#He gave us like three therapy homework assignments and that was one of them. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

royallyprincesslilly · 5 years

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Title: Rumor Has It {9}*

Chris Evans x Famous Reader Uriah “Riah” Tyler-Evans

Warning: Plot, Cursing, Slow Burn, Small Sensual Smut

Word Count: 5.5K

Summary: You and Chris have been married for four years after a whirlwind romance. You are both happy and trying to navigate marriage in the public eye while balancing your successful careers. In the entertainment industry, not everything is as it seems, the flash of a camera lens impairs vision. As scandal and flashing lights put a strain on your once fairytale marriage is it possible your Hollywood marriage can stand the test of the rumor mill?

**Inspired by a video seen of Chris and his co-star Ana De Armas on their press tour for Knives Out at TIFF where she kept touching his chest and face standing about five inches apart.

**Loosley Edited/Proofread**

**Interactive**

Thank you guys for reading!!!! If you enjoyed this please LIKE, COMMENT, REBLOG. 😊 ❤❤

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Two and a Half Weeks Later-

A lot can change in six weeks. People can die, relationships end, or begin, or even become rejuvenated. Eight weeks ago, you couldn’t fathom the events that transpired between you and Chris. You couldn’t have imagined the troubles with his co-star, or the deep-rooted insecurities the both of you held or even the pain that the two of you would have to work through. It was more than you had ever expected but you were grateful you had gone through it. You’d found new appreciation and love for your husband and everything he was.

After the thrice-weekly counseling sessions you and Chris attended for the last seven weeks you felt your marriage was stronger than ever. You felt closer to him than you’d ever felt. The homework sessions you’d been assigned seemed to work miracles. They were all designed to strengthen communication like the questions that were assigned for the two of you to go through and answer through discussion. The questions were usually about deep values the two of you held such as how each of you would want honesty to be handled in your relationship, or what ways do each of you prefer expression of each other’s shortcomings.

Then there was the homework designed to increase emotional intimacy, like the exercise you did every night where the two of you sat in your underwear on the floor in front of each other and just stared into each other’s eyes. There was no talking and no moving just gazing and breathing that increased in time over the weeks. You were now up for forty minutes. In the beginning, the two of you could barely get through ten minutes without feeling uncomfortable or looking away to some part of each other’s bodies. Today is was easy to remain focused on each other’s eyes and it gave you a feeling of comfort and connection that lingered for hours and hours.

The sound of your phone broke you out of your thoughts. As you walked across your office to your cellphone on your desk you saw Chris’ face on your phone. A smile spread across your face.

“Hello?”

“I’m going to be a little late for the session. I have a meeting about Knives Out and it is intersecting with the time for therapy. I’m so sorry. I tried everything to push it back--.”

“Chris, it’s okay. I understand.”

“Do you? I don’t want you to think I’m not taking this serious or that--.”

“I know how serious you’re taking this. I see the effort you’ve made the last few weeks despite being in the middle of promo and a lot of work. I see you’ve done everything you can to make this and us primary even if it resulted in contract breaches.”

He’d told his people to inform production that he was taking a step back from a lot of the promo for the movie due to a family emergency. The majority of his promo obligations were done through video conferences and interviews or phone interviews. Anything that could be transitioned to Boston was, anything that couldn’t he just didn’t do. Unlike other celebrities, you didn’t feel a need to disclose that you’d experienced a miscarriage because it was no one’s business but yours and Chris’. Thankfully he agreed wholeheartedly. Your families were amazing. When they found out about everything, they were all incredibly supportive and helpful in any way they could. You were never meant to feel less than or inadequate and that was a relief. The subject was still a tough one, but you and Chris were working through it and had come to a mutual acceptance regarding the loss of your child. It wasn’t meant to be at the time.

“You should know you and our marriage is more important to me than anything, career and contract breeches included.”

Your smile was a wide one as his words filled you with warmth and love.

“After—do you think you might want to have dinner at our place?”

Another smile spread across your face, this one wider than the one before. You leaned against your desk and wrapped your free hand around your abdomen. The memories of your place came flooding back. They were good memories—incredible memories and you loved every one of them. You’d had so many firsts there.

“Dragonfly?” Butterflies whisked through your belly and you actually sighed and tried to fight those very butterflies from making a descend down south. It had been quite a while.

“I’m here. Yeah, yeah that sounds great,” you responded.

“Okay. So, I’ll see you at therapy.”

“Okay. Drive safe. Bye.”

“Uriah?”

“Yeah.”

There was a ten-second pause before he spoke again.

“I love you.” Three words was all it took for your heart to melt and those butterflies to bring on a wave of desire. Those words from him meant much more now than they ever did. You’d taken them for granted before. You wouldn’t ever again, especially knowing how easy it was to lose love, happiness, and even life.

“I love you too Chris.”

The two of you lingered on the phone for a few more seconds before you ended it. you sat there for a few minutes and tried to push away the desire and arousal you were battling. It difficult and the difficulty it took was increasing with every passing day. A lot could change in little time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, it seems that this is a good place to end for this session. I am pleased things have been going so well between you,” Dr. Danquah exclaimed with a jovial smile on her face.

Glancing at Chris who was beside you met your gaze and smiled as well. “We are too, we’ve really been working at it like you said. Anything is possible if two people want it bad enough,” Chris voiced while never taking his eyes off yours. He opened his hand waiting for you to take it. you wasted no time before you placed your hand in his. Butterflies filled you again as he laced your fingers together.

“Wonderful. I also take it you two have been adhering to my no intercourse rule?”

Both of you looked to her with straight faces. “Oh yeah. There have been no invasions of foreign land here.”

You snorted then pinched your lips shaking your head. There was his sense of humor again.

“Good. For many couples, I know this can be incredibly hard.”

“Hard is a very good word to use.”

“Chris!” He smiled at you and you couldn’t help but smile back.

“I get it, don’t worry. Sex is a natural part of a healthy, loving relationship. Many use it as a way to communicate. The thing is you never want to rely on it as a primary mode of communication. With the two of you; communication was a big hurdle to overcome and rework. We’ve been working these last weeks to rebuild and reevaluate what communication means to the two of you and we’ve been doing the homework to rewire your brains. Just like any workout plan, it takes two weeks to feel it, four to see it with your own eyes and six to eight to hear it, hence a real change. The two of you are making great progress but you are not quite there where we can reintroduce sex,” Dr. Danquah explained.

You nodded because you understood and knew she was right and knew this was the best path for the two of you to go. Just because you knew and understood, didn’t mean it was easy. Every time you saw him around the house, he looked better and better. He’d kept up with his Captain America body and still worked out quite often this afforded him the body of a God. Every time when you did your intimacy exercise it was always hard not to look over his body, always difficult not to let your mind wander to sinful places.

“I think it is a good time to tweak the intimacy exercise. As you know from the beginning you’ve traveled through stages with it. First you were fully clothed, then one item of clothing was gone, then both. The next stage is fully undressed. The two of you will choose a time and place that works for you. You will undress and perform the exercise. See how long you can make it, ideally, I’d like the forty minutes to remain but again this is at your pace. Do you think you can do that?”

You could feel Chris’ eyes on you. You tried to slow your racing heart before you looked at him. The expression on his face was masked as he searched your eyes. You nodded.

“Yeah, we can do that.” Chris nodded his head then and looked back to Dr. Danquah.

“After you’ve reached your limit of time that the two of you feel comfortable, then I want the both of you to take another five to ten minutes to voice to the other just what you love about them. Try to keep these admissions and statements short and precise. Vagueness is the enemy. Do you understand?”

“Sounds easy,” Chris zealously announced.

You wished you had even half of his certainty. Sitting naked in front of your handsome, sexy and built husband for forty minutes and remain focused on his eyes and your intimate connection while not jumping his bones would not be easy. Failure was imminent.

~~~~~~~~

After the session, it was close to eight. You and Chris drove separately back to the brownstone. It gave you more time to think about the session and your assignments for the night and this week ahead. You and Chris were not one of those couples who were seeking therapy because you weren’t attracted to the other anymore and needed help unlocking that attraction and desire for one another. You and Chris were the couple who still had plenty of burning desire for the other and just needed help with centering the focus in their relationship. Through the last few weeks, the attraction you had for each other was evident with lingering looks or touches. Even the air between you and around the house was supercharged with everything that was being suppressed between you.

It took you almost twenty minutes to get home and Chris had made your reservations for eight-thirty which meant you didn’t have much time to get ready. You quickly went into motion with finding an outfit before you attempted to coif your hair in a semi intricate style that Chris would appreciate. He especially loved when you left your hair in its natural curled and coiled state. The result was always his undivided attention on you and his hands in your hair. You’d probably be able to handle his undivided attention but his fingers playing in your hair was another story. You probably wouldn’t be able to resist that.

When you came downstairs Chris was standing in the living room with his back turned to you. The way his dark checkered suit jacket hugged his shoulders and back muscles made your eyes roam his frame more. The lower they went the more your palms itched to touch. When your eyes landed on his perfectly toned derriere you admired the way his matching suit pants hugged every curve, and that is where your eyes stayed.

You didn’t even realize when he turned around until you heard him clear his throat. Your head snapped up and met his eyes. He was softly smiling.

“And here I thought you didn’t check me out anymore.”

You snorted and dipped your head lower. If he only knew how much you’d checked him out over the last few weeks.

“I am only human,” you answered. Chris’ eyes swept over your body and a pleased smile took over.

“God Uriah, you’re gorgeous. My god—how did I get so lucky?”

He walked around you like a predator assessing their prey and your skin prickled with goosebumps. You had no idea how one man could hold so much alluring sex appeal. You’d lost your voice and remained silent and the amused glint in his eyes said he knew it. He stood beside you and held out his arm.

“Shall we, Mrs. Evans?” You loved hearing that from him, looping your arm through his you smiled.

“We shall, Mr. Evans.”

You walked through the door and down the steps to his waiting car and everything the evening held in store for you.

~~~~~~~~~~

“This place is still the same.” You looked around the dimly lit restaurant and took in every detail. The flowers throughout the dining room were beautiful and wafted a soft aroma around that mingled with the finely prepared food that was being served. The view was incredible. The first time Chris had taken you here was the first time you were in Boston since you’d married. It was a brand new restaurant and hadn’t gotten many patrons due to it still being in its very first week of service. You fell in love the first night as you celebrated your first trip to Boston as a married couple. Then you took the time to celebrate anything and everything. Since you’d come here to celebrate any and everything.

“I’m glad it is,” Chris whispered before he took a sip of his beer.

“So, what are we celebrating tonight?” He smiled then gazed at you for almost a minute without speaking.

“That we’re in a good place. We’ve been able to make it through something that would have broken other couples. Let’s celebrate that our love is stronger than ever. I hope you feel the same way.”

Uncertainty and worry washed over his face as he waited for you to respond. You reached over the table and rested your hand on his.

“Of course, I feel the same way, Chris. We’ve been through a lot, you’re right and we should celebrate that we’ve been able to go through the dark tunnel and we didn’t give up.” Chris laced his fingers with yours and gently squeezed your hand. You held his gaze and felt the air around you change.

“Mr. and Mrs. Evans, your desserts.” Once the waiter spoke you pulled your hand back. Chris looked disappointed but the look faded as quickly as it appeared.

“Thank you.”

The caramel and amaretto drizzled double layer chocolate fudge brownie before you looked delicious. You took up the fork and looked over to Chris’ plate of bourbon and chocolate sauce drizzled triple fudge chocolate cake and smiled.

“Fudge chocolate cake still do it for you huh.”

“What can I say, I just love chocolate. Can’t you tell how much?”

The intensity in his eyes was not missed on you. You knew just how he meant it. Heat rushed through you and pooled between your legs. Looking down to your plate you took a forkful and placed it into your mouth and moaned at the delectable taste of the confection. Every time you came here you got the same thing and every time it tasted like the first time you had it. You tipped your tongue out to lick your lips and took a peek at Chris across from you. His eyes were focused on your mouth. You bit your bottom lip, it was an action you’d done hundreds of times over the years when you saw him looking at your mouth, it was unconsciously done. Chris cleared his throat and looked away as he straightened in his seat. The tension between you was palpable.

The ride home was tense and thanks to the two accidental hand grazes your skin was on fire. On some level you were happy that the attraction between you hadn’t faded, that would have been an additional struggle to rekindle. Because that attraction was still as present as ever it made it even more difficult to adhere to the rules of therapy. Being married for so long you also knew Chris’ tells that said he was struggling just as much. Chris has a natural sex appeal that was always around him. Others got the beginning stages, the docile, polite ones. He reserved the full levels, the catastrophic panty soaker levels for you.

His eyes were always expressive, and he always used them. Throughout dinner, he’d made sure to make eye contact with you every chance he got often lingering the looks just enough to raise the temperature in the restaurant. He also knew you loved his tongue, so he played it up, licking his lips, or tipping it out to taste something. Your husband was the expert at the tease. Now wasn’t any different, you would have bet he initiated those “accidental” touches.

As he drove your eyes drifted to him and went over his right hand clutched the stick. In the dim light of the car, his grip looked slack as if he were merely resting it there. You moved your eyes to the wheel that he held with his other hand just at the bottom. You loved to watch him drive, there was always something incredibly attractive how he controlled the wheel and shifted the gears of the stick so easily. He’d been the one to teach you how to drive a stick shift and it was not easy, but he made it look so simple.

When he rolled to a stoplight your eyes dropped down to his spread thighs. The way his slacks hugged his slender but powerful thighs had you taking in a slow deep breath. Chris squeezed the handle of the gear, from how pronounced each of his knuckles were you guessed it was a tight squeeze. Moving your eyes back to his thighs you slowly went over every detail before you moved to his crotch. You could already see a bulge, but it wasn’t an aroused bulge it was just how blessed your husband was. You sunk your teeth into your bottom lip and burrowed in the leather passenger seat hoping the feel of the leather on your skin would be enough of a consolation—it wasn’t.

When the green glow lit the interior of the car, Chris quickly shifted gears and slammed on the glass. The tires screeched at the sudden change in speed and you heard him groan out. He knew you were watching him, and he was having a hard time ignoring it.

By the time you walked inside the house again the only thing you wanted was a hot bath and a way to relieve yourself. You kicked off your shoes, picked them up and made your way to the steps.

“Uriah.”

Looking over your shoulder your eyes met his. “Thank you for agreeing to dinner.”

“Thank you for asking me.” Your eyes lingered and the temperature in the room rose. Then Chris walked away toward his office leaving you standing there to catch your breath for a little while before you hurried up to your bathroom.

Forty minutes, three orgasms, and several cramped fingers later you were sitting in your closet but still on edge. While your extracurricular activities in the shower helped to rid you of more than half of your need for him you were still left with that empty feeling that only Chris could fill. You decided maybe work would help to take your mind off of your hedonistic urges. So fifteen minutes later you were in your office going over contracts, answering emails and making plans for the next few weeks. You went over every one of your upcoming obligations and got lost with scanning a script that was sent by your manager.

By the time you heard the knock at your door, it was near one in the morning. “Hey, you okay?”

You gave your husband’s tank and sweats clad body a once over and flush of desire washed over you again. Sighing you rubbed your forehead. “Yeah. Great.”

“You’ve been in here a while.”

“Yeah, I got carried away with work and reading this script.”

“Ooh, a script. Is it any good?” He leaned against the door jamb and crossed his arms. The action made his biceps bulge even more. You leaned back in your chair and audibly groaned as you pinched the bridge of your nose.

“Uh—yeah, it reads good. It’s a dramedy.”

Chris snorted and nodded. “Dramedy, didn’t you say no more after the last one?”

“I did but there’s action in there too. It doesn’t seem like a typecast to me.”

“Okay. I can take a look at it if you want, give you a different perspective.”

You were too busy checking him out to register what he said. When you got to his hips, the way the sweats sat just below his obliques you knew he wasn’t wearing anything underneath them.

“Riah.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s—what?” Chris smirked and pushed his lower half off the structure and your eyes went right back to his hips.

“So that uh—assignment by Dr. Danquah,” Chris began. Your eyes trailed back to his, he had your undivided attention now.

“Yeah.”

“Feel like trying tonight?”

You absentmindedly traced your lips with your finger thinking about if you had the strength tonight. Chris had a mischievous smirk on his lips and you were itching to ask him why he was so amused.

“Do you?”

He shrugged and glanced down to the wooden floors as he uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, so his left leg was the one on top. “I leave it entirely up to you babe.” The sound of the pet name was unexpected. He hadn’t used it in weeks. You sensed he was consciously trying to keep his words as neutral as possible. This was a slip, a slip that made you moan. Your moan made his hips lurch forward and like a chain reaction you bit down onto your bottom lip.

This was every day in your lives since you met him, he set you off and then you returned the favor and you knew it would continue until one of you closed the space between you and when that happened neither of you would be able to resist the other. You cleared your throat, averted your eyes and looked down at the papers on your desk.

“Yeah, we could try. I’m gonna finish up the next ten or so pages and I’ll meet you in the bedroom,” you informed making sure not to look at him.

“How about the living room instead?”

“Yeah, yeah that’s fine.” You busied yourself and nodded your head while focusing on the screen of your laptop. When you felt him walk away you released a rush of breath and tried to calm your beating heart.

Fifteen minutes later as you descended the stairs you heard the soft sounds of the Bon Ivar song you’d recently been using during these exercises. You loved the song even more every time you heard it. When you got to the threshold of the living room you saw the lights off and the fireplace was roaring and there he was on one knee nursing the wood. Your heart skipped a beat and you were sure you knew where that beat went—right between your legs. When he turned, he just stared at you. It reminded you of the night he asked you to marry him and the night he asked you to be the mother of his children. On both occasions, he got on one knee.

For some reason you felt nervous to do this. Over the last few weeks, this exercise became something you looked forward to at the end of the day. It had started to become something of a comforting force for you. Tonight, your therapist was upping the ante, tonight was a whole different level of intimacy. You slowly walked to your husband as he stood and put the fire poker down. When you stood before him with the fireplace between you it was then you realized he had on a lot more clothes than you. Chris must have thought about his clothes too his eyes scanned his body then yours and rested his eyes on yours.

He took a deep breath and lifted his shirt off then dropped it to the side. In the glow of the fire, his hair and beard looked like a deeper rust color and as the light danced across his skin it gave him a warm hue, one that complimented every dip and curve of his muscles. Chris then looped his fingers in the waistband of his sweats and pulled them off. You were right, he wasn’t wearing underwear. As he kicked them to the side your eyes slowly drank in the sight of him. He was absolutely perfect, and no other could ever compare. Chris rolled his shoulders back and held his head higher. He was feeling vulnerable. It was your turn to take the leap with him.

Slowly you untied your robe while keeping your eyes on his. Before you shrugged off the robe you hesitated, and you knew it was silly. He’d seen you naked so many times, he knew every inch and crevice of your body. He could probably paint a perfect oil painting of what you looked like with his eyes closed. It was silly your hesitation and anxieties. So, you took a breath and shrugged off your robe. Chris kept his eyes on yours for a long while. When they dipped lower it was a slow journey, he looked as if he were pressing every curve of your body, every beauty mark, and scar to memory. Your heart rapidly beat from your nervousness, but your belly fluttered like a swarm of angry butterflies lived there. With everything in you, you wanted him to come to you.

Chris looked as if he wanted to say something but instead, he pinched his lips. You weren’t supposed to talk. The two of you sank down to the fur rug and sat in front of each other and listened to the song playing over your sound system. Neither of you broke your eye contact or moved an inch. Two minutes, then five passed and before you knew it you’d lost track of the time and only focused on his eyes and everything you saw there. You saw love, hope, fear, desire, and a deep yearning. You didn’t know what he was yearning so deeply for and you wanted to touch him so badly.

His bobbing Adam’s apple caught your eye and you wondered if this was difficult for him. Meeting his gaze again you focused more intently on the goal of the exercise and everything you wanted. The love you felt for him was powerful and the love you felt wafting off of him was equally as strong. Soon you got swept away in that love and the deepness of his eyes. Before you’d felt nervous, scared even but now all of that was gone, all you felt was calm, and an overwhelming connection that felt as if there were an invisible string from your heart to his.

