#((but like if my parents decide not to buy me the tickets ill just buy them myself))

[yourplaceinaugust]

i had the shittiest day at work and then i found out that my two of my favourite artists are doing a show together and that cheered me up

[b-elizabeth-not-brassica]

Lol I am so fucking high and reading fanfic as I’m typing all of this lol

my alt account tells not a lie.

My new roommate is also autistic and queer and we’re both pretty chill and I bought them a bus pass so they could get around their new connected cities around them and I watched Coco for the first time because it’s Jade’s favorite movie and they wanted to try out my projector. So we had movie night. And we’ve had art day with everyone available in the attic art studio before, and 4 of us went to the Ren Faire, the kids all for the first time and I drove and paid for their tickets (I paid for reduced price children’s tickets, aged 12 I know yes but also only $13 compared to mines $36 idc and the ticket person did not care either thankfully)

It’s been busy since June and I met these kids my god

I isolated at home for 3 years due to Covid and was then forced to go into the office 2 days a week or quit and so I said, okay, but then I’m not going to isolate anymore. If capitalism requires me to participate in activities that can make me ill, I’m going to enjoy social activities as well. So I’ve packed my calendar since the day they forced me into the office, literally during Pride month, so fucking rude of them. So I’ve packed my social calendar for the first time like ever this year as a queer adult!!!!

I have had so much fun!!! Met so many amazing people! Some for only a little while, an Instagram follows worth, but some recurring and hopefully lifelong friends I am hoping and working and showing up for! Friendship requires showing up sometimes! Being social in public! It’s a hard lesson I’ve learned! But I’m clinging to my in person friends as hard as I can by showing up to events and talking to them and sometimes messaging them. If anything, I really try to befriend the organizer and ask how I can support them, or just try to support them by showing up when I can as much as I can with money to donate or use to buy stuff when I can.

Anyway, back to reading fanfic

I might as well keep reading it

But

If you haven’t gotten hit by Bruce’s curse yet, flee

Save yourselves

There’s nothing you can do for me

I can’t send them back to their parents unsupportive and restrictive and emotionally abusive household. Not when they messaged me one day, weeks after I offered my spare bedroom as an alternative to them staying in Ohio in a homeless shelter while looking for housing in Ohio so they could continue to stay near their girlfriend because they didn’t want to come home to IL to their mom and step dads house.

Weeks later after I offered and they agreed to come home but needed help with that and I paid for their return greyhound bus ticket home and they went back to their small town and then weeks later, messaged me, asking if my offer of my spare bedroom was still on the table.

Having to pay for more groceries and maybe increased internet and water is a small price for me to pay so they don’t have to stay there or decide to live in a homeless shelter as a trans teen, and have more opportunities in a slightly bigger city with a bus actually.

Jade took the bus today for the first time with their new bus pass! They are absolutely thrilled!

So yeah

Anyways

Save yourself

You can’t help me

I’m in too deep

4 new queer siblings deep to be precise

I do not have a manor tho

I wish I did

I’m looking into bigger cars tho

Mine fits exactly all 5 of us and it’s squished when everyone is available to go to an event.

Oh god

Everyone stop reading I swear to fucking god

This shit is contagious

I’m telling you

I didn’t have children in June.

I started reading this fandoms in April I think

I made this side blog in April I think omg

I now have 5 children

Oh god

Istg

My spare bed is filled

I have a roommate now

My very new friend, an 18 yr old queer trans teenager, who was living at home, looking for a job and trying to just find a way out of a rural town.

My other 4 queer 18 year old new friends that I met that the local queer gathering. All newly graduated and one delayed due to covid and looking for jobs.

I would describe it as more like new adopted siblings but.

Literally.

And the others that don’t live with me I support as they need, sometimes with grocery help or I invite them to queer events, picnics, free closet pop ups that I was already going to that I can pick them up for.

I met them and became their queer older sibling.

I swear

Due to this fandom

I mean, i met some of these kids at a local price picnic in June, they added me on discord, one of them invited us all to walk in the Pride parade together. Parker’s homophobic mom drove us all to Chicago because she wanted to leverage us government political wise even tho she’s a raging transphobe and deadnamed Parker all day and we all loudly said Parker’s name all fucking day. We walked/road a float in the parade and I got to scream at a bigot with a microphone since I couldn’t scream at the one with me(!) on the way back to the car.

And I have a roommate now. My spare bed is filled.

I have children

I am child free

No baby

But I guess I didn’t expect adoption to sneak up on me

Wtf

So

Beware reading the adorable adoption fanfiction

it leads to

[tarosin]

The great adventures of y/n, Tommy, Jack and Tubbo

Requested:yes/no

Pairing: Platonic jack/tommy/tubbo/reader

Summary: another day another adventure

Content warning: cursing / I didn't proof read

An: reader has bright unnatural hair I wrote a lot, I can't figure out how to add read more on mobile I'm sorry

The music you were currently listening to was interrupted by the discord group notifying you that you have a new message.

Tommy: Y/N HOW BUSY ARE YOU TUBBO HAS COME TO VISIT AND JACK IS HERE

y/n: I mean I've currently got hair dye on but it’s being washed off and dried in around 20 minutes, why?

y/n: WAIT TUBBO?!?!

tubbo: oh yeah I forgot to tell you

y/n: how did you forget you know what nevermind, I’m glad you’re here :]

jack: we should be here in an hour so you have plenty of time to get ready

tubbo: what colour dye y/n

y/n: you’ll see soon enough as apparently, you’re all showing up at my house

Tommy: I suggest you wear comfortable shoes

y/n: I am terrified

Tommy: you have nothing to fear... for now

•••

luckily it had only taken you just over 40 minutes to get ready giving you roughly 20 minutes to prepare for the adventure ahead. or so you thought, as soon as you sat down ready to check your phone the sound of Tommy and tubbo laughing could be heard from your room, jack sent a message “hey we got here extremely early I’m sorry there’s no rush the others have been distracted by dreams music :)”

grabbing a backpack from next to your bed you had quickly chucked your phone and purse into the bag unsure as to what you’re going to need today.

•••

as soon as you opened the door you were met with an ecstatic tubbo who instantly pulled you into a hug unable to contain their excitement of seeing their friend

“I HAVEN'T SEEN YOU IN AGES YOUVE CHANGED SO MUCH LOOK AT YOUR HAIR”

“I look exactly the same”

“Now I’m no genius y/n but last time we spoke you didn’t have unnatural hair”

you paused for a moment as tubbo had a point the last time you and tubbo were on face time your hair was classed as a natural colour however today as a fuck you to your school which didn’t allow unnatural hair you decided to dye it your favourite colour.

“you raise a fair point now if you don’t mind releasing me from your grasp I have to lock the door so no one gets in”

•••

“Tommy unlock the door let tubbo and y/n in”

“Y/N YOU'RE HERE- HOLY SHIT YOUR HAIR! JACK ARE YOU SEEING THIS”

“Hello to you too Tommy”

“well if we weren’t going to get noticed at the shopping centre earlier y/ns bright fucking hair will definitely cause people to notice us”

“oh I’m sorry I didn’t expect to be going shopping with a bunch of Minecraft streamers today”

“don’t you stream Minecraft?”

“This isn’t about me jack”

the trip to the shops was surprisingly relaxing y/n sat at the front listening to jack sing along to songs playing on the radio, however, it was clear the boys had something they weren’t telling y/n which became evident through Tommy and tubbo bickering in the back of the car about who was going to tell them. it was a relatively short journey due to the fact you lived close to the city centre

•••

“let’s go shopping boys” Tommy practically yelled to everyone, tubbo held his phone in your direction then looked towards you, nodding at him you grabbed his phone and began recording

“I'm vlogging”

Tommy walked over “YEAHHHHH”

walking past cex you had to put up with Tommy making sex jokes until you made it to game, you stood holding back your laugh as you filmed Tommy and tubbo fighting about who’s paying whilst jack went off to buy a Minecraft squishy and mug despite everyone’s arguments against it. soon enough fans came over asking for photos with you all once the group of fans left jack took over recording for tubbo whilst you went off to quickly buy some games that you could play on stream.

•••

“want a wig bro? jack!”

the four of you walked into the shop, you couldn’t help but stand in awe looking at all the bright colours already questioning what colour to dye your hair next the sound of Tommy and jack being amazed pulled you out of your thoughts

“Gogy goggles, I’m actually buying them”

“i wan’t a pair”

“no, you’re getting a wig jack”

“I don’t want a wig I want George”

“y/n has bright hair and they’re not complaining”

“what do you have against people with colourful hair jack hmm?”

•••

“I'm not happy”

“you look lovely jack”

“we’re getting so many looks”

tubbo stopped everyone to ‘fix’ jacks wig which resulted in everyone laughing once you had finally stopped laughing you noticed tubbo had walked off and you were convinced jack had randomly decided to record strangers until you saw tubbo going up and down escalators

“oh there he goes again”

“pov you’re thinking about bees”

“where to next boys?”

Tommy pointed towards the lift

“Is this a lift for us”

Tommy noticed the safety sign and automatically made comments about it

“keeping us all safe is what I would say if I wasn’t carrying a knife”

“oh same Tommy”

“look you can see me”

taking that as an invitation to join the vlog you stood behind tubbo and pointed at the sign again and looked at Tommy and jack

“keeping us all safe is what I would say if we weren’t about to do this-“

the three of you went to jump up and down

“NO”

the four of you quietly left the lift however you were convinced that the public heard Tommy comment on having a knife and you threatening to jump as once the lift opened everyone was staring at you but it could also be due to the fact you had brightly coloured hair and somehow convinced jack to keep the wig on, you all spent a long time trying to convince Tommy to get a new outfit, eventually you went into another shop a certain keyboard caught your eye

“I’ve found my home, ill stay here at the gamer bunker”

you decided now was the perfect time to sneak off to buy the keyboard that had caught your eye, once tubbo noticed it was too late you stood holding the bag with your purchase leaving you stood in the middle of the shop defending your purchase to him claiming that it was a business expense and not just because you thought it looked cool.

“you told me you wanted to save your money”

“it lights up tubbo and it fits the vibe of my room”

Tommy placed his arm on your head treating you as an armrest as you were shorter than him and he knew it annoyed you

“they have a point tubbo it lights up”

once the recording ended you made your way back to the car

“say y/n you wouldn’t mind if me Tommy and jack stayed the night as tomorrow we were thinking-“

“sure thing”

“YESSSSSS”

•••

the next day you were woken up at 9 am by Tommy stood at the foot of your bed

“hi y/n”

“WHAT THE FUCK- oh hi Tommy Jesus christ do you know how horrifying that was to wake up to”

“Sorry bout that but if I didn’t wake you up now you’d only wake up in the afternoon and we need to go soon I’ll leave you to get ready”

you noticed a note was next to a jumper on the floor ‘hi, thanks for letting us stay the night I really liked your hoodie so I decided to wear it today here’s mine in exchange- Tubbo :D’

normally you’d be concerned that someone stole your hoodie as you live with your parents however today was an exception once you were all ready you set off jack pulled into a McDonald's drive-through so you could all get breakfast

“nice hoodie y/n”

“Thanks, someone took mine and decided to make a trade”

“you’re welcome”

the journey was quiet again you sat next to tubbo in the back Tommy sat at the front screaming at jack and trying to distract him and people around you decided to took a picture with tubbo who now had his arm wrapped around you as it was rather cold in the car and posted it to Twitter ‘@ ranboosaysstuff wish you were here :D’ less than a minute later you received 2 notifications ‘ranboosaysstuff replied to your tweet: same’ ‘ ranboosaysstuff has tweeted: *the spongebob gif*’

•••

soon enough you all arrived at mint golf to say you we’re excited would be an understatement

“can I get the shortest club you have”

you stood hiding your face in the jumper tubbo left you whilst you laughed a few minutes later you received a call from ranboo the others said they’d sort everything for you whilst you answered

“what’s up tall one”

“stay safe okay”

“ranboo it’s mini-golf I’m not fighting criminals”

“yes but I know how clumsy you are”

“first of all rude second of all fuck you third of all jealousy isn’t a good look on you” you managed to say through laughter

“jokes aside please come to the UK boo”

“oh sure I’ll go book a plane ticket now” *ranboo ended the call*

ranboo made jokes like that before however this time sounded a lot more serious and you had no idea why he called you so you made a mental note to call him again later. once with friends again you were met with Tommy telling the worker all about you all

“yeah we’re big on the influencing”

“What on earth did I walk in on”

“no time to explain let’s go golf”

you were handed a club and a ball and were dragged away by jack

•••

tubbo joked about getting a hole on one as soon as it was his go, you bet £10 with jack he wouldn't

“hand over the money y/n”

you looked at Tommy who was now recording you handing jack the money “so today we have learnt to not underestimate your friends and that gambling is bad. you lose your money to a tall bald guy”

to put it politely you and Tommy found out that mini golf is not your calling in life

“ill stick to streaming“

“you’re both losing by the way”

“yeah well- why and how does tubbo have soup”

tubbo stood cradling the soup as though it was a child

“Some things I can’t explain to you”

you stood tilting your head to the side questioning where the hell he got soup from

“eh”

“soups like a small child I take care of it as if it was my own”

you couldn’t contain your laughter at this point the confused faces of your friends alongside tubbos happiness of soup sent you over the edge so you decided to just sit down before you fall as your knees were already weak from laughing too much

“where did you get the soup from”

“I manifested it”

•••

after a few solid minutes of arguing over soup you and Tommy dropping the phone you all continued with bowling.

“tubbo get out of the way of my dream ball”

you stood recording jack cheering him on tubbo had different plans and kicked the ball away resulting in jack giving up and copying what you had been doing most of the rounds, after missing the hole 3 times each go, picking up the ball and placing it in the hole however again he missed

“you can’t be serious”

“golf isn’t for everyone big man”

Tommy took the phone from you to record “pov you’re me golfing”

•••

“how do we get across there”

“probably the bridge”

Tommy pulled to rope moving the bridge across the gap

“Why thank you, Tommy, wouldn’t have been able to do it without you”

you laughed

“you're extremely welcome y/n it was extremely easy because I’m a big muscly man”

golf was finally going well till you hit the ball a bit too hard causing it to go over the fence tubbo was able to get the ball back

“I’ve been watching a lot of doctor shows” you stood amazed at how far you made the ball go

“see the issue is its mini golf. if this was regular golf I'd have got a hole in one I'm telling you”

•••

“I'm never being in your vlog again”

jack looked at you and tubbo who was now laughing at you pretending to worship the can of soup in the hole

“Tommy please come back”

the rest of the game was chaos, you kept missing the hole then claiming to rage quit golf tubbo and Tommy kept making jokes jack left his drink somewhere then had to go back and find it, no one had been paying attention to you which allowed you to take the score sheet and make it so you had won the game eventually he game was over you had declared yourself the champion of golf despite the fact everyone was better than you including Tommy

•••

the journey back was chaos you called ranboo who claimed he only called you to plan a video/stream with you however it was clear that wasn’t the reason tubbo whispered to you so no one could hear

“I think he wants to be here with us I think he’s jealous”

you laughed and nodded

“of course”

eventually, you all made it back to yours, ranboo said goodbye to everyone then ended the call now it was time for you to say your goodbyes. since your love language was physical touch you hugged everyone. As you walked into your house Tommy yelled “Y/N HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT PLANES”

[mitts2002]

JJK pottery dates

Hii I've already made a separate inumaki fic on this so he won't be included. I was originally meant to do this for one character but I've decided to do multiple cause I can😌 Also I've never done pottery so I'm just winging this!

Itadori Yuuji

Yuuji would assume that he's gonna be a natural at pottery despite being both your first time

But yuuji would definitely not care about the end result of it

As long as he has a good time with (Y/N) that's all that matters

He'll accidentally use too much strength when handling the clay. Instructor tells him he's too heavy handed

(Y/N) on the other hand is doing pretty well. Shes almost done shaping and is ready to add some decorations

This is when Yuuji realises he does care about the end result because his looks like a complete mess

To cheer him up (Y/N) engraves Yuujis name into her pot and gives it to him as a gift.

You also offer to take yuujis piece in return

(Y/N) uses yuujis clay thing as a place for small trinkets and earrings

Yuuji uses (Y/N)s pot to plant a cactus

The couple had decided to go on a cute little pottery date for their first date, so why was Yuuji pouting in the corner?

Well at first (Y/N) and Yuuji were having a great time together. Messing around and quoting stupid memes and movie references was just their thing so when it was actually their turn to make something Yuuji had no idea what he was doing.

(Y/N) despite messing around with him had actually paid attention to the instructor and was doing just fine which made matters even worse for Yuuji. He assumed this would be a piece of cake when in reality it wasn't.

"Yuuji stop sobbing in the corner babe, it doesn't even look that bad!" You clearly lied to him but you knew it was for his own good.

"NO ITS TRASH look at yours (Y/N) so nice and pretty no one would ever want mine! Now I'll never be the world's best pottery maker" Yuuji babbled on just being his overdramatic self.

"Well I'd love love yours! I could put my jewellery in it, I needed a new trinket box anyways" you quickly thought on the spot and sighed in relief when Yuujis head perked up

"Really?" Yuuji sniffled and grabbed onto your waist. "Yeah and ill carve your name into mine! Then give it to you as a gift. Equivalent exchange" you winked at Yuuji knowing its an offer he couldn't refuse.

"Okay deal" Yuuji sat back next to you working on your trinket box while your worked on carving his name into his plant pot.

Choso

Choso was trying to learn more about the 21st century

How did he do this? By binge watching old rom coms on netflix.

In the middle of one of the movies a pottery scene comes up and chosos eyes couldn't shine more bright.

He loved the idea. It was a great way to spend your time with your loved one.

Choso immediately rang (Y/N) and demanded she arrange a date, which she did

You and Choso couldn't find any classes near you but looking at Chosos pout and puppy dog eyes begging to find a way you had no choice.

(Y/N) did the next best thing and decided to buy a beginners home kit. Now you both sat in the living room with newspapers littering the table and large aprons on yourselves.

"Okay so let's read the instructions first" you picked up the small booklet and looked over to Chosos who couldn't contain his excitement.

His buns were a little messier than usual as he rushed them the moment the package arrived but he still looked cute nonetheless. "Let me set it up then I guess we can try make a bowl? That seems to be the easiest option" you suggested while flicking through the pages and setting things up.

"Can we make a plant pot? I wanna give yuuji a plant for his birthday" Choso proposed. "Aww that's actually a great idea yuuji would love it!" You exclaimed in return and motioned him to come closer as you were ready to begin.

Choso had sat you in between his legs and leaned his head on your shoulder. His hairs tickled you and butterflys fluttered in your stomach when Choso began to kiss your cheeks slowly inching down to you neck.

"Oi behave" you ordered trying to sound intimidating but just burst out in laughter instead. "Fine sorry sorry let's focus on the pot" Choso apologised giving one last kiss to your head.

The pot was forming nicely but was a bit wonkey due to the hand size difference between you both.

Neither of you could care though, the intimacy of his hands on yours, music playing in the background and laughter filling the room from your stupid stories and Chosos dad jokes he recently learnt was just what Choso wanted.

The plant pot had turned out to be very cute and Yuuji ended up loving it.

Kamo Noritoshi

Kamo noritoshi was brought up in a strict household

During his childhood he was expected to be talented in many areas

Archery, studying, drawing, poetry, crochet, painting and even pottery were part of the many skills kamo noritoshi had devloped

The moment (Y/N) had learnt that the vase and other ornaments in noritoshis room were hand crafted by him she wanted to learn too

Now Noritoshi is sitting here behind his girlfriend teaching her how to make a vase because she wouldn't stop pestering him

"Noriii STOP being so perfect!" (Y/N) had yelled at her confused boyfriend who was simply decorating his clay piece.

"You wanted to do pottery with me and now your doing it. What's the problem?" Norotoshi sighed and turned to look at your vase. If he could even call it that.

"If you were struggling you could've asked me for help" Noritoshi scolded while your cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

"Yeah well I wanted to do it myself" you whined and crossed your arms in defeat.

"FINE help me please it's way harder than it looks" you admitted as nori made his way over to you.

"Firstly you need to be more gentle, it's wet clay not a damn rock (Y/N)" he corrected you and put his hands upon yours.

"Your hands are cold" you whispered to him feeling his slightly calloused hands touch yours.

"Focus (Y/N)" he responded equally as quiet as you. The room fell into a comfortable silence as your and nori moulded your vase together.

When it was finally finished you kissed noritoshi on the cheek. His cheeks turned slightly red but he kept his composure.

"It's fine (Y/N) just don't break it okay" the black haired male reminded you since you were quite clumsy.

"I promise I won't! But next time you have to do this call me and I'll join"

After this date, pottery became a common occurance for (Y/N) and Noritoshi. (Y/N) kept her promise and still fills her vase with flowers nori buys her to this day.

Okkotsu Yuta

Yuta okkotsu was a nervous wreck

You were given free tickets to a pottery event and asked Yuuta if he would accompany you

Of course he agreed without realising what he was actually getting himself into

The couple were currently at the event extremely close to make a bowl together

Yuuta could feel your hair on his skin and wanted to lean closer to bask in your presence

The moment he finally mustered the courage to lean onto your shoulder a little interruption had scared you both

'Okay Yuuta you got this. My wonderful (Y/N) is focused on the bowl so just slowly lean onto her' Yuuta thought to himself before looking towards his hands that were on yours. 'I GOT THIS' Yuuta had slowly inched closer while you continuously spoke so close to achieving his goal.

