#I should set my alarm this time so I get less sleep and don’t sleep at the same time tmr

[obstinaterixatrix]

okay so obv there’s always been nsfw anime and of course there’d be nsfw bl anime it’s just not something you stumble upon unless you’re actively looking for it but while I was doing my regular browse of my least ethical most sketchy bl site I got hit by multiple revelations of 1) there’s an anime of ayaka matsumoto’s really smutty bl?? 2) it’s uncensored??? 3) it looks like shit???????? I’m aghast matsumoto’s art is so charming and expressive, just a really refreshing retro look, and the anime character designs look so… modern. generic. smoothened. condolences to matsumoto for being in lightsaber censorship jail while the anime team gets to draw dick I guess (that’s pretty unusual isn’t it??) anyway it’s 4 am enough reporting on smut

[carlottawllms]

Author‘s note: Welcome to chapter 6. I hope you weren‘t too mad at me after chapter 5 🧐 There’s no good times without the bad ones, is there? Hope this one makes up for it 😇

As always, feedback is very much appreciated! Enjoy! 🩷

The drive back home was hell. Tears kept flowing and blocking your view and it was difficult to keep your composure overall.

Mason’s words had hurt you a lot, especially as you’d never thought he out of all people would say something like that to you, but there was also this embarrassment you felt all over. The way he’d literally laughed at you for potentially being jealous had cut the ground from under your feet.

You'd known for years that you felt a little differently about Mason than you did about other men and had simply refused to admit it to yourself and instead kept it buried six feet under, but it was his behaviour over the last few weeks that had encouraged those feelings to spill over. He’d been so touchy with you; more than he’d ever been and you’d liked to think that his words had held a deeper meaning.

Not to mention the two kisses you’d nearly shared.

But it was obvious that you’d imagined it all. The tension between you two, the meaningful glances, the sweet words.

Are you jealous? Don’t be ridiculous, y/n.

He’d made it pretty clear. You weren’t even close to being in his league and had very clearly been living in fantasy land for the past weeks. You’d just never thought he’d be so brutal about it.

Sleep didn’t come easy. Instead, you tossed and turned until the early morning hours and when your alarm eventually rang, you were positive you’d only gotten two hours of sleep. You couldn’t remember the last time you’d dreaded getting up as much as today and whilst you knew you wouldn’t see him for more than a few minutes, the thought of facing him at all made you feel sick.

You ended up being slightly late as you’d allowed yourself a bit more time in the shower than you normally would, but you couldn’t care less.

“I should be back at three. It’s only a short session because of the upcoming game.”, he explained, but you only gave him a short nod; not in the mood for pleasantries at all. You just wanted to get away from him as soon as possible, so you tried to brush past him, but Mason was quick in grabbing you by your elbow. “Can we talk when I’m back?”

He looked remorseful; his eyes fully of regret when you locked yours on his for a second before dropping your gaze to your feet and shrugging your shoulders.

“Please?”

Again you didn’t react. Eyes solely set on your shoes. After everything he’d said, it hurt so see him and hear his voice.

“I get it.”, he sighed. “See you later. Don’t let my tiny terror annoy you too much.” Mason squeezed your arm gently and then he was gone.  

You shook your head, trying to get yourself into a better headspace. It was awful enough you felt like shit, there was no need to make Ellie notice. You shrugged your shoes and jacket off, before heading into his house.

Ellie was sitting on the carpet in the living room, one of her many puzzles in front of her. She had her brows pulled together in an adorable frown – something that made her look even more like her dad.

Mason too carried that frown with him more often than not. It appeared whenever he was concentrating, mad, lost in thoughts or simply confused. Sometimes even in his sleep. You usually just had to smooth your thumb over it for it to disappear.

“Hi princess.”, you brushed through Ellie’s hair as you crouched down next to her. “This looks really cool. Do you want any help with it?”

“No.”, she shook her head. “Stupid.” And with a quick wave of her arm, the small pieces were scattered all over the floor. Amazing…

“Whoa, Ellie. Munchkin what’s wrong?”, you asked, sensing already that she wasn’t in the best of all moods. “Hm?” You tried pulling her into your lap, but she pushed you away as much as her little strength let her.

“No!”

‘Wow.’, you thought. ‘As if this day hadn’t been difficult enough as it was.’ It felt a little as if with getting up this morning you’d made the biggest mistake. You should’ve stayed in bed; should’ve let Mason figure something out instead of still being his safety net after everything he’d sad the evening before.

“Okay, I’ll leave you alone for a bit sweet cheeks. I’m in the kitchen if you need me.”

Technically it was way to early to make a start on the lunch you’d planned, but with-it being Saturday and Ellie in a mood there wasn’t much you could do. And since she took after her father when it came to bad moods and how long they lasted, you knew that there would still be enough time to clean the whole bloody house in the afternoon.

Maybe Mason had stocked up on stuff so you could give the new cookie recipe you’d found on Instagram a go. It was one of those with a molten chunk of chocolate in the middle – a big fat weakness of yours – and you knew Ellie would like them too. Maybe they would lighten her mood…

Before you could even search Mason’s pantry for the ingredients you needed, you heard a rather loud crash in the living room.

“For fuck’s sake.”, you hissed, already having an idea what it might’ve been.

Rushing into the living room, worried your goddaughter might’ve hurt herself, you found her standing in the middle of the room, hands tucked into her sides and glaring at what once was a big, beautiful vase.

A vase that was now spread out on the floor in its individual light blue pieces. And in the middle of the sea of shards was Ellie's little ball with the Manchester United logo. The ball that was only meant for outside. Something that Mason had made that very clear to her. He’d used his stern dad-voice and told her straight out not to bring the ball in.

And now she was standing there in her olive-coloured hoodie and matching jogging pants, staring at the broken pieces. Her lower lip jutted out as if pouting would miraculously undo it.

Truth be told, you were overwhelmed. You had absolutely no clue whether you should scold her or not. At the end of the day, it wasn't your job to raise her. But then again, somehow it was.  

“This is exactly why your dad told you the ball stays outside.”, you sighed. “Stay where you are please, I don’t want you to cut your feet.”

You slid your feet into one of Mason’s abandoned sliders in the hall before returning and hoisting Ellie up on your hip. She was barefoot and you preferred her unharmed, hence why setting her up the sofa seemed to be the best idea.

“Stay on the sofa please, I’ll clean up, yeah?”

“No!”

“Ellie, honey, do as I say please.”, you sighed, failing to keep the slightly annoyed tinge out of your voice. Your patience was wearing thin, and if she was going to keep her act up, you weren’t sure what you’d do. “There’s thousands of shards and I won’t have you walking through them and hurting yourself. Sit down and wait for me to be done.”

The little girl glared at you, obviously unhappy with your uncharacteristically strict behaviour, but much to your surprise, she stayed where you’d put her.  

A little less than 10 minutes later all the shards were gone, but unfortunately the day didn’t get any better after that accident.

Ellie thought everything was stupid or boring and after you had given her what felt like 200 suggestions and she had rejected every single one of them, you gave up and turned your attention to cooking. Something that normally calmed you down, but with the day you were having, not even that managed to make you feel better.

If anything, the small specks of tomato sauce all over the counter irritated you more than necessary and you were glad, that it didn’t take too long to finish it.

You were about to grab two plates, when your phone alerted you of a new message. Thinking it was probably Mason telling you he was on his way back, you ignored it, but with a few more coming in in quick succession, curiosity eventually got the better of you.

The second you looked at them though, your blood ran cold.

Who’s this tho?

You knew exactly who it was. The blonde hair, the height, her style…it was Rebecca. The gorgeous woman you’d came across in the park. The one who thought you were the babysitter. She looked great next to him. As if she belonged.

It was pathetic, but the longer you stared at that photo, the more the tears burned behind your eyes. Those last days and weeks, you’d let your guard down and unbeknownst that tiny spark of hope had blossomed, and you only noticed now just how deep your feelings for him ran.

“Fuck.”, you tipped your head back and tried blinking back the tears. If you started to cry over this now, there would be no stopping any time soon.  Angrily, you wiped at the few tears that had spilled over. “I refuse to cry again over this stupid boy.”

With shaking fingers, you replied to Kay’s messages before grabbing the lunch and setting it up on the table.

“Ellie, lunch is ready. Come over please?”, you called, but the girl who was sitting less than a few feet away from you on the sofa didn’t even bother to look up from her toys. “Eleanor.”

“No.”

“It’s pasta with tomato sauce, Ellie. It’s your favourite.”

“No!”, she screeched, making a point by throwing her teddy bear at you. “Daddy food.”

Taking a deep breath, you dragged your hand over your face. There was a lot you could handle and on a normal day, you didn’t face any problems when it came to dealing with Ellie’s tantrums, but today wasn’t a normal day.

In fact, nothing felt normal anymore these days. Mason had always been your rock, but the constant back and forth with him lately was starting to dig your head in and his outburst the evening before had only added up to the worries plaguing you.

There was no going back, you knew that. Those feelings that had slowly crept to the surface wouldn’t just disappear again. But you wanted your best friend back. You wanted the times back when everything was easy and for the first time ever since you’d stepped up, the thought of regret snuck into your head.  

If you hadn't taken on this role, perhaps everything would still be the same…

Eventually you sat down to eat by yourself. Ellie was a carbon copy of her dad and there was no chance to get her to eat now, so you didn’t even bother trying. Knowing her, it would probably just make it all even worse.

Not really being hungry anymore, you forced yourself to eat at least a little bit whilst staring ahead in silence. It felt as if within a few months everything had turned to shit and you wondered if continuing to do this was worth it. Maybe you should tell Mason to ask his parents to come up and take care of Ellie?

But then again, you weren’t a quitter.

“Do you want to go to the playground when I’m done here?”

It was your last-ditch effort because Ellie loved the playground and you hoped it would put her into a better mood, but your hopes were immediately dashed by a shake of the head and words that hurt more than you’d ever care to admit.

“Not wif you.”

A lump started to form in the back of your throat at the same time as your eyes welled up with hot tears. You tried to blink them away, but it was to no avail. They started falling before you could even get up from the table and hide away in the kitchen.

“She doesn’t mean it. She’s only little and in a bad mood. She didn’t mean it like that.”, you tried telling yourself, but there wasn’t much you could do. You felt incredibly overwhelmed and helpless as you stood there, elbows propped up on the kitchen counter and sobbing quietly into your hands. Your heart ached from all types of sadness, hurt and anger rushing through your body, making it difficult to breathe properly. You hated how everything was so overwhelming and made you collapse like a house of cards.

Mason was more than surprised to see the state of the living room when he came back home. Not that it was chaotic by any means, but he knew you and how particular you were about tidying up so seeing the table still set from what looked like lunch time and Ellie’s toys all over the floor had him a little worried.

His daughter was colouring in peacefully at her small table in the living room. Her little feet swinging back and forth made him smile softly. She’d been in a bit of a mood this morning and he was glad you apparently had managed to cheer her up.

As he made his way over to greet her, his gaze fell on the dining table, recognising Ellie’s favourite meal right away, but the fact that her personalised plate was entirely unused made him frown.

“Daddyyyy!” Ellie scrambled off her chair the second she noticed her dad in the room and ran over to him as fast as her little legs would carry her.

“Hi princess.” Mason picked her up and squeezed her to his chest before setting her on his hip so he could get a good look at her. “I missed you.”

“Missu too.”

“Yeah? You did?”, he tickled her sides a little, causing her to giggle and squirm in his hold before kissing her cheek repeatedly. “I missed you more though. Did you have a nice day with auntie y/n?”

To Mason’s utter surprise, his daughter shook her head. He furrowed his brows and pulled back a little so he could look at her a bit better.

“No? Why’s that little miss trouble?”

“Auntie y/n sad.”

Mason’s heart dropped to his tummy. He knew you always made sure to hide your feelings from his daughter, especially the ones that could affect her and the way Ellie had picked up on them told him everything he needed to know about the state you were in.

He’d been awful the evening before, he was well aware. He’d said things he hadn’t meant in the slightest and whilst deep down he knew you knew, it was still something that weighed heavy on his shoulders – and heart.

All day long he’d thought about how to apologise; what to say and how to make you feel better despite all those terrible things he’d said. He just needed you to know just how sorry he was.

“Maybe daddy should go and see if she’s okay then, hm?”, he asked as he brushed through his daughter’s brown hair.

“Ellie made auntie y/n sad.”, she whispered barely audible, eyes cast to the floor, but Mason was quick in tilting her hair up gently. Her eyes being full of guilt breaking his heart.

“I’m sure you didn’t, princess.”, he smiled, his thumb caressing her soft cheek. “Everyone is a little sad from time to time, you know? You are sometimes, so am I and auntie y/n is too.”

“Gwandma too?”

“Yes, grandma too.”, Mason nodded. “And it’s okay to be sad sometimes, yeah? But then we need someone to cheer us up and make sure we laugh again, yeah?” For good measure, he attacked his daughter’s tummy with quick fingers and only let go of her, when she could barely breathe from giggling so hard.

“I’ll go and talk to auntie y/n, okay? Can you stay here and colour-in the rest of that picture? I’m sure auntie y/n would be happy to have it.” Ellie nodded quickly, a bright smile on her face. “Thank you, princess.”

Mason pressed a kiss to the top of her head, before setting her down and making his way into the kitchen.

You had your back turned to him, your shoulders calm, but he couldn’t be sure that you weren’t crying. Not after everything that had happened. He watched you for a moment, gaze gliding from your messy bun, over the sprinkles of tomato sauce on the side of your t-shirt – he knew you’d be furious the moment you’d find them – to your legs clad in light grey joggers. Your favourite pair.

When you turned around, the surprise and shock were evident on your features, but Mason couldn’t look at anything other than your red rimmed, glazed-over eyes. You’d been crying, that much was obvious. Your cheeks were slightly red, a little blotchy and he could easily make out the tear stains.

“y/n?”

“I’m fine.”, you attempted to say, but your voice betrayed you rather quickly. You rolled your bottom lip into your mouth to stop it from trembling as you wiped your eyes.

“No, no you’re not.”, Mason sighed. “C’mere.”

There was little to no resistance when he pulled you into his arms and held you tightly. His warmth surrounded you and it was ironic how his smell calmed your mind almost immediately, when he was the reason, you were in this state in the first place.

“It’s okay, I got you.” He repeatedly kissed your head in an attempt to calm you down as your quiet sniffling was breaking his heart. “I have a whole lot to say to you, but you first. What happened today?”

“I don’t know…it was all a bit too much, I think. Ellie was a bit of trouble today too and yeah…I’m sorry you had to come home to this, I’m normally not-”

“Hey, no stop this. There’s nothing you have to apologise for, love.” Gently, he tilted your head back and held you by your cheeks so he could look straight into your eyes. His thumbs wiping at the few tears that had made it past the last line of defence. “Ellie said she might’ve made you sad?”

“Oh…well I made her favourite and she said she only wants your food and…it’s probably stupid really cause I know she didn’t mean it that way, but after everything-” At the end you let what you wanted to say run into the void, but there was no need for you to finish it as Mason knew exactly what you meant to say.

“I’m sorry, y/n.”, he whispered. “I’m sorry for everything I said yesterday and how I made you feel with that. I know I said some pretty shit things and I’m genuinely sorry. I didn’t mean any of those things.”

“I was just looking out for you, Mase.”

“I know you were.”, he smiled sadly. “And I should’ve appreciated that instead of coming at you like I did. I know you only ever mean well with me.”

“Then what happened? Mase you called me pathetic and jealous. You…you hurt me. A lot.”

“I’m so, so sorry, y/n.” Mason pulled you back into his chest, squeezing you tightly. He’d felt awful before, very much so, but hearing it from you, that he out of all people had hurt you and brought you to tears made him feel like the most awful person on the planet.

“Nothing I can say could ever take back the words I said, but y/n, I really need you to know that I didn’t mean any of those. You’re not pathetic, love. You’re absolutely perfect and I’m so glad I have you around. Not because you take care of Ellie, but because you’re you and I enjoy every second I get to spend with you. You’re such an amazing person and the thought of having hurt you kills me. I swear I didn’t mean anything of what I said.”

“Then what happened? Why Mase?”

You finally wrapped your arms around his middle, holding yourself to him a bit closer. You could feel his fingers running up and down your spine, causing you to curve into him a little more.

“It was too much.”, he admitted quietly. “Everything. The whole situation here with you sacrificing a lot for Ellie and I, then the pressure at United. All of sudden, Mae shows up unexpectedly and messes with my head and ends up kissing me. I was so overwhelmed; I didn’t know what to think anymore and when she kissed me I just…I don’t know. It was just too much, like all of it.”

Mason carefully placed his head on top of yours.

“When I came home, I just needed to get it off my chest and you said all the right things, but in that moment I think I wasn’t ready to hear them so I bit your head off. I’m genuinely sorry, y/n. You didn’t deserve any of that, especially not after you sacrificed your whole life for me and Ellie. You didn’t hesitate to put your life on hold and step up to ensure that mine and Ellie’s could be as normal as possible. And instead of telling you every single day how grateful I am, I said those awful things I didn’t mean. I’m so fucking sorry, I hate seeing you hurt and it killed me to know that it’s was me who did this.”

For a while you just kept quiet. Face snuggled into his warm chest, arms circling his waist as you listened to his rapid heartbeat. You knew he was truly sorry. He hadn’t meant any of those things and you’d known before, but you’d needed this apology.

“There’s something else I need to tell you. I don’t know if you noticed, but I got home later than I said I would. It’s…I went to see Mae.” Mason felt your body tensing in his hold and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Yesterday after you left, I thought about everything you said and realised you were right. She did see you as an out. You were her chance to be part of our lives without actually being there and I don’t want that for Ellie. She deserves all the love in the world and above that she needs stability. Not a mum who might or might not be there.”

“Yes.”, you whispered.

“When I told her that she has to be here regularly or not at all, she admitted that it is probably best for Ellie to stay with me and have you by her side. She said you seem to be very good for her and I couldn’t agree more. You’re perfect with her and I’m incredibly grateful to have you.”

“You’re my best friend, Mase. As if I’d ever not be by your side.”, you huffed, but Mason could basically hear the soft smile playing on your lips. He gently pulled away and tipped your head back with his finger beneath your chin and when his eyes found yours he was more than happy to find no more tears shining in them.

