#And if he writes it in a journal with hearts and your names mashed together so what!!

[jadewritesficshere]

Eddie x fem!reader (reader wears lingerie, no other descriptions of reader given except mentioning hitting that spot just right)

Contents: lingerie, both are a lil pervy tbh, humiliation, crying, praise kink, sub!Eddie, this is literally just horny ramblings

18+ only

It wasn't every day you came back to your house and your best friend had broken in. Maybe, every other week at best.

Usually, Eddie would be high eating your snacks (you were thinking about getting a lock for the cabinets). Or he would be watching whatever show you recorded and tease you about spoiling it (you threatened to use the VHS to beat him over the head and strangle him with the VHS ribbon if he did).

But, you had no clue Eddie was even in your house today. His van wasn't parked in your driveway when you came home. His shoes weren't in a haphazard pile at the front door. You had 0 clue he was there.

Not until you heard a thump coming from your bedroom. Which, your first thought went to the knickknacks you had that someone could be stealing (they wouldn't cause to a normal person it was junk but to you they were memories).

You grabbed a knife from the kitchen (you weren't gonna die without a fight, besides you learned a thing or two from the horror movies Eddie made you watch). You quietly pushed your bedroom door open and-

Shit.

Eddie was standing in your room in front of your mirror. Miles of pale skin just on display, scattered with contrasting dark tattoos he had. Nothing on, save for your lilac lingerie.

The palest purple lace bra, you can see from the back isn't even clipped correctly, missing the hook entirely. But the color is striking on Eddie. The lace thong cuts high on Eddie's ass, and you try not to gawk at the little black heart tattooed on his cheek. Eddie's scars seem softer amongst the lace.

How often did Eddie do this? Come over and put on your lingerie? Stand in front of the mirror and rub his fingers over his one hardened nipple. You couldn't see from where you were, but you knew his cock was hard. He'd be leaking all over your underwear, marking them.

Eddie lets out a little moan and it ignites a fire in your gut. You lick you lips as you watch Eddie, which maybe makes you a pervert but really it is your house and he is wearing your clothes so if anyone is-

Fuck why is it so hot?

"So-" you clear your throat. Eddie let's out a screech (that you are pretty sure ruined your eardrums) as he whirls around. He tries to cover himself with his arms, curls in on himself. And Holy cow he is hard.

He is big, so big, the tip just peeking out of the waistband of the panties. You can see the pearly translucent precum already dripping onto the underwear.

"I- fuck, I'm aha listen I can exp- i can explain!" Eddie fumbles over his words. You blink a few times tearing your eyes away from his massive dick (oh it would feel so good it would hit every spot just right).

Eddie's face is red, tears welling up in his eyes. "Oh Baby, no," you rush over, pausing when Eddie flinches. You gently put a hand out on Eddie's shoulder, drawing him into a hug, " It's- it's okay. Please don't cry." "Don't hate me." You gasp in shock, pulling back to look in his eyes," I could never!"

Eddie's eyes are wet, filled with unshed tears. His nose is turning a bit red, from embarrassment, shame, or sadness you can't tell. But his cheeks are such a pretty pink you think it'd look nice elsewhere on his pale skin.

Eddie hides his face with his hair, shuffling his feet a bit. "So..." you pause unsure how to ask it politely so you just go for it," I can see this is a kink thing...but like, what kind?"

Eddie shrugs," Wanted to feel pretty..." You frown," You are pretty Eddie." Eddie shakes his head and gestures to his abdomen," Not with these."

Eddie really should not be drawing your eyes any further south then his face. Cause your pulse kicks up and the fire inside you lights back up your spine. You can't help but notice his dick is still hard as a rock.

"You are too pretty." "Not really." "Yes!" Not-" You shove Eddie lightly, causing him to stumble back and fall onto the bed. Eddie's eyes widen in shock as he peers up at you.

"Don't talk about my best friend that way! You are too pretty. And handsome. Funny. So talented," You sigh and step forward, into Eddie's parted legs. Eddie leans up on his elbows and blinks rapidly at you. "You're so fucking pretty Baby." You murmur, hand reaching out lightly touching his thigh.

Eddie let's out a whine before looking startled at himself. You can't help but notice his dick twitch under the pale purple lace. "You like being called pretty?" You smirk. "Like when you call me Baby," Eddie replies softly.

You aren't sure who moves first, but suddenly your arms are wrapped around each other. Your lips meet Eddie's without hesitation. His are slightly chapped but still soft, molding perfectly against your own.

You run your hand down Eddie's neck, to the pale bra strap and snap it. He gasps and you take the chance, slipping your tongue into his mouth. He tastes of weed, mint gum, and just Eddie.

Eddie moans against you, hips bucking forward seeking friction. You pull back, gasping for air. Eddie let's out a whine," No, come back-" "I ain't going anywhere Baby."

Eddie's eyes flutter shut as he bites his lip. He hums as you kiss his jaw, lightly nipping at his pulse point. He shivers against you, hips bucking forward again. You suck lightly as you decide to give him some relief.

Your hand snakes down, grasping him firmly. You lightly squeeze through the lace, giving just enough friction as you move your hand.

"Look so good in my lingerie Baby, you should wear it more often." You murmur between kisses. Eddie nods absently, gasping and moaning beneath you. "Got a red pair that has some nice straps, you'd look so metal and so so pretty."

Eddie freezes, mouth falling open. His brow wrinkles slightly as he moans, pleasure overtaking him. His hips spasm, even his thighs twitch, as he comes. You can feel your underwear get soaked along with part of his stomach.

You stroke him through it, extending his pleasure until he whimpers and pushes at your hand. You pull back, smiling softly at his face. Eddie's eyes flutter open, darting down to your lips. "Kiss?" He asks quietly, unsure. You simply smile and kiss him again.

[writing-for-me-at-this-point]

Pragma | Alucard

Request: Hi, I love your blog. Would you mind writing about what it would be like to for Alucard to fall in love with the reader post season 3? Thank you! Keep up the good work!

Word Count: 1826 words

Page Count: 5.2 pages

A/n: hope you enjoy this!

Tags: @catherinedm​

        All Alucard could do was deny that you held no ill will towards him. He had found you when you were running from a cultist like group, ready to burn you alive just for learning older sciences, he could only laugh at the bitter irony. Your legs were whipped and tired, your chest was bruised and the rest of your body was worse than you could have imagined, and so he took you in when he knew you were not a threat. Or would be conscious for a good while.

        "I seem to only get more and more desperate for heartache, don't I?" He whispered to himself as he looked to you, your body was freshly cared and cleaned for, and yet he found on the other end of the room near the opened door. His fear that gripped his heart made him feel like a child, wanting to be held and cared for by those around him, yet cannot seem to overcome going up to an adult for help.

        When you woke up days later, cleaned and cared for, your body aching like never before- and the man in the room staring at you like you had just killed his mother in front of him, full of shock and fear. Speaking with him in this stage of your relationship was scarce, only what needed to be said was put into the air, either met with silence or acknowledged with muted nods and small hums.

*****

        Alucard was never known for his temper. He was a sweet and gentle boy according to his parents, something he wished to be after seeing his mother be... her, he was never to freak or lash out on those around him. When he realized this, it had been to late, his hands were running through his hair as tears slipped effortlessly from his eyes- curled in his bed with his knees to his scarred chest. He had been helping you walk more, working on your legs and helping them gain muscle, when you had fallen near him while he fell as well.

        You both had slipped due to the old rugs folds getting caught in his foot, making him slam onto his back while you managed to land on your knees, and when you turned to see if Alucard was alright he looked at you in pure fear. He shook as he saw you on your knees, on his right side, like her. Just like she was when they both locked him onto his bed, tied with the burn of silver, looking at him with such hate and disgust.

        Your eyes held worry though. Worry for his well being. Care. Your heart was opening up. But in that moment, he saw back to that night, her. His face contorted into anger, yelling at you while his lungs burned for air, profanities settled into your mind as he was cursing your existence. 

        "I trusted you! Gave you everything! And here you are again, having me on my back, a knife to my fucking heart!" He was leaning upright at this point, while you crawled backwards away from him, the fear evident in your eyes but he didn't see. It wasn't you at that moment. It was the flickering image of Sumi and Taka.

        Once he had caught his breath, he closed his eyes, hands coming to his hair as he shook violently. You realized what was happening, your father was a soldier and suffered from delusions like this, and your mother would come running to anchor him back into the present once his past came to torment him again. 

        "Breathe. Alucard, breathe. Evenly. Exhale longer than when you inhale, please." You coached him gently, your hands in front of you in case he were to look up, you weren't a threat to him- he knew that. You told him when to inhale and hold, before letting out the breath that wavered less and less. You needed to anchor him back to the present, he wasn't seeing you yet, but you would make him to help with his sanity.

        His breathing evened but tears still came, flowing against the flushed pale skin, and you made your way closer to him. You held out two fingers, mimicking your parents, and waited for him. He saw, and pulled out two gloved fingers to wrap around yours, his shaking would start to still after a few moments.

*****

        You hadn't seen Alucard in two days, his mind was taking its toll on him, and you managed to figure out the basics of his situation. His mind was sending him back to the most stressful moments of his life, the wound on his mind hasn't been stitched and is now bleeding into his daily life.

        You wanted to learn how to help people mend their minds, ranging from trauma to genetic ailments, the human mind was so vast and complicated so of course it drew you in. In doing so, you met an old vampire in Athens, she was kind and sweet- teaching philosophy and medicine to those she knew would use them appropriately.

        Alucard was depressing himself further into his mind, and you needed to help him, though helping him would need to be paced. He needs time and luckily you both have plenty of it. You made your way around the castle and found a few empty notebooks (not wrapped in human skin), a few books on meditation and spiritual awareness, and some recipe books next to fictional ones that held important meanings on self worth.

        Should you be looking through his things?

        You didn't care. He needed help.

        You then split the books into two piles, one for Alucard to journal in and write all his thoughts in and the other for you, to write tips and other important information for Alucard to read so he can understand what is going on and how he can help himself cope with his own mind. The books that helped with meditation would help him order his thoughts and understand how to calm himself in case he couldn't find an anchor, (you hoped the spiritual awareness would be a plus? Dracula had lots of books so it wouldn't hurt.), and books of things you thought he'd enjoy in general when he needed an escape.

        Once all was finished, you placed everything into a small net bag, limping your way to the kitchen, you decided the man needed something to eat. After all, food made everyone happy, right? Right. A simple dish of grilled chicken and veggies, with a side of mash potatoes and some water, you slung the bag on your shoulder and made your way to his room.

        You didn't hesitate to knock, but you made sure it was soft and non demanding, before calling his name in the same manner. You heard shuffling, but the door never opened and you never were welcomed in, but you knew you needed to intervene and help boost Alucard onto a support line.

        "I'm coming in, in a few moments, so if you need to ready yourself please do, Alucard." You heard nothing on the other end, and waiting for about two minutes with your head against the door, you pushed it opened slowly to allow yourself into the dhampires room.

*****

        When you had managed to get Alucard fed and on a routine to help himself more and more each day, he had apologized to you for the outburst, and decided that leaving you on your own when you had trouble walking was not the best idea. He was surprised you accepted his apology and brushed his actions off, deciding to help him instead, it was a reaction different than what he had expected.

        Allowing himself to be near you much more often, he opened up a bit after a week of sitting by your side, setting you into the nine circle of his mind. You peeled back the shallower layers at his pace, setting him for a more favorable way of opening his heart and mind up, and seeing how he thought and felt about everything.

        He was intriguing and intelligent, you found yourself tearing through your own heart just to open up and show him the exposed muscle, opening yourself up to him inevitably as he did to you. He felt warmth bloom in his chest that only rose up when he was in your presence, and while you helped him heal the wounds inside him, he continued to help you heal and gain your strength back physically.

        A mutually beneficial relationship is all.

        Yeah, no.

        It was a puppy love shrouded in pain and betrayal that was settled into an old wound, the bleed has now stopped, and the clotting had begun, a deep scab was there before the skin would over take it in a tough light pink blanket. There was healing when there used to be a knife digging itself deeper into the soft flesh.

*****

        "Do you plan on leaving?" His voice was soft and scared, his breath was shaky while pale arms wrapped tightly around your waist, the sheets covering the both of you blanketed the intimate scene of a boy begging for the girl to love him back- to not leave him, though he thought he deserved it, it started to become less of a thought on his mind.

        He accepted himself for what he is and what he has done.

        He knows what he wants and what he needs.

        You were on the top of both lists.

        He was being selfish, but you told him that was good, he was learning how to realize his worth in what he wants. He was still respectful of any decisions you made, but he begged everything in the universe for you to say no, no you wouldn't leave him. You wouldn't abandon him, you'd stay and love him as you do now, and for the rest of your time together.

        "Depends." You chuckled, rubbing his arms that were secured on your waist, your eyes were closed as you felt him curl around you.

        "Depends?" He mumbled into your hair.

        "Do you wish for me to stay?"

        What? Of course, he wanted you to never leave him, and he was sure he never gave the impression of being disinterested. Hell! The position you were in now speaks for itself! He sighed, realizing you were just teasing him, and settling his mind down.

        "Of course. I never want you to leave."

        "Then I never will."

        His heart had burst at the affirmation of love, a tear slipped from his eye as he smiled wide, the supernova in his soul sparked his love for you to become brighter and stronger.

        "Thank you."

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE: Will The Future Rule? Making Sense Of Chainsaw Man's Anime Adaptation

  Chainsaw Man is a comic where the hero rides on the back of a shark through a hurricane. It’s also a non-stop series of narrative rug-pulls exploring the psyche of a teenage boy struggling to grow up in a world where everything and everyone is expendable. Chainsaw Man is one of my favorite reading experiences of last year: I laughed, then cried, then yelled at the sheer audacity of what was happening on the page. A mash-up of Devilman, FLCL, and grindhouse schlock, it wormed its way into my heart in a way a comic has not in a while.

  And I’m not alone: Look online and you will find Chainsaw Man animation reels and Chainsaw Man MADs. You’ll find these two excellent fan-made EDs, and this great (but spoilery!!)  write-up on The Comics Journal. You’ll find plenty of fan-art and folks shrieking 24/7 about Makima, Aki, and Power. As the joke goes, “Why animate Chainsaw Man when all of Chainsaw Man is animated already?” Well, joke’s on them. Do you hear that sound in the distance? The shriek of metal against metal? Chainsaw Man is getting an anime, folks.

    Adapting Chainsaw Man is a tricky proposition. At first glance, the comic was practically made for it, with its cinematic layouts and spectacle. But the monster designs are complex, and the balance of tone and content is deceptively easy to spoil. Focus too much on the character drama and you miss the comic’s knowing stupidity. Gloss over Denji’s weakness and the story tips over into insufferable power fantasy — or depending on your tastes, an even more insufferable power fantasy. Adaptation is about interpretation, and about choice; rendering Denji’s story as literally as possible on the screen would be a fool’s errand, especially for a comic that so deeply loves movies. 

  The trailer MAPPA released is pre-animated, but that’s fine! As sakuga fanatic and anime industry expert Kevin Cirugeda has pointed out on Twitter, some of the best anime productions of all time started with pre-animated trailers. We don’t know release date details or its final look, but based on what we’ve been given, we can make educated guesses.

    What stood out immediately to me on the list of staff were two names: Kensuke Ushio and Kiyotaka Oshiyama. Ushio’s a former member of the great rock band LAMA who’s since composed for anime including Ping Pong the Animation and Liz and the Blue Bird. Oshiyama’s a genius, capable of everything from monster designs to directing and animating whole episodes of anime by himself (plus, he directed FLIP FLAPPERS!) When did these two folks last work together? On Masaaki Yuasa’s Devilman Crybaby, of course! Ushio composed the score, while Oshiyama was put in charge of devil designs and directed an episode as well. Now they’re back in the same positions, with Ushio writing the music and Oshiyama handling the monster designs. 

  The director of the series is Ryu Nakayama. Some might call him “inexperienced,” but this isn’t quite true: looking through Nakayama’s past work reveals some impressive credits ranging from directing and storyboarding an episode of Fate/Grand Order Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia to handling GAMERS!’ entertaining opening sequence. Best of all, Ryu Nakayama collaborated with character designers Mai Yoneyama and 7ZEL to direct “raison d'etre,” an animated music video for singer-songwriter EVE. EVE’s YouTube channel of music videos is shockingly consistent, starring a murderer’s row of talented animators. “raison d’etre” is up there with the best of them, featuring striking color design and an ever-changing oneiric cityscape. I can’t say this early on if Nakayama will succeed in grappling with what is sure to be a challenging production, but the chance to see what one of EVE’s collaborators might make of a series like Chainsaw Man is a gift.

    There’s another name on this list that’s just as important as Nakayama’s: Tatsuya Yoshihara, credited as the Action Director. You probably know Yoshihara from his work directing Black Clover. I know him from Muromi-san, a series with a truly deranged opening animation that begins with cute dancing mermaids and ends with shrieking heavy metal and the complete extinction of life on Earth. Yoshihara and Nakayama have collaborated in the past, most memorably for me on an episode of Yatterman Night. Nakayama contributed a significant amount of work to Black Clover, and now Yoshihara has his back on perhaps the most important project thus far of Nakayama’s career.

  The remainder of the staff list is similarly loaded. Yusuke Takada is an art director who’s contributed great work to series like The Eccentric Family, where he worked directly with Chainsaw Man’s current color designer Naomi Nakano. Hiroshi Seko’s a scriptwriter credited on countless popular action series, such as the best action series of the past decade Mob Psycho 100 — but also on last year’s weird science fiction extravaganza DECA-DENCE! Technical director Makoto Nakazono acquitted himself well at Trigger on SSSS.Gridman and Little Witch Academia. Yohei Miyahara’s an accomplished photography and CG director. There really isn’t a weak link on this team — the folks producing the series clearly want a hit, and they’ve hired the talent to ensure that is what they will get.

    Will the Chainsaw Man anime be good? I’m personally very excited! But I don’t know. Anime is hard to make. Too much of it is made too quickly. Producers in the anime industry have been ramping up their efforts to recruit more foreign talent so as to fuel the industry machine, and Chainsaw Man’s production will likely result in the line between “anime fan” and “animator” becoming even muddier. This isn’t even including the factor of continued COVID-19 prevalence in the world. There are a lot of variables, and any one of them could make life difficult for folks on the Chainsaw Man team.

  Here’s what I can say: I’ve watched that Chainsaw Man trailer an embarrassingly large number of times. I believe that Nakayama and his crew are capable of creating a worthy adaptation. I trust that MAPPA currently sees the series as their golden goose, regardless of where things stand in a year or two. It’s almost certain that this show is going to make or break many, many people’s careers. Until it airs, all I can hope is that those working on the project are given the time and resources they need to do their best work. After all — THE FUTURE RULES!

  Are you a fan of Chainsaw Man? What’s your favorite EVE video? Do you think you could defeat Kobeni in Dance Dance Revolution? Let us know in the comments!

      Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he is not playing this very challenging video game, he sporadically contributes with a loose group of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at @wendeego

    Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a feature, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott

[theghostofashton]

survival will not be the hardest part

hi. i know y’all are very anxious to read this. i know how long i’ve kept you waiting, but i’d really appreciate if you’d read this lil thing first.

so, this story, known more commonly as ‘the cancer fic’ is an idea my friend rachel gave me back in april. she’s pretty known on twitter, but not on tumblr, so for those of you who aren’t aware: rachel’s spent a really long time in the hospital over the years. she’s been having a hard time lately, and i...it breaks my heart. i wanted to do something for her.

this is that something.

in this story, rachel is awsten (she doesn’t have cancer. let’s be clear about that. aside from the medical conditions, she is awsten). there are seven main OCs. every single one of them is an actual human being. their names are the same. conditions are not. the main point of this story was the kids, to focus on the struggle rachel’s faced alongside being the person awsten is in the story, to the kids. 

a while ago, rachel came to me pissed about something she saw online, of people making hospitals out to be these “pretty” and “aesthetic” places, essentially glamorizing them. that made me want to do this even more. this is her life. this is what she deals with on a daily basis.  this is the reality of being in the hospital. it’s not pretty or glamorous or idealistic. this is real. it’s raw and real and painful because i wanted to highlight that. 

when i started writing this, i knew it wouldn’t be received the same as my other stuff. this is very OC heavy. it’s very personal. this is the longest and hardest and heaviest thing i have ever done. it’s so personal to me and to rachel and i would really appreciate yall keeping that in mind while you read.

trigger warnings for suicide and depression, also a ton of medical stuff including vomiting...this is a hospital fic, after all.

and finally, this is dedicated to lily. fly high, love. thank you for looking down on us. rest in peace.

September 3rd, 2017 – 10:53 AM

"Aws, we need your help."

He pulls out his other earbud and lifts his head, places a hand over the page in his journal as he looks over to the doorway. He doesn't wait for something else to be said, flips the book closed and loops the band around, pulls out his remaining earbud and wraps the cord around his phone.

"Who is it?" He falls into place beside Geoff as they walk down the hallway. An arm snakes its way around his waist and squeezes his torso. He moves a hand to Geoff's back, closes his eyes and breathes in. "What happened?"

"Nia doesn't wanna take her meds. And she needs a Vitamin B shot too," Geoff says. His voice is low. He runs his other hand through his hair with a sigh. "She's crying. It's bad."