"IS THAT YOUR GIRLFRIEND!' a young girl with pigtails and pink bobbles yelled at Yuuta. The pair had jumped and practically ruined their bowl but yuuta couldn't care less. His chance was ruined.

"Yuuta she asked you a question" you reminded him and causing the black haired male to turn back to the small girl

"Ah yes this is my girlfriend" He responded with a small blush. "Well she's very pretty!" The cute child exclaimed.

"Thank you sweetie you're very cute too" (Y/N) cooed at the small girl and patted yutas arm telling him to compliment her aswell. Before yuuta could speak the young girl had beat him to it.

"OH YOU MUST BE ON A DATE! Sorry I ruined your bowl" she apologised looking down in guilt for interrupting you both.

"No no it's okay don't worry about it" Yuuta reasured and patted her head giving her a soft smile. (Y/N) blushed at the sight of her loving boyfriend with a child and gave the girl a quick high five before she scurried off to her parents.

"Wasn't she the sweetest little girl yuuta?" You asked and got a small 'hm' in response. "Our bowls a bit messy but I think we can salvage it right? Come closer so we can fix it properly" you grabbed his arms pulling him closer to you. Maybe that little interruption helped him after all.

[heyitsyn]

Keeping Up With Seijoh Ep. ∞

a/n: this made me tear up a bit ngl bc haikyuu always hitting us with ‘theres no next year for us’ typa bull like BLS TAKE PITY ON MY SOUL AND STOP TIME AND KEEP MY BOYS TOGETHER :(((((((

it has an infinity symbol bc this is in the future so there isnt really an episode number 

for more seijoh content, check this masterlist out!

anon:

the third years coming back to seijoh the following year for a surprise visit, and watching over practice cuz they were in town for break. being impressed on how kyo has calmed down (a bit), kunimi actually giving a sh-, yknow the deal. just the growth of their kouhai makes them 🥺🥺 but THEN- Y O U walk in with the team’s bottles n the small gasp that comes out of your mouth when you see them. they GAWK cuz you’re maturing SO well (stfu oikawa- my eyes up are here) and just 🥺🤲

SO LIKE UNLESS YOURE NEW TO MY BLOG YOU KNOW THIS FINNA BE A SAD ONE BC SEIJOH THIRD YEARS ARE MY FAVORITE BOIS AND THEM GRADUATING MAKES ME :(

oh god here comes the tears

so

it was something you knew was coming since yanno, third years and all that

but you were so sure you had more time left before it happened

didnt you just join the team and met them like yesterday?

nope love you met nearly a year ago

and they made quite an impact on you in the short term you were together

so during the day of graduation

it wasnt really a school day since it was mostly for third years and the whole ceremony but kouhais could come so they could send off their senpais

you already called each third year the night before, nearly 2 hours per boy, to talk to them and cry with them so you didnt have to cry during the day

but ofc

you were sobbing already when you saw your captain walk up and get his tube with the diploma inside

they tried to remain strong as they sat in their seats but a single glance at you and the team at the stands above, the tears were already either forming or full out slipping

i know yall finna beat me up for this but im not really familiar with the other third years in the team bc theyre not really shown in the anime or manga that much so i dont have a good grip on their character so can we pls pretend theyre not in here?? omg pls dont kill me though

the ceremony felt like a long time for the seniors but when it was finally over, they ran out of that building and yall did too and you bolted yourself into the arms of your captain

oikawa held you tightly against him and he didnt care about being seen by his fangirls, who were waiting outside for him, or the others who wanted to have you to them too

‘i love you, y/n-chan’

he mumbled and you nodded

‘mhm. i love you too, oikawa-san. i love all my boys’

YALL MY HEART IS BREAKING BC OIKAWA ACTUALLY MEANT IT THIS TIME AND YOURE STILL OVER HERE THINKING THAT HES JUST SAYING IT AS A FRIEND LIKE IM-

iwa ripped you away from him and your face was buried into his chest

but it didnt last long since the others got a little impatient and just joined the hug turning it into a group hug

‘i dont want you to leave!’

kindaichi sobbed and kunimi sniffled, holding on tighter to the backs of his senpais

even kyo was sad but hes a tuff boy so he easily hid that behind his usual frown and glare

after seeing their parents and reassuring them they would be home soon, you started your trek towards your usual hang out spot

the second and first years were walking ahead of you while the third years fell back in step with you in between them

mattsuhana flanked your left while iwaoi were at your right

the tears were now gone but sniffles still filled the area and everyone was still down in their spirits

you held tightly to the warm big hands of iwaizumi and the soft touch of mattsun’s hand as if you were clutching your life-line

but you knew no matter how tightly you held on to them, they would still go and eventually leave you behind

the ramen shop was filled with another round of tears as everyone realized that this would be the last time seijoh og would have ramen here

‘WE DONT WANT YOU TO GOOO~~~~!!!!!!’

kindaichi sobbed while kunimi aggressively shoved noodles in his mouth to hide his hiccups

you refused to eat because you were so sad that you were scared you might end up throwing it all up later so you settled on relishing your time with the boys

oikawa was busy talking to yahaba and telling him tips and tricks for next year while iwaizumi was consolling the others who were crying

that left you to harshly wipe off the tears and focus on the jokes that matsuhana were telling to help and lighten up the mood

‘think of it like this! you won’t have oikawa and iwaizumi fighting anymore!’

well,,,,,

that kinda made things worse

geez makki stfu!!!!

you bursted into full tears and you sobbed, loudly and freely

‘WAAAAAHHHH!!!!!’

you wheezed and then continued to cry

everyone flinched and got startled at the sight of you crying

theyve seen you cry before but not this intensely and sadly 

‘DONT GO!!! OU-OUR FAMILY’S GONE!! ITS B-BROKEN NOW!!!!’

you wailed

everyone is so used to seijoh antics that they didnt even bat an eyelash when everyone started crying

‘damn it, i was trying not to cry!’

iwa growled and buried his face into his hands to hide the pain in his eyes

‘come here, y/n-chan’

mattsun cooed while sobbing and you went straight into his arms and his arms tightly wounded around you

he pressed kisses on your neck to calm you and he whispered promises to keep you from thinking that you would be alone

the boys were all still crying even when you paid for them and at the exit, everyone wouldnt let go of each other

ngl it was a weird sight of seeing these boys just hanging on and hugging the others and you were tightly pressed against makki’s chest 

‘dont cry, y/n-chan. we’ll be here, always. just a 4-hour ride to tokyo’

he promised but you shook your head

‘--too far’

you mumbled and he was able to make out a few words and he laughed

‘i swear you’ll see us in a few hours’

it took a few words of assurance from makki and eventually mattsun and iwa joined

oikawa stayed back because he already wanted to walk you home and iwa knew you were the one that was the hardest for oikawa to tell his plans to

waving them good bye, you fussed and made sure everyone was not crying anymore

‘you text me the moment you get home, all right? and kyo-san, let the food in your stomach settle before-’

‘before i take a bath-yea i know’

he rolled his eyes but he smiled lightly before hugging you

‘go home now, y/n’

he pushed you towards his captain but you pulled away one last time to give each boy a kiss on the cheek

their lips trembled, especially the third years, and wanted to keep their tears in but they rocket launched to space

yanno that one part in season 1 when kiyoko told them to work hard and then they just snot-rocketed and cried

oikawa interlaced your fingers as you both walked towards your house and it was quiet

you were sus bc it was too quiet and oikawa would usually be either skipping, humming a tune, or just yapping his ass off

but right now

he was quiet, slouchy, and,,,, not oikawa

you looked up to see his face and you knew it wasnt just the graduating part

it was like,,,, he was nervous

you squeezed his hand and that got his attention

‘oikawa-san, whats wrong?’

he suddenly stopped and your linked hands caused you to also stop so you watched him stare down at his shoes and you blinked at him in confusion

‘oika-’

‘y/n, tell me to stay’

he,,, sounded like he was begging

pleading

desperate to hear you say it

‘why should i?’

you asked and he finally lifted his eyes to stare into your eyes

he gulped before further explaining himself 

‘coach got me a volleyball scholarship’

he whispered and your eyes widened before you launched into him for a hug and pulled back to cup his face

‘oh my god! tooru! a scholarship?! im so proud-’

‘in argentina’

he finished and your eyes dimmed, the lifted corners of your lips falling into a frown

‘o-oh’

you stuttered and pulled your hands away but he grabbed them, placing them back to his face 

‘but if you dont want me to go, i wont-’

‘NO! what?! tooru, its your dream! you and iwa-san wouldnt stop talking about that match with argentina and-and you want to go there! dont you dare let that slip away!’

you scolded frantically however oikawa’s face scrunched before he started crying

‘i-i can’t! y/n, i’ll be alone! its so far away! far from iwa, far from you-’

then you reached to your tippy toes and kissed his nose then leaned back with a big smile

‘no matter how far, ill always be right here. im always going to be here, waiting for you’

you mumbled and oikawa hiccuped then leaned his forehead against yours, eyes clashing that was so full of love and fear

‘then dont you worry, y/n-chan. oikawa-senpai will work really hard and he will come back and make you happy’

he whispered and you pulled him even closer to give him the biggest hug

‘im looking forward to it’

TIMESKIPTIMESKIPTIMESKIPTIMESKIP

ONEYEARONEYEARONEYEARONEYEAR

truth to be told with guilty conscience, the third years havent really been in touch

yes theyve called and messaged but there wasnt a normal kind of communication, especially with oikawa

but they decided to go over there during a simultaneous week break for universities in tokyo and iwa, makki, and mattsun pressured oikawa to fly back to japan just for a week to visit

‘iwa-chan im so broke righ-’

‘fine, we’ll see y/n ourselve-’

‘OKAY FINE! HERE! IM BUYING THE TICKET NOW SEE?!’

bahahaha im sorry i love oiks so much its not even funny

they agreed to not tell anyone, even coach, to surprise you all and to see your faces of surprise bc mattsuhana are little shites and they love to mess around

it was a normal day during practice

yahaba was teaching some first years how to serve while watari was giving exercising tips on how to bend their knees without shrieking in athritis

kyotani was doing jump serves while kindaichi and kunimi tried to block him

it was a normal day

the former third years knew the ins and outs of the place and oikawa still had his keys of the gym since he never gave it back so they were easily able to sneak in

they sat on the bleachers and observed everyones growth which really blew them away and took them aback by how much they improved in little time

like kunimis actually huffing and throwing a mini tantrum bc hes so into it and hes mad he didnt get that block right

they also noticed the larger amount of new recruits and based on their practice, it looks like they would be in good hands for the next few years

however, the true shock settled in when this happened

kyotani cursed loudly when the ball hit out but yahaba scolded him for saying a bad word in front of the first years

‘kyotani, dont say that anymore! its not good to teach the babies bad words!’

he ranted and the college boys shared a look of caution and fear, bracing themselves for kyotani’s normal screaming and tantrum for being called out

but they were the most surprised when the bleach-haired boy simply glared at him and turned away to go pick up another ball to hit

‘did,,,, did kyoken-chan-’

‘was he just calm right now?’

‘oh my god iwa-chan kyoken-chan got abducted by aliens!’

I SWEAR TO GOD ITS LIKE THE CURRENT THIRD AND SECOND YEARS GOT AN OIKAWA ‘IWA-CHAN’ SENSOR BECAUSE THE MOMENT HE SAID THAT, THEIR EARS TWITCHED AND THEY JUST KNEW

THEIR SENPAIS WERE HERE

their eyes were wide and their attention snapped towards the bleachers where indeed, their 4 fathers sat

‘OIKAWA-SAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

kindaichi screamed and he NYOOMED towards the stairs but kunimi grabbed him by the collar

‘come down here, senpais!’

yahaba urged and coach and naoi shared a look of initial shock but then transformed into happiness

it was nice to see the family together again

they quickly turned into a dog pile with the hugs that were given around like kyotani actually giving iwaizumi a hug and makki and mattsun affectionately ruffling everyone’s hair

the other first years were just staring in awe at the legendary third years of seijoh that theyve heard so much about

‘everyone, these are your seniors!’

yahaba presented and the 3 third years became very flustered but ofc attention whore oikawa soaked it up

‘yes, hello, my little disciples! you are my legacy so work har- IWA-CHAN!’

he was cut into his famous line when his best friend bonked him for being too self-absorbed again

‘waaa, l/n-senpai was right’

some first year mumbled at the scene and their ears perked up at the name

‘l/n?’

‘where is she?! y/n-chan!’

oikawa shouted and looked around

BECAUSE OF FATE

YOU AUTOMATICALLY MANIFESTED THERE

‘YES YOU CALLED’

okay no but you actually walked in just in time, carrying the crate of water bottles, focused on not dropping them so you didnt really see the others

they were silent not because they wanted to mess with you and see how long youd figure out that they were there

no

they were silent because of how BEAUTIFUL you became

you gained a few inches and your hair is now longer with your baby fat slowly melting away and you were also finally showing your growth with your body

the eyes that used to gleam with childish innocence was now mature and poised like a perfect lady

even the way you walked with a crate made it seem like a ballet performance with the grace at every step and the flowery aura you exuded

you have turned from a ridiculously cute and pretty girl to a beautiful goddess

AND YOU WERE ONLY IN YOUR SECOND YEAR HOW THE HELL ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO HANDLE IT WHEN YOURE FINALLY A THIRD YEAR?!

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE AMOUNT OF BOYS THEY HAVE TO WARD OFF?!

‘my god’

iwaizumi mumbled, flushing red and turning away to hide his fluster

‘beautiful’

oikawa whispered and he gulped, not remembering how strikingly attractive you are

‘have mercy’

makki whined softly, clutching his heart as it started beating fast and made his stomach feel all funny

did they act like this back in the day?

mattsun doesnt have control so he ran forward and you were just putting the crate down when you were lifted off of the floor and twirled around

so like yahaba waved off the others to go back to practice so its like not awkward to be standing around and see this happening

there was only one person who did this to you

‘mattsun-san?!’

you shrieked and you giggled happily as he put you down so you were able to hug him properly and eventually, catching sight on the others behind him

your gasp made them smile widely and you pressed a hand to your mouth to hide the shock and your overjoyed laugh

if they could take a picture of this and remember the amount of love your eyes held and the pure unfiltered happiness that swirled in those orbs

it was like they felt themselves falling in love with you all over again

‘oh my god everyone’s here too!’

you ran to them and jumped at the awaiting arms of iwaizumi and he was still the bara arm babie you remembered

‘i missed you, doll’

he whispered

‘hmmm,,,i missed you more’

he let you go and you skipped over to makki who engulfed you in his arms and you felt his soft brown hair because you remembered he loved it when you ran your fingers through his hair

‘youve grown! so much! you got even more beautiful!’

he exclaimed and you giggled, bashful at his compliment

‘hmm~, no i didnt’

he gave you a deadpan look and you chuckled before scurrying away towards the one you wanted to hug the most

he definitely got more toned and he got taller too

you didnt have any time to react since he grabbed you and squished you against him

‘youre here, oikawa-san’

he nuzzled his head against your neck

‘mhm, im here now, y/n-chan’

he placed a kiss on your nose and you scrunched your face but there was a big smile that was clear

then oikawa’s eyes trailed from your face to your,,, ahem,,, girls

‘jesus, y/n-chan really grew, huh’

he complimented and you blinked confusingly before trailing after his eye’s gaze and it landed on your chest and you punched him

‘urusai, oikawa-san! my eyes are up here! youre so perverted. pervert oikawa-san’

you pouted and moved to seek comfort in the arms of makki

‘hmm, oikawa’s perverted as usual. i think it got worse with all those argentinian women’

makki teased and mattsun joined to poke fun at their captain

oikawa whined and told iwa they were making fun of him to which his own best friend betrayed him and starting teasing him too

you simply watched on and your eyes watered, your sniffles catching their attention

‘eh? why are you crying, y/n-chan?’

oikawa asked while approaching you to wipe your tears with his thumbs

but you shook your head with a teary smile

‘n-nothing-just,,,, i missed you guys. an-and im so happy because its like our f-family’s back together and i just-i-’

you cried but it was out of happiness and their hearts warmed

ofc they felt guilty because they were aware that they werent as in touch as they shouldve been so you probably felt lonely and casted aside without any contact from your boys

but they know now to make sure you feel loved and cared for because as you keep saying, they were your boys

they were a family

seijoh is a family 

and you love them 

but they love you more

a/n: okay im sorry this is probably trash and all over the place and im crying and stressing but ive been writing in between my college alg homework and its been so hard like WHY IS NUMBERS SO HARD LIKE WHAT-?! but this has kinda been the baby of my break time and relaxing few minutes bc i procrastinate too much and i want to do something i like before i actually go insane and i promise PROMISE that once everything is cleared up i will edit this and im already working on the other requests so expect a few to be out by the end of the week or something like that!!

[okay-victoria]

Random Personal Rant

For anyone somehow here not from the original thread, this started off me getting asked what finishing school is and me getting shit off my chest that is only mildly relevant about how I could both be of the social class that gets sent to finishing school and grows up on welfare.

With an understanding that in many parts of the world it wouldn't qualify as so, as far as the US goes, my dad is from what counts as a very old money family from Baltimore & Philadelphia. Both his siblings went to college and one now owns a major hedge fund, and his sister is married to a C-level executive at a huge conglomerate. His parents went to college. His grandparents went to college. All eight of his great grandparents went to college. My dad...did not go to college. He was not about that life, and while I don't mean it as an insult, when I say his primary occupation until I was ~5 was a drummer in a mediocre band I mean that he opened for a lot of great acts, and if you lived in the Boston to Atlanta area in the 80s you may have heard him play, but he was never a huge national name. But he wasn't an amateur band playing for free at some random local gig either.

My mom grew up on a chicken farm in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania but also completely rejected her heritage and became a model, sort of like my father, of mediocre status. Not Giselle Bundchen, but had national contracts and if you have a Graco ad/box from 1990-1993 you might see both me and her on it. They met because my mom's friends placed bets, one each, on who could sleep with a member of their favorite local band first and my mom picked my dad and...my mom was actually supposed to go be a model in Tokyo and found out she was pregnant with me and couldn't go 😂

So, after my parents had two kids back to back with a third on the way and determined they needed lifestyles more in line with having three children, they became much poorer than they originally were because my mom stopped working and my dad, with a barely-passed-high-school education but needing a true "day job" worked day labor in construction. My dad's father was too proud to give us money/help if my dad didn't beg for it; despite having eventually four young children my dad never did so we ended up on all the state assistance programs one could imagine. My grandma jokes that dinners at my parents house were BYOC - bring your own chair, because we didn't own any.

My mother and paternal grandmother had no such pride issues and I live in eternal gratitude that my welfare childhood was not as crappy as it should have been because my grandmother would have my mom accompany her on grocery runs and buy us food without my father or grandfather knowing, and every Christmas and birthday my grandparents/godparents could give us the one big ticket gift all the kids wanted that year. But, on the other side, I once got stung by a bee inside my mouth because my brother threw a hairbrush through a cracked window at me and broke it and we couldn't afford to fix it for about two years and a hornet got in one day and rested himself in my coke can (my parents were the very American type that fed me coca-cola in baby bottles at age 8 when I was jealous of my younger siblings lol).

It is hard not to believe in "toxic masculinity" when two men warring over dumbass pride issues would rather their children/grandchildren go without food than suck it up and decide 'help' isn't the worst word in the English language, and you know you've only been saved by two women who came from totally different backgrounds and entirely disapproved of each other but reached out the hand to shake when it came down to toddlers getting the short end of the don't-bend-the-knee stick. It wasn't that either of the men were bad people, I loved them both and got along great with both, but on a societal level I feel they were socialized in a very fucked up way if that was the end result, as both claimed "male pride" in these instances [my dad took multiple thousands of dollars I'd saved from working during college from me during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and didn't tell me and that was the reason I was given for why I hadn't been informed/asked, because it would be too emotionally difficult for an adult man to ask a young woman. My graduation present was them repaying me 1/3 of the money they'd taken from me without asking because I'd like, trusted them when it had been in a joint account that was a holdover from when I was <18 and couldn't have my own bank account].

While in some ways my parents on the surface achieved the American dream of going from nothing to a bunch of money, the real factor in play was that my dad's father was the bank. My parents had no credit and couldn't get real loans. My dad worked construction and during the two major periods that flipping houses was very lucrative, he never had to get an actual loan or pay actual interest, he just had to ask his father to pay out cash and then repay him at a flat 2% interest rate that didn't even accrue over time, just...whenever you are ready, repay the value of the loan + 2%. Because my father was doing something productive, in these instances, my grandfather was happy to pay, because it wasn't giving away money, it was loaning it. I had a very weird situation of mostly being poor but like also getting taken to the "big donors" events at the Kennedy Center and my grandparents regularly buying me a dress as a child worth more than my mom's wedding dress and also needing to pretend I fit in with these people.