“I also don’t love her anymore. I didn’t say it yesterday – out of pettiness really – but I don’t love her anymore. I don’t feel anything for her anymore because she doesn’t matter to me. Okay?”

“Mase, you don't owe me an explanation or anything. I just wanted you to maybe think about it again and-”

“I know.”, he smiled. “Trust me I know. But I don’t need to think about it again, y/n. I know I don’t love her anymore. She doesn’t mean anything to me, I promise.”

You weren’t sure why it was so important to him to get this across, but you closed your eyes and sighed in relief when he pressed his lips to your forehead.

“I really am sorry, y/n. I know you might take a bit until you can forgive me, but…are we okay?”

“I…look, you really hurt me, Mase. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hurt before but you apologised. I should probably be petty and make you beg for my forgiveness after all that-”

Mason chuckled quietly and nodded. “But?”

“But with everything that you had going on lately it’s not surprising you needed an out. It’s not okay what you did and what you said, but I know you’re sorry and that you didn’t mean it. We’ve been friends for years now and I know you’re not like that. I forgive you, okay? Just make sure it never happens again.”

“I will. Pinky promise.” He locked his pinky with yours, a cheeky grin on his lips, before he pulled you back into his chest. “Thank you.”

As you stood there in silence, still holding onto each other, you could hear Ellie’s chair scratching over the floor as it was pushed back and a little later her crocs-clad feet padded over to the kitchen.

“She kept away for longer than I thought”, Mason laughed. “Asked her to paint a picture for you, I’m excited what she came up with this time.”

But when Ellie opened the door to the kitchen, there was no painting in her hand. Granted, she had splatches of blue and red pencil stains in her face, but instead of the paper, she was holding her plate.

“Auntie y/n!”, she grinned. “Pasta now?”

[theresthesnitch]

Sirius woke up to the sound of heavy footsteps running up the stairs. He smiled, realizing it meant Harry was home, but it took Remus shifting in his arms to remember exactly what position they were about to be found in.

Remus lifted his head and seemed to realize what they were hearing a moment after Sirius, but Harry's footsteps were on the landing. They hadn't talked about what they were, much less what they were going to tell Harry, and he was about to find them naked in bed together. Sirius panicked and pushed Remus onto the floor on the far side of the bed just before Harry opened the door.

“Sirius!” Sirius turned around and pat the bed next to him. Harry hopped up and leaned into Sirius’s hug. “Sleeping in?”

“Um, yeah.” Sirius pulled the blanket tighter around his hips. “Remus and I were up late last night.” He hoped Harry didn’t ask questions about it.

Instead, Harry blushed. “Yeah, uh. I was too.”

Sirius laughed. “Oh, were you? Want to tell me about it?”

Harry smiled. “Sure, but can we wait for Remus too? Where is he? He wasn’t in his room.”

Sirius was sure that Harry would be able to tell that Remus was in the room by the way his heart rate changed. “Uh, maybe he is in the bathroom?”

"No, it was open."

"The kitchen?"

Harry shook his head. "I flooed into the kitchen."

Sirius pressed his lips together, thinking fast. "Maybe he went to pick up breakfast?"

Harry pulled back from the hug to look up at Sirius in confusion. "You think Remus woke up early to go get breakfast after you both were up late? Remus?"

"He knew you were coming!" Sirius covered quickly. "He might have set an alarm."

Harry stopped to consider that for a moment, then looked excited. "Do you think he's getting donuts? Cause I could really go for one now."

Sirius laughed. "You know, he might be!"

Harry scooted to the edge of the bed. "I'm going to go put my bag away and then make tea. I bet he'll want a cuppa by the time he gets here."

"You're probably right. Make me one too, Haz? I'm probably going to shower real quick."

Harry looked back with a smile. "Of course. I wouldn't forget you." Harry turned and walked out of the room.

Sirius scrambled to the far edge of the bed. “Remus? Oh Merlin, I’m so sorry.”

Remus peaked out from under the bed. “You know, I’ve had some pretty bad experiences the morning after hooking up with a guy, but I think shoved out of bed and forced into buying breakfast just might top all the rest.”

Sirius swallowed hard. “Sorry, it was just he was coming in, and I panicked. We hadn’t talked about us or what to tell Harry and–”

“And now I’m going out to get breakfast.” Remus slid out from under the bed fully now, and moved to start putting on clothes.

“I’m so sorry about that.” Sirius sat on the edge of the bed. “I’ll go if you want me to instead. You don’t have to.”

“And what, do you have some polyjuice sitting around so I can be you for the next hour?” Remus shook his head and pulled his trousers up. “It’s fine.”

Sirius bit his lip as he watched Remus dress. “I know we just talked last night about me fighting for you, but this is not me not fighting for you. It’s just–it’s Harry, and I’m–”

“Harry is your priority.” Remus looked at him with a smile, and Sirius felt his pulse settle a bit. “I’m not mad. He should be your priority. It was also kind of funny listening to you scramble for an explanation. I’ll go out and get breakfast now. Donuts, apparently.”

“I’ll pay for them. You can get some money out of my wallet.”

Remus snorted. “You’re damn right, you’re paying. I’m getting myself a coffee too.”

“Whatever you want. A breakfast roll, too. Or an extra donut.” Sirius grabbed his hand. “Are we alright?”

Remus stepped closer, legs pressed against Sirius’s knees over the edge of the bed. He cupped Sirius’s face, stroking his thumb over his cheekbone. “You still like me?”

Sirius bit back the retort that Remus used the wrong L word, and merely answered, “Yes.”

Remus leaned forward and brushed his lips against Sirius’s. “Then yes, we’re alright. We’ll talk about it later, when Harry is busy or whatever.”

“I’d really like that.”

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Rock, Meet Hard Place 4

Warnings: this fic will include elements, some dark, such as noncon/dubcon, and other untagged triggers. Please take this into account before proceeding. It is up to curate your online consumption safely.

Summary: your boss makes a deal that proves less than beneficial for you.

Characters: Nick Fowler, Lloyd Hansen

Author’s Note: This is what you asked for so don’t even.

Please feel free to leave some feedback, reblog, and jump into my asks. I’m always happy to discuss with you and riff on idea. As always, you are cherished and adored! Stay safe, be kind, and treat yourself 💜

“His dick is out.”  

The words wake you out of your daze. You barely remember grabbing the phone, but you have it pressed to your ear as Nick snarls on the other end. You put your hand on your forehead and yawn. 

“Fowler, it’s two in the morning--” 

“I said his dick is out, harpy,” he snips. 

You sigh, “tell him to put it away.” 

“Oh, thanks, didn’t think of that,” he retorts sarcastically. 

You shake your head, “I’m sleeping. Figure it out--” 

“Harpy, I haven’t had a blink. He’s been ranting at me for hours. And his robe keeps—Goddamnit, Hansen, close it!” 

You hang up before you can hear the rest. You set your phone to do not disturb and roll back over. You sink into the white noise and another blissful reprieve from consciousness. You work hard when you’re paid to. Outside of those hours, you don’t put thought to it. 

You wake with your alarm. You have your routine; cleanse, moisturise, tone. Then a light glimmer of concealer and gloss of lip oil, a bit of mascara. Many women tend to put on too much in an effort to hide their wrinkles. You never minded the lines. 

You dress; a high-collared boucle jacket and cigarette pants. You put on your usual leather boots and tap out of your house. The heels are thick and pointed but not high.  

You have enough time to stop for coffee. You grab the seasonal flavour and head off to Fowler’s. As you do, you smirk to yourself. You almost forgot about the late-night SOS. You hope he ended up getting some sleep. Either way, he’ll be a treat. 

You claim your usual spot and enter through the gate. All seems as it should be as you head for the door. Still, you feel a sort of unease. 

As you enter the house, your toe meets an empty bottle that skitters over the floor. You close the door and look around. There’s a puddle of liquor near the stairs. It must have been some night. 

You hover your foot over the bottom step as you sense something through the doorway of the front room. Hansen’s naked ass hangs off the couch as he teeters on the edge. You blink and shake your head. You head upstairs.  

You enter your office and put your bag on the desk. Fowler’s door is open. You can hear him snoring. You near and peek inside. He’s slumped over the side of his chair, an empty glass on his desk. His shirt is unbuttoned and untucked. 

You return to your desk. You could wake him up but you’re not his mother. You sit and set to reviewing your roster. Contracts but no meetings. You made sure his schedule was mostly clear for Hansen’s visit. 

You focus on getting through your task list. Eventually, you’ll need him to wake up but you can have mercy. Let him make up for lost sleep. 

As you sip your coffee, you hear footsteps in the hall. There’s a grumble through the door as it opens from the other side. You glance over your monitor as Lloyd walks in with only a pillow to hide his pelvis. He at least has an ounce of shame. 

“Nicky--” he calls then stops himself as he sees you. “Ah, there she is, the shrew. Ready to be tamed?” 

You roll your eyes. “Good morning, Hansen. I’m afraid Fowler’s not taking walk-ins.” 

“Well, aren’t you a peach,” he tuts. “Have a sense of humour.” 

“You’re not a very funny joke.” 

“Oh, ouch,” he touches his chest as if he’s been shot. “That stingggs.” You stare at him. His brows tweak and he winces again, “now that cuts deeper.” 

“I’m afraid Fowler is not up to visitors right now. He had a late night,” you look at your monitor and click around. Those leather boots are to die for.  

You ignore the man as he lurks. “I can wake him up.” 

“I won’t stop you,” you mutter. 

“You know,” he diverts and approaches you, “I’d like you to try. I mean, you sucker punch a guy once and you think you got him figured out--” 

“You come any closer and I’ll snip it off,” you grab the scissors from the pen stand and flash the blade at him. 

He looks down as he keeps his hand around his groin. 

“Hey, if you want a peek, you just gotta say the word,” he snickers. You open and close the blades and he gulps. “No fun.” 

You keep the scissors and swivel your chair. You grab your cup with your other hand and sip. You stare at him dully. He tilts his head coyly. His eyes wander over to the screen. 

“Nice boots. You should get them. I’ll let you step on me, mistress,” he purrs. 

You angle the scissors under his hand and press the flat to his balls, “go put some pants on before you have nothing to put in them.” 

“You’re fucking spicy. I like it.” He snarls and wiggles his hips. 

You retract the scissors and stand. He puffs up his chest. Is he flexing? You put the scissors under his nose and snip the ends of his mustache. He yipes and recoils, swinging free as he feels his upper lip. 

“Woah, ho, what the fuck? You don’t mess with a man’s stache!” He roars as he reels and pats his lip frantically. “Goddamnit! You really are goddamn harpy.” He searches around and runs over to the decorative mirror by the coat rack. “Fuck. It’s uneven!” 

“Not much of a difference. Still looks awful,” you snicker and slide the scissors back in the holder. 

“What the fuck?” A grumble rolls like gravel as Fowler staggers through his office door. He buttons his shirt but one tail is longer than the other. “All this fucking noise—ah, Jesus, Hansen, I’m having nightmares about your fucking taint.” 

“Oh, but your dreaming of me, pretty boy,” Hansen winks and drags his hand from his mustache. 

Fowler growls and his chest deflates. He looks at you, “I need coffee and he needs some goddamn pants!” 

“Should I put on the assless chaps or the snakeskin?” Hansen taunts. He meets only stolid silence. “Holy balls, you two are just lively. Aren’t you? Look, we’re workin’ together. I’m tryna break the ice.” He rolls his eyes and turns to strut away, “fine, better get one last look before I put the cake away.” 

[aleki-lives-here]

The second part of tech's pov is actually here, this time including Murderbot being lovingly disassembled while conscious! (an experience that was definitely nothing but pleasant, don't worry about it)

It's officially a series now, I think there'll be five parts total? But don't trust my word, the process is mysterious and unpredictable.

A feed alarm marking the end of ter shift blinked to the center of ter vision just as Ginson pried open the chest panel. Ter tool slipped, jamming into exposed synthetic muscle held to the side by the SecUnit’s one functional hand. Ginson turned off the reminder, rubbed ter eyes with the back of ter hand that hadn’t yet been covered in blood and fluids, and sighed. 

“Everything alright?” Minoa chimed in. Ginson could feel him working in the shared feed workspace, but he was keeping an eye on what te was doing. Which was, of course, not awkward and distracting at all.

“Yes, yes,” te sighed again, and brought the clock to the foreground of ter attention – it was an hour into ter usual rest period – and set a new timer, counting seconds to the morning. Te had a little less than eight hours to finish every diagnostic te could think of and compile the report, and even fewer if te actually wanted to get any sleep.

Which was why te picked up the tool, nudged the Unit’s hand into a more convenient position and pushed the chassis open manually instead of hooking up the specialized machinery and starting the full maintenance cycle that would require at least another half an hour and take the SecUnit offline. 

Blood dripped down from where the organics tore. The SecUnit helped ter maneuver its parts to provide access. Minoa whistled, feed activity slowing down, and peeked over ter shoulder. “That’s… fuck, they actually have, like, organs?”

“Language,” te warned distractedly (Minoa groaned), then answered, “Yes,” and leaned forward to get a better view. The diagnostics couldn’t tell where the damage was, and te hoped looking at it would make things obvious, but there were no visibly leaking parts, and the inorganic tissue was still in the way, even if this one was partially transparent, so te reached to move it aside – thankfully, it was made to resist impacts, not being cut through (if the most inner parts of a SecUnit are being cut, there’s likely nothing more to be done) – moved the tool carefully around the tubing, pulling the tissues away with the other hand, and–

“What’s this?” Minoa exclaimed. 

Ginson stilled ter fingers before te could accidentally cut something that should not be cut. “Nothing you need to look at,” te snapped and immediately regretted it. Judging by Minoa’s silence, it was entirely too harsh. That’s why Ginson hated working with people – te wasn’t good at it, especially when te was busy! Te put the tools aside and faced him.  “Sorry. I don’t mean to yell, it’s just… sorry.”

“No, no, sorry I interrupted,” Minoa laughed, and te shifted awkwardly. “It's late, and you have to work. Ugh,” he made an entirely exaggerated face of disgust. “Eleven pm at work is the exact time and place to be cranky.” 

That just reminded Ginson that te wasn't the only one staying after hours, and Minoa wasn't even paid for this. “If you want to call it a day–”

“Nuh-uh!” Minoa exclaimed and emphatically tapped his lips. “Nope, never, you're not getting rid of me so easily. You think I all but begged to be in your wonderful company just to give up like that?” 

Ginson sighed, but this time it came out exasperated. “Offering help isn't begging.”

“That's besides the point.” Minoa waved dismissively. “Also, where else do I get to poke around in one of these?”

And, to prove his point, he poked. His finger landed at the side of the mostly exposed lung, and he immediately flinched away, making a face. It startled a laugh out of Ginson. “Don't do that,” te had to warn. “These things are delicate on the inside, and cost a fortune. I need to prove it hasn't been damaged, not get it damaged.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Minoa grinned back. Ginson found some part of terself relaxing. “I'll limit my poking to data, then. Your magical fingers are definitely much better suited for this task.” 

Te waved him off, but couldn’t hold back a smile.

At seven hours thirty-eight minutes before the solicitor was due back at the office, Ginson had to accept that a purely visual inspection would lead ter nowhere, and ushered the SecUnit towards the table. It hesitated slightly, still holding its chest open with one hand, and Ginson put its severed arm aside, clearing the space.

At seven sixteen Ginson had gone through most of the circulatory system piece by piece, still finding no explanation for the lowered performance. It wasn’t surprising – the numbers weren’t significant enough to warrant so much effort in any other circumstances, but the manager had been clear: te was to investigate and list every smallest issue, and prove that (ignoring the mangled arm that happened during the assignment and could not be blamed on the company) no, there was no malfunction, so no, the company wouldn’t be paying for the mess. 

Ginson really hoped there wasn’t any malfunction, because if there was… best not to think of that.

At seven ten, Ginson was waiting for the liquid pump to pause the flow on one third of its pipes, so they could be rerouted to an external pump, when Minoa made a surprised sound. Te made sure the errors from the temporarily reduced blood flow cleared out, then asked, “Something interesting?”

“Uh, I guess?” Minoa’s attention was on the feed. “Dunno. I’m gonna– yeah, that, I’m gonna run it against the archives, but maybe?.. Give me a couple of minutes.”

At six forty-seven Ginson fiddled with the disconnected pump, still warm and dripping liquids. It looked perfectly good in ter fingers, but the diagnostics did return an improvement now that it was out of the picture, so, here. A meaningless problem solved. Te wiped the pump and ter hands and focused on the report and the list of other things that returned less than perfect status. Could the left knee joint being 1.7% too tight cause a SecUnit to misinterpret the order? No. Did anyone care about ter opinion or basic logic? Also no.

Stars, te was tired.

“So,” Minoa said and then paused for a good half a minute. Ginson looked at whatever he was working on in the feed – graphs and automatic reports by programs te wasn’t familiar with, structured in ways that didn’t feel intuitive. Minoa sent some of it to the display surface. “Got a minute?”

“I’m listening,” Ginson sighed. 

“Okay,” Minoa smiled and rubbed his hands together. “So, first of all, I wasn’t actually sure what I was looking for?” He looked apologetic. “I ran the code you sent, and the results were all very clear, and then I thought: surely I can do better than this! And you know I don’t really know how to interpret the logs, but it’s the exact kind of data I work with, so I ran some of my code just to see what’s up with that. And you know its performance is generally abnormal, right? Turns out, that’s not the only weird thing!”

That was interesting, Ginson told terself, and it was. Just, at any other hour, you know? Once te'd had a good long nap, then it would be interesting.

“I don’t have all the data from all the SecUnits,” Minoa continued, “but what I did have on hand has yielded fun discrepancies. This,” a graph appeared on the display surface, “is feed activity. This is what you’d see in new SecUnits, and some of the old ones here. This one would fit more with the first bunch, which is weird–”

“Individual differences,” Ginson interrupted. 

“Huh?”

“They are all different. I don’t suppose it shows up for you, but it’s critical in my work. Every Unit is a bit different. They perform differently. They approach things differently and in different ways.” Te shrugged. “Neural tissue. You really can’t get them acting the same, no matter how much structure and how many constraints you implement around their decision-making process.”