Before you knew it there was a bell chiming in the distance. It wasn’t loud but it was distracting. Blinking your eyes you looked beside Chris and saw the blinking of his phone alarm. When you looked back to him he wasn’t moving. His eyes were glued to your breasts.

“I love how smart you are, that you consciously make an effort to learn things and be a part of things that interest you,” Chris began; his voice was soft but confident. You gave him a small smile.

“I love your honesty. From the day you met me you have never lied to me about anything, even if it’ll hurt me, you have always kept it one hundred percent real. I appreciate that more than you know.”

He didn’t speak immediately; he didn’t look as if he were trying to think of something else to say he looked like he was trying to let your words sink in.

“I love your genuineness. You’ve never pretended to be anything you weren’t. that includes having a censor. I love that you don’t censor what you say especially to me, even though it drives me crazy something. I still love it.”

You smiled then pinched your lips. He smiled back at you.

“I love your sense of humor. You always make me laugh, yeah it’s kind of like a frat boy sense of humor or a dirty old man but I don’t mind because your dirty mind matches mine.” Chris snorted and laughed out loud slapping his hand across his chest. You laughed with him and fell even more in love with him.

“I also love your laugh,” you added.

Chris’s laughter died down and smiled at you. “I love your kindness, you love to make people think you’re mean and nothing but a savage but I see right through that Riah, I fell in love with your kindness, and how giving you are of your time, yourself, your resources. You are happy to give everything you have away and I love that about you.”

Feeling the prickle of tears you looked away from him but your eyes had a mind of their own and they dropped to his lap. Another wave of desire washed over you.

“I love your body,” you groaned out. Chris snorted again. You looked back to him and shook your head. “I’m sorry, well not really. I do love your body. You’ve always been the most beautiful, sexiest man I have ever met; you will always be it for me, Chris. Always.”

Suddenly Chris leaned over the space between you and moved closer. Before you were maybe half a foot apart now just inches. “I love your heart dragonfly, I love everything about you, from every natural hair follicle to your toenails. You’re the most beautiful, seductive, tempting and sexiest woman ever, you’re a goddess. My queen. I love you Riah.” A tear slid down your cheek, but Chris swiped it away and kissed where it rolled seconds before. Closing your eyes, you sat there and allowed him to place soft kisses across your face—your cheeks, forehead, jaw, nose, eyelids, and finally your chin.

When you didn’t feel his lips for several moments you opened your eyes to look into his. “Forever and a day Uriah. You promised me forever and a day and I won’t stand for anything less. I’m collecting all of it. Forever and a day.”

Crushing your lips to his you kissed him with everything you possessed. Your mother told you when you were a teenager that women fell in love one real time with one man. She said you could love others but that real, soul-shaking, earth-shattering love could only be felt once with one man. She said she’d felt that way with your father and one day if you were lucky you’d feel it. you never felt it with Christiano or any of your other boyfriends. You’d only ever felt it with Chris and after damn near five years of marriage, you still felt that way. Nothing had changed.

Chris lifted you onto his lap holding you in the tantric position as he savored your lips as if they were spun sugar and it was all he needed to sustain. When you felt him nibble your bottom lip you wrapped your arms around him and sank your fingers into his hair. Chris moaned on your lips and delved his tongue further into your mouth. The way his tongue teased and danced with yours stole your breath. You had to pull away and gasp for air. Chris then latched his mouth onto your neck and sucked at the spot on your neck he knew always drove you crazy. You moaned again and panted out ending with his name.

“Chris,” it was a fevered whisper. You could feel his need growing between you and you wanted nothing more than to slowly slide onto his length and reconnect with him the way your body needed.

“I love you so much, kitten.”

Chris cupped your breast and dropped his mouth to your hardened nipple. You threw your head back and moaned enjoying the feel of him. Chris suckled, licked and nibbled your flesh and in no time his length was hardened against your belly. It would be so easy and quick to just take what you needed, what you both needed in this moment, but you knew it would be a want of the flesh. Your bodies didn’t need to reconnect as much as your hearts and souls did—not yet at least.

As if reading your mind, he pulled his mouth back from your breast and kissed you once, then twice and gazed into your eyes. “I know, we can’t.”

“I want to,” you assured.

“I know, me too.” He kissed you again, you took control of the kiss and quickly got lost in it. Chris moaned on you and lowered his hand to your backside and squeezed. You groaned as Chris tore his lips away. “So damn much.” You quickly nodded.

“I want us more,” Chris added. You gave him a small smile then gave him a soft kiss.

“I do too.” He looked relieved as he dropped his forehead to your chest. You hugged his head to you and the two of you stayed like that.

