as she cranes to look up at him. “Hi.” He clears his throat, the group of teenagers studying them closely from behind him.

“Hi” she breathes. “Uhm…”

“Do you want to meet my junior author group?” He cuts in quickly.

“Hi.” She repeats, only this time her eyes travel across the young faces. “I’m Emma.”

“Emma Swan?” A young girl in the back pipes up. “You write Cap Zeph.” ‘Cap Zeph’ is a very popular Tumblr tag, Emma’s been told. She is now a mild-day D list celebrity with the news of the screenplay adaptation. She never published under her real name until this one, Killian’s idea.

“That I do.” Emma feigns a smile.

“Emma Swan” Killian begins, chest swelling “came up with the idea in a small town library.”

“Really?” another girl with wavy blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders asks.

“Yes, and Killian Jones worked there. He’s…evidently the inspiration. Hair as dark as night, eyes as blue as the sea he sails upon.”  Every girl and one boy in the group glance at Killian, amorously. Still handsome as ever. He looks down, scratching behind his ear and chuckling dryly.  She wonders if his throat burns the same way her eyes do or if this feels so natural he’s happy to fall back into it.

“Why don’t you all find some books to research personal voice from in the YA section, hmm?” He dismisses the group quickly. They share assuming glances and move to leave in pairs, surely gossiping on the way.

Being alone again is terrifying. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here. Why does she always go looking for him? What does she want? How can they come out of this okay? What is okay?

“What brings you?” Killian starts. He isn’t looking anywhere but her and the look in his eyes leaves frost on her flesh. His expression is so blank. She has no idea if he even wants her here after their last conversation.

“I was just looking for inspiration.” He nods.

“There are study rooms.” He adds, motioning in the direction she may find them. “My office is actually at a different location, or I’d…suggest…”

“Do you hate me?” it comes out without warning.

“No.” He winces. She’s not sure if it’s because he’s lying or because he wishes he were lying.

“Why not?” She asks. He flinches.

“Christ, Swan. Stop it.” He grabs a seat across from her at the small bistro-style table she’s been working on. She closes her laptop to remove barriers between them. “I hated myself for a while. I thought maybe I should have never lost sight of who you were. You’ve always been guarded. I thought I had broken down some of your walls. I should have never assumed I tore them all down.”

This voice within her tells her that it's no man’s job to do the work for her. Her walls are her own to remove.

“What about your walls?” Emma counters. She didn’t come for an argument, but Killian had trauma, he was damaged in theory, but always presented himself as such a well-adjusted, forgiving, kind, loving man. “Maybe you had to go brick by brick, but you knew they were there. I just watched you for years never act like anything troubled you.”

He laughs, loudly.

She’s startled more that she laughs in return than questions it.

“Emma, my love...of course I was troubled. I still am. I drink far too much and try to solve all of my problems myself without anyone’s help.” He’s still smiling as he confesses.”Hell, I didn’t tell anyone we broke up for months and it wasn’t because I thought you were coming back. I just knew I wasn’t going to let anyone worry about me.”

“You’re not troubled” she shakes her head but thinks back to every time he came home frustrated and sealed himself up before she could get a good glimpse of it. “Are you?”

“I spent an entire day at the marina grieving my dead brother, over a decade after losing him. Every time I went to leave and come home to you, I’d get upset again. I used to stay away until I could pull myself together.” His smile slips into something dark and Emma realizes all the ways they failed at communicating. “I loved you just enough to only show you my best parts. I never trusted our love enough to show you everything. And it’s not because you were sad every now and then.”

And she sees the orphan in him the moment she realizes being left behind were his worst fears, too.

“You thought I’d leave…”

“I think the term is ‘best-laid plans.’” His smile is back “Convince an author to fall in love with you, live forever. Only, with my luck, I get to read my heart get broken in the exact same way whenever I’d like. I was looking forward to your book, knowing I’d get to see us in love again.” She considers the part about him looking forward to her book.

“It’s as much my book as yours.” She means that. When she first wrote the Cap Zeph short stories, she had no plan of publishing. Killian pushed for her to immortalize this, to believe in herself and sell it. When the first went well, he convinced her to meet with Regina. “I mean, you are the entire series, after all.” He shakes his head and sighs.

She doesn’t have a response and the seconds tick by. It only takes a few before they reach an awkward silence where one person makes an excuse to leave. And then when do they see each other again?

“I should get back to my writers.” He moves to stand and she wants to jump up, but she doesn’t know what words follow that. She writes fiction. It's why this book has been so damn difficult. Writing their personalities into a fantasy of pirates and fairies, that's one thing. Writing history is another. She can build on what has already happened. This in-the-moment dichotomy, will they? Won’t they? Can they make it work? It’s disturbing.

He’s the quick thinker. Always a come-back, a pun, a literary quote…

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you…” She opens her laptop nonchalantly, as if it won’t wound her for him to leave. “...a boy who loves you.”

Among the many novels they shared, “The Book Thief” was one of Killian’s most treasured.

He stares at her with wonder glazing his face. “If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.”

Maybe she’d burn every book in this library, for a chance to experience falling in love with Killian all over again, as if it weren’t a moment in history.

The screenplay would read ‘They share a look of longing’ and she’s not sure that’s how she’d describe it. ‘Longing’ seems more cliche and not nearly as descriptive as her quickening pulse would use.

This feels like a pivotal moment where she realizes that they don’t necessarily have to not be in love anymore. They could take a slow pace, like windchimes waiting for a breeze to bring them together. That’s all a Zephyr is.

“My number hasn’t changed.”

-/-

His number has. She gets a text around 1am. Are you up? It's odd, because Killian isn’t a booty-call kind of guy, but who knows what a breakup can do to a man.

I rarely sleep before 2. Her phone rings moments later.

“Hello?” her tone sounds like a question, but she knows it’s him.

“Swan, it’s Killian.”

“Yes, Grandpa, I’m aware.” She can’t help but chuckle. Almost too elated that he’s on the other end. She can hear him laugh on the other end.

“Do you remember the first time we started speaking on the phone? You wouldn’t give me your number until maybe the 18th date.” She didn’t trust herself then. They took things so slowly.

“You know I like a clean getaway.” Is it too soon to joke about always having one foot out the door?

“What's the escape plan this time?”  

“Probably the West Coast since you chased me here”

“I did not!” His laugh is vibrating against her ribs, setting the tempo for her heart.

Could it be easy all over again? One quote and he’s calling her? One call and they go see a movie? One date and…

And thinking about the end is how she got there, isn’t it?

“Did you plan on seeing me again? Knowing you were moving here?”

“Of course. I planned on seeing you no matter where I lived...I prepared for you to come into focus and the rest of my world to blur.” He sighs and she can hear his mattress settle as he moves. “I didn’t plan on seeing you in my library again.”

“Where else would I get inspiration. You’re my muse.”

They talk til 4am. She’s rethought every word she’s said these last seven months. She rarely moves without tension tugging at the back of her neck. Her thoughts are never clear and simple, not since she left. And here, in the darkness of her bedroom, with nothing but a familiar voice on the other end, she hasn’t second-guessed a word.

-/- She’s not sure if she should call it a date. He invites her to a scholarship meeting and sure, they’re dressed up, but because it's a business meeting. He talks to the team, Belle is in attendance, and she barely says a word.

But he asks her out for drinks afterward and suddenly she’s all he’s focused on, laughing about old times, discussing the interesting twist in literature they’ve both read recently. She asks him if he’s written any songs and he beams brightly when he tells her ‘only recently, Love.’

Sometimes love is familiar, like a book you’ve read a dozen times. There’s comfort in knowing everything and loving it anyway.

-/-

“Are you dating him?” Belle watches her from the doorway as Killian moves down the hall to his meeting. They came to the office together this time, maybe a peck on the cheek occurred before his departure, and maybe Belle witnessed it.

“I don’t know.” Emma tries not to think logistically about what’s going on. It’s been 4 weeks, she’s written 8 chapters and Aly is about to find Atlas again. “For the first time since I started, I know how book 4 will end.”

They go over the recent chapters and Belle seems subtly impressed but she’s holding back. Emma knows it's Killian-related. She just knows she can’t pry without being pried open in return.

“You don’t like it?”

“No, it's beautiful. From tragedy to triumph is the Captain Zephyr way.” Belle hands the work back to Emma with a sad smile. “What makes it different this time? True love always finds its way back to one another, but how do we know they won’t split up again?” Emma knows this isn’t about the novel. They haven’t yet gotten back together to split up.

Does she know they’ll never separate again? Of course not. Killian is dedicated, devoted like a priest to the cloth. She is very aware that his heart is not yet healed, but eager to love her all over again. A few dates and late-night phone calls don’t make forever a promise anyone could keep.

“We don’t.”

-/- He’s walking her home after another fun night at a bar near her apartment. They’ve been casually seeing each other but nothing more than a kiss on the cheek or a hug goodnight has occurred. They get to her building in record time, too preoccupied by the conversation on who in Hollywood would make a handsome Captain Zeph. “Johnny Depp doesn’t have blue eyes.” Emma laughs. “You can’t just pick the most popular actors, and he’s already a pirate in another franchise.” They’re at the doors of her building and his eyes are boring into her. “Do you want to come up?”

And maybe it's because they haven’t had a real kiss in what’s very close to being a year now, but he seems almost nervous.

“I’m afraid I miss you too much.” he scratches behind his ear and looks down the road. When he looks back at her he seems shy.

“Chris Wood,” she comments. She liked him on Supergirl. “Come upstairs.”

It's the look on his face when he studies her apartment that makes her remember they broke up. As if she had forgotten months of trying to hold herself together, he reminds her that she broke him when his face floods with that loneliness.

“Killian...”

“This is a very nice place you have.” his eyes are darting from one corner to the next, lingering on the most significant differences. “So ‘New York’ it's almost as if you’ve never lived anywhere else.”

“Your apartment isn’t ‘New York?’” it's so weird that they’ve never seen each other's place when they’ve seen each other's souls.

“It’s just a place to lay my head.” He glances back at her with something almost accusatory when he says “You’ve gone ahead and made yourself a home.” And it has never felt like that, not once, when she was hiding away, when she would run home to it.

This place, this city has always been a foster home she feels like she’ll get kicked out of if she gets too comfortable. It wasn’t like their home together. Their home felt like roots. Here she feels like an implant that won’t take to the soil.

“The designer furnishings don’t mean shit to me.” Emma moves to the bookshelf, all new and shiny but it's just a box to keep what matters most. “Only what I’ve come here with is all I care to take. She pulls out a few books, “Wuthering Heights,” “The Book Thief,” and “Emma.” She hands them to him knowing they were always his.

“I wanted you to keep them.” He starts to give them back when she waves her hand.

“What do you need to not resent this place? To know I have everything you left tucked away in all these new places?” she motions for him to follow her to the bedroom and he slowly drifts behind, setting the novels on the coffee table. Her bed is covered in pillows dressed in his t-shirts instead of pillowcases. She keeps his cologne on the bedside table as if it were some expensive aromatherapy pillow spray. The blanket Granny from the local diner in Storybrooke made them lay at the foot of the bed, an anchor crocheted into the loops.

“I only drink whiskey you like. I only sleep in your t-shirts.” she sits on her bed, reaching for his hand to pull him down with her. “I don’t know what we are, and I can’t promise you I’m not a tragedy waiting to happen. I just know that I haven’t been able to erase an inch of you.”

He kisses her then. It's not on her terms, and he has only ever waited for everything to be on her terms. So when he pulls her in, hand cupping the back of her head, mouth open and adventurous, she gasps.

His other arm wraps around her waist, pulling her closer to him, her hands pressed flat against his chest as his tongue enters her mouth with desperation. She fists his shirt in her hands, pressing even closer to him as her tongue reacts in kind. It has been the longest year without him and he’s kissing her like they’re running out of time.

All at once they’re falling as he lays her down on her back, continuing to claim her mouth as his property. Her hands start moving, tugging and fumbling with buttons and zippers and just much too much fabric for her liking. When she moves for his briefs he tugs back from her lips.

“Is this what you want?” Her response is to slip her dress over her head. Any questions to follow are puffed out in a husky tone against her ear.

Sometimes love is erotica, so she catalogs every second of it because nothing has ever happened quite like this before.

-/-

They spend the next few months together and she bangs out the rest of the book in record time. Regina and Belle throw her a submission party. She dodges questions about their future and tries to focus on the book.

“So Aly and Atlas together again,” Robin questions her as Killian returns with a drink for the both of them. She knows he’s not talking about the story. Killian has been very careful to not assume much about their status. Both of them have just stuck to ‘seeing where it goes.��

But it's not like they just met six months ago. They have history, they have four years of standing together at parties and being a couple. Do they have the luxury of casually dating? If all happiness is fleeting, do they dive face-first in it or wade in the shallow end.

“I love Killian.” She says firmly. It’s never not been true from the moment she realized it, in a foreign library miles and miles away from home. He is not easily erased, and it has become glaringly obvious it will only destroy her to try. “I always have and I always will.” Killian’s eyes have never been so doe-like. She’s never been so bold.

“I…” Robin’s face flushes, certainly not expecting her to speak so proudly.

“And I love Emma, if it isn’t ardently clear. She’s everything to me and I’m happy just to exist in her life.” He raises his whiskey to her and she follows suit like a gentlemen’s agreement has just been formed: To love one another without concern of what it means. As she takes a sip she realizes what everything means. He hasn’t pushed aside his dreams in the slightest this go around. He’s been focused and driven, ambitious and busy. Somehow, he’s still considering her ‘everything.’ Maybe what she thought was sacrifice all that time ago was really just love.

So they stay in love.

