#Best work from home jobs in lockdown

[pepprs]

my depression is getting really really bad. like it’s been bad before but this is like… consistently really bad. like a long unending stretch for several weeks (and tbh months) now. to the point where no inoculation actually sticks (and im isolating myself from most of my inoculations anyway and feel unable to stop doing it even though i know it’s self destructive). im either helplessly unbearably miserable or numbing out on video games. i just don’t feel like it’s going to get better for me and i KNOW that is factually untrue but the feeling is louder than the knowledge and it’s just utterly immobilizing. ive been sinking in quicksand for 2 years.

[jmtorres]

i just saw a post about how we just have to "live with" covid and wanting more protections from our government is unreasonable because we'll never wipe it out, it jumps species and is in all sorts of animal populations (like, true ok) so why even try to

and apparently the argument was aimed at people (who I haven't seen in the wild) who are arguing we should still be in lockdown. and i have mixed feelings about the idea of extended lockdown or attenuating isolations; but my main feeling at this point is not that the government should keep us apart but that the government should be trying to make it safer for us to be together

things the government could/should be doing about covid:

we know that ventilation/air movement helps a shitton. we should be incentivizing upgrades to ventilation systems in all public buildings with shit like rebates or tax deductions, while phasing in eventual legal requirements. (and uh. it has occurred to me that the US might actually be doing this sideways by there's currently this decade enormous tax incentives in re energy efficient upgrades for slowing climate change and you know. energy efficient hvac does tend to improve ventilation. extra point to biden here.)

mandatory paid sick leave so workers aren't under social or economic pressure to work when sick

passing out RT-LAMP tests like metrix that actually work instead of the rapid antigen tests that have become less and less reliable as the virus mutates

i don't know how you'd write this law but like 95% or more of computer-based work can be done remotely and companies should not be allowed to force people to return to the office. I know there's people who want to be back in person and I'm not saying they should be forced to stay home but ffs I know of at least two people CLOSE to me who worked remotely before the pandemic and at some point their workplaces tried to tell them they weren't allowed to do that anymore despite the pre-existing contracts. stop canceling remote work for people that want, need, or prefer it.

for that matter, every college lecture that was an online class during covid should still be offered as an online class, there is no reason to force students into auditoriums in person. you got the communications infrastructure up and running, why are you tearing it down. give people the OPTION. it increases accessibility for everyone!

covid vaccine immunity lasts about four months. this should be well-publicized and everyone should be able to re-up for free every four months. "every year, like the flu vaccine" is demonstrably not often enough. actually "for free" isn't good enough start handing out $10 gift cards you will be shocked at how many people who are resistant to the idea of vaccines will fold for $10 a shot

are there already laws on the books about masks in medical settings that some medical professionals are blatantly ignoring because they forgot what best practices were before the plague and they're 'tired of masking'? if not, pass laws. if so, fucking enforce them

oh another incentives for upgrades phasing into legal requirements thing: brass doorknobs and railings over stainless steel or whatever. microbes do not survive on brass surfaces

i mean. i know this one sounds too extreme to a lot of people but. UBI.

most if not all of these measures will prevent or ameliorate other pandemics of different diseases that may arise in the future. and just. generally improve our health and quality of life for other reasons.

I haven't felt safe to go to a concert since 2020. Maybe if I knew a venue was legally required to have ventilation to a certain standard and that none of the ticket takers and ushers were on the job sick to avoid risking loss of paycheck or job, and knew a larger percentage of the crowd had up to date vaccinations--maybe if any or all that, I might ever feel comfortable going to a show again.

wouldn't it be nice if those of us who have been disabled, by covid or other conditions, had accessible remote options but also occasionally felt safe enough to interact with and participate in wider society?

one of the arguments on the post I saw was how isolation was massively psychologically damaging and various strata of society were affected in all sorts of ways, from undersocialized kids to increased depression in--well across the board, I think. and here's the thing: WE KNOW. PEOPLE WITH CHRONIC HEALTH CONDITIONS, LONG COVID OR OTHERWISE, KNOW ISOLATION SUCKS REAL BAD. because we, both for our own health and due to disability ostracism, are still isolating and isolated more than most.

what are you as individuals or societies, what are our governments, doing to help make it safe and accessible to rejoin you????

[xoxovanillq]

Second Chance Ch. 1

Pairing- Childhoodbestfriend!Steve x Introverted!reader

Warnings- Drunk Steve, Alcohol mention, Steve being an asshole, regret, kissing.

A/N- This was so fun to write, and part 2 should be out soon. This actually hit close to home tho cuz I got dumped by my childhood bestie right after lockdown ended

———

Steve-fucking-Harrington, childhood best friend, turned to someone you considered an enemy.

Elementary school was great, sitting on the porch together, eating popsicles, fighting over who was the faster runner. Middle school wasn’t bad either, minus a few arguments and awkward moments. Late nights were spent lying in your backyard, giggling and gossiping over who had a crush on who, and who was dating who. This was around the time you started noticing his popularity rise, more girls were starting to take interest in him, I mean, yourself included, but that was something he never knew. High school is when things went downhill, rather than laughing with him on the porch, you sat alone, staring down at your shoes, hiding inside whenever him and his new, cool friends came driving past your house. It all still hurt, the way it was as if you were erased from his memory, like he never knew you at all. 

Your phone rang, interrupting your otherwise quiet night. You set down your book, “Pride and Prejudice” and picked up the phone.

“Hey, Y/N, you think you could come help me out?” It was Robin’s voice, and you could hear drunken chatter and the other sounds of a party in the background.

“Depends on what it is.” You reply with an exasperated sigh, you were trying to have a relaxing night in, and having to save someone at a party didn’t sound like something you wanted to do right now.

“Listen, I need help getting Steve home, and before you complain, I’m not gonna be able to drive him home and you’re the only one I know that could help.” She explains before you can interject. She knew how he hurt you, and how you still disliked him to this day.

“God, fine, only because I want you to be happy.” You groan as Robin thanks you before hanging up. You put the phone back on the receiver and make your way to the party. 

Once you arrive at the house, you’re immediately hit with the overwhelming scent of alcohol and vomit, making you gag. You quickly find Robin, a drunken Steve at her side.

“Did you get him water?” You ask with a sigh, already over having to deal with him.

“Mhm, now get him home please, I’ve got things to do.” Robin reply’s, helping shift him toward you. You wrap an arm around the drunken boy, his hazy eyes meeting yours.

“I know I’m the last person you want to spend the night with, but let’s go.” You murmur, and he luckily complies as you get him into your car.

The drive home is fairly silent, until you turn onto your street.

“I don’t know why I ditched you.” He slurs drunkenly, and your heart seizes. You knew he wasn’t in his right mind, but hearing him say those words still meant something. “I thought they were cool or whatever, but now everyone’s off to college and I’m stuck working a stupid, dead-end job.” His words were sincere, no matter how drunk he was, it was all the truth. You couldn’t help but feel bad for him, it seemed like he’d changed, not completely, but enough to give him another chance.

“C’mon, let’s get you inside.” You murmur, helping him out of the car and into your house, where you then got him settled on the couch.

You could hear him mumbling to himself as you got him water, and when you set it on the coffee table in front of him, his eyes landed on your face.

“You’re pretty, you’ve always been pretty.” He slurs, and you give a brief smile, acknowledging the comment without giving it any time to blossom into anything more.

You brought him a blanket, telling him to rest before retreating to your bedroom. 

As you laid in bed that night, his words kept replaying in your head, and you couldn’t help the little swell of excitement you got in your chest when you thought of him. He was still as handsome as always, with his gorgeous carmel locks and big brown eyes. You dreamed of him, of what it would’ve been like if he hadn’t ditched you, if your life hadn’t taken that turn.

In your dreams, you lay in his arms, his face tucked into your neck. You were utterly in love, attending college together, planning out the rest of your lives. Unfortunately, when you woke up, you were forced to face the harsh reality.

You walked downstairs, expecting to see Steve on the couch, but he was nowhere to be found, until you spotted him out on the porch.

“What are you doing out here?” You ask quietly, confused as to his sudden change in location.

“You deserve an apology, and I figured there was no better place to do it.” He says quietly, his voice low as you sit down beside him. “I really shouldn’t have done that, I was an asshole to you, and look where that got me. I know this isn’t nearly what you deserve in the forms of an apology, and I understand if you never want to see me ever again.” He explains, looking down at his shoes.

“Thank you, I mean, I can kinda understand why you did it, being popular feels good, especially when there’s no one at home to make you feel like you matter.” You knew all too well about the situation at home, all the times he stayed over at your house as kids, all thanks to his neglectful parents. “For the record, I really don’t want to lose you, not after getting you back.” You add, and you find your hand in his, fingers laced together.

“You know, I had a crush on you all through elementary and middle school, always thought you were pretty, even after I left.” He says, squeezing your hand a little.

“I know, last night, you said some things. I’ve always liked you too, I mean, I don’t think that’s a huge surprise, everyone likes you.” You smile sadly, which makes his heart ache. He’d hurt you enough, and didn’t want to do any more damage.

“I’d be willing to give us another chance, but maybe as more than friends.” He offers, his tone soft, fearing rejection. Your silence scared him, but before he could react, you were pressing your lips to his, and his hands flew to your lower back, holding you close.

You spent most of the day like that, sitting on the porch and chatting, catching up on the last 4 years.

[aziraphales-library]

Hi,

Could I ask for some roommate fics? A little pining is great but I'm not a huge fan of too much angst.

There is one roommate fic I remember that I'd love to find again, it was set during lockdown, and azirphale was a virgin but was talking to Agnes on zoom with plans to date. Crowley offers to teach him about sex, and it gets physical, even though they're straight buddies ..of course. 😏

Thankyou

We have a #roommates tag. Here's the one you're looking for and a few more to add...

Not a Mounted Dildo but a Fuck Machine by NaroMoreau, summerofspock (E)

Aziraphale and Crowley have lived together for three years when lockdown goes into effect. When Aziraphale meets a nice girl on Tinder who he thinks is his perfect match, he's delighted. There's just one hurdle: that pesky virginity thing. Lucky for him, Crowley has always been there for him. He's helped Aziraphale with every other problem through the years, why not this one?