And look. When I say "these people"...honestly, by and large, most wealthy people, whether inherited or not, are not the assholes you want to imagine. Most of them are extremely nice. Most of them are generous when it comes to the less fortunate who are in their personal sphere of being. Most of them are just really out of touch. The 100% kindest of all of them that I know once relayed to me that she thought people would be happier if once a year they did what she did...go to the airport with a purse packed full of absolute necessities, buy a one way ticket to the most appealing destination on the flight board, buy your clothes and book your accommodations after you'd arrived, and come back after you felt you'd 'centered' yourself. She didn't understand why there were so many unhappy people who weren't taking this very obvious route to being happier. I didn't quite know how to explain that saying "most" people couldn't afford to do that either financially or from a job/career angle didn't even cover it, as "most" sounds like 70% instead of 99.7%.

I was both my parents eldest son and eldest daughter in the worst combination possible. I was the eldest son because I was the most stereotypically male of all my siblings, in everything from desire to physically fight the battles I was given to dislike of shopping/fashion to lack of emotional connection to my relationships, so I can now fix your average household plumbing/drywall/electrical issue better than most "city" guys I interact with and remain less clingy to them in the process. I was also very much the oldest daughter from a responsibility perspective, I managed our household and from age 10 - 24 managed the finances of our family business, my mom almost died giving birth to my youngest brother after a ruptured uterus that should never have happened in the first place if we had adequate insurance to get her a non-emergency C-section (I was just past 9 years old at the time) and I was informally withdrawn from school for two years to take care of the family when she couldn't because there is no paid parental leave in the US and we got double-fucked by the medical industry because she got a bad "mesh" put in and then had to have a further surgery to repair that which we also had to pay for and didn't have the money to win a lawsuit over.

I don't know quite how to put this, but in the deepest fuck you of the universe, my rich-immigrant-ggggg grandfather's money led to him owning banks, insurance companies, etc, and the family cashed out in a big way when their ownership was bought by and merged with what is now Cigna, one of the biggest US healthcare insurers, and my nuclear family specifically got screwed by the American health insurance industry, but anyway, we were the people selected for that karmic comeuppance so if you want to feel schadenfreude at my expense, I'll allow it without begrudging the sentiment, my family might have fucked up your family’s life too, not just their own.

I got up twice a night to feed my brother because my dad had to sleep unmolested in my room to get to work and my mom was too weak to carry my brother or even hold him against her while she nursed so I had to hold him up to her. Adjusting to living in a city and hearing lots of random noises all the time was not easy when I'd had mom sound instincts from age 9.

I learned to drive the fall my youngest bro was born because my mom couldn't and I had to get my middle brother to preschool and go the grocery store on my own. While I hold absolutely no ill will towards my father or grandfather for this and given that about 1/3 of my paternal family either has an autism diagnosis or should, I fully feel the struggles they both went through to be communicated with, my father wouldn't ask for help, and my grandmother that lived 20 minutes away couldn't give enough help because my grandfather refused to do a single dish on his own as that was outside their "marriage contract" type agreement and she couldn't ever stay with us overnight when there wasn't a clearly-communicated need, so they let the burden fall on a 9 - 11 year old child and that really shaped a lot of my life in both good and bad ways. My youngest brother is 22, and we have only just climbed out of the medical debt his birth left us with between my dad's life insurance and my oldest brother and I paying for the extra cost of out-of-state college tuition.

The irony of all of this is that because my father died before his father, when my grandmother dies, my siblings and I will all inherit enough money (as a non-blood relative my mom, despite keeping her vows to part at death and not having remarried in eight years, is cut out entirely) to make this a non-issue, but my grandfather couldn't conscience spotting his unluckiest child some money in the end of days to pay for my youngest two brothers' education and take that worry off my father as he was dying. The day before he died I had to hold him down in bed to keep him from trying to climb in his truck to go to work because he was so anxious about trying to provide for us in spite of his father having fuck you money, because his father didn't think it was fair to the other siblings (who, at the time, still owned a major hedge fund and were married to a C-level executive of a huge conglomerate). A day and a half later I went back to my job because at the time I was then the sole provider for the family and didn't want to risk asking for the standard week's bereavement leave when I knew I was capable of showing up at work the next day and was fresh out of college so hadn't built up a reputation yet.

My father worked the day each of us was born, so I suppose it is only fair and he smiled at the choice. In spite of what it may seem, I gave a baller and very heartfelt speech at his funeral to all his rich friends that over and above everything, he'd taught us how to be happy with our own lives no matter what, and multiple of them emailed my mom in the aftermath to say they'd reassessed their relationship with their children in light of it, although...tbh I kind of doubt that lasted and they probably changed nothing 😅. The last good talk I had with him, two weeks before he died [his liver was going and it sent toxins to his brain that de-personed him after that and he no longer recognized me as his daughter, but as his sister], I reassured him that though we would all be sad he'd gone, we'd live on just fine without him because that's how he'd raised us, and according to my mom that was what gave him the final bit of peace he needed. Although honestly, I don't think I will ever see the strength in another human again that it took my grandmother to sit next to him and stroke his hand and tell him to close his eyes and imagine he was happy on a beach and die, for God's sake, because he was unaware and in pain and just prolonging it for our sake by then.

That type of obsession my grandfather had with assessing his children and grandchildren on the basis of economic productivity and a very black and white idea of "fair" is one you don't easily forget, I promise you. My hedge fund uncle is currently positioning himself to screw us out of our inheritance because of janky writing in the will and I'm doing my fuck all best to gain the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with this cold motherfucker in court as the oldest and representative member of my happily much nicer and softer younger brothers who I want to remain that way not because I even care that much about the money, I know what bills affect your credit first and what you can put off paying and all of us have good enough career prospects to do our own thing, but just because I want to give the middle finger to a man that was a multi-millionaire and drew lines on his milk and orange juice bottles when I came over so he knew if I drank what my parents couldn't afford when I was approximately six. Anyway, ask me why I support major reforms in wealth taxation. I don't care who it goes to, just not that guy, you feel?

Having expendable income was very exciting for a bit after I started working but once I got to the hateable point of assessing my annual bonus and internally complaining that I'd spent the money I should have spent on a Sauternes cellar to drop five digits on bedset materials (to be fair they are drop dead gorgeous, very comfy and the factory pays a living wage for people to handmake the sheets/duvets/pillows to people in San Francisco, which is not cheap, so maybe I did more good than harm with that), I two seconds later nodded to myself and went "the government needs to confiscate more money from me". The narrative is always that the "undeserving" will use it for dumb things they don't need like iPhones or refrigerators...?...but like...I could also have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a very nice sheet/comforter set for at most a tenth of what I paid so am I really spending it responsibly either....?....who is going to get more joy out of this misspent money....?....not me, that is for sure, I probably would have had more fun going to BBB and laying on all the demo beds and buying something there.

My lifelong dream, which may become possible if/when I do have something of an inheritance, is to provide food security for one of the many towns in the US were most residents don't have it. It's the thing I remember the most distinctly over the years. I never could quite believe it when I got to the point that I could just...pay to eat at a restaurant. One of the most disappointed my mother has ever been in me is when I was twenty five and confessed I actually had no idea how much a gallon of milk cost in a city grocery store besides that it was probably between $1 and $5, because I didn't have to know. For now I make a weekly drop off of my excess produce to a mom group I met under somewhat weird circumstances but I was walking through the cut-through that went through the low-income housing back to my apartment at like 2 AM on a Saturday and these moms were out there partying and smoking weed with their kids all strapped in strollers around or the older ones watched by a rotating member of the group and I felt very safe and like these moms had a very good vibe of both living their own lives [seriously for mental health parents but in most cases specifically mothers need to be able to keep up relationships with people their age] but keeping their children safe and accounted for while doing so and trying their fuckin' best against all the odds to figure out how to make that happen when life had dealt them a shit hand.

...anyway, looping way back to the original question of what finishing school is, when I was almost done with middle school my dad had built a legit construction business that then very quickly took off because we lived in a commutable zip code to the now-rich-in-their-own-right people he went to high school with who trusted him to redo their homes. We eventually moved to that zip code but I stayed and commuted back to my old high school. But, i was a pretty wild kid which my father appreciated for a long while because I would follow him around on jobs and enjoy doing physical labor, but once I was mid-puberty and also he had to maybe show me to his high school friends that did not fly.

I snapped - not broke, snapped - my left thumb and my parents had to trap me like a wild animal to get me to go the hospital. Then I got a deep cut that partially injured a tendon in my leg and at eleven I tried to beat the shit out of my dad to prevent him from picking me up to strap me in the car and go to the hopsital. Next I got a deep splinter due to my eternal-barefoot tendencies and it wouldn't come out so got infected and I refused to go to the doctor [another weird back story but I was minorly sexually assaulted [[to be clear, not raped or anything big traumatic]] when I was eight and had to stay in hospital for a week and my parents couldn't be with me all the time so I have a permanent heebie-jeebie about going to the hospital, not true anxiety, I will go if I know I need to and I don't breathe heavy or anything, and I'm actually not permanently weirded out by sex or anything, just doctors in hospitals specifically I kind of unconsciously try to justify not needing to the extent I can rationalize it] and my dad was tired of my antics so he was like "fine if you don't go I will slice your foot in half with a Swiss Army knife to get it out" and I called his bluff and laid down on the floor, stuck my foot on his lap, and he didn't really know what to do when a barely fourteen year old girl called his bluff so my brothers watched in fascinated but horrified awe as I got my foot sliced open spectacularly so that the infection/splinter could come out and I didn't even make a sound out of spite despite it being quite painful to my recollection almost twenty years later.

They saw me cry from pain exactly one time when while trying to break up a fight between all three of them (it was over ice cream) I got pushed and my ankle got dislocated and what actually made me cry was snapping it back in place and they realized it was not a joke. These dumb assholes that I love have ragged on me for "skipping" chores the day after I was in the hospital because the day before that I had to spend 18 hours running Thanksgiving as a good sub-hostess like I didn't have a serious infection that needed treating and couldn't rest because none of them were up to any task beyond peeling potatoes.

After the Swiss Army knife incident, my dad's discussion of sending me to finishing school became real, which I knew when my mom made me take a walk with her and talked about it. Finishing school is like...etiquette school....? In ye olden day when finishing high school was not the norm for anyone, wealthy men finished high school and wealthy women often went to "finishing" school to have a combined education on being a proper lady but also being able to hold a decent conversation with your presumably-educated husband, so it wasn't entirely etiquette non-academic. It was more just like "what a rich man wants in a wife" school, which was sort of household management and knowing enough about cleaning/cooking to correct the staff if they fucked up, how to be a polite hostess, and how to not entirely bore him when you were alone together and had done your five minutes of sex or whatever so actually had to have a conversation. In modern times it has obviously expanded to be less bleak.

I said miss me with that, I can be a girl on my own, so I went full throttle into the girliest sport they offer in high school and ever since have gained the inestimable advantage of knowing how to also use femininity to my advantage, which I am very grateful to my parents for making me learn. It would be great if we lived in a world where that didn't count, but it did/still does, and they really set me up to operate in all the worlds.

It is weird for me to tell the story to Internet strangers because it's one of those things that makes your parents sound terrible and abusive in the general tone of the Internet nowadays, and while I support gender nonconforming children I don't remember my childhood or parents that way. But, I feel like the bits and pieces of my life I've given don't always make a ton of sense together without the context, so here it is, and in the end, I think a number of parts of it are areas where you can probably understand where it makes me have the opinions I do when I write.

Anyhoo, this makes my life sound far worse than it is, I actually have a great life and I am not unhappy with it at all and feel I was on the whole blessed with many more turns of luck than unluck, so, please, do not take this as a depressed artist rant, it is more like a rant of a very energetic person who rants about a lot of things all the time and didn’t need to come out but just did because the question was asked and the time was right with my life being in a bit of flux to think about how I got where I am and where I want to go and why.

Always remember no matter what problems it seems like I have, if I didn’t solve them on my 2 year round the world traveling hiatus I took from working, it’s my own fault, I definitely had the time and money to solve them and just chose not to.

[aggresivelyfriendly]

Tis the Damn Season

Chapter 6- Last Christmas

Hi all! Sorry she took forever- I edited all by myself, so be gentle!

Plans change. Tickets do too, it seems. Harry's beautiful hope, his gift, it came in handy.

Not in the right way, the intended way. Not because she came to him, ran around the world or even an unfamiliar city with him. Those were dreamy ideas, when she wound up spending all of fall semester in Holmes Chapel. Those daydreams shaded the hospital walls and funeral home with sunny possibilities.

Her father had a heart attack and her mother a breakdown. It was too late, when her mother noticed he'd been out with the dog for too long and the dog was inside whining.

"I knew, in my gut. Day dawned wrong. And then never ended." She'd cried. Her mother had cried in her arms in a reversal Emma felt was way beyond her maturity level.

That hadnt been over the phone. Over the phone had only been muffled sobbing and her dad's name, "John."

Emma didn't call him John, but she could forgive her mother. It was up to her mother's good friend Di to share the news: Emma had always looked up to Di, she'd had some tragic marriage in her youth, and then decided god damned men weren't for her.

At the moment, Emma was of a similar mind.

Emma assumed she'd have a similar life to Di, had planned for it actually. Di had her own house, a thriving career as a solicitor and no children. A life like that, of her own, was Emma's dearest wish before she wished to be able to say yes to Harry.

Now she just wished her dad was still around.

There were so many plans to make, a funeral to finance and a mother to support, to put back together.

It's a wonder Emma wasn't an outright romantic, the way her parents had been, lifelong sweethearts. They still had moon eyes for each other until the very end, could be found holding hands on the couch often. Emma had come home unexpectedly early last year and found her mother sitting on the kitchen counter with her father between her legs making out like teenagers.

It was a lot to live up to.

Emma supposed it was why she kept all her heart eyes and love life in the closet and saved it all up to spend once a year. Just like an old lady's Christmas budget.

This year, she didn't think it would be happening. Harry must have had some rich person thing going on with the ticket, because the minute she decided that rather than ask her mom to buy her a ticket to get home, for the funeral, instead use the one she  had from Harry, he'd called. There was clear excitement in his voice, hot on the heels of her phone call to the airlines. It was August. He was set to embark soon, she'd just got back to Amsterdam. He must have thought she was gonna sneak in a cheeky visit.

"You're coming?"

"What?" She was so disoriented. Coming where? What was going on? Her brain was muffled with plans her feelings kept stumbling over at the knees like a trip wire.

"To see me? I got a notification you used the ticket?"

Her brain was muddled, like an egg in a hot pan, what? How did he do that? "No, Harry, umm I'm not coming. I don't even know where you are right now." She barely knew where she was.

"Whose fault is that?" There was a tiny edge to his voice that would cut her if she could even notice. "You could have answered my calls."

"Harry," she sighed, she had been avoiding him a bit. Mostly because she had an evergreen memory of his disappointed face when she told him going on tour was too much, that she simply didn't have the time. She was glad she couldn't see his face when she said the next bit. His voice was buoyant with hope, she was about to pop that balloon. "I need the ticket to go somewhere else." She couldn't bear to say it, was biting her lip hard not to think it, the liquid memory brimming anyway.

"Yeah, ok. Well, Happy Christmas I guess. See you in four months, maybe." The bitterness in his voice was like an old lemon and she didn't even have time to sweeten it with truth when his phone clicked off.

That made her resentful. How could this truth be sweet in any way? It got worse over time, the resentment just nestled among her other griefs.

Then he wouldn't answer her calls. She supposed that was giving her a taste of her own medicine and it was a quick wash down her throat with no water after the other jagged pill life had just forced down her throat.

And it didn't get better. Though, she had to scoff at herself for even having a square of heart for Harry to break leftover.

Break it did though, when she heard he had a new girlfriend, a blonde, a model, a French blonde model.

Of course.

Emma couldn't help but stalk her instagram. His was useless, ill used, so when she'd finished a day of running the house she'd been a child in while taking care of her grieving mother, she'd torture herself some more and watch stories where the beautiful blonde played in a pool, or made jokes, or showed the big mirror over her bed.

That one hurt most. She'd never seen Harry's bed, nor he hers. The little devil voice inside her head whisper shouted that he much preferred the one he was in now, with the mirror and the model to the tiny inn room they'd spent all their overnights in.

She didn't hear from him, and she never called to explain herself either. What would she say? My life fell apart and I needed your ticket, but it hurt to much to say it out loud and you were to much of an asshole to let me say it.

Harry wasn't an asshole, not really, he was hurt. Emma was stunned she had that power, though she had admitted to herself there was more between them than mistletoe kisses and holiday fucks.

She'd admitted it was more to her.

He acted like it was more to him, unless this was just a bruised ego. She didn't like to think that. Harry had every reason to have a giant head, figuratively to go with the oversized cranium he actually sported, but he'd never shown it. He was cocky at times, just enough to be sexy. All of that was a veneer over a sweet vulnerability that made everybody want to be around him, protect him, love him.

Did she love him?

No, she didn't think so, but given more time, the potential was there, like a rock at the top of a hill, all it would take was a push.

Which, time on tour with him would have been. If she could have went. Which she couldn't. She wanted to explain all of this to him as soon as she has the chance- which she would in 6 hours.

Her promises to herself were that she would not cry and that she would accept his new relationship. His real relationship. Emma would not try to touch him, or kiss him, or confess her almost love to him.

He was probably in love himself, from her internet stalks, she was halfway there, with both of them. Harry edged it out by being perfect in person. Camille, that was frenchies name, could only be half as perfect as Emma made her in her head.

"Do I wear the sweater?" She asked her reflection. She'd had to become her best friend the last six months. Emma might have called her mom her best friend, just based on time spent together, if their relationship was reciprocal, but at this turn of the road, she was supporting her mom as she grieved and got back to herself. Emma could see glimmers. She had hope.

She however wasn't sure she had hope for herself. Was she really contemplating wearing the sweater Harry gave her last Christmas to his mother's Christmas party? How pathetic was that? She was rolling her eyes at herself. He'd had a big year, and he bought lots of gifts, probably for his new girl, so her thinking he'd remember felt narcissistic.

Plus, it was her favorite, which mostly had nothing to do with the fact it was from Harry.

Emma really didn't want to go, but Gemma was expecting her. And she really needed to see her, have her support. They'd been texting, a lot. Gemma had heard about her dad and reached out. It was the only emotionally connection Emma really had, those texts, and she needed to see Gemma, honestly. Even if it meant seeing Harry.

She might have wanted to see Harry.

To explain, and maybe just to see him. Make sure he was happy, feel his warmth, steal him back.

No, that was unlikely. See if he was happy and wish him well.

She wore the sweater.

The house was cozy when she arrived, like it always was and it thawed her heart enough for it to ache a bit. For something new. Her heart ached a fair bit off and on, then went numb. It was the only way she'd survived lately. Emma knew she was putting off really feeling her major loss.

It was a strange pleasure to mourn something as minor as heartbreak.

The hug from Gemma made the trip through the snow and down memory lane worth it. And the people all around her and their laughter were invigorating.

The alcohol helped as well. Their house was pretty dry but had been especially when she started to notice her mom was unconsciously developing a bottle a day habit. When it wasn't there she didn't mention it though, so Emma didn't buy it, except for special occasions.

She was merry, and felt held. Her hand was in Gemma's. She'd stayed away from the back bathroom and the kitchen, even come in the front door.

Emma felt like she was getting away with it.

Harry wasn't there, with girlfriend in tow or not. So all her pontificating about checking on him was all for naught, and she was getting all the crosses. She certainly felt like today was a plus.

Until she heard a tone of elation issue from Anne's happy voice that only motherly joy could produce.

Harry was here.

"Fuck!" Came out of her mouth, and Gemma looked at her sharply.

"What?"

"Nothing, guess I'm jumpy, your mum's shout made me spill." Emma thought she shouted an excuse me while she hurried up the stairs to hide, find a place farthest away from Harry and his happiness. He might be alone, but if he was glowing like a brand, the way he did when they holed up together only slightly dimmed by their parting, now because of it, from some other lover, Emma couldn't stand it.

Plus, she thought she'd heard another name connected to his over her own rated r exclamation.

She was coming out of the bathroom. Emma had suppressed her tears ruthlessly and her bottom lip might bruise from the brutal teeth marks she employed. She'd have given herself some words in the mirror, affirmations helped, but what was she gonna say. "You're happy for him."

She wasn't. She was happy with him.

"Fuck this." Emma decided the only course of action was a straight line to her parents house. her mother's house, she mentally corrected and gave herself a more legitimate reason to cry than over a boy. Even if that boy was Harry Styles.

Who she barely stopped herself from running into as she kept her head down and rounded the bannister to head down the stairs.

"Jesus! You gave me a fright!" She dramatized and kept a hand over her heart and her tear stained face down.

"Emma." His voice was flat, and not cold, but the warmth that snuggled around her name was absent and she shivered. "I wondered if you'd be here." Not Hoped, she noted. "What are you doing up here? Don't your usually use the back bathroom?" There was just a bit of heat in that statement, but it didn't warm, it burned. Was he being mean, that wasn't like him? "Nice sweater." Ok, definitely mean.

Her face came up with that thought, it shocked her out of the sense of control she was exercising.

He did look hard, mean, for a moment, but soft around the edges like a melting popsicle when he caught her face.

"Are you crying?" His hand came up and he stopped it mid air before it wiped away her tear.

Emma felt her body lean into him and another tear slipped out when his warm palm and always chilly finger tips touched her cheek.