-/-

Another year goes by and the first film is set to release. Although Emma and Killian still pay rent at their separate apartments, they spend every night together. Sometimes it's downtown in Killian’s studio, and other nights it's in the heart of the city at Emma’s. Commitment isn’t measured by who gave what up. It has shifted to who stays. They both do, and every day they make the decision to stay, when it's 5 months since Killian has slept alone or 10 months since Emma had dinner without him. They stay together with one promise in mind. They love each other. And for as long as Love is Present, they will choose each other.

Love is History

“Art imitates Life right?” Belle closes the folder encasing a rough draft of her first few chapters. 

“All good things come to an end.” Emma shrugs as if the concept of him being just a ‘good’ thing ending doesn’t devastate her. He was the best thing. 

She thought she’d never write their break up. 

“What’s the history?” Belle squints her eyes, nose crinkling as she watches Emma. Belle has been Emma’s ‘Editor’ since college. Now more official. She gets a paycheck, as Emma gets advances from a publishing company that started as a small mom and pop establishment. In the last four years, this little wagon wheel of a company is now a fleet of office buildings all over the US. 

“You read book 3: “Wind’s Ally”” Emma leans back in her chair, studying Belle right back. “You know their history.”

Belle keeps her eyes on Emma, relaxing the tension in her face and suppressing a smirk. They’re at a bit of a stalemate here because Emma isn’t sure what more info is needed and Belle isn’t sharing her thoughts at the moment. 

“Emma, I knew their history. They finished book 3 in a ‘happily ever after’ kind of way. What underlying issues could have brought them to this point? Why did Alysandra leave?” Emma considers the question. Why did she decide to destroy the happiest relationship she’s ever written? Why would a character who fell madly in love just change their mind? “Maybe, ask yourself why you left.”  

-/- 

The sun is setting over the Manhattan skyline when she gets back to her apartment. She doesn’t know where she went after the meeting but her mind just got back to the present and she’s pissed. 

Emma flings her keys across the kitchen island, kicking her heels off in a huff before stomping over to her bar cart. She pours his favorite whiskey into the anchor-etched old fashion glasses he got her one Christmas. 

“History is a stupid word” she grunts to no one but a tilted glass, muffling the sound as the amber liquid meets her lips a second after. She’s taken up talking to herself these last few months. The first four were spent crying and avoiding her reflection. The loneliness finally set in one night and she made herself her own best friend. So she asks her best friend ‘why did you do it?’ as she feels the tension in her shoulder blades ease. Why? Why did Emma Swan leave Killian Jones seven months ago?

“Wouldn’t we all like to know?”

 -/-

The nightmares finally stopped and she no longer wakes with a startle when she finds her bed bare of him. Its been 216 days. She’s cried herself to sleep at least 180. She’s been broken before, boys have left in more ways than one, and she has managed to wake up one day finding herself less damaged than all the others. Today might be that day for the Killian Jones saga. 

Today is they announced the upcoming film and casting begins in a few weeks. She knows she needs to finish this novel, but she hasn’t finished much. She barely finishes lunch on most days, barely finishes a thought that isn’t dripping in Killian. It’s been seven months and he is everywhere, in everything. She thought progress was a slowly-operated escalator but she was finally on her way.

And then the congratulation calls come through. Text after text, email, voicemail and she’s sure in a week or two, she’ll get a card from Mary Margaret. She sorts through them looking for something she’ll never find and she has to rewind. 

She left him. It wasn’t mutual and it wasn’t obvious. He had no clue. All the calls and texts he was going to send her were sent months ago when he was breaking down in voicemails and begging her to just tell him she was okay. 

Congratulations, Emma, you saved him...from ever having to care about you again.

-/-

She doesn’t leave the apartment again until the 245th day. It is easy to stay inside with the modern advances in technology. People will bring literally anything to your front door. Except, maybe inspiration. That she has to go out and find. 

She finds herself in Harlem. The Harlem Public Library. She has to get back to her roots. Sure, this isn’t Storybrooke, and no, she’ll probably never meet a pair of eyes as blue coconut as...but her work needs her to find a way to write.

She thinks of his face. 

Three hours pass and all she has in a google doc is ‘why?’

-/-

Despite the first failure to launch, she finds she quite likes that library. She’s giving herself a pep talk this time, before she finds herself staring at a blank screen wondering why again. 

“I left because I had to.” She looks at her reflection in her bathroom mirror. That’s the only statement she’s made to anyone, herself included. When her friends, her agent, her editor, and her heart ask, she tells them she had to. 

She makes her way through her apartment, recounting the moments, hours, days leading up to it. There are very few things her mind makes enough sense to share. Everything else is so convoluted, so tangled up in self-loathing and years of agonizing loneliness, the average person wouldn’t get it. Some days, as she’s matured and healed, she finds even she has trouble understanding it.

There’s not a day that goes by she doesn’t spend half of it feeling nothing but regret. That’s the healthy part of her, the well-adjusted adult who grew from the little lost girl. She’s sane enough to know she threw away the best relationship she’s ever had. She’s sane enough to know she saved him from future hardships with her. 

The sound of the empire striking back stirs her from her thoughts. Regina gets the Darth Vader theme as a ringtone so Emma never forgets who really owns her career. 

“Hey,” Emma answers as she reaches her apartment door.

“Nice of you to finally answer your phone.” She can hear the glare in Regina’s voice. “You know you pay me to do this right? Not the other way around. Get your money’s worth, why don’t you.” Emma rolls her eyes as she packs her laptop in her messenger bag.

Regina Mills is a fierce woman, as charming as she is aggressive. She can pretty much get anyone to do anything she wants. Emma doesn’t practice in the ways of the force, but she’s certain Regina knows a Jedi mind trick or two, and as her agent, that comes in handy. 

What doesn’t come in handy is her tie to Killian. Regina’s husband Robin happens to be Killian’s cousin. Emma avoided Regina’s calls for months after the break-up, afraid she’ll have to answer the same question she’s been asking herself all afternoon. Once she finally started accepting calls again, it seemed Regina had moved on to bigger and better things: A movie deal. 

“Right” she sighs. “What’s my money bringing me today?” 

“This isn’t money related, so much as a word of warning.” Regina’s tone doesn’t seem as sass-filled as before, so it’s clear she’s not the one wielding the threat. She actually sounds a bit sympathetic. “Belle and I pulled straws to see who got to break this to you, and I, unfortunately, pulled short this time around.”

“There’s a point here.” Emma urges, feeling ill-fated all of a sudden. 

“Killian just moved to NYC.” Like ripping off a band-aid. Emma braces herself for pain, but is met with an absence of feeling altogether. Her knees buckle and she finds purchase against her kitchen island. “Emma?”

“When?” She whispers.

“Just a couple of weeks. He took a job with the NYC public libraries, he’s actually doing really well and has just approached Belle with an idea to get the youth excited about writing. There’s a chance you’ll run into him at the office, so I just...we both thought a heads up was necessary.” 

“Which library?” because Fate is a nosy bitch and has no business showing up and guiding her to the man she ran from.

“Emma?”

“Which library”

“I think...if I recall correctly, his home base is in  Harlem.”

“I’ll call you back.” 

-/-

She thought about leaving the country. At the very least, the state. She is overwhelmed, without a question just so damn overwhelmed. She has gotten so used to tears these days, she’s a little shocked she didn’t cry the minute she heard his name. 

Her body had other ideas, because although she definitely meant to get on a train going the opposite direction, she found herself in Harlem 25 minutes later. 

She sits in the middle of the library at an open table, clickity clacking as loudly as she can. Part of her really believes that maybe if she saw him, she’d remember why she left.

Another part is certain that masochism is her new favorite hobby.

He never appears.

-/-

“Hey” Emma answers her phone going off for the eighth time today. 

“Emma?” Belle sounds more relieved than usual. “Where have you been, I’ve been calling non-stop since 3.” Emma rolls her neck to view the time on the DVR. 

7:45 pm

“Sorry, I’ve been reading all day.” she hasn’t talked to anyone for another two weeks. She does this far too often to still have a support system. Emma’s not sure she’d pour the same amount of effort into anyone who went radio silent every other week. 

“We had a meeting at 2:30.” 

“Sorry.” She shrugs, because honestly, nothing even matters.

“I’m coming over,” Belle says decidedly. 

“No, Belle, you don’t have to do that.” Emma regrets answering on the eighth attempt. “Let’s reschedule.”

“We just did, I’ll see you in thirty minutes. Open the door.” Sure, she’s a small, sweet, meek-looking woman, but what most people don’t know about Belle is she could slay dragons with pure determination alone. In a battle of wills, she's even got Regina beat.

Emma peels herself off the sofa for the first time since noon, snuggie falling to the floor as she heads for the shower. If Bella can make the journey to her apartment, Emma can at least shower. Sure enough, 30 minutes later she’s greeting Belle at the door, a pizza in hand. 

“Are you okay?” She sets the pizza on the kitchen island and wraps Emma in a hug. Emma tries to pull her head far enough to keep her hair from wetting Belle. 

“Yeah, just...the creative process. Ya know.” Emma trails off as the hug ends. Of course, she’s not okay. ‘Okay’ people don’t stop answering their phones for weeks, they don’t stare at blank pages until their vision blurs. They don’t behave this way. This was her first shower in days. 

“He was in the office yesterday,” Belle says after a long silence, just a full 3 minutes of her studying Emma from head to toe. Do her eyes just scream ‘Killian’ every time someone looks at her. “He said he called to congratulate you on the screenplay adaptation.”

“No, he didn’t.” She’s quick to dismiss. She scoured her missed calls for days looking for his name, he never called. 

“How would you know, you never answer your phone, Emma.” She sits on a counter stool, tugging Emma to join her. “He’s going to be in every day next week, and I think…”

“No.” Emma cuts her off. 

“Let me finish.” Belle opens the pizza box, sliding it toward Emma. “I think you should take a vacation. Get out of the city for a while, maybe visit Storybrooke, since you know he’s not there to run into.” Emma grabs a slice of pizza, not sure when she last ate but too preoccupied with the idea of leaving the city for a while. She ran to NYC. Now she’s running back to Storybrooke. Is he just going to chase her back and forth? 

“Did he say anything else about me?” she hates the desperation gnawing at her.

“He asked me why…” Belle sighs “I told him we’ll all find out in book four.”

-/-

God only knows what compelled her to do the exact opposite of what Belle suggested and show up at the publisher’s office. Probably the same thing that led her to the Harlem library a few weeks ago. She bought a new outfit. She realizes she’s barely even worn jeans over the last eight months, and now she’s in a dress and heels like she has an interview to work here. She’s wearing makeup and perfume. She’s trying her best to cover up and signs of the wreck she’s been for months. 

The office seems busier than it has ever been, many new, young faces bustling about. She keeps her features calm as she scans every inch of every room she enters for him. 

“Emma?” Belle is hurried as she crosses the main floor to meet her. “What are you doing here?”

“I know.” Emma returns the hushed tone Belle is using. “I reworked some chapters, delayed the breakup, and gave more of Aly’s history.” and Belle nods, but is evidently not listening.

“He’s here.” Belle looks almost frightened. “So if you want to reconsider, I would do it now. Otherwise…”

“Swan?” no one calls her Swan. She’s paralyzed. What did she think was going to happen? How did she think she was going to react? When she paced around her apartment for three hours this morning, did she think she was going to just be okay? He would be here, he would see her and suddenly everything would be okay? “Emma…” He tries softer, less shocked, more timid. 

This is the moment. In every love story, angst finds its way in, rips the reader’s heart out and although they’ve been bleeding for chapters now, they can feel nothing at this moment. Time is still, the lights are dim, and all we see is Emma and him. 

He looks like himself, just more professional. He’s in well-fitted gray slacks, a navy dress shirt, his hair is longer though. He’s got more scruff on his neck than normal. His eyes are too blue, truly, for anyone to notice another inch of him. They stare at her, the same shade that’s been haunting her dreams, and she still struggles to define it. Everything. They’ve always been everything, no matter if it’s more cotton candy than blue coconut. 

“Killian.” She swallows. Her throat makes this awkward gurgling sound and she wants to melt into the floor. Why is she here?

It’s suddenly so quiet but so loud. She can hear her heart hammering in her eardrums. No one says anything for a long stretch of time, maybe 2 seconds, maybe 3 hours, she can’t be sure. She just knows there is so much said in the silence. 

“How are you?” She asks without thought. The look on his face is devastating. 

“Sorry?” He mocks a laugh. “How am I?” 

She’s not completely delusional. This is a thing humans say to one another, no? Why does it feel so foreign all at once, like she’s attempting English for the first time with a local?

“Killian” she sighs, releasing the most dizzying breath.

“I’m good” he grits, suddenly covered in constrained anger. “And you?” 

And now they are strangers, all dressed up and nothing to talk about. 

“Me?” Her tongue drags along her lower lip to buy time. “Good.” She nods.

“I’m just pleased everyone is good.” Belle smiles sweetly. “Now, Killian and I have a brief meeting, and afterward, if you’re still available, we can go over your rewrite.”

An exit strategy. This is quite possibly the only thing she could have hoped for.

“Swan was a bright young writer once” Killian grins, wickedly. “Why don’t you attend the meeting. We’re talking about a youth writing program.” He’s obviously bating her. How dare she show up on a day he’s here and act like she didn’t destroy him…

“Sure” she agrees. Partly because she’s too stubborn to back down from a challenge, and mainly because she did destroy him and there’s that whole thing about masochism she recently discovered about herself.

Belle looks beside herself. Her eyes narrow and she puffs her chest for a moment before leading them to a meeting space. Two more individuals join them, laptops ready to jot down notes and ideas. Her meetings are only ever with Belle so, for Emma, this seems like red carpet treatment. 