“Forever and a day,” you repeated.

~~~~~~~~~

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exxar1 · 4 years

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Episode 11: New Believer, New Faith, and a New Vow

2/7/2021

- 1 -

Good morning! It’s a beautiful Sunday here in Las Vegas. I have much to talk about so I’m just going to get right into it.

It’s hard to believe we’re already a full month into the new year. This year for me has been very rewarding thus far. For starters, I have had no trouble keeping up with resolutions 1 and 4. (For a refresher, you can scroll back through my previous posts to the one from New Year’s Eve.) I have found time each day to read my Bible and pray, and I have had little difficulty in maintaining a pleasant attitude and a smile in my daily encounters with my co-workers and customers. As expected, though, that latter one has been tested a few times by the occasional sour apples that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. But I’ve surprised myself every time by my patience and my ability to keep a calm and pleasant demeanor. (Those of you who have known me for a long time will understand how truly remarkable that is for me.) It’s simply another testament to the power of God to change our basic attitudes when we are willing to let Him.

I’ve also made great strides in resolution #3, and that’s where I’m going to spend the bulk of my time on this post.

Have you ever sought something – therapy, a particular medication, advice from a friend or colleague – thinking that it might help with one problem, only to be pleasantly surprised that one, the result helped in many other ways you hadn’t anticipated; and two, that the change/outcome/counseling exceeded your initial expectations by such a great magnitude that you couldn’t believe you hadn’t sought this help long ago? That feeling has been with me for over three weeks now, and it’s only getting better with each session.

One of my first tasks in tackling resolution #3 was to consult a pastor on this issue of homosexuality and the Bible. I needed to know what God really said in His Word on this controversial topic, and since I have yet to find a home church here in Las Vegas the only pastor that I am casually acquainted with is Mark Sjostrom of the church in which I was born and raised back in Twin Falls, Idaho.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twin Falls or this particular church, allow me to forge a brief rabbit trail here to give you a short history. Grace Baptist Church was founded in 1975, and, back then, it was just a one-story, oblong, red-bricked building, its main auditorium forming a bubble at one end, at the intersection of Eastland Drive and Falls Avenue on the eastern edge of town. It’s still that same building today, only now there’s a massive, two-story gymnasium/classroom on the other side of the back parking lot, and a third, smaller, two-room annex that sits behind the gym. The first of those latter two structures was needed in the early eighties when the church launched its own private school, Twin Falls Christian Academy. I was in kindergarten when the gymnasium was under construction. I have many memories of watching my dad and some of the other men in church up on the scaffolds, putting together the walls, while I waited for my mom to pick me up after school, which was held in the various Sunday school rooms in the church. A few years later, I would be attending high school in the classrooms above that gym.

In the years since I have grown and left Twin Falls, I have come back to that church on the occasional Sunday morning worship service when I’m home for a vacation visit. I’ve always had mixed feelings every time I set foot beyond the threshold of its main doors (see my previous posts about my struggles during my teen years.) It’s the same feeling you get when you come back to something that is at once familiar and strangely comforting, but also brings with it unpleasant memories and the pain of old wounds that have never quite healed.

Grace’s pastor since 2005 has been Mark Sjostrom (pronounced ‘shos-trum’), and I didn’t know him that well when I decided to consult him on this issue. Our only interaction thus far had been a brief handshake and a greeting after those sporadic Sunday morning worship services, and I wasn’t sure he would even remember me when I nervously texted him a brief ‘Hello’ a month ago. He responded within a few minutes, and I re-introduced myself and then gave a short explanation of what I needed. We agreed on a time and date for a phone call, and I emailed him the next day with a longer explanation of what I needed to talk about with him.

That letter was a somewhat detailed account of what most of you are already familiar with: my struggle in high school with keeping my secret of being gay while trying to fit in socially and eventually declaring myself an Atheist after being expelled from school my senior year a month before graduation. It was probably about 2 pages, and I was now very nervous after clicking the ‘Send’ button. I suppose now is a good time to tell you something else about me.

I have been one of ‘those people’ for all of my adult life. You know who I’m talking about: the people who silently judge the other customers in the book store who pause to browse the Self Help section; or the people who quietly scoff when anyone talks about their latest therapy session with their friends or coworkers at lunch in the break room. I’m glad I don’t need self-help or therapy, I’ve always thought. But, then again, good for them, I guess. I’m glad I have all my issues worked out, and I’m a stable, normal adult. I’ve never had any issues that were so bad I needed to get help from an armchair counselor’s latest best seller or a psychiatrist’s couch.

Hhmmm. My life, lately, has been chock full of irony.

When the time came to dial Pastor Sjostrom’s number my level of nervousness was up to a ten out of ten on the anxiety scale. I hadn’t felt like this since high school when it was opening night of our Agatha Christie play, and I was one of the main cast. I had prepared a detailed outline of what I wanted to discuss, and, after a few initial pleasantries, Mark quickly put me at ease. I was pleasantly caught off guard by his relaxed, casual personality. I found immediately that he was very easy to talk to, and my anxiety level dropped to a ‘three’ in the first five minutes. Pastor Sjostrom is definitely one of those people who has found the right calling. His warm, personable demeanor made me feel like I was talking to an old friend over coffee at Starbucks, and after about ten minutes of getting to know one another, he brought the conversation back around to my letter.

Here’s where my second surprise occurred. Mark was bluntly honest. I had told him that I believed I was saved in 1985, when I was seven, after the evening service of one of our church’s mid-summer week long revival meetings. “Neal,” Mark said rather pointedly, “after reading your description of your life after high school, I gotta say that it doesn’t sound like you were saved. Your behavior and your atheism doesn’t reflect the change that is described in the Bible.” He went on to explain that salvation is a change brought about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the new believer. There is a desire to learn more about God and His Word. There is a desire to serve him and to live one’s life in surrender to Him.

I had to pause and think about that. And, doggone it, you know what? He was right. And the reason I knew that was because I had only to look at the last four months of my life, even more so since I had returned from Christmas vacation. That desire – that hunger – to know God had never been present in my life until September 17, 2020. That was the night I surrendered to Christ in an awkward, fumbling prayer on the way home from work. Ever since, I have had nothing but a desire to read my Bible and change my life. I told pastor this, and he agreed. It was evident now that I was truly saved. That evidence was lacking in my youth and my adult life up to this point.

My third major surprise of that initial counseling session – yes, that was what is was – was when pastor told me he was assigning me homework for our next weekly conversation. He wanted me to read the book of 1 John. He explained that we would eventually get to the issue of homosexuality, but that we needed to cover this ground first. I agreed to the assignment, and we hung up. I glanced at the clock in the upper corner of my computer screen. We had talked for almost an hour. I immediately reached for my Bible and opened it to 1 John. I read the whole book in about ten minutes.

1 John is a primer for the new believer. John states clearly and succinctly what makes a Christian a Christian. Chapter 1:9 was immediately familiar to me from my Sunday School days: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So was chapter 2:9: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness, even until now.” John goes to say in chapter 5:2: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments.” And, finally, verse 20 of that same chapter: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”

Yep. All of that book made perfect sense. Part of that was because I had absorbed so much of God’s Word in my youth that it had sat in the deep recesses of my brain for all of my life, and much of it had begun floating to the surface in the last several months – like debris from an ancient wartime submarine that has been recently dislodged from its ocean grave. Except that these artifacts – Bible verses, fragments of sermons, some of Mr. Walker’s proverbs from Bible class – were not dirty, soggy, disgusting relics. They were bits of priceless treasure, and I’ve been rediscovering them in dribs and drabs ever since.

I have had three sessions with Pastor Sjostrom, and they are each the highlight of my week. I very nearly broke down after hanging up from our first talk. I felt a combination of immense relief, peace and calm. Not to be overly melodramatic, but it was if something had dislodged in my very soul, like a sliver of wood just beneath the skin that has never quite come all the way out. I realized with immediate clarity that I was getting far more than just a pastor’s opinion on a particular issue for my book. I had stumbled on to something else, something I needed far more: spiritual counseling and guidance for my new life as a child of God.

I am a new believer.

That seems so strange to say out loud. I was raised in the church. I had at least a third of the Bible memorized by the time I was twelve. I knew all the major stories from the Old Testament – the creation of the world; God’s covenant with Abraham; Jacob, Esau and Isaac; Joseph sold into slavery into Egypt and God’s eventual deliverance of the Israelites from their captivity there; the introduction of the ten commandments and the Mosaic Law; Esther, Ruth, King Saul, David, the Book of Psalms, the prophet Isaiah – I knew all of it by heart by the end of my days in elementary school. Same for the New Testament – the birth of Christ; all of His teachings and parables; His death on the cross; His resurrection after three days; the founding of His church after His ascension back to Heaven – it was all as familiar to me by the time I walked away from high school as the mathematical precepts of basic addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.

I had assumed all this time that I was still saved. I thought I had really, genuinely believed in Jesus as my savior that long ago night in 1985 when I was seven years old. And maybe I did. But, for whatever reason, the Holy Spirit had not come into me back then. I was not truly saved. (This is perhaps worthy of a more detailed discussion and analysis later on down the road.) Whatever the case, I am most definitely a new believer now. The Holy Spirit is alive and well within me, and I have only a single desire and purpose: to know the God that created me, and to serve him with all my heart, soul and mind.

Pastor and I did discuss my homosexuality issue in our second talk, and that, along with the extracurricular reading I’ve been doing on this topic, has enabled me to finally reconcile what I couldn’t in my teen years when I first fought with this problem.

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If I am gay, and God – through His written word – has condemned what I am as a sin, how can I be His child and serve Him as he commanded me to do? That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with anew for the last few months. I began this new journey in last September with the premise that I was born gay. I’ve believed that my whole adult life. I proceeded from that assumption through all of my reading and research these last few weeks. But if God made me this way, why would He then condemn as an abomination the very thing that I am? Is He not contradicting Himself? How can this be?

Pastor Sjostrom asked that very question in our second talk. He then went on to answer it by explaining that my unnatural desire for the same sex was a cause of the Fall, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is what led their descendants to the sins of idolatry, fornication, sexual perversion, and many, many others. Yes, I was born gay. But that’s not how God made me. There’s a very distinct difference.

His explanation corroborated what I have come to discover in the last couple weeks as I’ve read Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church from the Counterpoints series. Author and editor Preston Sprinkle gathered four prominent Christian authors, scholars, and theologians to discuss this issue – two for and two against. I will not go into great detail of what these authors debate and discuss, mainly for the sake of page and time, but also because this issue is not anywhere near as complicated as it seems.

All four of the contributing authors to the Two Views book have used the following Bible verses/passages as the foundation of their arguments:

1.) The creation story in Genesis 1 and 2.

2.) Genesis 19:4-11 (Sodom & Gomorrah)

3.) Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13

4.) 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

5.) 2 Corinthians 5:17

6.) Romans 1:18-32, emphasis on verses 26-28

7.) 1 Timothy 1:9-10

Those authors have also drawn from extra-Biblical material such as the writings of Philo, a Jewish historian who was a contemporary of the apostle Paul; the Apocrypha; the writings of Saint Augustine; and various other books – most written in the last 50 years – on sociology, sexuality and anthropology in the ancient world.

Here’s an example of one of one of the arguments for the church’s endorsement of homosexuality. One of Two Views’ contributors, Megan Defranza argues that there were many people in Biblical times that were born with no distinct male or female genitalia or other defining sexual characteristics. These “intersex individuals” were often referred to as eunuchs by the people of that time, and many of them were used as sex slaves. Megan claims that Genesis 1 is “…a theological account describing creation in broad categories, not an exact scientific inventory of all of God’s good creatures.” She goes on to say that Adam and Eve were not the exclusive, ideal models for all of man and womankind. They were, rather, just the broad categories; that the birth of eunuchs and other such of types of intersex people prove that God would welcome the church’s acceptance of gays, lesbians and transgenders since they have been born that way, and their sexual desires are natural to them. She claims that God was not condemning the eunuchs and other similar people in those verses/passages I listed above. Those condemnations were for the ones who had turned deliberately turned away from God to worship idols and indulge their sinful lusts.

There’s a lot more detail to Megan’s argument, especially regarding the eunuchs and their forced sexual slavery to their male masters, but it’s not worth going into here. The other three contributing authors give similar arguments, citing external sources in addition to scripture, to support their particular view. Wesley Hill and Stephen Holmes, the two that are opposed to the church’s condoning of homosexuality and gay marriage, give the stronger of the four arguments. Two Views opens with Megan’s and William Loader’s essays (the other author who falls on the affirming and open acceptance side of this debate), but by the time I reached the end of their arguments, I already knew which side of this issue I was going to fall on.

Wesley Hill and Stephen Holmes – as well as Pastor Sjostrom – present a much stronger, sounder case for why the Christian church, no matter the denomination, should be condemning ALL forms of homosexuality as clearly as God does. My own Bible reading and prayer showed me this after only a few weeks. I don’t really need to read all the other books on this topic to know the truth. To be completely honest, I had a pretty good idea of what the end of this journey would look like before I even started it. All the verses from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and 1st Timothy that deal with this specific issue are quite clear. It is stated over and over: homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God. Paul stated it best in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

That word “effeminate” in the KJV is translated from the original Greek word that Paul used: arsenokoitai. This is a compound word: arsen – male; koite – bed. “Male bedders”, in other words; those men who sleep with other men. In the NIV translation, the word “effeminate” is replaced with the phrase “men who sleep with other men”. The only other passage that Paul uses that word is in 1 Timothy 1:8-10 (NKJV):

“But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine…”

The meaning of these two passages is quite clear: those that practice any or all of those sins listed will not inherit the kingdom of God. They are not true believers and followers of Christ. And thus, any church that not only allows its homosexual members to remain in their sin, but also performs gay marriage, is not a true church of God.

And such were some of you.

God has commanded those that follow Him and declare His name to turn from their wickedness and be transformed. Those that believe on His name and repent of their sins will no longer practice those sins listed in the passages I quoted above. That’s the meaning of the phrase, “…and such were some of you.” Well, I have definitely been transformed. I can feel the Holy Spirit working in me. And, because of that, I have no other choice. If I am to be faithful to my Lord and Creator, if I surrender myself completely to His will, I must take a vow to turn away from my sin nature. I cannot indulge in the “lusts of the flesh”, as Paul says in Romans, if I am to call myself a true Christian. I am now a child of God, and His will alone must govern all I say and do.

But, even more important than those passages I listed and quoted above, is the book of Genesis, chapter two. God created Adam first and then He decided it wasn’t good for man to be alone. So God made the woman out of Adam’s rib, and he called her ‘Eve”. Then, in verse twenty-four, God said, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” This chapter, more than any other passage in the Bible, clearly and explicitly demonstrates what God had intended from the very beginning. The only natural desire of the flesh was for the opposite sex: man for woman and woman for man. That was God’s original plan.

Unfortunately for us, Adam and Eve did not resist the serpent’s temptation to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After the Fall, their perfect, pure natures were corrupted by sin, and that corruption was passed unto their children, and their children’s children. Part of that corruption was the perversion of the natural, normal sexual desire. Men lusted after men and women for women. Even though the subsequent passages in Genesis which describe mankind’s deplorable state before the Great Flood never state it specifically, it is not unreasonable to assume that more than just homosexuality was a problem. Bestiality, pedophilia, rape and incest were very likely abundant among the first few generations of man, as well as the worship of false idols and complete rejection of God. Why else would God have felt the need to punish his creation by wiping them from the face of the Earth, save for Noah and his family?

As the old saying goes, ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’. I’ve always hated that pithy, snarky retort whenever I had to defend my sexuality to anyone who tried to tell me I was living in sin. But it’s true. God created only Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve; not Melissa and Eve; not Adam, Eve, and some other non-gender, non-binary person.

Just Adam and Eve.

Man and woman were joined in holy matrimony and, until the Fall, they lived in perfect peace and union with their Lord and Creator. Anything that deviates from that original, holy standard that God still demands of His children today, is a sin. That includes homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, incest, idolatry and devil worship, to name a few. Anyone that willfully practices or engages in any of those things and does not repent cannot call himself a true believer in Christ. Nor can any church that not only openly endorses homosexuality but also performs gay marriage can call themselves a true church of Christ.

So then, what now? If I accept that my sexuality is a byproduct of my sin nature, and that God, in fact, did not make me this way, how can I best serve Him? I’m still gay. That hasn’t changed. (And, yes, I’m sure. I’m watching last week’s episode of The Resident as I write this. Matt Czuchry and Manish Dayal are among the best male eye candy on TV right now.) I still desire a physical relationship with another man. (Either of the aforementioned actors would be especially nice.) But that desire – as well as the act – is a sin. God has made that clear in his Word. After some more talk with Pastor Sjostrom, I finally came to an answer – or, at least, part of one.

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I mistakenly assumed that after I asked Christ into my heart, after I surrendered myself to God, that my sin nature would be transformed. I thought what many torn, conflicted gay Christians and their family have thought: with enough prayer, genuine repentance, and strong faith I would no longer be a homosexual. God would change my unnatural desire, and I would be sexually attracted to women instead of men. I would throw out all the symbols of my gay pride that I had collected over the years – t-shirts, bracelets, baseball caps, the rainbow colored Apple watch bands – and I would begin my new life as a heterosexual man. 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Yes, it would be hard at first, but God and I would make this work, glory hallelujah amen!

But that’s not how salvation works. Yes, there was a transformation, but not quite the kind that I was expecting. It’s hard to put into words exactly what I felt in the weeks and months following that quiet prayer on that car ride home from work late the night of September 17, 2020. I knew for sure that something was different. To begin with, there was an almost instant peace and calm that settled over my entire being. All the anxiety, the fear, and the worry about the state of the world around me that had been plaguing me for many weeks melted away. In its place was a quiet, firm assurance that, no matter what happened from then on, I was in the hands of God. He would take care of me.

And then, in the days and weeks that followed that moment of salvation, I began to feel more than just spiritual peace and tranquility. The first was a hunger – an insatiable, ravenous desire to read my Bible. I had only the app on my iPad, and I started with Genesis 1. Every night, before bed, I would read two or three chapters. And then I would pray. It was awkward and nothing like the prayers that I heard time and again from my dad or my teachers in high school or my pastor back then. I stumbled over my words, I repeated myself, I kept forgetting what I wanted to say. And I still felt weird doing it. It was like I was talking to myself. But I kept praying nonetheless.

Gradually, as Christmas loomed closer and closer, and the more I read my Bible and talked to God, I felt something stronger inside of me. But it wasn’t anything physical, like an emotion. It was…something else, something in my soul. I imagined this new feeling as a few drops of red ink falling into a bowl of clear water. At first, the drops fall straight down, coloring only a little bit of the water. But then the ink begins to slowly spread, crimson tendrils that stretch outwards, eventually turning the whole water into the color of blood. That’s what it felt like was happening inside of me. My soul – the very thing that made me me was being changed from the inside out. And it felt damn good!

It was after my Christmas vacation, after ten days of rest and relaxation with my family in Idaho, that I noticed an even bigger change. When I returned to the daily grind of my two jobs, I realized that my whole attitude – and, by extension, my whole outlook on life – had been transformed. I was no longer the angry, anxious, frustrated, fearful man that was always pissed about something – usually the people who were my customers. Before, I was short tempered, impatient, always inwardly complaining whenever those around me were being difficult or annoying me in some way. Now, however, I was at peace. The difference in my new attitude from the old was as glaring as night from day. I greeted my customers with a smile. It was no longer an effort for me to be patient with the difficult ones. Nor did I feel the need to rant and rage on social media about the problems of the world, as I had been doing practically non-stop before I became saved.

It was like being wrapped inside joy, as if joy was something tangible – like a big, soft, warm blanket fresh from the dryer. I had to constantly check my reflection because I was sure I had a giant, stupid grin on my face all day long. And that feeling only got stronger the more I continued to read my Bible – now an actual book that I had bought from Amazon – and pray. That, too, was getting better. I no longer stumbled over my words or forgot what I wanted to say. The hunger to know God, to build a new relationship with my Creator, overshadowed everything else in my life. I lost interest in many of the things that had once taken up all my time, like watching TV or playing video games. All I wanted to do every night when I got home from a busy day was to open God’s Word and keep reading.

But there was one thing that didn’t change during all of that wonderful transformation. I’m still gay. The desire for that sin is still there, as strong and lustful as ever. Everything else about me seems different. I am, indeed, a new creature in Christ. So why am I still gay? Why is this particular thorn still lodged firmly deep in my flesh?

I still don’t have an answer. But I do have a theory. The transformation of the new believer in Christ is not like wiping the old operating system of your ten year old iMac. With a computer you can install a whole new operating system that’s free of the bugs, viruses and malware that plagued the old system. The hardware is still the same old hardware, but the software is brand new. Your computer has been transformed. It performs and operates like a new machine.