“...Right,” Minoa said. 

Ginson thought he looked disappointed, and felt another pang of guilt. Te fidgeted with the pump again, bits and pieces moving inside of it with every twist of ter fingers. “And other differences?” Te tried to sound enthusiastic or at least like te wasn’t dying for a soft pillow and some quiet.

“Right! Okay, there's quite a few to look at, but the most interesting one from those I could check is, I think, the cleaned up data for research on the governors and their effects. The primary focus was the cumulative damage to neural tissue and whether it was worth doing something about, but we tracked many metrics, and one of the things we tracked was hormonal response. The stress levels are higher in older SecUnits as a rule, but they fluctuate a lot, and, looking at the governor module’s influence, there’s always this spike right before it activates, and a long period of recovery afterwards, no matter which level the punishment was at.”

Ginson snorted. “So basically you’ve discovered that they have stress reactions to pain?”

Minoa blinked and looked at the SecUnit. Ginson did, too. It was still lying on the table, unmoving, tubes going out of the hole in its chest and to the external pump. It was still online. Suddenly, it made ter uncomfortable. 

“Well, yes. The thing is: this one doesn’t. Or, if it does, then less than other SecUnits. There’s little to no correlation between its governor module and stress responses. By that I don’t mean it doesn’t have stress responses, because it does, and they’re– there’s a lot of those. And I mean, a lot. If I were a MedSystem looking at a human, I’d give them anxiety meds.” He paused and blinked some more. “...Can constructs have anxiety?”

“The hormonal responses are calibrated for optimal performance,” Ginson dismissed. Te squinted at the graph, then closed ter eyes and accessed it in the feed instead. That, somehow, didn’t make it make more sense. “Individual differences,” te muttered. 

“I suppose,” Minoa sounded sceptical. “Do you know how long it’s been like this?”

“No idea. Logs aren’t kept in full for long.”

“So no logs pre-RaviHyral incident?”

That made Ginson pause. The SecUnit was a mess when te’d gotten ter hands on it first. Being infected with code that took control of its systems and forced it to kill indiscriminately – that was something out of a horror show, and none of them got out of it unaffected. Some were decommissioned as their performance reliability never returned to acceptable figures. Every other one had their memory thoroughly purged. 

Half of those showed repeated problems afterwards, which was how they ended up in ter basically personalized care. Ginson knew them, pulled them apart and put them back together with ter own hands, and hated seeing three more of them gone, never returning from other contracts. Te compiled reports of their state afterwards, and all looked like unfortunate accidents, and were unfortunate accidents. It still felt a bit like ter failure. Maybe they were still underperforming, some error stuck in the organic parts of their systems that Ginson couldn’t access, and the mistakes were the consequence of ter lack of ingenuity. 

But out of the ten Ganaka Pit SecUnits, there was one outlier. It hadn't been an outlier early on – In fact, it was one of the units struggling to return to baseline functionality – but then something happened and it shot beyond the baseline, enough to get Minoa's attention. It was great at its job, and Ginson never found out how it got there.

Te stared at the graph now, and wondered. It made ter feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Neural tissue can be unpredictable,” te repeated. “Especially after extreme adversarial circumstances. And it largely controls its own hormone release so it can self-regulate, and that’s what it did.”

Minoa didn’t look any less sceptical. “You made this sound like a very natural response that every Unit has,” he pointed out. “But then shouldn’t they have the same stress response to their governor module being activated? All the others do.” He gestured at the graphs.

“Well, what other explanation is there?” Ginson asked and immediately regretted it. The discomfort turned into painful pulsing between ter ears. This day couldn’t be over soon enough. “Whatever,” te waved ter hand. “It doesn’t give us much. I’m going to run the proper diagnostics on the endocrine system, but it’s not like it could have forced it to jump into the blast radius against an order.” 

Except hormones affected decision making (that’s why they were there to begin with), and so, yes. This could in fact make it jump into the blast radius without paying attention to an order. If it didn’t have the appropriate fear of the governor module’s punishment protocol, it was the exact kind of thing that’d make it disobey. 

Ginson winced. The only worse result te could deliver was finding out it was a rogue that got caught in an explosion in an attempt to commit mass murder. Oh, ter supervisor would love that conclusion. 

The good thing about hormones was: they were in the blood, and that blood was already conveniently running through a machine capable of taking every test needed. By which Ginson didn’t just mean the SecUnit, though of course it could track its own levels, but the external pump could double as a diagnostic tool. That was just great, and a wonderful way to appear like a good diligent worker that took time to run double tests instead of enjoying ter rest – if a single supervisor would think to realize how much effort hooking it all up would have taken if Ginson hadn't already done that. 

Half of the Unit’s hormone levels were of course elevated. Te’d already talked about individual differences – this was exactly about that. This SecUnit didn’t like going through any tests or repairs. It’d found those stressful since Ganaka Pit, and usually Ginson tried to keep it offline for everything that didn’t require its participation. Te felt a bit bad for keeping it awake like that. Poor thing must have spent the whole time in fear, but, well – it’s not like te had much of a choice here. Te’d take ter time if te had any. 

The test was simple and automated, but took time. The hormones flushed away from its system, then flooded it again. The SecUnit twitched minutely when they plateaued at the highest concentration, and Ginson patted its hand briefly. “Sorry, it’s not going to be a pleasant test,” te muttered. 

Minoa gave ter a startled look that made ter cheeks warm up, but didn’t comment. 

The hormones slowly flushed again and as its results returned almost clear, Ginson dropped a modified governor module diagnostic in its feed. There was an immediate spike in adrenaline that the machines quantified, which was also great because here, proof that Minoa’s findings were a fluke and all of it worked beautifully. The systems connected to the governor, exchanged messages, orders (limited to those the Unit could perform without moving physically), received responses, all in a timely manner and with elevated stress. 

Then came the test of punishment procedures. The shocks were administered at regular intervals, with growing magnitude, the governor module registered every one as completed with not a single problem, except…

“There are no pain-related spikes,” Minoa pointed out. 

Ginson could see that. 

The test finished, and returned all clear. “The endocrine system is being tested, that must interfere with the regular hormone production,” te lied. Because it didn’t, and the first spike was a proof that te’d not messed something up in the settings. The SecUnit had a fully functional hormone production system that could deliver as much adrenaline as needed, and somehow, magically, it didn’t have the natural, innate-to-all-constructs (and humans and, te was sure, animals too) responses to pain. 

“Should we test for it separately?” Minoa offered and clapped his hands. “If that’s the reason it’s been performing better, we should look into it!”

Ginson cleared ter throat. “Minoa…” 

“Come on, call me Tom.”

“Uh,” Ginson blinked and for a whole second looked away from the SecUnit. “Right. Sorry, – could you get me some coffee?”

Minoa stared for a few seconds before smiling. “Sure! How much sugar?”

“Three.”

“On it, boss!” 

He left and closed the door behind himself, and Ginson lowered terself on a chair and slowly, articulately, allowed terself a singular thought: holy fucking shit. 

Okay, te could still be wrong. Te wasn’t dismissing the idea that it was all a fluke, and a natural difference, and there wasn’t a singular test that came out anything but clear, and, most importantly, the SecUnit hadn’t actually killed anyone it wasn’t supposed to. It did ignore an order. And it did show the complete lack of natural responses to pain–

Wait, was it pain generally or pain from the governor? Te had full access to the logs, and te knew the exact timestamp te needed – ter alarm had gone off at exactly eleven, – and, yes, there was the spike in response to the tool slipping and hurting it, and then it lowered its pain sensors even further. So it felt pain alright, and had all the natural and universal reactions associated with it. Except when it came to the pain delivered by its governor. 

So, returning to that thought: holy. fucking. shit. 

At six hours and two minutes, Ginson spent an entire minute staring at what had to be a rogue SecUnit, lying on ter table, chestplate to the side, hooked up to an external pump and currently riding another hormonal high. That made no sense. There was not a single universe in which it made sense for a fucking rogue SecUnit to allow Ginson to do any of this to it! To continue allowing this, for months! 

…Was this why it hated being tested so much? Was it scared of being found out?

At five fifty te was carefully connecting the tubing back to the SecUnit’s liquid pump as the door opened again. “The sugariest coffee I could find!” Minoa announced. He placed it on the table without being told to do so, and peeked at what Ginson was doing again, and drew out a disappointed, “Is this a no for additional testing then?” 

“Not tonight,”” Ginson replied. “There’s already a lot to do–”

“Awwww.”

“–and hunting for mysterious possible problems – that likely don’t even exist because all the diagnostics are clear – would not just be a waste of time, it would be- it would be utterly unproductive, is what it would!”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I was just curious–”

“Well, I’m not! If it works, don’t fix it! My job here is to make sure that it was working within normal operating parameters during the contract. And it was! There’s a whole fucking lawsuit–”

“Hey, language,” Minoa tried for a joke.

“–and who do you think would be blamed if it were to have malfunctioned? Do you think it’d be whoever demanded it stopped in the middle of saving the workers? There was no malfunctioning involved, just some stupid contradictory orders, and that’s it. That is it!”

Minoa was silent for a while after te’d finished. “Sorry. I was just curious, is all. We don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to, tonight or ever.”

“There’s no need to check that, because it’s nothing but bullshit,” Ginson said and made sure ter voice sounded confident. 

Minoa was silent again. Ginson stared at the SecUnit in front of ter and felt sick. It stared at the ceiling, never once meeting ter gaze. A regular, normal, obedient SecUnit that helped with its own disassembly because a tech had asked it to, who just happened to receive conflicting orders that one time. Te’d checked the logs, there were conflicting orders. It was just that simple.

“Okay,” Minoa said finally. “I’m sorry. Is there something else I can help you with?”

Ginson felt awful. He’d done nothing but try to help and cheer ter up, but it was just… not a good night for that. “No. It’s fine, I’ll finish here myself. There’s just a lot of tedious checks, you’ve already helped enough,” that sounded wrong. Te winced. “Sorry, I’m really grateful, just…”

“No-no, I get it,” Minoa assured. His voice sounded odd. “Well, I suppose it’s time to spare you from the fun of my company.” He laughed. “Hang out at some point later?”

“Sure,” Ginson agreed and turned toward him. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he echoed and left.

At five forty two Ginson suddenly had no distraction from wondering whether a rogue SecUnit would jump up and kill ter the moment its blood was safely running all inside its body. It hadn’t yet. But it really wasn’t convenient to murder someone while they were conducting your own repairs. 

Ginson spent a few minutes sipping ter coffee and mulling over that possibility, and every other possibility that bloomed in ter imagination, and then got to work. 

At one hour thirteen minutes te submitted a final report that said that yes, there were minor problems with the SecUnit’s systems. Its pump was performing 2.3% worse than standard. Its left knee joint was too tight. A patch of skin on its back had been regrown at some point with slight defects. But there was nothing more than that, and nothing that would have made it malfunction and do what it shouldn’t have, and definitely not a single tiniest thing that would make the company liable for the damages, and even less that would point to ter, good Tech Ginson, as not having conducted a thorough enough check of the SecUnit’s functionality. 

It was a great report, all in all, with the result of every diagnostic attached. And te didn’t even get murdered while writing it, so maybe it really was the truth.

[bambinotattoo]

Erica’s Diaper Plan

Chapter 16

Erica’s first day of high school…and diapered like it’s her first day in pre school

Karen didn’t get much sleep that night, all she could do is think about her poor little daughter getting found out and viciously made fun of because she’s wearing and wetting diapers. As much as Karen tried to tell herself “ this is what she wanted” it’s still difficult rationalize that 15-year-old daughter will be wearing diaper diapers and getting changed at the school nurse on her first day of high school. This stress care out so bad.

Karen stared at the alarm clock as the minutes rolled closer to getting up, she clicked the alarm off a minute before it was set to go off… and headed to her daughter’s room to start getting her ready for her big day…

“ knock, knock, crinkle butt… are you awake?”

“ no”

“ yeah OK, lol… are you ready for today little girl?”

As Julie was wiping the crusty from her eyes, she replied with…

“ I had a dream that everybody saw me get my diaper changed at school”

“Aww, that’s not a very nice dream at all, speaking of a witch, let’s get on your changing table so we can get you diapered for the day…”

Erica slowly rolled over and meandered to the changing table, slowly climbed up, and let her mom start getting her cleaned.

“ what diapers are you putting me in today? It’s the thinner daytime ones right?”

“ well, honey, I kind of figured I would diaper you as sickly as possible today just so you were super uncomfortable, waddling, and blushing all day!”

“ no mom, seriously…”

“ yes grumpy, I’m gonna put you in an ABU, with an overnight booster… and then we’ll go look at some clothes and figure out what makes you the most comfortable”

“ do I have to have a booster in?”

“ well, Erica, you’ve been wetting pretty heavy… and I’m more than sure you’d rather not leak at school, right?”

“ yeah you’re right, I just didn’t want to waddle too bad, especially when I get wet…”

“ well hopefully by the time you’re wet, you can go see Miss Jasmine and she can get you changed, that’s the plan, right?”

Erica just noted her head, closed her eyes and let her mom continue wiping her princess parts, applying new diaper rash ointment, and her daytime diaper with thick booster pad. Erica was still pretty small for her age, and an ABU with a booster was still pretty thick. That definitely gave Karen a bit of pause, but if Erica is OK with it, we’re gonna go with it…

“ OK sweet girl we’re all done, come over to the closet and let’s figure out how we’re gonna dress you”

Erica got off the changing table gave a few big stretches, and commented about how she’s already waddling, and she’s not even wet. Erica joined her mother at the closet, and her mother gave some choices and options…

“ OK sweet girl so I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, I think you should wear a onesie at least off the bat… that way, your diaper will be more compacted and less noticeable I’m hoping. Secondarily, it will help keep the diaper up so if you get really wet, it won’t sag too bad. Is that a doable compromise?”

“ a onesie? Really?”

“ oh Erica, don’t be a brat… no one’s gonna know except for Jasmine.”

Karen took down a lilac purple onesie with no patterns, and put the head hole over Erica’s head. Continued and got her onesie snapped in place.

“ OK so I figure knee length or longer ski skirts would be a good option? What say you?”

“ I think that works, what about a pair of short alls? I have that pink denim pair.!”

“ oh honey, are you sure? That’s pretty tight, if you’re trying to be inconspicuous, I don’t think that’s the way to go…”

“ well I’ve been thinking to mom and I figure, the best way to desensitize me is to throw me in the fire…”

“ oh honey, you don’t mean that do you? I mean, if you walk in a silent classroom, you’re going to be noticeably crinkling and waddling… are you ready for everybody to know you wear and use diapers?”

“ I think you’re over exaggerating mom, it’s the first day… and besides, I thought I was the one that has to be comfortable?”

“ yeah honey, but… OK, let’s put them on and see what happens…”

Erica stood still as her mother helped her put the short dolls on and clipped the snaps into place. Karen stood back and all she could think of was my 15-year-old looks like a diaper toddler. Erica on the other hand, admiring herself in the mirror thought she was just cute as a button.

“ Erica, honey… walk around a few steps”

Erica raised her eyebrows did with her mother told her… in the silent bedroom the unstable wrestling crinkle of a disposable diaper was audibly unavoidable…

“ you’re OK with that Erica?” Like seriously? I’m not trying to be mean I’m trying to be supportive, but do you understand you’re going to high school, dressed like a toddler with a pretty much noticeable diaper? I thought you were nervous and scared and trying to hide that at school? Did I miss something??”

“ calm down, mom… like I said, I’m trying to desensitize myself. I understand this is my reality. This is what I wanted, people are gonna find out or they’re not I don’t think anyone’s gonna pay that close of attention…”

“ famous last words… OK Erica you win… I say we go ahead and put your matching thigh high socks on with your purple pumps? Maybe some purple bows in your hair?”

Erica immediately perked up, “YEEESS” as her eyes open widely!!

All Karen could do was shake her head for a smile and try to be supportive… if she wasn’t super nervous before she’s absolutely freaking out now…

“ OK sweet girl let’s get your bows in”

Erica absolutely looked like she was going to kindergarten not ninth grade, and the noticeable waddle and crinkle isn’t helping anyone… her mother just stared at her as she walked around, getting her stuff ready tears almost flowing thinking of how poorly this could go…

“ mom smile… it’s gonna be OK I promise”

“ if you say so, Erica…”

Erica has had a phobia of the school bus since she was a little girl, so her mother has driven her and picked her up most days since she was in elementary school. Which also meant Sara Beth would ride with them. As Erica was finishing her cereal and collecting her thoughts, side kitchen door swung open to see Sara Beth and her fresh clean new school duds smiling ready for the new adventure!!!

“ hey Second family, what’s up? Oh wow Erica, you um, look…little?”

“ see I told you, Erica…(little)”

“ Don’t you think this is cute SB?”

“ if you were modeling for baby gap, yeah”

Karen let out thunderous laugh, and decided to let Sara Beth tell her how it is…

“ is it really that bad?”

“ it’s not that it’s bad Erica, you just look like you’re wearing a diaper and that you’re 6…”

“ well I think it’s cute, and everybody is so afraid of how I’m gonna handle this… why not start desensitizing myself and everybody else off the bat… I’m diapered, I’m not potty trained, I wet and mess myself… I go to the school nurse to get a diaper change, and I suck a pacifier to go to sleep… is what it is”

“ I mean, that’s one way to think about it Erica… so when people ask me, what would you like me to tell them? Because we’re in the same classes and people know we’re best friends and people are gonna be curious… so you tell me?”

Erica looked back at her mom, and then at Sara Beth

“ don’t look at me. I’ve already had this argument this morning.”

“ Erica, what would you prefer the story be?”

“ I don’t think people are gonna be that curious…”

“ you don’t think?”

“ well shit OK, how about this? I had a really bad urinary track infection, lasted several months, and did permanent damage to my bladder and my ability to go to the bathroom. Because of this, I’m diapered full-time… and will be for the unforeseen in future. In an effort, to stave off the depression I’ve been dressing a little bit younger to help me cope with this fact”

Sara Beth and Karen just sat there staring at Erica… knowing she’s been planning this for who knows how long.