He has amazing ideas. He loves the idea of bringing an artistic outlet to the children of Harlem. He was always so much more than a shelfer. He was always a dreamer, with these brilliant, compassionate ideas for helping everyone feel less alone, more encouraged. 

She was always a fence, holding him back from the best parts of himself.

-/-

When the meeting concludes, Belle graciously thanks Killian for coming, makes promises of action, and attempts to say goodbye. 

Killian, as good-natured and kind as he can be, has always had a persistently obnoxious side. He invites himself to the next meeting.

“This is only fair, Swan.” he smiles, though his eyes are full of darkness. 

They regroup in Belle’s office after a bathroom break. 

As much as Emma is dying on the inside, Belle looks absolutely disturbed by this. She can’t imagine the discomfort in being the third wheel of a breakup reunion. 

“So...when we uh, when we left off, you were telling me why they broke up.” Belle sighs, knowing how awful this is. Emma smiles, hoping it lets her off the hook a little. After all, Belle told her to leave town. Emma decided to torture herself.

“Right.” Emma takes a large breath in, holding it while she pulls out her folder. Only releasing once its in Belle’s hands. Killian is studying her like he has a Chemistry final to take tomorrow and she’s the only hope. “Alysandra left Atlas for his…” She’s said it to herself. She’s made hints to others, but Killian has never had a clue. “For his own good. She’s derailed him from his journey. She’s made him less of a pirate, more of a…”

“More of a what?” Killian’s breath is sharp as it floods in through his nose and out through his mouth. “What did she do to him?”

“She reduced him to a caregiver,” Belle answers from what’s written in the text. “Alysandra took over the journey of discovery. She was suddenly the main character.” Belle looks up at Emma with a look she’d only be able to classify as “delayed understanding.”

“In a story about Atlas, Aly becomes the focus. Everything he does, he does for her.” Emma can feel herself losing composure, eyes stinging with tears, throat drier than a desert. Somehow, someway, she finds her way to Killian’s eyes. “He wasn’t living for himself anymore. He had no purpose but to love her. And it was destroying everything.”

She’s not sure if it’s understanding she expects, or maybe gratitude, for saving him from the needy monster that she is. She knows neither is what she received. 

“Did you ask Atlas, perhaps… perhaps that’s what made him happiest?” Killian’s eyes are drilling into her like nails, pinning her against a wall. 

She is less. 

Speechless, motionless, hopeless…

Less sure she did the right thing. Less firm on her decision. Just so much less than she was the day before. 

There’s movement after a long pause, not by her, but Belle, gently setting the files down and moving to leave them alone. 

“Aly is an orphan” Emma explains and she can see his head start to shake, but she has to be firm. “Listen. She is not the strong-willed, rebel without a cause she pretends to be. Some days the sadness from being alone for so long stunts her. She spends hours upon hours laying awake wishing she could sleep forever. She can be a wreck, a mess, an impossible woman to love.” 

Does it make it easier to talk about herself as if she’s someone else? She’s been doing it for so long, all the catharsis from writing herself into stories, just to unpack the things that plague her? Maybe she can have sympathy for anyone but her, maybe its the only way she can recognize how her behavior impacts others. Maybe the book is why she left in the first place. 

“You make it impossible to love you, Emma.” She’s never seen his jaw trembling like this before. “And against all odds, through resilience and patience, I’ve found a way to do the bloody impossible. You can cover it up in characters you’ve based off of us, but this isn’t fiction. I was real. What we had...what we had was real. It wasn’t easy, but when you finally let me in, it was simple. We were happy.”

“You were happy?” She brushes tears from her cheeks as she shakes her head in disagreement. “Was it simple? To come home and find I hadn’t moved from my spot on the couch? Was that the ideal relationship you dreamt of, to see all of your energy, love, and time wasted on someone who couldn’t get themselves off the couch?”

“So you got yourself off the couch now.” Killian stands, eyes frantically scanning Emma from head to toe. “Well done, it only took the motivation of ending a relationship to do it.”

“I did it for you.” and she believes that, with everything in her, she left for his own good.

“Did you now?” He seems so out of breath for standing still. “Or could you have possibly woken up one day and realized the weight of a relationship was what was pinning you to the couch. Was it that Atlas cared for Aly too much, or was it the expectation that Aly would have cared for him in return? Was breaking my heart easier than just trusting me with yours?”

And all at once in the middle of the ocean, she can see Aly waking up all alone in the captain’s quarters, searching the whole damn ship for a man who did what the men she loves always do. 

“Maybe there were days you thought I was miserable” he kneels before her as the ocean finds its way to this office. His eyes are ocean blue, always changing hues depending on if the sun is shining, or a storm is brewing or they’re in the deep. “But you weren’t afraid I’d die that way, always miserable, no...some part of you thought I’d leave before I let that happen. That’s the orphan I loved. You were never a mess. You were a survivalist.”

So maybe that’s their story. Aly watched Atlas change his life for her, and realized he’s going to live to regret it. Did the last seven months hurt less because it was her choice? If he would have pulled the trigger, would the bullet do that much more damage?

“I would have died miserable.” 

-/-

The history she’s writing is hers and hers alone. When she was younger, when her heart was stolen and broken, when she always ended up alone. She was writing an escape plan.

This was the first time she was the one who left, and to quell the guilt of being her own worst nightmare, she forced herself to believe she was doing it for him. How many people have left her for her own good? How many times did she think that they were doing her a favor?

She’s been sitting motionless for who knows how long when Belle comes back. Killian is long gone but his words linger like those dizzy stars after a concussion. Her head is throbbing trying to make sense of it. This wasn’t just seven months spent believing the lie. Now she’s searching for the truth. 

She gets anxious in monotony, like a stench in stagnant water, she is repulsed by the concept. She’s never wanted to do the same thing every day. She doesn’t want a picket fence, she wants…She does like a cute cottagey feel with a nice picket fence, she could…she could deal with a picket fence.

She definitely does not want a husband though, or to be barefoot and pregnant, or…

There were times, she’d look at him fresh out of the shower, or in his sleep and he’d look so much younger, she’d wonder what their kids would look like. There have been times she’s searched her fingers as they moved across her keyboard and realized her ring finger would look nice with a natural stone set in some brass band. It was never anything he did that scared her. It was that she thought about more. The concept of more scared her, and the fact that she was greedy and foolish enough to want it.

Four years is a long time to not talk about marriage, but after they moved past her initial anxiety attacks over having a boyfriend, he never really pushed for much again. Moving in together was her idea. He kept enough stuff at her place and with Elsa moving abroad, it made sense to do it. That’s as far as she was going to take it. Another few years piled up and she was busy writing and he was busy being supportive of that, she recognized she was his sun. When he made sure she ate during the weeks she barely left the house, when he kept her house plants alive, when he did her laundry, reminded her to shower, and told her he’s proud of her too often to quantify, she knew she was his ship. An inanimate object, something someone can love so much and not receive the love back in return, and sure, he’s as silly as a pirate to believe a ship that holds itself together while he’s sailing on her loves him, and that’s just her role.

Hold yourself together Emma, that’s always been your role.

She started to get bitter and insecure. What is she contributing to this relationship? How is she making him any better? Has he even written many songs since they moved in together, has she gone to see him perform, has he performed? Some days she was so enthralled in her writing, she didn’t realize he wasn’t home all day. It was his day off and he was gone for longer than a workday. He could have been having an affair for all she knew. For all he did, he deserved to be having an affair, falling in love with someone who would be there for him, encouraging his dreams, and dedicating herself to him.

After that day, she started her drafts. Killian, you’re so much more than I deserved…Or Killian, your life paused the day you met me. And finally, after months, she left him with I need this to be over.

She’s a writer, a published author, an English major and an avid reader yet, through years and years of literature and just terrible romcoms, she never learned how to break up with someone. She never knew the words to say to him, so she said nothing. He called for three-five days, she’s not sure as she was in a sobbing-induced coma.  He sent texts, he sent freaking carrier pigeons, and she locked herself in a hotel room with her laptop and her broken heart.

Finally, an email came in.

Emma,

I’ve moved out. Everything I’ve left is yours…among the worn t-shirts you liked to sleep in and the novels we’ve collected over the years is my heart.

Goodbye Love.

“Emma,” Belle brings her back to the present after a very long, painful trip into her past. “Are you okay?”

Why is that word even used to describe how ‘good’ something or someone is? 

“No.” She glances over at Belle, she thinks to ask if she talked to him in the hall after he left, if he said anything, if he seemed ‘Okay’ himself but she settles back to a business mindset. Work is the only constant. “Aly left because she didn’t want to get left again.” 

“And that’s how it ends?” Belle hands her the folder back. “You can do better.”

-/-

“The concept of fiction isn’t a lack of reality, it just hasn’t happened exactly that way yet.” 

She hears his voice cascading down the ramp she’s sitting at the bottom of. It's been a week since Belle’s meeting and she made her way back to the library. Back to their roots. There’s so much history in this building, but the history she’s looking for lives within her. There’s a group of teenagers huddled together like they’re on a tour. Her fingers shake as she looks back down at her laptop. 

“Don’t be afraid to use your own daily vernacular. It’s just as likely as any well-researched, powered by thesaurus dialogue, but it will come to you much more easily. That’s your voice.”

His voice sounds increasingly close. She wants to look but if they lock eyes now, while he’s busy, she’s back to being the center of attention. Why did she come here? Does she want to get back to being the center of his attention? 

“Swan?” her stomach flips violently. She really didn’t think this through. Her neck trembles as she cranes to look up at him. “Hi.” He clears his throat, the group of teenagers studying them closely from behind him.

“Hi” she breathes. “Uhm…”

“Do you want to meet my junior author group?” He cuts in quickly.

“Hi.” She repeats, only this time her eyes travel across the young faces. “I’m Emma.”

 “Emma Swan?” A young girl in the back pipes up. “You write Cap Zeph.” ‘Cap Zeph’ is a very popular Tumblr tag, Emma’s been told. She is now a mild-day D list celebrity with the news of the screenplay adaptation. She never published under her real name until this one, Killian’s idea.

“That I do.” Emma feigns a smile.

“Emma Swan” Killian begins, chest swelling “came up with the idea in a small town library.” 

“Really?” another girl with wavy blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders asks.

“Yes, and Killian Jones worked there. He’s…evidently the inspiration. Hair as dark as night, eyes as blue as the sea he sails upon.”  Every girl and one boy in the group glance at Killian, amorously. Still handsome as ever. He looks down, scratching behind his ear and chuckling dryly.  She wonders if his throat burns the same way her eyes do or if this feels so natural he’s happy to fall back into it.

“Why don’t you all find some books to research personal voice from in the YA section, hmm?” He dismisses the group quickly. They share assuming glances and move to leave in pairs, surely gossiping on the way. 

Being alone again is terrifying. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here. Why does she always go looking for him? What does she want? How can they come out of this okay? What is okay? 

“What brings you?” Killian starts. He isn’t looking anywhere but her and the look in his eyes leaves frost on her flesh. His expression is so blank. She has no idea if he even wants her here after their last conversation.

“I was just looking for inspiration.” He nods.

“There are study rooms.” He adds, motioning in the direction she may find them. “My office is actually at a different location, or I’d…suggest…”

“Do you hate me?” it comes out without warning.

“No.” He winces. She’s not sure if it’s because he’s lying or because he wishes he were lying.

“Why not?” She asks. He flinches.

“Christ, Swan. Stop it.” He grabs a seat across from her at the small bistro-style table she’s been working on. She closes her laptop to remove barriers between them. “I hated myself for a while. I thought maybe I should have never lost sight of who you were. You’ve always been guarded. I thought I had broken down some of your walls. I should have never assumed I tore them all down.”

This voice within her tells her that it's no man’s job to do the work for her. Her walls are her own to remove. 

“What about your walls?” Emma counters. She didn’t come for an argument, but Killian had trauma, he was damaged in theory, but always presented himself as such a well-adjusted, forgiving, kind, loving man. “Maybe you had to go brick by brick, but you knew they were there. I just watched you for years never act like anything troubled you.”

He laughs, loudly. 

She’s startled more that she laughs in return than questions it. 

“Emma, my love...of course I was troubled. I still am. I drink far too much and try to solve all of my problems myself without anyone’s help.” He’s still smiling as he confesses.”Hell, I didn’t tell anyone we broke up for months and it wasn’t because I thought you were coming back. I just knew I wasn’t going to let anyone worry about me.”

“You’re not troubled” she shakes her head but thinks back to every time he came home frustrated and sealed himself up before she could get a good glimpse of it. “Are you?”

“I spent an entire day at the marina grieving my dead brother, over a decade after losing him. Every time I went to leave and come home to you, I’d get upset again. I used to stay away until I could pull myself together.” His smile slips into something dark and Emma realizes all the ways they failed at communicating. “I loved you just enough to only show you my best parts. I never trusted our love enough to show you everything. And it’s not because you were sad every now and then.”

And she sees the orphan in him the moment she realizes being left behind were his worst fears, too.

“You thought I’d leave…”

“I think the term is ‘best-laid plans.’” His smile is back “Convince an author to fall in love with you, live forever. Only, with my luck, I get to read my heart get broken in the exact same way whenever I’d like. I was looking forward to your book, knowing I’d get to see us in love again.”

She considers the part about him looking forward to her book.

“It’s as much my book as yours.” She means that. When she first wrote the Cap Zeph short stories, she had no plan of publishing. Killian pushed for her to immortalize this, to believe in herself and sell it. When the first went well, he convinced her to meet with Regina. “I mean, you are the entire series, after all.” He shakes his head and sighs. 