God she'd missed him! While she was bolstering her mother, she'd needed support. He was supportive, or would have been. But he wasn't taking her calls, and she couldn't bring herself to text, "my dad died". Then, it was such old news, she figured he'd have heard from Gemma.

He took his hand away like she was a hot cooktop.

He pushed his hair back off his forehead with the hand probably damp with her tears and bravely changed the subject. "How long you in town for this time? Jetting off to some climate refuge hotspot soon?"

Emma flinched. Oh- he didn't know.

"Un, no, I'm living here." She didn't elaborate, maybe saying it out loud was as hard as texting it. "I was actually just about to head home to check on my mum. The back bathroom was in use, and the cold makes me need to pee." What the fuck was she talking about, he didn't need that information.

His dimple pressed in just a bit and he went to say something, but Emma just couldn't. She couldn't look at him anymore, or tell him about why she lived there, or about the ticket he seemed to have been hurt enough to move on over. She definitely didn't want to see evidence of his movement, especially not his upgrade. "Anyway, nice to see you," the words shot out of her mouth, impresonal and true. "Bye Harry."

"Wait Emma!" She thought she heard, but she just kept going. She'd tell Gemma she was sick.

She nearly was when she saw Harry's girlfriend hugging her closest friend in the living room.

"Oh god."

Luckily, when she got home, her mum was awake and feeling chatty, not blue. Emma focused on her and the special she was watching. Let the warm sound of her mother's once common laughter wrap around her as a blanket. It was more comforting than a cup of tea.

She waited until later to cry herself to sleep.

The next day was Christmas- the first without her father. She dried her rightful tears before she saw her mom, though she would have had all the standing in the world for them and she felt better about them than those she's shed the night before. She knew though that her wet face would cause a cascade event, the first drop in a waterfall, so she dried them up.

They had traditions to get through.

And get through they did. They each wrapped a gift for her father that they left under the tree and held each other right before tucking into a late brunch and preparing a boozy and sweet laden Christmas dinner, Emma contributed the puddings.

They were very much her mother's favorite, and she broke out a scandi recipe she'd enjoyed the last several years.

She Skyped her university friends, they exchanged the small gifts she'd mailed them and them her. She missed them something awful. She missed school horribly, so much she even emailed her advisor. All of her heart hoped to return after the winter break.

Emma thought the feeling of missing something was a bit like a paper cut and losing your keys combined.

Harry called late Christmas Day, just a few minutes shy of Boxing Day. That more than stung, it was a gut punch, or a knife plunge, though she'd never had either.

Emma ignored the call from Harry. What was there to say?

Boxing Day, well, Emma wasn't much of a drinker, but it was basically a tenet of British culture to get obliterated while watching the queen.

For the last several years, Emma had been off her face on Harry. This year she chose savingnon blanc with her mum. Two days, then they'd go back to a dry house. Tradition was tradition, and she couldn't think about the one she'd started and ached all over for.

What a pale imitation of ecstasy drunkenness was, though she supposed they both left a hangover, a residue.

Her bed, when she begged off to it early was warm and fragrant, but it smelled all wrong. No sandalwood or black coffee, not even the mint she'd come to associated with the comfort of love, or something like it.

It was worse, because when she closed her eyes, having seen Harry's someone in person, she could see him snugged up to her, so cozy. It was in their place, their room at the Boat's Head.

It was over, Boxing Day, when she puked.

She had another missed call from Harry. 11:59 Her personal witching hour.

The next day was a little bit better, either because she had her literal hangover to tend, or because she'd ripped the bandaid off her hurt and let the wound air.

"Hiya!" Gemma's voice and face were bright, unlike the gray day.

"Hello." Emma smiled and her voice held it, she held onto it. "You're merry!"

"Yeah, I'm at the pub. Everybody is at the pub," she flashed the phone around so Emma could see the waving swaying people, "we wanted to get you outta the house, you made such an effective Irish exit the other day you've let your people down, we need to see your smile. You feeling better?"

"Yes, thank you." Emma thought about it, there was a pull to the pub. "Um, maybe I can swing over."

It only took a few minutes to throw on jeans and a jumper, not her former favorite. The walk was a little longer.

When she found them, her first comment was "Im not drinking!" Over a grimace.

"Too much wine with old Elizabeth, huh? " Gemma Laughed

"Yes! Did you know my mum has a long pour?" Emma shared with a laugh.

"No, but mine's gotten more heavy on the booze with me lately, they must like the new stages. Daughters as actual friends and drinking partners. Mum is thrilled!" Gemma grinned.  "So am I! Harry's a little jealous."

Emma tried to catch her grimace before it stomped across her face. Gemma kept talking and she thought she'd got away with it.

"He wants to be one of the girl's! He came down last night and mum, Camille and I were sharing wine and mum was showing her atrocious pictures. You'd think he'd be mad or embarrassed! He was like, 'Where's my glass?'" Gemma was staring at her while she chuckled.

Emma had less success not responding. Her face was a picture she was sure, a jealous one. And then she heard herself asking, "what's she like?" She gulped down the g word she almost voiced. "Camille?"

Gemma made a funny face, then looked at her again. "Um, she's silly and kinda quiet and I think she's worried my mom will care she's posed nude."

She wouldn't. That wasn't Anne's style. And if she did have an issue, she'd never voice it. She was really big on respecting her kids choices. Even some of the stupider ones Harry had made.

Was she ranked among those now?

"Why do you ask?" The gentleness in a Gemma's voice told Emma she knew more than she was saying.

Emma couldn't explain, she was still in such a tender state, like a fissured piece of glass, she knew she couldn't go over it. "I just hope Harry's happy."  It was the only true thing she could say.

And Gemma, bless her just looped her arm through Emma's and said like she was holding a cracked egg. "He is." She left it at that, before she stood, pulling Emma after her. "And we need another drink." Apparently Emma was drinking, she needed it.

They spent another couple hours at the pub and Emma walked home through the soft snow. Her nose was stuffy, and her eyes were leaking, and she was drunk. Least she realized she must be, cuz she was crying. She really hated crying.

She was still weeping under her breath when she got home and found Harry on her doorstoop.

"You're still here?" She boggled. She assumed he'd taken his girlfriend to his big London home Emma had never been to, since she wasn't ever his g word.

"Yeah." He rubbed his hands over his corduroy flares. She'd consider what that might mean, but the pants distracted her. Those were new, must be getting fashion influences from new places, mew people. Those pants were roomy for him. He looked good in them. He looked good, happy.

"Did you need something?" Seeing himwas ripping her guts out and she could barely keep more tears at bay. Her insides were dangerously close to the skin now, tender and exposed. She hoped the distance between them and the weather and, well, maybe his rose colored glasses brought on by loving some other girl, he wouldn't notice her crying.

Over him. At the moment.

"No, I, um," he swallowed. "I thought we might talk." He made those green eyes at her and she hated it. Cuz they were soft and for someone else these days.

"I think we've said it all."

"We haven't said anything, not really, in a year."

"Yeah, well actions over words mate." Good, she was angry. She tried to go around him, into her door. Out of the cold and this situation.

"Emma, wait." He caught her shoulders and her blood froze in her veins but her tears were hot on her cheeks. "I'mso sorry about your dad." He choked up too.

She looked at him and let hurt run down her face, didn't even bother trying to stiffen her upper lip. When he opened his arms, she went to him and cried in a way she really hadn't let herself, into the comfort of his scent, the hurt of his presence.

Emma wasn't sure how long she cried, they wound up siting on the cold stone bench when their knocking knees froze.

"S that why you used the ticket?" He whispered against her hair sometime later.

She nodded. Sniffed up her tears and his pain laced smell.

"Why didn't you call me?"

She shrugged.

"I would have understood. And I would have come, to be with you."

Her tears apparently hadn't run out. She knew that, but she was hurt, by his hurt and his expectation.

She looked up at him. Her lips were so close to his, the outer edge that felt so plush and lovely.

That was a Liberty she didn't have. Maybe never a right she had, like him just expecting her to drop her goals to go to him.

"Where's your girlfriend?" She said the word like the four letters it felt like it was to her.

"Um," he stumbled over the subject change . "She was tired."

"You tell her you were coming to see a girl you used to fuck?"

"What?" He looked at her with a frown and Emma supposed she was being mean, mean but honest. "Don't say it like that. That's not what we were about."

Emma quirked a brow at him. "No?"

"Listen, why are you being like this?" He swallowed and looked like the wronged party when he was the one who assumed the worst of her, then abandoned her, moved on, and showed up, she could only assume, to rub it in her face.

The last year had been the worst of her life, and he'd been part of that. Mostly his absence.

Whoever's fault that was.

"Look, I don't need your pity or your condolences. Or your forgiveness. You just assumed I was taking advantage of you like you didn't know me at all. Which I realized is true apart from knowing what I look like naked, right? Let's be honest Harry? Huh, I'm just the girl you used to fuck over break. Your Christmas bit of fun. Til you found your next model. Who you couldn't wait to come home and show off, right in my face. So if we were more, you're a heartless asshole." She was crying over him now, but half the tears at least were angry and her face must be bright red.

The kicked puppy look on his face was so genuine and felt so false to her she could scream. "Why would I even think you would care if I had a girlfriend or not? If anybody was just the person the other thought of as a holiday fling, it was you about me, Emma."  He huffed, took down the finger he'd stood up to point at her. "I tried for more, asked for more?"

"When?" He'd asked for more, how'd she miss that?

"What'd you think the ticket was for? That was me asking you for more, at least more time?"

"I don't have extra time." She countered. Emma supposed that was some mealy mouthed passive way of saying you wanted to spend time with a person at least.

"And I do?" He yelled that before taking a big breath and muttering sorry. "Listen, I know what you're about, and that you are very serious saving the world, but I'm just as busy as you, more, and I would have made time for you."

"Why?" She stood up into his space. "So I could just miss you more, fall more for you and not get to have you in any real way? To torture myself?" And there is was. Emma knew the ache of the first weeks without him, and she'd always counted their brief time together as worth it. Subjecting herself to more just seemed masochistic. "Have more time with you so I have to get over you all over again multiple times a year."

"Who says you would have had to get over me? We could have been together!" Both of their voices had escalated past the bounds of polite disagreement.

"Together in every way except literally?" She threw her hands out at her sides. "What's the point of that?"

"The point?" He huffed. "The point is that I wanted you and you wanted me, and we could have had each other, but you're too busy," he sneered, "and couldn't talk to me."

"I couldn't talk to anyone!" She screamed. "I was supposed to text you that my dad died and I needed to use the ticket that was supposed to be a gift but was more like a curse, to take care of my mom. That my dream was at best on hold while I made sure my mum could get out of bed?" He looked a little slapped. "While you were off what? Being a rockstar? Having a record breaking year? Moving on? Out of spite?!" She didn't want to think that, but she'd wondered. She knew she was giving herself to much credit. "Why you made sure to bring her to Holmes Chapel? You take her to the Boar's Head too? Or just fuck her in your mum's powder room?" The words were explosive, the cadence like charges lighting off each other. Emma felt like a powder keg.

He was shaking his head. "Stop it. No, no, I didn't move on, not until I thought you were done with me."

"Oh, when I needed you and you wouldn't answer my calls?"

He looked at the ground then. When his eyes came up , the lovely green of them was even more vibrant, due to the tears crowding around their ages. "Emma, I'm so sorry about that. I'll never forgive myself."

His sincerity softened her, though the anger she'd wrapped around herself like a coat was all that was keeping her ribs together.

"I'm so sorry, I know the last year has been more than anybody should have to bear, especially alone." He took  a big breath. "But Camille, I didn't, it's not," he stumbled over the words like they were glass edges, but Emma had a feeling she was the one who was about to get cut. "Um, she and I just met and, well, we, we get on." That was a kind way to put it. "I wasn't looking for somebody else. But I was lonely and she's," the changes on his face ripped through Emma. "She's lovely. I brought her home, because I wanted mum to meet her." That told Emma everything.

"You love her?" She already knew the answer.

He ran his hand through his locks, avoided eye contact until the last second, "yeah, yeah, I think I might."

Emma was nodding, biting her lip to gatekeep the fresh round of tears threatening. "That's good Harry, I'm," she breathed, "I'm happy for you."

He looked at her then. "Really?"

"Course, I care about you, your happiness." That brought on the tears and he reached for her and she had to throw up her hands to keep him away. "No, no, please don't touch me."

His phone rang, he was the only person she knew who actually kept their ringer on. Well the only person under 50, it made her smile. Then cringe, the weird personal knowledge she had because of how much of an almost they were. From his face, Emma knew it was his actual calling.

"Um," he shady buttoned the call. "I have to go."

"Yeah," was all she could respond with, she already knew that. "Well, have a happy nee year Harry. You sticking around?" God she hoped not. May have to convince her mum to go to London if so.

He shook his head, "Um no, we're going to Paris." Ouch. Emma tried for subtle when she wrapped an arm around herself. "Sorry, I'd like," he always looked so genuine lately, in every interview she'd watched to hurt herself, his heart on his sleeve, in his eyes now. "I'd like to hug you, think you could stomach it?"

Emma nodded and went to him for the barest second and then concentrated on the pressure behind her eyes while he kept her close. "I'm so sorry Emma, for everything. I'd really like to be friends," he'd pulled back to hold her eye line at that.

She nodded, she wasn't sure how she'd handle that, but at best it was a couple phone calls, and no weekends away, they hadn't mentioned that in their middle state, she didn't think it would be to hard to keep him at arms length when they had continents between them most times. "Yeah, ok, friends. You take care of yourself, Harry." Emma was a strong girl, woman now, she could handle some texts and a phone call or so.

He kissed her cheek, a continental affectation she closed her eyes over and turned to go. He was almost out of the gate when he turned back. "I'd never take her to the Boar's Head, by the way, that's our place. I'd never take anybody else there." Before she could even think of a response he looked away quick and started to go. "Take care of yourself, Emma. Happy New Year." That came back to her on the wind.

Blew away like the hold she had on the heart she'd given him last Christmas. At least he was someone special.

[hailing-stars]

@febuwhump day 16: broken bones

such a softie 

summary

“Told you it was disgusting,” says Tony, as Peter pulls the metal bar and flushes the toilet.

“Shut up,” says Peter. His voice was so weak and miserable, Tony felt a stab of guilt.

“Feeling better?” he asks. He reaches out, and covers his forehead with his hand. “You feel a little warm.”

“I’m fine,” says Peter. “Let’s go back and watch the film.”

“Kid,” says Tony. “You’re clearly sick. We’ll go home, and you can rest, and we’ll come back when you’re better. It isn’t like we have to see this one tonight.”

OR

Peter develops a sickness at the movies, and Tony attempts to make him feel better.

“Parker,” says Tony.

They’re standing outside of the movie theater, their planned meeting destination, and Tony doesn’t think he can make it through the double doors without asking about what’s hanging on the boy’s arm.

“Please explain that hideous purse.”

“Oh,” says Peter. He tugs on the strap. “It’s May’s movie purse.”

It’s said with a tone that implies Tony should’ve already known this information, and as if that one, short sentence is enough to properly explain why the hell Peter has it and why it’s so ugly.

“And you’ve brought it out into the light of day because…”

“Because,” stresses Peter, “it’s tradition. It might not be fashionable, but it’s absolutely the best purse to sneak snacks into the theater. It’s got so many pockets!”

“You brought that to carry snacks?” asks Tony, unimpressed. “You realize they have a concession stand, right?”

“You’re rich so you don’t understand,” Peter tells him. “You gotta sneak snacks from the dollar store, Mr. Stark, or you’ll pay seven dollars just for a coke.”

“Uh huh,” says Tony. He slings an arm around Peter, and together, they start towards the entrance. “And since, as you so wisely just pointed out, I’m a literal billionaire, you didn’t stop to think I’d buy the snacks?”

“It’s the principle. Five dollars for a box of Sour Patch Kids is robbery.”

Tony laughs as they step inside the building. They purchase their tickets, have them checked at the end of the roped line, and step into the open area. The (apparently) evil concession stand is in front of them. Tony starts in that direction when Peter grips his arm to stop him.

“It’s my money, Pete -”

“Wait,” says Peter. The boy closes his eyes, and Tony sighes. He recognizes that goofy expression. He knows he’s about to get some kind of melodramatic speech. “Do you smell that?”

Tony humors him, and inhales the aroma of buttery popcorn. “Yep. That’d be the popcorn you refuse to let me buy.”

“Not just popcorn,” says Peter. “It’s the movie magic smell.”

“Christ,” says Tony. “I wish May would’ve told me you transformed into a strange little gremlin once you walked through the theater doors.”

Tony continues towards the concession stand, where Peter manages to violate his principles and uses Tony’s credit card to buy a large popcorn, a large Cherry Coke, assorted candy boxes, a package of chocolate chip cookies and a soft pretzel with a cup of cheese sauce.

He proves his original point quite well, when, between the two of them, they order enough food to charge over a hundred dollars to his card.

They haul all the food to their seats, and Tony thinks maybe they should’ve paid for an extra seat just for all the kid’s snacks. It’s a ridiculously large amount of food. If it were anyone else but Peter, Tony would’ve doubted they’d eat it all.

Peter Parker is a garbage disposal that never gets full. He’s devoured the pretzel and starts tearing open the package of cookies before the previews even begin.

Out of the corner of Tony’s eye, he watches as the kid does the most reprehensible thing he’s ever seen. He dunks the chocolate chip cookie in the cheese sauce and eats it.

Tony releases a long sigh. “Kid, that is literally one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen you do. Please do not -”

“-You wanna try it, Mr. Stark?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Seems boring, but okay.”

“If I were boring,” says Tony, “I wouldn’t be chaperoning you to this R rated film.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Like I don’t have a fake ID.”

“Excuse me what?”

“I said good,” says Peter. “Because I don’t have a fake ID, so thank you.”

“Uh huh,” says Tony, just as the lights begin to dim and the previews start to plan, temporarily saving Peter from an interrogation Tony schedules for later.

Parenting is rough, and teenagers are like a different species of human altogether. He’s dreading Morgan’s teenage years, but at least he’s got Peter to prepare him for it, to give him a trial run.

*

The previews end, and something’s glitching out the kid.

He’s gripping the armrests tight. He’s grimacing, and for a few seconds, Tony’s convinced Peter is holding his breath. He’s just about to ask him if he’s alright when Peter stands, and bolts, fleeing the auditorium with that ugly purse strapped on his shoulder.

Tony pauses, waits a few seconds, before deciding he’d better follow him and make sure everything’s okay.

He finds Peter in the bathroom, with his knees on the floor and his head over the toilet, puking his guts out.  

“Told you it was disgusting,” says Tony, as Peter pulls the metal bar and flushes the toilet.

“Shut up,” says Peter. His voice was so weak and miserable, Tony felt a stab of guilt.

“Feeling better?” he asks. He reaches out, and covers his forehead with his hand. “You feel a little warm.”

“I’m fine,” says Peter. “Let’s go back and watch the film.”

“Kid,” says Tony. “You’re clearly sick. We’ll go home, and you can rest, and we’ll come back when you’re better. It isn’t like we have to see this one tonight.”

“Maybe it is,” says Peter. He wobbles, and has to lean against the slimy, gross bathroom wall to steady himself. “This might be our last chance! There could be a pandemic that shuts down everything and threatens to topple the theater industry forever.”

“Pete that’s not going to happen, not even in our universe,” says Tony. “You watch too many science fiction films.” He pulls Peter away from the wall and leads him out of the bathroom. “Besides, we’ve got Bruce Banner. No pandemic would stand a chance, and it’s about time he start putting those seven PHDs to use.”

“Fine,” says Peter. “But we’re coming back to the theater as soon as I stop puking my guts out.”

“Deal.”

*

They spend the night in the bathroom.

Peter throws up so much Tony starts to worry, though there’s not much he can do except look on in pity and offer the occasional back rub of support.

After Peter finishes a brutal episode of puking, he flushes the toilet and wipes his face with a strip of toilet paper.

“I think I broke a rib that time,” he mutters.

“If you broke bones puking, that’d truly be a record, kid.”

“Might as well get something from this misery,” he tells him.

Peter looks at him with glossy eyes and a face pale with sickness and with sweat. He appears much younger right then, as if Tony’s peering into the past, and Peter’s pain hits him much harder in that moment.

Tony’s struck with this strange urge to make the whole world right just for him. He considers going backwards in time again, only this time just a few hours back, just to slap that damned cookie and cheese sauce from the kid’s hand.

“I’m sorry you got so sick, bud.”

“That’s okay,” says Peter. “I think I’m done puking… at least I hope. Just wanna lay down.”

“How about this,” says Tony. “We’ll get you in your bed, all nice and cozy, and I’ll bring you some Gatorade and some crackers, annnddd a trash can. Just in case.”

“Sounds good,” says Peter, and he tries to smile, but it gets twisted into a grimace.

Tony helps Peter to his bed, and tucks him in. He brings him the things he thinks will make him feel better, but somehow, it doesn’t seem like enough, and Tony’s still pondering a way to make things right for him, even after the boy’s eyes close and he drifts off to sleep.

Finally, he thinks of something that still isn’t enough, but will at least put a proper smile on the kid’s face.

*

Tony finishes setting up the screen along the wall opposite of the bed just as Peter nods awake. He sits up slowly, and rubs his eyes.