“ that was a pretty complete answer Erica” Karen said from the peanut gallery

“ you’ve been worried, and I’ve been thinking… plus, after Wednesday it will be in my medical chart that I’m urinary incontinent. So what’s the big deal?”

It seemed Erica had it all figured out, even through her Mom and best friend BOTH thought she was losing it. She just told her best friend to tell people, yes, Erica is wearing a diaper. This made Sara Beth a little uncomfortable, but never the less…this is what she wanted.

“ OK kids let’s pile in the car and get you guys to high school…”

The three exited the house and went toward the car. Instinctively Sara Beth went toward the backseat when Erica stopped her and said you can sit up front. I’ll be in my car seat!

“ wait, you’ll be in your what?!? You have a car seat, and you’re gonna sit in it on the way to high school?!?”

“ well yeah, who cares?”

Sara Beth once again and gave her a friend a very long look, she was starting to worry about her diapered friend. All of this was a lot all at once…

Sara Beth lovingly decided to ignore all of the weird and helped her friend into her car seat and got her buckled in

“ there you go little girl, do you want your pacifier?”

Erica just smiled and nodded quickly, and her friend offered her pacifier to which she accepted… Sara Beth got in the front seat put her seat seatbelt on and just gave a look to Karen. Karen was giving the same look to Sara Beth.

“ today is gonna be something… or everything”

Karen nodded and started the quick drive towards school…

They arrived in what seemed like no time, and Erica took her pacifier out as soon as she knew people could maybe see her. This action made Karen feel a little bit better that her daughter actually did have a little bit of tact.

However, she was still sitting in a car seat buckled in… they arrived at the drop off, and Sara Beth jumped out quick open the back door and started getting Erica unbuckled out of her car seat…

“ getting dropped off at the same time, was a few of their friends they haven’t seen in a few months… who just like little girls do, ran towards Sara Beth and Erica to catch up and get hugs…

“ Sara Beth…Erica…OMG I missed you guys!!” Jewel and Mellissa ran toward the two

Sara Beth froze, the two arrived while Erica was still buckled into her car seat, and her diaper poking through with all the obviousness…

“Um, hey…why is Erica dressed like my little sister, and why is she sitting in a car seat? What the fuck?!?? lol”

Sara Beth froze, Erica turned beat red and tears started to well up…at about the same time, she fully emptied her bladder and SOAKED her diaper.

“Erica, what’s up?”

“Um…uhhh…”

“Listen, she had some medical problems this summer. Really bad UTI, did some permanent damage.” SB spouted with as much confidence as she could.

“Ohhh, well damn…that’s a bummer. Better than last time. What kind of damage?”

At this point Karen helped get Erica unbuttoned, and out of the car. Her now FULL diaper made her already noticeable waddle, really noticeable. Erica took a few steps towards the three when…

“Oh shoot, are you wearing a diaper Erica?! Bahahaha. You wet you pants?!?”

Karen stood aside, her worst fears blazing in front of her. These wee supposed to be her friends, and they’re making fun of her and it’s only 8:15am.

Erica who was beeming with confidence earlier, now stands in front of night school, ugly crying, and flooding her diaper. Karen then noticed, that Erica wet herself so bad that she leaked all over herself. By the time Erica realized she not only wet herself, but the entire front of her shortalls had a growing wet spot, and was dripping onto her new shoes. Erica crying harder now, ran to her mom, buried her head in her chest and just uncontrollably cried. Her so called friends finally stopped laughing at her, and started walking towards the entrance.

Sara Beth, not sure what to do…walked towards her inconsolable friend and mother.

“Erica, are you okay?”

Sara Beth obviously upset and empathetic, locked eyes with Karen. Karen motioneded to SB to just go inside. Begrudgingly, she did.

“ Erica, sweetie… let’s get you back in your car seat, honey. Today’s not gonna happen.”

Erica listened to her mother still uncontrollably crying, incline back into her car seat for the long ride home…

Karen got in the driver seat picked up her phone and sent a text to Jasmine…

(Hey, so…today did not go well. Erica freaked out and flooded her diaper in front of her friends, leaked everywhere. I’m taking her home.)

[chaosduckies]

Friends in Small Places (Chapter 2)

Whattt two chapters in the span of two days? Wow even I’m surprised. But thank you for all the support on the first chapter! I hope you enjoy this one too!

Word Count: 4.2k

CW: Major Anxiety, slight dehumanization

2-Liam 

The rest of the day was spent just getting used to everything. There was no way for me get onto anything without climbing, which by the way, I had had zero upper body strength.  They didn’t really think through with this, did they? But otherwise, it wasn’t so bad. Cas pretty much left me alone, though I’m sure he wanted to talk. I would have liked to, but I was afraid I’d do something stupid. My sleeping situation wasn’t really the best either, considering I was too afraid to be held, let alone carried, so I was left with just sleeping on the floor. I wasn’t too picky about it, but I guess Cas felt bad and brought over blanket and just folded it a couple of times to act as a mattress and a blanket at the same time. 

I woke up a little earlier than I usually do to get ready to go to classes. I don’t really understand how they expect me to keep up with everything all at once, but hey, college. They don’t care about your personal problems. I hurried to grab my bag, then realized that I couldn’t exactly get out without turning the doorknob, which was currently fifty feet above me. I didn’t really want to wake up Cas, but I also didn’t want to be late for class. Which one was a better option? Waking up Cas. How was I going to do it? I had no idea. There was no harm in at least trying though, right? 

His room was pretty small, only fitting a twin-sized bed with a small desk that had what looked like a couple of notebooks. Cas was sleeping his bed, the blanket almost covering up his entire face. I sucked in a deep breath, forcing words to come out of my mouth. 

“Cas?” He didn’t hear. 

I moved a little closer from my spot on the ground, not minding the dark abyss that was under his bed. Totally not creeped out. 

“Cas!” He moved around now, but didn’t wake up. I was starting to get worried before a loud alarm rang high above me, but still hurting my ears. I covered them up, pressing my back against what I was hoping was his nightstand. So loud… My head was slightly throbbing, but finally the alarm was turned off. I looked up, seeing Cas yawning then struggle to sit up. He groaned, his eyes drowsily staring down at the floor, then trailed off to me. Maybe I should have just waited. Why does he have an alarm set anyways? Did he have somewhere to be? 

“Sorry! I’m so sorry.” He apologized, sitting on the floor so he was’t looming over me as much. Why was he worrying about me? My entire job was to be worried about him. Literally. Still, it made me feel a bit better to think that he’s self-aware of everything he does. 

“You’re fine! It was just a little loud.” I laughed nervously, still messing with my ears to make sure I could still hear properly. Cas’s hand moved closer to me, retracting almost immediately. My heart was beating fast, but I never flinched. Mostly because I think I was just frozen in fear for that split second, but still. Does that count as something? 

“Did-Did you need something?” He asked, fidgeting with his hands as if he was distracting himself from something. Was I also getting the subtle hint that something else was wrong? What could it be? Did I somehow hurt his feelings? I hope I didn’t… I would feel bad, plus I’d have to figure out some way to calm him down when I’d probably be less than an inch tall to him. I hope that never happens, but I’m sure it’s inevitable. 

“Just if y-you could open the front door. I-I have classes to go to. P-Please?” My voice came out a little shaky, and I could only assume that Cas didn’t ignore it. Instead, he tried his best to give a smile while nodding his head, “Do you mind waiting a minute? I’ve gotta get dressed.” He moved out of the way for me to walk over to the door. As soon as I took a few steps out, he lightly closed his door behind me. What does he have to get dressed for? Why so early in the morning too? 

It only took him around five minutes to get dressed and all ready, wearing a similar long sleeve shirt as yesterday and a pair of slightly baggy sweatpants. Seriously, where was he going? I guess he has his own reasons. It’s probably best if I don’t ask until later, when we actually get to know each other better. Plus, it’s mostly likely going to be something with the SSU anyways. He does have a red band after all. It’s not really my place to ask. 

“Do you um, know how long you’ll be gone?” Cas asked sadly. Like he didn’t want me to leave in the first place. Would he feel lonely? It would make sense. Could I just stay here? I wouldn’t think so in all honesty. I would hate for something bad to happen while I was gone. What if something actually does? Would I be held responsible? Of course I would. It’s stupid to even think that I wouldn’t. What if I just gave Cas my number? If there really was a problem then the school would be forced to let me go handle it. But hopefully it’ll never come to that. 

“Just until around two. I-I can give you my number if anything happens. Would that help?” I explained, doing my best to hide how shaky my voice was. My head was getting a little dizzy from staring up at him the entire time. Couldn’t he be a human height? Or was it just hard for him? Most likely the latter. I feel like if he’s so scared of hurting someone at the size he’s at right now, then he’d definitely want to be human sized. Maybe I could help him work on that? Would that make him feel better about himself?

Cas stared at me a little shocked, just about to reach for the door handle. He gave an unsure look before sitting down a little closer to me and pulling out his phone with a shaky hand. Was he scared? Of what? My heart fell, not seeing how someone who held so much power could feel scared. 

He turned his phone to face me, the screen dimmed and the keypad already out. I thought he was going to just say his out loud, but I guess this works too. I typed my number in, having to reach far above my head to reach the top numbers, but otherwise I managed it. 

I nodded while stepping back, seeing the shock on his face reappear as he clicked a button. His eyes darted between me and his phone. Thinking about what to text? I guess he didn’t want to say something stupid? My phone went off soon enough. I dug it out of my pocket in my bag and looked, smiling. 

Unknown: Thank you 

“Anytime.” Cas gave the best smile he could muster, slowly standing up and opening the front door. The sun was barely rising, and there a few people leaving for what I was guessing work. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to walk by next to them. It hasn’t even been a full day with Cas and I’m already wary about being next to him when he’s walking around the place. Though, I do catch him almost constantly checking the ground for anything. Or anyone. It was oddly… relieving. 

I stepped outside, taking a few steps outside and waiting for the door to close behind me, but instead, Cas walked outside too stepping slightly over me to lock the door behind him. I’m surprised I didn’t run off that very second. My heart started racing fast and my body trembled a little. Even after all of that I didn’t move. But he just stepped over me like a bug. Nonono. He doesn’t think that, does he? I’d sincerely doubt it. He probably just didn’t realize. All the more reason to watch where I am and where he is at all times. 

We both went in opposite directions, Cas mouthed a goodbye before walking off. I guess everything will be alright. What could go wrong? Just that something happens to Cas and then he shifts, I get in trouble for it, spend the rest of my life in jail for abandoning my “job” that I’m not even being paid for, and then eventually face the damage and destruction that could have been avoided if I had just stayed with him. Don’t think about it… 

Yeah, yeah, it’ll be fine. Just go through the day like any other, come back, and everything will be fine. Yup. It’ll play out just like that. I won’t even have to see Cas calling me. Everything will go just as I played it out in my head. I go to my classes, hang out with my friends for a while, then head back and Cas is a-okay. This is exactly how it’s going to go. Because I don’t think I can handle what would happen if it didn’t. 

——————

Halfway through day I sat through a lecture for my anatomy class. Apparently human jaws are just a strong as a sharks, but our minds just don’t let us use all of the strength. Cool, right? But that was currently not on my mind as I felt my phone vibrating in my back pocket. The person sitting beside me glared. I smiled nervously as I looked for Chelsey in my seat, who was sitting on the other side of the classroom. I stood up, hoping no one would mind and walked up to her. We were both friends, even if we barely talk. Only at small gatherings or when she helps me with studying everyone once in a while. 

“Hey Liam!” She piped up, her usual cheery self. I held up my phone, a worried look on my face, “I-I, um, I need to go…” She would understand, right? She was also assigned to a shifter after all. She looked at me confused, then made a shocked face, her lips forming an “o” while nodding her head. 

“I’ll cover for you. It’s not like they can get mad at you anyways.” She whispered. I whispered a thank you before rushing to grab my bag and walk out of the room. At the time, the professor wasn’t even in there, so I hope Chelsey would help me out. But I trust her. 

I dialed Cas back, hearing it ring for several seconds before he picked up. I wasn’t actually expecting something to happen! My only problem was how I was going to get there. It’s a thirty minute drive just to get to the other side of the city! I’m a college student without my own car, which isn’t really the best outcome right now. 

“Hey! Um, are-are you alright?” I stuttered, almost running to catch a taxi- or really anything that could get me there in time. No bus came here around this time. 

“N-Not real-“ I heard a loud thump! “Ouch- on second thought you don’t have to come here.” He nervously laughed, groaning immediately after. What was that sound? Did he hit something? I bit the bottom of my lip, slightly terrified of what I’ll see when I get there. If I ever will anyways. 

“Just take deep breaths, okay? I-I’ll be there as fast as I can.” I rushed down the street to an empty taxi, opening the back door and saying the address to the driver who was actually extremely nice. 

“I-I’m sorry to ask this, but how long until we get there?” I sadly asked, feeling bad that I might be placing pressure on him. Instead, he just laughed, “I know a shortcut, around a fifteen minute drive from here.” 

“Thank you so much.” I sighed, handing him a twenty dollar bill. I only really had to pay around ten dollars, but the extra ten won’t hurt. The older man gasped before he heard a loud noise come from my phone. I jumped, extremely worried now, “Cas, you good?” 

He didn’t answer for a while, and when he did, his voice came out pained. Kind of like how you sound when you’re losing your voice, “Yeah, yeah. I just hit the ceiling-“ Hit the ceiling? Is he being serious? There’s no way. How could I even-  So how small would I be to him? Would he even see me? They should’ve switched Ryan and I. At least he’s a shifter too so maybe it would’ve been easier for him. Instead they get an insignificant, little human who can’t even do a single thing right. 

“Okay, um, c-can you wait fifteen minutes?” 

“Yeah, I think so.” He groaned, moving around to what was hopefully a more comfortable position for him. The driver looked at me confused. 

“…Do you want me to stay on call?” I asked quietly, extremely scared of what I’ll see in about ten minutes. 

“Yes! I-I mean, yes please.” He immediately replied. I was a little shocked, but at least maybe I could delay the inevitable. For about ten minutes. Not really that long but it’s fine. Hahaha- yup. I’m totally not going to be around a literal titan and have to try to calm them down. What even made him lose control? He seemed okay before. Maybe it was when he went out? 

“Hey, if it’s alright to ask, what happened?” I kept my voice calm and collected even though everything in my body wanted to jump out of this car right now and make a run for it. 

“Just some new pills that the company gave me this morning. They’re supposed to help me stay at a human size, but they’re still working out a few things. Ow-“ He sucked in a sharp breath on the other end. The company gives him pills? They didn’t bother to mention that to me? I think the more shocking news was that he needed pills to help him stay at a human size. So he just can’t regularly? Or maybe that’s just for shifters with a red band? That’s probably it. I didn’t know much about it though if I’m being honest. Most things about shifters are disclosed to only the SSU. 

“It hurts you?” My voice came out shocked as the driver took a right turn, entering the neighborhood and riding down the street. 

“Well, i-it’s not supposed to. It’s a new medicine they’re trying out.” He laughed nervously. Please don’t let me pass out. The house came into view. Nothing looked out of the ordinary thankfully. He can tell me all about whatever medicine they gave him after I deal with what’s happening inside. 

The driver stopped slowly at the house, looking back it then to me, “Are you sure this is the right house?” My body started shaking just thinking about walking in. What would happen? What if he doesn’t see me and moves in a wrong way? What would I even do if he couldn’t hear me? How do people do this for a living? 

“Oh y-yeah. Thank you so much!” I slammed the twenty I was still hanging on to on the passenger seat and rushed out of the car, grabbing my bag in the process. The taxi had left, and I started slowing down when I reached the door. Cas would have to open it. Because of course they don’t have anything human-sized. They just want to make my “job” harder. 

“Hey Cas, do you… you mind opening the door?” My voice quivered. As much as I tried to hide it, of course I can’t for forever. What kind of psychology student am I if I can’t even deal with my own thoughts and emotions? Why did I think I could handle someone else’s? Don’t think like that, you’ll be fine. I had to tell myself as the door opened. I didn’t look up, scared that if I did I’d just run off before I could even take a single step inside. 

I hung up the phone when I walked inside, trying to hide the fact that I could literally hear every single time Cas had moved, which wasn’t something that was happening before. A few deep breaths, and I forced myself to look up. It took everything in my will to not run. It’s like a fight or flight instinct. When a person see’s something big, or something that looks powerful, our instincts kick in. In my case, I had a third option. Stand absolutely still and quiet. 

Cas didn’t say anything either, squinting down at me with a sorry expression. Oh this is just going to be so… fun. 

———Cas———

There were no words to describe how terrified I was right now. Why did I call Liam in the first place? It was a stupid idea, but I didn’t want him to get mad at me for not telling him. I thought today would have been fine. I’ve been taking my anti-depressants and I’ve been trying to at least look happy just so Liam would think I wasn’t that bad, but apparently not. I know he’s scared too, but I didn’t entirely understand why he stays. The old therapist I had was mean and didn’t let me go anywhere without her. She would boss me around, and eventually she left because of some complaints. So why did I get the feeling that Liam was different? Because he was only a year older than me? Because, so far, he’s given me freedom to do what I wanted? 

Seeing him so tiny made everything in my body go on caution. I didn’t move at all as he stared up in horror. I tried my best to stay in a confined space, my head just barely inches from hitting the ceiling again. I kept my legs close to my chest, my arms around them. I try not to break anything while I’m this size, but somehow something always does. I never know what to do when I lose control of my emotions. It’s why I take so much medicine to make sure I don’t in the first place, but the company makes me and a lot of other people try out new pills they make once every other week. Sometimes it makes me stay at a human size for just a couple minutes, or sometimes it just makes me grow, like it did now. Or nothing happens besides making me feel sick for a day or two. They were trying to figure out a way to keep the shifters like me at a regular human size for longer than we can physically handle it. 

This time though, it hurt. It felt like something was ripping apart my abdomen from the inside. My heard hurt, a lot, and my muscles were killing me. It’s not like I could move though. I didn’t want to mess up the place, plus, Liam was here and I’d rather not hurt him. I really, really don’t want to hurt anyone. I can’t put the weight on my conscience. Then everyone would have a whole ew problem to deal with- and then I’d be blamed for everything. 