"Fuck," he swears. He picks up the pace, so fast he almost breaks out into a run by the time they reach the end of the hallway. He breaks out of Geoff's hold and jogs past the nurses' desk and a bunch of hospital carts, ignores the multiple cries of 'Awsten, don't run!'. He needs to get there. He needs to be there. He forgot this was happening today he completely forgot fuckfuckfuck-

And when he does, he doesn't stop. He runs through the double doors, into the pediatric ward, and veers off to the left. "Nia..." He breathes. He stops at the foot of her bed, places a hand on the railing and moves to stand next to her head. "I'm so sorry I forgot, sweetheart. I'm here now."

"Awsie!" Nia cries. She stretches her arms out for him. Tears are drying on her cheeks and her lip is quivering. "Don't want it Awsie, don't want it."

He swallows. It feels like his heart is attached to strings and the puppet master is tugging, harder and harder, about to rip the muscle from its suspension in his chest. He takes one of Nia's hands and climbs into the bed next to her, pulls her into his chest and squeezes tightly, presses a kiss to the top of her head. When he looks up, it's straight into Geoff's eyes. He's tapping the end of the syringe with his nail, lip pulled between his teeth, sympathetic smile on his face.

"Tell me when she's ready," Geoff says softly. He nods and looks back down at Nia. Her head is completely hidden from view. Her arms are squeezing around his waist. He can feel the damp spot on his shirt.

He sighs. "Nia, love, hey, don't cry... It's gonna be okay, I promise." He tangles his fingers into her hair and pulls them through, tilts his head down and places another kiss against her scalp.

"Don't like it..." Nia whines. He exhales heavily and tightens his arm around her back.

She doesn't deserve this. She's so young. She should be worried about not having enough time play on the swings and whether the mean boy in her class will steal her toys again, not on the verge of a panic attack over a fluid-filled syringe that comes with its own cocktail of side effects. This is a mountain and it's too big for her tiny shoulders to carry.

"It's gonna make you feel better. Don't you wanna feel better?" Her sobs are starting to quiet. He keeps rubbing her back, pressing the circles in, firm and soft and tight against the warmth of her skin.

"And Nia, hey," Geoff says. "Awsten can stay with you after, if you take it."

He lifts his head to meet Geoff's eyes and sends him a smile. Geoff nods a bit and smiles back, motions to the door and mouths, 'I'll get them to let you. You can't leave her right now. She needs you'.

'Thank you. I love you,' he mouths back.

'I love you too'.

"You'll really stay?" Nia looks up at him, quivering lip and teary eyes. She's blinking rapidly against the sheen.

He leans forward and kisses her forehead. "Of course I will, love. But you gotta take your meds, okay?"

She gives a sigh that is much too long for a seven year old, before eventually nodding and sticking her arm in Geoff's direction. He pulls her head back down into his chest as Geoff cleans an area on her bicep, feels her grip around his waist get tighter and tighter.

And then the needle goes in and she squeezes him so hard he starts to see spots, but they go as quickly as they come. Geoff presses down on the tube to insert the medicine in, and ever so slowly, Nia's grip starts to loosen. She doesn't look back up until Geoff is pressing gauze against her skin and moving his hand to her shoulder.

"Which one this time?" Geoff shows her a handful of band-aids, all various colors with character designs and tiny patterns decorating the tops. Awsten smiles as she settles back against his chest and points to one on the end that displays a smiling princess from some movie he barely recognize. He remembers seeing her on the screen a few weeks ago in the playroom, feeling Nia tap his shoulder excitedly and squeal over how beautiful she looked when she came on the screen. And then black overtook his vision and he didn't wake until the credits were rolling and Nia was snoring in his arms, making little snuffles every couple seconds.

Geoff grins and affixes it to her skin. Nia takes her arm back and turns over fully, moves her head to his shoulder and breathes out warmly into his neck. He moves his arm up to wrap around her and pulls his fingers through her hair again.

"What song?"

"The Pink one!"

He smiles. "Alright love, close your eyes..."

...

September 3rd, 2017 – 12:22 PM

"Aws?"

"Sunshine, hey, wake up."

He blinks rapidly. His head feels heavy, like it's stuffed with cotton and full of rocks that make it so impossibly hard to lift. "Huh?"

"You fell asleep." A pair of lips brushes his cheek. He hums, keeps his eyes squinted and snakes an arm around Geoff's neck. "Let's go back to your room, 'kay?"

"Mmph...carry me..." Everything feels so weighted. He's warm and the position he's in is comfortable. He doesn't want to move and turn cold again.

"Sorry love." He can hear the smile in Geoff's voice. "I'm carrying something I think you'll like a lot more."

"Hm?"

Geoff holds up a large bag. He waves it around for a few seconds, just enough time for Awsten to detect the beginnings of a green logo...

Could it be-

"Holy shit, did you get me Whole Foods?" He tries to keep his voice level as not to wake Nia.

"Maybe." Geoff smirks at him. He reaches out for the bag but Geoff hefts it higher than he can stretch, swings it back and forth while keeping it up in the air. "Back to your room love, then we can eat."

He follows Geoff out of the pediatric ward and down multiple hallways. Geoff uses his shoulder to push open one of the doors to the adult ward, holds it open for him and then walks behind him until they finally reach his room.

"I don't think I've ever loved you more." He says the words through a mouthful of food, five minutes later. He smiles, as Geoff reaches out to wipe at the side of his mouth with a finger. Geoff licks his finger and he rolls his eyes, leans in for a kiss that ends up being a quick peck. He takes another bite and closes his eyes. "Oh my god..."

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Geoff asks. "Since you've had outside food?"

"Oh hell yeah," he mutters. "The crap they have here is so disgusting, jesus christ..."

He's been back in the hospital for almost a month now. They let him out a couple months ago, let him go home and go back to school and try to become a normal seventeen year old, one whose home isn't a hospital ward and whose reality isn't the rarity of his disease.

And then it happened and now he's back here. It feels like he never left. He knows more of the white walls and antiseptic smell and nurses coming in ever few hours to check his blood pressure and change his IV fluid, of constantly being asked if he's okay, the pokes and prods and needles shoved in his skin, the cannula they forced into his arm and chemotherapy treatments that inject so much chemical into his bloodstream that everything in his body is rushing to get out, like it's the relative no one wants to see at a family gathering and everyone is doing their best to get away.

There's a point, when you live in a hospital, where everything starts to blur together. It all mashes into one, one large ball of prods and pokes and people everywhere, grabbing and pushing and turn over here, no not like that, I need to take some blood, come on Awsten, jut cooperate, okay? Why do you always have to be so difficult?

Some days it doesn't feel like anything anymore. He exists on a separate plane from everyone else, watching his physical form stare at the wall limply. Nurses come and go, lift his arms and shove things into his skin, wrap blood pressure cuffs around his biceps and change his IV fluid, and all he can do is lay there, force his eyes open and try not to retreat back into himself.

You're never alone in a hospital.

"Aws?" He shakes his head and blinks rapidly, lets his eyes come back into focus. Geoff's smile is gone. He's leaning toward him, brow furrowed, sandwich abandoned in its container. "You okay?"

He forces the corners of his lips upward. "Yeah."

"You can't lie to me, sunshine."

"I'm fine," he insists. He puts his own sandwich down and tilts his head to brush his lips against Geoff's. "I love you. Thank you for this."

Geoff uses one arm to shove the food boxes off to the side and scoots forward in the same motion. Awsten jumps, as he takes him into his arms and presses a long kiss against the top of his shoulder. "I love you so much. Please don't shut me out, okay? I want to help you. I'm here to help you."

"You are," he murmurs. "Trust me, you are."

...

September 5th, 2017 – 9:46 AM

"What's this for?"

"I'm not too sure, sunshine." He tightens the wrap around Awsten's bicep and walks his hand down his arm. When he gets to his elbow, he digs his fingers into Awsten's skin, feels around for the vein that should hurt him the least. The most prominent veins are the easiest to stick. "They didn't tell me that."

There are so many needle scars on his arm already. He's spent his entire life being poked and prodded like a science experiment, so much so that he doesn't even have to turn away now. Geoff remembers those days, years before he started training to become a nurse, when he would sit in the chair and hold Awsten on his lap and try to distract him to keep his gaze away from his arm.

It's a pang, a sort of sting that embeds itself into his chest and stabs at his heart. He swallows.

He's wanted to be a nurse for most of his life. Awsten being sick only fueled it. He remembers growing up, spending all his teen years in the hospital by Awsten's side, holding his hand during the chemo treatments and promising through tears that everything would be alright for surgery after surgery.

He's lived this alongside Awsten, but Awsten's been the one going through it all, dealing with the tests and surgeries and chemotherapy treatments, he's the one who was forced to give up a childhood and a normal life to be stuck with white walls and sterilized tubes and overwhelming antiseptic, he's the one whose life will never be any semblance of ordinary. This is his life. He had to give everything up.

He had to give everything up.

There's a lump in his throat. His vision is starting to blur. His eyes are getting misty.

He's wanted to be a nurse for most of his life.

This is one patient he never thought he'd have to treat.

This is one patient he never thought he'd have to treat.

"How much do you need this time?" Awsten's voice isn't high. He doesn't sound shaky or scared. His tone is level. He's not meeting his gaze. His eyes are on his lap, where he's picking at a loose thread on his sweatpants with his other hand.

Geoff shakes his head to clear it. The ache behind his eyes is a balloon that's about to pop. It's pressing against his skull, full of tears, about to rip and tear and spill. It's about to spill. Everything's about to spill. "Not much." He forces his voice to stay steady as he presses the needle into Awsten's skin.

Awsten doesn't even flinch.

He watches the needle go in and keeps his eyes there until Geoff pulls it out and presses gauze against the wound. Geoff drags in a breath, hiccups and tries not to let a sob slip with it.

But sure enough, "Gee? You okay?"

He swallows again. The lump in his throat throbs. His head aches as he lifts it. He looks at Awsten, at his wide eyes and skinny frame, at the thin hair that's just barely started to grow back and look how it used to before the chemicals ripped it all out. He looks down at the gauze he's still holding to Awsten's arm and then at the two tubes of his blood now placed in the sterilized box.

"Yeah, love. I'm fine."

...

"Awsie!"

"Why's Nurse W here?"

"What's the guitar for?"

He exchanges a look with Geoff and smiles, surveys the room and lets his gaze stop on Lily, whose eyes are fixated on him. "Geoff was telling me about a certain someone – or someones – being naughty?" He glances over at Geoff. "Right?"

Geoff's eyes are wide when he answers, "They just don't wanna eat their lunches, Aws. I didn't know what else to do."

"That's not fair!"

"I don't like it."

"It's gross..."

He nods. "I know, guys. The food sucks." He shouldn't even be preaching right now, shouldn't be telling them to eat what's on their plates, because more often than not he throws his own plates out and makes Jawn bring him Whole Foods. "But the nurses get all annoying and yell-y about it 'cause you're all on meds, okay? If you don't eat you'll get sick."

"He's right," Geoff says from behind. "But I'm glad you think I'm annoying, babe. Nice to know."

Jacob starts to 'oooooh' and Nia and Matty quickly follow. They're grinning widely at them, wide eyes and red cheeks paired with large smiles.

He rolls his eyes and leans back to peck Geoff's check. "Oh shut up. You know what I meant."

"Do I?"

"Yeah." His cheeks are growing hot. He drops his head and leans in to whisper into Geoff's ear, "and you are distracting them."

"Well," Geoff murmurs, breath warm against his ear. "You're distracting me." He closes his eyes as their lips slide together, feels Geoff's arm move down to his waist. Just as he reaches up to wrap his own arm around Geoff's neck, Geoff breaks the kiss and takes a step back.

"Uh..." Everything is so hot. His fingers are brushing Geoff's shoulder. He stretches his hand out more, grips onto him and takes a step back so they're standing next to each other. His lips are still tingling.

"But anyway, as Awsten was saying," Geoff continues. "You guys finish your lunches, and he's gonna sing you a song." He glances over. "Right, Aws?"

"R-right," he says faintly.

...

"Alright, what song are we doing?"

"You should sing one of yours," Geoff says. He unzips the guitar case and kneels in front of it to pull the instrument out. "Maybe not something...too sad, if you can? They've cried enough today."

He rolls his eyes and starts to flip through his journal. It may as well be called a songbook by now. At first it was messy feelings, but now they all come out in pretty metaphors that are inadvertently lyrical. "I live in a hospital, the fuck did you expect?"

"You gotta have something happy," Geoff insists. "It's not all white walls and hospital floors, is it?"

"And antiseptic smell," he mutters with a grin. "But no, yeah, I got something."

"You gonna give me the chords, or?"

"It's that one," he says. He forces himself to smile and reaches for one of Geoff's hands briefly. "The one I came up with that right? You helped me write some of it?"

"Aws..."

He swallows and looks down at the floor. "You got it?"

"Yeah."

"Awsie!"

"What song are you playing?"

"Do the pink one!"

"I like the silver one!"

"Does it have to be a color one?"

He takes a breath and keeps the smile plastered on his face, steps back to stand next to the stool Geoff's sitting on and leans his hip against it. He has to inhale again, looking out to all of their smiling faces. Nia's talking excitedly to Lily, nudging her shoulder and whispering loudly in her ear. Lily is smiling and nodding, but her gaze is focused on him. Jacob is pressed against Toby's side, saying something to him, to which Toby smiles and brushes a hand through his hair. Georgia has Rosie on her lap, and she's smiling and nodding as the two year old grabs a lock of her hair and starts to babble nonsense. He has to smile at Matty, who's trying very hard to have a silent conversation with Geoff, making an obvious effort to mouth words. You can do this. Breathe. You can do this. They're probably not gonna get it anyway.

Georgia and Toby will.

But the others won't.

They're counting on you.

You can do this.

"This is a new one," he says, tries to keep his voice level. "I wrote it a few months ago, with Geoff, actually. It's the first time I've sung it since, so...yeah, I guess. This is, I'll Always Be Around."

...

September 8th, 2017 – 3:37 PM

"Awsten? Kiddo, hey, can you come here a sec?"

Geoff stops.

It feels like the words jump-started his heart, shocked it backs into continuation of the never-ending marathon it's been running. The world stops for a second, pauses where it is and tilts slightly, goes fuzzy at the ends and allows the black to creep in.

Awsten's head doctor usually leaves everything up to the rest of his team. He doesn't join in unless things are particularly bad, unless he has a piece of news to give that is anything but standard. He isn't called in unless it's big, unless whatever's going on requires a more drastic treatment or everything needs to be changed. Calling Awsten to his office...

The blood test.

The results.

The results are in.

"I promised Georgia..." Awsten trails off. His words start to get softer by the end. He knows. He's been in here long enough to know what this means. He knows what this means. He knows exactly what this is. He knows. Geoff's heart is racing. It's hotcoldhotcoldhotcold fuckfuckfuck- "Y-Yeah. What's up?"

Geoff wrenches his head up to meet the man's eyes. They exchange a glance. He needs to be in the room Awsten can't be doing this alone he needs to be with him he needs to be with him he needs to be in that room with him- and fortunately, he receives a nod and a small hand gesture. He sets his binder on the nurses' station, ignores her calling after him irritably ­who's chart is this, Geoff? You can't just leave it wherever you want and expect us to...

He jogs to catch up and falls into place beside Awsten, reaches for his hand and squeezes tightly. It's already clammy, slick with sweat. Awsten is shaking. He swallows. Nonononopleasenonononono-

They sit down in the office. He keeps a tight hold on Awsten's hand and tries to take some deep breaths for himself. You are not allowed to panic right now. You cannot panic. Awsten needs you more than you need to panic. Awsten needs you more than you need to panic.

Awsten needs you more than you need to panic.

"What's going on?" Awsten's voice is so shaky. He tries to push his chair closer, gives his hand another tight squeeze. Awsten doesn't even acknowledge it. His gaze stays fixated on the doctor.

The man sighs. "We've been running tests for a couple weeks now, kid. That's what taking bone marrow and doing scans and drawing blood all those times was for. We wanted to make sure we were completely right before saying anything."

"W-What do you mean?"

Geoff swallows. His breath catches in his throat and he clenches his teeth in attempt not to cough. Please no please it can't be that please don't let it be that please he can't deal with this he doesn't need this please don't let it be that pleasepleaseplease-

"When we got your bone marrow sample back," he says. "We found some abnormalities in your white blood cells. That didn't necessarily mean – we had to do a lot more tests and imaging before we were able to confirm anything."

"Just say it." Awsten's voice is so soft. "Please. I need you to say it."

"Awsten-"

"Just tell me!"

"We did so many tests, did the same ones over again, tried to explain this any other way we possibly could...but everything came back the same. The results all point to one thing." He takes a heavy breath and shakes his head.

"Your cancer's back. I'm so sorry, kiddo."

There's a moment. Everything stops. The world is still. Someone hit the pause button.

And then it plays.

And Awsten runs.

...

"Aws- Awsten, hey, stop."

"Let go of me, Geoff!"

He struggles against Geoff's grip, pushes at his arms and fights against the tightening around his abdomen. "I mean it, let me go!"

"No." Geoff's voice is right next to his ear. He feels his breath warming his skin, feels the arms move up to his chest and wrap around him even tighter. "Just breathe, sunshine. I promise it'll be okay."

"No it won't!" The words end in a sob. He shoves at Geoff's chest again, keeps pushing and resisting. Gotta get out gotta go I can't be here it'sbackit'sbackit'sback-

I can't be here I can't do this let me go please let me go I need to be alone I can't do this anymore I don't want it why is this my life why does this keep happening why is it happening to me I don't want this anymore pleasepleaseplease- it'sbackit'sbackit'sback-

It's back.

The scream starts low, at the back of his throat. It feels like his vocal chords are tearing as it comes up. Everything hurts. His chest is open and the poison is flooding in and everything is burning the world is on fire he can't see can't move can't breathe what's going on why won't it stop it'sbackit'sbackit'sback-

"C'mon love," Geoff is saying. "Deep breaths. With me, okay? I'm right here. It's all gonna be okay, I promise."

"D-Don't," he gasps it out and then drops his head. Everything is blurry. He's squinting at the ground. His vision is squid-inked, black spots dancing and moving all around, combining together to obstruct everything. Can't see can't see can't see– it'sbackit'sbackit'sback-

Everything is on fire. The world is white-hot. It's burning it's all burning it's hot everything's hot it's moving it's hot it's too hot it won't stop nothing will stop why won't it stop it won't stop-

He can't see. He needs more air.

There's no more air.

He needs more air there's no more air he needs more air there's no more air he needs more air there's no more air he needs more air-

It's back it's here it's happening all over again I don't want it please nonono take it away I can't do this take it away I don't want it please I'm sorry please I don't want it I don't want it I don't want it-

There's pressure against his arms. The hands clasp his biceps and push him back. He feels the hard surface digging into his spine. His stomach is churning. Everything is spinning. Can't see can't move can't breathe redwhitehotredwhitehotredwhitehot-

"...breathe, Awsten..."

"...sunshine..."

"...doing...well..."

He hears bits and pieces. They all sound far away, like Geoff's voice is being transmitted through a vocoder from another room. It's distant. Everything's distant. He's floating. The world is getting smaller and smaller. He's going higher; ascending into a separate plane of existence where his body is not a battlefield the latest fight just broke out on.

The next breath barely feels like one. It fuels the burn in his chest, the smoldering of his lungs and hiss of everything charring to a crisp and floating down to dig into his chest cavity. It hurts. Everything hurts. It won't stop. It hurts.

It's back it's back it's back it's back it's back it's back it's back it'sbackit'sbackit'sback-

It's back.

...

September 8th, 2017 – 8:32 PM

"It's gonna be okay, sunshine."

He tousles his fingers through Awsten's hair and kisses the back of his head. Awsten sniffles, scoots up slightly and then lets his head flop back. "S-Sorry, I just..."

"Don't start," he mutters.

Awsten does this all the time. When they're alone, in private, it's like he turns into an infinite thank you note, exploding with 'I'm sorrys' and 'thanks for putting up with mes', overflowing and letting them pour out of him like he's a cup that needs to be emptied periodically. "You have nothing to be sorry for, love-"

"Geoff, thank god, there you are." He jumps, hears the door banging open and one of the on-duty night nurses call for him. "I know you're off today, but Jacob's crying and we're short on staff 'cause of the storm, can you help?"

"I-" He starts to say. Movement cuts him off. Awsten pushes out of his hold and slides to the floor, wipes a hand down his face and makes his way out of the room without a word.

He takes a breath and climbs off the bed too, exchanges a glance with the nurse as he makes his way out of the room and picks up into a slight jog in the direction of the pediatric ward. Awsten's long gone from the halls. He moves through quickly, comes to a stop in front of the double doors and pushes through, straight over to Jacob's bed.

"...thunder, okay? Wanna tell me why?" Awsten is curled up on the mattress next to Jacob. He's lying on his side with Jacob's head against his chest and his arm wrapped around Jacob's shoulders.

"I-It's just noise." Jacob's voice is barely audible, especially from Geoff's position at the foot of the bed. Awsten is louder, but not by much. Neither of them notices – or if they have, they aren't paying any attention to – his presence. He tugs his stethoscope to sit properly around his neck and takes a tiny step backward. "J-Just noise..."