“Mr. Stark,” he says. “What’s that?”

“The theater,” says Tony. “I’ve brought it to your bedroom.”

Peter laughs. “You’re such a softie.”

“Shut your mouth or I won’t tell you the best part.”

It’s the first time in Peter’s life he manages to be quiet. Tony switches on the projector, and the opening credits play for the movie they had been trying to watch before the Cheese Cookie Illness had taken control of their evening.

“No way!!” says Peter.

“I know it isn’t the same -”

“-are you kidding?” asks Peter, his face lit with a grin. “This is so awesome!”

Tony’s chest flutters with something like pride. It’s a good, warming feeling, to see the strange gremlin Peter return, and maybe the best part, Tony doesn’t even need a time machine to achieve it.

[mchalowitz]

the woman is the king, part two

summary: a throughline of the matriarchal scullys; be they ethereal, sharp-witted, and ill-omened.

thank you to everyone who enjoyed the first part of this story! writing again has been so great and i’m excited for everyone to read where it goes from here! 

part 1: melissa

part 2: dana

———

The exam room is harshly lit, brutally overclean. When the doctor gives the diagnosis, it knocks the breath out of her, and she has the audacity to declare her gratitude. How could she.

The fragility of her age comes to mind on the drive home; her eyes prickle watching her copy of her oncology referral slide across the dashboard.

Dana is only thirty-three. Melissa was only thirty-three. She ponders her mother, Maggie, at thirty-three. Her destiny already decided; along for the military ride. She was carrying the fifth Scully child that year. Their matrarical line is cursed by the thirty-third year.

She simmers with the news for a few days; plotting methods of delivering impending doom. Mulder, the usual harbinger of bad news, is the one she tells first, and she believes using a clinician’s touch might soothe her.

The pronoun that binds them, the “we” travels from his vocal cords to their air between them. When he pauses, she can fill in the blanks of how he wants the sentence to end. We can do something about this or we can fix this. The problem is, there isn’t anything to be done.

Inside her head is a glass and cancer is the water from a faucet turned all the way on. They are merely waiting for the overflow.

--

Tara is pregnant; she is having a boy. Her brother’s wife is thirty-three. It must be so nice, to be dubbed a Scully, and yet remain so blessed at this foredoomed age. 

An appointment to be pumped with poison and Tara’s baby shower fall in the same week. What a scheduling nightmare, she jokes, when she declines the invitation with warm regards. Bill does not laugh and he buys their mother a plane ticket. 

The total lack of skeletal structure takes her over, has her melted into the couch. Scully finds the initial nausea passes quickly this time. It is the wave of self-consciousness from Mulder bearing witness to this betrayal of her body that lingers. 

“It must be kind of exciting,” Mulder comments. She is watching him wipe down the counter and she doesn’t remember a single time she has seen him willingly clean anything. He is not half-assing any of the responsibilities bestowed upon him by the Mrs. Scully. 

“It might be more exciting if it were someone else,” Scully responds, forgoing her usual diplomatic response on the subject. 

Mulder pauses, focuses in on her eyes, and in unsaid words, he nods in agreement. He throws the wet rag into the sink with a stomach-churning squelch and falls beside her on the couch. 

“You know,” she adds, “Melissa always said she wasn’t going to have kids until she was forty.”

Melissa would goad her into increasingly ridiculous futures; nothing is more ridiculous than futures that will never exist. Neither of them could have predicted such an outcome. 

When they were young, one Scully sister was rarely found without the other. It was only the intricacies of adult life that would split them apart. Melissa yearned for adventure; to shed ideals and expectations from their youth in far off places. Their parents envisioned a certain fate for their children, and Dana followed it, until she didn’t. 

As she conjures up those conversations about where their lives would go, she realizes she cannot even remember her voice. It rolls over her like a wave, the awareness of fading memories, and it cracks her guise held barely together. 

Her glassy eyes brim and she finally crumbles, feeling wholly pathetic. She lacks her usual resiliency that he is accustomed to seeing from her as she weeps, “My sister is gone and I have cancer, Mulder.”

“I know,” he says.

“I’ll miss everything,” she whimpers. The weight of mortality hits her; the decades worth of wasted holidays and the lost memory of her nephew’s birth. Scully will never stand in resolution with her partner after their tireless work for the truth. The loss of an uncomplicated life feels enormous. 

She laments what she was never sure of even desiring; the two-story in the suburbs, the babies of her own, the one true love...

“Let’s get married.”

--

His offer hangs in the air. Scully cries a bout of nausea and bolts for the bathroom. When she emerges, Mulder is there to tuck her into bed.

The sun sets and it rises again on a new day. She comes out of the bedroom apprehensively. Finding Mulder on one knee in her hallway isn’t an idea she can rule out completely. It wouldn’t even come close to the craziest thing she has seen him do.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Mulder rubs circles into his forehead with his cell phone pressed to his ear. She gets close enough to vaguely hear the caller on the other end, listen to the outrage behind, “I couldn’t even put the kettle on without her standing right behind me. In my own home, Fox,” and making it seem as though this is the only issue in the world that matters. And Scully kind of wishes that was true.

“That’s her job, Mom,” he replies. The tone of his voice almost makes her laugh. A polite but clear get me out of here she knows well that comes out during conversations with authority figures, midwestern cops, and not unsurprisingly, mothers.  

Their eyes meet, he looks at her as though she is his unsurpassable savior. He begs off the phone, making the usual adult child promises, and sets his cell phone down on the table. 

Scully commends Mulder for trying to be more involved with his family since his mother’s stroke. But what a fate he has, caring for the medically and emotionally broken women in his life. He gives her a tight lipped smile and she asks, “Is everything alright?”  

“Jury’s still out,” he declares with a shrug. He stands and starts walking toward the kitchen. “Can I get you anything? Water, toast, a ring?” 

A certainly interesting turn of events for them, a question that could develop into an actual conversation about the night before. 

“Mulder.”

“We could get married, Scully.” 

“This is so like you, Mulder. This is your stream of consciousness decision making,” she counters. Scully flattens her hands on the table, takes a breath, and attempts to change her tone to sound a little more kind. “I know the idea that I’m dying is bleak. But there are implications to getting married. I couldn’t do that to you.” 

Scanning Mulder’s eyes, Scully can see he understands what she means by implications. “Don’t think about that,” he tells her finally, “If you really believe this is the end, what do you still want to experience?” 

Scully’s eyes flash away, toward the door. Four years ago, she stood in that spot, and assured her sister unequivocally of her absolute disinterest in dating her new partner. Even if he were just a guy. 

Selfishness has often forced a wedge between them; a precursor to many experiences they would have as partners. His brilliance and humanity drew her in then, not unlike the way it does now. When the question was posed--just any guy--their debates were thrilling, a little flirtatious even, and now they can absolutely infuriate her, but she respects his ideals, and she knows that sentiment is reciprocated. 

On occasion, Scully is even a little selfish, and allows herself to appreciate just a guy with a little flop of hair that falls onto his forehead, and with the most charming smile. 

Whether it be guilt or admiration, Mulder wants her to experience everything before it gets taken away. She can admire the altruism. 

Mulder doesn’t ask again, he only suggests. And she accepts. 

--

The commencement of their marriage is without fanfare in a government building on a Friday afternoon with grocery store flowers and a safe kiss on the cheek to clinch the deal. There are no rings but he holds her left hand as they bound down the courthouse steps. During their late lunch at a local diner, the waitress notices their attire, and offers them a free slice of pie, any flavor they want, because it is a special occasion. 

A few paces ahead of her on the way to the car, Mulder opens her door. “Your getaway car, my bride,” he teases. The smile on her lips quickly fades. His jovial face morphs to confusion. 

But it’s the drip. Blood splatters on the clean, clear plastic protecting their chocolate cream. She tries to maneuver for her purse but he quickly procures tissues from the inside pocket of his jacket. 

He squats next to the passenger side of the car and holds tissues to the nose of his bride. 

--

Something is weirdly, intangibly incorrect. 

It starts with weekend plans. Mulder is already well aware of her singular escape, her monograph for the Penology Review, with its looming deadline coming up. 

He normally makes comments about her unwavering professionalism. It is a mutual agreement to keep their marriage to themselves. The federal government has no investment in the inner workings of their lives; they are legally married and they both know that could easily mean reassignment for both of them. It doesn’t stop him from sneaking in a few witticisms for his own amusement. 

Mulder knocks. That’s weird.

The wine is truly suspicious. Except for the occasional beer, Mulder was never much for alcohol to begin with, but what is especially bizarre is the sudden lack of concern over her doctor’s recommended meal plan. He had been following it down to the last letter, and while a glass of wine is not exactly forbidden, it is not the first item on their shopping list. 

“We never really talk much, do we?” 

Admittedly, the shared looks and delicate touches of silent communication is where they excel, but the question is still somewhat puzzling. Since beginning a routine of casual marital cohabitation, she believes they talk quite a bit. The minutiae of everyday life is often a topic of conversation in ways it never has been. 

Scully still plays along by agreeing that, no, they don’t talk. She sips wine and tells him true-ish stories of Marcus, the prom date of a Scully, but not herself, and the infamous pumper truck scandal involving her brother Charlie. 

Romantic intimacy has not exactly been a component of their marriage and she has found that cancer does not make one feel like the most desirable of specimens. He has never expressed anything to make her believe he feels anything for her beyond friendship, despite the deep affection they share. 

He leans in now; his eyes closed and head cocked. Kissing him isn’t a repulsive idea, but it just seems off, because Mulder is acting so strangely out of character. 

Scully scrambles off the couch to get away from the man that is so clearly not her partner. Absolutely horrified, she stares at Mulder, and has no reservations when he steps forward to cuff the pathetic and vile man that invades her living room.  

--

Many lines have still not been crossed and she doesn’t think they ever will be. The cancer is still aggressively present with the treatments doing very little. 

Scully prepares herself for the eventuality of hospitalization, potentially for good, and it is very tempting to keep that from Mulder, to allow them to remain in their bubble, but she knows that isn’t fair.

Her car idles on the street outside Harold Spuller’s care home and three soft raps sound on her driver’s side window. She sucks in air deeply and wipes the tears from her cheeks before rolling down the window.

“I didn’t mean for things to get so heated back there.”

“Me neither,” she agrees. When her eyes flash up to his, so guilty and fond, her words fall out in a tumble, unable to prolong this evasion of the truth any longer. “I don’t know why I lied to you. I’m not fine. My treatments aren’t working and my doctors don’t think another round will change that.”

“I’m in this with you, Scully.”

“I know you are,” she affirms. She ducks her head down toward the steering wheel, like a little girl caught eating dessert before dinner. “I’m tired, Mulder.” 

“I’ll follow you.”

His headlights shine in her rearview mirror, trailing behind all the way back to where they began this night in Georgetown. Arriving in the apartment, she shuts the door behind them, and informs him, “I’m going to take a shower,” and he nods, reaching forward to squeeze her shoulder. He loosens his tie and starts meandering toward the bedroom. 

The phantom ghost of his touch remains on her shoulder and it reminds her of his romantic soul that she is only now been introduced to. Mulder is more emotionally open and affection than she is. He treats her like a wife. They are married, after all. 

Their marital bliss is of their own design; enjoyably innocent with its lack of certain intimate elements left largely undiscussed. However, there is delight to be found in mere shared company. With a no-work policy now enacted in her home, the opportunity to see funnier, more relaxed, and domestic sides of each other often makes it feel as though their marriage could be real. 

An unspoken agreement to live this arrangement without rules creates something representative of authentic matrimony. Ignoring the initial awkwardness when sharing a bed leads to the normalization of pressing into his warm side each night; falling asleep faster and deeper. Leisurely playing with his hair while reading on the couch one evening introduced a few form of relaxation they both enjoy. He even calls her “honey” occasionally, and she must admit, it makes her feel pleasantly warm to hear it. 

It wasn’t right to keep him out of the loop.

Sitting on the tile shower floor, Scully washes the last six hours from her skin. In an attempt to prove to herself, to everyone, that she can still do this, she pushes herself too far. The best decision for the case was to take down the nurse. For her fragile body, not as much.

A small box sits on top of her towel. She picks it up, weighing it gently in her palm.

Mulder already lies innocently under the covers and appears deeply enthralled in his nighttime reading. He looks very youthful and sweet in his wire-framed glasses and his large feet poking out at the end of the bed. She presents the box in question and inquires, “Mulder, what’s this?”

“Hmm?” he murmurs. He glances up briefly, taking off his glasses. “Oh. Wedding present.”

Eyebrows drawn together in confusion, she sits down on top of the comforter, and cautiously opens the box. Her eyes fall on a gorgeously dainty bracelet with a small diamond affixed to a silver chain. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Scully finally admits. Mulder smiles, wordlessly leaning forward to close the distance between them. His kiss finally comes with soft lips and firm resolve.  

--

A keen ear kept on the exchange occurring in the hallway, Scully hears the malice in “let her die with dignity,” the intense intent to guilt. Since childhood, Bill has been masterful at identifying a scapegoat. 

Appearing at her bedside, Scully takes her brother’s hand. It has been quite some time since they were together in person and she is aware she should focus on the grand gesture of his presence. But they have always sparred on injustice and she just witnessed him as the purveyor. 

“I don’t want you to talk to him like that,” she tells him. 

It takes almost nothing to generate a quarrel between the two of them. “You keep defending him, Dana, and I don’t see what there is about him to protect,” Bill argues. “You wouldn’t even be in this situation if...”

“Fox has been very helpful,” Maggie interrupts. Their mother is well versed in deescalating the disputes of Dana and Bill; the oil and water of the Scully children. “Bill, sit down and be civil.”

Where Mulder pushes, Bill pulls, and Dana is left somewhere in the middle. Something akin to a jealous feud brews between the two men in her life; each vying for the role of ultimate fixer. It is only when Mulder orchestrates the impossible that her brother cannot deny the miracle. 

Most conversations were plans for a comfortable end or perhaps a prolonged, managed experience. The concept of remission, a life without the dark cloud of cancer, was a possibility never even considered. 

The day of her discharge finally arrives after a final weeklong observation of her progress, and Mulder, as a now regular fixture of the post-critical care ward, shows up to her room early as usual. He drops a bag on her empty hospital bed. “I brought you some clothes from your apartment,” Mulder informs her. “Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything as uniquely versatile as the hospital gown.” 

“I appreciate the effort,” she smiles, ripping open the plastic bag.

Scully can feel an awkwardness emanating from him with three feet between them. She is taking stock of the items he provided when he finally speaks, “Listen, I can be out--” 

With a week to discuss the topic, neither of them were brave enough to allow it. The last thing Scully wants Mulder to believe is she married him to take advantage of a kindness he extended to her. It was done with such a different outcome in mind; a selfless act with an outcome to be bathed in heartache. 

Now, there is no plan on how to approach where things will go from here. Scully didn’t ever think she would be in a position to have to consider it. 

At the very least, they deserve time to enjoy a lack of this particular impending doom. 

“Should we get dinner tonight?”

If there is anything they deserve more of, it is time.

It is health.

It is stability.

[wonwhomps]

Y.H.R.Y.D

Pairing: Choi Seungcheol x Fem. Reader

Summary: After telling Seungcheol that you hate him and wish to never see him again, will it be too much if one day he appears in front of you telling you how much he missed you or will it start something that could've started years ago?

Genre: romance / fluff / angst

Words: 2602

『Reminder: This story is the sequel / part two of Lie Again. To better understand the situations written below, I suggest reading Lie Again first. Thank you!』

Sitting on one of the station's public bench, you waited for your assigned train to arrive. For the last 10 years of riding the train in order to go to school, work and back home, this will be the last time of waiting and boarding. 

"I'm finally getting a car," you said while standing up and getting ready to enter the train.

Every time you wait at the same station after the tragic confession that happened 3 years ago, every word came back and you constantly think if there's anything wrong with how you look. You never forgot the words you also said to him that night.

"I wish I don't get to see you again", you sigh.

It's already 3 years, get a grip _____! You should be happy, 3 years of putting everything for work and now you're getting a car. Tomorrow.

With a sigh, you look out the window and enjoy the scenery of huge buildings passing by.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Incheon International Airport. Local time is nine-thirty pm and the temperature is twenty-three degree Celsius. (...) Have a nice evening!

Looking out the window, Seungcheol can see the familiar tall buildings and highways. Working in LA for almost 3 years, everything actually stayed the same... Or just the things that couldn't actually be changed.

"Did she change?" he whispered.

Resting his head over the window, "I want to see you again. I missed you,” he said.

"Ouch! I bit my tongue..." you woke up from daydreaming just the right time to get off the train.

"I wonder who's thinking about me? I did not bite my tongue on purpose... I'm not dumb!" Well except for the fact that I fell so damn hard to the man I don't dare say the name... and even meet. Psh.

Good thing there's not much people walking with you at the station. They might think that you're ill considering that you're talking out loud with no one else to talk to.

Tomorrow, there’s no need to buy tickets anymore. You’ll go home riding a car not a train. Tomorrow, you'll never get to remember what happened at the station 3 years ago. Tomorrow, you're moved on. It took you too long to finally convince yourself that you're over him.

For the past 3 years, you always say to yourself that you hate him, that you don't miss him even a single bit. But you find yourself trying to search his name on social media to see what's he up to these days. You can't help but sometimes worry about him, knowing that he's the breadwinner. You worry about him because you're his best friend before everything turned to ashes.

Your mind is full of wonders about him and his whereabouts for the last 3 years until you reach your home. It's only a walking distance from the nearest station up to your place. You did your routine, ate dinner and finally went to bed.

"A new day is waiting for me tomorrow. And a new car!" You excitedly said before closing your eyes and dozing off.

"Hyung! Over here."

Seungcheol couldn't believe that he's seeing his brother personally in 3 years of working overseas to send him to a decent school and provide a decent life for him.

"Video calls didn't inform me that you become taller!" He said showing his gummy smile to his younger brother while putting an arm on his brother's shoulder.

"How are you?"

"I'm glad that you're back, hyung. I missed you."

"You're too cheesy. You want something, don't you? I know your tactics. Let's go around town tomorrow. For now, let's go straight home." He said while hailing a cab.

jeo taeyang wiro my my my my my way~ 

-10 am-

A smile creeps on your face while you turn the alarm off, remembering something special about this day.

Owning a car is one of your dreams. Now that it's finally happening, you felt proud of yourself. Your parents are living on the countryside, that's why it is hard for you to visit them when you have a day off from work. With your dream car, you can now visit them whenever you want during your free time.

After eating breakfast, you took a shower and wore a black long-sleeve turtleneck shirt, mom jeans and black ankle boots. You put all your necessities inside your handbag and head outside to go to your chosen car's dealer shop.

While walking on the way to the station, you can't help but think of all the things that happened in years of riding the train. Although not all of them are happy ones, they're still a part of your train memories.

Seungcheol and his younger brother are on their way to the city to just spend some time together... and money.

He felt proud of where he is and what he is right now. He successfully raised his younger brother. Look at him achieving all of this. But something is still missing... Even after being with his brother, he still feels lonely. A sigh escaped his lips as he followed his brother who entered an electronic shop.

Before entering the shop, Seungcheol eyed something at the store beside the e-shop.

"I should probably start saving up for a car, sometime." He said while entering the shop where his brother welcomed him by pointing to a newly released computer.

"I thought I saw someone," you shrugged. "Must be someone I happen to see at the station. Geez. I think I'm familiar with everyone's faces after all the years of using the train as my main transportation." You said while entering the dealer shop.

Since you already settled the needed information last week, you are now signing some papers and the salesperson is telling you some stuffs about the car you chose. It's just a red sedan car, red has always been your favorite color.

Nothing special, except that you gave the color red a new meaning 3 years ago. Hatred and acceptance. It didn't change the fact that red is still your favorite color tho.

The salesperson told you that you can pick up your car later this afternoon. They still need to process your papers. So you decided to roam around the town, maybe buy some clothes or do a window shopping. 

But you ended up sitting on one of the station's public chair, your eyes following the passing train. You don't want to be emotional or start any drama. You're just here because after all those years, the station somehow calms you. Weird, but it really does.

You stand up near the ticket booth, you suddenly remembered how both of you take turns on buying tickets. The one who arrives first buys the ticket for two.

How both of you wait for each other even until midnight for the sake of riding the train together. Cheesy, but that's how it goes back then.

All the laughter every time both of you accidentally bought two tickets, now holding a total of four tickets.

Moments when you lend your shoulders for him to rest his head on when he's exhausted from his part-time jobs.

How you didn't even feel bored at all whenever you're riding the train with him. All his dad jokes that you actually find yourself laughing to. Basically, standing here... brings back all the memories of your friendship. But you never really think of it as friendship, you assumed something was going on. And here you are, alone.

Seungcheol ended up buying his younger brother the new pc. Something for study, he said. Seungcheol knows better that it's not for study, but still bought it for him, this is the first time his brother ever asked something from him.

He was left walking around the town as his brother immediately went home after holding the magical box. Seungcheol looked at the red car that was being tested. "Someone bought it," he said. "That was actually what I'm eyeing earlier." 

He was still tired after the long flight last night, so he decided to just go home instead of roaming around town. While walking towards the station, memories of 3 years ago flashed in his mind.