I winced when my head banged up against the ceiling again. Just calm down. Don’t make Liam do something he doesn’t want to-My eyes darted to where the tiny figure on the floor was, now shakily moving towards my hand. I let out a quiet yelp, moving my hand away and trying me best to keep my back pressed up against the wall behind me without breaking it. 

“Nonono, I’m fine I promise.” I laughed while putting on the best fake smile I could muster while wrapping an arm around the side of my abdomen, where it was throbbing the most. What did they even put in it this time? Why was he forcing himself to try and help me? I would be okay, right? I didn’t need to make him do anything. I could do this myself. I’m not even spiraling into my thoughts right now. Imagine what Liam must be thinking right now. “If he’s not even losing control of his emotions what would happen if he does?” I shuddered at the thought. It does get pretty bad though. I wonder if the others are going through with the same thing. 

I could tell that Liam was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear him. I didn’t really want to make him yell, but I also didn’t want to scare him half to death. 

“S-sorry, I can’t hear you… Is it okay if I move?” I asked, feeling a bit saddened. I wish I wasn’t even a shifter. I wouldn’t even be in this mess if I would’ve just stayed normal. Just like everyone else. I wouldn’t need to have someone watching over me constantly, I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting anyone smaller than me, maybe I could see my parents more than just once a month. My heart skipped a beat, and I knew that I couldn’t wait for some sort of confirmation if I could move. I hurried to lay down, flipping my stomach, trying to keep my limbs close my body. I groaned, knowing that I just made everything so much worse. 

I buried my head under my arms, facing the floor. I bit down on my jaw for a while while the abdominal pain started up again, then went away after a while. Okay, maybe the medicine isn’t the only thing making me shift sizes right now. Just calm down… take small breaths. 

“C-Cas, can you hear me now?” A worried and panicked voice filled my head. I peaked out, seeing Liam a small distance away from my face. But still too close for comfort. Please move away, I don’t want to hurt anyone. I thought to myself, thinking that if I talked it would only do more harm than good. 

“L-Look, u-um…” I could tell he was in a panic, and I wish that he wasn’t in the first place, “I-I don’t k-know. U-um, how about just a few deep breaths, ‘kay?” He took a few of his own, gripping a chunk of his shirt against his chest. I did as he told me too, finding that it was working just a little bit as I felt myself shrinking down a couple feet. 

“Is the medicine making you… grow?” He asked, confused, but also still under a small panic attack. My only answer was a slight nod, my heartbeat calming down, but the pain in my muscles and head never going away. Yup, tomorrow will just be a resting day at this point. I should probably clean up whatever mess I’ve made though. 

“Okay, think you can calm down enough to go back to the smallest size you can?” He breathed, his body trembling. He was still a student right? That would make sense. The therapist I used to have knew almost exactly what she had to do. Or at least what she thought, she needed to do. I only calmed down because she was practically threatening me at that point. Liam, on the other hand, apparently didn’t know what to do. Or maybe he did but he scared to do it. All I knew was that I’d have to listen to him to make his job easier. 

I nodded again, picking my body up as much as I could and trying to think about anything good. You’ll get to see your parents next week. Your old therapist is gone. And soon enough I was at my minimum at the moment. Liam was still extremely small, like a centimeter tall, which didn’t at all put me at ease, but I have no idea how long I’d be stuck at this size. Hours maybe? I laid back down on my stomach, groaning and facing the hard floor. 

“I’m so sorry.” I whispered. 

“It’s fine! It’s not your fault, I promise.” Liam explained, sitting down near my face again just so I could hear him. I would have preferred for him to be as far away as possible from me, but I can’t say anything. He is technically my boss after all. But it makes me kind of glad to think that he came over here just to help me out. I think I would have been fine either way, but it would’ve gone a lot slower.

“Are you okay though? You look pale.” He asked me. 

“Mhm. The pills this time just hurt a whole lot.” My head was throbbing. Why couldn’t I just be normal? I wouldn’t have to take those stupid testing pills in the first place. I felt my eyes closing. 

“Alright, how about you get some rest? Maybe you’ll feel better after?” He offered, I nodded my head while yawning and doing what he said. Yup. Hopefully I would. I just hope I don’t do something stupid while sleeping.  ——————

This is my first time writing some about sizeshifters so I think I’m doing an okay job at it?

And we finally get some g/t. Sort of I guess. I planned for this chapter to be longer, but then I didn’t want the one after to be too short. Aghhh idk

But thank you for reading! I hope you all have a great day/night :D

Taglist: @da3dm

[phinena]

Are you using lucid dreaming to shift?

Let me help you

Ιɴ 10 dαyѕ, Ι αм ɢoιɴɢ тo тeαcн yoυ нow тo вe α мαѕтer lυcιd dreαмer

Hi, you may be asking “what do I know about lucid dreaming that can make me master it, in ten days?”

Persistence and delusion. I consider myself a master lucid dreamer, because well I am.

I have been lucid dreaming for a while now, and lately it’s been getting easier and easier. So I’m going to tell you exactly how i did it in 10 days, or less. No, I’m not some “I’ve been lucid dreaming since I was child,” person. This is through sweat and tears. I built this sh*t, brick by brick. I found my method and now I lucid dream without even planning to. Mostly because I unconsciously do this method.

You will need 3 things

A notebook or journal

A regular sleep schedule

A strong willed mind

The notebook or journal is to not only document your journey, but also to make sure you are recognizing the patterns in your dreams.

The regular sleep schedule. Yes, this means no more going to bed one night at 10pm and another night at 4am. Find a middle time that can get you the regular 8+ hours that you need!

A strong willed mind. That is for not giving up, and not giving into the negative. Lucid dreaming is tedious at first because you are basically controlling what your mind is doing.

“But Phinena, I can’t dream.”

I would rather you tell me you can’t breathe.

Unless you have CWS, you should be able to dream. Aphantasia is the ability to not see images. Dreams are created through a whole different part of your brain. Though there’s still a VERY SMALL CHANCE that aphantasia effects this.

Now before you even start this method, have a good sleep schedule. You shouldn’t be trying this on irregular sleep schedules because of the way this method works. I would at least have 1-2 days of a going to sleep at the same time, before even attempting this first step.

So I’m going to start with day 1.

Day 1

(Getting your dreams back)

If you think you can’t dream

You’re going to love this method. And by love, I mean hate. And by hate I mean despise, if you like your sleep.

This method is not new. If you’re familiar with WBTB (Wake back to bed), it’s exactly like this, but with a more drastic approach. It will have you tired, so I do not recommend doing this on a day you have something important. School, work, an interview, party, etc. This method will leave you tired and exhausted. But let’s GO.

1.

Get ready to go to sleep. In my experience, I have a routine before I go to bed that starts to really get my mind in the mindset of, “oh I’m ready to sleep.” So do whatever you usually do. But make sure you put your journal next to you. With an intention to recall and write down your dreams.

2.

After you have winded down, set a timer for 1 hour and 25 minutes. If it takes you a while to fall asleep, maybe 1 hour and 35-40 minutes. Make sure this timer is loud and annoying, and not something you will sleep through. If you think you’ll just wake up, and unconsciously shut off the alarm and fall back asleep, set your phone away from you. Like on desk that you have to get up to be able to shut it off.

3.

Fall asleep, But have in mind that you will wake up very soon. Almost like having a nap. This will cause your brain to be more on alert, and won’t make you fall into a deep sleep.

4.

Now that you have waken up from your first round, pull out your journal and start writing what you could remember. If you can’t remember a whole dream, maybe write out certains things you can remember. Like: Ball, Club, dancing, singing, etc. And if you didn’t have a dream or can’t recall a single image, you will be able to recall your emotion. Did you feel happy, sad, confused, terrified, angry. Was the tone of your dreams chaotic or calm. Just write down what you think you felt. It doesn’t matter if what you think you felt was true or not, just write it down. Don’t write stuff for longer than 10 minutes. Just do a quick write.

5.

Return to bed and reset your alarm for 1 hour and 25 minutes. Fall back asleep.

6.

Rinse and repeat steps 4 and 5 until you complete your regular 8 hour sleep cycle. By the time you are done, you will probably have gone through 5-6 rounds of waking up. And you should have 5-6 entries. With your brain being on such high alert, this will cause you to retain your dreams much better. It will make it easier for you to see them and sense them.

7.

After completing your sleep cycle, take out your journal and go over the dreams you had. Try to think back on them, see if you can find missing details you can remember. Sometimes you may find more than you think. Recall for as long as you feel like it, and then go about your day.

The reason you will be doing this, is to get your brain used to being in a light sleep. This will fix your dream recall pretty much overnight. And remember, the further into your sleep you go, the longer and more vivid your dreams will get. Most of the dreams you naturally remember are the ones you have in the last 180 minutes of your sleep. 3 hours.

This is because you are starting to wake up, and your sleep becomes more and more light. Which is why most lucid dreams happen between the 5-7 hour mark of your sleep cycle. This method is preparing your brain to start becoming aware of your dreams.

You have come to the end of Day 1

Take care of yourself

🪐𝙥𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙣𝙖

[jedidryad]

Six Sentence Sunday: Conversations that should have happened.

I don't do this particular tradition much. I have enough trouble managing WIP Wednesdays, and I'm pretty sure this segment is more than six sentences so I'm messing with the tradition as I attempt it which might be poor form.

While working on this Mara memoir, I have sometimes found my brain wants the story to go in a different direction than canon allows. Some of these imagined sequences can turn into other "Luke and Mara get together stories" and some of them don't really merit that but still demand to be typed into a doc in black and white so I can stare at them and think of how different canon would have gone if the conversation had happened. This one is a brief snippet from a far more rambling discussion that might have happened if, instead of scolding and abandoning Mara after Kyp stole her ship on her first night at the academy, Luke had the insight to pull back after his outburst and ask Corran to escort Mara to his office and get her a cup of tea. If he had promised to meet her there after he calms the students and does post-Kyp damage control.

Maybe something like this could have happened...

Mara glanced up from the cup of elba she’d been holding in a death grip.

Luke stood in the doorway, robe hanging off his shoulders. His white sleep clothes made him look less imposing but also reminded Mara of just how good he had looked in an undertunic on Myrkr

He hesitated at her baleful expression but didn’t let her continued silence deter him. He entered his office, and sat down in the chair next to hers rather than circling around to his desk.

“I thought when I sensed your emotions that it was a…” he paused, clearly choosing his words carefully, “more the sort of danger that meant everyone needed to evacuate,  instead of something more personal.”

“So you sounded the alarm.”

“Yeah. and then I had to come up with some sort of explanation…”

“I embarrassed you.”

“I embarrassed me, Mara.” He sighed, “I’ve been doing that a lot lately. I’m not really feeling much like a confident Jedi these days.”

“Great,” she muttered, “Karrde sent me here because he thought a confident Jedi could help  me with my mess. Now what’ll I do?”

Luke’s gaze dropped to the floor, his shoulders drooping. He seemed  to fold in on himself.

Mara grimaced and set her mug on the small table between them: “Okay, not funny then.”

He glanced up at her, clearly trying to read her gaze from under the hair that was now falling into his eyes.

“You were trying to be funny?”

“I’m not my best self right now, Skywalker.”

“Neither am I.”

“Great."

“The whole galaxy knows what’s wrong with me. What’s up with you?”

“They don’t." She picked up her mug again and tried to let the warmth soak into her, "they really don’t. No one who didn’t sense you had any idea.”

“You sensed it?”

She nodded: “You and Kyle took a dip at the same time. I was with him. I sensed you.”

“I wish you hadn’t.”

“Why is that? You want to be some all-powerful master?”

He snorted ruefully.

“No, but I didn't particularly want to lose your respect.”

“Skywalker, I served a Sith Master for my entire childhood. Do you think slipping for a little while would be enough to lose my respect?”

“I wasn’t sure. Master Yoda said ‘if once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny’.”

"And he never did anything wrong?"

He smiled. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

“You are?”

“I meant it when I said it earlier.”

Mara took a deep breath, “I don’t think I’m in any state to train to become a Jedi.”

He looked at her for a moment.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Sure, it’s not like we can fly anywhere.”

[decks-writing-blog]

Whatever the Fuck Benrey is: Chapter Seven: Perform Like a Circus Animal

Chapter One

Previous Chapter

~

“Wake the fuck up already, Gordon!”

It was a far less horrendous wake up call than the wretched blaring of Gordon’s alarm clock, but that didn’t make Benrey happy about it.

“You’re the one who volunteered us to ferry supplies like a bunch of goody two-shoes pack mules,” Bubby continued, just as loud. “So you gotta get up and get a move on already.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m awake.” Gordon’s voice rumbled in his chest where Benrey still lay against it. They’d shifted a bit, Gordon now lying partially on is back with Benrey on top. He was still fully under the blanket though so he was still hidden from Bubby’s view. “How’d you get in here? I locked the front door.”

“I picked it. You know where Benrey is? I’d thought he’d be in here, playing your Xbox or something.”

Gordon’s arms shifted around Benrey, holding him a bit tighter, as he rolled a bit more onto his side, bringing Benrey with him and thus hiding him better under the blanket. “He was last night. I got no clue where he is now. I’m sure he’ll show up again eventually, he always does. Now could you please leave so I can get out of bed?”

“You naked under there?”

“Yeah, so fuck off.”

“Don’t fall back asleep.” A moment later, the bedroom door closed.

Gordon held Benrey to his chest for a couple more seconds before sighing and shifting to lift the blanket so he could look down at Benrey. “Good morning. Sleep well?”

“Five more minutes?” Benrey didn’t need another five minutes of sleep but he also didn’t want to get up yet.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Unfortunately we can’t lie here for five more minutes because it’ll turn into an hour and we… or at least, I really do have stuff to do today. So move.”

Benrey groaned but obeyed because Gordon would probably push him if he didn’t. Upon sliding off the bed and stretching himself out, he already missed Gordon’s warmth. It was a like a hot shower than never ran cold and without all the wet that cooled too quickly when stepping out. … He could survive without it though. Being needy, clingy, and desperate for cuddles was kind of lame and so he wasn’t. A one time really nice cuddle was all he needed or wanted. He was set for life on that now.

“You weren’t there but last night we talked and agreed to ferry supplies for the rescue attempt that the other guys are putting together to look for people deeper in the facility. We’re also bringing back wounded to Tuefort. Technically since the stuff in the health packs apparently comes from you, you could probably heal them. But we’re trying to keep you secret and no one’s in life threatening danger so it’s fine. I volunteered to drive back all our personal stuff while Dr. Coomer, Bubby, and Tommy deal with the wounded. Meaning you’re riding back with me.” As he talked, Gordon cleaned his glasses before sliding them back on his face.

“Neat. You got a DS or PSP or some other handheld gaming thing I could play during the drive?”

“Uh… yeah, actually. I found my Game Boy Advance in the closet yesterday. There was even half a pack of batteries still with it. I haven’t touched it in a few years though so I can’t say for sure it’ll work but it probably should.”

Well on the off chance it was busted, Benrey could always ask Tommy to lend him a book. OSHA manuals were probably even more boring than normal books but they’d probably still beat staring out the car window at the unchanging desert. Though even that was better than staring at it as he walked it. But if push came to shove, he could just bother Gordon to keep himself entertained. So really, it’d be fine no matter what.

~

Naturally having no personal possessions left intact to pack up, Benrey was ready to leave first. It helped that he also didn’t have to bother with breakfast. He played the Xbox right up until Gordon forced him off so he could pack it up. Blessedly upon doing so he handed over a large tote bag with a picture of a cat on it that contained his promised Game Boy Advance and batteries for it along with a whole bunch of games and some cables. Apparently he had indeed been hiding the good stuff in his room.

Benrey then moved to sit and wait the car and sort through his new borrowed treasure trove of games while Gordon – with some help from Coomer – packed all of the Science Team’s stuff into trunk and the back seats. Said car was a company car, the Black Mesa logo painted on both sides. Meant for transporting things, it was bigger than Bubby’s but the seats were less comfortable. It had a Christmas tree air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. An old one based off how little scent still clung to it.

Gordon, in typical Gordon fashion, ended up dawdling more than was necessary before getting into the driver’s seat and finally getting the show on the road. Tempting as it was to tease him for that, Benrey was already too absorbed in, new to him, Superstar Saga – Gordon’s selection of Game Boy games was much better than his paltry Xbox game collection – to think of something good. So he let it go… for now. Next time he dawdled for a long time when Bubby wasn’t around to urge him onward, Benrey would be sure to say something though. Had to keep him on his toes after all.

Other than the radio, playing soft only slightly staticky music, and the sound of the Game Boy, they rolled in silence for maybe a whole five minutes before Gordon broke it.

“So you can purr, huh?”

Before he could stop himself, Benrey flinched. His first instinct was to look at Gordon. A mistake he quickly remedied, setting his gaze back on the Game Boy even though he’d lost his train of thought with it. “What? No. Who told you that?”

“Last night, or I guess more like super early this morning, after the alarm woke us, you fell back asleep first and started purring.”

Damn it! He’d stamped down that urge and thought it defeated. Even after instead of having a funny reaction to Benrey being so close, Gordon had said he could stay which had been nice in an entirely different way, he hadn’t done it. Purring was cute and he may not know what he was beyond being not human but he did know he also wasn’t cute. Apparently whilst asleep his body had betrayed him.

“It was pretty cute,” Gordon continued at Benrey’s failure to respond, proving Benrey’s point.

“I’m not cute.” People in real life or in video games and movies labeled as ‘cute’ were almost never taken seriously. They were the side kick, rarely respected, often cooed at like a baby or dumb animal. Cute things were looked down upon, treated as less than.

“Nah, it was pretty damn cute, dude, adorable even.

“Shut up.”

Gordon chuckled. It wasn’t as nice as his laugh normally was because he was laughing at Benrey’s expense this time. “Does Tommy know?”

“No.” The only other people who knew were the scientists in charge of him. The way they’d treated it as a cute fun thing to show off to everyone like some kind of spectacle had convinced Benrey to never purr again. It had lead to the one and only he’d broken into their lab to destroy recordings of himself once they’d finally given up on trying to force him to do it again in person for everyone who wanted to see and instead had just showed the tapes. Since then, rare were the times he’d even felt tempted to purr, making it rather easy to not do while in front of anyone. Until last night apparently anyway. “Don’t tell him.”