Tinder Dates Gone Wrong by OceanLace (E)

Aziraphale decides to take a risk and brings a man home but doesn't realize that his roommate and best friend had the same idea. Things don't turn out the way either of them were expecting but end up exactly how they wanted.

Principles of Proximity by Cannebady (E)

Crowley's plan is to get through grad school in one piece and then live his bachelor dream life. With a less-than-wholesome upbringing and no real human ties to speak of, he's made a life for himself. It's just fine, actually. And he's fine too, while you're at it. Enter new roommate, Aziraphale, who just might teach him the benefits of putting down roots.

…And They Were Roommates by Mimsynims (E)

“You know… I just remembered that Richard and I were going away for a few days next month.” Something devious came over him. “Richard paid for it, but the booking is in my name.” Crowley quickly caught on to what he was getting at. “Ooh, I see. That’s convenient.” He grinned. “For us." When Aziraphale's boyfriend Richard (Dick) breaks up with him, he and his roommate Crowley hijacks an intended couples' vacation and uses it for themselves. Lines that had started to blur even before their trip gets even more blurry - which perhaps isn't the best thing when both are hiding a crush on the other (and communication isn't their strong suit).

make it with you by NaroMoreau (E)

PAID RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY: A romantic couples study!! ------ Aziraphale and Crowley are broke roommates who are struggling to keep up with rent and a harsh landlord. After Crowley loses his job and Aziraphale's bookshop hasn't managed to make enough profit, they'll resort to anything to save what they love, and when they come across with the idea of a paid study for couples... Because some ideas are good until they aren't.

You Can Stay At My Place (And We Can Fall in Love) by IneffableToreshi (E)

Anthony Crowley is an art student with a heart of gold and a broad assumption about himself and his own (apparent lack-of) sexuality. When he meets literary student Aziraphale, he thinks he's found a great friend and possibly the perfect roommate. But when an exceptionally idiotic idea turns into Aziraphale reluctantly agreeing to pretend to be Crowley's boyfriend, Crowley rapidly realizes that he may not have been nearly so asexual as he originally thought...

10,000 Hours by AnnaTheHank (E)

Rich playboy Anthony Crowley has finally broken the last straw. He's been disowned by his grandmother, and turned away by his family. With no money and no where to go, he heads to the old family cabin to lay low until it all blows over. Romance writer A.Z. Fell has been given use of her publisher's cabin to get away from the city and work on her newest book-her first erotica. Neither expected the other to be there, but there they both were. And AZ finds that Crowley's vast knowledge of sex may just make up for her own lacking knowledge when it comes to writing her book.

- Mod D

[precioustarkey]

journalism at its finest

summary: you have made a career for yourself by interviewing celebrities, but are feeling a little uncomfortable when one hits close to home.

warnings: none

i nervously climbed into my car. the engine only makes my nerves rattle more. growing up, i was infatuated with actors and musicians. i found myself watching movies for the actors instead of the plot. listening to songs for the singers instead of the message. i can't explain my relationship with the media. i guess being online a lot as a teenager is to blame.

regardless, i knew from an early age that i wanted to work in the industry. not as an entertainer, but in the background. i wanted to observe the lifestyle up close. going to college for journalism was the best decision i have made for myself because now i get to live out my fantasy. 

i get paid to interview these people. and though i find a lot of them uptight and spoiled, the nosy side of me loves picking them apart. because of my job, i try my best to stay neutral on these celebrities so that they don't feel uncomfortable. apart from the research i do in order to come up with my questions, of course.

today is different. there is a show called "outer banks" that came around during quarantine, so with my free time, i binge-watched the entire first season. as i mentioned, normally i watch tv shows and movies for the actors, but i hadn't seen anyone in this show. 

however, when i delved deeper into google, i found the name of one of the actors to be familiar. drew starkey. i quickly found out that he grew up in north carolina, as did i. confused, i pulled myself from my cocoon on my couch to find my old high school yearbooks. grabbing one at random, i see him grinning in his senior photo. how could i forget? 

ever since i discovered this, i avoided the show like the plague. even though i had been surrounded by celebrities for years now, i had never known one of them personally. it almost ruined the glamorous aura surrounding them. imagining him as a regular teenage boy in the classes we shared was humbling. he wasn't mean in high school, not at all. if anything, i remember finding it odd that he hung around the theater kids because he was a total jock.

because of quarantine, i knew that press would be difficult for the actors, and because of this, i never anticipated having to interview them. which helped ease my nerves. moving to los angeles meant that i would interview every celebrity on the new up-and-coming shows. part of me hoped the hype surrounding the show would die down before the lockdown did.

the entire ride to the studio, i told myself over and over again that there was no way he would remember me. he was a jock, and i barely spoke. it wasn't the fact that i was shy, high school just wasn't for me. i counted down the days to graduation. i was only there because i had to be. i put more focus on my studies than my social life. 

in the back of my mind, i can't help but fear that seeing him will bring back memories of being the closed-off kid i was back then. as long as no one mentions it, everything will be okay. i repeated that to myself a few times before parking my car in the lot. removing my seatbelt as slowly as possible to buy time.

my hands are shaking as i walk to my studio. i send passing smiles to my coworkers as i make my way to the bathroom. i confirm that my hair, face, and outfit look presentable, and read over my questions one last time. 

the cameraman walks up to me as i take my seat to wait for the cast to arrive. "i just got a call; austin and drew are going to be the only ones you're interviewing today. madelyn, rudy, and  madison will be interviewed tomorrow," he says, looking for any sort of confirmation. "that sounds perfect," i say, smiling, still looking at my cards. 

i hear footsteps coming from the hallway and quickly stand up. austin and drew emerged into the room with their crew. "hello! so nice to meet you, my name is y/n," i say with a grin as i hold out my hand to them. they do the same, introducing themselves as they take turns shaking my hand. 

all three seats are now filled, so we can begin the questions. the first fifteen minutes go perfectly; we're laughing, they're thoroughly interested in the questions, and they're giving great answers. turning my attention to drew, i ask, "has this sudden change in lifestyle been difficult for you at all? to go from putting your all into basketball, to then deciding on theater in college?" 

he looks taken aback by my question. that nervous feeling in my stomach is slowly creeping back. i made sure that his sports background was easy to find online, so i was confident he wouldn't be too surprised. "wait a second. y/n? y/n y/l/n?" i can feel my cheeks flush at his realization. 

"can i be honest? i was hoping you wouldn't notice," i said, covering my face with my note cards. we are now sharing smiles. "oh my god. i sat behind you in algebra, you're the only reason i passed that class," he says in between laughs. seeing him in person has brought all of those little memories flooding back. 

after a minute or so of catching up, their team urges us on. "we've got other interviews, guys," the man says impatiently. we carry on for an additional fifteen minutes or so before i have run out of questions to ask. we said our farewells, and i thanked them for coming.

just as they were leaving, drew turned around, brushing past the guys they had walked in with. "y/n can i get your number? i would love to catch up properly whenever we both have time," he says, pulling out his phone. "yes, of course!" i smile, quickly typing in the numbers before they are once again rushed away. 

it felt like no time before my phone started dinging.

part two is here!

[dayseternal-blog]

any naruhina fics where on the them is a police officer?

yahhhhhhhh love men in uniform trope

Here's all the ones I've recommended before:

Security Guard/Police AU

“Late Night Liaisons” by Newbie GK - Rated T, Corporate/Modern AU, One-shot. Naruto’s first thought was that the girl was rather pretty. His second thought was that Sasuke was going to kill him when he found out.

“Just Slightly Criminal” by oceanmoon - Rated G, Modern AU, One-shot. Naruto is a cop. One of the best and the youngest. So what happens when a mall goes on lockdown with gunmen and innocent people inside?

“Nightingale” by czgohan - Rated T, Modern AU, One-shot. A slow night on the job is a good thing.

“AU Prompt 1: Phone Booth” from “Tales of Two Ninjas” by magmawrites​ - Rated T, Modern AU, One-shot.  Walking home late one night, Hinata notices a man following her. A small suspense warning.

“Blurred Lines” by vegebulsoup - Rated E, Police / Crime Modern AU, Multi-chapter, Complete. Detective Naruto Uzumaki is having a hard time staying focused at work due to an elusive, dark-haired beauty.

“Fatal Attraction” by aisha12894 - Rated M for character death, Crime AU, Multi-chapter, Complete. Hinata’s life was simple. Yet all of that changed when she witnessed a most heinous crime, which caused her to be the subject of numerous threats on her life. She most now trust her life in the hands of a certain blonde haired blue eyed cop.

“Love Toxic” by @nekomamoru​ - Rated E, Modern AU, One-shot.  She would remain the criminal if he was the law after her.

“Hold Me in Your Memory” by Imanga - Rated E, Police/Crime AU, Multi-chapter, Incomplete. When 2008 rookie Detective Uzumaki Naruto discovers that he can communicate with 2019 Crime analyst Hyūga Hinata, they embark together on a manhunt that defies space and time. But, can the two of them really face the Rinnegan Killer, the serial killer that destroyed both their lives?

“Cops and Curators” by @journalist298 - Rated T, Modern AU, Two-shot. Hinata’s late for work and the world seems to be conspiring against her, until she’s knocked to the ground. It should be illegal for a man to look that good in a police uniform.

If anyone knows others, feel free to add on!

[djarins-cyare]

✨Questions Tag Game✨

Thanks for tagging me @burntheedges 🩵

Of course I’m going to add GIFs and images. Did anyone really expect me to post something without visual aids??

[photos are my own (apart from the one immediately below, which is from here), and unless otherwise credited, GIFs were made by me during office hours when I was supposed to be working… 🤫]

Do you make your own bed?

Not in terms of making it look all neat and tucked in, no. But that’s because I’m a teensy bit of a germaphobe, and humans naturally sweat at night, which means you must leave your mattress uncovered for a while after you get up to ensure it airs. So, for most of the day (because I forget to straighten it up), my bed just looks like this:

(Just for fun, how many Mandalorians can you spot in the pic?)

Favourite number?