Outside, the sky rumbles with another loud crack. The lights flicker briefly. They're gone for less than a second, but it's still enough to make Jacob jump and whimper, turn onto his side and tighten his arms around Awsten's waist.

"It's gonna be okay, love," Awsten murmurs. He presses a kiss against the crown of Jacob's head and hugs him closer. "It's just noise. It'll pass like it always does. You'll go to sleep and have nice, happy dreams, and when you wake up it'll be all gone, I promise."

"I'm scared..."

Geoff swallows. The words feel like a stab to his heart, a Jacob-sized missile that's large enough to burn a hole through the muscle. It starts a fire that stokes and sparks and burns, an ache in his chest that spreads quickly, smolders everything in its path and turns the entire cavity to flame.

"You wanna know what I do when I get scared?" Awsten hums.

"What?"

"I do something to get my mind off it." Awsten removes one arm from his body and stretches to the other side of the bed, pulls a book from the stack on top of Jacob's nightstand. "When I stop thinking so much about what's scaring me, it gets easier."

"R-Really?"

"Really." Geoff inhales, stares at the large smile on Awsten's face; he's grinning with his teeth, crinkling at the corners of his eyes and stretching so wide his cheeks look like they hurt. "Now where were we?"

"Harry's just about ta be sorted!"

"Oh!" Awsten's eyes go wide. "That's a really good part! What house do you think he'll be put in?"

"Slytherin!"

"What? Why?"

Jacob is giggling by now. The tears on his face are starting to dry up. His cheeks are pink and his smile is bright. He was sobbing ten minutes ago, and now he can't stop smiling.

Just noise.

...

September 12th, 2017 – 2:26 PM

They have a name for these days.

Amongst the nurses, they're called 'sudden death'.

The days when someone's kid is sick and someone else went on vacation and forgot to alert everyone else, when circumstances have piled in and formed a bullet that shoots the entire hospital in its foot. They have too many patients and not enough staff and that means they have to overcompensate and a job meant for six nurses has to now be done by three.

Having practically grown up in this hospital, he's been around for more than he can count.

You can tell by a nurse's tone of voice, the manner in which they handle things, their pace; the tells of 'sudden death' are hardly difficult to spot. People are grumpy and annoyed when they're stressed. It takes a special kind of person to shove that all back in and lock it far enough that it doesn't come oozing and seeping out into their personality.

And sure, Geoff is a really special person, but he's not that special.

The kids have all needed something today. Everyone's been fussy and grumpy and tired; they're spiking fevers and running around all over the place, tired of being cooped up inside but too unwell to be taken out for a walk. The cabin fever is setting in with Geoff's resolve headed closer and closer to the bin.

He can see it on Geoff's face. His eyebrows are furrowed and his lip is pulled between his teeth as he scribbles something into a chart. His hair is a mess, his scrubs are stained with something – some kid probably threw up on him and he hasn't had time to change – and his eyes are red.

He wants to say something, wants to slip behind him and wrap his arms around his waist, wants to breathe you're doing great, love. I know you're stressed and everything's a lot, but you're handling it really well against his ear, but he knows it wouldn't help. He knows Geoff has a lot of work to do, and distracting him – even if it is to try and help him relax a little – will only stress him out even more.

The news has felt like a hurricane. A natural disaster that's eclipsed their worlds and turned them on the side. It feels like that. The world's been turned 90 degrees, flipped onto its side, but everything hasn't moved with it. The world has changed but everything else hasn't and the limbo is lingering.

It's too much. It's all too much.

"Nurse W?"

"Nurse W..."

"Nurse W!"

Geoff jumps. The binder wobbles on the tray he was leaning on, and crashes to the ground. He blows out a heavy sigh and leans down to pick it up. "Give me a second, Matthew."

Awsten winces. He looks over at Matty, barely catches a glimpse of his wide eyes and quivering lip, before tiny footsteps pound against the tile floor and the four-year-old runs out of the room.

He sighs.

Matty's had a rough day. He spiked a fever overnight, so the nurses have been all over him, checking his vitals every hour to make sure he hasn't caught an infection. He's been bound to his bed in case there actually is something wrong, which doesn't bode well for a hyperactive four year old that loves to run around and play. He doesn't do well without his daily playroom time.

"Aws, fuck, I didn't mean to, could you..." Geoff trails off. He shakes his head and looks down at the chart in his hands.

"I got him," he replies. He knows exactly where Matty'll be. His favorite place in the hospital is that damn playroom. It's not much compared to a child's playroom at home, but the hospital has manage to accumulate a ton of board games, along with a foosball table, a pool table, and multiple video game systems. The room is massive, with tons of windows and brightly colored walls. And the kids spend every minute they can spare inside; a reminder of the future to tide them over. "Hey love, everything's okay. Geoff's just grumpy today. He has a lot of work to do because some of the other nurses didn't come in."

"He's mad at me," comes the tiny voice. He follows it to the edge of the foosball table, kneels down and presses his ear to the ground, sees Matty curled up underneath. "I made him mad."

Awsten sighs. His heart feels like it's being pulled, like Matty's piece is trying to break away from the others and descend into the bottom of his stomach. It's this ache that funnels out from deep in his chest, awakens every time one of the kids is upset and coats everything with a light layer of pain. "I promise he's not, Mats. He knows you've had a hard day and you didn't mean to bother him."

"I hate staying in bed."

He smiles. "I know you do, kid. The doctors were just worried today, hm." He scoots closer to the edge of the table and stretches a hand out. "When you guys randomly get fevers in the middle of the night, it means something bad could be happening. They just wanted to make sure you were okay."

"But Awsie, I feel fine," Matty insists. "I don't feel sick 'nymore."

"That's great, dude!" He exclaims. He drops his voice down for the next few words, "how about we go on a little adventure to celebrate, hm?"

"An adventure?" Matty's eyes seem to light up. He pushes up on his hands and stretches to connect his back with the bottom of the table. "Cool!"

"For sure, kiddo," Awsten replies. "Come on out, let's go do something cool!"

Getting Matty to sit in a wheelchair is a bit more of a struggle. He insists he's fine, pushes at Awsten's hands and whines when he rolls the chair up behind him, I don't wanna sit in thaaaat, why can't I just walk like a normal person? It takes a good five minutes to convince him, it's a special kind of adventure, okay? It'll be so much cooler in the chair, I promise.

But soon enough, they're off. He grips the handlebars tightly, gives the chair a hard push, and starts to sprint after it. Matty's giggles can be heard all the way down the hall. He catches up to the chair and grabs the handlebars again, keeps his stride and runs straight ahead, into the elevator that's just opened.

"Press a button," he instructs Matty, once the doors have closed.

"Which one?"

"Any one you want."

The elevator surges upward. The doors open with a ding.

He's not even sure what floor this is.

He grips the handlebars and shoves the wheelchair forward.

And then he's running all over again.

...

September 14th, 2017 – 5:48 PM

Something shoves at his shoulder.

It's gone before he has a chance to see what it is. He stops, clutches his clipboard against his chest and turns around.

Awsten's footsteps are loud, smacking against the tile floor. He has his head down and his arms drawn into his body. He speedwalks past Geoff and disappears down the hall, turns a corner out of view and vanishes completely.

"Dammit..." He looks up, makes eye contact with Awsten's head doctor, and grits his teeth.

"What the hell happened?" He mutters. He drops his clipboard off at the nurses' station, Parker, room 302, he's all set for the night, and walks right up to where the other man is standing. "What did you say to him?"

"Geoff," the man sighs. "We just scheduled his chemo treatments. He's starting tomorrow."

"He's...what?"

Everything goes cold. He feels the ice, feels it travel up his veins and seep into his bones like he was just dunked in a vat of frigid liquid.

"Yeah," Awsten's doctor replies. "First thing tomorrow, we've got a chair all ready for him. We're doing it in cycles this time, so he's gonna have the first infusion tomorrow, and then a couple weeks of rest. That'll give his body some time to make new, healthy cells."

"Fuck," he whispers. "He, I- fuck..."

"Go," the man murmurs. "I'll take care of your other patients. He needs someone with him right now."

He nods. His hands are shaking. He feels it in his legs too, like they're the consistency of jello and won't carry him any further if he tries to walk. He forces down a swallow and turns around.

And he runs.

...

His chest hurts.

It's a thorn in his side, a stabbing pain that keeps shooting and getting worse the faster he goes. It's the kind of pain he knows will get worse if he stops. He can't stop running. He needs to find Awsten. Can't stop running need to find Awsten can't stop where is he where is he where is it-

Not in his room. Not in the pediatric ward. Not in the playroom. None of the kids seem like they've seen him. Geoff doesn't want to say anything, doesn't want to ask Georgia or Toby whether he's passed by, they don't need to know. You don't need to scare the. They don't need to know.

"Fucking hell, where is he?" He grunts. "Aws? Awsten!"

He finds himself in Awsten's room once again, surveying the nightstand – his journal is still sitting there, like always – and the bed – his phone isn't there, so he must have it with him. He rakes a hand through his hair with a shaky gasp. "Fuck, Aws, where are you?"

That's when he hears it.

It's tiny. The sound is smaller than he's heard from Awsten in a long time. If he didn't know any better, he'd think it was one of the kids. It almost sounds like Matty or Nia on a bad day. They're the most vocal about it. Lily never says anything and Jacob is starting to follow in Toby's footsteps, not expressing unless he's asked.

"Oh, sunshine..." he sighs. He steps around in front of the bathroom – the door is open, why the fuck didn't he bother looking the first time he was here – and bites his lip. He moves further into the bathroom, a few feet behind Awsten, and looks over him, into the mirror.

There are tears rolling down his cheeks. His eyes are red. He's perched on the bathroom counter, fiddling with an electric razor, trying to plug it into the outlet next to the sink. It keeps slipping out of his hands because they're shaking so much.

"Aws..."

"Please don't shave your head too." The words are punctuated by a sob. He slides off the counter and takes a couple steps to meet Geoff in the middle of the bathroom. He reaches up and tangles a hand in Geoff's hair, swallows heavily. "You're just starting to look like yourself again. And it- it reminds me of what I lost."

He shaved his head. He remembers the day, remembers feeling the realization, the start against his chest as Awsten sat up in a flurry and burst into tears. He remembers the grip, how tightly he held him, lips pressed against his head and fingers running rapidly through his hair, it's just hair, sunshine. It doesn't define you. You'll still be beautiful. He remembers the lasting kiss, leaving his lips against Awsten's head for a while, and hey, it'll grow back, y'know? It's a reminder of what you're going through. How strong you are. It'll grow back when all of this is over and you can dye it whatever color you want and you'll always remember what it took to get you there. It's just hair, love. Okay? Just hair.

He remembers waiting until Awsten had finally drifted into sleep, going straight to the bathroom and turning on the razor without a second thought.

The lump in his throat is throbbing. His vision is starting to blur, slightly misty and foggy at the edges. He reaches out and pulls Awsten into his arms. Awsten snakes his own arms around his back and they stay there. He tightens his grip and Awsten grabs fistfuls of his shirt and no one moves. Nothing moves. They stay.

When he pulls back, it's just a tad, only enough to keep Awsten at arm's length, "what if neither of us shave our heads?"

"Geoff, I can't," Awsten says quietly. He drops his head down. "I can't watch it gradually-" His breath hitches. "Just...fall out."

"Hey, whoa, breathe." Geoff tightens his arm around Awsten's back and presses another kiss to his head.

What's a color you've always wanted your hair to be?"

...

September 15th, 2017 – 9:56 AM

"Alright kiddo, just attaching this last bag, and...you're all set, okay? It's gonna be a while, though, so make yourself comfy."

"Can...can he stay?"

Geoff swallows. The words feel like a bullet sent spiraling into the bottom of his heart. Awsten owns it, climbed into his chest and claimed it so long ago, sits on top with the most beautiful smile on his face and both hands under his chin, faced turned up to the sky. Awsten has the largest part of his heart, the same part that's been stitched over and glued together and hangs, from the thinnest thread. Awsten has it and he keeps breaking it.

"I took today off," he says, before the nurse has a chance to speak. "Tomorrow too. And I can take Wednesday if you need me to. I'm here, sunshine. You've got me."

They knew. Awsten's doctor was ready to fight if he had to, make sure, if anyone says anything to you, you send them to me, okay? The kid has no one and I'll be damned if they don't let you stay with him. The hospital didn't give him any trouble, and up until this point, he's been allowed to be in the room for everything. They needed to do a blood test and even let him be the one to do it, let him practice medicine on his day off because Awsten was getting panicky and this could not be the first blood draw in years that ended in tragedy.

"Of course he can stay," the nurse says. "I'll be back in a little while to check on you, okay? You know to press the button if you need anything, so just...good luck, sweetheart. Let's hope you don't react too badly."

Geoff drops to his knees in front of Awsten once she's out of the room, grabs both his hands and squeezes. "You doing okay, love? Still feel sick?"

Awsten shrugs and turns his head away. "I dunno."

"Your hair looks pretty." He leans up to brush his fingers through the newly dyed blue strands. They put a ton of conditioner in after the bleach and the result is so soft. He can't stop playing with it.

"Shut up."

"Hey," he murmurs. He squeezes Awsten's hands again, swings them back and forth. "It's gonna be okay, sunshine. We'll get through this."

"I just-" Awsten's face seems to crumple. He bites his lip and lets out a dry sob. "I thought it was over. I thought I was finally getting my life back. I thought- I thought I was done with this..."

Geoff stops there. He has to.

The ache is giant. It feels too big. It's right behind his eyes, a malleable balloon that's seconds away from popping. It lodges itself in, presses against the rut in his skull, and keeps going. The pocket of tears feels too full. It all feels too full. Everything is too full.

He doesn't know what to say.

He doesn't know what words to string together, what message to send, how to breathe reassurances into a body that's already beyond fallen apart. He doesn't know how to keep saying it'll be okay, you'll beat it, you've got this, I promise it'll all be okay, because he doesn't.

He doesn't know if it'll be okay.

Awsten's cheeks are red. His eyes are glassy. His lip is quivering. His hands are clammy in Geoff's, damp and slick with sweat. He looks so small in the chair, with his skinny shoulders and tiny frame, a child in a near adult's body living a life he never wanted.

He swallows and stands up on his knees, surges forward and takes Awsten into his arms – as best he can without disturbing the IV – and kisses the side of his head. He holds him for a while, keeps his lips against his skin and his eyes closed. Sunshine.

"What can I do?" The words feel hollow. It's like someone punched a hole through his chest and the pieces are dangling, bone fragments hanging from tiny threads, teetering over falling to their deaths and embedding themselves deep into the bottom of his chest cavity.

"The kids," Awsten whispers. His voice is thick. "Don't say anything to them, okay? They don't need to know."

...

"Easy, love, there you go, you're okay. Deep breaths, you're doing so well."

The aftereffects of the chemo don't waste any time. He rubs Awsten's back as he gags again, winces and tries to keep hold of the basin while still supporting Awsten's body. Awsten lets out a sob in between heaves. Tears are pouring down his cheeks. His hair is plastered to his forehead, sticky with sweat.

"Geoff..." Awsten whimpers. The spell seems to be over (for now, at the very least), but he doesn't lift his head. "It hurts."

"I know, sunshine. I'm sorry." He winds his arm tighter around Awsten's back and moves the basin off to the side. "You think you're done for now?"

"I dunno."

"Sunshine..."

"They probably think I left them." Awsten's voice is hoarse, raspy from all the vomit. "They're gonna be so mad at me, I- fuck." He scrambles against Geoff's arm and grabs for the basin, moves his head over it just in time to gag once more.

Geoff sighs and rubs his back, reaches over to hold the container on Awsten's lap. "Careful, sweetheart. You're gonna really hurt yourself if you keep doin' this."

"Already did," come the words, soft with a hint of rasp. "You- you should go ta them. They need you-" He pauses and shifts with a grimace. "M-more than I do. M'used to this."

"Stop." He tightens his grip around Awsten's waist. Awsten turns to look at him, and he exhales, shakes his head and runs a finger across Awsten's sweaty cheek. "I took the week off. You know that. You're my priority right now. The kids are fine, love. The other nurses have them." He sighs and leans in to kiss Awsten's hair. "You take care of everyone, sunshine. Now it's my turn to take care of you."

He's never reacted well to chemo. Geoff remembers the first time, remembers when he learned what it meant to 'feel your heart sink into your stomach'. He remembers standing at the edge of Awsten's bed with tears in his eyes, feeling bugs stinging his skin and the blood rushing in his ears, like Awsten was on fire and he'd turned into gasoline.

The vomiting doesn't start until afterward, until the chemicals have had a chance to seep into his bloodstreams and settle in amongst the cells. It takes them a while to adjust, but once they do, the damage begins.

He throws up everything in his system and cries, burns up with a fever that fries, all whilst the chemo wreaks havoc on his body. Geoff watches and winces and feels more pieces of his heart chip off, feels them drop and press into the bottom of his chest and sting, bleed, you're fucking useless why can't you do anything fucking do something you useless piece of shit. He doesn't deserve to suffer like this.

He doesn't deserve to suffer like this.

"G-Gee?" He blinks and refocuses on Awsten, pulls his teeth in with his lip and presses down. "I'm c-cold..." He's shivering. His teeth are chattering loudly. "M-make it stop..."

Geoff swallows and moves his hand up to Awsten's forehead. He has to pull it away almost instantly, lean back and shake his hand out before he wraps it around Awsten's waist again. "You're burning up, sweetheart. Lemme just go get a cloth..." He squirms, tries to push Awsten's arms away and detach himself. "Love, you gotta let go."

"No." Awsten's voice is so small. "Warm."

"Yeah, you are, sunshine. Your fever is high." Geoff sighs. His heart feels like it's bleeding, like every word is a separate slash and every piece is sailing away on a raft of its own. "This'll help, I promise."

"I got it."

He inhales sharply as he lifts his head; watches Otto take a couple steps up to the edge of the bed and place a folded washcloth in the middle of Awsten's forehead. His own hair is shoved into a beanie and his eyes are downcast. He straightens the fabric on Awsten's head and leans in to brush his lips against his hair.

"I didn't- they didn't say you were-"

"You haven't picked up your phone in days," Otto murmurs. "Jawn and I were worried. He wanted ta come with, but he got called into work. I didn't..." He trails off and shakes his head. "Why didn't you tell me, Geoff? He's your boyfriend, but he's...he's important to me too. You know that."

"I..." He looks down at Awsten, whose eyes are closed. His breathing is starting to deepen. "I didn't know what to say. How to say it, I guess? I don't know anything anymore. M'just..." He swallows. "I can't feel. Not right now. Not while he's feeling everything."

"You can." Otto glances behind himself and reaches for one of the chairs that are been backed against the wall. He slides it over and turns it around, sits backward and grips onto the bars at the back. "With me."

...

"I can't do this. Not when he's like this, I just-"

Geoff cuts himself off, tightens his grip around Awsten and keeps his eyes trained there. He waits for him to continue, to pick up where he left off and finish the thought, but the words don't seem to come.

"He's asleep," he says. "And he has a fever so it's a pretty fuckin' deep sleep. You're okay, Geoff. Let it all out."

"I can't," Geoff grounds out. His voice sounds choked. It's like there's gravel in his throat, a new piece tangling with every word. "He needs me not to. I can't have my feelings right now. They're not important."

He sighs and stands, walks back over to the side of the bed and reaches for one of Geoff's hands. "They're always important."

Geoff does this. He always has. He represses and pulls in, absorbs every last ounce of what he's feeling to put it in this tiny bottle and lodge that in the hollows of his chest. He squeezes out whatever he can, has a breakdown in the staff room or bursts into tears while he's getting ready, turns on the waterworks for a minute and then forces them off, forces it down, forces everything away.

"His cancer's back," Geoff says the words to Awsten's head. He won't look up. "It's back and it might be worse than before we don't know and he's back on chemo and everything's happening all at once and I don't have time for this." He finally lifts his head. His eyes are glassy and red-rimmed. "I have him and the kids and all the fucking work I have to do here I just can't-" A dry sob. "I just can't."

"You don't have to," Otto replies. He leans forward to wrap his arms around Geoff's shoulders, careful to avoid disturbing Awsten. He can feel the sleeve of his shirt starting to dampen. He winces. "Not right now. Right now is yours, okay? You don't have to be anything for anyone. It's okay. Just breathe, alright? I gotcha."

It's silent for a few minutes. Geoff cries quietly against him, silent tears that are soaking into the fabric of his shirt. "I'm so scared. All the time. I'm so fucking scared this might be it. That I might-" A breath that ends in a sob. "I'm so fucking scared I might lose him."

The ache behind his eyes is big. He wants to cry too. Everything hurts.

He swallows and tightens his grip, starts to rub Geoff's upper back. "You won't. He's gonna be okay. I know he is. He's survived the worst and he'll survive this too. You know him. You know how much he's been through. He's so strong. He's not going down without a fight."

"I don't know how much fight he has left."

...

September 21st, 2017 – 2:38 PM

"Awsie!"

"Whoa!"

"It's blue!"

"Your hair's so pretty!"