Of course Gordon would tell though. Gordon barely tolerated him so why would he not share Benrey’s secret? It was cute and thus must be shared and shown off. And now not only Gordon but Tommy and the rest of the Science Team would know too and he would never live it down. Heck, maybe he’d already told them and they’d had a good laugh at his expense over breakfast.

“Okay, okay, I won’t tell.”

Pausing his game – he’d been doing nothing but running around in circles anyway – Benrey looked up at Gordon again. His eyes were on the road and his gun hand was pushed through one of the lower parts of the steering wheel, helping steer. His expression wasn’t much of anything other than generally relaxed, making it hard to tell if he was genuine. “Really?”

“Yeah, sure, unlike some people, I try to not be an asshole, so if it really bothers you, I won’t tell Tommy or anyone else.”

“Okay. Better keep that promise though or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Uh… I don’t know yet. Just don’t tell.”

“I won’t.” He was silent for a long moment after that, long enough that Benrey was about to return his attention to his Game Boy before he continued. “Can I ask, um… why you purr though? Like, uh, cats purr most of the time because of positive feelings. But you’re not a cat, obviously, so do you purr because you’re happy or is it something else? Like maybe it’s just something you do when you’re asleep. Or is it because you were having some kind of dream that… made you purr for whatever reason.”

“I don’t know. I just do it sometimes when I’m warm and cozy or whatever. It’s lame so I try avoid stuff that might make me feel like doing it.” Except last night but he wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

Gordon broke eye contact with the road to look at Benrey, his expression soft now. What exact emotion was behind it was hard to tell though. “Well… I don’t think it’s lame. It’s pretty soothing actually, like it sounds nice. Um, it helped me fall back asleep. So I don’t think you should be ashamed of it so much you avoid it or whatever.”

Benrey scoffed as he turned his attention back onto the Game Boy. What did Gordon even know about it? Nothing, that’s what. He wasn’t the one with the ability to purr and thus didn’t have to live with some people thinking him a cute, adorable thing to show off to everyone when finding out. So Benrey was done talking about it. He had a game to focus on.

***

Driving was quickly proving to not be as much of a distraction as Gordon had hoped it would be. In hindsight not surprising given he was driving through an empty dessert with nothing to look at but dirt. The only other cars were the two Bubby and Dr. Coomer had been lent – no sign of Bubby’s original car which would’ve made three, freeing up room for Tommy to drive as well instead of going with Dr. Coomer, but whatever – and they were both far enough ahead that he’d have to go out of his way to hit them.

So naturally, after only a few minutes, he resumed talking to Benrey. Finding out more about him would be worthwhile, for curiosity's sake but also they had some sort of tenuous friendship going so it’d be good to know more about him on that front too. Also, apparently somewhere along his hellish journey through Black Mesa Gordon had become the kind of person who always needed to be talking or listening to someone else talk. Making him annoying but Benrey was annoying too so he deserved it.

Over the next long while he subtly tried to get as much info out of Benrey about his past as he could. What kind of life had he lead in the lab? How had they treated him? What kind of experiments had they subjected him to and their results?

Trying not to ask any outright invasive questions made it easy for Benrey to slip around them with a lot of non-answers. He was distracted by his game of course but also some of it had to be purposeful avoidance. Gordon pressed for more here and there but never too hard lest it be sensitive. Resulting in him not learning as much as he’d have liked. He did confirm and reconfirm a few things though, such as, Benrey had indeed spent his whole entire life in the lab in the lab, he wasn’t sure if he’d been born, hatched, or made there in a tube or something else, and that when he’d talked about the scientists harvesting his ‘juice’ to turn into medical goo he had indeed meant his blood – they drew it out of him with needles.

“Did you have anyone who uh… you considered to be like a parent?”

“Nope.”

Gordon waited for a bit but of course no further answer came. Benrey was too focused on his game and/or just straight up didn’t want to elaborate. And Gordon couldn’t exactly ask him if he’d been mistreated, especially since that was probably a given, right?

“What about friends? Any of the scientists your friends?”

“You guys.”

“I mean like the scientists uh… assigned to you or whatever. Any of them your friend?”

“Nope.”

And so on and so forth, Gordon never quite daring to ask what he actually wanted to know. Giving up on that line of questioning and bringing up video games finally got a bit more though.

“First console I got was the original Game Boy, the one with like the green screen and no real colour. I stole it from one of my handlers pockets. Only had one game for it but it was fun. I kept in my gamer pad and made it a power thingy but then it got bombed so… it’s busted now.”

“Oh, uh, sorry about that.”

“It really blows. A real bummer.”

Gordon would’ve liked to offer some comfort but how did one comfort someone who hadn’t had much to begin with and then lost it all? Instead… “What do you mean you ‘made it a power thingy’ though?”

“I put some energy in it so it would draw more power for me. Only a little though ‘cause I was doing it mostly to make it easy to find my gamer pad without having to like… walk through the halls and stuff, I could always just go straight to it. Also it was special but… whatever, doesn’t matter now.” The last sentence was a mumble, just barely audible over the radio and sounds coming from his game.

“So… like what you did with the passports on Xen?”

“Yeah but not as much. Oh, uh…” he looked at Gordon, not something he’d done often during this conversation, “I figured out earlier that uh, I’m made from Xen energy… I think. On Xen I was like… the most powerful I’d ever been and before that, after the resonance cascade, I was pretty powerful and always more powerful in Black Mesa. Especially around where they were getting all the Xen stuff to study. But now, with all the portals shut, I’m like the same power level anywhere I go, basically. So I must be made form Xen energy or from something they found on Xen.”

“Or maybe your from Xen?” Making him an alien and thus finally a possible answer to what he was.

“Hmm… don’t know, maybe.”

“Though, uh… maybe not. We saw all sorts of Xen stuff and none of it seemed to exhibit anything like what you can do. Which doesn’t mean much because we didn’t see much of Xen.” Meaning all they’d really done was narrow it down to alien or lab grown monster made when experimenting with stuff taken from Xen.

“I now know something about where I came from though so… you should be happy with that, right? You can stop being weird about me not knowing that kinda stuff.”

Gordon hadn’t thought he’d been being weird about it, just appropriately flabbergasted and a bit saddened that Benrey knew so little about his origins. “Uh… yeah. Knowing you have a connection to Xen is certainly far better than knowing nothing.”

“Good.” Benrey returned his full attention back onto his game.

Gordon turned his gaze back onto the road. Not that there was much to look at, just more desert road stretching in front of him, the sky overhead clear and blue. Tuefort was still awhile away. “It’s not everything though. It’s still sad you don’t know. But uh… I guess since we’re on the topic of what you are, what all can you do?” He’d been wondering that for awhile, since realizing Benrey had powers. Bubby and Dr. Coomer too but it was only Benrey in the car with him right now.

“Lots of stuff.” More of that non-committal dodging the question. Surely this couldn’t be a sensitive topic though, right? He was just being difficult for the sake of it. Gordon wasn’t going to let him get away with it if he could help it.

“Some of it’s basically magic, right?” Once upon a time magic would’ve seemed the opposite of science but Gordon had been working at Black Mesa long enough to see plenty of things that could only be described as magic even before his adventure with Benrey.

“I guess.”

“Right, so, you can imbue objects with power to draw more energy for you, shape shift, heal, including growing back lost limbs and… phase through solid matter. I know I’m missing stuff so… what?”

“Yep, you’re missing stuff.”

“Like what? Tell me.”

“Why you wanna know so bad?”

“I’m curious. From a scientific standpoint you’re fascinating. So I wanna know what you can do. Like starting with your shape shifting, what are the limits of it? How big and small can you get? You said you’re less powerful now than you were on Xen so can you not get as big as you could there? Can you take other forms? Like could you turn into a… grizzly bear or some other drastically different animal if you wanted to? Can you shape shift yourself gills to breath underwater?”

Benrey groaned as he turned his head to look at Gordon again. “So many questions. You’re starting to get kinda annoying.” Seemingly it had taken a while but Gordon had finally gotten under his skin. A win for sure.

“Yeah well, after all the times you annoyed me I don’t feel too bad about that. So like… tell me more or heck, show me if you want. Probably not right now but when we’re back at the hotel show me… I don’t know, all your magic stuff. I wanna see it.” It’d be interesting and something to do.

“You wanna put me in an observation cube so you can poke and prod at me until you figure out everything I can do and how far I can push it? Gonna see how much I can endure before I die or whatever? It’s not like it matters ‘cause I come back. Want me to jump through flaming hoops and do a little dance like a circus animal too?” His tone started his usual monotone neutral but by the end, his annoyance was audible.

That should’ve been even more a win than just getting him to admit to being annoyed but… his exact words made it not exactly feel like one. His upset wasn’t with the endless annoying prodding questions but with being asked to perform ‘like a circus animal’. So Gordon had found a sore point for sure but it wasn’t much of a funny ha-ha one but instead one that made him feel kind of like a bully.

“No, no, of course not. I would never…” Gordon took his eyes off the road to look properly at him. “I wouldn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to. I was just asking you to uh… show me.” So he had been asking Benrey to perform for him. “Um… yeah, not great, sorry.”

Even just a couple days ago he never would’ve believed he’d apologize to Benrey of all people, even less would have believed he meant it. But well… being a little nosy was understandable, even being a little annoying with it was somewhat justifiable with how much of an ass Benrey could be but there was still a limit. Asking him to let Gordon openly study him was probably hitting that limit if not passing it outright.

“Sorry,” he said again. “I’ll stop prying. I guess, um, I owe you some answers to personal questions too, if you wanna ask them.”

Benrey stared at him in silence, the shadow over his eyes seemingly darker than usual. Gordon had to break eye contact before the urge to ask about it grew too strong. He probably shouldn’t have taken his eyes off the road to begin with. The last thing they needed or wanted was for him to drive them into a ditch and get stuck, stranding them in the dessert.

“All right then,” Benrey finally said just when it was starting to seem like he was done talking period. “What’s your deepest darkest secret?”

The people he’d killed while they’d been making their way through Black Mesa. Benrey already knew about that though and it wasn’t something Gordon wanted to think about. He did have other secrets though that he’d never told anyone and well, Benrey would probably get a kick out of some of them. “In elementary school, when I was like… seven or eight, the teachers would hand out scented markers for the students to use for arts and crafts. We were supposed to put them all back in the box and return them to the front at the end of class. I, uh, put a couple in my backpack instead and took them home. The red, blue, and brown ones because they smelled the best.”

A beat of silence before… “Ha! I knew you were a thief.”

“Yep, I’m, a dirty thief. That was a twenty years ago though so the statute of limitations is up, meaning I can’t be punished for it.”

“Damn. You ever steal anything else?”

Gordon took a breath to say, ‘no’ but… that would be a lie. If he couldn’t in good conscious try to get Benrey to talk any more about himself, he might as well share some of his own past instead. It was only fair after how much he’d prodded at Benrey for his, right? And none of his past crimes were anything he could get in trouble for anymore so there was no harm in sharing. Maybe it would make Benrey more comfortable sharing more about himself in the future too, since it was an exchange of information instead of Gordon just asking him stuff.

~

By the time they were rolling back into Tuefort, Benrey knew about all of Gordon’s petty crimes. A short list, even counting the stuff that had just been minor family drama like the time he’d removed the head of one of his sister’s dolls in vengeance for some slight he no longer remembered. Gordon might regret telling him one day but it lifted the mood in the car quite a bit so for now it was worth it.

While Bubby and Dr. Coomer brought their wounded cargo to the hospital, Gordon stopped by the Tuefort’s tiny mall to get Benrey a cellphone and add him to his mobile plan. The rest of the Science Team had already exchanged numbers but apparently Benrey had never even had a phone and thus, having somehow wormed his way back into the group, he needed one.

“I want that one,” he said before Gordon could even finish asking the question, pointing to one of the fancy new touch screen phones.

“That whole touch screen thing is an overpriced gimmick, so, no.” There was no way that was going to catch on, right? The phones with the keyboards that slid out of the side were the way of the future.

“But I heard they got games on them and can take pics.”

“I already basically gave you my Game Boy though so you don’t need another handheld thing for games. But uh… you like to take pictures?” Now that Gordon thought about it, he had seen Benrey with a camera a few times. It had never come up in conversation so he hadn’t thought about it much until now.

Benrey shrugged. “It’s cool. Lost my camera on Xen though when… you know, and uh… spare’s broke.”

The smart thing to do would be to just get a him a standard phone – one of the ones without a camera to make it even cheaper – and that’s it. There were a number ways he could cause problems with a camera. But if it was important enough for him to bring it up, maybe it would also help keep him entertained and thus out of trouble. “How ‘bout, I get you a cheap phone for just texting and calling, then separately a decent cheap digital camera? That work?”

“Uh… yeah, that works.”

Gordon took a breath, intending to tell him not be weird with the camera but… bit back on it. Mostly not to give him any evil ideas but also because if this friendship they were forming was going to work, he had to at least try to trust Benrey a little bit sometimes. Also he still felt bad in general for Benrey and specifically for being too nosy in the car and making up for that with a show of good will couldn’t hurt.

From there it blessedly wasn’t long before they were meeting back up as a whole group for lunch. A pizza place that Gordon had never visited before but proved to be quite good. Even Benrey ate some which continued the trend of Gordon not being sure if he actually needed to eat or not. Probably he did, right? Just not as often as humans. Maybe he was like a reptile and only needed to eat like once a week or month, or whatever. After how nosy he’d been in the car, Gordon refrained from asking for now.

Once done, they loaded up on the supplies they promised to bring back and stopped by the hotel for a quick shower, to drop their stuff off, to make sure their rooms were still secured for now, and to drop Benrey off. The best way to continue to keep him secret from the rest of the Black Mesa folk would be to not bring him back there. Leaving him alone and unsupervised for so long seemed liked an awfully bad idea but what other choice was there?

“Here’s the deal,” Gordon said once he had Benrey seated on one of the chairs and paying attention to him. “You’re gonna sit here in this room and play video games for however long I end up staying down there.” Before leaving that morning he’d also been implored to stick around after ferrying supplies back down to help with the start of salvaging whatever they could out of the facility. He’d agreed to it in part to keep himself busy a bit longer but also to ease up on all the back and forth trips. “You can go out occasionally but don’t bother anyone or cause problems. Problems by my definition, not yours. Which means anything that’s gonna harm anyone or be especially disruptive. Just stick to yourself mostly and play your games, you got plenty. If you’re bad, I’m not getting a Play Station to share with you. Understood?”

Benrey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, understood.”

“Good. And just to reiterate and make super clear, no violence of any sort.”

“I just said I understood and you took the gun away. Can’t do violence without a gun.” A lie and he had to know it. “Why so worried?”

“I’m just… a naturally anxious person.” And even if he was maybe starting to like Benrey as a friend, that didn’t mean he trusted him to behave. He liked cats too after all but no matter how well mannered a cat was, he’d never trust it to not make a mess if left alone with a potted plant for too long. There were countless metaphorical potted plants Benrey could decide to play with and/or eat while Gordon wasn’t around to keep a close eye on him. Benrey was of course more intelligent than most cats and was thus perfectly capable of restraining himself. Being able to didn’t mean he would though, hence the worry.

“What ‘bout you? You gonna be good without me keeping an eye on you for so long? Not gonna steal anymore scented markers?”

“I highly doubt I’ll get an opportunity to but even if I do, I promise I won’t. I haven’t stolen even a cookie from a cookie jar in more than ten years so it’s really not even much of a question.”

“’Kay, but you also gonna be okay? You talked an awful lot on the drive down here, almost like someone afraid of silence. So… you gonna be okay in the silence by yourself?” Seems he was far more perceptive than Gordon had thought.

“Uh… yeah. I’m gonna ask Tommy to ride with me and even drive if he wants to. So I think I’ll be okay. I’ll text you later to see how you’re doing or whatever, I guess.” Make sure he hadn’t burned the hotel down.

“’Kay, talk to ya later.”

~

Next Chapter

[bamber344]

A Day In The Life Of Vivienne Matthews

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Heyo! So, for those of you who didn't see my post about this, I know I said at the end of the last chapter that you would be getting more bird woman this chapter, but i had a bit of a block so i decided to work on something a bit different to give myself a break from the whump. Hence, this!

Last time we had Viv pov, I felt like I didn't get to do enough introspection to really explore her character, so i wanted to make up for that here.

sorry it took so long! there were a number of things keeping me from writing at my usual pace these past couple of weeks. Namely, screaming children. But also I went on a date one day so that was nice :)

Anyway! I won't keep you for any longer! Enjoy!

CWs: discussions of abuse, recreational drug use, slight allusions to ns/fw things (a friend with benefits, horny dreams)

A Day In The Life Of Vivienne Matthews

The irritating chirp of an alarm was the first thing Vivienne heard as she woke up that morning. It pierced her ears and ripped her out of the pleasant dream she’d been having, leaving her stuck in the waking world for the foreseeable future. Just because this was how she woke up every weekday didn’t make it any less annoying. She groaned, burying a face in her pillow as she reached out to turn it off. Time to start her day, whether she wanted to or not.

Viv forced herself to sit up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and trying to remember what she’d been dreaming about.  Regardless of the contents, it had certainly been a good one, she could say that much. Good enough to leave a wet spot on her sleep shorts and a lingering tingle in her thighs, apparently.

She couldn’t help but laugh at herself. It had been a long time since she’d had a dream like that, so it was probably due. Maybe it was time to hit up Brea for another late-night meeting? Between school, work, and Union patrols, she hadn’t really had much time to think about that sort of thing, but clearly, her body was sending her a message that she was a little pent up.

She pushed the thought into the back of her mind as she got up to shower and go about her morning routine. None of her roommates were awake yet, so she was careful not to make too much noise as she gathered her clothes and teleported into the bathroom.

Viv dumped her fresh clothes on the floor and hopped into the shower, letting the cold spray wake her up properly before it heated into something pleasant. She went through the motions, scrubbing herself down before getting out and getting dressed for the day. A touch of makeup here, some cute earrings there, and she was ready to go. She smiled at her reflection, pulling a little pose to show herself off.