It’s always been 2, and my reasoning used to be that all good things come in pairs. But having discovered my autism in recent years, I’ve come to realise it probably more likely represents the maximum number of people I’m most comfortable interacting with at any one time. So it’s a manageable number. It’s also an even number. And it’s a prime number (in fact it's the only even prime number). It’s a pretty number – it has a nice curved top and a solid, sturdy base. It stops 1 from being lonely, so it’s a kind number.

Is this a weird answer? All of these are really logical reasons to me!

[GIF found here]

What’s your job?

It’s become so specialised that I no longer have a job title, but I started as a legal PA for one of the senior partners at a Legal 500 law firm in London. I flirted with the idea of qualifying as a solicitor but realised there was no way in hell I’d be comfortable standing up in court and speaking in front of lots of people (and I work in the criminal law department so not keen on casually chatting to criminals either). Instead, I decided to become The Person Who Knows Everything.

So now I write briefs to Counsel, proofs of evidence, funding applications; I analyse evidence, conduct legal research, advise the solicitors on their cases; I train paralegals and admin staff; I do a load of data analysis and make pretty spreadsheets for the bosses; and I manage the firm’s IT needs because I can do computer stuff too. I’m basically their go-to girl for anything that seems complicated or time-consuming… and I don’t have to wear a stupid wig in court.

And the best part is, during Covid lockdown, I demonstrated I can do 100% of my job from home, so I was allowed to move 150 miles away, and I now only have to visit my office two days a month! 🙌🏻

Downside: the arduous and random nature of the job means I’m never up to date and always very tired.

If you could go back to school, would you?

My original plan after getting my undergrad degree was to do a Masters and PhD and become an academic, but I put all that on hold for my (now ex) husband so he could finish his PhD and first postdoc. I’m very glad I never went back, though, because I realise that academia is not the place for me… see above comment about not being able to stand up and talk in court to understand why standing up and talking in a lecture hall would be equally nerve-wracking for me. So, no, I’m content with my current level of schooling.

Honestly, university was more about learning how to ‘adult’ properly than obtaining any useful knowledge on the course anyway (she says, routinely using concepts learnt on her fiction writing modules when crafting Mando fics).

Can you parallel park?

Yup. Narrow roads and a lack of parking spaces in the UK kind of make it a non-optional skill here.

That said, I do sometimes see people desperately trying to line themselves up to get into a space and making an absolute farce out of it, so I guess maybe some people here think it’s optional, but I’d rather not have that kind of stress, so I practised until I could do it easily.

[original GIF found here and then cropped]

Do you think aliens are real?

The way this is phrased… do I think they’re real? Like, do I think the grey ones with big black eyes are anally probing residents in certain sections of North America on a regular basis? Hmm, no. Too many episodes of The X-Files. I mean, Fox Mulder: yum, but I really Don’t Want To Believe, thanks.

But, I remain open to the idea that alien life has evolved elsewhere in the known universe. It’s inconceivably huge, after all. There’s nowhere near enough data to prove (or even speculate) either way – just look at the Drake equation, which has been used to both ‘prove’ and ‘disprove’ the possibility – so I’ll reserve any kind of judgment until some real evidence appears.

Can you drive a manual car?

Yeah, of course. It’s the standard driving test in the UK and allows you to drive both automatic and manual – you actually have to specifically ask to learn only automatic if you decide you can’t handle gears. And, like, it’s all muscle memory, so it’s really not as hard as people think once you’re used to it. I tried to drive an automatic a few years back and found myself involuntarily shadow-shifting the gears!

[original GIF found here and then trimmed for length]

What’s your guilty pleasure?

Mostly, I don’t feel guilty about indulging in pleasures these days. I used to be really affected by social pressures (back before I discovered my autism and still felt like I had to ‘mask’ and fit in), so I used to feel guilty talking about my hyperfixations, but now I couldn’t care less. I shall consume them endlessly and unselfconsciously. It’s very liberating.

Any phobias?

I suppose the answer is sharks, which has no sensible basis for being a phobia because I’ve never had any real encounters to make me fearful (thank fuck!). In fact, I walked through the shark tunnel at SeaWorld just fine as a 7-year-old. Unless that planted some kind of seed of terror, I don’t know. Not sure when it really took hold, but I can’t even look at photos these days. It’s their damn teeth. Someone’s going to have to give me a tooth report on Gladiator II before I can go see it.

The hell if I’m gonna put a photo (or God forbid a GIF) of a shark here, so, umm…

Favourite childhood sport?

Two answers: (1) Football (AKA soccer). I played for a girl’s team when I was about 11, but it was only because the boy I liked was into football. I couldn’t give a shit about it these days, and I don’t think I ever really liked it – I was just ‘masking’, as I did for most of my childhood, but I convinced myself I loved it.

(2) Karate, which I decided all by myself that I fancied doing, then found I was actually quite good at it and excelled at it for a while. But I was 9, and they decided I was so good that I should go and join the adult class (age 14 and up), which I hated, so I quit.

[GIF is one I already had saved from Reddit a while ago, but I can't find the source anymore, so sorry for not crediting the maker]

Do you talk to yourself?

Sometimes, but not often. I live alone, so I occasionally just need to exercise my vocal cords lol. It also depends on what mood I’m in. On an average day, no, I don’t really feel the need to fill the silence, but if I’m excited/animated/annoyed in some way, I might say stuff aloud. Basically, if I’m inclined to utter curse words for any reason, I’ll probably use other words aloud too.

[GIF found here]

Tattoos?

I only have one right now, but I plan to increase that number someday. See photo below; I used to have chameleons as pets and got this tattooed near my right hip when I turned thirty to commemorate them. It’s really small.

I would like to get a phrase in Mando’a inked on me somewhere, probably “Kaysh meg miit’gaana, oyacyi”, which means “she* who writes, remains” [*substitute chosen pronoun – Mando’a doesn’t distinguish genders], and is a Mandalorian proverb teaching that you can live forever if you leave behind written words. I have it engraved on my iPad.

Favourite colour?

Very much the blue (with a hint of green) end of the colour spectrum. For something soft, duck egg blue, or for something bold, teal. See the colour of the titles in this post.

I also like the colours of hyperspace and would happily snuggle up with Din in the cockpit.

Do you like puzzles?

Yeah, I guess. I don’t dislike them. But I don’t really do them much. In terms of the crossword/sodoku/brain teaser sort, I might choose to do them in specific settings, like on vacation when I inevitably need to offer my brain something different than whatever book I’m binge-reading.

In terms of the jigsaw type, I have short phases of thinking, “Ooh, that’ll be fun!”, trying to do one, getting bored, and then forcing myself to finish. Last time that happened was Covid lockdown. Took me a year! Though, to be fair, it was one of these bastards…

Okay, I’m done. I realise I’m very late to the party, and a lot of people have already done this one, so sorry if you’ve already participated. No pressure (and no need to illustrate with gifs and images, I just can’t help myself)… 🩵

@604to647 @beefrobeefcal @d4rm4nd4 @feral-ferrule @gracieheartspedro

@joelslegalwhre @littlemisspascal @magpiepills @penvisions @quicksilvermad

@secretelephanttattoo @studioghibelli @syd-djarin @the-mandawhor1an @zaddymandalorian

[eliotquillon]

oooooh would you write about Cameron and whatever the hell was going on in her brain when she was in Chicago between Teamwork and Lockdown? She's still waiting for Chase to come back to her and is trying to bait him with divorce papers while getting updates about him going speed dating and punching House.

i will very likely flesh this out into something better and longer when i get home for the break and rewatch s6 but as a quickfire drabble:

The move goes well. Cameron spends the night in a hotel, arranges for movers to pack and ship her things, and catches the next flight to Chicago. Simple as that. Open and shut.

If she goes back to the apartment, she’ll cave, and that isn’t—she just can’t. She has to stand for something. It’s shock therapy, she thinks; Chase will see sense, once the apartment is empty of her jewellery and perfume and favourite books. He’ll realise what he’s throwing away, and he’ll book a ticket to Chicago. A ticket home, to be with her. He’ll come, Cameron thinks, and then a week passes with her staying with her parents, and he does not call. He does not cave.

You were supposed to come with me, Cameron thinks as she rubs the spot where her wedding ring should be sitting. You were supposed to be here already.

“Robert and I are getting divorced,” Cameron tells her parents at the end of the second week. It is the first time she has said the D word—one that isn’t Dibala—out loud. Until now she has been dancing around it: temporary separation, she’d said at first, and then, he just needs some more time. “There was a dealbreaker. I don’t want to talk about it.” She doesn’t elaborate; she lets her mother assume that it’s about children, that he doesn’t want any, and Cameron’s mom practically mourns the idea of little blond miniature Chases for the rest of the evening. It goes really well. No tears.

*

Cameron gets a job running the ER at Northwestern Memorial, better than the one she’d had lined up when her and Chase were meant to be leaving together, and for the first few days she keeps stumbling over her words whenever someone asks, politely, if she’s married. “My husband died,” she says at first, which is somehow both true and dishonest. She practices saying, and I’m separated from my second husband in the mirror until it flows smoothly off her tongue. It feels truer than the D word. It feels right. Divorce, she thinks, implies that he is no longer a part of her. That he is entirely gone. That she isn’t still watching her cell phone and hoping for a New Jersey area code to pop up, just in case.

*

“These don’t go through if he doesn’t sign them, right?” Cameron checks with her attorney. She feels silly and naïve; her knowledge of divorce comes mostly from television and grapevine gossip, no intimate knowledge to impart—her parents are still, after forty years, uneasily married, and she feels cut adrift.

She is calling his bluff, she thinks. Chase loves her. He does. He will not end their marriage over this; once he sees that she is serious, that she isn’t going back to Princeton, he’ll capitulate. Chase wants forgiveness, she thinks, more than he wants to own his actions. She can give him that. Please, Cameron thinks as she gives the go-ahead for the paperwork to be faxed. Let me forgive you.

*

Foreman calls every now and then. It’s always a little stilted—outside of work, they never really were quite friends—and Cameron gets the sense that he dances around most things, House especially, but Cameron hasn’t lived in Chicago for the best part of fifteen years and it’s embarrassingly comforting just to hear a familiar voice, a filed-down East Coast accent. They talk a lot about nothing: Cameron’s new job, his apartment renovation, what’s on the news. He will occasionally mention Thirteen, and even more occasionally Taub or Cuddy, but no-one else. It’s strange, Cameron thinks: the two most significant people they both had in common have been completely erased from their pool of conversation.