But we humans are not machines. We are creatures born of the Fall. Being saved in Christ has made us like new, but the old self – the old, corrupt nature – is still there. The old operating system hasn’t been wiped away. Rather, the new OS is now installed, and the two systems are at war with one another. Why is that, I wonder? Why doesn’t God simply transform our sin nature by wiping it way when He fills us with the Holy Spirit? Wouldn’t that be easier – and more complete – than forcing us to constantly battle our old selves in order to remain faithful and obedient to Him?

The honest answer is, I don’t know.

What I do know is that God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen not to remove this particular thorn in my flesh. I am still gay.

The thorn in my flesh. Yeah, that phrase sounds familiar. In fact, it’s been rolling around in the back of my brain for several weeks now.

In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul writes of the “thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan sent to buffet me.” Those four verses, more than any other Bible passages that I’ve read and also read about, have continued to echo within me ever since the beginning of this journey. Many pastors and scholars agree that that the thorn Paul speaks of was of a spiritual nature, not a physical. Paul says that he “…besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.”

The thorn in my flesh.

What if I am in the same seat as Paul? What if my sexuality is the ‘thorn’ in my own flesh?

I think that part of the reason that God doesn’t just snap his fingers and wipe away our old self is because, without those old, sinful desires and temptations, we wouldn’t continually come back to Him for mercy, grace and forgiveness. It might have taken a little longer for me to surrender if the outside world hadn’t melted down last year, but I have no doubt now that God has always been working in my life, and He wants my love, worship and obedience. My homosexuality is a reminder from Him that I have a choice: I can give in to my sin nature and indulge my own desires, or I can turn from the flesh, take up my cross daily, and follow Him.

God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our sin nature, and He knows that when times are good, when everything is going our way, we often forget Him – just as the Israelites did over and over in the Old Testament. We get wrapped up in our daily lives, turn away from Him, and give our worship to false idols instead; or we just pay Him our weekly rituals and sacrifice on Sunday, and then put aside our Bibles until the following week. But it’s during the times of adversity, when God allows the trials and tribulations of life to afflict us, that we come to Him. We seek Him because He is our only source of comfort and peace. The storms in our lives remind us that God alone can save us, can heal us. Our afflictions draw us closer to Him. And, if we remain faithful to Him, there is much reward for our devotion and service. When the storm has passed, we often find a rainbow.

The rainbow was God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants that God would never again destroy the world with a flood. In our modern world the homosexual revolution of fifty years ago took the rainbow as a symbol of pride and diversity. When I entered my adult life as an out and proud gay man, I, too, adopted the rainbow as a symbol of pride in myself. I vowed to live my life on my terms, and I wouldn’t be cowered or ashamed into silence about who I was, of what I had been born as. But, of course, I have renounced all of that since becoming a new child of God. It is NOT my life, but His as a gift to me. I live now in complete service to Him, and Him alone.

But I’m not quite ready to throw away my rainbow bracelet that I wear on my right wrist every day. It is still a symbol to me – and to everyone I meet in daily life – but not the one that it used to be. I have found a new place beneath the rainbow created by God in the aftermath of that flood in Genesis. The peace and reconciliation I have long sought has been found at last, and the rainbow is a symbol of both my old life and my new one in God’s service. I don’t find that conflicting at all, just as I have no problem calling myself a gay Christian. Until such time as God, in his perfect timing and wisdom, decides to change my unnatural desire completely, I will always be a gay Christian, and the rainbow will be a sign of my personal covenant with Him.

The process of reconciling this issue, the spiritual traveling and soul searching that I have done over the last few months, has shown me clearly that God is my Lord and Savior. He has allowed this affliction so that I would do the work that I needed to reconcile what appeared to be a crisis of faith. I wouldn’t have experienced personal growth in my life – and my faith – without this conflict and pain. Yes, it has been painful. Peeling back the faded scars of old wounds wasn’t not all pleasant. I had to go back to that fifteen-year-old kid and have a long talk with him. (See section 5 of this post.) I wrote letters to my parents and my three brothers, apologizing for the way I treated them all those years ago. I have recognized how selfishly I have been living my adult life, and the pride of my old nature has screamed fiercely whenever I bow my knee and my heart every morning in prayer. There is now a fight within me – the old nature vs. the new self – that will never let up until I die. And, sometimes, that fight will be painful. And yes, I already know that there are times when I will fail, when I will give in to the temptation to break my new vow with God. But that failure is not as important to God as whether or not I stay in the fight. And I will stay. I’m in this for the long haul, and I know without a shred of doubt that God is on my side. He wants me to succeed.

Hallelujah, amen!

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Most of you have seen my post on Facebook from three days ago. My only answer from God to this twenty-four-year-old conflict has been a call to celibacy. Until such time as he chooses to change my sin nature, to change my unnatural desire into a natural one, I have made the following vow to Him:

I take a vow of celibacy before God; that I have surrendered my life and my will unto Him; that I will not give in to the temptations of my sinful flesh; that I recognize my homosexual desire as a sin in His eyes, an abomination caused by the Fall; that He has saved my soul from eternal damnation, and I owe him nothing less than my whole heart, soul and mind.

I take this vow on the 3rd of February, 2021.

Amen.

- 5 -

I read a long time ago – probably in a textbook somewhere in college – that one of the tools therapists and psychiatrists use in their counseling of patients is to have their patients write a letter to their past selves. As I mentioned earlier in this post, I wrote letters to my family to apologize for how I had wronged them in the past. After some more thought and deliberation I decided to write one more letter, this time to that fifteen year old kid that used to be me.

At first, I thought this a stupid idea. I mean, how much more clichéd can one get? Plus, I’ve already treaded into dangerously melodramatic waters in this post. Is yet one more emotional, sappy passage needed?

Ehhhh…yes and no. Turns out, I had a lot more to say to myself than I thought at first, and, son-of-a-gun, I did feel remarkably better afterwards. Guess there was some genuine, therapeutic value to this little exercise after all.

So…here it is.

Hello.

It's been a long time.

Yes, I see you. You've been there all along, but only recently have I begun to really see you. You've been with me my whole adult life, affecting me, shaping me in ways I never realized until now. I thought I left you behind when I left high school. At various times in my life since, I've judged you, shunned you, tried to erase you, or just simply ignored you. I could never understand why you never had the courage to speak up, to ask for help. There were a few adults – or even your friends – who would have very likely sympathized and tried to help you. All you had to do was say something! But you didn't. You kept your secret, protecting it, guarding it like Gollum with his precious ring. I was the one who eventually had to reveal the secret to those around me when I was old enough and no longer ashamed of what I was.

But now I realize that instead of judging you and blaming you, there's one thing that I should have done long ago. I never said, “Thank you.” Thank you for giving me the strength and courage to step into the world as a confident, independent adult. It was because of you, what you went through silently as a teenager, that I developed the strength and resolve to live my truth as an adult. It was because of you that I knew what I wanted in life. It was never my desire to just go with the flow, to blend into the crowd and do whatever everyone else was doing. I did my own thing. And yes, it would have been better if I had been living that truth within God's will, but God, in His infinite wisdom, decided not to work His will just yet. He chose to wait while I forged my own path.

Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and be the adult that you needed. I would have embraced you, told you that you weren't a mistake; that God loves you just the way you are, including being gay. And, deep down inside, you knew that you were loved. Your parents told you that every day. But you always had that sliver of doubt in the back of your mind.

“Would you still love me if you knew my secret? Would you still accept me if I was gay?”

I, the adult looking back at you across the gulf of years between us, know the answer to that is a resounding “Yes! They have always loved you, no matter what!”

Part of me also wonders how our life would have been different if you had reached out to the one person that understood what you were going through; the one that knew your pain – and your secret. It was He that made you, after all. What I can see so clearly now is that it never occurred to you to reach out to God. You only knew Him through the church, through your teachers, through your parents, through all the endless rules, and restrictions, and demands that they all placed on you. That's what you rebelled against. God, to you, was just a system, an institution that governed every corner of your life. That institution would never understand your secret, would never accept you for the real you.

But He was there all along. He was there on those nights when you cried yourself to sleep. You were struggling to understand your pain, to understand the turmoil inside you, but you didn't have the words or the wisdom or the experience to fully realize it all. All that you knew was anger, frustration and fear. But God understood you, and He was there in the darkness, crying with you.

I want so badly to be there now, to wrap you in my arms and wipe away your tears and tell you that everything will be okay. Because it will be. You can’t see it now, but things will get better. You will find a way through this, and you will emerge on the other side with a strength and resolve that you never knew you had within you. The rest of your life is an as-yet-unwritten map of joys and blessings, failures and setbacks, triumphs and successes that will make all of this suffering worthwhile. You will know happiness that you couldn’t dream of – most of it found within the family that you don’t understand or get along with now. (There are 10 nieces and nephews that think you’re the greatest uncle ever, for example.) God has a plan for you, and, like the father of the prodigal son, He will be there with open arms when you finally come back home. He will accept you, just as you are.

But all of that is for later. For now, just know this: the storm will pass, and there will be peace.

You will find your rainbow.

#christianity #life #personal growth #homosexuality #gay

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kumkaniudaku · 5 years

Text

No Nut November

A/N: Shoutout to the anon that requested this. I hope you enjoy!

"Stop it!"

"No, you stop!"

"You were saying don't stop earlier today. Which one is it?"

"Shut up!"

Like high school sweethearts, CoCo and Chadwick sat together in their therapist's office, giggling and sharing small touches. Things had been almost perfect as they counted the days until their wedding. Aside from minor spats that were handled using the tools they learned in therapy, the friends turned lovers were enjoying the fruits of a healthy relationship.

Dr. Barea quietly walked into the office, unbeknownst to her favorite couple before stopping to observe their conversation.

"Ya know, when you two are on the same page, it's a beautiful thing to see." She smiled as Tasha timidly pulled away from Chadwick only for him to scoot closer and drape an arm around her shoulder. "Oh, don't stop on account of me. Continue the love fest!"

"We're just trying to make you proud. You've done a lot for us."

"Always a pleasure," Andrea laughed. "Well, since we're all smiles, it's only right that we have a free session. What's going on in the lives of my favorite, almost married couple?"

Tasha looked over at Chadwick and smiled, "We're thinking about moving in together early. It feels right. We're happy and spending every day together." Finally, looking away from her fiancé's loving gaze, she gave Andrea her full attention. "What do you think? Are we ready?"

"I think you're on the right track. How've you two been dealing with disagreement lately?"

"We're applying the listen, learn, level approach," Chadwick gushed while gripping Tasha's knee.

Andrea quickly jotted the small gesture in her notebook as she took in his statement. "Great. And how has that helped? Any discoveries?"

"I learned that Tasha just needs a moment to blow off steam before we talk."

"And I learned that Aaron prefers to solve problems in the moment, no matter how long it takes."

Dr. Barea watched Tasha's hand float to Chadwick's inner thigh and rest for a moment before her thumb began a gentle stroke. Noting the third instance of PDA, she sat forward in her chair.

"Tell me, how often are you two having sex?" Chadwick let off a surprised cough while Tasha's eyes bulged from her head. "What? We're cool here. I would guess maybe 3-4 times a week?"

"Higher," Tasha suggested.

"More than five?"

"Try twice a day."

It was Andrea's turn to be surprised as she forced herself into taking a sip from her coffee mug. "Wow. Okay. Um...woah. Where do you find the time?!"

"Before work, after work, getting dressed... Sunday's are usually empty."

"There was that one time during your lunch too."

"Oh yeah! I forgot about that."

Their therapist sat in stunned silence, mentally taking notes for both their file and her husband at home. She allowed them to run through several scenarios before lifting her hands in surrender.

"Okay! Shouldn't have asked," she laughed. "So, that's what's been keeping you two happy."

"I mean, we like each other too, now. Sex is just the cherry on top."

"Right. Of course. Out of curiosity, though, how often do you hang out? No sex at any point together."

"Last weekend," Tasha proclaimed. Her proud smile soon dissipated once the realization hit. "Wait, no. We had sex later that night."

"What about dinner with your friends last month?"

"No, we had sex in the car when we left."

Chadwick whispered, 'oh yeah' before sitting back to think. "Maybe when we had lunch on Monday. But then again…"

"Do you see my point," Andrea laughed. "Is sex the only way to enjoy each other? Trust me; I understand the bliss of engagement. Still, I'm afraid that your relationship's entire existence is wrapped in physical pleasure instead of the genuine enjoyment of your partner. Would you agree?"

CoCo and Chad sat in silence, understanding Andrea's sentiment but not wanting to admit she was right. She could sense the smoldering stubbornness which fueled her next move.

"Let's cut this session short so that you guys can jump on what might be my favorite homework assignment to date." Dr. Barea stopped short to drink from her mug amid protests from her clients. "Today is November 1st, and I want you two to cease all sexual activity until the end of the month. That includes solo fun."

"What!"

Andrea laughed at Chadwick and Tasha's simultaneous response and decided to show some mercy. "Okay, until Thanksgiving. But you'll get extra moral points if you can hold out for the entire month. In that time of abstinence, you are not allowed to decrease the time spent together. Carry out your routines as normal. I suggest you test out your moving in theory. Spend some time together outside of the bedroom and see what happens. I guarantee you'll be rewarded."

After several minutes of bargaining that ended in disappointment from the couple, Tasha and Chadwick left the office angry and strangely aroused. The mere sight of each other doing otherwise mundane tasks heightened the sexual tension between the two as they settled into Tasha's condo to live together for the month. Silent prayers as they piled into bed and attempted to cuddle were sent to God to ask for strength to keep their hands to themselves.

It was going to be a long month.

WEEK ONE

Chadwick stood at the bottom of the stairs in CoCo's condo, holding her heels and keys to help her as she rushed out of the house. Sleeping in the same bed without touching was beginning to affect her sleep pattern, leading to several restless nights and late starts.

"Oh my God, babe, I am fucked." Both of them caught the unintended second meaning and shivered at their sad sex life. "Well, shit, at least if I were literally fucked, being late would feel better."

"Only two more days left in the week before we make it to week two."

"Which means only two more weeks until you can take me to pound town."

Shaking his head at her joke, Chadwick extended his hand to provide balance for CoCo to slip into her shoes.

"I can't wait. But for now, you need to go to work."

It wasn't abnormal for them to leave each other with a quick kiss in the mornings, but today felt...different. The hard lines spanning Chadwick's body seemed to create the perfect grooves for the soft curves of Tasha's body. Their lips lingered a bit longer than usual as they fought an inner battle for restraint.

CoCo let go of a small moan and a shaky breath before pulling away. "I...I have to go. I can't suck your dick right now. I can't! Stop asking!"

"Wha…?" Chadwick started as she dashed to the front door.

Looking back, she bit her lip and shook her head, "I said, stop asking!"

The door slamming shook the coat rack beside it and left Chadwick in total shock with a small smile on his face. "Wow, I'm in love with a crazy woman."

WEEK TWO

"Babe, can you bring the shrimp over here? The pan is ready."

Following instructions, Chadwick navigated the quaint kitchen to deliver the cutting board to its destination. In two weeks of living together with no sexual contact, Chadwick suggested an indoor date night in an attempt to reduce the tension in the house. He knew it was time for a change when watching CoCo clean the kitchen counter one night made him more excited than he should've been. Being in the same room and smelling her perfume would make him tingle with excitement until he realized that he wouldn't be able to get any closer.

Making his way across the kitchen, he stopped short when he reached the stove.

"Co, I can't bring this to you. I'm sorry."

"Boy, stop playing and bring me the damn food. This butter is gonna burn!"

Chadwick found himself in a pickle. He could refuse to bring the item a second time, but that would end in anger and an empty stomach. Or, he could slide past Tasha's backside as risk losing all sense of himself once their bodies came in contact. Taking a deep breath, he told himself to choose the latter option to prove that he could withstand the temptation.

He planned to move quickly without looking down. If he couldn't see the forbidden fruit, he wouldn't feel the urge to bite. He nearly succeeded until a sudden shift in CoCo's stance left him butt to crotch with filthy thoughts tormenting his brain.

"Shit," he whispered as the bowl roughly collided with the countertop, sending some of the shrimp tumbling onto the counter.

"Are you okay? Did you trip?"

As CoCo attempted to turn around, Chadwick anchored his hands on the counter and shook his head. "Don't move! Stay right there. Give me a moment." Another shift on her heels made his body stiffen at the sensation. "Baby, please! Stop moving!"

"What do you want me to do!"

"Moan my name," he breathed out.

"What?!" Craning her neck around, she found him with his eyes clamped shut and lips parted to draw in shallow breaths. "Are you aroused right now?"

"I'm aroused all day, Co! Now moan my name."

"You know what, you can finish cooking. I'm going back to the living room."

Tasha made it a point to press her body into his as she left the area, forcing him to deal with the pain of rejection and an unattended erection alone.

WEEK THREE

The sexual energy in the house was at an all-time high to match the building tension. Small infractions would create an argument in seconds that forced them to institute the listen, learn, and level method more than before. As the end of the challenge approached, they found that they were spending time together without thought of sex, forcing them to cut physical contact short.

With Twister spread across the living room floor, Chadwick and CoCo's Friendsgiving game night raged on with the lovers locked in a winner takes all battle of bending prowess.

"Okay, Tash," Devin hollered over the noise. "Right hand on green!"

Looking around the board, CoCo smiled and began to move her hand, "You gone have to come harder than that, this ain't nothin' but a little lunge."

Her move placed her in a comfortable position with her feet shoulder-width apart and her palms on the ground a few spots ahead of her body.

"Tasha has assumed the position. Chad, your turn. Left hand on yellow."

With both of his feet on separate red dots, Chadwick searched for a comfortable spot to place his hands. Those watching the game sat in silence while he made his decision. Finally, his hand landed on the dot behind Tasha's left elbow, forcing him to hover over his fianceé slightly. Instantly, they were transported into a moment that featured fewer people and even less clothing.

The downward dog variation made them shiver with the contact. Tasha could feel the weight of Chadwick's body on her back, the same weight that would trap her to the bed as he explored the depths of her body. His touch made her light-headed and sent her body collapsing to the ground. Her sudden fall caused him to tumble on top of her with a thud.

Sprawled across the floor, the lovers fought to catch their breath.

"So, does that mean both of them lost?"

"I think it means we need to let them have a moment."

Slowly, the crowd began to thin out, leaving them on the ground in separate dazes. Tasha was the first to snap out of her trance and turn her head to address Chadwick.

"In one week, I want you back on this floor without those pants."

Smiling, he grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. "It's a date."

WEEK FOUR - THANKSGIVING

A long day of family friends and food kept Chadwick and CoCo away from home until the wee hours of the morning. Both of them wore a goofy smile as they used each other to stumble into the condo buzzing from the Rose served at their final stop.

"I'm gonna go put this pie in the kitchen," Tasha announced as she made her way across the room. "You want water?"

"Yes, please. My mouth feels like cotton."

Chadwick made short work of securing the door before joining CoCo at the kitchen counter. Her growling stomach overruled her plan to save the sweet potato treat for the next day. She was so into her food that it took her several moments to notice her partner staring at her.

"What," she asked with her mouth full of food.

"I'm excited for us to have Thanksgiving in one house one day soon. Our families under one roof with some kids that look like us running around."

CoCo chuckled before shoveling another bite of food into her mouth. "And you coming to the kitchen to steal food. I see your vision."

"Speaking of, let me taste some of that."

Tasha watched Chadwick lean across the barrier between them with her lip trapped beneath her teeth. He moved with the type of smooth confidence that made her heart flutter every time. When his face was close enough to feel the warmth of his breath on her skin, CoCo lifted her fork to feed him a piece of her dessert.

Watching his tongue escape his mouth to accept the food before using it to lick his lips was a moment that became far more sexual than intended.

A glimpse of the clock across the room made the gears of Chadwick's mind turn. "What time is it?"

"2:00 am. Why?"

Taking a swipe of sweet potato from atop the crust, Chadwick held it between their lips and smiled. "We made it to the finish line. How should we celebrate?" His index finger slowly swiped pie filling across CoCo's bottom lip to watch her repeat his earlier display. The moment she finished, he pulled her face closer to taste for himself. Sparks flew behind their eyelids as they settled into the significance of the moment. Pulling away left them breathless and ready for more.

A split second sent them in a race to throw clothes and shoes around the room and meet each other and around the counter until they were tangled on the cold tile of the kitchen floor.

"Babe, wait," Tasha panted, breaking the kiss to make sure her words were heard.

"What's wrong?"

Smiling, Tasha pressed her lips against his and pointed up at the counter.

"Grab the pie."

---------

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#Chadwick Boseman #chadwick boseman imagine #chadwick boseman x reader #chadwick boseman fan fiction

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theendisbeautiful · 4 years

Text

I'm just gonna leave these fanfics for whomever needs to read something nice and cozy today:

1. Mr Russo Goes to Hawaii

Summary:

In which there is an undercover op, and no one looks like a waiter.

Why you should read it:

I will simply leave you with the trope "undercover as married" and everything that goes with that. It's incredible.

"So how are we going to play this?" Danny said as he drained the last of his coffee, feeling a little more human already. "I mean, depends what Sorensen is like when we meet him, but you want to be good cop, bad cop, what? Clearly I'm the talker in this relationship, but do you—"

Steve raised an eyebrow at him, said, "Why don't we just act the same as always?"

"The same as always," Danny said flatly. "But gay."

2. ho'okāne

Summary:

As active as Danny's imagination was, however, as strong as all his fears could be at the thoughts of his little girl being taken away from him again, he'd forgotten to factor in one very important element: Steve.

Why you should read:

It's basically Steve wanting a family of his own and it just really shows his love for both Danny and Grace. And the trope is "Marriage for convince", so what's not to like?

"You just proposed to me!" Danny said, flinging his arms wide, and startling a group of lawyers walking past them. He turned and stood in front of Steve, blocking the way to the stairwell that led up to their respective vehicles, prodding him in the chest with one irate finger. "Out of the blue, with no warning, in front of a family court judge! Tell me how that's logical, huh?"

3. One Sure Thing