She doesn’t have a response and the seconds tick by. It only takes a few before they reach an awkward silence where one person makes an excuse to leave. And then when do they see each other again?

“I should get back to my writers.” He moves to stand and she wants to jump up, but she doesn’t know what words follow that. She writes fiction. It's why this book has been so damn difficult. Writing their personalities into a fantasy of pirates and fairies, that's one thing. Writing history is another. She can build on what has already happened. This in-the-moment dichotomy, will they? Won’t they? Can they make it work? It’s disturbing. 

He’s the quick thinker. Always a come-back, a pun, a literary quote…

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you…” She opens her laptop nonchalantly, as if it won’t wound her for him to leave. “...a boy who loves you.”

Among the many novels they shared, “The Book Thief” was one of Killian’s most treasured. 

He stares at her with wonder glazing his face. “If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter.”

Maybe she’d burn every book in this library, for a chance to experience falling in love with Killian all over again, as if it weren’t a moment in history. 

The screenplay would read ‘They share a look of longing’ and she’s not sure that’s how she’d describe it. ‘Longing’ seems more cliche and not nearly as descriptive as her quickening pulse would use.

This feels like a pivotal moment where she realizes that they don’t necessarily have to not be in love anymore. They could take a slow pace, like windchimes waiting for a breeze to bring them together. That’s all a Zephyr is.

“My number hasn’t changed.” 

-/-

His number has. She gets a text around 1am. 

Are you up?

It's odd, because Killian isn’t a booty-call kind of guy, but who knows what a breakup can do to a man. 

I rarely sleep before 2. Her phone rings moments later.

“Hello?” her tone sounds like a question, but she knows it’s him.

“Swan, it’s Killian.” 

“Yes, Grandpa, I’m aware.” She can’t help but chuckle. Almost too elated that he’s on the other end. She can hear him laugh on the other end.

“Do you remember the first time we started speaking on the phone? You wouldn’t give me your number until maybe the 18th date.” She didn’t trust herself then. They took things so slowly.

“You know I like a clean getaway.” Is it too soon to joke about always having one foot out the door? 

“What's the escape plan this time?”  

“Probably the West Coast since you chased me here”

“I did not!” His laugh is vibrating against her ribs, setting the tempo for her heart. 

Could it be easy all over again? One quote and he’s calling her? One call and they go see a movie? One date and…

And thinking about the end is how she got there, isn’t it? 

“Did you plan on seeing me again? Knowing you were moving here?”

“Of course. I planned on seeing you no matter where I lived...I prepared for you to come into focus and the rest of my world to blur.” He sighs and she can hear his mattress settle as he moves. “I didn’t plan on seeing you in my library again.”

“Where else would I get inspiration. You’re my muse.” 

They talk til 4am. She’s rethought every word she’s said these last seven months. She rarely moves without tension tugging at the back of her neck. Her thoughts are never clear and simple, not since she left. And here, in the darkness of her bedroom, with nothing but a familiar voice on the other end, she hasn’t second-guessed a word. 

-/-

She’s not sure if she should call it a date. He invites her to a scholarship meeting and sure, they’re dressed up, but because it's a business meeting. He talks to the team, Belle is in attendance, and she barely says a word. 

But he asks her out for drinks afterward and suddenly she’s all he’s focused on, laughing about old times, discussing the interesting twist in literature they’ve both read recently. She asks him if he’s written any songs and he beams brightly when he tells her ‘only recently, Love.’

Sometimes love is familiar, like a book you’ve read a dozen times. There’s comfort in knowing everything and loving it anyway.

-/-

“Are you dating him?” Belle watches her from the doorway as Killian moves down the hall to his meeting. They came to the office together this time, maybe a peck on the cheek occurred before his departure, and maybe Belle witnessed it. 

“I don’t know.” Emma tries not to think logistically about what’s going on. It’s been 4 weeks, she’s written 8 chapters and Aly is about to find Atlas again. “For the first time since I started, I know how book 4 will end.”

They go over the recent chapters and Belle seems subtly impressed but she’s holding back. Emma knows it's Killian-related. She just knows she can’t pry without being pried open in return. 

“You don’t like it?”

“No, it's beautiful. From tragedy to triumph is the Captain Zephyr way.” Belle hands the work back to Emma with a sad smile. “What makes it different this time? True love always finds its way back to one another, but how do we know they won’t split up again?” Emma knows this isn’t about the novel. They haven’t yet gotten back together to split up.

Does she know they’ll never separate again? Of course not. Killian is dedicated, devoted like a priest to the cloth. She is very aware that his heart is not yet healed, but eager to love her all over again. A few dates and late-night phone calls don’t make forever a promise anyone could keep.

“We don’t.” 

-/-

He’s walking her home after another fun night at a bar near her apartment. They’ve been casually seeing each other but nothing more than a kiss on the cheek or a hug goodnight has occurred. They get to her building in record time, too preoccupied by the conversation on who in Hollywood would make a handsome Captain Zeph. 

“Johnny Depp doesn’t have blue eyes.” Emma laughs. “You can’t just pick the most popular actors, and he’s already a pirate in another franchise.” They’re at the doors of her building and his eyes are boring into her. “Do you want to come up?”

And maybe it's because they haven’t had a real kiss in what’s very close to being a year now, but he seems almost nervous. 

“I’m afraid I miss you too much.” he scratches behind his ear and looks down the road. When he looks back at her he seems shy.

“Chris Wood,” she comments. She liked him on Supergirl. “Come upstairs.” 

It's the look on his face when he studies her apartment that makes her remember they broke up. As if she had forgotten months of trying to hold herself together, he reminds her that she broke him when his face floods with that loneliness. 

“Killian...” 

“This is a very nice place you have.” his eyes are darting from one corner to the next, lingering on the most significant differences. “So ‘New York’ it's almost as if you’ve never lived anywhere else.” 

“Your apartment isn’t ‘New York?’” it's so weird that they’ve never seen each other's place when they’ve seen each other's souls. 

“It’s just a place to lay my head.” He glances back at her with something almost accusatory when he says “You’ve gone ahead and made yourself a home.” And it has never felt like that, not once, when she was hiding away, when she would run home to it. 

This place, this city has always been a foster home she feels like she’ll get kicked out of if she gets too comfortable. It wasn’t like their home together. Their home felt like roots. Here she feels like an implant that won’t take to the soil. 

“The designer furnishings don’t mean shit to me.” Emma moves to the bookshelf, all new and shiny but it's just a box to keep what matters most. “Only what I’ve come here with is all I care to take. She pulls out a few books, “Wuthering Heights,” “The Book Thief,” and “Emma.” She hands them to him knowing they were always his. 

“I wanted you to keep them.” He starts to give them back when she waves her hand. 

“What do you need to not resent this place? To know I have everything you left tucked away in all these new places?” she motions for him to follow her to the bedroom and he slowly drifts behind, setting the novels on the coffee table. 

Her bed is covered in pillows dressed in his t-shirts instead of pillowcases. She keeps his cologne on the bedside table as if it were some expensive aromatherapy pillow spray. The blanket Granny from the local diner in Storybrooke made them lay at the foot of the bed, an anchor crocheted into the loops.

“I only drink whiskey you like. I only sleep in your t-shirts.” she sits on her bed, reaching for his hand to pull him down with her. “I don’t know what we are, and I can’t promise you I’m not a tragedy waiting to happen. I just know that I haven’t been able to erase an inch of you.”

He kisses her then. It's not on her terms, and he has only ever waited for everything to be on her terms. So when he pulls her in, hand cupping the back of her head, mouth open and adventurous, she gasps. 

His other arm wraps around her waist, pulling her closer to him, her hands pressed flat against his chest as his tongue enters her mouth with desperation. She fists his shirt in her hands, pressing even closer to him as her tongue reacts in kind. It has been the longest year without him and he’s kissing her like they’re running out of time.

All at once they’re falling as he lays her down on her back, continuing to claim her mouth as his property. Her hands start moving, tugging and fumbling with buttons and zippers and just much too much fabric for her liking. When she moves for his briefs he tugs back from her lips. 

“Is this what you want?” Her response is to slip her dress over her head. Any questions to follow are puffed out in a husky tone against her ear. 

Sometimes love is erotica, so she catalogs every second of it because nothing has ever happened quite like this before. 

-/-

They spend the next few months together and she bangs out the rest of the book in record time. Regina and Belle throw her a submission party. She dodges questions about their future and tries to focus on the book. 

“So Aly and Atlas together again,” Robin questions her as Killian returns with a drink for the both of them. She knows he’s not talking about the story. Killian has been very careful to not assume much about their status. Both of them have just stuck to ‘seeing where it goes.’ 

But it's not like they just met six months ago. They have history, they have four years of standing together at parties and being a couple. Do they have the luxury of casually dating? If all happiness is fleeting, do they dive face-first in it or wade in the shallow end. 

“I love Killian.” She says firmly. It’s never not been true from the moment she realized it, in a foreign library miles and miles away from home. He is not easily erased, and it has become glaringly obvious it will only destroy her to try. “I always have and I always will.” Killian’s eyes have never been so doe-like. She’s never been so bold. 

“I…” Robin’s face flushes, certainly not expecting her to speak so proudly.

“And I love Emma, if it isn’t ardently clear. She’s everything to me and I’m happy just to exist in her life.” He raises his whiskey to her and she follows suit like a gentlemen’s agreement has just been formed: To love one another without concern of what it means. As she takes a sip she realizes what everything means. He hasn’t pushed aside his dreams in the slightest this go around. He’s been focused and driven, ambitious and busy. Somehow, he’s still considering her ‘everything.’ Maybe what she thought was sacrifice all that time ago was really just love.

So they stay in love. 

-/-

Another year goes by and the first film is set to release. Although Emma and Killian still pay rent at their separate apartments, they spend every night together. Sometimes it's downtown in Killian’s studio, and other nights it's in the heart of the city at Emma’s. Commitment isn’t measured by who gave what up. It has shifted to who stays. They both do, and every day they make the decision to stay, when it's 5 months since Killian has slept alone or 10 months since Emma had dinner without him. They stay together with one promise in mind. They love each other. And for as long as Love is Present, they will choose each other. 

[troughtonmedia]

Who I am and what I’m trying to accomplish in the year 2021

Hello reader, thank you for your interest and attention.  My name is Carter Troughton and I run this blog, The Hashtag Headlines.  I started it back in 2012 for reasons I will happily address and have accumulated over 3000 posts in 9 years because I have something to say like I’m raising my hand in class.  The theme is pursuing the unknown, the mysterious, the supernatural.  I know I know you’ve probably done some research yourself for it is the curious monkey in all of us but I care about the answers so much I have put my own reputation on the line.  

After college I started a career in the consumer packaged goods industry where I was relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada.  I did a really good job while I was there but the year 2012 was dawning upon us all and the possibility of anything from economic/societal collapse, biblical rapture, or even space aliens coming down to pay a visit struck fear into my soul.  I honestly did not know what it would be but something was striking fear in my mind’s eye so I wound up moving back to the refuge of my hometown where I have continued living to this day.  

I was always somehow able to keep a job selling cars or hvac although most conversations wound up completely off topic.  More recently I delivered pizzas for awhile and what I liked about it most was how straightforward the task really was.  Collect the order, follow the route, exchange the product for some money.  After getting robbed at gunpoint tho, I quit and then COVID happened which put me on unemployment which is where I am today.

Where am I today?  I believe I’m on the cusp of breaking through a wall of disinformation.  Misinformation,  conspiracies, and lies.  It’s getting harder and harder to believe anything that anyone says anymore.  The fake news, the evening news, and just the news in general.  Anyone willing to break the law can have their 15 minutes of fame and believe it or not I actually tried in 2015 but miraculously enough and I mean miraculously, my story didn’t make it!  Now I sit here thanking god and thinking how I never wanna do anything again.

I was trying to garner attention to my online comic book @bathoscoda where alien zombie shape shifting reptilian creatures invade earth on the starship Nibiru to hold mankind hostage by threatening to detonate the sun with alien technology if they were not given the planet’s gold.  You should see it for yourself I made sure to include as many conspiracies as possible.  In 2013, I also emailed over 300 mainstream journalists claiming I casted the dark lord Lucifer into the pits of Hell for 1000 years.  That didn’t make it on television either although the Roman Catholic Pope did resign immediately the next day.

Look here, I don’t really know what is going on with the deep state but I do believe there is definitely something going on!  It’s like this really crummy episode on a TV station you don’t even like because it doesn’t make life any fun.  This obsession of mine has costed me more than you can know but I stick with it because there is a chance it can lead man and woman into the right direction!  I am talking about the light at the end of the tunnel so thank you for reading this and I’m not dead yet so I can answer any questions you may have.

Carter Troughton 

[snarkwrites]

Title: ghosts of christmases past

Theme: holiday party

Fandom / Character(s):Juice Ortiz x OFC! Hazel Morrow.

Warnings: A little bit angsty/bittersweet here. This is kind of Juice and Hazel being stuck on the side of the road together and... internally reflecting on their last christmas together, alone and earlier at the MC. One in particular. Listen, if I’m never gonna write either version of this story, just enjoy these random ass little bits as they come to me, lmaooo. Love you guys.

FYI, the bit in italics is Haze having a bit of a flashback. This ties to the theme, I promise.. It’s theme adjacent...

I made the moodboard thing. Don’t steal or repost/claim as your own.

Word Count: uhh.. 300 to 700+, roughly.

My last intention was for this to... Turn angsty and bittersweet. But alas, here we are.. But don’t fret, it ends kinda.. somewhat happily.