He saw how disappointed you were back then and how hurt you were. After seeing you turned your back to him that night, he badly wants to run to you and tell you the real feelings he feels about you, but he needs to provide a better future for his brother, so he needs to let one go.

He realized how foolish he was thinking that lying to you was the best option for everything, when he could've just said he's going away to work. "Things were done and there's nothing else I can do now." he sighed as he stand in line for the ticket.

You realized you were standing near the ticket booth and some passengers might think this is the official line. All your thoughts vanished when you feel someone stand behind you. "Shit." You said before turning around to politely say that this is not the line.

You froze.

You're not expecting things to happen like this. This is like the last time except it's him.

Seungcheol's eyes widen and his lips parted, trying to say something but nothing's coming out.

Staring at him feels surreal, it feels like one of those dreams you had before. He grew more handsome for the last 3 years. You bet he has a lover now, remembering how he rejected you back then. You wish he was yours.

Looking at him, you started saying things inside your head.

I thought I hate you. But the truth suddenly came out, I never really hated you. I was waiting for you to come to me that night when I turned around. But you never came. I lied about hating you. I lied about not wanting to see you again, because I badly want to see you. I want to love you. You're now here, again. I want to hold you but I'm afraid to be rejected again and that makes me want to run away from you.

You were about to leave, but he grabbed your arm. You can see that he wants to say something because his eyes tells you to listen.

"S-seungcheol... I have to go somewhere," you tried to escape. "I'm running lat-" !!

You were surprised when he suddenly hugs you... Tightly.

You remember his scent. You remember the time when he comforts you every time you need someone by your side, this feeling was the exact same feeling back then.

"I'm very sorry," he said while caressing your hair. "_____, I'm sorry."

I missed this.

"I missed you." Seungcheol said.

This must be a dream. You feel like crying after all those years of wanting to hear his voice and to feel his warmth. You want this, but a part of you says you need to let go.

And so you did.

You backed away from Seungcheol and started to walk away. Slowly.

Just like the last time.

You are silently waiting for him to come to you. Because if he does, you can't hide your feelings anymore. Now that he's here, your feelings for the past years suddenly came back.

You noticed that you are now near the exit of the station.

Maybe, he's just here to say sorry.

He's just here to say he missed me... Our friendship. To say sorry for the hurtful words he said to me. He's just here to end things more clearly. Maybe, I should too. I should turn around and say the words I wanted to say to him because now's the right time.

“We were friends, after all.”

You turned around and you suddenly felt a lips on yours. A pair of hands finding its way to rest on your hips.

Seungcheol deepens the kiss because of how unresponsive you are.

Everything's not processing, but you closed your eyes and started to move your lips against his.

Both of you feels like you're in a separate world where there's only the two of you, no one else.

Both of you parted lips when you both heard the station’s announcement.

The next train is arriving at platform X. All passengers who will board the next train, please stand by.

You looked at him. Still can't believe what happened. Same goes for him.

"_____, I love you," he pecked your lips and hands still resting on your hips.

"I.. uh," your phone rings.

You answered the call, Seungcheol's hands still on your hips, while looking at you. Memorizing all of you.

Seungcheol didn't expect already meeting you after arriving back here, and at the station too where everything started and paused.

He always believes that everything just paused between the two of you. That night was not the end. And here he is, holding you. Staring at you like he found something precious that he will take care of forever.

He waits for you to finish the call. He is mesmerized by your beauty. Indeed, everything he said back then were all lies.

After receiving the call, everything is suddenly processed. He just said the love word to you!

I mean, I love him. Not that I was just pressured when he suddenly said that. I was originally planning to say that when I turned around, but he just kissed me. Damn, we're still at the station. Should I say I...

"Love you?" your eyes widen.

"Are you asking me? Yes, I love you." Seungcheol can't hide his smile.

I just said that out loud, didn't I?

"No... I.. I was saying that I.. uh," you looked away. "I love you."

Seungcheol smiled as he hugs you again.

"_____, I want to tell you that I love you that night until today. Until forever."

xxxxx train arriving the platform.

Seungcheol looked at you.

"I'm supposed to take that train, you know? But I forgot to buy a ticket since it's you who's more important right now." he said.

Remembering the call you received, "I'll give you a ride."

His eyes widen.

"Aren't you a little straightforward, I mean... We just exchanged 'I love yous' earlier... Not that I'm saying that you're a little bold. But are you that hungry for me?" Seungcheol said like rapping, trying to avoid your eyes.

"What are you saying? My car is ready to go. I'm saying I'll give you a ride back home. Only if you want." you said, amazed by how his face started to be red like the color of your car.

Oh.

You can see how embarrassed he is right now. He can't even look at you properly. He just nodded, still not looking at you. Ears all red.

You hold his hand and walks towards the station's exit, back at the dealer shop to finally drive your car. With him. The one you love and the one who loves you, too.

Like how the stations and airports always say that the passengers reached their destination. I, too reached mine.

A/N:

I hope you reach yours, too.

Finally, after almost a year posting Lie Again, the sequel is now done. Lie again is a bit angst and I'm not really a fan of angst endings LOL. So if ever my stories ends with angst, expect that I'll write a sequel of that story. I hope you enjoy reading my works. To more stories together! I seriously thank you all esp my followers!

*My masterlist!*

Requests are allowed.

(Format)

Character:

What is your request about:

*tags - WWwrites

:)))

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Chapter 1: Dance of the Dragon Kings

I would do anything for ballet.

I accepted the constant practicing and rehearsals. I volunteered to give up ordinary childhood play. Because I loved it, it was all-important. It was what bound my secret friend and I together all my life.

I hurried from the dance hall, across a snow strewn street and into the dingy front seat of an old car. The air fogged in front of my face. I blew into my hands and looked into the driver’s brown eyes that sparkled from under the brim of his baseball cap. “When are you going to fix the heat in the car, Robbie?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “When you can work and afford your own toe shoes!”

I flinched, making a little heart with my hands in apology.

He laughed, amused by my youthful cheek. “You are somethin’ else.” He yanked the car into drive, pulling away. “ How was that last rehearsal?”

Still winded, I took a deep breath. “Hard.” Robbie pointed to me to remind me to buckle up. “But I think I’ve got it.”

“I know you do. I see how hard you work! Dinner’s in the fridge. Make sure you get to bed nice and early. No cellphone time.”

I peered out the window. People were trudging through the snow, carrying bags of gifts for their loved ones. It was December 22nd -- only three days to Christmas. Many were on vacation or enjoying a relaxing time off work. I prepared for the performance of the Dance of the Dragon Kings. Everyone saw this ballet even if they would never attend any other. It was a holiday tradition. For the first time, I would share this dance with my foster family after years of hard work and expense. They would watch from the nosebleed section. However, their friend played the part of the Dark King, one of the most coveted roles. This made any seat the best one in the house.

It would be the best gift I could give.

I curled my toes in my shoes, attempting to squeeze the aching out of them. They were sore and craving a massage, but I was giddy with excitement at the prospects that lay before me. Tonight would be for rest before the big day of my most important performance. So many talent scouts would be there. Their eyes would be on me.

As much as I adored Robbie and Mom for their efforts, I wanted to stand on my own two feet. Get my own apartment. Buy my own toe shoes. This was my ticket to freedom. I had to make it happen. I would make it happen.

We stomped the snow from our boots before entering the front door of our two story Chicago townhome.  A woman was in the sitting room watching television.. When she heard us come in, she got up and headed straight for me. She cupped her calloused hands around my face and gave me a kiss on my head. She still smelled like onions and bacon grease from the kitchen. “Shower up and I’ll warm up some of the chicken ‘n’ dumplin’s for ya.”

“Mom, the teacher would kill me if she knew I was eating that.”

She pinched my cheeks, her brown eyes lively with enthusiasm. “Who says she has to know?”

I didn’t eat the chicken and dumplings. It would make Mom sad, but it would be worse if I failed the weigh-in. Then I would have to give up my spot to the understudies that were nipping at my heels and eating little else. Ballet was my ticket to a dream of spending my life spinning in toe shoes with arms outstretched. Performing on stage was all I ever wanted. I was so close. I couldn’t afford to lose it all.

I rested my feet in a bath of warm water. Elbows propped on my knees, I started to relax when I felt the stir of a familiar presence join me: my translucent look-alike staring at me from across the room. 

Even though girls at the dance academy came and went, she had always been my friend. When potential adoptive parents came around, they saw me dance. They would be more than happy to offer to adopt me. Later, they returned me home. However, all of them failed to realize the commitment required, the expense, the effort for a child like me, with more energy than sense. They always had a reason to return me to foster. Eventually, I was more of an adult than a child. I crossed the threshold of someone who grew up in foster care.

This wraith, like Robbie and Mom, stuck with me.

My friend was still wearing the dance costume I would wear on stage. I was to play a majestic dragon. My tutu was frilly, over the top in black and red and gold. A collar fanned out the back of my head like a pair of massive wings. The embroidery and sequins evoked the dragon’s scales and fire.

The ruffled skirt stuck straight out from her waist, revealing the entire length of her legs. My ghostly friend looked like a glowing mass of tissue paper, the color whitewashed away. I knew she haunted the triangular necklace Mom gave me for my tenth birthday. When I was a baby, she said, it was wrapped in my blanket, a keepsake from my real mother.

For six years, this phantom and I grew up together. I always wondered how long she would hang around. I never told anyone about her, not that anyone would believe me anyway. Having a secret friendship was something I rather enjoyed. It was the only social contact I had that ballet had not devoured.

Normally, my wispy friend would hover at a distance, but this time she approached and sat down beside me. I gaped at her in surprise. She raised her hand as if to touch my face. Her expression was distant, wistful, almost… loving? It wasn’t like her to be so sentimental. She was usually tough and confident, but before I could ask what was wrong again, she disappeared.

There was a double tap on the door. It was Robbie, still in his work boots and overalls. He carried a platter of vegetables with hummus. He replaced Mom’s cuisine with that. “You’re going to go places, baby doll.” He ran his hands around my coiled hair. “I’m proud of you.”

He gave me a little kiss on the head and stood up and left the room to give me some quiet time to eat and fall asleep.

It was still dark when I awoke the next morning. There would be no more rehearsals, but a performance. My quivering stomach made me ill as I headed into the weigh-in that day, two hours before show time. I passed and squeezed into this elaborate costume fitted for a tiny frame. I could only stretch and warm up. This was it.

The lights dimmed over the audience. The curtains rose on the opulent stage of the ornate opera hall. I was no longer an unruly orphan teenager. I was the Dark King, the great dragon that ruled the world. Together with the Light King, I dominated other dragons. Humanity, portrayed by the corps de ballet, was my slave. The choreography dramatized that ancient legend and made my rule on stage beautiful.

Once upon a time, humans and dragons lived together, ruled under the The Dark King. The Dark King decided to make another dragon, equal to himself as a partner: the Light King. Together, they dominated the earth with unquestionable authority.

My desire was to portray that godlike power. To terrify, not just the characters on stage, but the people out in the audience. In contrast to the Light King’s graceful and delicate movements, I was brutish. I bared my imaginary fangs, curled my fingertips into claws, arched my back forward. I stalked the stage like a fear inspiring monstrosity.

The rule of this pair was so united that there were no male or female assigned roles in this choreography. Anyone could be a Dark King. Anyone could be a Light King. I loved the role, pretending to be the fierce leader of everything I laid eyes on.

Over time, the Light King would want the power of the Dark King. He started a revolution, tempting a third of all dragons to her side.

My movements were quick and strong. When the Dark King was angry, I performed daring leaps across the stage, regal in my unstoppable power. I pantomimed the legend of the Dark King pinning the Light King to a pillar. The stage props and lighting portrayed my sinking him to the depths of an icy sea. I plunged him through the seabed into a fiery volcano beneath. His body turned into ash. I consumed it. It was the last of him. I had won.

Intermission.

Backstage, it was a whirlwind of activity, makeup and nerves, insecurity and touch ups. We made costume adjustments and changed shoes and wiped away sweat -- and there was not enough time. Never enough time.

There in the dressing room, I stared into the mirror. Over my dark-skinned face, my pale shining companion appeared superimposed on the glass. She reached out to me, carrying my necklace in the palm of her hand. It was not part of the costume. I’d packed it for good luck. I needed it now. I slipped the necklace on and left the room.

The time drew near for my return to the stage began my solo, my moment of truth. The Dance of The Victorious Dark King contained a long series of difficult fouetté turns. Backstage, my muscles shook, my energy waned. My teacher, an older man, came and talked to me. Despite my tired mind, I worked through his thick German accent as he told me I could do it.

My head was dizzy. I stepped back on stage. Applause settled into silence. The stage lights, erased the world in a blank flare. The music began. My body moved on its own through strict training and muscle memory. Time slowed.

In this moment, in my mind, it was only me and the dance.

I threw out my leg and lifted myself up on point, tucking my toe against my knee. I spun as though suspended on a string. Over and over on one leg without a break.

The pain and exhaustion clawed at my legs and hips, but I’d long since forced my body into submission to the clicking of a metronome. I wouldn’t let myself fall behind.

The world itself was spinning. An odd wind filled my ears. The dragon king’s gleeful expression felt like a mask on my face. I lower from my toes degree by degree and lift my hand to the musical sting. A perfect performance.

Applause from the audience rushed over me in a wave . I took an elegant bow, trying to keep my expression professional and serene.

I walked off the stage, I looked for my teacher. I expected approval. When I raised my eyes to him, his expression chilled my heart and halted my steps. Why was he so pale? Why didn’t he look at me? What happened? Before I could ask, someone grabbed my arm, completely enclosing it in her grip. The assistant teacher shook me. “What was that? What did you do?”

I couldn’t answer. I was too out of breath, too confused. Her face was close to mine, filling my vision with the leathery folds that narrow her snapping dark eyes.

“Never mind,” she says. “The show must go on, but this will affect your future at the dance academy.” She let me go and withdrew in a huff.

I looked at the other girls for answers. They didn’t have any, but shrank into groups to whisper and glance at me through the corners of their eyes. Her words were that the show must go on. I needed to bury my emotions and continue no matter what. To focus on the steps, the rhythm, the pacing. This wasn’t about the teacher. It was about my future. My dreams. The fouettés were perfect. I didn’t do anything wrong.

The show continued.

The Dark King was not done. He created the Four Kings: Norton, the Lord of Bronze and Fire, Leviathan, the King of the Ocean and Water, Fenrir, the King of Earth and Stone, and Feilian, the King of Wind and Storms. Each one in a natural enmity with the other so they would not unite to rebel against him.

I danced with the Four Kings. They were soloists in their own right. Dressed in costumes of red, blue, green, and gold sequins to depict each of the four elements .

The peace was not to last. The Four Kings banded together with the humans. Using a mysterious process, the humans became hybridized with dragons. For the first time, humans were able to wield their power. With the Four Kings and the Hybrids fighting against him, the Dark King was unable to hold his own.

The stage hands wheeled out the props for the final curtain.

As the Dark King, I danced in a frenzy. I was attacked on all sides, driven onto a mountain. This prop created the illusion that I, as the dragon, was as big as the mountain I stood on. Then, at my defeat, I fell on its peak, striking hard with the music. Red lights flooded the stage, depicting the legendary rain of the Dark King’s blood. The orchestra resounded with timpani and brass.

The curtain fell with the audience’s rapturous, thunderous applause and whistling and shouting. Tears pricked at my eyes and I walked out with the rest of the troupe in front of the curtain. Once we were all assembled, we looked at each other giving thumbs up. The curtain rose again. People stood up on their feet.

As I bow with an extended arm, I glanced off stage. No sign of the teacher. I continued beaming at the cheering and whistling crowd. I was not sure what happened during my solo, but no one in the audience seemed to notice. We walked off stage, excited to see our families. For me, there was another curtain call. I walked out again with the Light King and the Elemental soloists and bowed again.

Once more, I reassured myself that everything was fine. The performance was over. Despite everything, I’d done it.

I was anxious to find Robbie, my teacher, Mom. Still wearing my costume but in leg warmers and slippers, I wobbled on tired legs to the lobby. I found them, standing with someone I’d never met.

A man in a fitted custom suit was talking to them, gesturing with an unlit cigar between his fingers. He stood a head taller than Robbie, had a white grizzled beard. He held his long winter coat tossed over his shoulder.

The other foster children ran over to hug me. Robbie hurried to excuse himself and peeled away from the conversation. He hugged me so hard it hurt, planting a big kiss on my cheek. “Honey! You were beautiful!”

I’m still looking at the man who is regarding me with a knowing look in his blue eyes. My heart begins to knock against my ribs. “Robbie? What’s going on? Is that a talent scout?”

“Yes. And a very special one, because you’re special... “ Robbie knelt to look at me. “He’s from Cassell. He says he wants you to join.”

“Cassell?” I asked, my expression incredulous. Cassell College was Chicago’s most elite private school. Their esoteric entry requirements were the stuff of legends in my high school. Rumor had it that the admission exam baffled promising aspirants. It reportedly included questions about belief in aliens and mythological creatures. These questions were interspersed with questions about philosophy. There were rumors they admitted those with poor scores on exams anyway. It was as if there were other top secret requirements.

People whispered in the high school halls about how rich the place was. They said that every student there had a private pool, that they embossed diplomas in pure gold. Everyone who went there was from a rich influential family with the finest of everything.

The tall man caught up to Robbie and me. “You must be tired after such an exquisite performance. I'm sure you want to have fun with your friends. We can talk business later.” He stooped over to get on my level and hands out a small card. “Here, call me when you’re free.”

My shoulders relaxed a little at his compliment. After glancing at Robbie for his permission I approached the man and took his calling card. Hilbert Ron Anjou, President of Cassell College.

An invitation to go to College. Me. At sixteen. Before I could grasp that, he continued.

“You have a very special talent, my dear, one that only we can help grow. But the choice is always yours, little Dark King.” He rose to his full height again. He beckoned into the crowd. A few others who were with him detached themselves from their conversations. Together, they disappeared into the throng of people. A woman with long, scarlet colored hair caught my eye over her shoulder and winked.

I turned to Robbie, my heart swelling with rapturous joy. I leaped into his arms. He spun me around. I clung to his neck laughing. He put me down. Mom hugged me and gave me another big kiss on my cheek.

Over her shoulder, I caught a glimpse of my friend in the shadows, smiling at me.

Chapter 2

[strawberryspeachy]

So on the last day of july i went clubbing

Almost immediately met a cute boy and he asked me to go to a hotel with him. I debated but ultimately went with him. He asked if i wanted to go on a date because fucking japanese assholes equate date with hotel.

Went. Hooked up. Then. He said he wanted to go back to the club because otherwise “it would be a waste of his night”

Yeah

So... went back.... watched him look for another girl. And felt like shit

Eventually a boy that was ok looking talked to me. I didnt ignore him and he got excited over me talking to him after having ignored other boys. I didnt intend to continue talking to him but he was so excited the entire time and was nice so i just stayed with him.

We left together and sat on some sidewalk and talked. I saw that both his arms had cut marks all over them

And as a fucked up person... i stupidly think that other fucked up people will be as empathetic as i try to be and my depressed friends back home

He told me some of his shitty homelife - apparently he doesnt have parents

He asked me to go to a hotel with him and i said no... so we went to eat instead...

He kept being overly nice (in words) told me that he works at an old folks home and that he wants to learn english and come to america and help me take care of my mom.... in a sudden way

Rationally im not stupid and know that was a line. But im pretty stupid in general

He kept asking me to be his gf and i told him id need to go on a date with him to decide that

I just wanted to say no but...

He didnt pay for my meal - ya im one of those girls that that bothers

We seperated and he continued to text my the next few days. We set up a date. He asked me to go to him in yokohama - an hour away from tokyo

Since id never been there i said yes. But this meant i had to pay an expensive train ticket

He did pay for dinner and afterwards convience store for me... mostly... asking if i had change

He wanted to drink at the pier and insisted i get a drink but didnt pay for it

And then took me back to his apartment

It ended up being fun

The next morning while he was showering i was just poking around at his stuff. Not actually looking for anything just curious about the things he has

I looked at his wallet (honestly to see the design but i also always wonder why japanese guys are so comfortable leaving money around who is generally a stranger)

And then. I found. Picture from a photobooth. Him amd soem girl. It was dated from a week before.

He told me the night we met that he broke up with his ex a year ago. But this picture looked very much like a couple

I asked him about it and he just said sorry and threw it in the trash (not a real trash. It could easily be taken out) he said it was from a year ago

After. Bit i took it out amd pointed at the date. He literally hummed and refused to comment ...but he told me hell only see me...

I shouldn’t take that as enough but i did and told him when i got home that ill only se him too. I told him i liked him - and to this point he kept saying he likes me over and over. He has not said it since this. Just said he was happy that i used his name.