Summary:

He doesn't close his eyes. Doesn't pretend it's just another evening, no matter how much he wants to.

He knows this is it. Steve is leaving. No matter what Steve says, phone calls or not, this is the end of a run that lasted ten years.

Steve leaves and Danny is left to try and piece himself back together.

Why you should read:

Fair warning, I cried like 90% of this fanfic!!

However, this story deals with Steve leaving the best way it possibly could. Danny is heartbroken when Steve leaves, Grace is angry at Steve but they deal and that scene is just beautiful, and it does not feel rushed. This is my favourite fix it by far.

“But you know what else I know? Family is there for each other. Mine may be weird and broken and stitched together, but even for us that’s always been true. And I thought-” Her voice breaks and she scrubs at her eyes, pretending they’re not watering. “I thought you were part of that family. And- And I’m not sure if you see it that way, because instead of staying with us, with Danno, who’s always had your back you leave us all behind to go wandering around with Cath! And I like her, Uncle Steve, I do, but she’s abandoned you, more than once and you still chose her.”

She rubs her eyes again, looking out of the window when she can’t keep the tears back. It’s got the added benefit of not seeing the hurt look on Uncle Steve’s face any longer.

4. I'd Give You the Moon

Summary:

In which Steve McGarrett does something crazy, like trading homes for two weeks with Rachel Williams to stay in New Jersey for a Christmas getaway, where he meets one Danny Williams.

Why you should read:

If you love some Christmas magic or just family Steve, Danny and Grace this is a must!! It has everything from GrumpySteve to SoftGrace and when you add the trading a house for Christmas trope -> well you have yourself the perfect Christmas recepie.

Alternative Universe trope!

Danny slaps him across the shoulder and shakes his head, “Bastard. I’m not clumsy. You’re a huge, hulking figure that takes up half the space in a room with your physical presence alone. Then you factor in your emotional issues and there’s like, nowhere to move,” Danny says. Steve frowns.

“I don’t have emotional issues, Danno,” he says, annoyed.

Danny narrows his eyes, “You,” he jabs a finger in Steve’s chest, “Don’t call me that. Danny, Daniel, those are acceptable, Big D, D, Danno, D-Dog, those are unacceptable names in the book of nicknames to call me.”

“Big D?” Steve grins

5. Moving In (To Every Single Aspect of Danny's Life, Including the Boring Bits like Dry-Cleaning)

Summary:

It felt wrong for Steve to sound unsure of his place in Danny’s life. His place in Danny’s life was at Danny’s side, driving him slowly insane. Steve should feel secure about that.

Why you should read it:

This is basically just a story about how Steve falls naturally into every aspect of Danny's life. Pure fluff!!!

“Alright. Come on.” He hooked a hand around Steve’s arm, and pulled him back towards the master bedroom. He prodded him through his door, and back into his bed. Knowing that it would in no way improve Steve’s idea of what the boundaries between them should be, he flopped down next to him.

Steve gave him a look, and Danny suddenly thought he understood some of the pleasure Steve got from surprising him.

“Just go to sleep, Steve. If you have the dream, one look at my peacefully sleeping face will let you know that everything is right in the world.”

6. A Study in Touch

Summary:

After a contentious therapy session, Steve and Danny are given an unusual homework assignment: every day they are together, they have to reach out and touch each other three times. Danny seems fine with it, but Steve starts to unravel under the constant onslaught of affection.

Lucky for Steve, his ohana is more than happy to see him through.

Why you should read it:

It's just a whole lot of touching and learning to be comfortable with expressing feelings and emotions. VulnerableSteve is my fave!!!

And I love me some Chin and Kono!!! They will always be my fave!

"Please don't make me do your flirting for you."

"I - what?" Steve stuttered, looking at Chin in shock. "I'm not flirting with Danny."

"Really? Because this text message I'm typing would beg to differ." Chin typed for a few more seconds before he put down his phone in the cup holder. "The things I do for my ohana," he mumbled under his breath.

I hope you enjoy!!!

#mcdanno #steve mcgarrett #h50 #danny williams #hawaii five 0 #kono kalakaua #grace park #chin ho kelly #daniel dae kim #fix it #fix it fic #fic rec #fake relationship #I just need canon to leave me tf alone #alex oloughlin #scott caan #mcdanno+fic+recs #McDanno #Mcdanno

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rpausandwhatifs · 4 years

Text

There’s This Guy|| Elliot Drabble

@danhowell-rp

@felixpierp

@shanedawson-rp

Elliot had been fighting it for so long, that it was causing him to lose sleep. He didn’t want to bring it up in family therapy because maybe he could learn how to work through his problems without a trained mental health professional in the room. It wasn’t the best decision, but he had walked himself out of his room and down the stairs. Making sure on the way down that the girl was still outside.

Persi had been doing this futile assignment her therapist gave to her to read a book about personality disorders and anxiety to help her answer her questions and move along in her sessions to a point where she wouldn’t need to take them. They were visiting in London with Bryony, but the three parents had stepped out for a little while and trusted that the two were old enough to look after themselves. A beautiful day, she had her hair out of her ponytail, allowing herself to relax in order to get settled into the book. Criss-cross applesauced under the tree, she viewed the pages and started to fill her head with the words, her long orange locks blowing in the wind. It was a rare and gentle moment for her.

Elliot watches from the sliding door and begins to think about what he’s about to do. He’s basically giving her (and Persephone) cannon fodder, and he has a hard enough time as it is trying to figure out all of this out. Who knows? It might even be a passing thing but he wanted to test it on someone other than his parents, who he felt like would be uncomfortable at best, and probably disgusted worst-case scenario. Plus, Persi is gay(?), right? It won’t feel weird if he is, but it might be the person; you can’t help who you love, right?

The boy was so tangled in his thoughts that his saunter through the grass made him trip on his own awkward feet, exclaiming before tumbling in front of her. He sighed and stared at the sky a little longer on his back, his entire train of thought derailed.

Look, Elliot! It’s your cousin Harlan!

Baby cousin! Gimme a hug!

...

H-heyy Harlan...coming to babysit?

Yeah, but first I gotta finish my homework, your parents aren’t leaving for a little while...c’mere I’m not a stranger gimme a hug, cuz!

...

Ugh! Your sister snuck out again *sighs*...

*shrugs* You can call Papa and Otosan, and then come back, we can play a game- Oooo! Dibs on the good controller!

Du är så lat! Just go upstairs and get the other on.

The-then I’ll lose...

Then wrestle me for it! Show me how strong you are!

Y-You’re so big! I hate wrestling...

Why do you hate wrestling?

Because Persi is too big and she hurts my arm...

Do you like..wrestle with other boys?

Ew, no...why would I do that?

Cus sometimes boys wrestle! I wrestle with Reiner and stuff.

Again. Not me. Also huge. And ew.

Okej! Jag fattar!..And stop saying “ew.”

Stop talking other than English.

Make me...*looks at him, raises brows* Jag slår vad om att du inte kommer

Ha-harlan..

Tell me why it’s gross to wrestle boys.

...

“Ellie,” Persi said, “Yo, why are you being weird?...Helllooo!”

Elliot snapped out of it and turned his head to look at his sister, “Huh?”

“The fuck?!”

“Papa told us not to curse,” he replied, turning his head toward her.

“I don’t care. You came out here, ate shit on my patch of grass, then stared at the clouds...*sighs* What do you want?”

“I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“*scoffs* Oh that’s easy! You were born. Next question.”

“Noo! Persi...I-I-I’m...I think I’m a bigot.”

“Bigot? Do you even know what that word means?”

“I don’t like people...right?”

“No, dumbass-”

“I’m serious, Persi! Stop! I think I have a problem with sombeody...”

“Oh! Is someone picking on you?” she finally caught on, straightening and narrowing her eyes.

“Well...It’s hard to explain...”

“Is it a teacher? Another kid at school?..School bus?” she asked sitting up, feeling her chest drop that someone might be bullying her baby brother.

“He’s older than you...” he says sheephisly.

“Ew! Did you say something to Dad or Dan?”

“N-No...” he feels like the world is closing in on him.

“Some fucking perv is diddling you and I have to say something. Ellie this is serious shit, how long has this been going on? Do you know where he lives?”

“N-No! I-I-It’s something wrong with me...” he timidly tries to explain, finally sitting up and leaning over and points to his chest, urging his sister to keep her voice down.

“There’s nothing wrong with you. What he’s doing is wrong and that fucko is about to go to jail!” Persi exclaimed, shutting her book and starting to stand up when Elliot grabbed her arm in attempt to get her to sit back down, then jerking away from him, “NO ONE FUCKS WITH MY BABY BROTHER! Come on, we’re telling Dad.”

“STOP!” he yelled, his voice cracked, “It’s not like that! I don’t think I like...act like a normal boy, or I don’t think I like boys like Harlan or if I’m supposed to grow up like...I WANNA WRESTLE WITH HIM AND I DON’T KNOW HOW!”

“...W-...Is Harlan diddling you?” Persi whipped around to face her brother, the disgust on her face, “Wait, what? I dunno what you’re trying to say...Is he making you uncomfortable or touching you in the no-no zone?”

“N-No, no! Nothing like that! I just...I guess...can you like teach me how to wrestle with Harlan?”

Persi was completely perplexed by her brother's request, "Huh? What? Why? And why Harlan specifically?"

"Well if you were here that one time he was babysitting me he wanted to wrestle and I said ew and he told me it was bad to say ew to wrestling with other boys."

"Wait, like how him and Reiner wrestle? Like how boys just kinda roughhouse? Why do you say ew? That's weird."

"'Cus it's the first thing I say when he says it, but it's not how I felt. I dunno why I said it, and that's why I said that something is wrong with me and one of my friends called me a bigot because I don't like touching boys, but I like touching boys, I just don't know how."

Persi sat back down slowly and attempted to digest what her brother was explaining. She watched him try to use as much as his sixth grade vocabulary can muster. It made sense enough that his friends weren't helping him much, but the whole thing with Harlan wasn't clicking for her. Her eyes looked to the sky as she pushed her hair back and sighed, "You...Do you think you're not tough enough?" she asked.

"That's, like, part of it, but my friends don't wrestle, and I don't hang out with like big boys like Reiner or Harlan."

"So you want to learn how to wrestle because you want to wrestle with Harlan to be tougher?" she asked carefully.

"Kinda. I wanna learn how to wrestle so that I can only wrestle with Harlan," he admits with confidence.

"So the word you were looking for is probably homophobe. Just thought I let you know. However, if I think you're saying what I think you're saying then I really think you need to talk to Dad or Dan."

"I don't think they would understand-OWwwwwah!"

"Fucking idiot! Our parents are gay grown up boys! Gay means you like boys!" she bursted, extending a leg out to kick his, "You're not a bigot, though, and you're not a homophobe. Thank God."

"So you're calling me gay?" he asked, sitting up on his elbows.

"No. I'm calling the feeling you have towards Harlan gay...do you like girls?" she corrected him then asked swiftly as to not cause any awkward tension.

"I mean yeah, who doesn't?"

"Bigots and gay boys."

"So I'm a bigot," he nods and offers his answer, causing the girl to throw her foot down into his chest and knocking him back, "OWwwah! Get your dirty foot off me! This is my Versace shirt Otosan bought me!"

"How dumb are you?" she asked with a bite.

"Dumb enough to lay in the grass and think your foot is dirtier than the actual dirt I'm sitting in."

"Maybe you are a bigot," she scoffed, but trying not to be too mean on her innocent sibling.

"Seriously, Persi! What do I do?" Elliot whined, "Tell meeee!.."

"Alright, alright! Stop crying...Well. Do you wanna wrestle for real or do you wanna like they do on TV?" she asked.

"There's a difference?"

"Oh my god- yes! Absolutely!" she exclaimed.

"What's the difference? D-Don't show me!.."

"Uh, Reiner did competition wrestling for a while...And that's like sumo where you're trying to make him tap out or go outside the circle. The one on TV, which is fake, by the way, is a lot more slamming and jump moves and got some interesting drama," she said with a smile.

"Who's cuter?" Elliot asked innocently.

"What's your thing? Like why do you wanna wrestle Harlan?"

"He's..big..?"

"Not enough! I like Reiner and he's big. Do you like being held or do you like bonding with him or something like that? You understand that these are contact sports, right?" she folded her arms.

"Oh...ew."

"Why ew?"

"Because my friends and I don't play contact sports."

"Well then you're just gonna have to be different. Teach them and see if they like it."

"Again, I only wanna do it with Harlan."

"Stop dancing around why you like Harlan so much and just tell me."

"Uhh...cus..I-I'm not supposed to. He's our cousin. You can't have a crush on family."

"He's not our family technically...not blood anyway."

"What?"

"That's why I'm not completely grossed out. See, you're old enough now so I can tell you."

"What? That I'm adopted?"

"Harlan is, actually..."

"Wait...really?"

"Well, technically. Harlan has a mommy, but she couldn't take care of him, so Uncle Felix and Uncle Shane adopted him."

"Whoaa...but is it still wrong?"

"Yes, because he's too old. He's got 10 years on you, easily."

"Well can I still tell him how I feel?"

"Absolutely! He’ll still probably answer more of your questions, too."

Elliot was finally able to relax, pushing his hair back from his forehead and let it flop back down. Persi started to pick up her book and opened it to try and find where she left off. He watched her, sucking his teeth, causing her to flip the book and inhale sharply, widening her eyes at him. "Teach me to wrestle!" he whined, "And stop hurting my arm! C'mon! We fly back to the states tomorrow and I wanna try it with him."

"Ugh! Fine!" Persi said, moving her book and getting on her knees, "Get up, just like this."

Elliot moves as his sister puts her hair in a ponytail, "Alright! What do I do?" he asks, taking a heavy huff to prepare himself.

"Mentally prepare yourself to be grabbed...Physics dictates that your lower torso is the center of gravity so he's gonna grab your torso to get you off your feet and knock you on your ass."

"Ew-OWwwaah!" he exclaimed at Persi slamming her palm into his forehead, followed by her bonking him on the top.

"Stop. Saying. Ew. Open your knees and brace yourself," Persi said.

"H-How else do I prepare?" he asked, his shoulders still wound up. She puts her hands on his shoulders, trying to roll them.

"You've gotta loosen up. You can think clearer if your muscles aren't tense...What did it for you? With Harlan?" she asked, showing him to shake out his nerves.

"Arms...I-wow!...I like-yeah- I like his arms,” Elliot surprised himself with how automatic the response flew from his lips, then realizing how his heart felt to say it.

“That’s normal. And yeah he’s got nice arms, makes his hugs feel like you can trust him,” Persi said.

“When do you not trust a hug?” Elliot asked with a raised eyebrow.

“If you’ve been heartbroken, you’re me, or their energy is wayy off. Now, when I approach you I’ll try and go easy but I want you to try push back and pin me to the ground,” Persi explained, making sure to lock eyes with her brother, and get herself in position to tackle him with a small expectation he’d go down like he always does, “Ready? It’s gonna happen fast.” She recieves a nod, but just before he pushes her shoulders a little.

“Hey..uhh Persi?” he asked nervously.

“Hm? What?” she asked, popping her head up.

“I’d trust a hug from you, Persephone, too! Also, uh, thanks for not being whole jerk...” he admitted with a little smile.

Persephone looked at the boy and grimaced, but Persi felt like she might well up with tears because she really didn’t think she was a good sister, let alone he could trust with Persephone and everything, but she figures they should since their circumstances are unique.

[One Week Later]

“So...how was England?” Harlan asked, sitting on the couch, leaning back and flipping through something to watch as he settled into the easiest $200 he’s ever made. Persi had to go to work for the night and since her parents didn’t know when she’d be back (or if she was coming back that night), Harlan could use the down time and the money for when he went back to school after summer break.

“It was cool as usual, my mom, dad, and Otosan went out more by themselves so Persi and I got to hang out,” he started, watching the other’s sweatshirt-clad arms rest by his head, while he chose something to watch, settling by adjusting his hips into the couch. For the first time, Elliot was sweating, and not because it was too hot or because he rarely got in trouble, but because of the boy’s dark brown hair lazily gelled on top into a neat quiff, the soft curve of his body molded into the couch, making his sweatshirt ride up a little, “Uhh...how’s college?”

“UHm...I’m really busy. Was doing a lot of work and then I had a few projects. I like the library up there. The events are pretty fun. I was a little surprised freshman year but they don’t..do much for sophomores,” he said, looking at him with a sigh then furrowed his brows when he saw Elliot, “You okay? You feeling alright?”

“I think I like boys...” Elliot says, not realizing how quickly he jumped into the topic, “But I-I’m new a-and...Persi said for me to ask you for some advice.”

Harlan tried to understand what he was saying and sat up a little more, “Elliot...you know I’m too old for you, right?...I didn’t mean to make you feel nervous or uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, I know...but uhh..you made me realize it, so in a way you’re responsible for making me like this,” Elliot started, getting a little more comfortable and uncrossing his arms, slinking into the couch with him.

“Oh, am I really?..What’d I do?” Harlan chuckled lightly, tilting his head up and shaking his head a little in disbelief.

“I learned how to wrestle because I wanted to wrestle with you. Also, I sorta learned how homophobic it was to say ew all the time.”

“Ahh...so your sister is a good influence on you...” he said with a nod, smiling still to keep from spilling over with a giggle, he wiped his mouth and scratched his little hairs growing along his jawline just clustered enough to say he was trying to grow a beard.

“Yeah well, sometimes she’s good. I just wish sometimes was a little more often, but she’s still my sister and I love’r!” Elliot says pridefully, then backing up a little when Harlan looks at him, “Uhh..uhm yeah, she said this means I’m starting to go through puberty, but I gotta ask my dads about it.”

“Well I’ll tell you right now, it sucks, like pojke gör det jävla suger...enjoy being young, Elliot. Revel in that innocence for as long as you can...but if I heard you correctly, you said you wanted to wrestle me?” Harlan caught him before he wavered off and downplayed his gesture.

“Uhh y-yeah, but I just wanted to learn because I like how...uhh..strong you are~ and uhh it feels really nice to get hugs from you,” Elliot continued, not expecting him to pick up on it, his sweat getting a little worse as he struggled to look the boy in the eye that was staring him down.

“Bluush! Är du inte en söt?~..There’s nothing good on anyway..so get up, lemme see what you got! I’ll go easy on you as long as you’re not weird about it, okay?” Harlan mentioned as he sat up, slapping the boy’s knee as he got up.

“Uhh I’ll-I’ll try..maybe we should have a code word for if it’s too much?” Elliot asked, slowly getting up as he felt like he was about to throw up, but he could practically imagine living in the boy’s arms. Harlan rolling his sleeves up and standing over him just caused his knees to weaken just a little more. He didn’t remember him being this big, or brawny, or smelling so good.

“HOw aboouutt...hm..what’s your favourite colour?” he asked, taking in the boy’s obvious hesitation at approaching him.

“Black,” he answered quickly.

Harlan rolled his eyes at his selection and shook his head, then asking again, “What’s your second favourite colour?”

“Why doesn’t black work?” he quickly asked back.

“Too many hard consonants. If you can’t breathe, you can’t get your lips together to create blah noise and the ack is just gonna sound like you straining against me. Pick another colour,” he quickly explained as he tried to fashion a ring out of some pillows and throws.

“Oh. Orange then. I like how it sounds! OORRaannnggggEEE....”Elliot added, which made Harlan giggle and nod, shuffling over towards the circle in the middle of the room, “Oh hey can you just talk to me about how this whole puberty thing goes? I really don’t feel all that jazzed about asking my parents..I’m their baby and all..”

“Maybe later, cus I wanna talk to them first to make sure it’s okay. Especially since you have this little crush on me, men jag berättar inte för dem om det...” Harlan said shaking out his limbs and getting on his knees while he rolled his neck, “That’ll be just between us boys.”

Elliot got a wave of excitement and anxiety, a little frustrated that he spoke in Swedish over whatever the last part of the sentence was, but he thinks he’s not gonna tell his parents. It made him wonder, but it also made him worry. Was he just not going to tell them right away? Was Persi onto something about Harlan being a perv? His head was swirling and he was both scared and confused, which Persi told him he needed to clear his head before he engaged in a fight or any sort of activity like this. “Yeah..uhh yeah..sure..” He awkwardly gets on his knees and stares at Harlan before thinking of something that might calm him down, “H-Hey, Harlan?”

“Yeah? What’s up?”

“Uhh before we start..c-c..would it be too much to ask for a hug?” he asked, shy and timid and feeling the full weight of his question despite what he’d just explained.

“Sure. Anytime. Never saw harm in a hug,” he says brightly and pulls his forearms in as he embraces him. It was so surreal to think that Elliot looked to him as such an influence. Elliot squeezed against the boy and sighed a huge deep sigh, allowing his body to relax into his. Harlan rubbed his back a little, feeling him relax, giving him a soft kiss on the top of his head before giving him a playful shove, “Alright, now come on, cuz! Ge mig allt du har!“

#phan #persephone grace #elliot james #harlan kjellberg-yaw

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elenaescribe · 5 years

Text

People Like Me

I open my eyes. There’s a slim glimmer of light forming a halo along my lashes. My heart is beating fast against my chest, echoing in my throat as I feel it pulsating there too. The white walls of my bedroom sway from side to side like the movement of a boat. I clutch my pajama bottoms and realize my entire body is drenched in cold sweat.

“Mama!” The words shoot out from my mouth.

No response. Crawling to the edge of my mattress, I check the time on my phone: 10:15 a.m. “She’s probably at a meeting,” Logic concludes in my mind. I flip to my back and cover my face with a pillow. A thick rope makes its way up my spine and ties itself around my diaphragm. The oxygen is forced out. It feels cold against my muscles and I instantly recognize what’s strangling me.

“You’re all alone,” the anxiety hisses through my consciousness. The rope tightens even more. “No one even cares if you get out of bed.”

I grunt loudly and throw my pillow to the side.

***

Turning back seven years, it’s 2012. I’m a scowling fourteen-year-old waiting outside a therapist’s office for my parents to come out. They’re figuring out what happens next, how they can tame their hurricane child. I’ve grown into the habit of skipping meals, skipping school and sitting in an empty bathtub for most of my day. With the spikes of corn holders, I’ve scratched the skin on my ribcage until there’s a faint sight of blood. There’s been numerous visits to a nutritionist, a sweet older woman with short hair who tries to convince me to eat. There’s also been endless therapy sessions. I feel wonderful under the attention of a variety of people.

A door opens and my psychologist steps into the waiting room. She’s beautiful with clear eyes and long blonde hair. There’s a warm grin on her face as she waves my parents goodbye. I notice my mother fidgeting with her keychain and my father staring at the floor with his eyebrows furrowed together. They approach me and tell me we have to go.

“So?” I ask as we walk down the cold hospital hallway.

“She knows a place where you can get the help you need…” My mom struggles to reply.

“A place?”

“Yeah, for people like you.” My dad explains.

I stop walking and stare at them with a raised eyebrow. They halt and turn around.

“People with the same diagnosis.” He corrects himself.

“What’s my diagnosis?”

“Don’t worry,” My mom delicately smiles. “It’s… not very important.”

***

Using my right hand, I tug at a string dangling from the side of my window. The blackout curtain slowly lifts and uncovers the darkness swallowing my room. I stretch out the sheets on my bed and sit carefully on top of them. Looking forward, I can see my red water bottle filled all the way to the top and a cluster of books spread out on a wooden desk. I sit cross legged with a straight back and my palms on top of my knees. The only way to loosen the knot around my torso is by practicing some EFT- a technique where you apply pressure to different points around your body while reciting affirmations.

I begin by gently tapping on the karate chop point, a spot on the side of your hand below the pinky finger.

“Even though I feel anxiety and it makes my stomach hurt, I completely love and accept myself.”

I repeat this three times while pressing the same point on both hands. Afterwards, I tap on the crown of my head while deeply inhaling.

“This anxiety…” I exhale. “This anxiety that hurts in my stomach.”

I say this two more times. In a swift movement, my fingertips start pressing against the inner corners of my brow bones. Words keep flowing from my mouth like a stream of water. I tap of the temples of my head, beneath my eyes, above my upper lip, on my chin, my chest and under my arm pits. Not once have I stopped talking. Softly, I bump my wrists together and finish the exercise. My lungs expand with fresh air and contract as they expel insecurity, a huge wave rushing down to the tips of my toes.The rope around my diaphragm is no longer suffocating me.