Also, again.. I made the banner for this. Don’t steal or repost.

TAGGING:

@chasingeverybreakingwave @sassymox and @kyleoreillysknee are the only people on my Sons Of Anarchy taglist. If you’d like to be on there, dm my main or this blog or click that link belowa nd add yourself.

also gonna tag bb @champbucks and @12daysofchristmas

[ about my writing | masterlist | multifandom tag doc ]

“Sweetie, can you go with Juice into town? Your brother said that Tig and Chibs are sending him after some things for the party tonight and I need a few things too. I’d do it, but I’m kind of enjoying Grandma time with little bit and your nephews.”

My mom thought she was asking the harmless questions. Apparently, she’d completely forgotten how Juice and I can’t even be in the same room anymore without either a shouting match or awkward silence and heavy tension as the air around us filled to the brim with things that hadn’t been said. 

And all I could think was that this time a few years ago, before I left town, we were so happy. I thought he was it for me. I thought back then that by now, we’d be settled down. That maybe Juice would be working at Teller Morrow and I’d be teaching or something.

I swallowed hard and nodded. My mom wasn’t going to let me out of this and obviously, whatever she needed was important.

She handed me a list and some money. I tried to shove the money back at her, explaining that I’d pay, but she wouldn’t hear it. 

As I went to walk out the door, my mom called out to me. “Juice was a better man than Jase.”

I whirled around, gazing at my mother with my brow raised. “ If this is your way of saying you told me so, Mom… Trust me. Lesson learned.”

“No, I was just suggesting that maybe you use the time you’re out with Juice, you at least attempt to talk to him. I know things went wrong back then, but I also know that if you didn’t still feel something and feel it strongly, you wouldn’t spend so much time picking fights with the poor guy. He doesn’t really have anyone but the club, Hazelynn.”

I opened my mouth but I closed it. My mom had a point. And lately, any fool could see that Juice was really going through it.. He rarely talked to anyone, he was always so damn tense I thought he’d jump right out of his skin. If he did have to interact with me, he was even more tense. Standoffish, even, and that wasn’t like the man I’d known years before. That wasn’t the man I loved. Juice was more easy going and a bit of a joker. Not this tense and serious guy he’d apparently turned into as of late.

I was beyond worried about him. To a point where my own current situation was sort of taking a backseat. But any attempt I’d made to reconnect had been met with annoyance. Bitterness. And deep down, that cut me.

He was literally the one man I’d honestly never wanted to give up back then. But I had to at least try to follow my dreams. I had to at least try living a life free of the MC and it’s dangers and scary situations. I’d just needed a break.

“You know I’m right, Hazelynn. You look at him the way I used to look at Jax’s father. You never wanted to break it off back then. You’re home now. You’re safe. You deserve to be happy. And if Juice makes you happy, maybe you need to stop pushing that down and lean into it. Just a thought, sweetie.”

“Mom, I…”

“No buts. Go. I need everything on that list now, not four hours from now.”

I eyed my mom and after a second or two, I walked out of the kitchen and into the hallway, stopping to put on a light jacket. It wasn’t terribly cold, but I knew it would get cooler the later in the afternoon it got.  I made my way down the hall and into the guest room where I’d put down my little girl Serena earlier after she crashed for her daily nap. I leaned over and brushed my lips against her forehead. “Mommy will be back as soon as she can, okay? Until then, Gramma’s got you. Be sweet, little angel.” I muttered, walking to the door of the bedroom and shutting it quietly behind me so the boys didn’t run in and wake her up.

I’d just walked outside when Juice’s motorcycle as well as my brother’s and Opie’s came to a stop in front of my mother’s house. They were laughing and talking and as usual, the second Juice and I locked eyes, his jaw set and the smile was gone. There was only hurt and bitterness there.

Opie and Jax shared a look and quickly retreated to the inside of our mom’s house and I shuffled my feet, trying to figure out a way to ask if he’d give me a ride to town too. Even though I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the last thing he wanted to do was have me riding behind him on his bike. Even something as simple as an accidental brushing of bodies lately seemed to make him overly annoyed.

And it hurt.

I knew I’d hurt him. I just wanted to make up for that. But so far, he wasn’t willing to let me.

“Are you going into town?” I asked the question tentatively. Juice stopped messing with the bike to look over at me and then he shrugged. “Maybe. Why?”

“My mom, uhh.. She needs some stuff from the grocery. I’d go in my car but it’s kind of sitting in Teller Morrow on a jack right now…” I gave a sheepish look and bit my lip, watching his facial expression as he seemed to take forever mulling it over.

“Fine. I’m leavin now though.”

“I’m all ready to go.” I answered, stepping a little closer. I stared up at him intently, noticing just how pronounced the deep circles seemed to be under his eyes. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping.

,, Oh Juice,” I thought to myself, ,, Why do I feel like there’s something wrong but you stubbornly refuse to reach out.”  

He eyed me and bit his lip. For a few seconds, I almost thought he was going to say something. He looked like he wanted to ask me something so badly that it literally almost came out, but he closed his mouth and cleared his throat, nodding to his motorcycle. “Hold on tight.”

I slipped onto the bike behind him, careful to hold on tight but leave distance. Last thing I wanted was for him to get annoyed because I was leaning against him a little.

The ride into town was quiet, only the sounds of the motor and the wind. I shivered a little, wishing I’d opted for a long sleeve beneath my thin jacket too. I’d forgotten just how chilly it got to ride a motorcycle, because I hadn’t done it in so long.

The lights of town were coming into view when things went downhill quick, fast and in a hurry.

The motorcycle got wobbly and Juice swore, pulling over on the side of the road, near one of the canyons. The wind picked up a bit and I hugged myself. Juice kicked at the motorcycle and dragged a hand over his head. A movement which I spent far too long staring at as my mind just kind of… Drifted.

To a Christmas a few years ago, back before everything went so horribly wrong between us.

XXX

“ Baby girl, wake up.”

The warmth of his breath against my ear had my eyes fluttering open and as soon as I saw the bright midmorning sun, I groaned. “Oh no. Mom is going to absolutely murder me.”

“We both crashed. Question, how dead do you think I’m about to be in Clay Morrow’s eyes, scale of ten?” Juice asked the question as he rushed around, grabbing my clothes for me so I could go and jump in the shower. My head was pounding. I knew the few drinks I had the night before at the MC Christmas party had been a very, very bad idea… Especially when you consider that of my entire family, I’m the one who never does things like this.

But last night had been magical. Cuddling in front of a bonfire with Juice, wrapped in a blanket. Stargazing as we sipped cocoa and later, whiskey… and we just kind of really talked about the future. Where we saw things going.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that after I graduated in the spring, I was heading off to UCLA. And that I intended to put distance between myself and Charming for a while. I just.. I needed the break from the rollercoaster of crazy my life had always been. I needed time to process discovering that my father wasn’t the same man as Jax’s father, but Clay Morrow, a man that I really hadn’t ever bonded with. A man that I’d always seen as merely ‘dad’s replacement’. 

I didn’t want to ruin our time left together, so I hadn’t quite told him yet.

His arms wrapped around me from behind just as I went to step into the shower in his bathroom and he muttered quietly against the shell of my ear, “Want some help washing off, baby girl?”

I turned to face him, melting against him and biting my lip as I gave a soft laugh and giggled. “Your hands all over me? It’s only one of my biggest fantasies, baby.”

His mouth crashed against mine passionately, our tongues tangling, his hands all over me as he pulled me even closer somehow and mumbled into the deep and passionate kiss, “Love you so fuckin much baby girl. Can’t wait until we don’t have to deal with curfews and all this other shit. When it’s just you an’ me. Our own little family.”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat and smiled up at him, nodding even though I knew I wouldn’t be around for a while. But not having the heart to tell him…

XXX

“I asked you a question, Haze. You listenin to me?” Juice’s stern tone had my head snapping up and I bit my lip, surveying the blown tire. I finally managed to clear my mind from my memories enough to ask what he’d said and he grumbled, repeating himself.

He’d asked if I had any signal on my cell phone. I handed it over and he took it, unlocking it and promptly pausing.

And in that moment, I wanted to kick myself, because I forgot that I’d taken a photo of him with Serena asleep a few days ago at the MC when she got dropped off there to be watched by Jax and the guys until I finished my shift at the hospital. I’d come in to find her asleep on Juice’s chest, arms around his neck. She’d told me on the way home that she had three favorite uncles now… Apparently, she’d really bonded with Juice.

I told myself that I put the picture on my phone because my little girl was in it. But deep down I knew it was more or less because the two people I loved most in the world were in a photo together and I wanted it where I could see it every time I had a shitty day or a long double shift at the hospital.

He glanced at me, rubbing his hand over his head and held the phone back out in haste. “None. Same as mine. We’re either walkin or we’re standin here all night. Because I don’t exactly have a spare.”

“Shit… I.. I can walk up the road a little, see if maybe I can pick up service.” I offered, starting to walk away before Juice even had a chance to verbally answer. I’d gotten a few feet away from the motorcycle and Juice and I heard him running to catch up, stopping me.

“It’s getting dark. I’ll come with ya.”

“I figured you might want some space, I… you were getting annoyed.” I mumbled softly, staring up at him. His entire expression changed and he sighed quietly, shaking his head no, tilting my chin up when I decided it was better if I looked down and not directly at him.

Because I couldn’t take the pain in his eyes anymore. I also hated that I was the reason it was there to begin with.

Everything had gone so horribly wrong between us and it was all my fault. All because I’d been too afraid to do what I really wanted. Too young, too stupid, too filled with all these big plans. Plans that all went wrong and even if they did go alright, they always felt wrong. I’d never really felt like I was where I was supposed to be.

But since I’d come home?

I hadn’t felt like I was ever supposed to be anywhere else. Maybe I never should’ve left. Maybe then my daughter would have a good father and not some prick of a sperm donor who was already married and wanted no part of her, or of me.

“I wasn’t. It’s just hard bein around you… Knowin that I wasn’t enough.” Juice mumbled quietly and I gave a quiet gasp.

“Juice, you’ve always been more than I deserved.” I found the courage to actually hold his gaze, my brows knit in concern because his words weren’t like him… and somehow, I knew he meant them and that he felt them.

Had he always felt them?

“That’s not why I left…” I started, only to go silent. “I left because I had to know if there was more to life. I needed a break from the craziness and I had a lot on my mind. I was so in love with you that sometimes it scared me.” I trailed off completely, muttering the last part “I wish I never left every single day.” quietly enough that I thought maybe he wouldn’t hear it.

But he did hear it. And he tilted my chin again, leaning down a little, his mouth brushing against mine. “It’s also hard bein around you because I still love you, baby girl. I never stopped. I just thought you didn’t...”

“I didn’t what?” I asked, my mouth brushing up against his with each word that left it. His fingertips dug into my waist and I rubbed against him just a little, my breaths shaky and erratic. Everything coming at me so fast I didn’t have time to process. I waited on him to answer.

“That maybe you didn’t love me.” he finally answered, adding quickly, “I was scared back then too…” his hand caressed my cheeks and he stared into my eyes. The wind picked up and he wrapped his arms around me to try keeping me warm just a little.

“I still love you too.” I admitted it quietly, making him blink in shock when his eyes met mine. He swallowed hard and started to  tenderly move his hands up and down my sides, one hand stopping to caress my cheek all over again.

“First.. We get off the side of the fuckin road.. Then, baby girl… when we get back to the MC, we’re going to have a serious talk, okay?”

I gave a soft laugh and nodded. “Okay. That’s fair enough. Let’s go try to find a spot with some service, yeah?”

“Yeah, even though I don’t wanna let you go right now.”

“You have all night to dance with me and hold me.. Like that last Christmas party we went to back then.. I’ve missed us so much.” I pointed out, making him nod.

Nothing mattered but getting back to the MC. Because I had so much I wanted to say. So much I needed to do to make things right again. To show him that I loved him and I’d missed him every single day I was away. That I made a huge mistake back then and I was so sorry.

[namea]

I’m fucked: A memoire

So, I know there are so many people in more need than I am. I feel ashamed to even ask but I honestly don’t know where else to turn. 

Last month my mental and physical health took a severe turn for the worse. It was bad enough that my husband had to take leave from work for about a month. It doesn’t seem like much but bills piled up. His last paycheck was a partial and was less than 300 dollars. I had to prioritize what I could pay and we weren’t even able to go grocery shopping. 

Today’s paycheck is less than 400. At this point I’m terrified. Here is a breakdown of our current finances:

Our exact bank balance at this moment: 362.05

Bills breakdown:

Rent: Thankfully my landlord was willing to work out a payment plan with me so we’re not in immediate danger of losing our home. 

Phone: 460.76 due to past due payments and fees. + 110 for next month which is due on 7/5

Internet: 141.00

Gas: 50 for the next two weeks

Food: Technically we can survive. We have rice, rament noodles, and our garden provides fresh veggies daily. However we do need a few things: Eggs, Milk, and bread. 

Every other expense we have is something I will let lapse if necessary. The only reason I won’t let phone and internet get shut off is because our phones are necessary for contact with our jobs, each other, and our families. The internet is how I make a living not to mention I start school on the 6th and it’s online only. 

I don’t know what to do. Where we live resources aren’t given to families unless they can prove they make under a certain amount hourly. We don’t, normally we’re perfectly able to provide, we both have good jobs. Unfortunately my job is closed due to Covid and only freelance work and art commissions is keeping me afloat at the moment. My husband’s hours were cut also due to covid. 