He swallows against the lump in his throat and forces the smile to say on his face. Nothing is wrong. They don't need to know. Nothing is wrong. You can't tell them. They don't need to know. They don't need to worry. Nothing is wrong.

The last six days have been the worst he's had in a very long time. He doesn't remember the last time it was this bad, can't recall a time previously when pulling himself out of bed didn't feel like his body weighed a thousand tons and merely opening his eyes formed a very large lump in his throat that fortified itself with steel.

He's been staying away. The chemo is hard. It hurts. His body feels like a battlefield but the war's barely started. Every side effect is a new battle, a new tiff that breaks out and wreaks havoc. It feels like he's bleeding, all the time. Every day he's being sliced open a different way, and the pieces that are left don't fit together anymore.

"You like it?"

"Yeah!" The vigorous nod comes from Nia. "It's awesome!"

"Thanks, love," he says. He steps over to her bed and shifts Rosie against his hip to ruffle her hair. "How've you been today?"

"Missed you." Nia ignores the question and holds her arms out. "Where'd you go?"

He exhales and swallows again, feels the saliva travel downward and settle in his stomach heavily. Nothing is wrong. They don't need to know. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong. "I just got really busy with my family and stuff." He pauses, tries to keep his voice steady. "But I really missed you guys."

A silence falls over the room. He bites his lip. Toby and Georgia are looking at him. He can see the confusion on their faces. Their gazes are burning into his back. They don't believe you they don't believe you they don't-

He feels an arm snake around his back and exhales a shaky breath, leans into Geoff's grip and closes his eyes for a briefly. Geoff rubs his back for a few seconds and then takes a step over to Nia's bed. "And they really missed you too, so how would y'all feel about a movie night to catch up?"

"Yeah!"

"Yes!"

"Please, Awsie?"

He smiles, presses a kiss against the top of Rosie's head with a swallow. "Geoff was just telling me that he got some new movies for you guys. I think he got Moana and that other new Disney one..."

Lily is leaning so far off her bed that she looks like she's going to fall out. Her eyes are wide. She's reaching for him, making grabby hands and opening and closing her fingers. He takes a step closer, shifts Rosie on his hip and reaches for one of her hands with his free one. He tightens his hold on Rosie so he can lean down and press a kiss to her hair.

"Movie night it is." He hears Geoff say from behind. "Let's go into the playroom guys, alright?"

"Yeah!"

None of the kids have IVs in at the moment. He knows Jacob is scheduled for a vitals check in a couple hours – Lily just got back from hers, Geoff is doing Nia's right now, Matty's was done, and Rosie just finished – and Georgia and Toby know when they have to get up and come back into the ward for their checks. This is – ironically – the perfect time.

Matty jumps onto Geoff's back. He watches Jacob tap Toby's shoulder until he gives a very heavy mock sigh and crouches down too. Nia grabs Georgia's hand and starts to giggle, race you to the playroom! Boys vs. girls! Their footsteps are loud as they run out of the room and stomp down the hall.

"Ow, sweetheart." He unclasps Rosie's chubby fingers from his hair and kisses her cheek. "Careful, okay?" She babbles something he doesn't quite catch and flops against his shoulder.

"Awsie?" He feels a tug at the hem of his shirt and smiles down at Lily.

"Yeah, love?"

"Your hair's really pretty," she says softly. She moves her gaze down to stare at her lap as soon as she finishes talking.

"Thank you, Lil," he murmurs. He lifts her chin and brushes his fingers through her hair. "Come on, let's go watch the movie, hm?" He turns around and bends his knees slightly. "Climb on."

"You've got Rosie." Lily's voice is barely audible at this point. "It's okay."

"I can carry you both," he replies. His heart feels like it's being pulled, like her piece is trying to tear itself from the whole. He shifts Rosie with one arm, and uses the other to squeeze Lily's hand. "C'mere, love. We'll go watch Moana and I'll braid your hair, how's that sound?"

Lily smiles.

...

A crab is singing.

An evil crab is singing a song about something being shiny. He isn't sure what or what happened or how they got to this point, but a crab is clawing at whatever character The Rock is playing and singing about seafood and shiny things.

The younger kids are enthralled. Lily, Nia, and Matty haven't looked up since the movie began. Toby, Jacob, and Georgia seem a little less captured and Rosie probably couldn't care less, but the little kids are enjoying it.

He hasn't really been following the story. The songs are catchy and the dialogue is funny at some parts, but he hasn't been able to pull his mind out of the hole it's been sucked into.

It's all so much. It's so much and it feels so heavy and he can't move out from underneath. He can't move or breathe or escape any of it. These white walls are his reality, a physical representation of the life that feels like catastrophe.

It was starting to get better. Things were starting to go back to normal. He was starting to unstick himself from the passive as he passed into a more active role in his life. The world was starting to come back into orbit, like he'd finally come back to Earth and reentered his body again, given life to a body that had been disguised as a corpse for so long.

He was alive but never living.

The world was different too. He remembers that, when a tiny stream of light cracked through the weight on his shoulders, split it in half and started to break off pieces. He remembers feeling lighter, feeling like he was floating in the best way, overlooking cotton candy skies through newfound rollercoaster highs.

He remembers how sparkly everything started to look. The world was clearer and brighter and prettier, with glitter and shine everywhere. It felt like a dream. Like his nightmare was morphing into an existence he could get used to living in. A conclusion that was no longer confusing. The world wasn't blurry anymore. Nothing was blurry anymore.

It was a new canvas and he'd been given paints for the first time.

And then it hit. A wrecking ball that was on fire, sparking with every reminder of the existence that-

He swallows. The lump in his throat is throbbing. Everything feels far away, like he's managed to float out of his body and onto a separate layer of pain in the last twenty minutes. He blinks, refocuses his vision, and forces in a deep breath. Not now. You'll have time for this later. Not now. Not now. Not now.

He rakes a hand through his hair.

He stops.

Someone hit pause on the world. The breath has been sucked dry from his body, leeched from his bones and tugged away from his throat. It feels like sandpaper. The last thread holding his heart together has snapped and it's falling down, further and further, sinking into his stomach and rolling back on the switch that sends nausea surging up into his veins.

No. No. No.

He forces himself to look downward, moves his entire head to stare at his hands, stare at the lock of hair that has just fallen out and into his palm.

He tries to stifle it, keep it back, lodge it in his chest for later when he's back in his room and Geoff is with him- wait for Geoff wait for Geoff not now please not right now I can't do this- so it's not nearly as loud as if he'd chosen not to, but a tiny sound, a whimper leaves his throat.

He hears the gasp.

He whips his head up, locks eyes with Georgia, whose gaze is flittering from the lock of hair to him so fast he can't follow it. Her lip is already starting to quiver. Her eyes are getting glassy.

"Fuck," he curses in a whisper. He closes his fingers around the lock of hair and slips his hand into his pocket, slides out from under Lily, "I'll be right back, alright love? Just gonna go to the bathroom real quick."

He meets Georgia's eyes once again and then looks pointedly at the hallway, bites his lip, what the hell am I supposed to say to her how do I do this she wasn't supposed to find out she wasn't fuckfuckfuck-

Georgia makes her way out of the playroom and steps no further, plants her feet and crosses her arms over her chest. Her lip is wobbling dangerously and there are already tears on her cheeks.

"Georgia, love..." he sighs, shakes his head and presses harder into his lip. "I didn't, you weren't supposed to-"

"You're sick again," Georgia chokes out. Her voice is thick with tears. "Aren't you? It's back. You're getting chemo again. That's why your hair is falling out."

"Sweetheart..." His heart is constricting. It feels like she just took a sledgehammer to it, slammed into it at full force and smashed it to smithereens. Nausea is swimming up his throat. The ache behind his eyes is pulsating.

"Answer me!"

"Yeah," he says. His voice cracks. He knows he's crying too. "They found some abnormalities in my white blood cells, and-

Georgia sobs. She covers her face with her hands and cries loudly, a kind of sound that bottles itself up and comes flying toward him, bypasses every layer of skin to crash into what's left of his heart.

He surges forward and pulls her into his arms, presses nose to head, wraps arms around waist. She throws her arms around his abdomen and buries her head in his chest, lets out another sob that muffles slightly into his shirt but still sounds as guttural as the first one.

"It's gonna be okay, love," he whispers. His voice is shaking. His hands are, too. He tries to keep them steady as he rubs her back, kisses the top of her head and hugs her even closer. "I'm gonna be okay. You don't have to worry about me. I'll beat this, you'll see."

"You don't know that!" Georgia wails. "You don't know anything! What happens if you don't? What are we gonna do? Awsie," She hiccups, chokes on tears and starts to cough. He winces and presses firmer into her back, rubs in small, tight circles. "What am I gonna do without you?"

"Nothing." He closes his eyes and presses his cheek against the top of her head, lets the tears stream freely down his face. "Because I'm not going anywhere, okay? I'm staying right here. I'm gonna beat this and be around to play Monopoly with you and help you with lyrics and tease you about Toby and teach you- teach you how to play guitar. I'm gonna be around. I'm gonna beat this. I'm not going anywhere, I promise."

...

September 22nd, 2017 – 11:21 AM

"N-no."

Lily starts shaking her head, slow at first, and then faster and faster, eventually so fast that she's probably making herself dizzy. He sighs and takes a step forward, reaches for her shoulders. She tenses underneath him, but doesn't start to move away. Just as he's about to speak, he hears the tiniest, "No, Awsie."

Lily is peering up at him with wide, glassy eyes. Her lip is quivering. His grip on her shoulders has allowed her to wrap her hands around his forearms. She squeezes. Her little nails are digging into his skin, sharp enough to prick, but not nearly enough to hurt. "Please. No."

"Lil." He bends his knees and crouches so he's at her eye level. "I promise it'll be okay, love. It's not going to hurt. You'll be fine."

"Scary," she mumbles. Her voice is so small. She moves her gaze to her lap and pulls her knees up and into her chest. "Don't wanna."

"How about I come with you?" He offers. He scoots his hands down and around her back, slides onto the bed and pulls her to his chest in one motion. She curls in and buries her face in his shirt, lets out the tiniest whimper that slowly transitions into a sigh.

He swallows. He looks down at her and watches his hand come up to rub her back, keeps his eyes there and pulls his lip in with his teeth.

It's like his heart's been split, like each of the kids has crawled inside and claimed their own piece, perched on top of them and turned each one into their own arts and crafts project. They're both different and vital, like slashing through one or feeling it pull away from the hole turns everything upside down. If one of them falls, they all fall. They all fall and nothing's okay. These kids inadvertently have so much power, positions that weren't necessarily given to them but happened on their own; he got attached and they made their homes in his heart and he's not getting any of it back.

The universe seems to be on his side. Lily contemplates things for a few seconds longer before peeking up at him long enough to nod. She clenches her fingers around the fabric of his shirt and scoots even closer, close enough that he eventually pulls her onto his lap and moves to properly sit on the bed, shoots an apologetic look at the orderlies that have to transport a much heavier bed than they were originally planning to.

"It's an ultrasound," one of them says. "So you're good, kiddo. We're just bringing this in." They roll in the ultrasound machine, right up to the edge of the bed, and set to work connecting everything.

"Do you know what it's for?" Geoff wouldn't tell him. He's asked multiple nurses – maybe they didn't tell him 'cause he's a student – but they've been silent too. No one will tell him what's going on. They're hiding and he's trying, trying to find their needle in the haystack of 'I don't knows', trying to keep his breaths at ease when it feels like everything is starting to freeze.

"They didn't tell us anything, kid, sorry. We just gotta get all this hooked up before the doctor comes in, alright?"

He swallows and forces out a nod. His heart is racing. He doesn't know what's going on. His breath is coming shorter, shallower and shallower as he grips Lily's body tighter and buries his nose in her hair. He doesn't know what's wrong doesn't know what's wrong what'swrongwhat'swrongwhat'swrong-

It's just a routine ultrasound.

She's going to be fine.

It's just a routine ultrasound.

She's going to be fine.

She's going to be fine.

She's going to be fine.

The saliva feels heavy in his stomach.

She's going to be fine.

She has to be fine.

...

September 22nd, 4:45 PM

"Yeah, and just put your middle finger there...yep, there you go, that's G major."

Toby shifts his finger into place and strums the chord, smiles widely at the sound. Awsten looks down at the neck of his own instrument and follows up with another G chord, one Toby's sounds almost exactly like. He's getting it.

"Good!" He exclaims. "You're a fast learner."

"I have a good teacher." Toby looks back up at him and bites his lip. "But he's really stupid sometimes, too."

"W-what?" He swallows. His heart picks up almost immediately, like someone flipped a switch to turn from peace to panic. Toby is the oldest. He's not like Nia or Lily or Jacob; he can't be placated with a white lie wrapped in lullabies. He knows what's up and he sees through everything.

Toby moves his gaze to the ground. "Georgia told me," he says quietly. "Y'know, what you guys talked about a couple days ago. Don't be mad at her!" He holds his hands up in surrender. "I kinda forced it out. She was crying and kept crawling in my bed with me and I needed to know what was goin' on."

"So you..." he trails off. The words die in his throat, like the lump lodged in the back has grown to a full-on barrier keeping them back. The bugs are starting to awaken under his skin, press their stingers down further and gnaw and absorb. "You know..."

"...yeah."

"Fuck." He squeezes his eyes shut and clenches his fingers around the neck of the guitar, and feels the strings dig into his skin. It hurts. It stings. But it's a good pain, a good sting. He presses further.

"You're not on your own, y'know."

"Toby, I-" Everything stings. The world is on fire and it's starting to burn deep, char everything that's left of his chest and turn it all to ruble. He knows. He knows. The one thing he wasn't supposed to find out and he knows and Georgia knows and the kids Nia Lily, Jacob Matty fuckfuckfuck-

"You're always there for us," Toby continues. "You hold Jacob when he has nightmares and go with Lily to her scans and make sure Nia doesn't rip her cannulas out. You're the one that knows what Matty needs when he's having a bad day and makes sure Rosie's getting the love she needs. You make sure all of us, are getting the love we need." His voice catches in his throat. He pauses and shakes his head. "But it goes both ways, y'know? You don't have to be the hero all the time. It's okay to need us sometimes too."

He swallows. The ache behind his eyes is starting to burst. It's leaking everywhere, paint layers of pain coating the room in anguish. Everything feels too big. It's too much. This is too much. It's all too much.

"I just..." is all he can force out. Everything hurts. It's too much. It hurts. "I'm so scared. All the time. And I didn't- I didn't want you guys to be scared. I'm always the one tellin' you it'll be okay but this I just- I don't know. I don't know if it'll be okay and I didn't wanna scare you guys and I just- I didn't want anyone to worry about me." A sob tears from his throat, dry and scratchy. It feels like there's an open wound left in its wake, raw and blistering. It feels like razors cutting through everything.

Toby's eyes are glassy and his voice is thick when he speaks next, "you're our big brother, Aws. We love you. We don't know if it'll end up okay but we can be there for you while it happens. Like you are for us all the time. We wanna be there for you. Let us be there for you. You've done enough for us." His breath hitches.

"And hey, even heroes need saving sometimes, right?"

...

September 23rd, 2017 – 1:30 PM

"NO! PLEASE! AWSIE!"

He hears the cries from across the hospital. They're distinct, punctuated by guttural sobs and loud, raspy coughs. He pulls the other earbud out of his ear and flips his journal shut, slides off the bed and wobbles onto his feet in one motion.

His heart is racing.

He can feel it in his ears as he takes off, runs out of his room and into the hallway, past the nurses' desk, Awsten, don't run! You're gonna hurt yourself or someone- and straight to the pediatric ward. He bursts through the double doors at full speed, squeezes his eyes shut and swallows against the nausea already rising.

His stomach is in his throat. It's the kind of feeling you get running the mile in PE, that overwhelming stickiness and heaviness in your chest, like it's nausea rather than blood being pumped into your veins, knowing that you have to keep going, because if you stop you're going to puke. It's a blanket that drapes over him stickily, coats everything in a mush and blurs it all together.

Lily.

Lily's crying.

He stumbles over to her bed – wobbles dangerously and almost trips and collapses on himself multiple times – and straightens against the rails. A weight hits his chest. A pair of arms winds around his neck.

"Lil," he chokes out. His breath is coming in pants. The room is tilting and shifting. He reaches his arms up to wrap around her, pulls her into his chest and turns to the man standing at the foot of her bed. There's a nurse on the other side, holding a needle attached to a tube, with two more tubes lined up in the tray in front of her. "What the hell is going on?"

"Awsten-"

"Was this planned?" He continues. He knows Lily's doctor. The man is the main guy in charge of all the kids; he's a fifth year resident who oversees all of their care after the specialists give instructions. He's been doing this for a while now, spent most of his residency in this ward – Awsten'd like to think they know each other pretty well.

He would've said something, if Lily had a planned blood test. The entire ward knows how terrified she is of needles. It's a process; they tell him the day before and he goes to her that night, slips into bed next to her and strokes her hair as he tells her what's going to happen. He stays with her – the nurses are all used to this by now; they know that if it doesn't happen, then, well, this, will happen – and coaxes her into things slowly, and it works. It works every time.

"Awsie they're tryna stick me I don't want it please don't let them it'll hurt I don't want it please-" The words come out as more of a gasp. She heaves at the end, coughs so harshly that she's dry gagging against his shoulder.

"Whoa, hey, it's okay," he murmurs. He rests his chin on top of her head and starts to rub her back, presses a kiss against her hair. "Awsie's here, love, I'm here. I'm not gonna let them do anything to you that you're not ready for, alright?"

"Awsten, can I talk to you in the hall?"

"I'll be right back, okay?" He starts the flood of sweet nothings against Lily's body as soon as her doctor finishes speaking. She's shaking her head and saying no over and over, squeezing her eyes shut and crying loudly. "I promise, they're not going to do anything-" He pauses to look pointedly up at the nurse, who nods and sets the syringe down. "Until I get back. No one's going to touch you love, I promise. I'm gonna go talk to the doctor. I'll be right back."

"What the hell are you doing?" The words come out as a growl. His chest aches. He can still hear Lily crying in the other room. Every sound feels like another slice at the fragments of his chest cavity, another hole poked into Lily's piece of his heart. The world was just set on the fire, but he doesn't know where the source is. He doesn't know where it's coming from and he doesn't know how to stop it. "I haven't seen her that upset in years. She's fuckin' terrified."

"Awsten."

He stops.

The anger, the white-hot walls building themselves up in his chest, stop. Everything feels like it's falling, like he's plummeting back to Earth with that single word. "H-her- the ultrasound," he whispers. "What did it say?"

"There's something wrong with her kidneys. We need to do some more tests to confirm – that's what we're taking her blood for – but it's very possible she might be in kidney failure, kiddo."

"I'll do it." He doesn't register the words until he's saying them. His heart is racing. The world is spinning away, a tiny dot, a blip on his radar. He's somewhere else, in a different existence, and everything is screeching to a halt. "I'm a match."

"We haven't confirmed she needs a kidney yet," the man says. "And kid, I hate to break it to you, but...if she does, you can't donate. You're getting chemo, remember? Your immune system's already compromised beyond belief. No one in their right mind would let you do a transplant right now."

He stops.

...

September 25th, 2017 – 8:28 PM

"How're you holdin' up?"

He swallows at the voice, doesn't move to lift his head or turn toward the door. "What're you doin' here?"

"I heard." There's rustling. He hears a jacket unzip, and then hears it fall to the ground. "About everything. I talked to Geoff. Aws, I'm so-"

"Save it." He bites the words, but it feels like the pocket of tears is pressing harder against his skull. His throat is closed. Speaking feels like razor blades cutting up his vocal chords, like there's a wheel of knives shredding them to pieces. The ache lodged between skin and skull stays, pounds and presses in until keeping his eyes open starts to hurt. "I don't wanna do this right now."

"You can't keep it locked up. You suck at that. We both know it."

"I can't do this." He grounds the last two words out and lifts his head to glare at Jawn. "Don't you get it? I can't talk about it. I can't think about it. I can't do it."

"Not talking about it isn't gonna make it hurt any less," Jawn says. "But at least lemme give you a hug first. You scared me, you fuckin' asshole."

"It wasn't a damn picnic for me either, thanks," he mutters. Jawn moves toward him and he lets it happen, feels the arms around him and leans up and into the hold. He buries his face in Jawn's chest and exhales, feels the lump in his throat start to throb and tries to bite back the sob.

"It's gonna be okay." Jawn rubs his back and he leans into it. The ache feels too big. Too much. It's forcing itself against his skull in a pocket of pain that feels too heavy. It all feels too heavy.

He wants to sleep. He doesn't want to do this anymore.

He wants to sleep.

He doesn't want to be here anymore.

...

"You're not gonna talk to Geoff about this. So it's either me, or I'm going to your doctor and telling him you need a damn therapist."

"You wouldn't."

"I fucking would," he shoots back. The words feel hot, leaving his chest. His hands are shaking. Everything is tooredtoohottoored- "I can't just sit here and watch you destroy yourself."

Awsten laughs. It's a different kinda of laugh. It sounds choked. His voice is slightly raspy. It sounds like poison, like the sound has injected it into the air and it's starting to diffuse across the whole room. "Destroy myself? You think I'm doing this?"