***

My mother drives up a narrow driveway to an old building. It’s a small, perfectly geometric wooden doll house. We knock on the door and are greeted by a man with very dark circles under his eyes. He leads us to what seems like a living room and asks us to wait. I look around and take note of the furniture: everything is in a slightly different shade of beige. The lamps look vintage and expensive, the tables neatly polished. Then, there’s a comforting smell of coffee and cookies. For a moment, it feels like we’ve entered the most boring edition of a Home Goods catalog. The stillness of this home, the synchronized sounds of footsteps going up and down stairs, plants an eerie feeling in my stomach. This is the place my therapist recommended.

The guy with shadowy eyes comes back and signals us to follow him with his large hand. He takes us to a woman sitting behind a large brown mass- her desk, apparently. She peers across at my mother and I with a stiff smile across her face. Her hair is a deep chocolate color that blatantly contrasts her pale skin.

“Welcome to DBT,” A dull voice says. “I understand it’s your first time here.”

“Yes.” My mother answers.

“You’ll love it. Allow me to explain our program to you.”

The monotonous lady tells us that DBT is a type of therapy designed for people like me. It consists of two sessions a week: one with the psychologist they assign you and the other with a small group of teenagers. Everyone must attend group therapy with a parent- the same one each time.

“The patient and their guardian will have separate homework to do each week.”

Patients also get extra homework at their one-on-one sessions. DBT’s program is divided into four modules lasting three months each. Every week we’ll learn and practice a different skill of mindfulness. She guarantees that within a year of therapy, I will have made a complete recovery.

“That sounds great,” My mom asserts. “When can she begin?”

The woman gives us some papers and asks us to fill them out. When we’re done, she sets her piercing eyes on me and mentions another form. This one is only for me and without my signature, they can’t let me into their organization. Reading the page she hands me over, I realize they’re asking for my full consent. DBT needs to be know that I’ll cooperate, that I’ll agree to any treatment they decide is right. They also ask for my confidentiality- nobody can know about the details of their procedures. With a worried sigh, I glance at my mother. She pats my back and encourages me to sign.

***

Comfortable with the decreased levels of anxiety, I shuffle over to the short bookshelf next to my desk. On top of it are some transparent containers of jewelry, a Magic 8 Ball, a tiny sculpture of a monkey I painted a few years ago and a pill case. My mom gave me the rectangular case when I was almost thirteen years old and already a regular consumer of antidepressants. She was worried I’d forget to take my medication and thought a storage bin would keep me organized… which it did. Now the box is so old, so worn out, the edges look jagged and dark. Half of it is blue and holds the p.m. tablets, the other is yellow and for the a.m. ones.

I open the lid marked “MON am” and turn the case upside down. Three small pills land on the palm of my hand. The central focus of my medication is treating my epilepsy. For that, I take Epival- a long, banana colored pill that smells sweet like candy. Then come my mood stabilizers: Xanax XR for the demonic anxiety and Cymbalta to treat my depression. Returning to my bed, I grab the water bottle and swallow the bunch.

***

It’s around one in the morning and I’m sitting up in my parents’ bed. My father is gone on a business trip and my mother is long asleep. She lets me stay with her because I’m terrified of being alone at night, especially since I started believing somebody was trying to murder me. This began after I thought I had seen a grey figure with a bright mask outside my window. Whispers swirled in my ears and I decided to sleep only during daytime. Every night, I would watch movies on my mom’s laptop and browse through “pro-anorexia” blogs on Tumblr.

Hunched over in bed, I decide to look up a movie a friend had recommended a few weeks ago: Girl, Interrupted. The film starts off by introducing us to the protagonist, Susanna Kaysen, a high school graduate uninterested in following society’s demands. Hypnotized by Winona Ryder’s beauty, I willingly continue watching. Soon enough, Kaysen is institutionalized after an attempted suicide. She meets a handful of unique characters at the hospital, including the out-of-control Lisa. Susanna is immediately drawn to her, the same way I’d been drawn to various toxic friendships.

Halfway through the film, it comes to my attention how much I truly relate to her. We both self-harm, write to survive, have incredibly awful psychiatrists, are victims of sexual abuse and have been hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. Her impulsive and reckless behavior resonates deep within me.

“Mama.” I nudge my mother, trying to wake her up.

“What?” She groans, opening an eye.

“Do I have Borderline Personality Disorder?”

There’s a small silence.

“Yes,” She reaches out for my hand. “You do.”

“Oh…”

I put my earphones back on and continue watching the movie, seeing myself in every corner of every shot of that big hospital.

#bpd #borderline personality disorder #mental health #mental illness #personal essay #writers on tumblr #female writers #writing

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dearophelia · 7 years

Text

brightly shone the moon at night

Five Christmases in Olivia Shepard’s life. ~5k, G, includes references to parental death (not Hannah, she’s fine). [if you’d like background music] | AO3

one, mindoir.

Yawning, Charles quietly pads down the stairs, sidestepping the edge of the landing and the squeak that developed during the fall. He should’ve checked the weather before even getting out of bed – easier to plan how many layers he’ll have to pile on – but at some point, cold is cold, and they reached that point two weeks ago. At least the new heater Mark built for his engineering class seems sturdy enough for the chicken coop, even in the snow and subzero temperatures.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs and turns toward the kitchen to start coffee, but pauses with his hand hovering over the coffee maker. It isn’t nearly as dark as 3:30am should be: the kitchen lights shine into Mark’s room if the door hasn’t shut just right, so they turned off the motion sensors until he has a chance to fix his son’s door. He starts the coffee maker and, suppressing a yawn, looks around. His brow furrows when he looks into the living room.

The Christmas tree is on. And there are two mismatched socked feet sticking out from underneath it.

As the coffee maker burbles to life, Charles walks over, nudges a few gifts out of the way, and lies down next to his daughter. “Morning,” he says quietly. He follows Olivia’s line of sight up into the tree, smiling at the sparkling white lights Hannah carefully threaded through the branches.

Olivia huffs the kind of quiet little sigh only possible from nine-year olds.

He turns his head to look at her. His children are early risers, but 3:30 is pushing it. “You okay?”

She sighs again. “I didn’t get my homework done,” she admits, a twinge of guilt in her voice. She covers a yawn, and doesn’t take her eyes away from the lights and glittering ornaments above.

Charles knows that tone. What she means is I couldn’t get my homework done. “That’s okay,” he assures her. School’s almost over for the winter, one more missing assignment won’t matter. And if any of her teachers decide to say something about it, there isn’t a single one of them he wouldn’t fight on his daughter’s behalf. There’s an Alliance ship due in January with supplies; he and Hannah have already decided to have the ship doctor work with Olivia. They both have their suspicions about why she’s having trouble reading, but an official diagnosis would open a few doors. “Can I help?”

Shaking her head, Olivia scoots closer to him. Charles takes the hint and lifts his arm, letting her cuddle into his side. He brushes her hair out of her eyes and kisses the top of her head. “I love you,” he says, hugging her close. She nods and rests her head on his shoulder.

They lie side by side in silence for a while. Charles lets his eyes drift out of focus, turning the tree above into a blur of white lights and shiny smears of color. Water runs through the pipes from upstairs – Hannah’s awake. “We should get up before your mom comes down. She’ll think we’ve finally lost our minds.”

Olivia giggles and sits up with him. He stands and offers her his hand, then tugs her up and into a tight hug. “You’re my favorite daughter,” he says.

“I’m your only daughter,” she points out, hugging him in return.

“Yeah,” he grins as she steps back, “but I don’t have to like you,” he teases lightly.

She scrunches up her nose and, after a moment, sticks her tongue out him.

Charles laughs. “Do you want to help with the chickens?” He doesn’t need the assistance, though Hannah does need a truly tremendous number of eggs for today, but Olivia doesn’t look like she’s interested in trying to go back to sleep yet.

“Yeah,” she nods.

“Go get bundled up,” he says, and then heads into the kitchen for at least a sip of coffee before he has to pile on three layers of warmth.

The snow’s deep enough outside that he goes first so Olivia can step in his footprints. He keeps his stride shorter in deference to her nine-year-old legs, and holds the coop door open for her. Olivia makes quick work of collecting all the eggs while he feeds the chickens, changes their water, and checks the heater.

He lets Olivia go first on the way back, smiling into his scarf as she carefully steps in his footprints in the snow. Cold moonlight glitters over the ice that’s covered the trees and the vines, but warm welcoming candlelight shines from every window in their house.

“Thanks for your help,” he tells Olivia once they’re back inside.

Tugging off her purple hat, Olivia smiles up at him, a happy smile a billion miles away from the sigh she gave him earlier. She wraps her arms around his waist, hugging him tight even through two sweatshirts and a jacket. “I love you,” she says, a little muffled.

Charles smooths out her hair, and settles his hands on her back, hugging his daughter close. “I love you too, Liv.”

two, citadel.

Olivia glares at the stove, and her third attempt at toffee. It goes into the matter recycler with the other two, but at least she didn’t set off the smoke alarm this time.

“This is not difficult,” she mutters, rising up on her toes as she scrubs at the burnt bits. They only have one saucepan, and she’s getting tired of cleaning it. Toffee is fussy, it was fussy on Mindoir even when she knew all the quirks of the stove, but it’s never made her want to throw the pan out the window before.

Well. It did last year, but that’s because it was smoking so bad she genuinely thought it would catch fire, and the kitchen window was conveniently open. After staring at her for a minute, Mark told her to try out for softball in the spring, and then went outside to fetch the pan.

Olivia thoroughly dries the saucepan – even brings out a fresh towel, just in case – and sets it back on the stovetop. Lights and decorations went up around the human sectors of the Citadel over a month ago, and she’s heard nothing but carols on the walk home from the transit station for two weeks. She can count six brilliantly-lit trees and three menorahs in the windows of the building across the street, and someone’s gone to great lengths to hang garland and ribbons along the stairwells of their own building.

And yet, their apartment remains dark. No lights, no tree, no stockings on the wall, no wreath hung on the door with jingle bells that ring every time a cargo skycar flies past. No nutcrackers on the shelf or Santa figurines tucked into every corner, no candles in the windows.

She thinks the candles bother her most of all. She bought one, a little electric thing she found in a shop while she was taking the long way home last week; she turns it on every night after Mom comes home, but it’s not the same. It’s just one candle. They have six windows.

Sighing, Olivia dumps sugar back into the pan for one more effort. They don’t have a tree or decorations, Mom didn’t even ask what she wanted (which is fine; Olivia’s throat gets tight whenever she passes the Santa at the center of the upper Zakera shops, has to duck her head down and blink hard when she hears him ask a small child what they want; it’s better that nobody ask, lest she tell the truth and finally tumble over the same cliff her mother catapulted over six months ago in a small room on an Alliance transport), but it’s Christmas. And at Christmas, even though it hurts so badly to remember laughing while Mark dashed outside for the scorched pan, she makes toffee. Burning it a few times is part of the tradition, even if there’s no one around to see.

She’s spreading melted chocolate over the hardened toffee when Mom finally gets in. Olivia looks over her shoulder and offers her a smile, and not just because she’s carrying a pizza that smells wonderful. Olivia tries to be a little less sad on Tuesdays and Fridays; therapy days are hard for both of them – she dreads Monday and Thursday evenings so much she’s about to call it quits – but Mom always seems fragile afterward, like a gust of wind would shatter her into pieces.

“You’re making toffee,” Mom says, a strange, distant tone in her voice. She sets the pizza down and takes out two plates.

“Fourth attempt,” Olivia admits. She pokes at a particularly-stubborn corner until the chocolate finally covers it.

Mom laughs – it’s a tiny thing, more of a slightly-upbeat huff than a true laugh, but it’s more than Olivia’s heard in months. She bites her lip as she sprinkles toasted walnuts over the chocolate, determined not to cry into her candy.

“I was thinking,” Mark says once they’ve sat down to pizza.

“That’s dangerous,” Olivia says, out of habit. But when she looks up, it isn’t Mark sitting across from her – it’s Mom. “Sorry,” she immediately apologizes. Maybe she shouldn’t quit therapy after all – Mom and Mark sound nothing alike.

Mom simply shakes her head and smiles. “I was thinking,” she starts again, “this place could use some decoration.”

There’s a sadness in her eyes – but it isn’t the sharp, stabbing sadness of half their family just suddenly gone. It’s a dull sadness, an ache. Guilt, maybe.

Olivia realizes that her single little candle in the window isn’t as secret as she thought. Her vision blurs and she swallows hard, willing the tears not to fall. “Yeah,” she says quietly after a moment, “it could.”

“Meet you after school tomorrow? We can go shopping, grab dinner?”

The tears fall anyway, and Olivia quickly wipes them away. She sniffles, but manages a smile. “Sounds like a plan,” she says as Mom squeezes her hand.

three, thessia.

“I’m gonna murder this paper,” Olivia says, hauling the box into their apartment, “do you want to help me set up this tree?”

Liara looks up from her laptop with her brow furrowed, trying to figure out what one thing has to do with the other. “Where did you find a Christmas tree on Thessia?” she asks, standing up to help Olivia. The box is just about as long as Olivia is tall, which bodes interestingly for the rest of their evening.

“I didn’t,” Olivia says. She hangs her coat and scarf on the hook by the door, drops her hat and gloves in the basket, and toes off her boots. “It’s freezing outside.”

Liara looks at her roommate’s reddened cheeks, then outside to the snow that’s been falling for three days, and then back to Olivia. “That happens during winter.”

Olivia presses her lips together and stares flatly at Liara for a moment before walking into the kitchen to find something that can pry open the plastic box. “I ordered it from the Citadel months ago,” she says, coming back in with, of all things, a metal offset spatula. “Never again am I going for the free shipping option,” she grumbles.

“Is this,” Liara gestures to the box and steps out of the way, “why you’ve been living on noodles and coffee for the past two months?”

“No,” Olivia grimaces, working the spatula into the seam of the box.

For a moment, Liara considers videoing this endeavor, but decides she’d prefer the video of her at a karaoke bar for Olivia’s birthday not ‘mysteriously’ end up on the archaeology department’s internal website, so leaves her omnitool where it lies on the table.

“I’ve been living on noodles and coffee because I have five research papers and a thesis proposal all due within forty-eight hours of each other next week.” With a twist, she pops open one corner. “And because the universe hates me, I also have to present that thesis proposal in person on Christmas Eve, and Dr. Aridana can’t reschedule, so even if I could afford to go home, I can’t,” she growls at the box and glares at it. With one last shove, the lid pops open with such surprise force that Olivia loses her balance and falls on her rear. She sighs. “Hence the Christmas tree.”

Liara still isn’t sure what one has to do with the other, but doesn’t say so. She offers Olivia a hand up. Though they’ve lined up neatly the past few years, Serrice’s winter break just barely misses human winter holidays this year, and instead they have finals the whole week of Christmas. She’s heard no end of complaints about it from her human colleagues, though Olivia has been silent on it until now.

“Is everything alright?” She helps Olivia lift the tree from the box and set it aside, revealing even more decorations underneath.

Olivia huffs and bats her hair out of her eyes. “Christmas is…weird for me. I don’t know how I feel about it anymore.” She looks away toward the windows, and when she looks back, she looks a little distant. “I feel like I should be there though, for Mom. It’s five years, this year,” she says quietly, almost to herself. Blinking, she shakes her head, clearing her thoughts, and hands Liara two strands of lights.

Liara nods, and gently bumps her friend’s shoulder before she begins to unravel the twinkling lights.

After a few minutes of silent working, Olivia turns on some quiet Christmas music. Liara defers to Olivia on how best to string the lights up on the tree and instead goes to work on the garland. They don’t have a fireplace, as she’s given to understand is a traditional location, but they do have plenty of bookshelves.

While Olivia is shoulder-deep in the tree, Liara subtly types a message to her mother – would you mind terribly if I brought Olivia home for holiday? She doesn’t even have half the next sentence typed – an explanation of why she’s asking to bring her roommate home – before a response appears.

Not at all. I will make sure the guest room is ready.

Liara smiles and deletes her half sentence. You might also want to stock up on human coffee, she suggests, and then sets her omnitool back down so she can focus on the task at hand.

When Liara leaves her room later, in need of a slice of cold pizza and a glass of juice to fuel the next three hours of research, she’s surprised to find the apartment darkened. Olivia usually works in the living room, needing space to spread out star charts and maps, and she hasn’t gone to sleep before Liara for at least three months. Olivia’s bedroom door is open, and the little string of lights she’s hung up around the window illuminates enough for Liara to see that her roommate hasn’t simply tripped over her own feet and just decided to stay where she landed face-first in bed.

Puzzled, Liara walks down the short hallway to the main living space. She pauses at the edge of the room, wondering if she can get her snack without intruding, or if she should tiptoe back into her room and leave Olivia to her solitude.

Olivia sniffs and wipes at her cheeks, but doesn’t look away from the small candle-shaped lights they’ve placed in the windows. A quiet rumble heralds the heat kicking on, and warm air gently blows into the room; the Christmas tree glitters in the dark behind her. The hollows under Olivia’s eyes cast haunted, cold shadows against her pale skin. Liara wonders when she last slept. Olivia blinks, and the candles reflect off tears trailing down her cheeks.

Liara shuffles her foot against the carpet, letting Olivia know she’s here, and then walks over and sits beside her. Snow falls softly outside, sparkling in the lights.

“They’re my favorite part,” Olivia whispers, “the candles.”

“What do they symbolize?” Liara sets her arm around Olivia’s shoulders, letting her friend lean into her.

Olivia rests her head on Liara’s shoulder. “That there’s safe harbor inside. A warm place to wait out the storm.” She wipes at her eyes again. “We had them at the farmhouse,” she says softly. “The colony got battered by blizzards a few years, and Dad always opened the door for anyone caught out in the snow and cold. Neighbors, mostly, but sometimes transients, even people whose company he couldn’t stand.”

Liara hugs her and presses a kiss to the top of her head. The matriarchs have a similar tradition, though it lasts all year; she’s met her share of unexpected houseguests over the last several decades. “Would you like to come home with me over break?” she asks after a while.

Sniffling, Olivia sits up a little so she can look at Liara. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and nods. “Yeah.” A smile – small and trembling, but still a smile – quirks at her lips. “Thank you.”

Liara smiles in return, and tugs Olivia back into a hug.

four, normandy.

She has to hand it to her crew. Middle of a war, and they’ve still managed to decorate the entire ship for Christmas. Wreaths in the hallways, candle lights in every window (her doing, two nights ago, when her insomnia thoughts took an ugly turn toward something she wasn’t sure even her meds would be able to lift her back out of), strands of multicolored twinkling lights looped around cables and cabinets, an incredibly tacky Santa Claus next to the armor fabricator. A stocking for each member of the crew – including the aliens – hangs along the medbay windows, candy canes hooked on each one. Someone’s even found a Christmas tree.

Such as it is.

They’ve done what they can with lights and garland and ornaments (mostly weapon mods balanced precariously on the branches), but it still looks like it was the last one on the lot. Given wartime rationing and that fake Christmas tree manufacturing likely isn’t a high priority for anyone, Olivia would bet that it probably was.

“That is the most pathetic Christmas tree I’ve ever seen in my life,” Joker says, lifting his glass of eggnog in mockery.

“I can return it,” Ashley offers, light enough to be joking but with enough bite in her tone that she means it. She peers over the gifted baked goods from Hannah, and selects a snowflake-shaped sugar cookie. The icing sparkles with decorative sugar and Ashley breaks the cookie in two, offering one half to Cortez. He takes it with a smile.

Joker holds up his hands in defeat. “Hey now, let’s not be hasty. Where else is Shepard gonna put our presents?”

Olivia snorts into her coffee. “Look who thinks he’s getting more than coal.” Truthfully, she’s bought gifts for all of them. Some are practical, some are very not, and each of her crew will find something tucked away in their bunk or locker when they turn in for the night.

“It’s perfect,” James steps in. “It’s scrappy, just like us.”

Olivia raises her mug. “To the Normandy, and her amazing crew,” she toasts.

“The Normandy!” everyone shouts.

“Enjoy the party,” Olivia says as Ken turns on music and several brave souls go in for another glass of Vega’s eggnog. Christmas itself isn’t for another three days, but there’s no guarantee about tomorrow, let alone three days from now. Tonight’s a quiet night of travel, surrounded by mass effect fields and inky space as they fly toward the Caleston Rift in search of Garneau and Leviathan. They might as well celebrate when they can.

Olivia makes the rounds, chatting with her crew and politely turning down every offer of eggnog (she saw what went into it). She pauses beside Gabby, and stands quiet as the other woman says a prayer and lights seven candles on her menorah. She asks about family for the crew who are still in contact with theirs, and doesn’t for those whose families are missing or gone – she offers them a warm hug instead.

Eventually, she makes it through everyone and gets a refill on her coffee before looking for Garrus. She finds him leaning against the wall, apart from the others. Frowning a little – he’s usually not this quiet amongst their friends – she walks over to him. “You okay?” she asks, sitting on the table beside him. She bumps her shoulder against his.

He blinks silently, and the deep breath he takes immediately tells Olivia that, despite whatever he might be about to say, he is very much not okay.

But he doesn’t try to deny it. “I miss my mom,” he says so quietly that it’s almost lost amidst a very rowdy – and incorrect – rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Olivia quickly does the calendar math in her head – Alterra isn’t for another few months, but she supposes any winter holiday, especially right now, is enough to bring up memories of lost family. “Come on,” she says, taking one more sip of coffee before sliding off the table. She catches his hand and tugs him away from the wall and toward the elevator.

They leave the party to a number of teasing ooooohs, and she makes sure to walk them underneath the mistletoe. Despite his melancholy, Garrus smiles as she lifts up on her toes to kiss him. She squeaks a little in surprise as he dips her low to the sound of cheers and a few wolf whistles.

“Have fun and don’t trash the ship, please,” Olivia calls before rounding the corner.

They ride the elevator in silence, and once inside their quarters, she withdraws a wrapped package from her desk drawer. She’s also bought him the boots he’s been lusting after every time they walk past the store; they’re in his armor locker, shiny blue bow on top of the box. But this one is more important tonight.

“Merry Christmas,” she says, sitting on the couch with him. She offers Garrus the package.

He leans in and brushes a kiss to her cheek, and then turns his attentions to the package. She’s given him wrapped gifts before – last Christmas and Alterra, and a belated birthday gift once he was back on board – and he always treats them the same: like the paper is just as precious as the gift inside. She has no idea how he manages to get the paper off in one sheet, without a single rip: she has five fingers and no talons, and can’t manage that kind of delicate work.

Garrus opens the lid and sets it aside before unfolding the tissue paper to reveal the gift. He gently lifts the candle light out of the box. “It’s a candle,” he says quietly, almost reverently.

“Well, I was going to get you a garage door opener,” she smirks, grinning even wider when he pokes her in the side; they’ve been joking about that for a year. “But,” she settles back to serious, “I thought this might be better.”

Garrus looks over to the window behind their bed, and the two candles she’s set there. He looks down at the candle in his hands, and then over at Olivia. “Why are there two this year?”

She sighs, and tucks herself deeper into her sweatshirt. “Everything’s a horrible mess,” she says softly. An understatement. “I just wanted Mark and Dad to know I was thinking about them.”

He nods, and looks down again. “And so, this is for…my mom?” The tight, thin rumble in his voice betrays his outward calm: he’s far more upset about his mother’s death than he’s told her.

Olivia scoots across the couch toward him. She leans up and kisses his temple. “Yeah.”