She knows it’s bad news when he calls her less than three days after the previous time. Cameron’s head goes to worst case scenarios: suicides, bus crashes, random shooters. She thinks, absurdly, of Chase’s younger sister all the way over in Australia, although she’s fairly sure that Foreman doesn’t know about Danielle and, besides, Chase hasn’t spoken to his sister in years. And it isn’t any of those things, of course. No reason for it to be. Instead, Foreman says, very apologetically, “House took Chase speed-dating the other night.”

It’s the first time he mentions either of them directly, and it hits Cameron like a punch to the gut. He was supposed to come with me, she thinks blankly, as she makes all the right noises about how she appreciates Foreman telling her and that there’s no hard feelings. She can’t go back; if it’s a ploy to make her jealous, it works, but Cameron knows what she wants. She can see herself being happy in Chicago. Being free. Her only concession is that he was supposed to be here by now.

“Robert, it’s me,” she says to an unfamiliar new answering machine when Foreman eventually hangs up. Her palms are slick with sweat. “Please sign and fax over the papers I sent you. All the best.”

Cameron regrets saying that last part immediately, but what is she to do. It is a far less offensive trio of words than I love you.

*

The truth is that Cameron has never been a particularly patient person. As a child, she always bemoaned her August birthday and having to wait so long between Christmas and birthday presents; as a college student, she always raced through test papers as soon as they were in front of her; as an adult, she is little different. As she regularly tells patients, no news is good news. Chase’s lack of response to the calls, to the divorce papers, is a good thing. It means he isn’t saying no. It means he’s thinking about it.

I can’t keep chasing you forever, Chase told her once, when they were in that horrible quasi-argument that had been about her apartment drawer and not about the drawers at the same time. Cameron is beginning to understand his sentiments. The wait is torture; she signs for a new lease, and catches herself wondering if she’ll have to break it if Chase moves over and they decide to upsize. She finds herself thumbing over his contact information with a religious regularity—like the rosary he used to keep in their nightstand and sometimes pore over when he was restless and thought she was asleep. He was supposed to come with her, and he didn’t, and she doesn’t know how long she can keep limping on—

It’s a silly detail that pushes her to book the flight, in the end. She’s having another one of her biweekly chats with Foreman when, ever so casually, he says, “It was just after Chase punched out House,” the embargo on either of their names lifted, and Cameron freezes.

“After what?” she asks, and she can practically see Foreman’s little self-cringe behind her eyelids at the question; God, there’s a version of herself out there that wouldn’t believe this, but she does sort of miss him. “When was this?”

“Not long after you left,” Foreman says tactfully. “House kept asking questions about the—divorce, so Chase clocked him one.”

Chase, Cameron knows, is not typically an angry person; he is even less typically angry at House, even when he was tucked away safe in surgery and refused to have anything to do with Diagnostics. The anecdote suddenly makes it very hard to swallow. He was supposed to come with me, she thinks. If he is angry at House now instead of her—

Cameron is sick and tired of waiting. Either he’ll sign or he won’t. Either he’ll come home with her, or he’ll stay. And it is safe now, she thinks. He will see her with the papers in hand, and he won’t be able to ignore her. He will know that this is it.

He’ll make the right decision, she thinks. This time, he will. She books a single plane ticket to New Jersey, and gambles on a double return.

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

In Dire Need

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.6k

Warnings: tw: shooting, performing surgery with a gun to your head, tw: pregnancy, tw: miscarriage, super major angst

Request by anon: Tw shooting: Hi there can I get a Spencer Reid x surgeon where the hospital goes on lockdown bc of a shooter and its like Greys Anatomy where in 6x24 reader goes through what Cristina does? And Spencer doesn’t find out until some members of the BAU point out how “brave” his s/o is to him when they saw footage of the operation room? Thank you 

Summary: Spencer drops you off at work without worrying if you're not going to make it home or not. Then, reports of a shooter in the hospital you work in come flooding in and now Spencer's whole world crashes down around him.

Square Filled: held at gunpoint for @badthingshappenbingo

Author’s Note: If you've seen the shooting episode of Grey's Anatomy, then you pretty much know what to expect with Christina and with what happened to Meredith.

x

Spencer pulls up to the hospital you work at, and you turn to him with a sweet smile.

“Thank you for driving me.”

“Of course.”

You lean up and kiss him quickly before leaving the car.

“Remember, we have date night tonight. I have a present for you.”

“I can’t wait.”

You leave his side and walk into the hospital with tens of other people trying to either get to work or see their loved ones. Spencer notices a tall man walk in right behind you but he doesn’t think anything of it. He puts the car into drive and heads to the BAU which is only a quick twenty minutes away. Derek greets Spencer as soon as he comes in and he hands him a coffee.

“Thanks.”

“How’s Y/N doing?”

“She’s doing her best. I don’t know how she and Savannah work in hospitals. They must see more gore than we do. Plus, their hours are longer than ours.”

“I guess the same thing can be said about our jobs.”

“True,” Spencer chuckles and sips his coffee.

JJ walks into the room with a worried look on her face and she turns the news on for all to see.

“This just in. Quantico State Hospital is on complete lockdown as reports of a shooter come from within. Doctors are rushing to get patients out in an orderly fashion, but the location of the shooter is still unknown. The Quantico Police Department and SWAT have already arrived on scene, but not much is known at this stage in the investigation.”

“This just happened ten minutes ago,” JJ says as everyone gathers in the bullpen.

“No, that can’t be. I just dropped Y/N off. Everything was fine,” Spencer panics.

“The police are getting calls after calls from people inside the hospital. They’re evacuating the wings who aren’t affected as of right now. There’s no telling where this guy is going, who his target is, or how many people are affected inside.”

Spencer takes out his phone and dials you but your phone goes straight to voicemail. Spencer visually begins to panic and Derek places his hand on his shoulder to help calm him down.

“We need to go down there and help.”

“I agree,” Hotch says, “but we can’t go inside until we know the situation.”

“I don’t care. I just need to get down there.”

By the time the BAU gets to the hospital, the roads have been closed off, and a lot of patients and doctors are in the parking lot separated from less urgent to most urgent in terms of who needs to be taken care of first. First responders and doctors use what’s in ambulances to help keep some of the patients alive, but there is a great deal still left inside the hospital.

“Commander, what is going on?” Hotch asks.

“I came over with my guys as soon as I heard the calls. The dispatch center is getting calls left and right about this.”

The man plays a few recordings of calls that came into the 911 dispatch center.

“There is a shooter in the hospital! Send everyone!”

“My friend is dead. Please send help. I’m scared!”

“I don’t know what you have to do but we need help in here! The shooter is tall with blonde hair and facial hair. I don’t know where he went.”

The next call captures Spencer’s attention because it’s you.

“There is an active shooter right now, and I’m in the middle of surgery that I can’t stop. Last I heard he was in the OR wing where I am. Send help!”

“That’s my wife!” Spencer gasps.

“Yeah, it’s always someone’s wife or daughter,” the Commander sighs.

If the shooter is in the OR wing where you are, are you okay? Are you even alive?

“Why aren’t you going inside?”

“We don’t know the situation yet. We don’t know where the shooter is or how extensive the damage is. If we go in now, we could scare the shooter into killing more people.”

“This isn’t happening right now,” Spencer sighs and pulls at his hair gently. He looks at Derek and Hotch in desperation. “What if it were Savannah? Beth?”

As much as it sucks, Hotch could use a person on the inside. He knows and trusts his team to go inside and de-escalate the situation while the others find a way to get inside the safest. Hotch gives Spencer two nods and he takes off running to the entrance. Derek steps in the way of the officers that try to stop Spencer but aren’t successful.

There are a few bodies by the entrance since that is where the shooter stuck first. He strains his ears to hear where the shooter might be since the entire hospital is filled with a deafening silence. He doesn’t have time for this when you could be in danger. He prays that you’re alright as he safely and carefully runs to the OR wing.

He looks into each OR as he passes by but you’re not in any of them. That is until he reaches the last one. On the floor in the scrubber room are two doctors or nurses who jump at the sound of the door opening. They relax when they see his FBI vest, and he puts his hands up to let them know he isn’t a threat to them.

“I’m with the FBI. Who else is in here?”

“My boyfriend got shot,” one of the doctors says. “My best friend is doing surgery on him now.” 

Spencer takes a couple of steps into the scrubber room to look through the window to see what’s going on. That’s when his whole world comes crashing down around him. You’re there doing surgery on your friend’s boyfriend with another surgeon on the opposite side of you, but the shooter is inside with a gun pointed at your head. Tears are streaming down your face because you refuse to stop fixing the man on the table.

“Uh, stay down there.” Spencer takes his phone out and hands it to one of the doctors. “Call for help. Tell them Spencer Reid with the FBI is in OR 3 of the surgery wing. Tell them he says to send the team in.”

“Okay,” the doctor says and grabs his phone.

Spencer slowly walks into the OR with his gun raised. The shooter immediately moves the gun from your head to Spencer when he sees him.

“Spencer,” you cry as you work.

“Drop the gun,” Spencer orders the man.

The man moves the gun back over to you and shoves it into the side of your head. You sob loudly at the thought of leaving Earth like this in front of the man you love.

“I will shoot her if you don’t lower your gun.”

Spencer has no choice but to listen to what he says. If your life is on the line, then he’ll do anything to save it. He drops his gun to the floor and kicks it away per the shooter’s instructions.

“Let him die.” When you don’t, he presses the gun into your head again, and you sob. “Do you want me to shoot you?”

“Y/N--”

“No, I can’t stop,” you cut your husband off.

Spencer needs to get that gun away from you so he takes one step toward the shooter, and he aims the gun at Spencer instead. With the threat of the gun off you, you and the other surgeon work quickly to do as much as you can as long as you can do it.

“The person you’re holding a gun to is the woman I love.”

“The man on the table, Dr. Greystone, is responsible for killing my wife. I was justice!”

“If you kill that man then justice won’t be served. Knowing that this doctor is rotting in prison for killing your wife is justice, and I can make that happen. All you need to do is put the gun down.” Out of the corner of his eye, Spencer sees the knobless door to the OR room open. Hotch and Derek walk in with their guns raised silently so as to not alert the shooter that they’re there. “I will make sure this doctor goes away for a long time. Just drop the gun.”