"Awsten..." The marks beneath his eyes have deepened. They're a darker shade of purple, deep enough to reach the tops of his cheeks. He looks paler. Jawn knows he's already had a chemo infusion – they fuck with him really bad, remember? He doesn't look very good. But it's helping. It's supposed to help – but he didn't think it would happen this fast.

He's pale. He looks sick. It's like the cancer patients you see in the movies, sunken in eyes and sallow skin, pale and weak and sickly.

"How the fuck am I supposed ta get better when my life won't?"

A silence falls over the room. It's sticky. It feels like a blanket that has stingers attached to it, pressing into his skin and burning. He doesn't know what to say. There's nothing left to say.

He's never known what to say. He remembers being ten years old, watching Geoff hold a cloth to Awsten's forehead while trying to figure out what words yelled into his mom's answering machine would make her pick up. He remembers getting into bed with Awsten and curling around him, please, J, I'm so cold please hold me it hurts so bad, trying to keep the liquid out of his eyes so Awsten could spill freely. But most of all, he remembers the late nights, staying up till 3am even though exhaustion tugged at his bones because Awsten couldn't sleep and wouldn't sleep and I'm so tired, Jawn. I'm so fucking tired of pretending it'll be okay because bad things keep happening and I don't want to do this anymore.

He remembers going home, laying awake for hours into the night and staring at his ceiling, please, anyone, if you're up there, please just...turn his luck around. Give him some good. He doesn't need anymore bad things to happen. Make his life good, please, give me all the bad stuff if you want, but he's been through enough.

I don't know if he'll survive another bad thing.

(I think he'll actually do it.)

Awsten has depression.

He was diagnosed when he was 14; right after they got the news that his cancer had gotten worse. Right after weeks of lying in bed that progressed to months of wishing he was dead. It was like life had sucked the color out of him. He was a wrung-out rag of empty promises and false hope.

He tried to kill himself when he was fifteen, stole one of the scalpels from a tray in the ER and went to town – nothing is getting better and it's too hard. I'm sorry. He ended up in therapy for six months, on a slew of medication to combat the cocktail of emotion wreaking havoc on his brain.

Awsten has depression and it's gotten a lot better in the past few years, calmed the tides as the trials in his life started to diminish. Things have been getting better. His promises were holding true – I told you it'd happen, didn't I? I don't break promises; he was finally starting to look like less of a dick as the universe clicked into place for the first time.

"Did they tell you anything else?"

"She needs a kidney." Awsten's voice is flat. "I can't donate. I'm a match. But I can't donate."

"How do you-"

"I know her damn blood type." It's a snap now. He bites the words. There's a hint of rasp; a hint of a sob that's poking its way through the surface, about to escape. "Geoff can't keep a fucking secret to save his life."

"She'll be okay," he says. His heart is racing. Not another bad thing he doesn't need this he can't do this right now why the fuck are you doing this why are you doing this to him what the hell did he do to deserve it- "They'll put her on a list, or something, right?"

"So she can die waiting?" Awsten is quiet for a few moments. He squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head and bites his lip. "I just- I thought this was over. I thought I was done with it. I thought it was- I thought I was finally getting better..."

"Awsten..." He sighs out the word, feels the tug and burn in his chest. It's like that single utterance set everything on fire and now it's smoldering.

"Some days I still wish I was dead," Awsten mutters. "And it's not fair that obligation is the only thing holding me back from that."

"You're not doing that again." He stands, takes the couple steps over to Awsten's bedside and reaches for one of his hands. "Okay? I need you to promise me. You are not trying again."

"I don't want Geoff to have to explain it to them," Awsten mumbles. "They...I can't do that to them."

"You can't do that to yourself, either," he says. "You deserve to want that. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to live." His chest feels like it's being torn open. Slashed apart. The words are taking a knife through the structure he's been trying to rebuild for months. Everything is on fire and everything is broken and it's all so bad why is it so bad why does his life have to suck this much why do bad things keep happening to him-

"Sometimes it doesn't feel worth it anymore." Awsten's voice sounds different. He doesn't sound sad or angry or frustrated. The words are out there but they're different.

It's the voice of someone who's been sad too many times.

"I'll let you get some sleep, okay?" The words tumble out in a rush. His hands are shaking. His lip is quivering. The world looks blurry. Everything is starting to fog over. He reaches out and rubs his fingers down the side of Awsten's face, cups his cheek and leans down to kiss his forehead. "And I promise I'll come back tomorrow, 'cause we're not done talking about this. But it's late. You need your rest. You'll feel better in the morning, I promise."

"I'll still be dying."

...

September 25th, 2017 – 10:06 PM

"Sunshine? Hey love, you awake?"

Check on him. He's not in a good place. I don't think he should be alone right now. I...you gotta get him talking, Geoff. He's locking too much up and we- Jawn's voice caught there. The sob tore its way out without warning. I'm scared he might try again.

His shift just ended. It's not uncommon for him to stay, change out of his scrubs and make his way back to Awsten's room to check on him one last time. He spends a lot of time in this hospital outside what he's meant to; you're not okay and I'm not leaving you like this. If they let me stay, I'm here.

Awsten's parents don't. They fund his private room and make sure he has the best of the best, write a check every time someone calls their house in place of actually coming to the hospital to spend time with their son. Geoff knows the nights, curling around Awsten and trying to get his mom on the phone, why don't they care about me? What did I do wrong? He knows his heart breaking, feeling the bomb detonate and the pieces fly everywhere, a reminder of the life he couldn't fix. He couldn't fix it he couldn't do it he couldn't-

"Hey." He forces his voice to stay steady and drops to his knees to get on Awsten's eye level, reaches forward to brush his hands through Awsten's hair. "How're you feeling?"

"Didn't Jawn tell you?" He bites his lip at Awsten's voice. It's not loud or soft or happy or sad or scared or confident or anything. It's one level, one tone, one emotion. It's nothing.

"He's just worried, angel," he sighs. "I am too. We all are. You've had better days."

"Don't."

"Aws-"

"You don't have to be here," Awsten mutters. "You can go. I don't need another person to disappoint."

It feels like a bullet. It probably would've hut less, had Awsten pulled out a gun and shot him straight in the heart. It's a pain that encompasses, stretches out over everything and throws a blanket over it all. It's entrenching. Capturing. It feels white-hot at first, and then dies to a low buzz that's prominent enough to hurt, all the time.

"Listen to me." He stops himself, has to rein everything back in to keep from word vomiting everywhere. Breathe. It's gonna be okay. Breathe. "I'm your boyfriend, not your dad. I don't have some bullshit expectations you're letting down. I love you. I just want you to be happy, okay? I want you to feel better and be happy because you deserve it. I hate seeing you like this, sunshine."

"Why do you keep calling me that?"

"What, sunshine?" He swallows. He isn't sure how they got here. He doesn't know how they ended on this. Sunshine is- Awsten is sunshine. When he looks up at the blinding light, feels it rouse him every morning and blinks up at the rays through his window, when he feels the warmth against his back and the soft breeze against his chest...Awsten is sunshine.

"M'the furthest fuckin' thing from sunshine." Awsten bites his lip. He's staring at a spot on the wall, not really even looking at it. It's almost like he's staring right through it, like the x-rays have moved to his eyes.

"My love," he murmurs. He grabs one of Awsten's hands and brings it up to his lips. "You light up every room you walk into. You smile and laugh and tell stories, you expose your heart to the world even after it's been broken. You read to Jacob when he has nightmares and go with Nia to her scans and hold Lil all night if it makes her feel better about blood tests. You take Matty on adventures so he doesn't get bored – and so the other nurses and I don't rip our hair out – and you're so good with Rosie. She loves you. She attaches herself to you for a reason, y'know? You're teaching Toby guitar. And Georgia...what you've done with her and songwriting and helping her to become more confident in talking about her feelings...the other nurses and I talk about it all the time." He pauses. The lump in his throat is throbbing. "She may not be here if you hadn't done that. And after I've had a hard day-" He leans down and kisses Awsten's forehead. "You are where I want to go. You make them easier. You hold me and let me vent and make me feel like my problems are real, even when you're dealing with so much worse." He stares at Awsten through glassy eyes, takes his other hand and smiles. "You are the embodiment of sunshine."

He tilts his head forward and pecks Awsten's lips. Awsten wraps an arm around his neck as he kisses back. They stay there. His knees are bent in a very uncomfortable position and everything is burning, but they stay there. It's silent for a long time.

"I'm so scared she's gonna die."

The words hang in the air for a moment. He opens his mouth, knows he has to say something even though he doesn't know what to say; he needs to hear something, you idiot. Say something. Awsten beats him to it, "and if she goes, I go."

"Whoa, no," He breathes. He braces one hand against the mattress and pushes up, hooks his leg around Awsten and slides in behind him to straddle his body. He winds his arms around Awsten's waist and pulls him in, presses his lips against the top of his head and leaves them there. "We are so far from that, okay? I talked to Briars today. She is so far from that. And you are never doing that again. No matter what."

"I can't do it," Awsten says faintly. "I don't know how to live in a world she isn't."

"For her," he replies. He looks down at the mattress and reaches for Awsten's hand, laces their fingers together and squeezes. "You live, for her. Live the life she wouldn't be able to. You smile and you laugh and you love and you live. You beat this stupid fuck up of cells and get outta here and we go find a nice apartment in the city where you can look out over the buildings and we can go to art galleries on the weekends and walk around downtown and have people over for brunch." He moves his lips to the shell of Awsten's ear and starts to stroke his hair as he continues, "and you can find an amazing producer to sign you so you can sing your songs everywhere. Live for that, my love. If, god forbid, anything happened to her, she would want this. For you to live and love and laugh and let things get better. She'll be watching and she'll be so proud."

...

September 27th, 2017 – 3:31 PM

"Nurse W?"

He feels a tug at the hem of his scrub shirt and pauses to look down. "Yeah, love? What's up?"

"Why'd Awsie leave again?" The seven year old's voice is slightly higher than usual, lacking the hint of whine she usually has in favor of what sounds like genuine curiosity.

He sighs. Awsten hasn't gotten out of bed since that night. The kids haven't seen him in a couple days. Jawn came back, sat with him for a few hours and tried to coax some words out, he didn't say like, anything, dude. One word or a fuckin' head nod. I'm really worried about him.

He's okay most days. He deals with things as they come, processes the pain as it permeates, lets it seep in steadily rather than absorbing everything all at once. It's a tidal wave of false hope and empty promises that encompass him on the worst days. Geoff knows those.

He knows check-ups turned to suicide watches, curling around Awsten while still in his scrubs – don't you have work to do? scans to run? Patients that don't wanna off themselves to check on?

You're all I care about right now, love. I can't function if I don't know you're okay.

You've been functioning fine until now.

"Is Awsie okay?" He blinks rapidly to refocus his vision, and swallows against the newly formed lump in his throat as he takes a breath. The ache is back. Everything feels thicker in a way that makes the room start to blur. It's going fuzzy at its edges. He swallows.

"Yeah, sweetheart." He holds out a hand for her to put hers in. "Do you remember what we talked about a while ago?"

"Sometimes he has sad days," Nia says quietly. She's staring down his lap. "Where he doesn't want to get of bed."

"Right," he replies. The word feels thick. It's like the room has been filled with molasses, like they're swimming and wading and trying to break through the sticky mess that just keeps on coming. It feels too thick. Too heavy. Too much. "He'll feel better soon love, I promise."

"I wanna go."

"Hm?"

"I wanna go see Awsie," Nia repeats. "I wanna make him happy."

"Nia, love..." He bites his lip. It's a good idea. It bottles itself up and shoves into his heart, presses into one of the holes Awsten's created and starts to close it. It's warm. It might work.

Or, Awsten might say something so morbidly dark and give her permanent anxiety of whether each new day might be the day he actually does it.

"I wanna go," Nia insists, louder this time. "He needs me."

"Are you-"

"Please, Nurse W." Nia pokes out her bottom lip and widens her eyes.

"I wanna go."

...

He doesn't have the best track record with Septembers.

Maybe it's because that's when everyone from school goes back or the world starts to turn chilly and windy, maybe it's the reminder that you're never gonna be normal. This? This is your life. You're never gonna have something different. You'll never be like them. You'll never be like them.

You'll never be like them.

Maybe it's the reality that these four white walls are all he'll ever be.

He can't cry anymore. It feels like he's used up everything in his tear ducts, like they're scraping against the insides of themselves and scrambling for more water to let out. It hurts. All of it hurts. It's a pain that stays, sets the tendrils making up his chest ablaze; burns through the short phrase of this will pass. It's not forever. You'll get better, and sparks all over again.

September isn't good to him. It never has been.

This year hasn't been good to him. There was a spike and now it's falling all over again and Lily could die and he could die and everything's falling apart it's all gone to shit so quickly he was so happy what the fuck happened how the fuck did this become his life he was so happy he was going back to school he was supposed to be a normal one with everyone else how did this happen how did this happen how-

How the fuck did this happen-

He doesn't think because he can't breathe. He doesn't let himself. He ruminates and cultivates more anxiety, more dampness down his back and slickness on his hands and churning in his stomach, more hotcoldhotcan'tmovecan'tspeakcan'tbreathe, more tooheavytoohardtoomuch, until everything comes out all at once and he's left an empty shell of the promises he once was.

September isn't good to him.

"Awsie?"

He freezes.

Everything seems to stop. It's like someone hit pause on the world and play right after. It jars. Whatever he has in his stomach – bile and stomach acid grossgrossgross – is about to eject upward. He can feel it. It's too much. It's all too much.

This can't be happening.

Please no not her please why is this happening please I can't do this I can't deal with this pleasepleaseplease-

He feels the arm thrown across his side and the weight against his back. The arm span is tiny, but a tiny limb still snakes between his body and the mattress, wraps around him and squeezes tight. "I'm sorry you're sad."

"Nia," he chokes out. He didn't realize he was crying until the sob slipped, until that one word broke the barrier and sent the floodgates rushing. "Wha- I- you-"

"I wanna make you happy," Nia says softly. "But Nurse W said sometimes that doesn't happen. So I wanna be here. I hate being sad alone. I think everyone does. I don't want you to be sad alone."

He forces himself to swallow, twists around and flops onto his other side so he can meet her eyes. She's smiling at him, hair pinned back, eyes shiny. He knows his are red. Everything's red. Redwhitehotredwhitehotredwhite-

"Your hair is really pretty," Nia continues. "It looks like the smurfs! When you're better we'll watch the movies, okay? I have my own smurf, I'm so lucky..." She reaches up and starts to tangle her fingers through his- no.

Please no not now please nononononono-

"I thought- I thought something was wrong." He can hear the tears in her voice. She's holding a blue strand in her hands. They're shaking. Everything is shaking. Nothing feels real. He wants to go away why is this happening fuckfuckfuck- "B-but," she whispers. "It's gonna be okay, y'know? You're gonna fight. Beat this again. I know you will. 'Cause heroes always win, right? You're gonna win."

"Yeah," he chokes out. Reaching forward, he pulls her into his chest and squeezes, buries his nose in her hair and closes his eyes. "I'm gonna win. I'm gonna beat this, I promise. I'm gonna be here with you and we'll watch all the Smurf movies and eat all the blue ice cream and it'll be so good, okay? It'll be so good."

He sobs into her hair and clutches her even tighter against him. This is about the time she'd be whining, giggling, Awsie, you're holding me too tight!

She doesn't.

She stays.

He stays.

It'll be so good.

...

October 15th, 2017 – 10:56 AM

"Shhh, Lil. It's gonna be okay, love. Just keep breathing for me, that's it, you're doing so good."

"H-hurts, Awsie." The words come out in a gasp. She hiccups against his chest and chokes out another sob, one that seems to bubble up her throat and spurt out messily. "Hurts s-so bad..."

He sighs, squeezes her tighter and presses his hand firmer into her back. "I know, sweetheart. I know. It'll get better soon, I promise."

Kidney failure isn't the prettiest. She's at the top of the donor list, but her condition is deteriorating in front of their very eyes. She's been put on dialysis and a bunch of new medications to combat the symptoms and make her more comfortable, but the only thing that will actually help her pain is a new kidney. She needs one. She needs a transplant in the next couple weeks or she won't survive.

The past (almost) three weeks have been the worst of his life. He knows that for a fact, knows that nights spent staring at the ceiling, red eyes and aches in his chest, feeling like everything had been torn through and smashed with a wrecking ball, like the precious tendrils making up his ribcage had been broken down too many times and the strength to rebuild was too much.

This feels worse than that, like someone's gone in and torn through his chest like it was made of paper, torn the pieces into fragments that are scattering everywhere and falling, crashing, down to the bottom of his chest cavity. Every piece is a new sting, a new dig that sparks and burns and turns the whole world white-hot while he tries to catch his breath.

He's drowning, all of the time. It's too hard and too heavy and too much he's choking on mouthfuls of water every time he tries to swim he has no strength left to pull from within it's all such a mess of chemo and dialysis and tears is Lily okay she has to be okay what's going on with her no fuck I have to be there you don't understand she's scared she needs me-

You're having chemotherapy she needs me these are chemicals attacking your cells she needs me you need to take care of yourself she needs me-

He's had one more chemo infusion in the time, one that wasn't any better than the first. He puked and cried and pulled Geoff off the nurses' schedule for another three days, hid face in chest and forced himself not to come out until he could be an actual human being and not a saggy lump of flesh that couldn't stop complaining.

His feelings were like a painting and the canvas was already full.

And now everything is grey and the world is dull.

He doesn't know what to do anymore. He doesn't know where to go from here. It's just make it to tomorrow get through today live to see tomorrow it's not a life. It's nothing. It's an existence without a purpose. He's a presence with a ghost of a personality. Reality is heartbreaking when fantasy rips off the cloak.

"Awsie..."

He doesn't know what to do anymore.

He doesn't know how to help. He can't fix this. He'd rather die than sit here and watch her cry for another second. It's too heavy. It's a weight that slams down on his shoulders, like her prognosis has placed another thousand tons on his back and he's flailing under the unexpected attack. He doesn't know what to do he can't do anything he doesn't know what to do he can't do anything he doesn't know what to do he can't do anything-

He can't do anything-

"Whoa, Lil, don't touch that." He blinks back into focus just in time to catch Lily reaching for her cannula. He takes both her hands in his and brings his other hand around to cover them. "That's gotta stay in, alright love? I know it's annoying, but you need it."

"Hurts," she fusses. She's teary and frustrated; it's been a long day and it's about to be an even longer night. It's hard to sleep when you're in pain all the time and he knows it won't be letting up any soon. None of it will be letting up any soon. He has cancer and one of her kidneys is failing and there's nothing either of them can do about it.

These are their lives.

This is his life.

He'll live and die here, thrive and cry in the place that was never supposed to be home but now is. His cancer's back and one of her kidneys is failing and nothing ever goes right for him why the fuck does everyone get to tell me to have hope when everything is bad all the time why don't they realize that having hope makes it worse when things go bad why doesn't anyone get it why are they all so stupid-

It's too much. It's too much for him to handle, too much for any human being to handle. There's too much pain and too much heartbreak and too much loss it was getting better it was supposed to get better what the fuck happened how did he end up back here how did this become his life again-

He can't stay and he can't leave. They need him but he doesn't need the world anymore. It's hurt him too many times. He's given second, third, fourth, fifth chances and been disappointed by every single one of the answers.

He's not living but he can't die and the limbo is frying. He's rotting here. He's rotting inside. It's too much. It's all too much.

"Aws?"

He blinks a few times and looks up, then closes his eyes and shakes his head, tightens his arms around Lily and lets his head tilt back a bit.

It's not just Geoff.

Lily's doctor is standing behind him.

He can't do this again.

No more bad news.

Not one more thing.

He can't.

"Don't," he forces out. "Please, whatever it is, I don't wanna hear it. I can't take 'nymore of this, please."

"Aws-"

"Everything hurts," he says. "All the time. Everything is so bad and it's all so much and I can't do anything I can never do anything and I'm so fucking sick of feeling useless so please-" He pauses, clenches his teeth to keep the sob back in. "Nothing else. I can't do it."

"Awsten-"

"I can't," he insists. "Please."

"Sunshine, will you just shut up and listen?"

"Why don't you get it?" He snaps. "I don't wanna hear about how she needs more dialysis or that you moved my chemo up or someone else has something wrong with them. I don't wanna hear more about this damn hospital because I know I'm gonna be stuck here until the end of time. I don't wanna-"

Geoff takes a step forward. He's smiling. Briars is smiling. They're both smiling why are they smiling what the fuck- "Our sister hospital called ten minutes ago. They had an MVC. Brain dead on arrival. And-"

"You..."

"We have a donor."

...

Reality will break your heart.

Survival will not be the hardest part.

[jinjikook]

House of Cards: An Ace (M)

word count: 4.8k

genre: super angst + references to smut; non-idol AU ; set in i need u + run mv universe, references to other mvs

pairing: ot7/reader (includes all pairings but enforced yoonseok, vhope, jikook, yoontaeseok, sugamon, yoonmin, jinkookmin)

summary: all eight of you were just trying to live life, go with the flow. unfortunately, fate had much more awful plans for you all.

warning(s): lots of angst, plenty of major character death, suicide, self-harm, depressing thoughts, cursing, sex (straight and gay), murder, violence, eating disorders, codependency, drugs, smoking, verbal, physical and mental abuse, sexual situations, use of the word slut and whore (both used only once), promiscuity, mentions of being arrested

a/n: this is suuuuper angsty so please read the warnings beforehand because it has a million things that could trigger someone. this was inspired by the song listed, along with a video edit that i’d love to link but unfortunately, the one link i had seen it from was a repost with no luck in finding it so if anyone recognizes the edit to go with the song, please let me know!

music: dynasty - miia

masterlist

There was no definition for you all.