From there, she teleported into the kitchen and started on breakfast, putting together a quick meal of fried eggs on toast and scarfing it down as quickly as she could. She didn’t have a lot of time before her lecture started; intentionally setting her alarm as late as possible thanks to the convenience of her powers. No need to worry about travel time when you could get to your location instantaneously, after all.

Sam, her roommate, was just coming out of their room when Vivienne was grabbing her bag and making the final preparations to go.

“Morning,” they mumbled, shuffling into the kitchen to make an instant coffee.

“Hi,” she greeted, securing her bag over her shoulder. “If you’re planning on cooking anything for breakfast, there’s already a pan there you can use. Don’t need to make any unnecessary dishes.”

Sam waved her off. “Breakfast is for chumps. I don’t eat until noon at the earliest.”

Viv paused. “That’s… unhealthy. You should eat more.”

“Your mom’s unhealthy.”

Viv plastered a smile on her face. “Pleasant as always. I’ll see you later.”

“Later.”

With that, Viv focused her mind on an image of her usual seat in the lecture hall and, with a slight pop, she teleported. Several people around her recoiled in shock. She grinned, greeting them as they calmed back down.

“Vivienne, I thought I told you not to teleport into the lecture hall!” the lecturer yelled. “You could hurt somebody!”

Viv winced, ducking her head as her face heated up. “Sorry, I forgot.”

The lecturer sighed. “Just don’t let it happen again, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

—

Vivienne trudged through the lecture, trying to intake as much information as she could, taking notes where possible, and generally just doing her best not to doze off. Despite her attempts to always come across as bright and bubbly, the truth was that Vivienne was tired. All the time. Between studying for her nursing degree, doing whatever work she could as a superhero, looking after Madeline, cooking, cleaning, doing what little self-care she could fit in, and most recently, worrying about Jordyn, she had almost no time to herself to just relax. It was good that she actually enjoyed working as a hero and spending time with Madeline, but a girl still needed time to herself to just decompress. Everyone in the union relied on her for her powers, so she constantly had to be vigilant to any monster attacks or disasters so that she could help dispatch people to the scene, and frankly, it was fucking stressful. Part of her was regretting taking on such a demanding degree, but at the same time, it was what she wanted. She couldn’t spend her whole life living off of the Union, and helping people always made her happiest. It was hard work, but it was good work. It was worth it.

Probably.

Her day continued in the usual fashion; more lectures, more notes, more expensive iced coffee from the university cafeteria, followed by two hours of frantic studying to teach herself all of the things the lecturers missed. Thankfully, all of her lectures were in the first half of the day, so while her mornings were usually an impossible flurry of activity, it left most of her afternoons free so that she could focus on whatever she deemed most important at the time. Ideally, that would’ve been a nap, but there was something else that had been sitting in the back of her mind ever since that chance encounter a few nights ago, and she had to address it before anything else.

She sighed, rubbing her eyes. It was just her luck that she would stumble upon another lost bird to take in, but now that she knew, she couldn’t just ignore it. Those bruises and cuts weren’t just training injuries. Jordyn needed help. Vivienne needed a plan.

Her ears popped as she teleported, and she worked her jaw to alleviate the discomfort as she adjusted her eyes to the dim conference room of the Union HQ. It was the biggest room in the building, with a large table right in the centre and a massive screen covering the entirety of one wall, displaying analytics of the city. Without that citizen’s report detection system, Vivienne’s job would’ve been much harder.

She shivered, hugging her arms to herself. After coming straight out of the afternoon sun, the room was almost aggressively cold. In fact, it was weird just how cold it was. Or, at least, it would have been weird, had Maddie not been sitting at one end of the table with her legs kicked up, forming small icicles to throw at a dart board set up on the far wall. She wasn’t alone. The smell of marijuana lingered in the air, wafting from a joint hanging between Ashley’s fingers as he focused on something on the table. It was pretty rare to see both Union leaders working together these days, what with Maddie’s mental health issues. Though, to be fair, it didn’t seem like Maddie was doing much work. Still, her presence alone was progress that Vivienne couldn’t help but be proud of.

“Hey guys,” she greeted, approaching them. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you both here together.”

“Hi Viv,” Ashley greeted, scratching at his dark stubble and not looking away from the papers spread out in front of him. He was a fair bit older than her and Maddie, in his mid thirties. He was one of the few people in the Union who didn’t actually have a power; having inherited his leadership of the Union and everything that comes with it from his elderly mother once she became too old to manage things, unlike Maddie, who was voted into the position. A new leadership election would be held in about a year, once Maddie’s term was up, and the new co-leader would take her place beside Ashley. As much as she had on her plate, Vivienne certainly wouldn’t mind holding the position herself, if it came to that.

“Hey,” Maddie said, grabbing the joint from him and taking a puff. “I just figured I’d come here so that I was actually doing something instead of waiting for you at my apartment. I figured you’d show up eventually, so it seemed efficient. We’re sorting out budget issues at the moment. Or, at least, Ash is. This stuff goes over my head a little.”

Ashley smiled. “Hey, don’t sell yourself short. You’re way better at the people side of things than I am.” He looked up at Viv. “So, you two are hanging out tonight?”

“Yeah,” Vivienne replied. “Having dinner at Maddie’s.”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded, glancing over at Madeline with a suggestive sort of smile. “I see. Is this just a friend thing, or…?”

Maddie practically flinched, and the ice dart she was aiming went way off course, thudding into the wall. “C’mon man. It’s not like that.”

He put his hands up. “I know, I know. I just think you should consider it. Well, maybe not with Vivienne, obviously, but just in general. Putting yourself out there again could be good for you.”

Maddie pulled her feet off the table and got up, walking away with her shoulders raised. She stopped in front of the dart board and started pulling the icicles out. “Stop, Ashley. I’m not ready for that.”

Ashley sighed. “Sorry, Madds. Just trying to help.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you to.”

Ashley didn’t reply, and the room fell silent. Vivienne clenched her fists, feeling immensely uncomfortable in the suddenly frigid atmosphere of the space. She had to fix this somehow.

“Uh, I- I actually have something I wanted to speak with you about,” she said. “Both of you.”

Madeline turned around. There was still a tenseness to her shoulders, but her face had softened a bit. Viv must have sounded more upset than she realised.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Vivienne sighed, rubbing her eyes. “It’s that police hero. Seven.”

Maddie stood up straighter. “Has she done something to you?!”

Viv frantically shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that. Actually, we’ve been getting along pretty well, the few times we’ve met. It’s more… Well, I’m worried about her.”

Ashley frowned. “What is it?”

Viv bit her lip as the memories flashed through her head. “I… I don’t think she’s a hero by choice. I think de Vygon has forced her into it somehow. And… he’s not treating her well.”

“How do you know?” Maddie asked.

“You remember when someone tried to assassinate her a few weeks back? Well, Brea and I were there, helping provide first aid. We took Seven’s chest plate off, and her body was covered in bruises and cuts. At first, I just hoped it was from training or something, but I ran into her the other night, and she was practically beside herself, crying her eyes out. Someone had forced her to get drunk, apparently, and she admitted a whole lot of stuff to me. She said she has no memory of her past beyond about a year ago, and all she can ever remember was being groomed to be a hero by her dad, who I can only assume is de Vygon, though it remains to be seen if he’s actually her dad, because that man is white as hell, and Jordyn’s skin was pretty tan from what I saw. It’s just sketchy all around.” She was starting to ramble a little, but with all of the emotions that talking about this sent through her, that wasn’t surprising.

“Jordyn?” Ash asked.

“Oh, um, that’s her name. She told me when she was saying everything else. Anyway, she also mentioned that her dad would punish her if she didn’t get home in time, which, by the way, is a fucking facility underneath precinct 23. By the sounds of it, she doesn’t even like being a hero, especially not in the way de Vygon makes her, with all the faux-police work. It- it’s just… Ugh! I don’t know! I want to help her but I don’t know how. I figured if anyone could, it would be the Union. There’s gotta be something we can do to get her out, right?”

Ashley frowned. “If what you say is true, then we absolutely have an obligation to help her. The only problem is, there’s no proof. Coming out and announcing something; that de Vygon… what, kidnapped an amnesiac and trained her to be a hero against her will? That would be shot down as an unbelievable rumour in an instant. And from the sounds of it, if we tried to offer her an olive branch and allowed her to stay with us, de Vygon would accuse us of kidnapping, which is the last thing we need right now. I’ve actually done a bit of research on this ‘Project Genesis’ thing of his, and it’s being funded by some of the most rich and powerful people in the country. You remember Sebastian Beaumond, the senator who ran for office a few years ago? Yeah, he owns a controlling share in the project. Honestly, even if we did have proof, unless it was absolutely incontrovertible, they would cover it up without a second thought. This isn’t a beehive we want to poke without a good plan.”

Viv snapped her fingers. “Beaumond! That was his name! He was the one that forced Jordyn to drink the other night.”

Madeline sighed, running a hand through her hair. “I don’t think this is an issue of coming up with a plan. No matter how we do it, if we lay even a single hand on de Vygon’s little pet, he’s gonna come crashing down on us with the strength of the entire police force. The Union would be finished, and no matter how bad things are for Jordyn, we can’t afford that. There are too many people relying on us to survive. She’s on her own. Besides, I’ve been keeping an eye on her activities, and let me tell you, that woman can fight. She can get herself out if she has such a problem.”

Vivienne’s jaw dropped. “Maddie, what the fuck? You of all people should know that abuse doesn’t work like that!”

Maddie clenched her fists. The room grew several degrees colder. “I’m saying we don’t have a choice. She can get herself out, because that’s the only way she’s getting out. Abuse, domestic violence, people don’t fucking care about that shit! If we raise a stink and start throwing accusations, even with proof, absolutely nothing will come of it. You’d need a much bigger controversy to even make a dent in de Vygon’s friends’ armour. It… It sucks, okay? I get it. You see someone hurting, and you wanna do everything in your power to help, because you’re just good like that, but you need to understand that there is nothing in your power that you can do. 

“Besides, like you said, abuse doesn’t work like that. If she’s really been groomed by that bastard for as long as she can remember, she’s not gonna want to turn away from him just because we tell her that the way he’s treating her is wrong. The only way that anything could possibly happen would be if Jordyn was allowed to join the Union. Maybe then we could slowly work de Vygon’s collar from her neck, but that’s never going to happen, because de Vygon hates us. He would never let her anywhere near us.”

“I’m… not so sure about that,” Ashley said, butting in. Vivienne was grateful. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to formulate a reply to Madeline’s argument without bursting into tears. This type of conflict just didn’t agree with her, emotionally speaking. 

Maddie turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it. What could possibly be the goal here? He pours all this money into making what basically amounts to a super cop? That just seems like a waste of cash. No, there’s something he wants; something that only Jordyn can help him get. I can make a pretty good guess as to what that something is.” He pointedly glanced down at the floor before looking back up at them. 

It took a second to click, but when it did, Vivienne’s stomach dropped. “You don’t think…?”

“I do. He’s been bitter about not being part of the main family ever since he learned about it. Doubly so now that we don’t share the de Vygon name anymore. That’s half the reason he hates the Union so much, like it’s our fault his grandfather was born later than my great-grandfather. I can only imagine how angry he was when my mom married my dad and took his last name. Now Min is the main family name, and de Vygon is the branch name. That’s gotta sting for a man as egotistical as him.”

“So you think Jordyn is just a ploy to get a soldier into the Union to usurp control of the Godling’s prison from you?” Madeline asked.

“Why else would a man who hates superheroes raise a superhero? He’s certainly biding his time, but I don’t doubt that the moment Jordyn expresses interest in the Union, he’ll let her come here and stake the place out.”

“So what do we do?” Vivienne asked. “I mean, we’ve still got to let her in, right? She needs help.”

“Of course. That way we kill two birds with one stone. We already know de Vygon’s plan – or at least, our best assumption of it – so we can take steps to ensure Jordyn doesn’t get too far with it, while also doing our best to help her recover and break free from him.”

Viv pursed her lips. “I suppose it’s our only real option. Still, it just… I wish we could do more.”

“I know. The situation is just awkward. Still, we’ve got a plan now. Vivienne, how close are you with her?”

“Uhh, not very? We’ve just run into each other a couple of times. She seems to like me well enough, if the hug she gave me when she was drunk was anything to go by.”

“I’ve met her once, but she seemed weirdly enamoured by me,” Maddie said. “Kept staring at me.”

“Well, the next time one of you run into her, make sure you let her know that the Union is an option.” Ashley replied. “The sooner the better.”

“Got it.”

“Also, don’t discuss any of this with anyone else. If Jordyn does join the Union, it needs to feel as natural for her as possible. That’s not gonna work if everyone’s watching her like a hawk.”

“That makes sense,” Vivienne said.

Ashley nodded. “Good. Now, I believe you two had plans? I wouldn’t want to keep you.”

“I can still work for a bit longer,” Madeline said.

Ash shook his head. “Nah, it’s alright. I’m pretty much finished anyway, and I need to go do more research into de Vygon’s whole deal. You two can head off.”

Maddie shrugged. “Okay, then.” She walked over to Viv, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Shall we?”

Vivienne’s relief that the previous tension between herself and Maddie had faded away was palpable. She smiled. “Let’s go.”

—

Cooking was always something that Vivienne looked forward to. The act of taking all of the separate ingredients, refining them, and then bringing them together into something that was more than the sum of its parts just relaxed her. For a small moment of time, all she needed to focus on were the even cuts of the knife through an onion, and ensuring that the cacciatore in the pan didn’t burn. There was no room to worry about nursing degrees, or her friend’s tenuous mental health, or the fact that an acquaintance was almost certainly being abused, or even her own never-ending fatigue. It was just her, the ingredients, and the sizzle of the pan. 

That wasn’t all she liked about cooking, though. No, her favourite part was definitely what came after the cooking. Sharing a meal that she poured her heart and soul into with a dear friend; that was what made cooking truly great. The feeling of watching Madeline take her first bite of pasta and seeing her face melt with enjoyment was a sensation that would never get old.

“So? How is it?” Viv asked, perhaps stroking her ego a little bit, but who could say?

“Fuckin’ amazing, as usual,” Maddie said. “Seriously, we’ve gotta do this more often.”

Viv beamed. “What, just so you can enjoy my cooking more?”

“Exactly. Why else would I hang out with you?”

“Damn, all this time I thought it was for my charming wit and stunning good looks.”

Maddie let out one of her rare laughs. “Sure, that’s totally it.”

They fell into a comfortable silence as both of them enjoyed their meals. They were sitting out on Maddie’s apartment balcony, basking in the warmth of the setting sun and the cool breeze wafting through the streets. The city was calm; the sound of traffic floating up to them and providing a nice white noise that sat comfortingly in the background. Despite all that, though, Viv just couldn’t get her mind to rest. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jordyn. Apparently, Madeline was on a similar wavelength.

“So,” she said through a mouthful of penne and sauce. She paused and swallowed it down before continuing. “How do you think de Vygon found Jordyn, anyway?”

Viv frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you said she says she doesn’t remember anything other than her training, right? So, what, de Vygon just kidnapped someone out of the amnesia ward of the hospital or something?”

Vivienne gave it some thought. “I don’t know. That seems really risky for how secretive he’s being about the whole thing, and besides, what are the odds he kidnapped someone with a power anyway?”

“Okay, what about… he trafficked her in from another country to hide from the missing person’s report, and used hypnosis or some shit to wipe her memory?”

“No, she doesn’t have an accent. Also, I feel like that wouldn’t really work with how publicised Jordyn is. The moment anyone hears about her power to control shadows, they would immediately know who she was if they knew her before she was kidnapped, even in another country. Only one person can have a power at one time, after all.”

Maddie threw her hands up. “Well fuck, I don’t know. Genetically engineered test-tube baby? Some sort of clone? Y’know, speaking of which, do you reckon if someone cloned me, the clone would have the same power as me? Cuz they would technically still be me, right? I’ve always wondered about that.”

Viv snorted at how quickly she drifted off-topic. “I mean, they’d probably still have a power, since you’ve got the mutation for it, but they probably wouldn’t have yours. It would be like having a twin, right? Just because you’re genetically the same, you’re still different people. Thanks to how powers work, no one else can have the same power as you, so I’d imagine your clone would manifest something different.”

“So what you’re saying is, we wouldn’t be able to find out who she was cloned from by looking at power records?”

“Why do you think she’s a clone?” Viv asked with an incredulous grin. “They’ve barely even done research on cloning sheep, haven’t they? We’re years out from any reliable human cloning program, let alone one that lets you make a fully grown adult.”

Maddie tapped her temple with a finger. “That’s what they want you to think.”

Vivienne squinted, finally noticing the redness in Maddie’s eyes. “Oh my god, how high are you?”

Maddie grinned. “Hey, someone had to finish that joint Ash and I were having while you were cooking. That was good weed! I didn’t want to just waste it.”

Vivienne laughed, shaking her head. “I should’ve known.”

“Honestly, I’m just surprised you didn’t smell it.”

“Well, have you got any more? I’m starting to feel left out.”

Her grin widened. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

—

Vivienne really should’ve gone home and studied that night. It would’ve been the best use of her time, and she hadn’t promised Maddie anything more than dinner. Instead, what she did was get very high and watched movies on Maddie’s couch late into the night. She’d been having too good of a time to just up and leave, and if she was being honest with herself, the little break from everything on her plate was nice. Needed, even. There was only so much bandwidth she could spare before she fizzled out, so it was important to find the time to blow off steam like this. Usually, she would find herself in Brianna’s bed for that purpose, but hanging out like this, just relaxing like two friends should, it hit the spot just the same. She and Maddie didn’t get to do that enough these days (again, usually Brianna was filling that role lately), and Viv wasn’t going to waste this no-doubt fleeting moment of high spirits for her.