Whatever he sees in Spencer seems to work because the shooter drops the gun with tears in his eyes. Hotch keeps the gun trained on him while Derek jumps into action. He grabs the man and kicks the gun away before putting handcuffs on him. You’re just about done with this surgery anyway, so you hand the stitch and needle to your coworker and run over to Spencer. 

When you feel the comfort of his arms around you, you break down crying.

As soon as the shooter is apprehended, doctors and patients are allowed back inside. Paramedics come rushing in to tend to the wounded. Your friend and her boyfriend are transferred to a room, and you’re taken outside with Spencer while the rest of the BAU help where needed.

“I’m sorry,” you cry. “I had to keep going. This hospital is my family. I couldn’t let my best friend’s boyfriend die.”

“I know. I’m so sorry you had to go through this. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Spencer pulls you in for a hug and you put a hand to your stomach in thought. You have a pregnancy stick waiting for Spencer at home because you’re you wanted to surprise him that you’re pregnant but after what just happened, you might not be.

x

Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[matriayawrites]

The Hot Zone

wordcount: 30k

rating: e

pairings: travis konecny/nolan patrick, travis konecny/ofc, (tk/pat endgame!!)

tags: covid times, pat has an onlyfans, friends to lovers, omg they were roommates

a/n: i finally finished it babyyyyyy!!!

Ao3 link

Preview of ch 1:

Travis is worried at first when the whole fucking world goes into lockdown for COVID and he gets trapped in a two bedroom Philly apartment with Nolan, but honestly, it’s been kind of fantastic. Like sure, half the time they get on each other’s nerves. Nolan has threatened to toss him off their 11th story balcony on more than one occasion, and once, Travis was a little worried he actually might. 

But overall? It’s pretty great. 

Nolan’s been his best friend since they were in middle school, which makes them the perfect lockdown buddies. They had more sleepovers growing up than Travis could count. This is sort of like that, only with adult money. And they have to work from home for 8-10 hours a day. And Travis’s mom isn’t around to bring them snacks. Whatever. The honest truth is, if Travis has to be stuck in an apartment for an unknown amount of time with any person, he’s glad it’s Nolan. 

Travis’s job working at Valvoline is on hold since no one needs their oil changed when they don’t go anywhere, but the company was able to transfer him temporarily to online support, which he can do from the comfort of his living room. Nolan? Nolan makes his money a different way:

On OnlyFans. 

Travis will admit it’s kind of weird at first. It’s not like he doesn’t know Nolan is gay. Travis was the first person Nolan came out to back in high school when he developed an inconvenient crush on the football quarterback. Nolan having sex isn’t a surprise either. He picks up more dudes than Travis ever has ladies, and Travis isn’t exactly a slouch in that department - (or wasn’t, before a global pandemic squashed his sex life like a bug.) 

But sex work? It was weird at first.

He’s come to terms with it. Now it’s just…a thing Nolan does. After Travis gets off work, they have dinner, play some video games or watch a movie or something, and then Nolan goes into his room, shuts his door, and jerks off in front of strangers. A lot of strangers, if his paychecks are to be believed. Travis hasn’t ever looked him up. Sure, he’s been curious. Who wouldn’t be? Sometimes he has to wear earplugs at night to keep the sound of Nolan moaning to a minimum. But actually looking always felt like crossing a line. 

He supports his best friend no matter what, and if that means getting a white noise machine and industrial-strength Loop earplugs to sleep at night, then that’s what he’ll do. 

It doesn’t affect Travis much, other than the sleep concessions, until one day it does.

Eight pm looks like a fucking dream across Philly, with the sun splashing everything in a beautiful orange. Travis keeps one curtain open, and there’s a slant of sunlight across the living room that’s starting to leak onto the TV screen, which is kind of annoying, but is also so pretty that he doesn’t mind. Yet. 

He’s not even really watching ESPN, just has it on in the background while he’s scrolling his phone. Instagram is the same damn thing over and over. This depressing/hopeful see-saw of people moaning about their cooped up state, mixed with exotic pictures of foreign locales they all wish they could be at. 

There’s one of Sanny and his girlfriend, tucked up all cute together on the sofa with their dogs. Hashtag quarantine, hashtag blessed. Another of Travis’s brother Chase with his wife and their little girl, all masked up and giving the cameras thumbs up. Hashtag mask up for life, hashtag covid strong. It makes something in Travis’s chest ache. He sees his friends and family pretty frequently over Zoom. He and Sanny had lunch over Zoom this afternoon, even. But it’s not the same. He fucking misses everyone. 

Nolan emerges from his room wearing a ratty pair of basketball shorts and a scowl. Travis looks up long enough to register the grumpy expression, then looks back down at his phone again. Honestly, if he’d had to do this whole quarantining thing without Nolan, he’d have gone insane ages ago.

Nolan drops down onto the couch beside him, one arm slung over the armrest, and props his bare feet up on the coffee table. 

“They know who you are.” He doesn’t look at Travis, keeps his gaze on the Sixers highlights reel. 

“ That’s cryptic.” Travis says, reaching over to punch Nolan lightly on the arm. “Who knows who I am? The mafia?” 

Nolan is unusually pink-cheeked for eight pm. He blushes like a motherfucker a lot of the time, and Travis has run into him in the hallway in the middle of the night before when he was taking a break from streaming to find him so fucking red he’d looked like he’d smeared lipstick on his cheeks, but normal Nolan doesn’t always ruffle easily.

This Nolan? Sitting next to Travis right now, avoiding his gaze? This Nolan looks ruffled.

“My fans.” Nolan mumbles. 

That makes Travis put his phone down.

“Your what?” he asks.

Nolan lets out a long, dramatic sigh and rolls his head along the back of the couch to look at Travis.

“My fans. My subscribers. I was streaming from a different angle the other day and the door wasn’t totally shut and you walked by. Now they know who you are.” 

Travis laughs. “So? Did you tell them you live alone or something?” 

It earns him another even bitchier sigh.

“No. I didn’t tell them anything about that, but they…I don’t know. Assumed? And now they think you’re my boyfriend or whatever.”  Nolan’s words go decidedly mumbly on that last bit, and Travis laughs even harder.

“Bud, you wish you could pull someone as hot as me.” He leans over and jostles Nolan with his shoulder. Nolan’s a solid wall, deeply entrenched in the cushions by this point, so he barely moves. He gives Travis a small smirk, which they both know means Nolan can and has pulled people way hotter than Travis before, but he gives Travis the small victory. 

“Just tell them we’re roommates or whatever. Who cares.” Travis tells him.

It’s sweet of Nolan to worry, but Travis doesn’t give two shits what a bunch of horny men and women on the internet think about him. He doubts it’s enough to identify him if push comes to shove, and the people at his work aren’t likely to subscribe to Nolan’s channel. Maybe. Probably not. 

“I get it dude.” He reaches out and pats Nolan’s thigh. “You like to keep it separate. You want me to come on and do an AMA? Ask the Straight Best Friend?” 

Nolan grins.  “They’d eat you alive,” he snorts. 

Travis may not know what Nolan’s fans are like, but he follows a few women on OnlyFans. He knows what people can be like in the comments section. The sunset is turning half of Nolan’s face orange now, and it’s kind of pretty. He’s just so pale, and it makes him look like an ethereal modern art piece. 

“Yeah, probably. But if it makes it easier for you…” he trails off.

He knows Nolan’s been struggling. Fuck, everyone on the planet is struggling right now, but beneath his gruff hermit exterior, Nolan’s a bit of a soft nugget. They don’t exactly talk about this shit because duh, but Travis has heard him talking to his mom over Zoom, getting weepy when he thinks Travis can’t hear. And like… maybe they should talk about this shit, because it’s a big deal! Anything he can do to make Nolan’s life better, he’s going to do, no questions asked. 

Nolan doesn’t answer for a solid two minutes, just stares at the basketball players as they run across the screen, and lets out a huff of derision as Embiid misses his free throw. Just when Travis has decided Nolan’s going to ignore his suggestion entirely, Nolan turns his head again to look at Travis. 

“Yeah.” Nolan says with a small smile. “That would be cool.” 

[saintjosie]

I'm gonna jump in the discourse lol, I don't pass as a trans woman and I don't think I'll care to. But demilypyro was advocating for living as your best self, she happens to be in a country that funded her transition? But other than that she's like poor too. Idk it feels like everyone's just looking for trouble because she was responding to hate with snark

okay people really don’t get this so i’m gonna tell y’all a story. my story.

i’m a trans woman with a fuckload of privilege. i’m pretty, i’m passing, and i have a platform, but most importantly, i had the privilege of starting my transition when i was financially stable on my own in largely supportive environments. and i recognize these things now but i didn’t always.

i started my transition in may of 2020, during the height of lockdown. and at that time, i was working a cushy corporate salaried desk job with full benefits which included both therapy and gender affirming care. i got on hrt quickly, and because of good genes, because masculine asian features are regarded as feminine in western beauty standards, because i’m really fucking good at makeup, and because i was working from home and there was no where to go, i was able to stop boymoding by october of 2020, about 6 months after i started hrt.

and then around that same time, i had another stroke of luck. i made a tiktok about coming out at work, which i did in the most extra way imaginable, and that tiktok went viral. it got 300k views and overnight i went from having 150 followers on tiktok to several thousand. and a less than a year later, that grew to 100k.

that year was rough as hell. i transitioned during a time where going out into the world to find community was impossible. and i lost my job. and i got divorced. and i cut out my family. and because of all of that, i felt like i was doing better than a lot of other trans people. cause i was facing hardships and still doing incredible.

but even so, i was longing for community that would validate and accept me the way that i was validated and accepted online. and so over the next year, i moved across the country three times, something i was able to do only because i was able to afford it

during that year i finally started to get out and meet queer people as the pandemic slowed down. and as i connected with queer and trans people in varying stages on their own journey, i realized the enormous privilege of being able to transition, afford therapy, afford my meds, afford moving to a place where i could find community. i wasn’t just “better at being trans”, i was just luckier than most.

being able to accept being trans is so dependent on having the support structure around you to process what you are feeling. being able to socially transition is dependent on having the people around you who will accept your identity and being in a place where you are able to do so safely. being able to medically transition is dependent on having the physical health and financial stability to do so.

privilege is something that needs to be constantly dismantled within our community because privilege is the main weapon that is used to oppress us.

the fact that this demily person made a snide sarcastic comment doesn’t change the fact that she sought out a person without a following to shit on someone without a following. the inherent privilege of saying something like, “i’m better at being trans” even if she didn’t mean it seriously, shows that she doesn’t recognize the privilege of being in a place where you can learn to accept yourself.

and on top of all that because she’s a person with a following and a platform, the danger of that kind of thinking compounds and is worth calling out.

i’m not misunderstanding her intentions or the context.

you are misunderstanding privilege.