Garrus pulls her into a tight hug and nuzzles her neck. “Thank you,” he whispers softly, holding her close.

five, citadel ii.

“She doesn’t talk much, does she,” Hannah says, more of an observation than a question, as she rolls out sugar cookie dough.

Olivia looks over her shoulder, and finds Nora in the living room playing with her brothers. Quentus, already almost as tall as the other two put together, places the last block high on the tower and crows in victory. Nora and Nico silently share a look – a look that, even from kitchen, Olivia can tell is nothing but a conspiracy – and Nico subtly shifts position under the pretense of stretching out his knee, and knocks the tower’s base with his foot.

There’s a moment where everything hangs still, and it looks like the tower might only just wobble, but then the whole thing crashes down around her children in a shower of brightly-colored plastic blocks. Quentus’ slightly-irritated subvocals vibrate through the air, countered only by Nora’s giggles.

“No,” Olivia says, turning back to her chocolate once she’s sure they’re going to start building again and she won’t have to break up another block-throwing fight. “She can,” she clarifies, stirring the chocolate chips, encouraging them to melt faster, “she’s just quiet.”

Hannah bumps Olivia’s shoulder with her own and gives her daughter a small smile. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

“And then that someone else you know ended up shouting at people for a living, so look how well that turned out,” Olivia teases. She doesn’t shout much these days, not in the sense of raising her voice to dalatrasses and primarchs and clan leaders who forget that they’re on her ship by invitation only, but she’s nearly perfected her tone of parental disappointment. She never uses it with her children, though it seems to be tremendously effective on diplomats.

“I think she turned out just fine,” Hannah says, a surge of pride catching in her throat. She swallows and rummages through a plastic box, searching for the star cookie cutters amidst rabbits and pumpkins and hearts.

Smiling, Olivia looks over her shoulder at her children once more. They’ve begun the tower again, but shorter and wider this time so they can all reach. She turns back and pours the chocolate over top of the set toffee she made earlier. She only burned it once, a personal record.

They work mostly in silence for the next hour, Hannah cutting out cookies and sliding batches into the oven while Olivia starts on another round of candy, until muffled voices rising from the basement herald the return of Garrus and Zaeed. Both women look up when the door opens, twin expressions on their faces of it cannot possibly have taken two hours to simply find all the lights. The two men stop in their tracks, Zaeed half-in-half-out of the doorway, and Garrus trying to hide behind him on the stairs below. Neither one of them are carrying anything at all.

Olivia breaks first. “What password did you change?”

“That was one time,” Zaeed says, defending both of them.

“It was my coffeemaker. It exploded.”

“I heart Garrus isn’t a difficult password,” Garrus says.

The corner of her mouth quirks up in a grin she’s trying very hard to hold back; they’ve held this exchange countless times in the last ten years. “It is when the keyboard in question doesn’t have an emoji setting.”

“It was voice-activated.”

“Well, your instructions were unclear.”

Hannah clears her throat. “Weren’t you two supposed to be getting the lights?”

Garrus and Zaeed share a look, and sheepishly retreat back down the stairs.

Much later, once cookies are iced and lights are hung and candles placed in the windows, and once everyone else is asleep, Olivia brushes a kiss to Garrus’ mandible, and sneaks out of their bedroom and downstairs. Despite her quiet, frustrated requests to the stars, the galaxy does not come to a halt just because it’s Christmas; her office released an updated relay repair schedule earlier this week, and she’d promised her staff she’d keep an eye on her email in case there was any resistance to the new schedule order.

She stops on the landing and smiles softly. The glass has shifted to nighttime mode, blocking most of the ambient light outside, and the candles shine bright in the windows – one in each, except for the window on the end, holding three. A quiet noise draws her attention toward the Christmas tree, casting soft warm light over the living room.

Three pairs of feet – two turian, one human with mismatched socks between them – stick out from underneath the tree.

Her smile widens as she walks the rest of the way down the stairs, and turns toward the tree instead of her office. The galaxy can wait half an hour.

“Enjoying the view?” she asks her children. Quentus scoots over, making room, and she lies down between him and Nora.

“It’s really pretty this year,” Nico says, looking up through the branches.

She reaches an arm around Nora to rest her hand on Nico’s shoulder. She gives him a squeeze, and his subvocals rumble happily. Quentus nudges her arm and she lifts it, letting her eldest son scoot in close; his crest has started to grow out, he might not be able to lie on his back like this next year. Nora makes a content little snuffle and cuddles into her side, eyes wide and fascinated by the lights and shiny ornaments of her first tree.

“I love you,” she whispers after a while. She presses a soft kiss to Nora’s and then Quentus’ forehead. Her engagement and wedding rings glitter and shine in the lights as she squeezes Nico’s shoulder again.

“Love you too, Mom,” Quentus says, and the other two echo him.

Nora yawns twice in a row, but Olivia decides they can all lie here for a little longer. She looks up at the tree and lets her eyes drift out of focus, turning the green branches, white lights, and multicolored ornaments into a sparkling, cheerful blur.

#this was the inverse mood-wise of what i'd intended but oh well #liv wanted to talk to me about things so i let her #livfic #s:words #s:2017 #olivia shepard: responsible coffee commander #livfam tag #verse:object permanence #this is also my 200th fic on ao3 so confetti for that

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jennymusictherapy-blog · 7 years

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3 Things About Being A Music Therapist That Others Don’t Tell You About

1) It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to become a board-certified music therapist.

“The education of a music therapist is unique among college degree programs because it not only allows a thorough study of music, but encourages examination of one’s self as well as others.” -American Music Therapy Association (AMTA).

Although the required coursework vary from school to school, completing my music therapy requirements at Berklee College of Music was challenging. Every semester I had an average of 8 courses/semester (Berklee goes by semesters, not years) and each class consisted of 1-2 credits, at most 3. These classes included music theory, arranging, conducting, ear training, music technology, psychology, private lessons, ensemble, music therapy, development seminars, electives, and general studies. Courses specific to music therapy included 5 levels of supervised practicum fieldwork in facilities that served individuals with disabilities in the community. I was assigned to work at a school setting with children diagnosed with cerebral palsy for my first practicum, and this was my first direct hands-on client experience with music therapy. I was then placed at a nursing home for my second practicum that focused on geriatrics in which I served groups of elderly who were diagnosed with depression and Alzheimer’s disease. Then I got to work with homeless women in my next practicum, adults with developmental disabilities in the one after that, and children and babies in intensive care units during my final practicum at Boston Children’s Hospital. Courses in addition to each practicum focused on specific areas, such as P1 (practicum 1) in Special Education, P2 in Geriatrics, P3 in Research, P4 in Psychiatry, and P5 in Medicine. Although you’re required to work for about 7-8 weeks at your chosen facility (1-2hrs once a week) and that may not seem like much, having to balance studying, completing research, doing homework assignments, practicing instruments, preparing for concert recitals, recording music, attending meetings, memorizing songs, and overall figuring out my life as both a musician and a music therapist was very challenging. Although my main focus was music therapy, I still needed to focus on vocal performance as I was graded for my musical skills, not just for my clinical work. There are numerous amounts of documentation and clinical writing involved as well, and each practicum is paired with courses related to what you’re learning and dealing with in that specific practicum. Music therapy courses at Berklee require not only sitting at your desk listening to lectures, finishing up tasks and passing exams, but they require active participation such as public speaking, group work, role playing, advocating, and playing instruments. In other words, it’s about practicing and developing skill through action than just having mere knowledge about each course. Meditation and self-care practices are also taken place inside classrooms where you get to be in an open and vulnerable space with others, tap into your own personal thoughts, emotions and feelings, and focus on self-awareness and awareness of others. There is a lot of individual attention that you get from professors who have high expectations of their students (Berklee’s student-teacher ratio- 11:1), and because I got to learn in such small, inclusive classroom environments with direct patient contact at fieldwork, I grew massively in my musical and clinical knowledge and abilities. Because I was pushed to actively participate and throw myself into uncomfortable situations, I’ve grown immensely through my learning. It’s great that we get to apply what we learned in class directly into practice at our practicum sites and receive feedback from our supervisors on site who are also professional music therapists. Classrooms feel like workshops, and practicums feel like small unpaid internships. It’s challenging to be seen and trained as a musician, professional, and therapist inside classrooms when we’re still students and sometimes don’t feel mature enough to handle the ups and downs of social and emotional experiences throughout the whole process. But real growth happens when you’re out of your comfort zone and that’s how Berklee was like for me and for many others who are currently music therapy students. We are constantly pushed to feel uncomfortable in our learning.

Then after you’ve completed all of your training at school which usually takes about 4.5-5 years, you graduate (hurray!) and then go search for an internship to receive your degree. This is the last step you need to complete before receiving your official diploma and becoming a professional music therapist. My internship took place at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) in which I worked 40 hours/week, unpaid, for 6 months. Although there are some paid music therapy internships, most are not and require you to work 6-9 months depending on the site. Then once you complete your internship, you are finally eligible to sit in for the certification exam. Once you pass the exam, you are finally acquired the credential Music Therapist-Board Certified (MT-BC).

2) Therapy > Music.

I say music therapy is 70% therapy and 30% music. We are using music as a tool to reach non-musical goals. So it’s not just about performing and entertaining patients/clients and wowing them through your musical skills, it’s about using music purposefully and intentionally through the connection and relationship you build with your patients/clients to help them reach their goals. We do music WITH the patient, not just TO the patient. It doesn’t mean you have them to follow you, you adapt yourself to follow them. This is also the main difference between music education and music therapy- while music education focuses on musical knowledge and skills that follows a standard, rigid curriculum with no adaptations to meet the patient’s specific needs, music therapy adapts the music to meet each patient’s specific goals and needs. Music therapists are trained to see the needs of patients with disabilities and special needs on a deeper level, and therefore know how to use effective strategies to target those specific needs through music. Here is an example I can provide from my internship- I’ve worked with several cancer patients at CHOC and at the time, many were undergoing stem cell transplants and chemotherapy. Going through treatment can be extremely stressful and scary for kids, especially when their family isn’t around to keep them company through challenging times. Kids need to be in supportive environments where there is structure, autonomy/independence, and relationship support. In order to target these three elements, my main goals for music therapy were to provide structured and predictable environments, increase their autonomy and control, and build rapport. To provide structure, I used familiar music for predictability and songwriting scripts; for autonomy support, I allowed patients to make their own choices about lyrics, melody, how they wanted the song to sound like; and for relationship support, I focused on building rapport through discussing about the content of the song, brainstorming ideas together, and interacting throughout the overall songwriting process. Providing specific music interventions that are tailored to their experiences helps create a safe space and allows them to drive benefit from music and be successful in therapy. So music therapy isn’t just focusing on the musical elements- rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, pitch, dynamics- but it’s focusing on the musical elements to be used clinically in purposeful ways. It’s more about the interaction, the connection with the patient/client rather than the music itself. Because our main focus is therapy, music therapists utilize a variety of methods and don’t necessarily have a traditional, fixed way of doing things when providing music and playing instruments. I’ve used the back of my guitar as a drum once, the side of my guitar as a slide for stuffed animals, boomwhackers to slide eggs through the tube rather than whacking them on hard surfaces to make sounds (which is how you would “normally” play it), the back of a floor drum as a pot to cook pretend soup with kids, xylophone blocks as cake for dessert, a drum mallet to strum the guitar, and I can name other ways where I’ve used music creatively, thinking outside the box for patients. You have to think what are the GOALS you’re trying to reach, and how are you using music as a TOOL to reach those goals? Music therapists use music both traditionally and non-traditionally to reach non-musical goals. Unlike a traditional music educator who plays guitar to teach students how to strum and has everyone to follow, music therapists could use a guitar to teach how to strum, use it for play using toys, move it around in different positions and be flexible with the overall use of the instrument that follows the patient and their response to music. Music therapists are aware of how to utilize music to engage and target specific needs of individuals from the moment-to-moment experience.

3) You never know what to expect as a music therapist.

There are no fixed answers to anything. We need to let go of expectations and assumptions about various situations and circumstances, especially during sessions. I remember my supervisor who is a board-certified music therapist with almost 20 years of experience with music therapy, telling me he still gets nervous to this day walking into patient rooms, because it is a new experience for him each time. It is crucial that we remain open to whatever happens, to lean onto discomfort, to let go of the need to control and to simply go with the flow. I had one patient at CHOC where, when I went to check-in to ask if he was in the mood for some music, he responded with an enthusiastic “yes!” and gave me a huge smile. He seemed to be feeling a lot better than the last time I saw him when he was undergoing chemotherapy, so I got excited and started thinking to myself what songs would be good for him and which instruments I could use for those songs. I told him I’d be right back with my instruments which only took 5 minutes and walked right back to his room, only to see he was now crying after his mom refused to feed him chicken nuggets. He was not allowed to eat before his procedure, and he looked at me and shook his head. I had no choice but to put aside the session plan I had for him and adjust myself fully to that moment. I decided to pull out an ocean drum and strum relaxing chords on my guitar to provide relaxation and calm his emotions, and matched my humming to my guitar. I had no idea how the session was going to go after that and what to expect out of it, but I trusted my gut in that moment and decided that that was what was best for him. Then the next day, I walked into his room again to see he was feeling a lot better and was bursting with energy throughout the session so I matched myself to his energy level and provided that high stim he needed. Being a music therapist means you’re constantly having to deal with fluctuations (fluctuating referral calls, fluctuating moods of patients and families, fluctuating health conditions) and overall spontaneity- so it’s crucial that music therapists are flexible, open-minded, and adaptable to various circumstances. The only things to expect as music therapists are to expect the unexpected, expect discomfort, and expect the unknown.

#musictherapy #JennyLim #berklee college of music #berklee #music therapy #music #songwriting #therapy #therapeutic #goals #clinical work #musical work #career #professional #internship #music therapist

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fairy-average · 7 years

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Reunion

Hey so I’m still alive, which is pretty neat I guess, so enjoy this fic, and please give feedback!

Word Count: 2,143

Nico let tears stream down his face as he lay beside his daughter Allegra, who was finally allowed to join their family that day. He wept out of love for his adopted daughter (the paperwork was made official and she was allowed to live with him as of that morning) and he wept for the fact that his husband had never met her in person yet.

Will was deployed overseas and had to go back before things had moved along too far in the adoption process. The most he had seen were pictures. He was supposed to video call tonight, but Nico knew that plans like that were very loose. Which is why Nico always kept his phone on hand, always ready for a call or text from his husband, even if it got him in trouble at work sometimes.

He ran to his computer as quickly as he could when he heard it ringing. Allegra stirred but didn't wake up. He ran his fingers through his hair as he hit accept, his smile beaming. "Hey," Nico breathed out a content sigh when he finally saw his husband again.

"Where's my little girl?" Will was dressed in his uniform, and the bags under his eyes were impressive. He clearly hadn't shaved in a week or two. The room was loud around him, but he had headphones in.

"She's asleep, but I'll go get her. One moment," Nico put the laptop on the coffee table and went back to their room to grab their two year old daughter, waking her up in the process. "I'm sorry, but someone very special wants to meet you." She looked confused but followed Nico to the living room, sitting on his lap on the couch. "This is your Dad, Allegra. Can you say hi?"

Will didn't even try to hide the tears that were welling up in his eyes, and his next words sounded quite choked. "Hey beautiful! Your Papa and I have waited so long for you to join our little family."

Allegra had grown up neglected, and her speech was seriously delayed and we already had her on the waiting list for speech therapy. "Da." She leaned against Nico's chest and her eyes were closing, it was late and she'd had a very long, eventful day.

"That's right, I'm your Dad."

"I miss you so much." Nico hid the pain behind his words.

"I-" The connection was lost.

Nico brushed away the tears in his eyes before carrying Allegra gently to her own room and putting her to bed, kissing her softly on the top of her head. His phone buzzed and he saw he had an audio clip from Will. He already knew what it would say, but that didn't stop him from listening to it over and over again before sending one back. "I love you too."

- - - - -

Nico sat up with a groan. Last night Allegra refused to go to bed, and Nico needed coffee. Desperately. He had a system for mornings down pat. Get up early, get ready, get his daughters things together, do any last minute work he didn't finish the night before, and then wake up Allegra and they would eat breakfast together before he dropped her off at daycare.

He tried turning on his phone, but it was dead. He checked to make sure it was plugged in properly (he really needed a new charger). He got up and turned the light on but the room stayed dark. He flicked the switch a couple more times before checking his watch and seeing that he had twenty minutes to get him and his daughter out the door if he didn't want to be late. Merda. Stupid power outage.

He rushed into the kitchen after getting dressed, forgoing the shave, to put on a pot of coffee and start breakfast. He got Allegra's bag together in record time before going and waking her up. Thankfully before bed each night they would choose her outfit for the morning together. She threw a tantrum because she didn't want to eat breakfast, or get in the car, or do anything Nico needed her to do, so they were ten minutes late dropping her off at daycare. Which meant he stepped into his classroom just as the second bell rung.

"Mr. di Angelo, did you mark our tests yet?" One of the twelfth graders asked as he sat down at his desk at the front. He and Will had hyphenated their last names, but for the sake of convenience, only the first half was used in the classroom.

"I'm sorry, I didn't get around to them last night, but I'll make sure they are done over the weekend. As always, you can check your grades online, or just wait until I hand the tests back on Monday. Everyone open up your work packages to where we left off and keep going on those while I do attendance and some photocopying I couldn't do this morning.

During his lunch break, Will phoned. "Hey, what's up?"

"We are heading off base tomorrow, and I just wanted to call because it might be a bit before I have connection again. How has your day been?"

"Stressful. Power was out this morning so my alarm didn't go off and Allie was in a mood so I was late to work and I'm behind in everything because she hates being left alone, which I can understand because she grew up neglected, but I don't know, sometimes I just wish there was a pause button." Nico walked out to his car for some privacy.

"You know you don't have to work right now. We have enough put away, and I understand that it's hard being a single parent. Take a year off, spend some time with our daughter, it doesn't mean you've failed."

"Spend time with our daughter? That's all I do. I haven't had a night off since she joined us eight months ago. And don't even get me started on this job. You know how much these kids mean to me, I'm not just going to abandon them in the middle of the school year. Until you're here you don't get to choose how I live my life. I'm doing my best." Nico knew it was the lack of sleep, the stressful past few days, that made his voice cold and his words sharp.

"Well I'm sorry for wanting to help make a difference. I'll call you when I get back to base I guess." Will hung up, leaving Nico to sit in his car and try to compose himself before his next class.

- - - - -

"'I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life'? What does this mean to you? How is it relevant in your life?" Nico glanced at his phone vibrating on his desk, but he didn't recognize the number so he sent it to voicemail. A few minutes later, the secretary told him that the call on line 2 was for him. "Read the next three chapters, you can do it independently or in a group, but keep the volume down, please.

"Mr. di Angelo-Solace?" the voice on the other end of the phone asked seriously.

"Speaking." Nico felt his stomach turn, and he sat down on his chair. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm sorry, but your husband is missing." The voice broke it to him gently, but he still felt his heart break. Keep it together, you're in front of your students.

"How long?"

"The men that made it back arrived a few hours ago. As of right now, we do not believe he is deceased, but his whereabouts are unknown. We will call you as soon as we have an update."

Nico sat there in shock after hanging up the phone. The first thing he did was contact a sub from the list. He couldn't let his mind wander until he got his class sorted out. He collected his things and sorted out his lesson plans until the substitute arrived so he could go over them with her. He held it together long enough to give instructions and notify the class that he had to go home due to a family emergency. He held it together long enough for him to sign out and make it to his car where he broke down.

He had been so angry during their last conversation. Nico wiped away the tears and somehow managed to get home in one piece. He wouldn't have to pick up Allegra for several hours, and he was going to delay it for as long as possible. Here, alone, he didn't have to pretend he was okay.

- - - - -

It had been a month. Nico went and taught every day, he brought his daughter to speech therapy and swimming lessons and continued through the motions. Word had gotten around the school of what had happened pretty early on, though he wasn't sure how.

This continued day after day, the emptiness never going away. Even Allegra knew something was wrong and she was always asking 'Where's Da?' because they hadn't skyped in so long.

- - - - -

It was his last class on Friday, ten minutes before the bell would signal the weekend, and Nico stood at the front of his class wrapping up his lesson and assigning the homework. A knock at the door interrupted him midsentence. He finished writing down the assignment before going and opening the door.

All he could do was stand there, his hands went and covered his face as he let out a happy sob. Will stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his husband tightly, smiling.

"How is this? What?" Nico couldn't even form a coherent thought as he stood there enveloped in Will's warmth.

"I made it to base yesterday and flew out as soon as I was able. I told them not to call you, I hope that's okay?"

Nico pulled back so he could look at Will's face, one hand on his chest, the other around his neck. "I love you." He couldn't stop smiling and Will leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. He came to his senses and blushed, turning to the class only to see almost everyone videoing the surprise. "Class dismissed." He laughed and let his students go a few minutes early. They all stopped and thanked Will for his service on their way out the door.

"I love you so much. It was killing me that I never told you that before I left on the mission." Will leaned down and gave Nico a proper kiss now that the classroom was empty. Nico wrapped his arms around Will's neck and was lifted off the ground briefly.