If you would be willing to help my paypal is: Snakeflame46@yahoo.com

I can repay you with art (samples here) or set up a time in the future to repay you with money. At this point I’m scared for my family. It’s just myself, my husband, our 8 year old son, and our pets (2 cats and a snake). My son is autistic and needs supervision round the clock. Thank you for reading. Commission prices for art are under the cut, currently I’m charging half of whatever is listed. 

[polkahotness]

SHORTAKI WEEK, DAY 4

FFN // AO3

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Adjusting to Freshmen-life at Hillwood High School had proven to be more difficult than either Arnold or Helga had anticipated. As they watched their friends thrive in their new environment, both felt as though they were still struggling to find their place within clubs, classes, and cliques. Each day during the first few weeks was a rush to navigate through the unfamiliar hallways that were filled to the brim with bustling students who had long since learned the various shortcuts and routes to most effectively get to their next hour's class.

Arnold and Helga on the other hand, were still taking the less-direct paths which led them around corners and into one another on a semi-frequent basis. And while this collision was not something that the pair had never accidently done before, on this particular afternoon, it would prove to be an encounter that would forever change their young lives.

SMACK!

Right around the corner of the 500 and 300 wing, Arnold Shortman ran directly into Helga G. Pataki, both of their armfuls of textbooks, notebooks, pens, and other high school essentials scattering around them like confetti from a canon.

"Seriously, footballhead?!" Helga exclaimed as she began collecting her various items that had mingled with Arnold's on the floor of the hallway. "Personally, I would have thought that by now, you'd know how to use your own two feet properly!"

"Sorry, Helga," Arnold grumbled as he too began feverishly gathering his things as quickly as possible. The warning bell had already rang, and both he and Helga were sure to be late if they didn't hurry. "I guess I was just in a rush."

"I'll say," the young blonde responded while glancing up to sneak a glimpse at the boy who had stolen her heart ages ago and still possessed to this day. Her eyes lingered on the boy with the oddly shaped head for a long moment as he picked up his belongings, though her gaze brought heat to his skin causing him to look up and meet eyes with his feisty classmate.

"What?" the boy asked her while pausing momentarily mid-reach for his phone which lay face-down in its black protective case.

"What, what, Arnoldo?" Helga spat back at him while maintaining their eye-contact and reaching to grab her own phone.

"You're staring at me," Arnold noted while finally palming the phone and reaching back to shove it into the pocket of his jeans. Without leaving Helga's eyes, he reached towards the next item on his horizon—his Algebra 2 textbook, which he needed for the class that he was nearly positive he would be late to after his run-in with Helga.

Out of everything she had dropped, Helga's own cellphone was the least of her worries—her focus instead on the notebook that lay just head of where Arnold was squatting before her. Inside the pages of that notebook were some of Helga's deepest thoughts and strongest feelings regarding him and their complicated relationship.

He could never find out what was written on the lines of the papers inside.

Taking the phone she'd grabbed to cram it into the side-pocket of the zip-up sweater she was wearing, she soon snatched the notebook while silently breathing a sigh of relief that Arnold was none-the-wiser as to what lay inside. "Uh, newsflash—it's not me who's doing the staring here, it's you." Her retort merely triggered Arnold to exchange a blank look with the quick-witted blonde before he picked up the last of the items he had dropped.

"Whatever you say, Helga," he recited—a typical ending to a typical conversation with the girl he still harbored feelings for even after all of these years. Oftentimes he would lie awake until the early hours of the morning while staring ahead at the stars that shone brightly above him through his skylight. His mind would endlessly replay moments the two of them had shared since their fifth-grade trip to San Lorenzo and wonder where it was that they went wrong.

Could it have been that they were too young?

Had they simply not been ready?

And more importantly, was there still a chance to remedy what the pair had seemingly lost?

For Arnold, the answers to his questions lay trapped inside the mind of one Helga G. Pataki; the object of both his desires and absolute frustration. He could never seem to wiggle himself back into her thought process, no matter how hard he tried—and he had certainly tried.

As the two parted ways for the next hour that would begin in less than a minute's time, neither realized that the phone in their pockets could hold the key to unlocking the mysteries that either teenager ruminated over time after time. Perhaps it was in their accidental switch that they would find their answers after all.

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DING. DING. DING. DING.

Just as the bell let out its final ring, Helga slid into the seat of her English class. Panting from her jog after her crash with Arnold, Helga tossed the things she'd gathered in haste onto the top of her desk. Glancing her way, Phoebe immediately knew that something was troubling her best friend.

"Is everything alright, Helga?" She asked as their teacher continued talking in the opposite corner of the room to one of their fellow students. "You seem to be… discombobulated today."

"That's the understatement of the year," Helga answered while sorting through the compilation of things she'd gathered in haste just moments ago. "I swear to you, Pheebs, if I run into Arnold one more time, I might kill him. This is the third time in two weeks that he's almost made me late for class."

"Considering how often the two of you run into one another, I think it may be improbable to expect it won't happen again," Phoebe mused with a soft smile. She knew of the mutual feelings that Helga and Arnold shared for one another. She herself had engaged in dating shortly after the infamous trip to San Lorenzo, however for Phoebe and Gerald, their partnership had proven to be successful in all of the ways that their best friends' relationship hadn't.

Despite this, both Phoebe and Gerald never let go of the hope that their friends would one day reconnect in a way that would work out for the better. From their objective points of view, Helga and Arnold were perfect for one another. To them, it seemed that their friends merely lacked the motivation at being truly honest with one another; the real kryptonite that plagued and stood in the way of their seemingly imminent relationship.

"I don't know, Phoebe," Helga finally said as she softly traced the cover of her precious notebook that Arnold had once again almost seen the contents of. "You'd think the way the universe keeps shoving us together, something would have happened by now."

"But something did happen," Phoebe offered, though Helga was less than receptive.

"Yeah. In the fifth grade," she sneered before rolling her eyes and leaning back into the chair of her desk while crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "Maybe it's time to give up and face the facts. Arnold and I are just… never going to work. We'll be forced to run into each other for the rest of our lives… our feelings littering the floor in a mess of emotional debris we keep having to pick up and hide away like some kind of… goddamn racoon, or something. A crow, maybe. They collect things, don't they?"

The question confused Phoebe who was accustomed to Helga's nonsensical rants that typically revolved around Arnold only to jut off in another direction entirely by the end. "Y-Yes, they do, but Helga—"

"Honestly, it's fine, I guess," Helga continued as though she hadn't heard a word her friend had said. "So, we collect our feelings like objects. Big deal. If he isn't willing to show me his, then I sure as hell am not willing to show him mine." Seeing that their teacher was still conversing with someone across the way about what appeared to be a previous assignment, Helga snuck her hand into the pocket of her sweater to grab the phone that lay inside.

"That's all there is to it," she said while pulling out the phone and clicking the button on the side to illuminate the screen. "I'll keep my feelings to myself and Arnold—" Helga stopped mid-sentence as she stared down at the screensaver that looked back at her.

"Helga?" Phoebe called her friend's name with a twinge of fear beneath her voice. "Helga, what is it? Is your phone alright after your hallway mishap?"

"I don't know…" she uttered before holding up the phone for Phoebe to see, "because this isn't my phone. It's Arnold's."

Meanwhile, a hallway over, Arnold Shortman had yet to notice that the phone residing safely in his pocket was not that of his own.

Slipping into his seat at the moment the bell chimed it's final chime, he too was glad that he hadn't collected another tardy slip like he had as a direct result of previous run-ins with Helga. It always seemed that the two of them found one another at the intersection of the 500 and 300 wings—Arnold silently wondered why he kept taking that route when he knew their colliding was almost fated to occur.

Perhaps he did it because he wanted them to bump into each other.

Maybe he secretly hoped that one of these times, just once, Helga might not snap at him and instead spill her feelings rather than her notebooks, pens, and papers.

"Hey, Arnold!" Gerald whispered out to his friend from the next row, and Arnold turned his head to direct his gaze towards him. "Did you get my message?"

"Huh?"

Pulling out his own phone and holding it out underneath his desk, he wiggled it back and forth as if the action would further illustrate his question. "Your phone! Did you get my text?" His voice was barely a whisper and more of a calculated soft-shout. It was a good thing their teacher spent the majority of his time playing Sudoku behind his desk rather than paying any attention to the going-ons of his classroom.

"No, why?" Arnold responded while fighting with his jeans to take out his cellphone.

"Just check it, man," Gerald instructed before continuing to explain what the message said; alleviating the need to read the text in the first place. "We're meeting at Gerald Field after school today for baseball. You in?"

"Sure. Sounds like fun," he remarked before furrowing his brow. "But why didn't I feel my phone vibrate? You must have texted me right when Helga and I ran into each other."

"Ah man, again?" his friend said with mock surprise. "Mm mm MM. Arnold, I think the universe is trying to tell you something and you'd better start listening. Next time it may do something more drastic than ramming you into each other."

As Arnold finally freed the phone from his pocket and looked down towards the screen, his eyes widened in horror. "Uh… about that…" he muttered as Gerald eyed him curiously.

"What, the universe or baseball?"

"Both," Arnold answered before holding up the phone in his possession. "This isn't my phone."

"Then who's is it?" Gerald soon asked; Arnold clicking the button on the side to light up the screen which revealed a lockscreen with the image of a pink neon heart against a dark backdrop.

"Helga's."

"No…"

"Yes," Arnold insisted with a shake of his head. "Maybe the universe already took it up another notch…"

"Yeah, maybe," Gerald affirmed before shrugging his shoulders. "Or maybe it just doesn't want you to play baseball this afternoon."

"Gerald…"

"What?" He exclaimed as their teacher rose from their desk to finally make their way towards the front of the classroom to begin the hour. Apparently, he'd finished his latest Sudoku puzzle. "So, you gotta exchange phones with Helga. Big whoop. Use it to your advantage."

"Alright class," the teacher addressed the class. "Take out your textbooks and flip to page 2-0-2," he instructed as Gerald and Arnold followed suit; the football-headed boy setting Helga's phone carefully down to rest on his lap.

"What do you mean to my advantage?" Arnold whispered over while pulling out his algebra book and turning the pages to find the appropriate number.

"You know," Gerald muttered back while flipping through his own book. "Maybe we can hack in or something."

"To her phone?!" Arnold said loudly; a few stray eyes glancing in his direction at the minor outburst. Quieting himself, he leaned over to whisper back, "I'm not breaking into Helga's phone, Gerald. That's a breach of privacy. If she ever found out, she'd kill me."

"Yeah. If she found out," he soon responded. "And she won't."

"Oh yeah? How do you figure?"

Gerald shrugged his shoulders while thinking for a moment before saying, "I don't know. I'll talk to Phoebe."

"No. Absolutely not, Gerald," Arnold insisted as silence fell over the classroom at his words. Suddenly feeling a heat surround him at the countless eyes resting on him, their teacher included, a dark-red blush filled in Arnold's cheeks as he realized he'd been caught. "Sorry," he sheepishly told the teacher, who proceeded to begin explaining the latest in their mathematical lesson-plan.

Midway through his explanation, a wad of paper landed on the top of Arnold's desk; his eyes shooting over in the direction from where it came—Gerald. Picking it up and unfurling it, his eyes scanned over the words his friend had scrawled down for him to read.

After class, meet me by my locker. I know a guy.

Frowning at the two sentences staring back at him, Arnold turned to shoot his friend a glare before shaking his head and mouthing the word, 'No.' But even though he had no intentions of breaking into Helga's phone, a part of Arnold couldn't help but wonder what lay behind the screen and inside Helga's mind.

Could the secrets Arnold seeked really be locked away inside the phone precariously perched on his lap? And to what lengths was he willing to go to discover them?

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"Gerald, I really think this is a bad idea," Arnold stated as he walked by his side from their lockers in pursuit of the 'connection' that awaited them.

"Relax, man," Gerald reassured his nervous friend while giving him a slap on the back and using it as a way to continue pushing him forward on their mission. "Fuzzy Slippers knows a guy who knows a guy who's cousins with this girl who knows how to hack into anything. They call her 'The Giant.'"

"The Giant?" he repeated with heavy skepticism. "I'm assuming that means they're tall or something?"

"No clue," the tall-haired boy admitted. "All I know is we're supposed to meet her in the 100 wing by that cluster of lockers nobody uses."

"The 100 wing?" Arnold intoned with obvious bias. "Gerald, nobody uses that hallway except to go into the wrestling room from the side door. Well, and the cafeteria, I guess. And to do shady things…"

"And just what is it you think we are doing? We're breaking into Helga G. Pataki's phone. What's shadier than that?" he emphasized. "Besides, wrestling doesn't start until after school PLUS we've already had lunch… so right now during sixth period with two more hours to go before school's done… Man, it is the perfect meeting spot."

Not wanting to argue about whether or not they should follow through with his insane plan, the flaxen-haired boy moved on to ask a different kind of question just as they rounded the corner that led to the entrance of the 100 wing. "How long do you think it'll take?" he paused as though waiting for Gerald to tell him he understood what he was saying. To be more direct, Arnold reiterated himself. "You know, the hacking-in part."

"Shh!" Gerald shushed. "Keep your voice down, alright? We don't need everybody knowing that we're over here."

"Why not?" Arnold reacted right away. "We're not not allowed to be in this hallway. There's a bathroom down here, we could always say we're going there or something." The pair continued to walk in silence for a moment as the slowly made their way down the infamous wing.

"I just can't be late to last period, again, Gerald," Arnold let out and he dropped his head back in annoyance while he continued to talk. "Mr. Nelson is a stickler for being on time—do you know that he locks the door when the bell rings?"

Perking his head up, Gerald said, "You've gotten yourself locked out of History class?" before letting out a jealous scoff. "Man! I wish I could get myself locked out of that class. History blows and Nelson's tests are impossible to pass."