[demonkidpliz]

Update on balaramerchela

So, I had to disable comments on the latest story on my Wordpress blog, balaramerchela.

Basically, even though I explicitly said that this is a multi-chapter story of eight chapters of varying lengths and that I will be publishing one chapter every Friday, the not-so-gentle readers are not happy. They complain that I don't publish often enough. They complain that the chapters are not long enough.

I've explained myself repeatedly that I am an adult with a full-time job and family, pets and friends. I do not make money from these stories. My stories are original works and take a lot of time to write, edit and proofread. No machine learning and AI are involved. I cannot keep churning new ones out week after week. So my only option was to stagger them out one chapter at a time. This also gave me time to edit them in between my job and travels. I would love to have the whole story up in one go (like I used to back in the day during the pandemic) but then I cannot cope with the amount of nasty comments I get about not publishing a new story immediately afterwards. I’m sorry that the readers think that it’s unfair but I think it’s unfair that I write novel-length stories but only receive comments expressing disappointment from my readers. I’ve been writing since 2009 and in 2014, two of my friends, who are also my proofreaders, urged me to start this blog. Things were going well for the past 10 years but now this blog and my readers’ expectations have become too much for me to handle, in addition to my full-time job and personal life. I did a LOT of writing in 2020-2021. I’m talking full-length stories every Friday because I was under lockdown at home with nothing better to do. Once I went back to the office full-time, I explained that I wouldn’t be able to keep delivering stories like I used to and my readers were very understanding. But something changed this year. The hateful messages and comments have become unmanageable for me. This blog is an enjoyable, but a very small part of my life. I cannot let it take up so much emotional bandwidth. I’m happy to finish publishing the stories I have but after that I will probably archive balaramerchela. I will obviously keep writing, but I will no longer publish my stories. My two best friends might continue to proofread them and I might narrate them to my sibling, but that’s about it. The cons of sharing my stories with the world outweigh the pros. I’m sure there are other, much more talented authors on Wattpad, Tumblr and AO3 who will be able to fill the void. Thank you for reading and supporting me for the past 10 years!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from fringe figure to the prospective head of U.S. health policy was fueled by skepticism and distrust of the medical establishment—views that went viral in the Covid-19 pandemic.

People once dismissed for their disbelief in conventional medicine are now celebrating a new champion in Washington. Scientists, meanwhile, are trying to figure how they could have managed the pandemic without setting off a populist movement they say threatens longstanding public-health measures.

Lingering resentment over pandemic restrictions helped Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign draw people from the left and the right, voters who worried about the contamination of food, water and medicine. Many of them shared doubts about vaccines and felt their concerns were ignored by experts or regarded as ignorant.

Kennedy merged a crowd of Covid-era skeptics with people who long distrusted mainstream medicine and food conglomerates. Together, they helped return Donald Trump to the White House. With the president-elect’s selection of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the medical establishment is bracing for an overhaul of U.S. health policy.

Health authorities who beat the pandemic worry about losing more trust from the people they worked to save. Doctors, scientists and public-health officials are asking themselves how they can win it back. Among their postelection revelations: Don’t underestimate or talk down to those without a medical degree.

Officials fear that Kennedy will promote unproven remedies, appoint vaccine skeptics to immunization-advisory committees and hamper the government’s infectious-disease detectives in a future pandemic.

Kennedy has said he opposes food coloring and additives, the widely used pesticide glyphosate, seed oils and foods with added sugars, among many other issues. Medical authorities say some of his views, such as suspicion of ultra-processed foods, have scientific merit, while others are unfounded. The food and pharmaceutical industries are planning to win him over where they can and do battle where they can’t.

Much of Kennedy’s popularity reflects residual pandemic anger—over being told to stay at home or to wear masks; the extended closure of schools and businesses; and vaccine requirements to attend classes, board a plane or eat at a restaurant.

“We weren’t really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City,” the places where the virus wasn’t hitting as hard, former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said at event last year.

Authorities focused on ways to stop the disease and failed to consider “this actually, totally disrupts peoples’ lives, ruins the economy and has many kids kept out of school,” Collins said. The U.S. overall took the right approach, he said, but overlooking long-term consequences was “really unfortunate. That’s another mistake we made.”

Public-health officials wonder if they have sufficient clout for the next national emergency. “Science is losing its place as a source of truth,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious-disease physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “It’s becoming just another voice in the room.”

Pandemic restrictions wore on Joel Grey, a 62-year-old retired car salesman in Belfair, Wash., who voted for Trump. He got vaccinated only because diabetes put him at higher risk of complications from Covid-19. He said he watched acquaintances lose jobs because they wouldn’t get the shot and blamed his mother’s death at 87 partly on the isolation of lockdowns.

Grey became frustrated with scientists telling Americans how to live, he said: “I just don’t think they have a place in our lives.” His view resonated broadly.

In October 2023, 27% of Americans who responded to a Pew Research Center poll said they had little to no trust in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, up from 13% in January 2019.

‘Latest Nonsense’ Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit group founded by Kennedy, got a boost during the lockdown era, a time of surging interest in alternative medical and nutrition information and advice. The nonprofit raised more than $46 million from 2020 to 2022, nearly 10 times more than it collected in the three years before the pandemic, tax filings show.

The group published articles saying Covid-19 vaccines sabotaged the immune system and enriched shareholders of drugmakers. “Ignore the Latest Nonsense About ‘Variants.’ Stay Focused on Dangers of COVID Shots,” read the headline of one 2021 article. Others took aim at Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the federal government’s infectious-disease research center, and groups that supported vaccines, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

To counter such views, Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, shared information on the importance of vaccines and face masks. She dismissed unsupported claims as misinformation and described some of their purveyors as grifters.

Looking back, Rivera said her sometimes scolding messages weren’t helpful. “Everybody has been tempted by the slam dunk,” he said. “It’s not an effective way to communicate science. It’s just not.” She and others say they are dialing back the use of the word misinformation, saying it makes people feel they are being called liars or dumb.

During the pandemic, Palmira Gerlach had questions about the Covid-19 vaccines, but doctors “were very dismissive,” the 44-year-old recalled.

Gerlach, a stay-at-home mother outside Pittsburgh, said she falsely told her child’s pediatrician that she got the shot, seeking to avoid judgment. The doctor told her, “Good girl.” Gerlach turned to podcasts featuring Kennedy, drawn to his willingness to question pandemic measures.

One challenge for health authorities was learning how to combat Covid-19 while hundreds of people died each day. Researchers needed months just to clarify how the virus spread. That meant answers to common questions kept shifting: Was it OK to gather outside? When was it safe to visit grandparents? Do I have to wear a face mask everywhere?

Health authorities sometimes got it wrong. At first, officials said Covid-19 vaccines would prevent transmission or infection. Later, they learned that the shots instead cut the risk for hospitalization or death.

Shelli Hopsecger, a small-business owner in Olympia, Wash., who described herself as an independent, said she listened closely to health officials when the pandemic hit. But as school closures and lockdowns dragged on, she began questioning what they said.

Hopsecger, 56, said the pandemic made her realize how powerful a role federal health agencies played in her life. “We all are aware now that there are these agencies that look at these things on our behalf,” she said. “As citizens, it’s time for us to start telling them what we want them to look at.”

Last year, Hopsecger said she started listening to Kennedy’s podcast interviews on the recommendation of her 26-year-old son. She recalled Kennedy pointing out how millions of Americans suffer from chronic diseases, despite vast sums spent on healthcare.

“Mr. Kennedy is definitely on to something,” Hopsecger said. “Our current policies and systems are not doing the job of preventing or even reversing chronic diseases.”

Us and them Kennedy’s polling as an independent presidential candidate had fallen to the single digits when he threw his support to Trump in August and embraced the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.”

The career of Kennedy—an environmental lawyer, former heroin addict and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy—took a turn in 2005 when he began questioning the use of vaccines. He says he exercises, meditates and attends 12-step meetings every day.

While campaigning for Trump, Kennedy talked about how more Americans were obese and more young people were getting diagnosed with cancer. He decried the quality of foods and warned that water and medicines were polluted by toxins and chemicals. He criticized the medical establishment for pushing pills and shots, rather than addressing the root causes of disease.

“We were all told in Covid: ‘Trust the experts.’ But that’s not a thing,” Kennedy said in an episode of the “What is Money?” podcast in April. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of science. It’s the opposite of science. It’s not a feature of democracy.”

Many doctors, scientists and health officials with traditional credentials share Kennedy’s view that ultraprocessed foods contribute to obesity, yet they also say more study is needed. Likewise, many establishment health figures agree that scientists need to do more to understand the role of microplastics and so-called forever chemicals in food and water.

Yet many scientists and food-industry officials say some of the food colorings and chemicals Kennedy pinpoints as dangerous don’t affect human health in such small quantities. Nearly all are alarmed by Kennedy’s unproven or disproved claims—that vaccines cause autism, AIDS might not be caused by HIV and antidepressant drugs might be linked to mass shootings.

Ashley Taylor, a 33-year-old entrepreneur in New York City, sides with Kennedy’s views on food safety and the role of experts. She became critical of traditional medicine after scoliosis surgery as a teenager left her reeling in pain and reliant on Tylenol. She said she rejected her doctors’ recommendations and found relief from her back problems with acupuncture, a nutritious diet, yoga and positive thinking.