Lost.

Distant.

Drifting.

Just following your hearts until it inevitably led you over the edge; into the unknown, the deep dark abyss of which you never thought you’d welcome so familiarly, like a distant cousin or old friend from kindergarten. Like someone you’d lost touch with and barely remembered their name but you still had shards and fragments of their memory, burned and etched into your mind in a million insignificant, nonspecific ways—from how the bitter taste of your coffee was like the candies from their mom’s purse or the hollow sound of your desk drawer reminded you of someone’s hollow eyes, empty smile full of promises you knew neither of you would keep.

You couldn’t say you all hadn’t tried to stay together, amongst it all.

When Taehyung’s dad would beat him to a pulp, you all vowed to make it the glue to hold you closer. When Yoongi’s music went nowhere, it just solidified your need to stay united. When Jimin’s love rejected him, it just made you all codependent on each other, saying how no one’s love could compare to the bond you all had.

Even when Hoseok swallowed a bottle of pills, you all realized that it made the group tighter, as you huddled around the too-stark-white hospital bed, stench of chemicals and medicine in the air; with the boy who used to breathe life in everything he did, his sunshine warm skin now pale in comparison to the milky sheets he was laden in. All your knuckles matching the empty color along the bars of the bed, gripped tight and the fabric below just darkened with tears as they soaked into them, only making Hoseok look that much more devoid of life.

But sometimes, life had its limits.

As much as your little ragtag gang liked to test them, push past them and tease Mother Nature by screaming in that bitch’s face with as much malice as you could muster, at the end of the day there were things that you all just weren’t capable of withstanding, holding up like a weak twig on an already bare tree, trying to weather the hurricane that came rushing at millions of miles an hour, determined to break you off and sweep you into the whirlwind until you’re forever forgotten, spread across acres as only bits and pieces of who you used to be.

Soon all would remain are those stale, empty, hollow memories.

Like how a strip of aluminum foil just made you think of the burrito joint Taehyung danced on a table at, how a candle’s gentle flicker would remind you of Jeongguk’s birthdays, his favorite thing to do being blowing out them out and waiting with his eyes scrunched shut and wish being plotted for his friends to smash his face with frosting and bits of cake.

The smell of fresh strawberries made you retch, only able to recall the sweet taste you used to savor, Seokjin’s chapstick melding with your own countless nights, only for you to be torn away and forced to mash lips with Yoongi right after, just because he was always the one to taste you last, to leave with your tongue on his.

Some called you a slut, a whore.

For what? Just letting things run their course?

You weren’t sure if you’d ever end up with any one of the guys, feeling like all it would ever be is whirlwind romances, quick fucks in closets and stairwells with palms muffling sounds until you reached your high, going lax in their grip and smiling contentedly at your inner beast being satiated, while whoever was with you finished quickly. It was never a chore but it was something done daily, just another aspect of humanity you all indulged in.

Sometimes it was with one of the guys, sometimes they did it with each other and sometimes you just took care of it yourselves.

Not that big of a deal you always told yourself, because it really wasn’t. You loved them, and you always hoped the feeling was mutual amongst them as well.

“Hey Y/N, wanna blow me?” Jeongguk asked one night and all you could do was shrug and tug his zipper down, wetting your lips because you knew he liked things sloppy. Not once did you doubt their intentions, fear that they’d speak ill of you or treat you like some object because your friendships ran deeper than that.

Hoseok and Yoongi were close, Taehyung somewhere sandwiched in the middle there. Jimin was fond of Jeongguk and the latter was protective of Jimin, Seokjin being the Taehyung in their pairing. Namjoon and yourselves just slotted in the cracks in-between, being something along the lines of rubber cement in the shredded wallpaper lining your friendships.

Somewhere along the line, the rain began to trickle in and soften your hold, the boys slipping from your grip one by one.

Taehyung was the first to go.

He had always been a rebellious guy, loved to go tagging with Namjoon and mock fast food workers for giving into society’s ploys. Never one to back down from a challenge, he’d participated in more orgies than you could count on your fingers and toes and you’re sure he’s never said no to a dare—having slept with a teacher, gone streaking past a police station and even slipping in a tab of ecstasy on his tongue, just for shits and giggles. You swore he’d be the one to go kicking and screaming if anyone even thought about threatening your groups bond.

But one day, it was just too much.

Too many bruises on his skin, too many harsh words spat at him and his sister, too many days where he wasn’t sure if the sun would rise and he’d be alive long enough to see it.

So he made sure one day he would see it, but his father wouldn’t.

He ran for days after it happened, after someone called about screams and wails of anguish; after his apartment was littered with cops, each inspecting the spatters of blood along the floor and window of the small room, swabs in clear cases turned purple to indeed confirm it was exactly that, blood. Tests were ran to show the fingerprints on the broken beer bottle indeed were the dead man’s son’s, the boy with a record for graffiti and public indecency. The boy with a boxy smile that charmed all the female officers whenever he’d be brought in, the boy who you felt inside you too many times to forget.

It wasn’t like any of you hadn’t tried to find him, countless days of searching and shouting and hoping he’d turn up like a lost dog, ears perked and stomach receded until you finally brought him in to have a big meal and a warm bath.

But he never came.

Someone spoke of a boy with pretty eyelashes and dead eyes standing by the ocean, muttering about how sorry he was, how he wished things could’ve been different but he wouldn’t have changed a damn thing because every small, seemingly insignificant detail in his life led him to you, to your friends. To his lovers and exes and all the in-between that you couldn’t name or define. That same someone said they watched as he took a deep breath and jumped over the railing, taking a plunge and never emerging from the dark waters of the stormy shores.

The hurricane powered on.

It took ages to even sort of recover, Yoongi went back to smoking and as many times as Jeongguk would blow out his fire to keep him alive a little longer, it only served to double his cigarette count. Namjoon always kept a journal on hand, writing the most obscure details of the days in it because he was worried one day, something else would happen to another one of them and he didn’t want anyone’s memories to die with them, for their days to be meaningless and forever lost in the wind. He had a black hair tie always on his right wrist, a running joke that he just wanted to give it to a pretty lady one day just to make her life easier but you knew what it was for. You at least commended him for taking the tamer route in hurting himself, unlike Jimin who—no matter how many sweaters he’d wear even on the hottest of days—couldn’t hide how he befriended a razor, the dotted lines of scabbing and scarring flesh being his only lifeline, as ironic as that was.

Hoseok lied and said the orange bottle in the trash wasn’t his and Seokjin would just keep dealing out cards on game nights, as if nothing happened, as if he wasn’t putting out stacks for eight players when there were only seven of you seated. As if Taehyung’s cologne wasn’t still sitting there in Jeongguk’s gym bag right where he forgot to grab it. As if the scratch marks from when Yoongi fucked him too hard on the table you were sitting at weren’t prominent still, the grooves dipping under where your dug your nails into, hoping to cover them up with your own tracks.

You want to say it was unexpected, that you all had no idea it was coming.

But really, it was just a matter of time before someone else came crumbling down, an unfortunate victim to the Domino Effect.

Jeongguk was covered in bruises, supposedly not from the car that carelessly drove straight into him. The medical examiner said he was in a fight, two different assailants with big fists and a drive to kill but the stake in his coffin, the final nail, were the headlights that he stared into before it barreled into him, splattering him onto the pavement.

It was poetic, how his blood looked so similar to Taehyung’s father’s, to Jimin’s when his wrists began to leak down his arm. It was just blood, it flowed in everyone and despite the fact that when you donate it, you have to be so specific when you scribble it down on paperwork, it all looked the same on the ground.

“Kiss me.” Yoongi looked at you with disgust, his lighter a constant flicker in his fidgety fingers.

“What is it with you people? Two of us are dead and we’re supposed to act like it never happened? Like we can all go through the motions without their presence around?” It was the first time someone had verbalized it, made it real by saying it out loud. The room was pin-drop quiet—not like it wasn’t already—but now everyone’s eyes were on Yoongi.

“We’re not forgetting about them, Yoongi,” Namjoon corrected. His pen already blindly scratching down the date and time of this incident to forever keep in his records.

“Just because you put a few things in your little dream diary doesn’t make them alive, Namjoon. They’re fucking dead, in the ground and lost at sea forever. At least with Jeongguk, we got some fucking closure but Taehyung… he’s still out there, floating like trash or sunken like…”

“Like treasure.” Hoseok finished.

Taehyung was always closest with Hoseok and Yoongi. Jeongguk also but…. he wasn’t around to speak his mind right now.

“Maybe we just need to be with them then. They’re waiting for us, probably. God knows Jeongguk can’t do anything without one of us to hold his hands anyways.” Jimin mumbled, fingers toying with what laid under his striped sleeves, his skin marred in a similar pattern. You don’t even know why he even bothers with the sweaters anymore, it was no secret what he did to himself.

“Jimin. Never say that.” Seokjin chastised, fingers wringing out excess water from the sponge he was using to clean up the drink Namjoon has spilled on the table. The table that still has sticky sweet liquor inside the grooves that Taehyung left behind.

“It’s not like we aren’t already headed that way anyways. Hobi has tried and so have I. Pretty sure Y/N attempted to too, after Jeonggukkie died.”

“Don’t call him that.” It was Yoongi’s turn to chastise the younger, eyes shutting as he tried to push the rotten, beautiful memories of Jeon Jeongguk in his prime, chasing after butterflies and having the stars in his eyes.

“So what if we’ve tried? Clearly, God doesn’t want us, that’s why we haven’t succeeded.” You picked at the stray tweed from the sofa, knowing you were not only unraveling the lining of the cushion but also in the patched layer of your friends. “He wants the good kids, it’s why he took Tae and Guk. God is a selfish prick, he can suck me.” You seethed.

“Or you could.” Yoongi looked at you with his dead eyes, and you knew he probably couldn’t get it up if he had swallowed as many Viagras as Hoseok took pretty white pills in unmarked bottles. But it didn’t stop you from getting up and tugging his belt off.

The calendar marked today as some off-brand holiday, something that a store somewhere would profit off of. It marked that it’d been a week since you choked on Yoongi’s limp dick in front the rest of your numb friends. The red circle on the date, however, was because today was yet another tragedy.

In your dreams, you pictured Jimin to die in the tub, the water murky with his blood and something poetic inscribed in his forearm, a picture or something of equal significance burned into scorched soot by the clawed feet of the porcelain bath.

You didn’t think it’d be Seokjin found like that instead.

Namjoon wrote in his journal, tore out the page and burned it the minute he finished with it. The hair tie on his wrist was replaced with something sturdier, more industrial. The colored rubber band snapped harder, louder and left a bigger welt. He tried to take pride in the fact that he still hadn’t resorted to pills or fire or the end of a blade but honestly, this was so much worse. He lived a lie, a façade that he was alright just because his choice of pain wasn’t that of vulgar taste. He lived among the common faces of the world, blurred in the crowds but nothing would make the bright green on his wrist blend into the bland, colorless world.

Jimin tried to cry, the tears burning at his retinas but nothing ever came to fruition, his fingers scratching at the scars he chose to keep visible to the world today.

Of-fucking-course Kim Seokjin would ask to be cremated, to be turned into soil for trees. It was such a “him” thing to do, something he probably read on FaceBook or saw on Pinterest. You honestly thought if he was to be reincarnated into anything, he’d ask to be a pressed into a diamond, so he could always be has beautiful as he said he was. As he really was. No one was as beautiful as Seokjin, both inside and out.

The screen of your phone was shattered and you couldn’t bring yourself to get it fixed, the constant swiping on the glass leaving shards in your thumbs and making you smile whenever another cut embedded itself into your skin. You were just as weak as Jimin, though you hoped that you looked a little more civil since at least you didn’t have to wear jackets in ninety degree weather.

“What are we ordering for takeout?” Hoseok flickered through the several menus in his hand, mind caught between Chinese and pizza. Namjoon just shrugged and Yoongi pointed his chin at the one in Hoseok’s right hand, the Chinese menu. He scanned the options and asked what meats and sides for everyone. When he reached dumplings, Seokjin’s favorite, Jimin ran to the bathroom and left the door wide open as he puked into the toilet.

It was a resounding no for dumplings that night.

“Do you ever think… we’re being punished?” Namjoon started one night, his journal long forgotten as he inhaled deep, passing the joint to Yoongi before puffing out a big cloud of dragon-like smoke.

“For what? Fucking a lot and tagging some abandoned buildings?” Yoongi bitterly spat, Jimin next to him flinching with every venomous syllable. His body was constantly trembling, fingers unable to stay steady unless they were gripping something, anything. This time, it was Yoongi’s own shaking hand.

Hoseok took his own inhale of the drug before giving you the rolled up papers, the joint looking more and more displeasing to you as you stared at it.

“Maybe this is why we get out every time we’re put in a cell, because our ultimate justice will come from a higher power.” Hoseok drawled; weed always made his tongue slow and his eyelids heavy. He’d probably pass out on your shoulder any minute now.

“I think we’re just bad people getting what’s coming to us.” Jimin whispered, eyes still stuck on the break in the floorboards where Jeongguk drunkenly fell, his ass breaking the wood but no one caring because Jimin was on top of him, making out heavily mid-party. You all cheered for the two of them, watching their sexual tension unfold and you yearned for those days back, when you’d skip school and come to this little shack of a home, broken and frayed at the edges but still home. Just like you and your friends; your family.

“Stop repeating what your deadbeat alcoholic of a mother says to you, Jimin. She’s more worthless than any one of us.” Yoongi tightened his grip on Jimin, his squeak of pain doing nothing to ease the tension in his fingers. He didn’t want to lose him too, to watch him slip through the cracks.

Hoseok began to sing, slightly off-key but still melodious, somber in the empty house with broken furniture and too many memories to stay sober near. Namjoon couldn’t sing to save his life but his voice joined, a low murmur along Hoseok’s. Soon, the scratch of Yoongi’s voice intertwined like the threads in Jimin’s crocheted sweater before he too, began to sing. He harmonized with them, a missing link tying the bridge to the chorus. When you finally gave in, it was when you’d all reached Jeongguk’s name, singing Happy Birthday to him one last time.

 “Did you know the Song dynasty ended in 1279 but it coincided with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties as well?”

“Who gives a fuck, Namjoon?” Yoongi pulled off Namjoon’s dick long enough to try and shut him up, hoping he’d just be quiet for once and take the damn blowjob without making a damn lesson out of it.

Hoseok was asleep on the couch, Jimin and you in a heated battle of black jack, currently you had 20 and you could chance it and hope you’d pull an ace and win all the graham crackers you’d put in the pool or you could play it safe and hope Jimin had less than you. He wasn’t a great card player but lately, all his expressions look the same so his bluffing was the same as his genuinely sad face, making you lose your cookies too many times in a row.

You used to use real money when you played, back when you had a reason to want to win. Back when you’d cheer for taking all of Taehyung’s money and you and Seokjin would go out to spend it on stupid shit that you’d regret a day later but in the moment, it just looked so useful and convenient.

When Jeongguk would win it back the next day just to see Taehyung smile again, to have him underneath him that night to repay him for his chivalry.

“Hobi, did you want me to suck you off too?”

Silence.

“Hobi?” You murmured, looking over in his direction. Jimin’s sad eyes followed.

Namjoon tucked himself back in, not zipping up the rusted metal in his tattered jeans.

You put down the card in your hand, moving from where you hovered over the deck to turn and watch as Yoongi crossed the room to shake Hoseok, his voice incomparable to the ringing in your ears as he screamed for Hoseok to wake up, to just wake the fuck up.

Jimin didn’t look away, Namjoon frozen in place as Yoongi continued to slap and shake his best friend, his lover, his confidant, hoping he’d wake up from some deep slumber. You turned back to your game, hand back on the deck as you decided it was time to give fate a chance. You pulled a card, the black butterfly in the middle telling you what you never hoped for.

An ace.

You won.

It used to be “us against the world” with you eight, a force not to be reckoned with whenever you all banded together. When you originally met, it was through friends of friends, mutual interests and one through a really interesting Tinder profile. You all had sworn fate brought you together for a reason, happiness meant to be share amongst the lot of you.

You wish you’d never met them, not a single one.

“Jimin? Could you let go?” You touched his shoulder, his body no longer jerky with anxiety. He was desensitized, no longer feeling anything. His eyes stayed on the cascading waves as he released the urn he had clutched against his chest, as if Hoseok still radiated his warmth through the pretty patterns and decorative top.

He wanted to be spread into the ocean, to find Taehyung. He didn’t want to leave him alone out there, knowing that Yoongi could be strong and handle him being gone. His note read:

“Just because I was weak, doesn’t mean you have to be. Let us live on in your hearts, let them beat for the rest of us. Taehyung was a tragedy, Jeongguk an accident, Seokjin an unfortunate chain of events and I, an outlier. Don’t make us into martyrs, something we’re not. We’re just kids, dealt a bad hand. But you all still have your game faces on, so come on Yoongi, pull an Ace for the rest of us.”

Yoongi set fire to his bedroom instead; with the lighter Jeongguk used to blow out, the very one Seokjin used to light his birthday candles, the one Taehyung bought at the gas station at the corner of where you lived. Namjoon threw the remainder of his journal pages in there, Jimin tossed his sweaters inside the flames. You stood by and warmed your hands by the fire, feeling your tears dry from the heat until the firetrucks came screaming and the hoses put out the fire that was in Yoongi’s heart. They killed him. Right before your eyes.

  And then there were three.

Jimin never ate, walking bones that creaked and cracked whenever he moved. Namjoon refused to give up his rubber band, switching to a thick red one that turned white when he stretched it beyond his limit, matching the color of Hoseok’s pills, the mayo that globbed out of Seokjin’s burger, the come that Jeongguk would get on the bed after round two, the boxy grin Taehyung used to get everyone in more trouble than it ever did help. The same color that burned when the ignited fire got to its hottest, right in the core. The color of Yoongi’s skin when he found his friends dead, one by one.

“Should I take up the flute?” Jimin shook his head and told Namjoon his fingers weren’t dexterous enough, that he’d never manage the fine skill it took to play such an instrument. You nodded, knowing the damn thing would break the minute it slipped between his grimy fingers.

“Taehyung liked the sax, maybe you should try that instead.” At the sound of his name passing your chapped lips—lip balm no longer appealing to you because every flavor reminded you of someone different, someone dead—Namjoon stiffened, Jimin motionless like always. You’re sure any sort of use of energy from the younger male would cause him to pass out, the hunger in him always there but food never enticing enough for him to give into the temptation and give his body the energy it so desperately needs.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Another tack on the wall as Namjoon robbed a music store and let the cops gun him down. You never thought Namjoon would be the kind to go out in a blaze of glory, let alone one to own a gun. He was a pacifist, but when the crime scene investigator told you that the initials M. Y. were on the handle, messily scratched with probably some house tool, you knew what he’d done.

  Jimin stopped holding hands, not having the nutrition in him to making his fingers tighten around yours, the bones probably seconds away from turning into dust. Your throat was dry, like the days you used to love. The days where the sun burned something serious and the boys only wanted to run around outside, despite your protests. Those were the days that everything seemed so simple, so cut and dry. So… easy.

You really hoped that Jimin would be stronger than you, that you’d finally give in and join the others so you wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of yet another piece of your soul, your very being, shot dead right in front of you. So you wouldn’t have to go to another funeral or service or spread another’s ashes or read another’s will; so you wouldn’t ever have to hear crying wails or heartfelt apologies, hushed murmurs about how tragic it all was and how you all slipped through the cracks, the school system and your parents all failing you. So you wouldn’t have to etch a seventh mark, as you found Jimin, strung up from the ceiling fan.

The bedsheets were Jeongguk’s, the bandana Taehyung’s, the dishtowel Seokjin’s, the rubber bands Namjoon’s, the shoelaces Yoongi’s, the scarf Hoseok’s, and the sweater Jimin’s.

All knotted together to create a perfect noose, just like you all were meant to come together as. Only good for bringing the worst, death hovering over you all like an ominous storm, threatening to rain on the parade you’d created for yourselves.

All that was missing from Jimin’s perfect noose was yourself.

So you made sure to remedy that.

Putting yourself next to him with the aid of a rickety dining table chair; your hands wrapped around his throat to create a vice, to wrench the last breaths from his body, knowing that his heart was weak but his eyes weren’t; finally there was a spark inside his irises, something more than fear and dismay. You felt his body go limp before you finally checked his pulse, confirming that he indeed, was gone.

You sat down on the ratty couch, the same one you’d had sex with each and every one of them on; the same one that hosted countless movie nights and had popcorn tossed all over it whenever Hoseok got scared or Taehyung too excited. The couch that cradled Jimin when he cried at night and when Jeongguk would hold him for hours, promising to never leave him. The same couch that Yoongi would always fall asleep on, Seokjin covering him because he knew he’d catch a cold if he wasn’t kept warm. The couch that sat Namjoon when he’d heard the news on the phone:

“Kim Taehyung has committed murder.”