After that i went to okinawa for a few days. He told me his sim card broke and he doesnt have wifi unless he goes to a convience store (as an excuse to text slow)

I got back the next week and stayed home all week from a yeast infection that i think he gave me. When he barely responded i told him that

Then he responded continuously telling me that i just got it on my own and hes healthy so it wasnt him

That weekend i went drinking with some friends and messaged him. He responded immediately and i called him. Asking when his phone got fixed. He told me the day before

Then he told me he has pink eye and sent a picture. He said he cant go out of his house because of it

The next week was my birthday. He said hed be cured the day after and we could celebrate. Then he cancelled saying the doc told him hes still contagious

A few days after he sent me a picture of him with makeup on and contacts in saying he went to the salan. I responded immediately asking if he was still contagious and tried to call. He ignored me

I tried to call more throughout the day

Nothing

Over 24 hours pased so i used another account to say hi to him. After 2 hours he responded to the fake account asking who it was

And i flipped the fuck out. I told him a bunch of reasons why he sucked and that he did and fuck him

Then he responded to me with long messages. Many of which i couldnt understand (hes used incorrect kanji before that which makes translation strained)

His excuse was that he felt sick and slept for 20 hours (but he ignored me for over 27)and that he wanted to answer his texts in order. That he doesnt look at him phone much and then got mad at me for not being worried about him and instead getting mad

He didnt addresss any of my complaints like the fact that if im his gf i should be a priority

But because im a sucked i felt bad for trying to hurt him and apologized.... he said hed forgive me if i buy him an accessory next time we hung out...

Yeah. Red flags. I too if i had other options... would have said. Thats a weird way to accept an apology.

Also before (on that first date) when we talked about our bdays cause his was a bit before mine. I asked him what hed wanna do as a late celebration. He immediately told me he wanted yakiniku (an expensive meat meal) and clothes or accessorys from an expensive brand he likes...

So he continued to take over 24 hours to reply to me. With very small responces - he never asks me questions. I asked him to call the night before i went camping and he said he couldnt because he was too drunk from drinking with friends. I went camping and came back and got him on the phone. I demanded him to call and he said he couldnt cause he was tired from work and would the following day

I told him it makes me upset that he doesnt talk to me and that i constantly dont feel good because of him. He just said sorrry. I planned to say this is over if he didnt agree to meet me. But he agreed to a date the coming sunday... the day before i began work again. He said hed come to tokyo and and had a plan. It sounded fun.

Well come sunday morning.... he cancelled. He said he didnt have money. I tried to call him several times and he ignored me.

I confronted him in person. He got mad at me for it. Said he got some sort debt collection and got frauded... someone used his name to take out money and he has to pay court. He said he doesnt have money because of it.

I asked why he never tells me whats going on with him (because im dumb and beleive this... actually i dont. I hope hes being honestly and just has really bad luck but)

This time like last time i told him the way he treats me is how really awful boys who are using me and playing with me treat me. And i cant trust him if hes like this but doesnt tell me why

Well...i was there... i offered to pay for out date.... besides the 11 dollars it takes to get to him

He asked me to put 5 dollars on his train card.... it takes 3 dollads to get to and from where we went. He... mad sure no matter where we would eat it would cost 40 bucks - wanting to drink alc and such. It costed 43 dollars. He wanted starbucks but i kinda said no by saying i dont rlly like starbucks - but he still wanted to get a dessert - 3 dollars

And... he wanted me to buy him that aftermentioned accessory... a ring. He looked at very expensive ones... i... would not have paid for even as stupid as i am.. the one he got was 15 or 25 I forget which...

The thing is... if he wasnt actually... if i wasn’t comfortable being with him i woulda stopped this before... unfortunately. As usual. Despite initially not being attracted to him i really enjoyed his company and find him to be fun...

He said that we should go home at 8 i asked about going back to him place and he said no because hes tired and has work the next day. He knows i also do too. At the same time. And i tried to convince him and he kept saying no. Then i asked doesnt he wanna have sex. He said that we should go to a hotel. And i protested that hotels are expensive and his apartments free and just a cheap train station away. He said hes too tired and just wants to sleep at his apartment but hotels are exciting so hed be awake at a hotel.

He pushed them and i said at that point id be spending like 100 dollars on the day and he knows i also dont have a lot of money.

We awkwardly went to a manga cafe that was only 5 dollars but it wanted you to make a card that costs 5 more dollads. And then i got fussy because too much stress literally makes me lose control of my emotions.

It fucking sucks and i hate it. I have no fucking control over my emotions when my stress is bubbling (which it almost always is) and boils over.

I asked him if he can even pay just the 5 dollars and he said he has no money. I asked how hes gonna get to work with literally no money and he said his conpany pays for it (yea japanese conpanies pay AFTER you go )

We left. It was a bad mood. He didnt storm away from me even though i was basically crying in the street (i have had this happen with even friends. I start crying and they just walk away so even though it should be expected of someone claiming to be your bf... ya)

Anyhow i told him i just wanted to cuddle and talk and kiss

He looked annoyed but i guess he thought those wants were cute and looked for a isolated place

Because were in japan

Couldnt find one cause we were in a city and he again just started saying lets go home. That hes tired and not in the mood.

But we were in a quiet enough play.

And im bitching here but ill take a quick break to say i kept hugging him and stuff which he liked despite saying he was really embarrassed

He told me ealier ok that because of this debt thing hes gonna work two jobs

Which. Terrified me. The first guy I went on a date with in Japan asked me to be his gf and to move in with him and said he had to work two jobs for a month to afford to move so he wouldnt have time to see me. He told me his progress for two weeks and then ghosted me.

This boy told me hell make time to see me when i complained about not doing anything physical when i wouldnt see him again for who knows how long

Welp. Todays saturday and that was sunday. And while at first i thought he was trying because he replied to my messages in or at 24 hours for a few days. Its gone back to the 17 hours

And i asked him to talk on the phone

And he just said not tonight because after his current job hes working at home too

And because im dumb ive waisted my whole saturday waiting for him to reply and crying.

[wolfpawn]

I Hate You, I Love You, Chapter 86

Chapter Summary -  Danielle does not feel well, but thankfully figures it out, leading to more time talking and in turn, repairing the relationship.

Previous Chapter

Rating - Mature (some chapters contain smut)

Triggers - references to Tom Hiddleston’s work with the #MeToo Movement. That chapter will be tagged accordingly.

authors Note - I have been working on this for the last 3 years, it is currently 180+ chapters long.  This will be updated daily, so long as I can get time to do so, obviously

tags: @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog​ @jessibelle-nerdy-mum​ @nonsensicalobsessions​ @damalseer​ @hiddlesbitch1​ @winterisakiller​ @fairlightswiftly​ @salempoe​​ @wolfsmom1​​

If you wish to be tagged, please let me know.

Tom looked at Danielle, unsure what to do, she was clearly overstressed with the issue with her aunt and seemed completely out of sorts in general as she insisted she needed to go to bed early.

The auctioneer had confirmed Danielle's suspicion, Bernadette's claim the house and the meagre plot of land with it was worth a hundred and sixty thousand was way off, it was only worth ninety-five. She had gone to the solicitor again with her information and had called her aunt and uncle to inform them before she began to feel incredibly ill. Tom watched as she doubled over, complaining of stomach cramps and a headache.

"Can I get you anything?" He offered pathetically, completely at a loss as to what to do.

"No, I'm fine."

"Elle, you are as sick as a dog."

"I don't know what it is." She whined. "How am I so sick all of a sudden, ever since Christmas?"

"Maybe it's me." Tom joked, earning a groan from her. "What does it feel like?"

"Like what I imagine it would be like if you were to do that scene in Alien where the creature bursts out of your chest, only in my stomach." She explained. Tom winced slightly. "I haven't gotten this in years."

"Wait, you had it before?"

"Yeah, before I got the…wait, I got the bar changed a month ago."

"Right…?"

"I am…shit," She turned around and headed for the door.

"Elle?"

"I need to get to the shop before it closes."

"Elle, are you mad, it's half nine at night and you are sick."

"I'm not sick."

"What?"

"I am not sick, I know what's wrong with me."

"Good, okay, so what is it?"

"I am getting a period."

"What?" "A period, I had to go on the bar because they were so bad, I changed the bar and now I am reacting badly or something because my body is acting like it is not there."

Not wanting to argue, and with two sisters, Tom knew that though he knew something of female anatomy, he was nowhere near qualified to make comment on anything, he grabbed his shoes again. "I am driving." Danielle did not argue.

*

After getting the supplies they needed and Danielle took something to help the pain, she seemed to become more upbeat…somewhat. "God, I cannot wait to go home." She moaned.

"When do you think…?"

"I have no idea. As I knew would happen, Lourda and Michael cannot afford to buy out Bernadette, and according to the solicitor, if she really pushes it, they may fold and sell it in its entirety."

Tom folded his arms and leant back against the counter. He had only been at the house for just over a day and he loved it, knowing that it meant so much more to Danielle, he could only imagine how she was feeling. "What do you think you can do?"

"I am trying to see if I can get the twenty-five thousand to pay her myself."

"What?"

"If no one else can buy her out, I am going to see if I can, by myself."

"Can you raise that much?"

"I had planned to get a new car, but if I keep onto my one, I can get a loan against my house and then yes, I can."

"How long have you been considering this?"

"Since the moment Siobhan told me she could try this stunt. I always planned to try and convince my family to sell me their shares in this place when I was younger, now I may actually get it."

"So you would then own…"

"My share in the house would be half the overall," She confirmed. "I would keep the same arrangement as is currently here, though obviously, Bernie would lose her ability to have any input in the place."

"Obviously." Tom nodded, he looked at her. "You really want this."

"I do, I love it so much, I have so many good memories here."

"Can I ask about your parents' house, why were you not as interested in keeping that?"

"My parents and I moved three times in my life, so none of those houses gave the feeling this has. Nan's was constant, my parents was where was suitable."

"Do you think you can get the loan?"

"Living in England isn't working in my favour, I guess I'll have to wait and see." She shrugged before wincing again. "I want to Google hysterectomies right now, fuck I forgot how much this hurts."

Tom looked at her sympathetically. "What if this is a permanent thing now, you reacting badly?"

"Jesus, don't curse me like that." She warned.

Tom understood her somewhat, she had tossed and turned for the majority of the night, waking him on several occasions before saying she was going to get some painkillers and sneaking down to the couch downstairs to sleep. He realised her plan after ten minutes and herded her back into the bed, telling her that he would sit in the armchair across from her for the night if she decided to stay there. "Was it always…?"

"Not as bad, but when as I grew more and more, it got worse, and now I am enduring it again, fuck I am going to go through my own weight in painkillers at this rate." Tom pulled her close to him, kissing her gently. "I am sorry I ruined things."

"Elle, you said it was done, so it is."

"But we can't have any fun."

Realising that she was not referencing the argument but her inability to be intimate because her body was doing what it is supposed to do, he smiled slightly. "We will again when you are back to normal, but you said you didn't want to do anything here, so at least this makes sure you stay on that. Also, there is more than one way to be intimate, it doesn't have to be sexual." He pulled her to him again, his arms around her. "I am so glad I still have you my darling Elle." He whispered in her ear. "I love you so much."

"I'm sorry I ran off."

"I'm sorry I rubbished your feelings." Tom added, "Though I am not sorry we came here, it is gorgeous."

"How about you get that shower you wanted and we can head out for a while, I can show you more?"

"Perfect. I will be back in a moment."

"The water should be hot enough by now."

Tom nodded and went to fetch a towel. "Shit, I forgot, Luke said he was going to ring," He handed her his phone, "If he does while I'm in the shower, could you tell him Ollie got onto me and could he double check the TV show confirmation with the film company, he'll know what that means."

"You're lucky I love you." Danielle sighed with a smile, causing Tom to grin.

"I am, I truly am." He agreed, kissing her before going and readying himself.

As Danielle threw together some food as a lunch, Tom's phone rang; seeing it was not Luke, she left it go, the second time it rang, it was Luke, so she answered. "Hi Luke, Tom said you might ring."

"Is he there?" Luke sounded somewhat perplexed.

"He's in the shower, he told me to tell you, he was talking to Ollie and to double check the TV stuff." She recited.

"I did and it is confirmed," Luke answered.

"Should I tell him that?"

"Please."

"Okay."

"I am not prying, but Tom told me you were in Ireland at present." Luke inquired.

"I am."

"So then, he is in Ireland too?"

"Yes, we are at my Nan's place. I had an issue that was stressing me out so he came over." Danielle explained.

"Well, better than the jet-setting fiasco of last summer."

"Well, I don't own a jet."

"I am sure he will forgive you for that; if it is any consolation, he doesn't either." There was a hint of a smile in Luke's voice. "While I have you, I was wondering if you were going to the premiere in London?"

Danielle frowned. "I had not even considered it."

"I am aware you would not have gone as Tom's other half, but there are limited tickets for friends and family also. Tom is getting a few since of course, it is in London. Are you interested?"

"I am not sure, I have too much going on here, I am not going to be in Britain for a few weeks at this stage."

"Oh, I see. Can I ask if it is something serious?"

"Family drama."

"Everyone has that." Luke consoled. "I hope it resolves soon."

"Yes, well, my aunt is going all out on hers, so I m unable to plan anything, and thank you, I hope the same."

"I am sure Tom will ask you also, but if you change your mind, all you need do is ask. Tell him I have his ready for whomever he wishes."

"Thank you, Luke." She smiled. "I will tell him what you said and I am sure he will be on to you again soon."

"Thank you, Danielle, have a pleasant day."

Danielle laughed to herself as the call ended, going about getting everything ready for their afternoon. Several minutes later, Tom came downstairs, wrapping his arms around her, ensure to keep away from her tender stomach. "Luke rang, the TV thing has been confirmed, I told him about Ollie, your extra tickets are with him and someone else rang but I didn't know who it was, so I didn't answer."

"Thank you, love," He kissed her neck. "You make a great secretary." He looked at her for a moment. "I had planned to ask you about going to the premiere, but considering what you are doing here, I said I would not make you feel pressurised."

"I would have, but with my aunt." She gave him an apologetic look.

"I know," he reached for his phone. "It's Odette."

"No idea who that is."

"She is the PA for the Skull Island tour."

"But I thought Ollie was your PA."

"Not for this, he can't make it."

"Fair enough, I will let you call her back and I will get us ready to go." She kissed his cheek as Tom smiled and went on the phone again, thinking to herself as he did so.

[katasztroka]

Right after this: https://katasztroka.tumblr.com/post/615445931008081920/two-weeks-later-than

I don’t have a taglist, but if anyone wants to be added, I will make one, just send me a request! - Ludwig woke up with a terrible headache, but with Roderich’s soft, cold hand on his face. He pulled the blanket closer to his face, but didn’t dare to move more, because he didn’t want to wake Roderich up. He closed his eyes again, because every single sunbeam pouring into the bathroom hurt his eyes, but tried not to fall asleep again. After all this and especially after last morning, he decided to finally leave, knowing full well he could stay, but worried about his feelings and breaking Roderich’s heart. But he was sure he couldn’t travel with such a hangover.

By the time he got to the end of these thoughts, Roderich started to move his fingers on the German’s face. 

‘Are you awake?’ The Austrian whispered, trying not to cause a wave of headache. 

Ludwig nodded and sat up slowly. Roderich gave him the other pillow he had brought in last night. 

‘Thank you. Sorry for all this.’ Ludwig’s voice was filled with regret.

‘We’ve all been there.’ Roderich softly touched his hand, but only for a second. ‘Do you want some Aspirin? Or coffee?’

‘Later. Can we sit here for a while?’

‘Of course. As long as you wish to.’

‘I think I should go back home soon. I’m glad that I could come here, but I feel like it’s time for me to go back to Berlin.’ The German muttered. 

‘Fine. Thank you for being honest. I hope you feel better now and that you’ll find a man suitable for you or find joy in being single.’

‘You speak like you were the one who broke up with me, you know.’ Ludwig smiled sadly.

‘Every once in a while even I feel the need to be honest. I hope you will visit often, but it depends on you, of course.’ 

‘I hope I will have the opportunity.’ Ludwig nodded. 

They sat there in silence, not even daring to look at each other. This silence was the most comfortable one they have ever experienced. They didn’t feel the pressure to talk, they were together and they both felt like it was fine. Ludwig’s hand started to wander and found its way to Roderich’s cold, slim fingers. The Austrian looked at him. 

‘Is this the same coping mechanism as in the motel?’ He asked.

‘Not really. I just… we… I…’

‘Ludwig, what’s wrong?’ 

‘I think, I should have a shower.’ Ludwig jumped up, causing a wave of dizziness to himself. ‘Can I help you with the bedsheets?’

‘No. Have your shower. I will bring some clothes. What are your plans for the day?’

‘Endure.’

‘Good luck. I will put the clean clothes to the shelf.’

‘Thank you, Roderich.’

‘You’re welcome.’ The Austrian picked up all the sheets and left the bathroom. He got used to the way Ludwig changed topics when he got flustered or embarrassed. Roderich usually just smiled to himself when things like this happened, but wouldn’t dare to make Ludwig talk about things he didn’t want to. 

Ludwig hated himself for last night and for causing Roderich any inconvenience. Nonetheless, he had to move way slower than he usually did, because every single movement was painful. He heard the bathroom’s door closing, so he assumed he got the clean clothes. He climbed out of the bathtub and tried his best to get back to his normal speed, but due to the alcohol he drank last night, it seemed impossible.

When he arrived to the kitchen, Roderich immediately gave him a huge glass of cold water and an Aspirin. 

‘Thank you.’ Ludwig nodded, taking the painkiller.

‘I made coffee. Do you want some? Sit down, please. I will take care of you.’ Roderich patted his shoulder lightly. 

Ludwig knew that any kind of opposition would be useless. He remembered how it was when Gilbert had left him with Roderich and the Austrian’s parental instincts switched on. There was no way anyone could stop him. Ludwig allowed himself a barely visible smile remembering this. 

‘Are you feeling better?’ Roderich asked. 

‘I feel horrible. I don’t know what I have done last night and I’m ashamed of how I acted around you yesterday. I’m a horrible person and I should leave Austria, before I could cause any more harm.’ Ludwig answered.

Roderich collapsed onto a chair and his face looked surprised. He wasn’t sure what harm Ludwig thought he had caused, because he was fine with what had happened yesterday.

‘What exactly are you talking about, Ludwig?’ He asked after a few minutes of silence.

Ludwig sat down in front of him and his cheeks were already flushed deep red. He was fidgeting with the hem of his T-shirt.

‘There are things that we should discuss…’ He started, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

‘Should I speak or are you the one who wants to speak?’ Roderich asked, sipping his coffee. 

‘I think it’s my time to talk. Finally.’ 

‘Then talk.’

‘But there is something we need to clear up, before I say anything. I know you had once loved me. Do you still love me?’

It was Roderich’s time to flush deep red and nearly choke on his coffee.

‘I… I think I do, but that shouldn’t have an impact on what you say or do.’

‘Thank you, but it has.’ Ludwig shook his head. ‘That is why I have to leave.’

‘Why?’ Roderich didn’t understand a word, but he tried to concentrate on every single one of them, thinking that would help.

‘I have… I…’ The German fell silent. 

‘You need to know, Ludwig, that everything you feel is fine. I will listen to everything you have to say.’ 

‘You know, by saying all this, you are just making it worse. But it’s not your fault. After the war ended and what I had done, I thought you would never want to see me again, but then you called me that you had Gilbert with you and I was so grateful. Then you were with me all the time when he was ill, never pressuring me into a relationship.’

‘Why is that important?’

‘Because I looked at you as a friend. Just as I did when you arrived to Venice two weeks ago. But then I started to feel something else. Something…’ He fell silent again. 

‘Something more. I know. Did you really think that I wasn’t aware?’ Roderich asked with a soft smile. 

‘I hoped so. Because I wasn’t sure what it was.’

‘Are you sure now?’

‘No. That is why I have to leave before I could break your heart.’

‘Thank you, I guess.’

‘I’m so sorry for what happened. I shouldn’t have done any of these things.’

‘Everything was fine like that. You don’t have to be sorry for anything. I know your problem, I think.’ Roderich added.

‘What is it then? I think you really an expert.’

Roderich couldn’t help, but laugh out loud. Even he himself was surprised at his own reaction, but he found it really ridiculous how Ludwig thought he could hide away his feelings from him.

‘You are wondering whether what you feel is for me or for Feliciano who you still miss, because you’ve been together for… thirty years now, if I’m correct.’ The Austrian spoke so simply of this and Ludwig was so surprised by that kind of reaction. ‘If you want to figure it out, I’m willing to give you the time you need, but I must add what I’ve told you earlier: that room is still yours.’

‘How can you be so calm?’ 

‘I’ve been abandoned by lovers before. They didn’t care about my feelings or bothered to act like they did. You are not my lover and at least you are doing your best to be honest.’

‘Roderich, I… I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t say a word. We can buy a plane ticket after breakfast if you want to. But first, have a coffee and eat a proper meal.’The Austrian poured some coffee into a cup and handed it to Ludwig without any added sugar or milk. He knew full well how the German liked it. There was no way for him to forget that.‘What do you want to eat?’ 

‘Just omelet. I still feel a bit sick after last night.’

‘Wonder why.’ Roderich nodded and handed him the pan, while sitting down again. 

‘Don’t you eat?’ 

‘No, I can’t today. Thank you.’

They sat there quietly, Roderich still sipping his milky, sugary mug of coffee, Ludwig eating in small bites, his eyes wandering to the Austrian over and over again. Roderich could see the flush on his cheeks, before he decided to speak up. 

‘Did… did I tell you yesterday that you were beautiful?’

‘Yes.’

‘I just… I wanted to make sure that you know I find you beautiful when I’m sober, too.’