"I knowthat," he replied blankly before going on to stress, "That's why I don't think this is such a good idea! Who knows how long this is going to take."

"Shouldn't take longer than a couple minutes," A shriek called out; both Arnold and Gerald looking around themselves to find the source of the high-pitched voice. Emerging from behind the grouping of unused lockers, a small girl who barely stood at five-feet-tall approached the friends while pushing up her large glasses which were sliding down her nose. "Of course, that's all depending on the make, model… year."

"Oh, uh…" Arnold stuttered while fishing out the phone from his pocket once more and holding it out for the unassuming girl in front of him. "I don't know. It's just a phone. I think it's like mine… so—"

"Hold up," Gerald interrupted as the girl took Helga's phone from Arnold's hand to begin inspecting it. "You mean to tell me that you're 'The Giant?' The school's best hacker AND Ralphio's seventeen year old cousin?"

"Wait, who's Ralphio?" Arnold questioned, though his inquiry was lost in the girl's answer.

"All that you need to know, Gerald Martin Johanssen," the girl called him by his full name which immediately made him flinch with frightening surprise, "is that I can do exactly what you're looking for and I can do it for a small, minimal, and inconsequential fee."

"If you're looking for money, we don't have any, so—" Arnold began to tell her, though 'The Giant' was quick to dismiss him.

"I'm not interested in money," she stated before looking between the both of them. "I'm far more interested in secrets."

"Secrets?" the teenage boys repeated in unison as 'The Giant' nodded her head while gently tapping the back of Helga's phone against her hand.

"There's nothing more elusive than a good secret," she explained with a mischievous smirk. "And, as a hacker, secrets are a large part of my work. So. What secret do you have for me? One secret for one code, that's the rules."

Gerald and Arnold exchanged a look for a moment before the blonde softly muttered, "Gerald… I don't know if this is worth it."

"C'mon, man! Don't you want to know about the inner workings of Helga's mind?" He whispered back as though the girl ahead of them wasn't actively listening to their every word. "What happened to the bold kid running through the jungle to save his parents or fighting the man to save the neighborhood? Huh? Where's that guy, right now?"

"It just seems… wrong," Arnold replied while reaching up to rub at the back of his neck and stealing a glance at 'The Giant' who looked on in curiosity. "I don't think I should break into Helga's private property."

"Arnold," Gerald stated blankly. "You and I both know that she's probably doing this exact thing to your phone right this minute. I'll bet you twenty bucks that she's standing in the hallway, talking to Phoebe and trying to guess your passcode so she can look at whatever secrets you've got hiding in there."

He thought this over while trying to imagine what Gerald had so precisely described for him.

"And you know what?" he went on to say, Arnold's eyes shooting back over to his friend as he continued. "With how smart Helga is… I would also bet that she doesn't even need a secrets-dealing hacker to do it either."

As Arnold considered Gerald's point, across the school and downstairs in the 600 wing Helga was staring down at the locked screen of the phone she'd mistakenly grabbed nearly an hour ago. "Stupid football-head losing his phone…" she muttered before huffing out a deep breath and dropping her arm while still holding the cellphone tightly in her grip. With exasperation, she rested her head against the metal of the lockers she leaned against while waiting for Phoebe to finish grabbing her books for their next class.

"I'm going to need a hacker if I ever want to get into Arnold's phone."

"Helga!" Phoebe scolded before shutting her locker with the appropriate book she needed in her grasp. "You can't break into Arnold's phone. It's his personal property."

"So what?"

Phoebe frowned while knitting her brows together in an expression of great concern towards Helga's judgement. "It would violate his privacy."

Helga remained in control of her tone as she brushed off the objection. "He's not going to find out. This is Arnold we're talking about, here. The kid barely knew I existed up until that nonsense on the roof of the FTi building."

"I'm not so sure that I would agree with that, Helga, but to break into Arnold's phone is another issue of which I wholeheartedly disapprove." She shook her head more to herself than to Helga before softly squeaking out, "What about his trust?"

"What about his trust?" Helga repeated while emphasizing a different part of the sentence entirely which gave it a distinctly sour aftertaste.

With a tired sigh, Phoebe said plainly, "Mutual trust is something that, once broken, is nearly impossible to repair. Suppose that Arnold didn't find out right away. Helga, I know you are smart enough to realize that Arnold would discover it eventually. It could hinder your relationship should you already be engaged in one, or… think of the damage an exposed secret of that magnitude could have on a potential relationship between the two of you. Is that something you're willing to sacrifice so you can snoop through his phone and perhaps find nothing of significance?"

Groaning at Phoebe's opinion on the matter, Helga shot her a hopeful, yet irritated look. "You could get me in though," she stated rather than asked. At Phoebe's lack of response, Helga went on. "Arnold's phone. Hypothetically speaking… you could hack into it. Am I right?"

Chewing over Helga's assumption, she decided to hint rather than answer. "Possibly."

"And you really won't help me out with this?" Helga begged yet again, an ace hiding up her sleeve as she spoke. "You'd really make me sit in the library and skip my next class, OUR next class that WE SHARE together? Hmm?"

Trying to walk away from Helga as she grew more and more persistent, Phoebe couldn't escape her longer strides that allowed her to catch up with ease. Just within reach, Helga called out as they walked, "You want me to have to watch some long parade of videos which frustrate me SO BADLY that I end up going back to you and EXPLODING like some kind of wild ape?"

"Helga, please," Phoebe ordered from over her shoulder. She was angry at how right Helga was. Maybe it would be the smart thing to skip what was implied and simply unlock the phone. At least by doing that, Helga would leave her alone with all of this nonsense.

As she thought this over with each step she took, Phoebe continued to listen while Helga kept painting the grim tale of her eventual compliance. "Picture it. There you are. You're right there in the middle of the hallway while I'm bugging you even worse than I am now. And what do you do, Phoebe?" Helga moved from talking to one side in lieu of the other. "What can you do when I'm just jib-jabbin' away like a bird on your shoulder squawking and pecking at you as I chirp, 'Help me, Phoebe! Help me! Open the phone and help me!'"

Stopping mid-stride, Phoebe pivoted around to face Helga with an angry albeit bored expression dusted over her features.

As if silently telling her to continue, Helga took the imaginary cue and began speaking to the dark-haired girl with a mock sympathy so sweet, it could cause cavities. "I'll tell you what you do, Pheebs. You, being the kind-hearted, good, and true-blue friend that you are… you give in. And I'm sorry, but you know you will, I'm not wrong, am I?"

Phoebe knew she was right. Phoebe also knew that it didn't matter. Helga would find a way regardless of her assistance or not. Helga herself went on to express her exact thoughts, but with her own words. "The only person I know better than me… is you."

Catching the glare that was sent her way, Helga soon held her hands up in defense. "It's not a bad thing, I mean, criminy! I'm pretty predictable too, we both know that."

"I guess so…" Phoebe quietly agreed, and Helga swooped in to play her final card—the ace she'd been saving for this very moment.

"Look. Phoebe," the teen began before giving her friend an exaggerated shrug. "I'm just trying to give you a shortcut here-a one-way ticket to jump you and I to the end of this headache."

"But Helga—" she tried to stand her ground, the foundation feeling flimsy beneath her weight as she began to faulter under Helga's towering presence.

"Please, Pheebs? I'm so, so close here and if you do it now, you'll save us both a stupid-long process," She paused for dramatic effect while holding out her one hand as though using it to weigh the choices she was presenting, "OR, we can give it a go and do this pointless dance which, worst case scenario, you still don't help me and I just go reach out to the depths of the 100 wing and hire someone to do it for me."

Phoebe eyed the pleading young woman who stood before her. She didn't want to give in to Helga's cries for help, but she knew in her heart of hearts that by refusing to help, she was merely prolonging the inevitable. What were the ethical ramifications of denying her friend and forcing her to find another way? Could the method that Helga ultimately finds lead to something far worse than imagined? Worse yet than any threat the consequences of Phoebe helping right away may pose to the universe?

The scowl on Phoebe's delicate face hardened as she prepared to hold her stance. "Helga, I'm sorry, but I must refuse to parti—"

"Wait, hang on a sec, Pheebs," Helga stopped her from finishing as she held out Arnold's phone to look down at the bright screen. "Arnold just got a text message," she reported flatly, and Phoebe arched her brow.

Without thinking, she blurted out, "From who?"

Flipping the phone so the screen could face her four-eyed friend, Helga replied, "From me."

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"I can't believe you told her about the dress-up thing," Arnold noted with a small smirk. "Honestly, I'd forgotten about it."

"As you rightfully should have," Gerald countered with a lone shake of his head. "I mean, we looked fabulous—"

"Right?!" the blonde agreed with excitement before toning down his demeanor. "But, you know… not everybody needs to know about it."

"I just hope that those pictures never see the light of day… ever." The two shuddered at the thought, though Arnold maintained his for a few seconds longer. Turning to look his way with worry, Gerald crossed his arms over his chest before saying, "You don't happen to have copies of those pictures on your phone, now do you, Arnold?"

Swallowing hard, he merely grimaced while managing, "Well…"

"Arnold!" Gerald shouted while throwing his arms up into the air. "Come on, man! That was like… our secret! We don't need to advertise that little experiment."

"It wasn't that bad," Arnold insisted.

"We put on make-up."

"And it looked good,"

"I know that, okay?" Gerald stage-whispered back to his unphased partner-in-crime. "Don't you think I know we looked great? It was disturbing."

"Eh," he sounded while tilting his head back and forth to weigh out his answer before speaking. "I thought it was interesting. Kind of cool, actually. You really didn't think it was fun?"

"Sure, but I'm not admitting that!"

"You might have to, now," Arnold teased while receiving the other end of an intense glare. "Why be ashamed when we looked so good?"

"Because it was last month that we did that," Gerald explained while using his hands to wildly gesture about himself. "Maybe if we were six it would be cute but we're almost sixteen now and—"

"And we put on dresses that we found in the crawlspace at the boarding house," Arnold continued to say as Gerald desperately tried to hush him without success, "and then Grandma gave us her make-up which we then used to—"

"Arnold…"

"—make ourselves, as you even described with your own words—"

"C'mon!"

"—as 'fabulous.' We were fabulous and we were wearing dresses with make-up on. What's the worst that could happen?" He patiently waited for an answer that never came. After a moment, he gave Gerald an answer of his own. "The worst that happens is Helga finds them, or 'The Giant' leaks them and then everyone can be jealous at how good we looked. I'm not ashamed."

Slowly shaking his head back and forth, Gerald watched Arnold while humming his usual song. "Mm mm MM. Arnold, I've said it once, and I'll say it again—"

"I'm a bold kid?" Arnold offered, though it wasn't what had been on his counterpart's mind.

"Nah, we established that a while ago," He said before handing over Helga's phone which he'd been holding since 'The Giant' had returned it to us opened and free from a passcode. "What I was going to say was that this is your dad's fault." Waving a hand over where Arnold stood, he continued while contorting his mouth into a twisted sneer. "All of this? I blame Miles. Dude has no shame and neither do you."

Taking the unlocked phone and easily swiping his way to the 'messages' menu, Arnold let out a single laugh. "I may have no shame about wearing a dress, but I have plenty of other kinds of shame, and those are thanks to myself."

Opening his mouth to argue, Gerald stopped when he saw his friend's fingers begin tapping away on the screen. "What are… what are you doing?"

"I'm texting Helga," he responded, then paused to look up and out thoughtfully while musing to himself, "Well, I guess I'm texting me, but, you know…" Arnold's voice trailed off as his attention returned to the message he had been feverishly typing.

"Why?" Gerald asked. "I thought we were going to explore the inner workings of Helga G. Pataki's mind!"

"Maybe that's what you would do," Arnold retorted before hitting the send button and lowering the phone altogether. "I told myself that the only way I would go through with this was that when the phone was unlocked, I would text Helga so we could arrange a switch. That's all."

"Okay, so what did you text her?"

Helga:

I know you have my phone, Helga. And I know you're probably reading this right now. Guess I'll find out in a minute when the 'read' receipt comes back.

"Would you look at that," Helga remarked, "he just has me labeled by my first name in here. The only other contact like that is Gerald's. And his parents, I guess."

"You already looked through his contacts?" Phoebe asked while looking over at the screen she'd helped to unlock.

"Doi," was all she said before beginning her own message to send back to the name she recognized as her own. All the while, she imagined Arnold receiving her text and smiling that dopey grin at the words she'd carefully typed.

Footballhead:

Took you long enough to get into my phone. Geez, Arnoldo. I take it your giant-head didn't come with an equally giant-in-size and freakishly-shaped brain, now did it?

"That Helga," Gerald commented while looking over Arnold's shoulder as he began wording his reply. "Always the clever one, isn't she."

"Always," Arnold affirmed before tapping send once again; the two-minute warning bell resounding through the 100 wing that the two still lingered in.

Helga:

No such luck, I'm afraid. But how do I know that you unlocked MY phone before I unlocked yours? After all, it was ME who texted YOU.

DING. DING. DING. DING.

"Two minutes," Helga noted while looking up to the air above her as if the noise had come out of the atmosphere rather than the speakers in the hallway. "We don't have to switch back yet…"

"Why wouldn't you want to get your phone back? I thought you didn't want Arnold looking through your things."

Helga's fingers danced across the keyboard of the screen as her body instinctively began walking towards the destination of her next class. "Because, Pheebs, he's already in," she clarified before hitting 'send' and sliding the phone safely into the pocket of her sweatshirt. "Now, we're just playing a little game."

"And where does that game end?" Phoebe probed as they took off down the hallway towards the end of the wing where the science rooms were located.