It felt like weeks, months, years scrawled by before you heard the front door open, slowly and then suddenly. The creaking something similar to Jimin’s bones, his body still hanging from where he killed himself; where you killed him.

Taehyung walked in, eyes on Jimin then you.

“How’s Hell?” You murmured, knowing damn well he could hear you clear as day.

“I just got back.”

You smiled and let death sweep you up, leaving just one. The first, the domino that started this terrible chain of events. The butterfly on your card, the Ace you needed.

Taehyung took one small breath before taking your life, making sure he followed right after.

Maybe you’d all meet up again, in some maze of chain link fences and pristine white ribbons like the bedsheets of Hoseok’s hospital bed, the suds in the sink where Seokjin scrubbed, the wax of Jeongguk’s birthday candles, the hoodie Taehyung always wore, the blond of Yoongi’s hair, the pages in Namjoon’s journal, the nailbeds on Jimin’s small hands. The white on the back of your playing cards, the ones built to be a steady house but instead crumpled in on itself.

But for now, you just welcomed the white and hoped that no one else would follow in this Butterfly Effect.

[bentchcreates]

Beyond Light and Darkness, A Kathbute Anthology (Part 2)

Let me begin 2018 with an awesome review of our awesome book! I’m very proud of this – I was part of the new writer judging, the editing, and I wrote the preface! – and if you want to know this book’s journey from conception to publishing I wrote a lengthy blog on that last year.

In this second part of the #BLaD blog posts, I’ll be reviewing it as a reader and I’ll try to review it as objectively as I can. ;) Here’s what I think of the 11 stories by the Kathbute Authors, because while a general review of the book is appreciated, it always feels great for anthology authors to read about their works individually.

I. Love Bits

1. The Watch Repairman’s Son – H. Bentham Prompts: A broken wristwatch, peppermints, and a hug that goes too far.

LOL at reviewing this objectively! XD This is my work and for me it’s the best! Hahaha!

Anyway, a trivia about this story: This is actually my first Sancho de Guerra story. I finished writing this almost a full year before “Guide for A Day” appeared in Summer Feels but this took a while to see the light of day. The town I envisioned here is a wee bit different from the one I imagined for the later story, but you wouldn’t really notice. All the bits that got published can go together, and as of this writing, I declare it as canon. ;)

2. Can I Stay? – Nigel Libranages Prompts: Tarot Cards, the coming winter, a pair of old leather boots

This is more of a romantic fiction than romance but the feels, especially the melancholy, is on point. The tone seems levelheaded, but there’s something subtle in how it’s presented that tugs at the heartstrings just right. I must commend both the clever interpretation of the given prompts and the vivid visualization of the settings. Sandra’s characterization is also well fleshed out, justifying her decisions through the end of this short story.

II. Spell Crafts

3. Potion Lunacy – Irina Jean Prompts: The first day of school, a love note, a recipe with a significant mistake

The YA Fantasy theme in this one is cute and reminds me so much of quirky 2000’s anime. Feisty Portia is stubborn but also a bit insecure and her love interest, Gelen, is just the right amount of clumsy and torpe to be endearing. The fun and fast-paced banter depicts the youthfulness of the characters accurately. And the magic parts, though light, are solid and well thought of.

4. Etienne and Amelie – Johanna Lee Prompts: A supporting fairytale character, a lake, pretenses

This retelling of your favorite fairytales retains the fantastical magic of our childhood reads. I’m not going to say which tales get beautifully mashed-up because I think the figuring out is part of the story’s charm. The visualization and choice of words are commendable, as well as the surprising twist at the very end. You have to read this carefully. Blink, and you’ll miss it.

5. Man in Between – Trix Luna Prompts: old train, jewels, an inconvenient truth

This story wasn’t in the original manuscript I got to read in the editing phase so reading it for the first time in the book is quite an experience. It is told in the second person POV, something I rarely get to read and the spec fic theme is also somewhat fresh to me. I don’t know how best to describe it without spoilers except that I thought it felt transcendental. The choice of words really got to me and it was…unsettling, in the way good fiction affects readers even after the story ends.

III. Distortions

6. The Time Banker – Raine Rillera Prompts: A name, a prison cell, music

The sci-fi/spec fic concept for this one has been wonderfully executed, and the interpretation of the prompts, though subtle and downplayed, were key elements in the advancement plot. This is one of the stories chosen after our writing contest and I remembered that even the rough draft of this one was solid so the edited version in the print made for an awesome reread.

7. The Trial of the Tainted – Trix Luna Prompts: A heroic villain, an old parchment, an unforgivable sin

Space and time-travelling were the themes of this interesting short story. I loved the world-building in this one and the twist and turns it took to get to that ‘heroic villain’ bit. There is also an underlying subtheme of a familiar story that everyone knows by now so the marriage of sci-fi elements to that story kind of updated the mysterious plot.

8. Word Wisp – AlaraChan IDA Prompts: aerobics, a secret diary, something unpleasant under the bed

With prompts like those, familiar stories immediately come to mind about monsters and inner demons, yada, yada…but this interpretation of the boogeyman trope is fresh and brilliant. The monster here isn’t a thing, more of a concept, and it doesn’t kill, but rather consumes something everyone often takes for granted. I especially loved the world apocalypse scenes and the people’s reactions to it in this story’s universe.

IV. Penumbra

9. Allegro – RK Sanchez Prompts: A name, a prison cell, music

Our cover artist also contributed a story here, and it is one on the darker themes. This time the mystery is more psychological and less fantastical but is just as interesting as all the other stories.  The author takes a different turn with the interpretation of the prompts and offers a sweet twist toward the end.

10. Thirty-Seven – Yelle Felicenny Prompts: A stolen ring, fear of spiders, a sinister stranger

This was one of my anticipated reads in this book because I only got to read the first part during the editing phase. There’s a bit of action, adventure and mystery here but what really got me was the dark turn of events at about the final quarter of the story.

11. Darker Than Night- AlaraChan IDA Prompts: a campfire, a scream, a small lie that gets bigger and bigger

This is uniquely written in epistolary style/journal entries, and is a dark but captivating read. I don’t read a lot of horror stories (everyone knows I’m a coward, lol) but I couldn’t put this down! I wanted to know what happens to the aswang and the military party that’s pursuing it!

5 of 5 Stars. Because I’m super proud of our work, and it is an honor to have worked on this with awesome writers and awesome people!

Blurb: The 11 stories in this anthology showcase the interpretations of the Kathbute writers to the theme of light and darkness in the genres of Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Mystery.

Buy Links:

Right now it’s only available in print here: bit.ly/BLADBatch2

I’ll update this when the Kindle version is released. J

For the meantime, put it in your GoodReads TBR shelf? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36995364-beyond-light-and-darkness-a-kathbute-anthology

About the authors:

Nigel Libranages Nigel Libranages is a licensed chemist but dreams of becoming a marine biologist and take care of sea turtles. Born as a genuine sinker, the closest that he can do about his dream is own an aquarium. He has pitcher plants for pets, and he loves reading about myths and folklore. He writes before he forgets. Dedication: To those who are strong enough to hold on, and brave enough to let go.

Wattpad: @libranages

Raine Rillera Born and raised in Baguio City, Raine has a natural affinity to cold weather and “vintage” clothing (i.e. ukay). Her first paying job was as a puppeteer, when at 8 years old she staged her own puppet show at a birthday party. Since then, she has been telling stories through whatever medium was available.

Wattpad: @purple_porpoise

H. Bentham H. Bentham was born and raised in the Philippines but now resides 1,481 miles away from home. He battles homesickness with his various hobbies and (mostly) procrastinating on the internet. When he's done being bored, he writes stories; and when he's feeling particularly profound, poems. He adores turtles and bettas, enjoying the slow, quiet companionship they provide.

Wattpad: @bentchbites|Facebook: H Bentham Writes | Twitter: @bentchbites| Instagram: @bentchbites

Irina Jean Irina Jean is an elusive mushroom who indulges in anime, manga, video games, and most of all, art. She believes that writing is a unique form of art too, for she can express herself with words as her paint and her laptop as her canvas. When she's not writing, she's usually binge-gaming with friends. She dreams of being a webcomic artist and, if possible, a space witch. (Actually, any kind of witch would do.)

Wattpad: @Cygneux|Facebook: Irina Jean

Trix Luna Trix is the self-proclaimed duchess of the East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a place where there is always light when you need it. She’s still waiting for her Hogwarts acceptance letter even though she is already sorted to Ravenclaw. She’s not adept at any game ending in –ball (basketball, football, volleyball, etc.) other than Quidditch and Scrabble. She has a one-sided relationship with music and strongly opposes to divorce with it, believing that music will learn to love her singing voice…eventually.

Wattpad: @lunatrix|Facebook: Trix Luna | Twitter: @3xLuna

AlaraChan IDA AlaraChan IDA is a kabute who like books, cats, and hot chocolate. She takes long quiet walks, bike rides, and binge-watching a number of TV series to keep her muse alive and kicking. She dreams of becoming a pod racer, a dragon-tamer, and a space pirate. She recently took up watercolor painting and is now torn between writing and the arts.

Wattpad: @AlaraChan| Instagram: @alara_arts

Johanna Lee Johanna Lee is a Filipino writer based in Western Australia who writes poetry, and fictional stories in the genre of Chicklit, Romance, and Paranormal. A published Tagalog Romance author, Radish Fiction writer, and a Children’s-storyteller-wannabe. She finds joy in her collection of toys, books, stationery, and old-fashioned writing tools.

Twitter: @ilivewritenow| Instagram: @ilivewritenow

Yelle Felicenny Felicenny is an awkward melange of multiple extremes: an artist hemmed in a thriving tycoon’s body. While business is her field of study and training remote communities is her passion in public service, her heart belongs to art, poetry and travelling. Bus rides, sunsets and coffee shops are among her favorite things, for the untamed muse beckons the most - inked on bus tickets, receipts and table napkins.

Wattpad: @Felicenny| Facebook: Yelle Felicenny

R.K. Sanchez R.K. Sanchez is a teacher by profession, but is fond of learning a lot of things from her students. Her hands are often dirty as she is a right-handed artist and guitarist, often having guitar string marks on her left hand fingertips and paint stains all over her right hand. She is an introvert who has always been afraid of meeting and approaching new people, but never afraid of approaching stray cats and dogs.

Wattpad : @PrivateHeroine| | Facebook: Skribsinner | Instagram: @skribsinner

[cosmosogler]

hello i am here. i took a break from pokemon today except to check up on the pelago for about two minutes while i was waiting at the doctor’s office. and i guess i’ll do the daily stuff in fifteen minutes.

i have been having weeeeird dreams again. i think it’s the birth control... i very rarely have dreams like that when i’m NOT on birth control. it involved me watching a let’s play of sonic adventure 2′s two-player thing and the players couldn’t figure out what to do despite the directions showing up on the screen. i wanted to scream. 

then i was looking at sky scrapers. i recognize them in retrospect - they’re in the Big City. i am not usually up that high to see the top of the buildings. there was a family-owned sub sandwich place with a big sign that read “We Cater!” in yellow cursive. it was on top of a radio tower. i mistook it for a billboard until i leaned over and saw the counter with the meat and bread and stuff. there was absolutely no room for a kitchen or tables and the restaurant, or room, was about 10 by 10 feet with glass walls and the sign over the door. i asked “how did this happen?” out loud and then i woke up.

the early part of the dream was me wandering around in the fog on a dock that was also a college campus. i had to get an ark down from the mountain. because i needed more bible symbolism in my dreams? there was some kind of party going on, because every now and then people would appear from the fog wearing bright colors and carrying balloons and prize bags and kazoos and stuff. i think they spoke simlish, or something i didn’t understand very well. i ended up getting the ark down by doing a weird optical illusion thing. i was standing far away from it, so it looked small, so i just picked up the small ark between my thumb and finger and put it in the river. then when i got close it was big again. i think that’s where they were playing the video games. it was in a wooden room at least.

the thing that makes these dreams weird is that they are even more disorienting and mashed together than usual. generally there’s some kind of theme connecting my dreams, like the colors or mood or some phrase or motivation. or i will deliberately try to leave one dream if i don’t like it, and once i leave i forget what i was doing and have the new dream. there’s nothing particularly sexual or anything in these dreams, as you can see, but :/

i don’t like it at all.

i felt that disorientation all morning. the shower was a haze, and right after i washed my hair i couldn’t remember if i’d washed my hair yet or not. there was still soap in my hair so i figured it out. when i left to drive to the doctor’s i forgot the garage door was broken. then when i was driving i started dissociating really bad. i was trying to watch the road, but i was also like observing myself driving and everything looked really far away and it was hard to focus. usually when i’m driving and something like that happens a million alarms go off in my head, and that happened, but it was also hard to care. i made it to the doctor without incident though. when i checked in i noticed they had monsters inc on in the corner and there was a little kid watching it with her mom and that cheered me up a little bit.

the doctor changed up my birth control prescription, so hopefully i won’t be so sore and sick all the time next month. she also recommended that i start keeping a food journal to see if there are patterns in what makes me sick and less sick. so i will make more of an effort to write down what i ate and how i felt afterward. i totally forgot to take my anti nausea meds twice today but it was ok.

i was ok driving home. i put on some music i like. i decided to hold off on picking up the new meds until tomorrow to see if my other prescriptions are ready by then. i still have some time left before i need to get more wellbutrin and stuff, so hopefully if there’s a problem i can get a refill from my doctor on monday.

for lunch i had my leftovers from manuel’s. a spinach enchilada and some espinaca con queso. it’s a pretty cheesy meal, but i did ok. i felt just as sick as yesterday and i ate roughly the same amount, which was about three quarters of what i had rationed myself. after that i was doing something on the computer... i don’t remember what it was. i think i was looking at some videos i didn’t have time to get to yesterday and when i finished that, my brother and dad had moved all the bookcases out of the hallway and into my sister’s unoccupied room. so dad asked me to clean the floorboards. so i took a rough cloth and wiped off the dirt. dad is going to paint the hallway sometime in the near future. i was going to say he didn’t need to bother, but, thinking about it, it really needs it. there’s still crayon markings from when my brother was a toddler a few years after we moved in.

after that i called the outpatient hospital thing that my therapist recommended! i am going to be “assessed” on monday. it meets for like nine hours a week. i am hoping i get in, and i am hoping it will be helpful, although i am not sure what it entails or how many weeks i will theoretically be attending. i will have to remember to ask those questions on monday. i also looked up some reviews online and there weren’t any comments on being “treated like an animal” or “left in the waiting room for 7 hours” so i am hoping it will be good. they also take my insurance.

after that i bummed around on tumblr until i realized it was too late to also call the school about my tuition. maybe tomorrow...

dad and i went to thai food for dinner. i started feeling really sick about halfway into my soup but i forced myself to continue eating because thai food is my favorite. like, i have liked almost every thai dish i have ordered at any restaurant. this one doesn’t make the very best food, but it is very good, and they also do vegetarian soups which are magnificent and i can’t seem to find any other thai place that makes them. so dad and i go to this one. i decided to try something new and got “spicy noodle.” which was basically black pepper with some noodles and broccoli. it was pretty good!

dad was too tired to go to the game store to play terraform mars so we went home after dinner. i set up onitama and got him a beer and we played a round of that. it took like 25 minutes, while with asher they usually took 10 to 15 minutes. dad ended up pulling a very unexpected win in literally the last turn after i’d put pressure on him since turn 3 or so. it’s like chess except more crowded and fewer options. it’s hard to explain without the board and pieces in front of me.

after that i sat and thought for a while. my sister used to have a very similar problem to the one i am having now. constant stomachaches, feeling nauseous, stuff like that. that started when we were very young, like “eating solid food now” young, and seemed to still be happening when i left for high school. when i see her next, probably on easter for the family gathering, i will ask whether or not that ever stopped or if she just started hiding it better. i think she started feeling better after having a nose surgery... so it might not be the same problem. i have a much wider nose and don’t have a lot of breathing problems except a weird respiration cycle that probably developed because of my heart problem.

after that i was talking to asher and i brought up that game where you find a young teenager with like a sparkledog oc and you draw it and make the kid happy. an artist named coral did that for me once when my secret santa was a no-show one year. i was 14. it blew my mind! i spent so much time after that trying to draw like her. my style is much different from hers now, but i think i am about at the same level technical wise. i have never been a popular artist but i think having someone with practice draw your first oc is kind of magical regardless.

so i spent like two hours combing through the internet looking for goofy ocs made by kids. i noticed that my little pony and five nights at freddy’s is very popular. i don’t know much about those... but i found a few examples of “baby’s first character” so i will try to at least do some sketches tomorrow evening. maybe it will help me start drawing again.

i wanted to go to bed at 11:30, but now it is 12:30, because i am dumb and said “i’m just gonna write something really quick” at 11:30, which is when i ran out of resources to find mostly unironic eye-searing sparkledogs.

also in one of the “young artist” groups on deviantart there was tentacle porn and i don’t know how to feel about that. (it was... pretty vanilla actually.) and some vaguely sensual shirtless photo realistic paintings of star wars fan characters. and there was one folder with pages upon pages of ms paint anime drawings by one person from 2010. 

i don’t miss being a kid.

i’m going to try to sleep and hope my hellacious dream torment ends soon.

[thesinglesjukebox]

SAM HUNT - DRINKIN' TOO MUCH [5.33] What've we got here? Why, it's a CONTROVERSYBOMB!

Ramzi Awn: A bold experiment with a few good ideas, "Drinkin' Too Much" employs dark moments of candor to highlight a muddled mix. [5]

Olivia Rafferty: The heart and soul of country music is storytelling, which is why this track works so well. "Drinkin' Too Much" shifts the typical country subject of alcohol abuse to the context of sad man R&B, aka Drake's genre. The spoken verses contain a rawness that could only be conveyed with that style of delivery, and the lyrics themselves are so vivid. Lay this over a subtle blend of 808s and slide guitars, and you have a solid attempt to influence the direction of country music. Let the genre-mashing begin. [8]

Anthony Easton: John Prine, in a recent Rolling Stone cover story, spoke about how Dylan's Nashville Skyline broke apart country music for him (he was a folkie at the time): "Man, there's something there where their two paths crossed. My stuff belongs right in the middle." This is also in the middle: between soul and hip-hop, between the drinking and heartbreak of Nashville and the fame-wasted ennui of Kanye and Drake. But it's also at the bottom: the bottomed-out production, how Hunt trips over details, how he extends stories, how he never quite brags about his money, how his self-loathing bubbles up like swamp gas. It's the opposite of all those party songs, the opposite of Moore and Eldredge and Gilbert. It has a singular voice -- a songwriting voice, but also how he sings, a gravelly push that reinforces his production choices. It is the smartest thing he has done, and maybe the most heartfelt. [10]

Alfred Soto: I'm no country corn pone. I like electronic whooshes and the kind of manipulation of space more common on Drake or "Climax"-era Usher, but Sam Hunt can't even talk-sing without his sockless boat shoes tripping on his ill-lettered cadences. He comes off like a lunkier Chainsmoker, in the market for any hook that'll get him on the radio and laid -- two of his more admirable virtues. Find better songs, dude, and don't try so damn hard. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: This non-single posted on SoundCloud is the audio equivalent of a viral video, and like many viral videos, it's also essentially a journal entry set to music. Frankly, it's not up to snuff: this is him doing his rhyming couplets (he loves rhyming couplets) with a woozy rhythm track from Pro Tools or whatever. It also sounds a lot like a demo for Justin Bieber. Most of all, this is slightly creepy oversharing; I want a Silkwood shower after listening to it. [0]

Elisabeth Sanders: Everything about this is deeply embarrassing, and that's why I love it. While I can't pretend I like this as much as anything off Montevallo, it makes up for it with "I wish you'd let me pay your student loans," and I'd like to submit this as a great entry into a music category I'd like to call "voice-memo pathetic-wave." (The other artist in this genre is Mike Posner with his great, deeply pathetic album At Night, Alone.) The song approximates, sonically and with almost nauseating accuracy, the feeling of being just too drunk enough that the room is spinning a little, being very sad about something that might be your fault in a crowded place at 2 in the morning. BEEN THERE, SAM. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: In which Sam Hunt pens a letter to Montevallo's Courtney From Hooters On Peachtree and proves himself to not be country music's Drake, but rather its Mike Skinner. The hook is the weakest part; it doesn't resolve Hunt's thoughts but elides them. (The austere "8pm" take works better and is worth a point or two more.) There is frisson in a lyric that pushes too far past the fourth wall, threatening to combust as it reaches the event horizon -- for the non-country, non-rap examples to which "Drinkin' Too Much" draws nearest, look to emo acts like Cursive's The Ugly Organ or Say Anything's "Every Man Has a Molly." "Hope you know I'm still in love," Hunt closes, except it's a correspondence that is only intimate the way a performance is, and so his words are combustible as well as heartfelt. The sour sense that this song bears too much truth is its most compelling point but also its most repellent; Hunt is too casual in his exhibitionism. [5]