"Did you just flick me?" Will asked in surprise.

"Just making sure that this is real, that you're real. I'm sorry for everything I said during our last conversation. I love you."

"I had gotten shot and separated from the guys." Will pulled away and pulled up his jacket and shirt to reveal a nasty scar on his lower abdomen. "It got infected and I was out of it for several days. I somehow made it to a village where they took me in and some of the women fixed my hasty repair job. I was a long way from base and it took quite some time to find my way back.I was luckier than some of the others." Will trailed off, looking at the ground.

"I'm so happy you're safe, does it still hurt?" Nico gently placed his fingers over the injury, but Will shook his head. "What do you say we go pick up our daughter from daycare?" Nico's heart felt full when he saw the grin spread across Will's entire face, lighting up the room.

Nico drove as Will had taken a cab from the airport. Their fingers were laced together and Will was bouncing his leg the entire time until they pulled into the parking lot. "Wait here, I'll go get her and tell her I have a surprise waiting for her by the car."

Will waited impatiently by the car until his heart melted at the sight of Nico walking out with their daughter on his hip, smile wide. "Allie, say hi to Daddy!" Nico put her down and Will crouched as she walked hesitantly towards him, confused.

"Hey baby girl, can you give Daddy a hug?" Allegra reached out to him, and he picked her up easily, holding her close as some tears escaped the corners of his eyes. Nico came and stood beside Will, putting his hand on his back. Will leaned down and placed his forehead against Nico's. "My beautiful family," he whispered.

Nico leaned upwards and placed their lips together. "Let's go home."

"Home," Will smiled. "I like the sound of that."

#solangelo #percy jackson #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo fic #army reunion #not edited sorry

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cosmosogler · 7 years

Text

hey.

today i got up on time and got to the office on time. i taught my lab and everyone finished. one girl asked if i had their grades.

i said “before the end of my natural lifespan i will get your grades back.”

the girl behind her laughed really hard.

when that ended i went to my office hour and very slowly attempted to drink my soup. the thermos is a little too Powerful. i helped a student get set up to practice their lab while i oversaw the otherwise empty room and clicked through some social media sites.

i think the break was helpful. it was nice to eat food slowly for once at least. when my hour was up i went back to suzanne’s office and got settled and worked on the late classical assignment and finished what i could... nobody knew how to do number 5 so i just wrote what i think i would need to do to solve it, and that i didn’t know how to start doing that, and turned it in. i briefly considered stopping at one of the offices i passed to talk about research projects, but i felt too busy and even more shy.

so i went back downstairs and caught up on ALL my class notes, and put in a word with suzanne to give john my contact details. i will try to catch him before or after class tomorrow. and i did some work for e&m.

that ended up taking all day. i didn’t get any grading done. i am avoiding it. i need to stop avoiding it. i will try again tomorrow.

at about 3:15 i went upstairs with luis to the coffee/cookie afternoon thing that’s every tuesday and thursday. today i learned, from listening to the other students talk about their textbook, that they were undergraduates. i thought all of them were graduate students.

there is a girl i have spoken with a few times. her name is also samantha. she said i was “so cute” when i roasted luis. i gritted my teeth and asked if it was the bow. she said it was the bow, and the curly hair, and the face, and that i was holding my tiny cookie with both hands, and a couple other things.

i guess... it was... good...??? to get feedback on that.

then she called me cute four more times in the next 20 minutes. i wanted to slap my hands on the table and tell her i am like four years older than her. as if being older makes you not cute i guess.

eventually i slumped in my chair and muttered “maybe YOU’RE cute.”

i think that was the response she was looking for because she got excited. i did like her glasses though, they are super round and huge. i only have “stern librarian” reading glasses. my elton john sunglasses broke at the frame so now the lens pops out. i have too many heavy things in my purse maybe. i can’t go anywhere without my game boy. just a habit by now.

that’s the only heavy thing in my purse.

then she called me cute again and didn’t seem to realize i had complimented the SHAPE of her glasses because she said “you have eyes.”

i said “you have beautiful eyes. can i have them?”

afterward when we were back in our office i asked luis if she was “like flirting with me for real.” he said sometimes people can be attracted to each other. later he texted her and then informed me it had been in jest.

but apparently i look like shirley temple. i get it from my gramma. my biological father’s side of the family also has naturally curly hair. my half brothers both have kinda soft round faces too.

i didn’t get flustered because she specifically called me cute. i got a little annoyed because it’s a Thing i deal with constantly from other people. and she did it like six times in the 40 minutes i was up there.

it feels like i worked all day? but it also feels like i didn’t get anything done. even though i was working for real and making progress through the things i was doing. like i wrote about four class periods’ worth of notes. well, three and a half. i nabbed my missing quantum notes from jake and jennica let me steal her notebook for the day since she wasn’t in the office.

i hung out with harrison for a little while. he has a masters. at 19. i made a series of jokes where harrison was becoming more and more accomplished at more and more ridiculous ages until he was a tenured professor at a university teaching phd students older than him.

eventually rebika asked me a question, i don’t remember what it was, and when i responded she answered with “i don’t care.” i said “OH OKAY.”

luis laughed and said “sammie’s triggered.”

i said “i’m pretty tilted.”

so i yanked rebika’s chain mercilessly for the next 25 minutes after that until i got ready to go home.

i biked home without running out of breath! i mean i still have trouble picking up speed again after the hill, and i got cut off in the roundabout by a car that decided to go whatever speed i was going while i was trying to get into the circle, but i didn’t pant hardly at all!

haha the roundabout was annoying though. as i approached the circle in the highest gear the car came zooming right in and cut me off, so i slowed down, and then the car slowed down, and then i stopped, and the car stopped, and then i got moving and it moved. eventually it passed and i had to try to start moving in the highest gear because i didn’t have time to switch to a lower one before i’d stopped. i got passed by other bikes before i could pedal enough to switch my gear down.

when i got home i did some dishes and fussed over snoopy and took out the recycling. then i made TERIYAKI TEMPEH!!!

except the teriyaki i bought at the grocery store was just soy sauce which made me pretty sad. because i already have soy sauce. why did they call it teriyaki if it was soy sauce?

i had to make my own except i didn’t have corn starch so it was runny.

it wasn’t my best dish ever? but it was perfectly acceptable. the rice came out really good for my first time ever making it myself. there’s something about this tempeh though that seems different from the kind i got at home, even though it shouldn’t be... they are the same brand. i can’t seem to recreate the nutty flavor. maybe it’s because i soften it first.

maybe they aren’t the same brand. the one i had at home crumbled super easy and this one i have to cut with a knife and then break apart as i saute it.

anyway i had plenty to eat, i made a little too much. at that point it was well after 8. i wanted to grade, but... i bummed around on the internet for a little bit instead. i checked my usual evening comics and then it was 9:30. that’s not enough time to do any grading so i swept my floor instead and finished up the dishes and hid some cookies around for snoopy to find. she didn’t find the last one from yesterday, which isn’t in one of her sleeping spots.

maybe i should hide them BEFORE i give her a bunch off the bat so she watches me do that instead of eating while i hide them.

i cleared off my desk just a little bit and made up my to-do list for tomorrow and now it is 10:40. tomorrow i have group therapy AND the student “care area” appointment. and three classes. but at least it’s spaghetti day and my classmates are back on schedule.

emotionally... i am doing ok i guess. i felt more focused today than i have in like ten days. i got over a big hurdle with catching up with the class notes. and i wrote down the first question of the next classical assignment so it’s... started, technically. five to ten minutes i won’t have to spend later at least.

jake also gave me a bit of a pep talk. well, it wasn’t a pep talk so much as “you’re doing exactly what i did last year with the class notes.” he seems like a Responsible Adult. and he does take beautiful notes. he said mine were great though.

and i do more homework than he did last year (which was none) so hopefully that will... help somehow. i guess.

i just need to stop procrastinating and do the hard stuff. study for e&m and not just skim the chapter without reading anything. grade. i won’t have a lot of time tomorrow with the double appointments. but i also don’t have many other things on my to-do list that i can acceptably use to put off the stressful stuff.

yeah, looking at the list, basically a third of it is taken up with just grading milestones alone.

anyway, it’s 10:48, which is three minutes after my “stop writing” alarm has gone off. so i will get ready for bed now i guess. i also stretched today for just a few minutes so i feel a little more settled i hope. back, wrist, and eye exercises are something i’d like to start incorporating into my daily schedule but i’m not sure where to fit them in. i’ll look into that after this grading adventure is no longer an adventure and more of a routine. hopefully before the end of my natural lifespan.

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jaeminlore · 7 years

Text

Queen of Disaster // Lee Taeyong

the prompt: can i get song vased scenario with Taeyong?? X) Lana Del Rey-Queen of disaster?

words: 2957

category: song rec + fluff

author note: don’t ask me how i came up with this plot from this song bc i don’t know.

- destinee

“When I saw your face it was incredible, painted on my soul, it was indelible.“

You wanted to get to know him, honestly. He was the boy you couldn’t touch, the boy who had nothing to do with you.

He was a rebel, caring not when class actually started or when an assignment was due. Yet he seemed to be passing well above the average student.

Perhaps he was some kind of sorcerer. That would explain how he managed to not study and still get good grades. Even when you spent all night studying, there were some tests you couldn’t seem to pass.

So maybe you were just jealous of the narrow-eyed boy who was gifted with natural intelligence. His permanent smirk only proved that he knew how good he was, too.

You wanted to be him. You wanted to be able to sleep for twelve hours, come into school late, and still somehow avoid detention.

Still, you were too shy to ask him how he managed to get away with everything. You wished to be as outgoing as him. You wished to have an abundance of friends like him.

Logically, you were a lot like him. You owned a motorcycle like him, you owned a denim jacket like him, and you were rather rebellious like him.

The sole difference was that he was loud and proud of his ways and you couldn’t bring attention to yourself if you tried.

One lucky day, you managed to get detention. You were three minutes late. As you leaned against your desk, mulling over your bad fortune, Taeyong waltzed into the room.

He was ten minutes late, and yet the teacher didn’t bat an eye at him.

You did. You glared at his figure as he slowly made his way to his desk, greeting his friends along the way.

Then you made the decision that would change your life forever. You rose your hand. “Mrs. Kim? Taeyong came in late as well. Where is his detention?”

The entire class turned to you, including Taeyong. He was smirking with one eyebrow raised, wondering what you were going to say when the teacher ignored you.

Mrs. Kim frowned. “I suppose you’re right. Taeyong, detention.”

Now you only felt fear, as it was Taeyong’s turn to glare at you. A few of his friends snickered at him, but he only stared at you. Challenging you.

So you silently accepted by giving him an innocent shrug and a smirk of your own. “See you in detention,” you whispered.

Maybe you shouldn’t have acted so big and bad in front of Taeyong. For now you had to follow up and actually spend an hour alone with him in detention.

You arrived after him, enough of a regular to know that the detention monitor never came in on time.

Taeyong didn’t know that of course, and you felt somewhat smug knowing that he had been waiting in the empty classroom, alone and bored.

You entered and sat at your usual desk. Taeyong was already seated beside you, doing whatever homework he could before the detention monitor came in.

You folded your arms on your desk and laid your head down, hoping to get some shut-eye.

“Don’t tell me you sleep through detention.” Taeyong mumbled.

You turned your head so that you could face him while you were lying down. “Yeah, so?”

“So, I thought you would do your homework or something, at least.”

“Oh no,” you said, your eyes closing. “I’ve got to take a nap before I can start doing schoolwork again.”

Taeyong snorted. He looked around the room. “Hey, where’s the detention monitor?”

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “He’s always late.”

Taeyong began to pack up his books and stood up.

Then he offered you a genuine smile, one that you had never witnessed before. You found yourself hoping he would show it more.

“Where are you going?” You asked him.

“I’m ditching,” he answered. “You coming?”

He didn’t have to ask twice. You swung your back over your shoulder and followed the boy out the door.

“You’re the king and, baby, I’m the queen of disaster.“

Taeyong bumped his shoulder against yours as soon as the two of you entered the parking lot of the school. “Where should we go?”

You were both matching, with your skinny jeans and your denim jackets. Taeyong had a pair of sunglasses hooked onto his white t-shirt, lowering the neckline and showing off his collarbone. Your dirty sneakers were scuffed and torn, while his combat boots were tied and neat.

“I don’t know,” you said. “I usually go to the ice cream shop when I skip school.”

“Lame,” Taeyong commented, rolling his eyes. Then he stopped and turned to you, his boots scuffing against the asphalt. “Wait. You’ve skipped school before?”

“Yes.” You rolled your eyes. “I hope you don’t think you’re the only rebel in this school.”

“I don’t,” Taeyong defended himself. “I just never imagined it would be you.”

“If you had taken time to notice me, you would’ve.” You said. Once you reached your motorcycle, you turned around. “Alas, no one in this school notices me.”

“That’s not true,” Taeyong mumbled.

You shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not here to be noticed.”

Taeyong examined your bike. “Is this yours?”

“Yeah. My grandad and I fixed it up,” you answered proudly.

Taeyong looked up. “Wait, does your grandfather work at the garage down the road?”

“He owns it,” you corrected. “I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”

“I love his work,” Taeyong said, that smile appearing on his face again. “Isn’t he the one who does paint jobs on old motorbikes?”

“He does,” you said. Then you looked up at him, a great idea popping into your head. “Hey, do you want to go meet him?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” you returned his bright smile. “We’ll go separately and meet up there. I’ll introduce the two of you.”

Taeyong was already seated on his own bike. “Let’s go!”

“Grandad?” You called as you and Taeyong entered the garage. It was closed during the weekend, so you had to use your spare key to get in.

Still, you knew your grandfather would still be there, working on the cars in peace.

“I’m in here!” His joyful voice replied, albeit muffled and low.

You smiled reassuringly at Taeyong as the two of you followed the voice. Your grandfather was underneath a car, only his legs showing as he working underneath a red Mustang. “I brought someone who wants to meet you.”

“Really? You have a friend?” He joked as he pushed himself out from under the car.

You frowned. “Hey, I have friends.”

“You’ve never had a friend that’s a boy,” your grandfather corrected, his eyes meeting Taeyong’s. He held his hand out for the boy to shake.

Taeyong let out a nervous laugh and accepted the handshake, “I’m Taeyong.”

“We’re skipping detention,” you said.

Taeyong elbowed you. When you turned to him, he gave you a look. “I don’t want your grandfather to think I’m a bad kid.”

“You’re not a bad kid.” Your grandfather clarified that he had been eavesdropping. “Everyone skips detention. Now, tell me why you’re here.”

“Taeyong is a huge fan of your work and I told him I would introduce you two.”

“Oh. Sorry I’m not very exciting in real life,” he said, looking at Taeyong. “I’m about to go home for dinner, but if the two of you want to stay, you can. The gallery is open.”

“Gallery?” Taeyong furrowed his eyebrows and looked at you.

“What do you think he does with all the bikes after he paints them?” You asked.

“I thought he sold them,” Taeyong said, as if it was obvious.

Your grandfather nodded, “Most people do. I find that I can’t part with them though. Feel free to look at them, just lock up when you leave.”

He gave Taeyong a friendly clap on the shoulder and left.

You grabbed Taeyong’s arm and pulled him to the back of the garage, where the gallery was located. “Get ready to see the coolest room your eyes have ever witnessed.”

You pushed open the door, and Taeyong let out an audible gasp. His eyes widened as he stared at the many bikes.

In the large room, bikes were lined up in rows, each painted with a different design. The walls were covered in spare parts, each painted as well. A few bikes were set up on pedestals: these were your grandfathers favorite.

Taeyong couldn’t take his eyes off of one that was set upon the farthest pedestal away. You pulled him closer to it. The rich violet covering the rusty metal gave it some sort of character. Blue, pink, and yellow made up a honey suckle that covered the majority of the bike.

“This was his first bike,” you said. “After my grandmother died and he came to live with us, he painted this. This was Grandma’s bike, and the honeysuckle was Grandma’s favorite flower.”

“So it’s therapy,” Taeyong said softly. He reached out and let his fingers brush against the seat of the bike.

“Yeah. Grandad was never really one for following the norm. You remind me of him, you know.”

“Me?” Taeyong snorted. “I’m just a lazy kid. Your grandfather makes art and shares it with the people of the town. I mean, if people knew he had all of these in his garage, they would go crazy trying to buy one.”

“Maybe,” you said. “But he would never agree. Like you said, these bikes are his therapy.”

Noticing the mood dimming, you attempted to lighten it. “Want to see the bike I’m working on?”

“You’re working on a bike?”

“Yep!” You said proudly, skipping over to the back of the room where dozens of paint cans and paintbrushes lined the walls. You gestured to the rusty bike barely standing on a torn piece of tarp. “Ta-da! I found it myself. I call her the Queen of Disaster.”

Taeyong found your enthusiasm contagious as he glanced at the bike, which honestly looked like it was about to fall apart any second now. “Where’d you find it?”

“In the junkyard down the street. Grandad said if I paid for it, I could use any of his paints. I’m thinking of entering it into a paint job competition. All I have to do is take a picture of the finished project and email it to the judges. If the art is enough, they’ll give me twenty grand towards college.”

“Twenty thousand?” Taeyong’s eyes widened. “How much did you pay for the bike?”

“Only one hundred dollars,” you said, patting the seat. “The junkyard owner knows gramps so he let me off easy.”

“How are you going to paint it? When does the contest end?”

You smiled in embarrassment. “About that…the contest deadline is in a month and I have no idea how to paint it.”

Taeyong closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. “You’ve named it, yet you don’t know what design you want?”

“I know,” you said, squatting on the ground and pulling the paint cans towards you. “It’s horrible. I have this idea of polar opposites. One side jet black and one side stark white, but both connecting in some way, maybe mixing to gray on top? It doesn’t match the name though, and I don’t know what else to do.”

Taeyong hummed. He walked over to the wall and plucked a paintbrush off of it’s hook. “You know, what if you only named half of it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Taeyong started. “Multiple people can enter the contest, right? So both of us enter. You do one side and call it Queen of Disaster. I’ll do the other side and call it King of Disaster. We’ll connect the designs, but they’ll be totally different because they’re painted by two different artists.”

You grabbed a paintbrush. “I love that idea.”

“What you do to me is indescribable.“

Taeyong sat with Yuta at lunch. "You’re coming to my soccer game tonight, right?”

“Of course,” Taeyong answered.

“Are you coming to the pizza place afterwards? Coach said he’d pay for the whole team and whoever we wanted to bring.”

Taeyong took a sip of his coke and shook his head. “I’m going over to Y/n’s. The contest ends tomorrow and we’ve got to get all the finishing touches on the bike.”

Yuta clicked his tongue. “You’ve been hanging out with Y/n a lot lately, you know. It’s like she’s your new best friend.”

“She is not,” Taeyong denied. “We’re working together for college money.”

Taeyong didn’t tell Yuta about how some days the two of you would skip painting altogether and go on a trip to the ice cream store instead. Or other days, when the two of you would lounge around your house, binge watching The Hobbit series until your mom kicked you out and told you to be productive and go paint.

He didn’t tell Yuta about all the times he had caught himself absentmindedly watching you. Just watching, as he told himself there was no harm in that. Ultimately there was harm in it, because Taeyong discovered that he could name all of your nervous ticks and your mannerisms. He had your laugh memorized, and your smile forever pinned as the first thing he saw when he closed his eyes to go to sleep at night.

Of all the people Taeyong thought he would have a crush on, you were the last. Not that you weren’t pretty, or nice. Just that you were quiet, and Taeyong never knew what you were thinking.

He never took the time to talk to you and see what you were all about. After he did, he wished he had done it a lot sooner.

Because he had uncovered a wonderful person who managed to make his heart beat out of his chest. He couldn’t really describe the way you made him feel.

"No other boy ever made me feel beautiful.“

You traced over the calligraphy you had painted in black yesterday, this time with pink paint.

Taeyong worked silently on the other side of the bike, painting a few flowers over his own written words. Your grandfather’s radio played out an old sixties station, and every once in awhile a song would appear that you and Taeyong both knew. This would call for an impromptu dance party in the middle of the garage.

Eventually, the two of you had finished your individual projects and stood up to celebrate.

With paint on your elbows and in you hair, you laughed along with Taeyong as The Monkees blasted through the speakers.

As The Last Train To Clarksville played, Taeyong grabbed your hands and pulled you close to him, a wide smile on his face.

The two of you jumped around like complete idiots, singing along to the track as loud as you could.

The black paint on his fingers mixed with the pink on yours. The cold sensation made you giggle as your fingers intertwined with his.

He pulled you lazily around the garage as an unfamiliar song replace the last. He quickly caught on to the tune and began to hum it, laughing at himself when he hit the wrong note.

You giggled as he hid his face in the crook of your shoulder. "Taeyong, that tickles.”

Just to make you squirm, he nuzzled further into your neck. His soft hair brushed your cheek.

You finally managed to push him away, only for him to press his forehead against yours.

“Why are you so clingy, today?” You asked, feeling hot under his gaze.

“Did you know that you are beautiful?” Taeyong asked, his face so close you could see the little flecks of gold in his brown eyes.

You had never even been called pretty before, let alone beautiful.

Yet here Taeyong was, making you feel like the most beautiful person in the world.

You stood in your grandfather’s garage, handing him whatever tool he asked for from under a large monster truck.

You were itching to go home and check your email, just to see if the winners of the contest were announced.

Your Saturday was otherwise boring, just helping your grandfather around the garage.

The door to the garage opened suddenly, and Taeyong ran in, having known where the key was hidden. He waved his phone in the air. “We won! Y/n, we won!”

“What?” You dropped the monkey wrench in your hand. “We won?”

Taeyong lifted you up and spun you around, holding you flush against him. He couldn’t stop his laughter from tumbling out of his mouth. “Do you want to read the email?”

“Give it to me!” You said as he put you down and gave you his phone.

You scrolled down the email, “Dear Taeyong and Y/n, you have been chosen as the first place winners because of the individuality showcased on your work… Taeyong! We’re rich!”

“I know!” Taeyong screamed back. “I could kiss you right now!”

At that you found yourself, in excitement, grabbing him by the shoulders and getting on your tiptoes. Without a thought, you pressed your lips to his.

Taeyong reciprocated with vigor, moving his lips against yours eagerly. You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled him closer, smiling into the kiss.

“Are you guys done kissing? Can someone hand me a monkey wrench?” Your grandfather’s muffled voice interrupted the moment.

Taeyong threw back his head in laughter, his hands pressed against your lower back. You felt yourself falling faster and faster for the boy in front of you.

"Isn’t hard to see what’s goin’ on, I’m so far gone.“

~the end~

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coshayphinelove · 7 years

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prompt: your RA almost caught your illegal cat but I convinced them that it was just me meowing

i am so unbelievably sorry this took so long to fill. hopefully it’s worth it.

Prompt me!!