Taylor said that health authorities during the pandemic ignored studies on natural immunity and didn’t acknowledge that people who had been infected with Covid-19 might not need to be vaccinated. “What I just don’t approve of is purposefully presenting information in a way that is not allowing the American public to arrive at their own opinion,” she said.

Taylor listened to part of Kennedy’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci; Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” She was attracted to his ideas even more after watching a September roundtable on nutrition featuring Kennedy and his allies, hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R, Wisc.) in the Senate.

After previously voting for Democrats, Taylor said she cast her ballot for Trump.

Mainstream doctors, researchers and health officials are bracing for a Kennedy-led federal health department. They are considering how best to communicate with the public if they need to counter decisions that stray from established public-health measures.

Some Food and Drug Administration staffers have already stopped saying that vaccines are safe and effective, instead advising that the benefits outweigh the risks, a person familiar with the matter said. The change is intended to make clear that all medical interventions have risks, the person said, and to spike the argument that rare side effects mean vaccines aren’t safe.

Virologist Dr. Greg Poland said he advises scientists to communicate with humility and empathy, to speak as a compassionate physician would with a patient. “We’re not dogmatic. We’re not about forcing people,” he said. “We’re about imparting information.”

To build trust in vaccines, Poland, who is also a Presbyterian minister, speaks to conservative churches and civic groups. He tells them he will be truthful and transparent and then explains how vaccines work and how scientists arrive at a consensus.

Poland said he stays until he has answered every last question.

[vonlipvig]

I started playing Not For Broadcast, a game that manages to both be a worrying dystopia where human rights can and will be violated, AND a wonderful utopia where the rich actually face consequences… As someone from the UK I feel I am looking at both a brighter and darker future for my country and I don’t know how I feel about that! It is also (as someone who grew up during the era) very nostalgic. These adverts, this title sequence, I feel as if I have seen these before… a small me is dispassionately watching this shitty bullying play at school… at home she turns on top of the pops to see this exact music video… I had to go on the IMDB page for some of these actors to work out where I’ve seen them before.

I have just got up to the first day of lockdown, in what I am pretty sure is an unconscious electric shock dream. I’m enjoying myself a lot so far though my god it’s stressful having a job and a family to support. I think my wife is leaving me and taking our daughter with her, WHICH IS A BIT MUCH CONSIDERING I PLAYED HOOKIE FROM WORK FOR THE SAKE OF OUR RELATIONSHIP! And I’m SORRY you didn’t get to go on holiday daughter but we’re in CRUSHING DEBT! I TREAT OUR SON WITH COMPASSION BECAUSE HE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO ASKED ME TO DO SOMETHING I CAN ACTUALLY GIVE! I’M NOT RISKING OUR NECKS FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR BROTHERS TRUST FUND! AND I CAN’T MAGIC US UP MONEY BECAUSE I’M TERRIBLE AT MY JOB!!! I’M TRYING VERY HARD FAMILY!!! *sob*

Anyway I’m having fun, and getting to know the characters! I think Jeremy is my favourite at the moment. I can appreciate a character desperately struggling for both command and a sense of dignity on a sinking ship. If you look to your right you’ll see Megan has constructed herself a lifeboat and is doing just fine. She’s definitely going to be eating your lunch in a few years Jeremy… ah well!

YIPPEEEE WE GOT ANOTHER ONE, FOLKS! 📺

i will reserve most of my plot-specific comments for obvious reasons, but yeah, i do really love the angle they took with advance being a pretty popular progressive party (like, i would have voted for them, i'm fairly sure most of us would have voted for them). it definitely makes what's going to happen a lot more interesting and less black and white...

OOH the lockdown, one of my fave broadcasts, no doubt! it was, as you can guess, very much a product of the 2020 lockdown and the inability of getting together to film, and to me one of the best examples of art that used the situation to their advantage, i'm really so fond of it ♡ and also YEAH IT'S INSANE. i can't wait for you to discover all the insane secrets and possibilities within it...

again, shutting the fuck up regarding all your family choices here, but 👀 very amused, very amused, keep going!

and yeah, jeremy is such an amazing character. my fave's megan, but everyone in this game is so stellar, it's just fantastic.

[sapphic-luminosity]

4.5 years

I’m so tired.

It’s really incredibly tiring living through the ongoing pandemic and feeling like the world around me does not care that it still exists and is dangerous as ever. 

It really does feel like few people care at this point. It’s very hard to be honest, but the threat is such that I can’t really just relax and pretend like it’s not there.

I do follow covid conscious people on social media and it helps to know that there’s many of us out there. And I’m glad to have a number of friends who have remained covid conscious, but like we really are few in number. A lot of friends and family members who used to be cautious have thrown caution to the wind, only maybe masking when, say, going on flights or maybe to crowded spaces if that. I still want to be friends and have relationships with these people but every time I meet with them I’m very aware that there’s increased risk in doing so. Meanwhile plenty of friends who stopped taking covid seriously have simply stopped really talking to me or including me in plans, even online friends. It’s disappointing. It’s isolating. It feels like I’m disposable to many people. But at least I do see some people repeatedly in person consistently wearing masks like I do. And that helps some.

Every couple waves I’ll see more people wearing masks such as the ongoing one. You know what, that’s welcome, I appreciate everyone who starts masking again after having stopped. But masking only during the heights ignores that the spread of the virus still goes on in between. So the next wave comes as people relax and transmission increases again. 

It’s hard feeling mostly housebound. I am a bit of a homebody, but not nearly to this degree. Not having an in person job outside of my home doesn’t help with that but also I’m not sure that I could bear to do one at this point. Being disabled already pre-covid and moving states literally weeks before the shelter in place orders came into effect (not lockdowns, we never had those in the US) meant that I did not have a job when the pandemic struck. I decided to wait it out for weeks months a year until the first vaccines got rolled out and thought about trying to apply again but then in the summer of 2021 Delta came. Then Omicron. And so on. Now we’re up to BA.2.86 and JN.1 as the variants of interest. It’s never stopped. There’s never been a break. The years start comin' and they don't stop comin'.

Working from home was a huge option early in the pandemic for many people outside industries that require people to work in person but gradually companies and organizations have rolled back this accessibility by requiring people return to office. And the economy sucks right now. Applying to jobs sucks even in the best of times with the current system, but now we have confirmed cases of job recruiters putting up phantom jobs, some admitting that 75% of the jobs they’ve posted being fake to make their company look like it’s in better shape or positions where the candidate has already been selected internally and they just want to make it look sorta fair. Not to mention all the scam listings. Job hunting sucks. It’s a lot of energy spent for very few returns and my disability/chronic illness means I just can’t channel endless amounts of energy without paying a far greater price in the future.

It’s not just work either. I haven’t seen a movie in theaters since the Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey movie in February 2020. Maybe I’ll actually go see one soon, but it’s a real risk, even during a matinee when fewer people might be there, even masked in an N95. (And definitely a much bigger risk if I should want some popcorn or a drink.) I have been to one indoor event (MBMBaM live show) that required masks of everyone in late 2022. It was a risk but masking made it feel a little safer. Nothing like the risks today where so many people seem to have forgotten the danger that they knew in 2020 and 2021 and maybe 2022 and will look at you funny if you even wear a mask much less suggest they might wear one.

We’ve known about covid spreading as an aerosol but I’ve had people I know act like it’s safe to eat inside as long as you’re far away from people regardless of ventilation. Some even still believe the six feet away idea that has been thoroughly debunked. We’ve known about long covid post-viral syndromes since 2020 and that you can still get long covid after vaccines at least since 2021. Research has come out over the last few years about covid having rampant effects on your immune system, heart, brain, pretty much any organ in your body, but people still think of it as just a respiratory illness.

Our government has failed us profoundly. I never had much trust in the government, becoming politically conscious in the early Bush era in the wake of Islamophobia and endless wars against concepts which got widespread support from both dominant parties in the US. Coming out as queer in my early adulthood, I learned about the Reagan response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic (ignoring it for several years because ewwwww gay people!!) which filled in the blanks of knowledge from my childhood where the education was pretty much just scaremongering. It’s truly monstrous how Reagan ignored HIV and yet I’m not sure anyone has really done that much better since him.

I’ve never liked Biden nor do I pretend to. But even so, he campaigned on how thousands of covid deaths in 2020 were unacceptable under a US president when it was Trump in power. Yet under him we’ve seen likely over a million people die and the dismantling of protections that helped prevent covid’s spread or monitoring. We were pushed the idea that you simply had to get vaccinated and then it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But that’s never been true. He declared that the pandemic was over in September 2022 and in the two years since then I’ve watched more friends who mask consistently get sick than those I knew who got sick from November 2019 to September 2022. (I’m pretty fortunate in that regard, I know many people had lots of friends and relatives get sick and die or become permanently disabled prior to September 2022.) 

Sure, the White House approved 4 more covid tests per household again in response to the current wave (after getting rid of that program months ago), but the tests are notoriously unreliable for a single test unless it gives you a positive and generally you need to use them over multiple days to make sure you don’t have false negatives. Not to mention that we have known about asymptomatic transmission of covid since 2020, but people just seem to have forgotten about that. Testing daily would do so much to help track the disease, especially if our leaders were to encourage everyone to do them. But there’s a serious lack of test availability. The government could give each of us a test per day and help stop a lot of transmission. Where are free masks? Where is the continued funding for vaccines? Where is funding for improved ventilation including air filtration systems for every classroom and other shared public space? Where are protections to make sure that employers have to keep people home and give them sick pay? Any public health response we had has pretty much fallen away into privatized, “you-do-you” individualism. (Anyone remember that “you-do-you” MTA sign from 2 years ago saying masks were optional so wear them however the fuck you want? “You-do-you” feel free to get someone’s immunocompromised grandma mortally ill on the subway.)

There’s only one mention of the pandemic on Harris’ campaign website’s Issues page at the moment, only in passing while talking about automotive industry jobs. The pandemic is in the past, this seems to say. There’s no need to mention it except to compare what she has done under Biden vs. what Trump did. Biden may have stepped down from running after getting covid for at least the third time and possibly suffering lasting health issues including possible covid-accelerated dementia from it but there’s no need to address that. Simply move on and forget. Maybe she can’t even admit that Biden fucked up royally in 2022, she just has to save face for the DNC. Or she’s trying to appeal to anti-vax anti-mask “Never Trump” Republicans who still won’t vote for her. I don’t pretend to understand what she’s thinking of during her campaign’s numerous missteps so far.