Will Adams: It feels right; we've reached the level of bleakness in our pop music that songs can now just be actual shitposts with first draft choruses tucked in. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Did we need another country "Marvin's Room"? In every country review I keep harping on artists telling the same generic story addressed to the same imaginary sorority girl, but here's a lyric and addressee that are certainly not generic or imaginary, and I'm not sure what to think. If Sam Hunt's byline didn't scare off the traditionalists, the first vocoded note is almost deliberately scheduled to shoo away the rest (none of the subsequent vocal is so blatant), leaving a smaller audience of fans and an explicit audience of one specific, named girl. There's something inescapably creepy -- voyeuristically creepy for the listener, manipulatively creepy for the artist -- about this, this couple chords and a tirade. Most of his target demographic will hear this as romantic, but for those unfortunate enough to have been stalked, the details are so familiar as to be textbook: presenting her with his un-rebuttable imagination of her life, in which she stages the Everytime video every time she wants to cry, in which there's nowhere else in Georgia she can buy peaches, in which everything reminds her of him, or at least does now; reminding her of her debt while holding Montevallo money over her head; apologizing for boosting her profile while writing her name into a huge triumphant chorus; pondering "whether it's OK to lie" while careful to mention none of the indiscretions that got him there -- merely their consequences, which now seem unreasonable. Better to address this as fiction, then -- like most "autobiographical" songs by celebrities, somewhere between songwriting exercise and publicity stunt, because you don't cross over into pop and stay without some dating drama. What's left is slapdash: accurate-sounding candor spewed over a couple identikit country choruses, each piece well-crafted but only assemblable by a real-life happy ending. Which is the point, and the problem. [5]

Megan Harrington: Too much of my instant dislike of "Drinkin' Too Much" hinged on the preposterous way Sam Hunt apologized for (more or less) doxing his then ex-girlfriend, now fiancé Hannah Lee Fowler on his debut album Montevallo, only to turn around and close the song by singing her name. In case there were any straggler fans out there who hadn't quite put her identity together, I guess. It was incongruous in a way that grated on me until I realized that it was the perfect synecdoche for the song, one that indulges overwrought production as 40 as it was country and several different singing styles, including plain old talking. It's right there in the way he names her his first fan and then cheats on her, the way he dismisses her sisters as "matchmakers" but hopes her dad still prays for him. Real life is messy and filled with leaps forward followed by half-steps back, relationships are chaotic and confusing, and Hunt captures all of it, ending hopefully with a (sort of, he hopes) romantic pledge to win her back. And it (sort of, I think) worked? [7]

Crystal Leww: The first time I heard "Drinkin' Too Much," I did not like it. I did not like the 40-esque production, the sad sap lyrics, the way that Hunt called out his ex-girlfriend. Then I listened to the 8pm version, stripped of the production flourishes, and figured that it was just the production that was bugging me. The lyrics were sad, but they were so specific: peaches in Pelham, a hotel room in Arizona, and that devastating, heartbreaking "hope your dad still prays for me," a reminder that breakups are the deaths of families, too. I've never liked the comparisons to Drake -- Drake is someone who has clearly never been in an adult relationship with a real woman rather than a built-up image of a woman, but Montevallo and "Drinkin' Too Much" feel like they're about real adults who have genuinely loved each other and created lives together. I still like the 8pm version more, but I've come around on the full version. It's dramatic, but I appreciate the attempt to appeal to a broader audience, and it highlights that Hunt's lyricism shines through anything, even snaps and strings. [7]

Josh Langhoff: A prof used to tell us, "People who are sorry weep bitter tears." I don't buy Sam Hunt's sorrow. Nor do I buy that this song has a melody or a beat, that it has any connection to country or R&B, that this is the same Sam Hunt who did "House Party," or that picking peaches is anything but the pits. More schnapps! [3]

Katie Gill: Look, I'm sorry, I can't hate this. With the exception of that "I hope your dad still prays for me" bit, the verses are awful, not singing but the Sam Hunt Spoken Word Poetry Hour. They swing between endearingly hokey and the awful Nice Guy sort of patronizing that was the entirety of "Take Your Time." But the chorus is AMAZING. It's so silky and smooth, perfectly mixed, and Hunt shows that he has a halfway decent R&B(ish) voice. But the two never really meet. The transition between verse and chorus is awkward every time, as the buttery-smooth chorus butts up against the not very smooth speaking voice of Sam Hunt. [6]

Joshua Copperman: I keep singing this title to the tune of Twenty One Pilots' "Ride", attempting to remember what little melody this song has ("I've been drinking too much, help me..."). Until the bridge -- which would make a better chorus -- nothing is worth remembering: not the strings, not the drum machine, and especially not the single strum of guitar to signify that it's still country. What made "Marvin's Room" work was the honesty and subtextual self-loathing that Drake would spend the rest of his career distilling. This seems less stream-of-consciousness and more trying to write stream-of-consciousness, which rarely works as well and results in lines like "I wish you'd let me pay off your student loans." The dramatic piano ending makes clear Sam Hunt's lack of shame in copying Aubrey, but that just makes him sound even less authentic, even though the backstory contains more than enough drama for something genuine. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The first time I misheard the line as as "I'm sorry for making the album Montevallo," but this sketch wouldn't be a repudiation even if he were sorry for that. And it's really not that much more than a series of lyrical fragments and a chorus, but I find myself nodding along at some parts, and being frustrated at the lack of detail in others, and going to the "Personal life" details of his Wikipedia article to see the resolution. So that means it's fairly compelling for its limitations. [7]

[Read and comment on The Singles Jukebox ]

[how2to18]

CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work. 

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

¤

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles? 

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

¤

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2CMGjGb via IFTTT

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

CRABAPPLE, PRICKLY GOOSEBERRY, bittersweet, and devil’s walking stick — are these the names of thorny old monsters in some dark children’s fairy tale? Nope. They are simply the flora that vine the paths of the forests and hollers of the Smoky Mountains. A brave five-year-old girl named Ernestine must journey through these persnickety snatchers in the early morning shadows in order to deliver mason jars full of fresh milk to the neighbors who live far away. It is 1942, and the husbands are away at war. The wives and mothers run the farms, raise the children, milk the cows. These country neighbors take care of one another in their time of need.

This is the framework for Kerry Madden-Lunsford’s Ernestine’s Milky Way, an achingly poignant tale of independence, resourcefulness, and good old-fashioned neighboring as seen through the eyes of a strong-willed little girl in the wartime South. The illustrations, by Emily Sutton, brush the pages like the powdered wings of butterflies. There are sturdy rock houses and old wooden fences, hand-sewn blankets and dusty banjos, everything surrounded by watercolor bursts of soft country colors — trees, leaves, grass, and plants. Flowers and vines are like their own characters. The facial expressions of the people make you ache for home. Any city-dwelling child is bound to look up at the parent, or teacher, or sibling, or babysitter reading them this story and ask, “Can we please go the woods tomorrow?”

I met Kerry Madden-Lunsford during my first MFA in Creative Writing Residency at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I was immediately drawn to her; she emanates a warm and welcoming vibe, with sparkling blue eyes and a wide, down-home smile. She dresses like a hippie teenager from the ’60s who has met her future self, an older, wiser earth-mother. Currently she directs the Creative Writing program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where she covers the desks and tables of her classrooms with books — dozens of picture books and chapter books, and middle-grade and YA, and, sprinkled in between, weathered copies of classics, like cherished relics from a magical library. Reminiscent of your favorite elementary school teacher, she actually writes out the lessons — infused with words of wisdom and anecdotes — in a comforting cursive on the board. She connects with everyone. She connects with their work. She was my first workshop leader, and her editorial letter about the 20 pages I had submitted told me everything I needed to know about her — namely, that she was a very old soul with a very young heart. You can sense this about her. You can feel it flowing from the pages of her books.

I recently visited Kerry at her home in the hills of Echo Park. We sat together over bagels and coffee with her husband Kiffen and their dazzling little dachshund, Olive, to talk about her latest release, the aforementioned Ernestine’s Milky Way, as well as her prior work. 

She is the author of eight books, including the lauded Maggie Valley Trilogy set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia. The first in that series, Gentle’s Holler (2005), was a PEN USA finalist in Children’s Literature, and it’s easy to see why. The book shares some strands of Ernestine’s world as it explores the life of a 12-year-old girl and her adventures, with her eight brothers and sisters, in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1960s. It’s heartwarming and heartbreaking at once. Imagine a mash-up between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Coal Miner’s Daughter, and you’re nearly there. Mountain country folk ridden with worries about money and bellies swollen from hunger are the characters that anchor Madden-Lunsford’s work. But the families in her stories rely on mutual affection and a resourcefulness that flows like pure mountain spring water to get them through the rough times.

Her December 2018 essay in the Los Angeles Times, “The Christmas Suit,” is a blistering meditation on family addiction — a deeply caring mother’s despairing attempt to stave off the crippling inertia of frustrated emotion. It’s a different side of Kerry, a flip of the coin. It reveals something tender and truthful about a majority of authors who write picture books, middle-grade, and YA: that they are seasoned individuals whose brave flights of fancy trying to survive adult life are the pearls of wisdom hidden in the sealed-shut shells of books that celebrate innocence, or the end of it.

¤

TIM CUMMINGS: Where did you grow up?

KERRY MADDEN-LUNSFORD: That is a complicated question, though it shouldn’t be. The short answer is that I grew up the daughter of a college football coach, and we moved all the time. For years I said that I lived in 12 states, but my daughter, Norah, reminded me that it’s actually been 13 states. Alabama is lucky number 13. I used to remember all the states by mascots and teams rather than towns. My father’s first coaching job was for Father Lopez’s Green Wave (High School). He married my mother in between football and basketball season.

He was both the coach for both outfits, so he had the basketball season printed on the wedding napkins to build up team support. “Follow Janis and Joe on the Green Wave.” Always the coach, he informed the principal, Sister Annunciata, that the school dance should be held in the library, so the students wouldn’t mess up his gymnasium floor in fancy shoes. He only told me this story a few weeks ago or it would have been in Offsides, my first novel about growing up the daughter of a football coach. Sister Annunciata shut that suggestion down flat, and the dance was held in the gym. I asked him if he chaperoned, and he said, “Hell, no.”

Because some people are going to think that I am the daughter of John Madden, which I am most definitely not, I finally had to write an essay called “I Am Not John Madden’s Daughter.” My father has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s dementia and he sometimes wakes up from naps, talking old football plays or what defense he ran at the Sugar Bowl in 1977 as the defensive coordinator. He did this while we were in Rome a year ago, and my mother said, “Snap out of it! You’re in Rome!”

How did you come to writing?

I’ve told this story once or twice, but I really do credit my fourth-grade teacher, who told me I was a good writer. It was the first time a teacher ever said any such thing. They usually said, “Aren’t you a nice tall girl who listens well?” They said this because I was shy. So it was a relief when a teacher noticed more than height or shyness. That day, I walked around my neighborhood of Ames, Iowa (Iowa State Cyclones), noticing everything, and wrote a story called “The Five Cents,” thinking it was about the “the five senses.” I never was a good speller. I remained a shy kid, and later some of the nuns began to suggest I might have a vocation to join the convent. I wrote about everything, but mostly I read — I read all the time and that absolutely formed me as a writer.

Who are your greatest influences?

My parents were great influences for humor and resilience, but I rebelled quietly because I was not a girly-girl or an athlete (unless field hockey in ninth grade counts, along with golfing on the boys’ team in high school), so I set out to find ways where I could create my own identity away from the gridiron.

I was definitely influenced (terrified) by Helen Keller and facing her fate when I had to get glasses in third grade. The doctor told my mother, “she’s blind without them,” to make a point. When I sobbed in my father’s arms about my horror of going blind (I think I also threw up in the bathroom), he shouted, “By God, nobody is going blind in this house!” I cried, “But how do you know?” “Because I said so!” It made no sense whatsoever, but I believed him.

I adored my babysitter, Ann Kramer, who was a wild tomboy in Ames, Iowa. I loved the coaches’ wives because they were such good storytellers. I was incredibly influenced by my first best friend, Pattie Murphy, in high school because she was so funny and irreverent, presenting a good girl persona to the powers-that-be and then whispering to me filthy things that were horrible and hilarious. We got caught cracking up laughing in the worst places — in class, at midnight Mass, on stage in Ten Little Indians. She was the first friend to make me laugh. We were miraculously “the new girls” at almost the same time in a school, Knox Catholic, where the kids had been together forever; even their parents and some grandparents had attended Knox Catholic.

I was very influenced by my Aunt Jeanne, who gave me books, and my Uncle Michael, who taught me about art. I lost them both to suicide when I was very young, and I wrote about them in Offsides as a way of atoning for not paying more attention. I wrote an essay about that this past summer.

I do think I was most influenced by getting to study abroad at Manchester University my junior year in college. A group of British drama students adopted me and showed me a whole world of art and theater, and I worshipped them for their hilarity and brilliance. I also had wonderful professors in England, who paid attention to me in ways I had never experienced during my first two years at the University of Tennessee. Plus, nobody in England cared if I went to church or watched football. They wanted me to write plays and “drop the grotty trade school occupation of journalism,” and I was very happy to oblige. I’m now writing a novel inspired by that time called Hop the Pond, which also has themes of addiction and features the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell.

When I returned to the University of Tennessee from Manchester, I often pretended to be a British exchange student (yes, I was insufferable because I couldn’t bear leaving England for Tennessee). I changed my major to theater, and I came to know my professors in Tennessee who taught us theater history, acting, directing. I was grateful for the encouragement and attention they gave me as a student (and a girl in the South) who wanted to write plays. The only contemporary playwright I knew of at that time was Beth Henley, and I hadn’t yet heard of Wendy Wasserstein.

Our theater department was still cranking out suggested scene study pairings of mostly Inge, Albee, and Williams, and maybe, once in a while, Lillian Hellman. I wanted to write plays, so I stayed in Knoxville after graduation and began an MFA in playwriting. I was the only student in the course at the time, but it gave me two years to learn to teach “Voice and Diction” and to write plays while working at a bookstore. Those two years in Knoxville influenced me because that is when I fell in love with Southern literature. I dropped the faux British accent, and my patient friends were grateful.

Finally, I think my greatest influence just happened this year. She is my cousin, Maureen Madden O’Sullivan — or, simply, Mo. We met for the very first time last May; her grandfather and my great-grandfather — Patrick and Joseph Madden — were brothers in Roscommon, Ireland. Mo and I have lived parallel lives in Los Angeles for 30 years, with many friends in common. She has been sober since 1982, and I have a family member who suffers from addiction, so she has taught me how to really let go — to breathe, to meditate, to eat better, to make gazpacho, to take walks by the sea. She also has stage-four cancer and is doing everything to live and take care of herself, from chemo to acupuncture to meditation to plant medicine to sound therapy to massage to simply taking joy in everything. She is the light of my life, and when I complain about us not meeting sooner, she says, “We met at the perfect time.” She is more evolved than I am.

I have gathered all the letters and texts we have written to each other since May in a compilation, and it’s currently 440 pages. It’s ridiculous, I know, and I don’t know what the project will be, but I am so grateful for Mo. I know I’m a mother, and I love being a mother, but around her I am not a mother. I’m just me again. A friend said I should call the book or whatever it’s going to be: 23 and Me and Mo.

Could you talk about your dual life as director of Creative Writing in Birmingham as well as a working author, teacher, and mother in Los Angeles? 

I’ve been living this unplanned dual two-state life since 2009. I wrote an essay about making the decision to accept a tenure track teaching job in Birmingham, Alabama, and living on an air mattress for a while. I came alone the first year; the second year, my sixth-grade daughter, Norah, joined me and she was like a little cultural anthropologist. She came home from school the first day and said, “We played the name game and we had to say what we liked. And all the kids said they liked only Auburn or Alabama. I know they like their state and ‘auburn’ is a very pretty color, but what I am supposed to choose? When it was my turn, I said, ‘I’m Norah and I like books.’” I realized I had given the child no information about Alabama, so we had a crash course in football so she could catch up. Whenever I hinted at wanting to return to Los Angeles, she would say, “You can go be with Daddy. I like it here. I love it here. All my friends are here. Alabama is great!”

When I realized we were in it for the long haul, we got a rescue dog, Olive, who flies back and forth with me to Los Angeles. I had a terrible flight before we got Olive, awful soul-sucking turbulence, and Norah thought I was crying out “Hell Mary’s” instead of “Hail Mary’s.” After the trip, I vowed to drive or take the train, but it only took a four-day train ride from Los Angeles to Birmingham sitting up in coach class to get me back in the air. Then I got Olive. She has rescued me in countless ways every single day. And she truly is my emotional support animal on planes, along with the occasional emotional support Bloody Mary or glass of red wine.

I love my job as the director of Creative Writing at UAB. I love my students. I learn from them all the time. They come from all walks of life and many of them are first-generation college or they are returning to college later in life. I do miss living with my husband, who has four more years until he retires from LAUSD, but we get to spend summers and holidays together. We also cook and watch movies together. We do this by saying, “One-Two-Three — Go!” and then we hit play at the same time and mostly we’re in sync on Netflix. And because he is a wonderful man, he also goes to visit Mo, and we all have dinner and Skype together.

Our son is in Los Angeles, our middle daughter is in Chicago, and our youngest lives in the dorm at UAB. During the academic year, I live with Olive in what I call my “Alabama Retreat House.” Lots of sweet students and kind faculty drop by from time to time and other friends, too. Birmingham is such a cool city — a bright blue dot in a big red state. One of my L.A. friends visited, and she looked around the house and said, “You’ve created a little Echo Park in Birmingham.” I have filled the place with books and art from mostly “Studio by the Tracks,” where adults on the autism spectrum make art. Started by Ila Faye Miller in what used to be an old gas station, it’s a fantastic studio located in Fannie Flagg’s old neighborhood of Irondale.

I’m currently working on three novels — two are children’s books and one is for adults. I’ve adapted Offsides into a play, and I’m writing a little poetry and always picture books. I am thrilled that Ernestine’s Milky Way, written in this Alabama Retreat House and edited in a 1910 bungalow in Echo Park, has found a home at Schwartz & Wade.

What are your thoughts about the MFA Creative Writing programs these days?

I think they’re valuable because they allow students to find their people. I didn’t find my people in an MFA program, because I was the only student in my program at the time. However, I kind of made my own MFA with a writing group in Los Angeles — we met for 15 years, regularly. Those writers are still some of my dearest friends. I’ve also joined an online group of children’s picture book authors, who are brilliant, and a wonderful local group here of smart women writers. I find I need the feedback and connection with other writers — a kind of forest-for-the-trees thing with all the teaching I do. We also show up and support each other when our books come out.

That is the most valuable aspect to me of the MFA program — finding our people and getting to teach upon graduation. I feel incredibly fortunate to have taught in both a traditional BA and MA program here at UAB and a low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles.

What’s the most important thing you relay to your students?

I hope I encourage my students to trust themselves — to know that they do have a story to tell. I use play in the classroom (storyboarding and making book dummies) and I get them to take risks or chances with writing sparks, exploring narratives. I also talk about the importance of showing up for each other when success comes along. In other words, go to the reading, buy the book, go to the play — it’s such a long and lonely road to go alone, so I encourage them to cheer each other along the way and offer a hand. It’s so much better than being competitive and harboring jealousy.

Of course, it’s natural to feel envy, but I have been so fortunate to have friends who show up and are genuinely pleased, and I hope I do the same for them. I encourage my students to be good literary citizens and also to spend less time online. I offer the advice I need to listen to myself, especially when I fall into the online rabbit hole.

Can you tell us about your love of picture books and children’s literature?

I read to our three kids all the time. My son’s favorite book was Where the Wild Things Are. I even read that book last year to a group of incarcerated men at Donaldson Maximum Security Prison who had never been read aloud to before. I wrote an essay about that experience.

Anyway, I loved reading to our children when they were small, and my husband was a fantastic reader, too. I used to seek out books with great writing and stories. I hid the Berenstain Bears from the kids because I hated books where we had to learn a lesson. I never really thought of writing for kids because I was writing plays and novels for grown-ups. But I began falling in love with stories like Swamp Angel by Anne Isaacs, and anything by William Steig. The kids loved Chris Van Allsburg, as did I, and of course we loved Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Roald Dahl, Ann Whitford Paul, Cynthia Voigt, Eve Bunting, Jacqueline Woodson, and Lane Smith’s The Happy Hocky Family. There are too many to begin to even name. One of their favorites was “What Luck A Duck” by Amy Goldman Koss, who later became a friend.

We read stacks of books, and as they grew older, they began to tell me what books to read. My son, Flannery, begged me to read The Giver and The Phantom Tollbooth. My daughter, Lucy, fell in love Laurie Halse Anderson’s book, Speak. She wasn’t a huge reader at the time, but she liked that book a lot and said after school one day, “Mom, I felt like reading it at the lunch-table with all my friends around. What it is up with that?”

I read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn out loud to them and we watched the movie together. Norah used to have a little shelf of books in the minivan, because she was terrified of finishing one and not having another at hand. She used to ask me, “Can I bring three books?” and I would say, “You may bring them, but I am not carrying them.” When we moved to a different house a few years ago, we donated 20 boxes of books and it still has not made a dent in all the books we have.

¤

Tim Cummings holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. His recent work has appeared in F(r)iction, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Critical Read, and LARB.

The post Echo Park in Birmingham: An Interview with Kerry Madden-Lunsford appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2CMGjGb