‘Thank you.’

When Ludwig finished his meal, Roderich put all the dishes into the sink and washed them as quietly as it was possible. Ludwig closed his eyes, because the light still hurt them.

‘I don’t want to go by plane.’ He said.

‘I can drive you to Berlin, if you want me to.’

‘No. I mean… Thank you, but I… I was thinking about taking the train.’

‘Ah, fine. But you can’t go today. I mean, considering your condition.’

‘I agree.’ Ludwig nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s fine, you need to get better, before you leave or else…’

‘Or else?’

‘Your brother will think I did something to you. He’s already sure I’m a slut, I have no intention to give him more evidence.’

Ludwig nodded again. ‘I’m so sorry about that.’

‘I got used to people thinking I am a slut.’

The German stood up and walked up to the Austrian.‘Let me do it.’ He asked softly.

‘Can’t you just sit down?’ Roderich turned off the water.

‘No, I… I want to help you with this.’

‘Please don’t.’

‘Roderich… are you mad at me?’

‘No. I agree that you’d need some time to figure out your feelings.’ The Austrian turned to him. 

Ludwig took two steps backwards. Roderich was too close, his fragrance filling the German’s nose who couldn’t trust himself. Keeping space was the only safe solution. Roderich didn’t seem to mind it at all, he finished the dishwashing. 

‘Do you want me to be with you when you pack?’ He asked.

‘Yes, I would appreciate that.’

The day went by, Ludwig getting ready to leave the next day, Roderich doing country work, sitting on the German’s bed, laptop in his lap, eyes fixed on the screen. They barely spoke and if they did, it was about work or the details of Ludwig’s travel. But neither of them concentrated on what they should do. These two weeks had gone by so fast and so peacefully. 

Roderich felt content with this particular German living in his house. He was grateful to find this young and strong man in his kitchen every morning. But still, he was worried for Ludwig, because he had just gone through a break up and he didn’t understand the reasons. And he didn’t understand his own feelings either. Roderich genuinely hoped that the German could figure them out and then recover from the heartbreak. The Austrian didn’t want Ludwig to be in love with him, although he couldn’t deny he would be happy if that was the case. 

Ludwig, too, was thankful for these two weeks. In Vienna, he had always felt like the whole world gone completely silent and slowed down. Here the days passed by with coffee, music and work and he had always been content with it. And now, he had to leave it all behind, because he had absolutely no idea what was going on inside his head. He would surely miss the peace, the music, but most importantly, Roderich. This fragile Austrian, who - giving up all his dignity - decided to help him and treated him with so much respect. He didn’t know if this treatment was due to the fact that Roderich had forgotten what happened during the wars or that he had left him after ‘45. The German felt horrible for all these things, he didn’t need another thing to feel horrible about.

‘Ludwig, would you let me pay for the train ticket? I mean… I…’ Roderich’s voice cut the German’s thoughts off.

‘Under no circumstances.’ Ludwig sat on the bed when he realised what Roderich just suggested. ‘All this is my fault. Mostly it is my own fault that I have to leave. So I will pay for the ticket.’

‘Fine, if you wish to. I think I will order food for dinner. What do you think?’

‘Good idea. But no Italian food, please. Not yet.’

Roderich felt the urge to laugh at this, but finally he was able to hide his amusement. He had been trained for this, so he just nodded.

‘Roderich, would you be so kind and help me out with the e-ticket system?’

‘Yes. Take this.’ Roderich put the laptop in Ludwig’s lap.

With minimal guidance, Ludwig purchased his ticket for the next day. It was final. Roderich breathed out loudly. Maybe in his life this was the last time he could be so close to his love. It felt like something sacred. He didn’t dare to move, he was too afraid that the slightest, softest move would ruin this.

And then, Ludwig’s mobile rang. The German stood up and walked to the bedside table to check the phone. He didn’t answer the call.

‘Gilbert?’

‘Feliciano.’

‘Why don’t you answer?’ Roderich asked surprised.

‘I don’t want to talk to him.’ 

‘What if… he just wants to apologize or something?’ 

‘Do you remember why I need to leave Vienna?’

‘For alone time.’ Roderich nodded.

‘Exactly. I will call him back when I want to.’

‘Yes, of course. Sorry. I just…’

‘Do you think I should answer the call?’

‘You should do whatever you wish to. Regardless of my opinion or presence.’

‘No, I just… I really don’t want to talk to him at the moment.’ Ludwig shook his head. 

‘I see.’Roderich pulled the laptop back into his lap and ordered dinner. 

As usual, he only ate strudels, but he knew full well that wouldn’t be enough for the German. He finally chose some chicken with rice. Just when he clicked to ‘order’, Ludwig closed his suitcase.

‘Thank you for everything, Roderich. I’m sorry I have to leave.’

‘But it is necessary. And you will be healed when we meet again. Everything will be fine, Ludwig.’

‘Can… Can I…’ The German’s eyes locked with the Austrian’s. ‘Nevermind.’

Roderich nodded. 

‘The food will be here soon.’

‘Thank you.’

They went back to the kitchen and ate dinner quietly. After dinner, Roderich did the dishes, letting Ludwig be the first to shower. This was over. 

[swiftiemcdibbles]

Where have I been?

Hey guys! I know it's been a while since I've made, posted anything on here. ((I did FINALLY start a @taylorswift fan based Instagram, it's the same handle, SwiftieMcDibbles, but even that was very recent)) So, not like anyone cares, here's a life update I guess.

I DID have to end up selling my Lover Fest West tickets, and cried about it in the dark for a couple of nights. I feel like I broke a promise to my son, I did explain why to him and since he is the most understanding, sweet boy he was a little disappointed but understood. I have full faith I will take him to see her live one day. It is crushing though to know that because of financial problems I couldn't deliver, I knew we couldn't afford a trip from South Carolina to California, with hotel costs, food, etc. So I had to do it. And that's that. And no, I did not make any money off of them, I sold them at the price I bought them, I can't believe people think its normal to buy tickets for a couple hundred dollars and then re-sell them for THOUSANDS literally, it's kind of gross so just don't do it.

So when my fiance was deployed, about 4 months in we decided for me to stop working. I've gone back to school to become a lawyer and between that and suddenly being a "single mom", while he was gone, was just too much. I have, yes I've been diagnosed for years now, Socialized Anxiety Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar 1(which is WAY different than Bipolar that people think they know). On top of that, my other illness is also an invisible one and that is Rhuematoid Arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease/deficiency. So A LOT of my days are filled with pain and worry and panic. I take my medications as well as natural remedies but it can only do so much, there is no cure. As I've gotten older, I'm 33, the Rhuematoid keeps getting worse. I'm quarantined now, because my immune system is at risk with the Coronavirus. So, since mid March, I've been at home with a Kindergartner, trying to home school and stay healthy. I'm extremely concerned about Coronavirus, and that people are not taking this seriously. I wish it would not be compared to other viruses or illnesses, but it is. Please, I beg you stay home. If you stay home, you're not spreading it. And you could save lives.

The real kicker in this too, is RIGHT before this pandemic, back in February it became apparent I needed to go back to work. My fiance made more while overseas, which is why I stopped working. And it was always just until he got home and settled. I was AGGRESSIVELY looking for a job in my field, then started looking for any job. It then became clear that COVID-19 was more serious than initially thought so guess what? No one is hiring. Bills are piling up, and accounts are dwindling. I've had to ask my parents for help a lot and they have when they could but they are feeling this economy as well.

So now, I'm cleaning houses when I can and doing anything to get through. Probably start selling some stuff soon. It's really rough right now, but we will pull through. All of us will. My son's birthday was March 26th and thank God we bought stuff for him over time so that we weren't having to spend money we don't have for him to have a good birthday. However, his party was set for tomorrow. At a local lake that has a big park and two big docks to fish off of, because he wanted a Marvel vs. DC fishing party(the mind of a then 5 year old boy is always wonderous). So yet again, he had to be told something we planned for was either postponed or not gonna happen. Once again, he's fine, so resilient. I hope it's just postponed because its paid for and with all the parks closed I can't get in contact with anyone there to see what the deal is. We could use that money!

So yeah, life is rough. I'm homeschooling my son while taking courses online myself. I'm going stir crazy, my depression is pretty bad at the moment. I just feel like I'm not holding up my side of things. All the financial burden is on my fiance and I feel terrible for that. He's considering selling his truck, that he JUST got in January because he NEEDED a new car, well it's a 2012 but new to us. I will literally die before I let him do that, this man works so hard. He's National Guard so he works a civilian job and then has to drill. The way his schedule works is he is LUCKY to get 2 SATURDAYS a month off, and that's it. So of course, I feel worthless which makes all the mental health issues I have way worse.

So yup, that's where I've been. In a dark place I'm really hoping will lighten up soon.

I truly hope everyone is doing ok. I know times are scary and hard but just be patient and do what your leaders are telling you to do as far as the Coronavirus is concerned. Love you guys! If you get too down, just throw on a Taylor album and escape for a minute, it's what has helped me.

@taylorswift you are an inspiration right now, and all the time. What you're doing to help those in need is remarkable and you have stayed the epitome of class throughout the entire past 4 years when basically half the world thought you were a liar. And instead of rejoicing in your victory, you took the spotlight away from that call and put in on The World Health Organization. Way to go! Hope your anxieties are not too bad right now, hope your Mom is doing well, everyone else too. Ok, I'm done now lol.

[purrplebun]

forget-me-not ; ch 1

fandom: mr. love: queen’s choice

pairing: gavin/reader

genre: fluff, angst

word count: 2.6k

summary: You, a stubborn and insecure woman who really needs a shoulder to lean on. Him, a strong and dependable man who strives to protect those dear to him. One would think it a match made in heaven - but in reality, things don’t go quite as smoothly.

a/n: reader doesn’t take on the role of mlqc’s original mc; credits to @rynkao for not only inspiring me to do this, but also writing the plot with me, advising me and letting me know whenever something needed fixing; thank you @just-lazy-croc for reading all of my drafts and supporting me; more at the end!

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As per routine, you were following the same path you always took on Fridays. Your life wasn't exactly in order. But if there was something that remained constant, it was this. You had always thought the building huge, almost maze-like, so the fact that you no longer needed help with directions was certainly an achievement. The long, seemingly endless halls were swarmed by people. And noise. So much noise, you were glad your earphones were plugged in. From uncertainty, despair, regret, desperation and all the way to relief, their gazes portrayed the internal struggles they were going through.

You merely minded your own business as you were passing by. It wasn't that you were heartless or wished despair upon anyone, no - after all, you were fully aware of how impactful accidents and illnesses could be. But looks of pity from strangers aren't exactly appreciated by everyone. Some people prefer to suffer in silence or keep to themselves, so they might wind up doing more bad than good.

You could relate to that too.

Nevertheless, there was a second reason why you were rushing. That Friday was different, the colorful bouquet in your hands said as much. It had been exactly eight years since the accident. Eight years since you caused someone's life to take a turn for the worse. And eight years since you started paying weekly visits to the hospital.

Upon finally reaching your destination, you lightly knocked on the door and opened it. The room was no different from before, silent and welcoming. "Hey, Em," you quietly said, after closing the door behind you and heading towards the windowsill. There, a single blue hydrangea stood lonely. You had left it the prior week, so its once outstanding beauty now wilted. "I brought you some really nice flowers this time.

"Lying on the hospital bed was a girl with long, brown hair, early in her twenties, and your best friend during high school. Much like the sleeping beauty, Emily had closed her eyes one day and didn't open them since. It had been nothing but an accident, truly. If only she hadn't run off the way she did, that car wouldn't have crashed into her. If only the two of you hadn't argued back then, she would've been alright now. She would've been living her life the way she wanted, not like a vegetable stuck to a bed. She would've been.. happy. "If only-" you shook your head so as not to further that line of thinking. These doubts were always present in your mind, haunting and tormenting; but now was not the time.

So you resumed arranging the flowers. You took out the hydrangea and carefully placed the fresh lilies. Since they were her favorite flowers, you decided to have a special bouquet arranged for this occasion. They were pretty. Colorful. Alive. You couldn't help but stare at them for a while before finally taking a seat by Emily's bedside and unplugging your earphones.

"I haven't managed to sell any paintings this week either," you spoke up, disappointment clear in your tone, "but college has been otherwise going pretty well." This is how your visits always went: telling your friend about your everyday life, recalling fun memories from your past and asking her questions you knew you wouldn't get an answer to. "My part-time job hasn't been too bad either, apart from your usual snobs here and there," you made sure to add with a sour face.

The only sounds disrupting the silence were the constant beeps of the heart monitor. Visiting Emily had always represented some sort of escape from reality. Of course, you also wanted to see her, but you couldn't deny the existence of other reasons. For one, you were trying to atone. To push away the demons haunting you. On the other hand, it was during your visits that you finally had peace, both in your mind and surroundings. You could finally relax, hear your own voice and that of your subconscious.

It wasn't an exaggeration to say that everything around you was so full of noise, you couldn't even think properly. After all, you were different. You, much unlike normal people, were capable of hearing others' thoughts - or as movies so eloquently put it, mind reading. It seemed like a scenario taken straight out of a really bad fanfiction. Which is why, back when you first discovered your ability, you thought your lack of sleep had finally caught up with you; and you must've been hearing things.

A few similar occurrences later, that assumption proved to be false. But if that was indeed reality and you could actually read minds.. then just what was going on? What caused that sudden change in you? Was there a way to get rid of it? And more importantly, were there any other people like you? Hundreds upon hundreds of questions were swarming in your head. You thought about talking to your parents but reconsidered after imagining their reactions. "They probably wouldn't even give me the time of the day", which was justifiable, considering you had superpowers. So, like any other person in the 21st century who sought answers, you decided to consult the internet.

It took a lot of digging. You had to go past thousands of movie reviews, superhero stories and game synopses before you could finally find something useful. While not about mind reading specifically, you did manage to learn a few new things. One, superpowers were real and referred to as evols. Two, people all over the world had evols, but they were kept secret for the most part. And three, there was no way to get rid of them. Or if there was, no one had ever revealed or mentioned anything about it.

Your research done, you proceeded to bookmark a few websites and go on with your life as usual. Your evol could get quite annoying at times - during exams, for instance, you involuntarily heard some of your classmates' thoughts and therefore had trouble concentrating. But it was bearable. You thought that, with time, you'd get used to it.

Oh, but how wrong you were.

Fate has a way of toying with people, and as you grew up, so did the power within you. It got bigger. Larger. It grew to the point where it was uncontrollable. Albeit without your intent, you were able to hear what anybody near you was thinking. The closer they were to you, the louder the voices in your head. You could no longer differentiate thoughts from sentences, not even when they were yours. You had long lost control. Hell, did you even have it in the first place?

That power took away your peace. It was slowly driving you mad, but you had to stay strong. Because you knew. You knew it must've been a punishment for what you'd done, for ruining your best friend's life. So you learned to live with it, and in the process, music became your best friend. It was the only thing you could think to do, in order to at least drown out the noise.

"If only everyone was as kind as you, I'd be rich right now," you couldn't help but sigh, as you left your chin to rest on your hand. Closing your eyes, you tried to imagine how that scenario would go. "Then I'd be able to buy us tickets to one of Kiro's concerts. You haven't heard any of his songs yet, but I just know you'd be madly in love with them."

It was true. You had a pretty good grasp of Emily's taste in music, and Kiro's definitely fit the bill. Not only that, but he was also the most popular idol in Loveland - for good reason. He was charismatic, really good at what he was doing and his looks were pretty up there as well. Kiro wasn't involved in any scandals either, so you just couldn't dislike him. "Or maybe I could go on a vacation. You know, escape from the city and all the noise that comes with it. Just me, the sun, and-" But before you could continue, the sound of the door creaking pulled you out of your fantasies.

Expecting it to be someone part of the hospital staff, you lazily opened your eyes and directed your gaze towards the entrance. What you were met with, however, wasn't a doctor or a nurse. It was a well-built, tall man with short chestnut brown hair. He was wearing a simple white shirt with a blue denim jacket on top, leaving part of his collarbone exposed. As your (e/c) eyes met a pair of golden ones, widening in realization, you were sent back to that day. "You're.."

Last time you saw him, the two of you were still in high school. He was shorter then and his shoulders weren’t as broad, but he otherwise remained pretty much the same. As for his personality, you knew he used to be a troublemaker - according to the rumors circulating between students, at least.

You didn’t believe a word. Not after what he’d done. Not after how, without caring about the dangers it involved, he tried to save Emily. His presence at the scene had been a mere coincidence; but as soon as he saw the car fast approaching, he started running. “Watch out!” He didn’t stop to consider calling someone for help or think about the situation he was in.

He just saw someone in danger. And decided to act.

Something you didn’t, as you stood there petrified. You watched as your best friend ran towards the street without paying attention to where she was going. You watched as this boy called out to her and attempted to push her out of the way. You watched as the car crashed into her body because the boy was a few seconds too late. All you did was watch as the scene unfolded right before your eyes. You were in so much shock that you couldn’t even cry. Not that you would have allowed yourself to, anyway. After all, you weren’t the one in pain.

You were just a bystander, there to witness faith follow its course. That boy, however... He was a hero. Someone who, without giving it another thought, helped people in need; all out of his own free will. You hadn’t seen anyone display such bravery before. A category you knew full well you were part of. The two of you were so different, you never thought you'd meet him again... Yet there he was now, standing in front of you.

“Gavin,” he suddenly spoke up as if to finish your earlier sentence, “from high school. But judging by the look on your face, you remembered as much.”

It then dawned upon you that you must’ve been staring. Cursing internally for your failed first impression, you quickly got up from your seat and extended your right hand towards him. “S-Sorry for spacing out like that! I’m (y/n), also from high school. But I’m guessing you knew that already.” Gavin lightly shook your hand whilst you scratched your neck in embarrassment, eyes landing on the bouquet you hadn’t noticed he was holding. Lilies.

“Oh, do you want some help with those?” No sooner had the words left your mouth, than you immediately regretted it. He most likely came in expecting to be alone, to see Emily and maybe some of her relatives; having an old acquaintance around wouldn't exactly count as privacy.

"On second thought, I should probably-" but he interrupted you before you could finish your sentence. "Sure, thank you." His lips curled up in a small smile as he handed you the flowers. After replying with an awkward "Make yourself comfortable..?", you took them gingerly and headed towards the windowsill once more.

Flower arrangement wasn't something you were particularly into, but you liked to think that you had an artistic sense for it. You were, after all, a painter and you loved art. Albeit it didn't really seem to love you back.

You removed the ribbons keeping both bouquets' lilies tied together and freed them in the vase. Since you didn't have a specific design in mind, you just let your hands move them around playfully. You heard Gavin’s footsteps as he went to sit where you previously had been. And then there was silence. Not the comforting sort, it was rather the kind of silence that made you want to just run away.

"Oh God, what am I supposed to do now? I can't just leave, but sitting in complete silence like this is unbearable. Then again, what can I even say? «Hey, so how's life been?» That's too awkward!"

Wait, backtrack a bit. Silence? Your movements stopped abruptly. By now you'd normally hear everything he was thinking, every sentence going through his mind. ..So why weren't you? Not that you were complaining, of course - getting into others' brains wasn't something you wished to do, and that wouldn't ever change.

However, that wasn't the first time something like this had happened. There'd been a few people present in your life whose thoughts you couldn't hear. But you never managed to put your finger on why. Did they have something that prevented your ability from working? If they did, would you be able to procure it too? And did that mean you could finally stop it for granted?

You stole a quick glance at Gavin, who was looking at Emily. You couldn’t see his face very well, but you could’ve sworn you heard a really faint, almost unnoticeable “I’m sorry.” Seeing as that was all you heard and he didn’t show any signs of moving, you decided to just brush it off, “Yeah, I must’ve imagined it.”

Going back to your train of thought, maybe today was your lucky day. Maybe this man represented an important clue in finding the answers you sought. Maybe talking to him would help you learn more about your evol. Maybe, just maybe, the Universe finally decided you had enough suffering and gave you a chance. Or maybe not, and you were completely wrong.

Even so, you definitely couldn't let this opportunity slip by.

"Hey, umm.. would you like to head to a café and catch up on things? I know a good place." He turned his head to look at you and you used the chance to add, "Oh, only if you're free! I wouldn't want to inconvenience you." It was a pretty sudden invitation, so you anxiously awaited his response expecting a rejection. If he refused, your only lead at the moment would be gone and you’d continue your life as usual. After seemingly considering it for a few seconds, he finally replied.

"Of course."

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a/n: aaaahh i’m sorry there’s not a lot of gavin in this chapter!! i wanted to properly introduce the main character and her backstory, also no, emily isn’t the original mc i assure you - dating your high school crush is nice, but i just?? want gavin to naturally fall in love with someone else?? i haven’t seen something like this done often, and if i’m motivated enough this should be a preeetty long fic,,. so i guess we’ll see how it goes. anyway!!!! no one cares but this all started because of a really soft dream i happened to have of gavin?? where he was super nice to me and i actually got to touch him???? idk how that happened but it did so now i’m turning it into a fanfic. which reminds me, please keep in mind i’ve never seriously written before, so whilst i may not be the best now i’ll make sure to improve along the way! (つ﹏⊂)

thank you so much for reading if you’ve reached this far!❤️