We don’t live in 2019 anymore but so many people seem trapped there. They think that we who are covid conscious are unwilling to move on and are trapped in 2020, but I find that often we’re more attuned to the actual situation going on. So many people seem to be unaware of the long term consequences of catching covid, especially multiple times. So many people passively question why everyone seems to be sick all the time or why there are so many more heart attacks and such happening in young people or why there seem to be more dangerous drivers on the road or why there are so many fewer workers these days but never stop to pursue the answer to the most clear solution. Occam’s Razor never had a chance.

The pandemic has changed us all on levels we probably won’t realize for years or decades, but I feel like many people who have moved back to 2019 are worse for it. Worse empathy for those who had any empathy at all beforehand. Worse science literacy, especially amongst medical professionals. (“You’re not going to get sick in a hospital!” “Why would we wear masks in the cancer ward!?”) Worse critical thinking. Worse memory. I know people deal with trauma in different ways but so many people just seem to be so avoidant that any tiny reminder of it makes them want it gone gone gone. Or they seem to just sigh and laugh internally at those of us taking it seriously. “You just have anxiety!” they might say, even when in my humble opinion nothing is more rational than our desire to not get sick. Not to mention all the harassment people have gotten for doing things like masking because using a simple medical device has turned into a moral panic in some spaces. (I know of some people who would mask don’t anymore because of social pressure or outright threats used against them.)

It’s hard to have hope for the future and yet I hang in there. Maybe someday I’ll be able to work in person again. Maybe someday I will be able to be on a plane again and travel outside of the US or go to visit friends in parts of the US I’ve never been to. Maybe someday I will be able to eat inside a restaurant again instead of getting takeout or (rarely) taking a risk by eating outside of one. Maybe someday I’ll be able to casually sip an iced latte in a coffee shop while reading to pass the time again. Maybe someday I will be able to go to concerts or conventions or crowded outdoor festivals or indoor parties or board game nights or even ride the bus without having to ask myself if it’s worth the risk and without having to wear a mask. But with the infection rates we’ve been seeing that feels far off and most people don’t seem to care about making that world a reality.

I hope that there will be some treatment to finally end covid-19 and its numerous lineages that continue to mutate and spread across the world like wildfire. I feel like that’s one of the only hopes. We had a chance to end covid in other ways but our government leaders and greed from corporations failed us. Yet even with that, I know that if a treatment using some kind of super effective antibodies or such is developed, it’ll probably still be kept from many people by corporate greed. But still I hope for the future even if that hope is dim.

Until then I’m largely housebound. And I will forever be changed by this pandemic, largely not for the better. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to trust people in general again. I’m not sure how I would cope if covid suddenly disappeared from the face of the planet, like with magic. Maybe I would just completely lose it. Maybe I’d bounce back completely in a few months. (Unlikely. I’m still disabled and chronically ill from pre-covid times. My life would still have big challenges.) But I’m pretty sure it won’t disappear suddenly.

And I’m so very tired.

[callmewrinkles3]

Charlie

December 2022

Em really didn’t want to be out. She was constantly tired and still felt stressed, but Blake insisted. Her cast was off and she’d finished physical therapy so “cmon Timmy, the two of you are coming out for dinner and drinks.”

So she did what he told her and got dressed, the three of them sitting at a table and chatting. It was good food and relaxing and she actually enjoyed herself. Dan spotted where Blake’s attention was being drawn, a woman standing at the bar turning down a guy. She’d glanced over at Blake a few times but kept looking away.

“Have a crush, Blake?” He asked and their friend shook his head and pushed his glasses up.

“She’s cute. But you know me.” Em looked at him and stood while pointing at their glasses.

“Same again?”

“Yeah, please.”

Going up for drinks was just the first excuse that Em could find to go up to the bar and stand beside the pretty brunette Blake kept making eyes at. She’d deal with him being annoyed at her later, her friend deserved some happiness for once. As much as he tried to hide it she could hear the sadness when he said “you know me”. He’d put his personal life on the back burner for them.

It wasn’t that Blake didn’t want to meet anyone and settle down and be happy, but he didn’t have time. And it was entirely because of her and Dan. The thin walls between her old apartment and his worked both ways and she knew he’d stopped bringing anyone home over lockdown and never did again. Between how 2021 started, the mess of that year and how it ended, and the hell that had been 2022 he didn’t stand a chance. Instead he kept an eye on them, half brother, half parent, all Blake.

Officially his job was to be Dan’s manager but after everything he became a professional third wheel to make sure they were ok. He’d spent the last year keeping his barely functioning best friends going and ignored his own happiness. So for once Em - helped by the g&ts she’d drank already - was ignoring how shy she could be and telling the girl that Blake was interested if she was too. Em couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen Blake’s eyes light up at seeing someone. It’d be worth his annoyance to make him happy. He’d put her happiness first, it was her turn to do that for him.

“Can I get a gin and tonic, a Jack and Coke, and another pint please? And whatever her next drink is too? Thanks so much.” Em pointed to the girl beside her as she ordered once she’d stepped into a free spot before turning and holding her hand out. “Hey, I’m Em.”

She saw the surprise on the woman’s face the second Em introduced herself. If someone ever did that to Em in a bar one night she’d probably run away, and definitely run back to Dan, but the woman didn’t. She had skinny jeans and converse on with a tank top and a flannel shirt over it. The woman stood there with her nearly empty glass for a second before speaking.”

“Hi. I’m Charlotte. Can I help you?”

“This sounds insane, but yeah, you can. I mean not exactly me but my friend. See the cute one over there with glasses? His name is Blake. He thinks you’re cute.” Charlotte glanced over and back carefully, but Em saw the “oh fuck” expression on Blake’s face.

“He does?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about his face, he’s mad at me for telling you because he wasn’t going to say anything. But I promise, he’s a sunshine. The sweetest man in the universe after my husband. So I figured if you think he’s cute you can come sit with us and say hi. And if you don’t that’s fine, enjoy the drink. We won’t bother you.”

“You actually want me to say hi to someone at Daniel Ricciardo’s table? Really?”

“Sometimes I forget my h-boyfriend is a celebrity. But seriously, don’t think of him like that. Dan’s a regular guy, and Blake’s even more normal. So if you feel like it come say hi?” The drinks were out down beside her and Em tapped her card on the machine to pay. “I haven’t touched your drink, it’s all yours. It was really nice to talk to you, Charlotte.”

Em walked away from the bar barely balancing the three glasses in her hands, dropping them down on the table in front of her two favourite men barely spilling a drop. Her favourite part about getting back was how their jaws dropped slightly. She was never the one who did those things. She was the introvert, the one who hated talking to people. Especially talking to strangers. But three gin and tonics and a margarita meant she wasn’t thinking about how uncomfortable it was to talk to people. All she was thinking about was Blake being happy, even if it was just for one night.

“What did you just do?” Blake asked, staring at her as if she was an alien and not one of his best friends and his adopted sister.

“You mean to say “thank you”, right Blakey?”

“Where’s my sweet baby girl and what have you done with her?” Dan joked, trying to keep it together and not burst out laughing at what his wife had done.

“What did you tell her?” Blake sounded frantic so Em took pity on him.

“That my very sweet, handsome bestie thinks she’s cute. And then I paid for her drink and told her to come say hi if she thinks you’re cute too. She’d just said no to that other guy and I saw her checking you out, so I think she’ll come over. You’re welcome in advance.” Em took a sip of her drink. “When you get married I get dibs on maid of honour duties and to be godmother for your first child.” She shrugged and scooted closer into Dan. It was the least her thing she had ever done, but she owed it to Blake.

“You’re never gonna drink again. Ever.” She wanted to laugh as she watched Blake blush even harder, but she didn’t want to make things worse. Instead she smiled and snuggled into Dan as he wrapped an arm around her. “Seriously. I’m never letting you drink again.

“And you’ve never seen her when she starts drinking rose. That’s when she really says the weird stuff.”

“Dan!”

“You know it’s true!”

“Weirdos,” Blake murmured under his breath and Em could see how he was beginning to regret not only coming up with the idea to go out that night, but for Em to start drinking again after a few months off alcohol.

“I might be a weirdo, but I’ll have you know Charlotte’s looking over here.” She could see how Charlotte was trying to act normal while looking at their table and checking out their friend. It was a small smile half hidden behind a glass that she was trying to finish for some extra courage. It was the table where hometown hero Daniel Ricciardo was sitting with his girl and his best friend.

“She told you her name and you weren’t even going to tell me? Seriously, Timmy?”

“Oops?”

“Sometimes you’re so annoy-shit she’s coming over.”

If Blake’s cheeks were read before, his entire face may as well have been an apple. Em couldn’t remember seeing him so nervous I’m all the years she’d known him. He was always the composed one, especially at work, so seeing him blushing like a school kid with his first crush was the most adorable thing in the world.

“Hey, Charlotte, you joined us!” Em welcomed her happily, gesturing to the free seat beside Blake when she saw her standing next to their table.

“Is that alright?”

“I invited you over for a reason, right?” She smiled and gave a wink to make the other woman feel welcome and able to relax, even if for a moment. “Introductions, this is my h-boyfriend, Dan. Ignore if he tries to impress you and be fancy.”

“Nice to meet you, don’t believe a word Em says about me.” Dan held his hand out to shake like the polite man he was.

“And this is my best friend, Blake Friend. Yes it’s his actual name, and yes I tell him regularly it’s ridiculous. Blakey, this is Charlotte.”

“Hi. Call me Charlie, Charlotte is for strangers or when my parents want to ask something. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hey Charlie, it’s nice to meet you too.” Blake smiled and offered his hand for her to grab like Dan had, but it was nothing like when Dan introduced himself to Charlie. Em could nearly see the sparks. This was the night she’d met Dan for her best friend and this new girl, she knew it.

“I need some air. Come out with me, Love?” She whispered to Dan and grabbed his hand to give the other two some privacy.

“What’s that for?” He asked when they got to a dark corner across the bar.

“Give them some privacy.” She leaned against Dan and gave him a kiss, hoping that it was going as well as it looked for the two.