"I'm not sure yet," she responded just as they passed the threshold of their biology classroom. "Probably in us switching our phones back and going our merry way. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

Footballhead:

You may have texted me first, Hair Boy, but that doesn't mean I didn't have PLENTY of time to peruse your contact list, messages, emails, and of course, your many, MANY pictures.

Both Gerald and Arnold widened their eyes at the message that stared back at them from the bright light of Helga's phone.

"So, that's it," Gerald stated in defeat. "We're officially screwed."

"She's bluffing," Arnold immediately announced before zealously concocting his next message. "If she got into my phone, she got into it because of Phoebe, right?"

"Probably, yeah. Why?"

"If she got in because of her," he theorized, "then that means she's with Phoebe."

"So?"

"So," Arnold reiterated, "there is no way that she would let Helga go through my all of my stuff while she's still around." Clicking 'send' with a light tap of his fingertip, he added, "I think I can keep her distracted through the next couple hours until school is over."

"Why wait until school's done?" his childhood companion wondered. "You two can switch phones back after this period is over, no harm, no fowl! Why wouldn't you do it right away?"

"Because," his words were slick with amusement at the question, "I'm kind of enjoying this."

"Enjoying it? What are you, crazy, Arnold?!" Gerald practically shouted as they started on their way to the period that they may be late to after all, though Arnold hardly seemed to care anymore, despite the constant warning from his friend. "You're playing with fire, man!"

"Not fire, Gerald… only Helga."

"Which is worse," he argued; Arnold instantaneously disagreeing.

"It's all going to be fine, Gerald, I promise," he tried to reassure with a confident upturn of his lips and a light pat on the back. "Trust me."

And so began the exchange of a century.

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

Helga:

I don't have anything to hide, Helga. If you want to go hunting through my phone for some kind of blackmail-material, you won't find anything.

She stared at the words of Arnold's latest message that shone from under the table she sat at in the back corner of her biology class.

Footballhead:

Who's to say that I haven't already FOUND all of your dirty little secrets and am currently planning to expose you for the weird, football-faced dingus that you are?

Arnold suppressed a laugh before replying while typing with one hand at his side and out of his teacher's sight.

Helga:

I have nothing to be ashamed of that you can find on that phone, Helga. The things I'm ashamed of are words that were never said and feelings I never acted on.

Mouth agape, Helga fought the urge to let out a loud gasp in reaction to the words Arnold had so boldly sent across the airwaves.

Footballhead:

And what words and feelings might those be, exactly?

A half-smile curled up at the corner of Arnold's mouth. This was his chance to use an inconvenience as a blessing—a way to reach out to Helga by using the only means that she seemed to understand: written word.

Helga:

You know.

"Two words?" Helga muttered to herself as she finally was able to read the message that she'd had to ignore for nearly thirty minutes to do some lame science experiment. The bell would ring any minute and she would be free to roam the halls with Arnold's phone still in tow.

Footballhead:

Why no, genius, I DON'T know. Why don't you and your dumb head enlighten me?

Walking slowly out of his class at the bell's chime, Arnold seized his moment in the back and forth he'd been enjoying—a back and forth that he knew Helga was enjoying, too.

Helga:

I guess I could do that. Only on one condition, though.

Footballhead:

Name your price.

Helga watched the bubble on the message screen appear and disappear rapidly as Arnold worked out the perfect reply. Her hands sweating, Arnold's phone became slippery no matter how tightly she held onto it, and she waited with bated breath until his message at last appeared on the screen.

Helga:

Slausen's. Today, after school. You can even order whatever you want.

It was Arnold's turn to wait anxiously as Helga typed her reply, though she didn't make him wait quite as long for a response.

Footballhead:

And what is it that YOU happen to be getting out of this little, late-afternoon ice cream social? Besides your phone, that is.

Trying to hide his growing smile, Arnold knew exactly what it was he wanted to say next.

Helga:

I get the chance at trapping you in an honest conversation with the bait of free food. You get to eat, and I get to tell you how I feel and HAVE felt since that Summer of 6th grade when we grew apart.

Chewing on her lip, Helga debated her next choice of words before sending one more question that she knew she wouldn't be getting an answer for. At least not by way of text.

Even so, she knew that she had to try.

Footballhead:

Just how was it that we grew apart? Why DID you stop talking to me? Did I scare you off?

Sighing at the words he knew Helga had struggled to successfully send, Arnold decided to give her just enough information that it would only make her want more.

Helga:

Absolutely not. It was ME who scared MYSELF off. I chickened out.

Intrigued by his vague explanation, Helga wasted no time in answering.

Footballhead:

Why?

The one word that Helga had sent brought butterflies along with it. They gathered inside of Arnold's stomach to flurry and flutter in circles as he sent her what he hoped would be an invite she would finally accept.

Helga:

Meet me at Slausen's after school and I'll tell you.

Before she could tell him that she was interested in his proposition, another message popped up on the screen.

Helga:

And make sure you bring my phone. As fun as this has been, we should probably switch back before we go home for the night. What do you say?

The 'typing' bubble didn't have to float for long before Arnold received Helga's reply; the message once again containing only one word.

Footballhead:

Deal.

[caffeinechic]

Good Omens Fic Recs 1/?

I went to fix a link in this post and managed to delete the entire thing like an absolute fool. 

But my complete annoyance with myself won’t be bested with my determination to post this lot. So here I go again. I am so sorry if this has shown on your dash a million times. And sorry for the double links / tagging as I honestly went half mad over even the basics. This is where I am with life.

I have about 300 Good Omens fics bookmarked at this point to trying to pull out my absolute favourites sent me down a re-read (and in many cases a re-re-re-re-read) rabbit hole, which was an absolute joy so no complaints here!

These are just some of the ones that have just really stuck with me for one reason or another so I’ve gathered them up under the cut

4 Authors I just need to do like a HUGE rec for as they’re life ruiners. How dare they be this good. HOW DARE THEY.

@princip1914 @princip1914

Yeah I started pulling out the bookmarks I had for @princip1914 and realised it was...everything they’d written. All of it. Just...all of it.

But my particular favourite out of an outstanding batch is the following - which I have read approximately 70 squillion times. It stuck with me for so long in a way that I don’t think many fics have, ever. I actually can’t recommend this enough:

Doubt Thou The Stars Are Fire

“But how,” Aziraphale gasped, agonized and close to tears. “How can you be sure. Crowley, dear, you got thrown out of heaven for questioning everything. How can you be sure about this?”

Crowley loves and Aziraphale doubts. God intercedes. A groundhog day kind of situation ensues wherein Aziraphale has to fall in love with Crowley over and over again as a human until he gets the point. Highlights include: delivering medical care in rural Louisiana, stargazing in Vegas, strangers on a train, and teaching middle school.

@bestoftheseekwill @bestoftheseekwill

Same “problem” with @bestoftheseekwill - READ EVERYTHING. Oh my god, the human AUs, THE HUMAN AUS.

Special shout out to Acts of Service which was the first Human AU I’d read and got me completely hooked and now whenever seekwill posts I immediately read.

Acts of Service

"You seem very familiar to me. I can’t say why that is." As Aziraphale spoke, Crowley turned away from the fire, and Aziraphale was momentarily concerned that the spell had been broken, that he had crossed some invisible line. But Crowley smiled and brought his beer to his lips.

"Maybe we met in a past life. Does your lot believe in that?"

"Past lives?"

"Yeah."

Aziraphale smiled into his wine. He was sure Crowley was poking fun, ever so slightly, but he liked it. "Not strictly speaking. No."

Crowley shrugged, taking another long sip of his beer. “A mystery then."

After receiving direct instruction from God, village reverend Aziraphale leaves his countryside congregation to serve the underserved and in-need at an urban church in London, a transition made all the more complicated by the mysterious and handsome Crowley, who always seems to appear when Aziraphale least expects him.

OH!! but also

That this could be the kingdom

- this one sat with me for a while. Stunning

I have lived my whole life with a wrecked heart. Fr. Aziraphale Fell’s present mirrors his past, as long ago roommate, classmate, and former friend Anthony Crowley reappears in his life in an unexpected and disarming way, challenging Aziraphale’s choices, and bringing him back to the breaking point, when he made a decision he couldn’t take back. It isn’t temptation, it’s revelation.

@mygalfriday @mygalfriday

Ah here, listen - I went to get my bookmark list for @mygalfriday and just ended up re-reading all 12 fics this week.

i can't say the words, so i wrote you into my verse

Aziraphale blinks as it slowly dawns on him exactly what he’s looking at. Crowley has a tattoo. Well, another one anyway. Unlike the small serpent curled just beneath his temple, this one takes up far more space.

And listen if you don’t read the blind date au series then I don’t know how to help you!

I couldn’t find Rend_Herring  Found @rendherring @rendherring on Tumblr but I had to put my phone and my head down after I read both of these.

The Lightness of You

God should not have built them with such discrepancy, made them need for love, and long for wholeness, then left them to their own devices.

This Soul Outstreaming

“Why did you come here?” Aziraphale interrupts. “Why do you keep doing this?” All the saving, he means, all the chasing after Aziraphale he does. It can’t only be that he’s not keen to endure a replacement. That can’t be it, not anymore. He’s going to get himself in trouble, and then it’ll be Aziraphale’s fault.

Crowley’s mouth shuts with a click. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, reaches for the handle of the fork and taps his fingertips against it before setting his hands in his lap.

When he speaks, it’s very soft. “Don’t you know?” he asks.

Aziraphale, unaccustomed to his heart refusing to translate why it throbs with such haste, shakes his head.

Fics that, to me, are just stunners. I love them so much.

Slow Show - @mia-ugly @mia-ugly Honestly if you’re seeing a rec list WITHOUT slow show...I’d be legit surprised In which temptations are accomplished, grand romantic gestures are made, and two ineffable co-stars only take four seasons of an award-winning television program to realize they’re on their own side (at last, at last.)

Barriers, and the breaking thereof - @cardinaldaughter @cardinaldaughter Ezra Fell has long been comfortable in his loneliness. He’s content to simply run the Soho Public Library and otherwise keep to himself. However, when a handsome stranger bursts in one evening with a baby, frantic and in need of help, Ezra finds those carefully constructed barriers he’s long maintained begin to crack.

Perhaps it’s time to let them fall.

Anthophilia - @fortinbrasftw @fortinbrasftw Anthony J. Crowley's life seems like it's finally falling into place: his floral shop has begun to gain an undercurrent of appreciation in the design elite of London, and he might have even finally found a boyfriend who looks just right lounging on his Tenreiro sofa. Things seem almost perfect, until one day the empty shop across the street is leased to frumpy fellow Oxford alumni, who doesn't seem to remember Crowley nearly as well as he remembers him, which really shouldn't bother him as much as it does - it was ten years ago after all, and it wasn't even that good of a kiss.

The road to rapture has a lot of pit stops - @emmagrant01 @emmagrant01 Five times they kissed over four thousand years, and one time they actually meant it.

Demon and Angel Professors - Ghostinthehouse - not 100% sure that this is also their tumblr handle so if anyone can confirm that would be great! They're professors. They're married. Their students don't realise. Cue shenanigans.

Multiple short arcs with one-shots (and often pauses) between them. Characters continue from one arc to the next. It's marked as complete, because each short arc is complete in itself, but there will be more arcs and one-shots in the future.

The Grinch Who Sold Christmas - @forineffablereasons @forineffablereasons Anthony J. Crowley, a big-time attorney from London, is sent to small-town Tadfield to close a deal before Christmas that would sell out half of high street to a fancy developer and put him up for partner at his firm. The deal will run the local businesses out and change the landscape of the town forever, but that’s none of Crowley’s business; he’s just doing a job.

But as the town invites him to share in their lives and their hopes and their holiday celebrations, and as the enigmatic Aziraphale invites him to share in something more, Crowley starts to wonder: if everything has its price, is he still willing to pay what this deal will cost?

Slow - write_away It started like this: A boy with the ability to warp reality met an angel and a demon and he made assumptions.

You might say it started like this: An angel and a demon found a marriage contract hung on the wall of the angel's bookshop. They didn't question it.

It also could have started like this: Once upon a time, the angel told the demon he went too fast. The demon took it to heart.

Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves somehow married. Crowley fears going too fast. Aziraphale forges ahead. Neither know how to ask questions of each other.

You, soft and only - @thehoyden He hadn’t expected a sudden lapful of angel.

“Very sorry about this,” Aziraphale said, and kissed him.

A Bushel and a Peck- @thehoyden  Sometimes, a family is a demonic nanny, an angelic cook, and a kid who isn't actually the Antichrist.Or: Crowley helps Aziraphale secure a different position at the Dowling Estate.

Long is the way, and hard - Kate_Lear The first time Crawley meets the angel, the celestial being is twisting its shining white robe in its fingers and looking wretched. It hardly spares him a glance as he shifts from snake to human, and Crawley is a touch put-out. It’s taken some practice to be able to do it so fluidly.

A story of Crowley's thoughts about Aziraphale, from the Beginning to the present day.

And also of temptation, and want, and whether - for a Fallen Angel - redemption is possible after all.

the 21st century, in which they finally work it out - @fieldbears @fieldbears This is light speed in comparison to the last few centuries of their relationship, but Crowley is barely holding on to his patience.

A Few More Rescues - @poetic----nonsense @poetic----nonsense 5+1 Times Crowley Rescued Aziraphale According to the Romantic Tropes of the Era, and One Time Aziraphale Turned It Around on Him (plus Prologue)

The Cottage, the Husbands (series) - Dragonsquill A demon and an angel fall in love and decide to take on the monumental task of living together in a cottage by the sea.