As the night wound down, Maddie retreated off to bed, and Viv stayed on the couch, not wanting to go back to her apartment where her roommates would no doubt be loudly gaming until the early hours of the morning. She stared up at the dark ceiling, thinking about everything they’d discussed today. As was the usual lately, her mind drifted to Jordyn. She remembered that drunken hug they’d shared the other night; the feeling of the cold, uncomfortable metal of her armour pressed up against her body, juxtaposed with the warmth of her tears soaking into Viv’s shoulder. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Vivienne couldn’t help but hope that none of what they’d theorised about Jordyn was true. It hurt to think about the fact that she might be hurting at this very moment, and Vivienne couldn’t do a thing about it. The pain and fear in Jordyn’s voice that night still rang through Viv’s ears, and it was the perfect fuel for her mind to keep supplying her with horrible samples of what Jordyn’s screams might sound like as de Vygon punished her for some perceived mistake. She tried to shut it out, but as per usual, her brain just wouldn’t stop working.

Vivienne didn’t get much sleep that night. But hey, what was new there?

Taglist: @steelandblood @sapphicwhump @urnumber1star @alsolucakairomi @idkwhattodowiththisaltiamsorry

@iamheretohurt @anoyedartist @dontyoubleedoutonme @seastarblue @lettherebepain

so, originally this was just gonna be an interlude, but then plot started happening, so i guess this is an actual proper chapter now. Lucky you, viv fans!

i have been very very exhausted and lost a lot of sleep this past week, so if there are any mistakes I've missed, please let me know!

Next time, I super duper prommy that you'll get your bird lady wishes.

let me know what you thought with a comment or reblog! It's very appreciated :) Also let me know if you want to be added/removed from the taglist! Thanks for reading!

[alwayslurkinginthebackground]

Convincing Arguments - A "Kissing You" Drabble

Pairing: Frankie Morales x f!reader Warnings: Brief mentions of sex, but nothing insanely graphic. Someday I'll finish that one I started that got way out of hand but today is not that day. Word Count: 1100 Prompt #3: Kisses traveling from your lover’s nose to their lips. a/n: Hi it's been like a month but I've been working long days trying to finish a television and film master class (I'M DONE) and working extra shifts (TOO MANY) and also am just trying to deal with the fact that planets doing dumb things makes my life feel dumb too (DUMB MERCURY) but amidst it all I wrote this little self-indulgent piece so here it is! Enjoy!

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Exhausted doesn’t even begin to describe how you feel. 

Perhaps you should have listened to your friends when they told you that you should ease up on how much you’re adding to your plate. After all, your busy schedule didn’t exactly leave much time for socializing, or sleep for that matter, but it paid the rent either way. 

Still, you could feel the toll on your body every time your alarm went off at five in the morning, running yourself ragged as you jump from task to task before finally collapsing back in bed well after midnight. Even Frankie has started suggesting that maybe you should slow down a bit, but in a world where everyone expects you to say yes, it’s rather hard to say no. 

Your apartment is blissfully quiet when you unlock the door, and within seconds you’re collapsed on the couch, not even bothering with your shoes, much less changing into something more comfortable. You’re nearly asleep the second your body hits the soft cushions. 

When you wake, you’re unsure of how long you’ve been asleep, but you’re well-aware that you’re no longer in the living room, and on top of that you’re definitely wearing one of Frankie’s shirts and not the jeans and sweater you had on earlier. The room is dark, but it’s easy to make out his body next to you in the soft light streaming through the window. 

And then you remember. It’s the second Friday of the month, set aside in both of your schedules as date night. Guilt coils in your stomach as you stare at your boyfriend’s peaceful form, hair mussed against the pillow. You hesitate to wake him, but a glance at the clock tells you that it isn’t actually too late - just a few minutes before midnight - and you know that you’ll be tossing and turning all night if you don’t apologize for missing your time together. 

Scooting closer to his warm form, you lean in to press a faint kiss to the tip of his nose. Then another, and another on the bridge, following a path to his cheekbone, and you know he’s awake by the time his patchy beard scratches against your lips. When you trail down, he’s quick to return your affection, his tongue tracing your lower lip as he encourages you closer. Strong arms wrap around you in a flash, pulling you to straddle his hips. 

Instinctively, you grind down into him, warmth coursing through your veins, but things cool off quickly as you pull away to catch your breath, exhaustion still evident in your body as you relax. He laughs quietly, his breath fanning out over your ear as you nestle your head into the crook of his neck. “A bit tired tonight, Querida?” 

Your agreement comes out as more of a moan, and you shift against him to lay more comfortably, effectively draped on top of him. He runs gentle hands up and down your back, seeking out the tight muscles the best he can from this angle. “I’m sorry I missed our date night,” you mumble. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers into your skin, lips ghosting a bit of exposed shoulder. “I think you needed the sleep.” 

A frustrated sigh leaves your body. “Maybe, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that I missed our time together. I feel like we never get enough of it these days.” It’s an admission that you probably would’ve kept to yourself had your tired mind not let it slip, and your anxiety skyrockets when Frankie remains silent, hands still working along your back. “Frankie?”

“Move in with me,” he says rather suddenly, and if you weren’t awake before, you sure are now. You sit up frantically, arms braced on either side of his head, his hands shifting to rest against your lower back, spanning your waist as he keeps your hips firmly situated against his own. 

“What?”

Frankie looks so serious, his expression the same as the first night he asked you out. The same look when he told you he wanted to get his pilot’s license back. The same look he wore when he told you he’d been clean for six months because of you. “Move in with me,” he repeats, a little louder this time. 

“Frankie, I...” you start, trailing off as you catch the minute change in his expression. Most wouldn’t notice, but you know that look too, the one he gets when his certainty evaporates into anxiety. He looks like he’s about to speak, but you cut him off by rolling off him and onto your back, still tucked close against his side. “Shit, Frankie...” you respond, running your hands over your face. 

“If you’re not ready it’s okay, I just thought -” 

“Wait,” you stop him, reaching for his hand so you can weave your fingers together. You take a deep breath that he mirrors as you stare at the ceiling above you. The same apartment ceiling you’ve been staring at since your move to Miami three years ago. Your very expensive apartment ceiling. 

“Yes.” 

“Yes?” he asks, and you can’t blame him for being confused. “Truly, if you don’t want to, I’ll understand."

"I'm sure, Frankie," you return, your voice steady and sure.

He obviously doesn't fully hear you, because he continues to ramble. "I know we’ve only been dating a year but I love you and it’s ridiculous that you’re working two jobs to pay your rent when you could move in with me and pay nothing and..."

You roll on your side again to look at him and he trails off. “You don’t have to try and convince me because I'm positive that I want to move in with you, but do you have any other convincing arguments?” 

Frankie smiles, anxieties now long forgotten as a mixture of joy and relief becomes evident in his features. “Well, for starters, you’d be closer to the job you actually like, there would be a yard for you to bring home that dog you want so much, and you’d get to wake up next to me every day.”

You hum, pretending to ponder your options. “I’m not so sure about that last thing, but the dog part is nice. Got anything else?” Playfully, you kiss his nose again, only to squeal when he peppers your own face in featherlight kisses, his beard tickling across your skin.

The two of you laugh heavily until he rolls on top of you, settling between your legs and caging you in. Frankie kisses you soundly, the air in the room instantly changing. “How's this for a reminder?" he offers, trailing a path down your body until he reaches the apex of your thighs.

You're tightly grasping the sheets on either side of you moments later.

A convincing argument indeed.

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[knitjumpergames]

Diagnosis - a Dark Souls 2 journal - chapter 7

The ruin sentinels are ruining me- my only solution is to find a way to kill them faster. So I return to places that be been before, I scour them for materials, weapons, armour and souls to level up and upgrade. My lucky breaks comes from returning to Harvest Valley and finding a good quantity of Titanite, and finding the Drangleic Set in the Forest of Fallen Giants.

I return with bloody minded vengeance. A few more tries, some close calls, and I bring them down. Relief fills me for a time, and I proceed towards the Belfrey Luna. I know I need to go this way so I can light the room of the Lost Sinner. I can’t see me beating them without it.

Unfortunately the Belfrey Gargoyles are like the Ruin Sentinels but worse. I take a few bites of the apple then come away. I’ll give them a proper go later.

I’m aware that Brightstone Cove is the ending area of another of the main bosses, so I begin to push through that to find the boss zone. I am surprised and alarmed to accidentally come across a boss in the MIDDLE of the map, the Congregation one, but luckily it’s the easiest boss so far, and I get it on the first go. In fact it’s easier than some regular enemy encounters I’ve had. It’s almost sad, but I believe that it’s a deliberate choice on the designers part. In the ruins of an old church, surrounded and beset on all sides by giant mutant spiders and hollows, this priest character keeps the last members of his ruined, rotten congregation safe, even though they are long gone. I wish I could have spared them, passed them by, maybe even helped them. I tell myself it’s a mercy to end their suffering, but I can’t be sure.

Now THAT is good environmental storytelling!

I continue and probe my way further into the cove, and find the boss door. With a summon, I go in. Annnnddd it’s a giant spider. Makes sense. With lots of little spiders. Cool man, cool cool cool.

I have at it and manage to bring it down to like a fifth of its health, maybe less before I foolishly run into a laser beam (from a spider, who knew?!). At this point my poor wife is trying to sleep, it’s late, and we need to go to bed.

The next day is…disappointing. Outside of the game, in real life, I was expecting a call, a diagnosis for Autism. I just want to hear someone say the words and confirm for me what I’ve felt is true for sometime now. So I can move forward. So I can know that all those things I struggle with, those times I didn’t understand how to be with people, those times I couldn’t detect sarcasm or flirting or anything, those moments I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone, the BACKBREAKING work that I put in to mask it all and appear normal…I just want to know, need to know that it’s nothing I’ve done. It’s not my fault that I am this way.

But that’s not what I hear. They tell me they don’t think I have it. I don’t know what to feel, but ultimately I think that they’re wrong…even though I know they are the experts, I feel that they are wrong. They spent an hour with me, and told me within the first fifteen minutes that I should apply for an ADHD exam (which I’m cool with). I think they latched onto that idea, and we’re blind to everything else. They spend an hour with me then made a judgement call on who I am based on…not a lot it think. So maybe I do know how I feel. I’m angry.

I feel impotent and upset and weak, like…floating in a pool of uncertainty. There’s nothing I can do today about it. Except one thing.

I go back to Blightstone Cove and throw myself at that fucking spider. Again and again. I die close to it being dead multiple times. I die stupidly some other times. But I keep coming back and soon enough it’s dead. I take the soul and slay the duke. That’s it.

One down.

[2nd2ndalto]

Fall Down With You

Chapter 6

(previous chapter)

Nico really should have known better. They both should have known that time wouldn’t be on their side. After all, it’s hardly the first time they’ve ended up in this situation.

But the thing is, they haven’t properly spent time together in almost three weeks, and now here they are, wrapped up together in bed in their little apartment in New Rome, still sharing soft kisses and careful touches, and Nico’s just managed to divest his boyfriend of the last of his clothes. He presses a final kiss to Will’s collarbone before ducking under the covers. Will sighs, his fingers coming to twine gently in Nico’s hair.

Then - “fuck,” Will groans.

“Hmm? What did I do?”

“My phone.” Will scrambles up, lunging for the night table, his knee bumping Nico’s cheekbone in his haste.

“Shit, sorry -” Will’s eyes go wide.

Nico winces, waving the other man off, and Will dives for the phone, catching it on the last ring.

It’s definitely the hospital. Will immediately puts on his doctor voice, and damn if that isn’t the hottest thing ever, especially combined with the view of the taller man pacing naked towards the hallway, phone pressed to his ear.

Nico hears him ending the call, and Will walks back into the bedroom looking regretful. “I thought I was going to get some sleep,” he sighs.

Nico rises up to his knees to embrace his boyfriend at the side of the bed. “I thought I was going to get to… you know.” He presses a kiss to Will’s chin.

Will chuckles. “What? What were you gonna get to do?”

Nico grins. “You know, that… that thing.” He tries his best to convey… something. Through raised eyebrows, tilts of his head and a pointed glance downward. He winks.

Will lets out a giggle. “I think I have even less idea of what your plan was than I did five minutes ago,” he teases.

Nico flops back onto the bed. “Well. Just rest assured it was going to be really good,” he says, only a little embarrassed. “I’ll show you when you get back.”

Will leans down for a kiss. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Nico watches the other man dress, disappointment tempered with the fact that he knows Will really, honestly loves his work. Even if it means Nico doesn’t have his boyfriend all to himself nearly as much as he’d like to. They’re both so busy these days, Will in the first year of his residency, Nico ensconced in his post-graduate program and the occasional errand for his dad.

Will returns for a good-bye kiss, his hair tousled, face flushed from his rush to dress as well as their earlier activities. They linger just a little longer than they should, in gentle kisses, Will sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed, warm fingers finding their way under the hem of Nico’s t-shirt. He finally pulls away, pressing a kiss to the bridge of Nico’s nose.

“Think they can wait another ten minutes?” Nico asks, hopeful and a little breathless.

Will grimaces. “I should probably go. Sorry, I -”

Nico silences him with another kiss. “Don’t be. Just come back to me.”

“Always.” ___

It’s hours later when Will finally crawls back into bed. Less than an hour before Nico’s alarm is set to go off, he notes, squinting blearily at the clock.

Will snuggles up to his boyfriend immediately, face pressed into the space between Nico’s shoulder and his chin, his words rushing against Nico's skin.

“My feet are killing me. I was stuck in surgery for four hours and by the end of it, all I could think of was being right here with you,” Will moans softly.

“Mmm. Poor baby,” Nico murmurs, sleepily raising a hand to stroke Will’s hair. Will hums happily, nuzzling.

Nico turns his head into Will’s, feeling himself drift closer to sleep. It’s delicious like this, cocooned in blankets, tangled with the only person he’d ever want to be entwined with.

And then Nico suddenly remembers where they left off, hours ago. And honestly, he’d be happy just to sleep a bit longer, but - “did you wanna um… do stuff?” he whispers.

There’s a long silence. Will shifts slightly, lifting his head.

“I do… but I’m just really -”

Nico shakes his head, smiling. “No - me too. It’s okay.”

Will flops back down, nuzzling closer, if possible. “Thank gods. I mean, if you really wanted to -”

Nico snorts. “Don’t be silly. Sleep, sweetheart.”

“Just want you,” Will mumbles, sounding half-asleep already.

“I’m all yours,” Nico murmurs. “For…” he glances at the clock. “Thirty-eight minutes.”

Will sighs. “It’ll have to do.”

Maybe almost an hour, if he skips breakfast, Nico decides.

(next chapter)

[cooganbegs-blog]

The first of a few legs of the journey down.

HBA - MEL

4am wake up. Despite setting my alarm, getting up at 4am regularly with Loki meant I beat the alarm by a few seconds! Took him out and stood in the freezing dark while he did his doggie ablutions. His cortisone tablets means he is drinking enormous amounts and peeing correspondingly! 10pm, 1am and 4am. Such is the state of my mind currently I rarely get back to sleep so by the time the 6am alarm normally goes off, I switch it off and get a precious extra hour of sleep. It being winter and a long ways south it’s still dark until well after 7am, so sleeping in is possible.

Tried not think of this goodbye with Loki as a final goodbye. He did his normal stretching and upside down, “Please scritch my stomach” act, which I obliged.

I’m back frantically making pacts with the gods (those capricious fucks). If they just take some pity and let him still be there when I get back….I’ll what? Be a good girl? How many of these daily trades did I do as a kidlet, except it was more along the lines of, if I’m reeeeeally good, please make him not be angry today, if I volunteer and do extra washing up, will he be in a good mood….I’ll give up my chocolate ration if he just doesn’t lose his shit. And no surprises there, the big G god I begged for pity back then showed no mercy, so I’m not holding my breath now.

So a long, slow drive through the dark peering through the defogging windscreen to avoid the crowds of possums and pademelons hopping across the road.

The first airport lounge. A long weekend of Dark Mofo means it’s heaving at 5am, so un-Hobart like! I’m already grumpy, possible even a tad surly. I’ve spent the past few days wrestling with the huge decision of whether to checkin my little carryon bag of keep it as carryon. I have six hours in Melbourne and it was the thought of having to haul that thing around every time I wanted to pee, get a drink, get something to eat that tipped the scales. The downside of travelling alone, no one to watch your bags while you go pee. And I always have a morbid fear of getting human excrement on my luggage when in airport toilets!! Humans are fucking grots, I don’t trust them where shit it concerned!!!

However, I am unfailingly polite and friendly to airport staff. While I can’t remember the exact words, a good friend once said (words to the effect) that being nice to those that service us sets the civilised from the uncivilised and this does not spare those with money and means! In fact it’s generally those who should know better who don’t do better. So thanks to my egalitarian friend I am always on my best behaviour even when tired, coffee-less and struggling with the thought of never seeing Loki again.

Vast crowds of hipster, blowins from the mainland means I can’t sit and sob. What is I never see Loki again, and fuck I’m dreading the next few days.

[sleepy-moron]

Some additional stuff about specifically vestibular disorders and just some general things I’ve picked up.

- Fatigue is a very common side effect of dizziness /vertigo and you shouldn’t beat yourself up for needing to rest.

- Some conditions don’t show up on tests. That doesn’t mean it’s all in your head. I have pppd which means that there is nothing physically wrong with me but parts of my brain are overly sensitive to certain stimuli and it significantly effects how well I can function.

- Anxiety exacerbates a lot of health problems. That doesn’t mean anxiety is the problem but treating/minimizing it can help a lot.

- Sometimes there’s not a whole lot you can do to recover, and sometimes you backslide a lot, and other times you cannot recover. It sucks and it’s frustrating but it isn’t your fault.

- Try to get out/have fun within your limits. You want to push yourself a little bit but you know your limits better than everyone else and pushing yourself too much isn’t going to help.

- Try motion sickness bands to see if they help you. Even if it’s a placebo thing it can help at least a little bit. They don’t make me less dizzy but they do help with nausea which is nice.

- Make sure you eat and drink. Even if it’s just crackers and sports drinks you need to eat something. Eating small meals helps with nausea.

- Do neck and shoulder stretches daily if you can, consider a handheld massager or a heating pad if you can’t stretch. You move your neck less subconsciously when dizzy and it can make things worse.

- Ice packs to the back of the neck are helpful when the dizziness gets really bad, it won’t get rid of your symptoms but it does help a little bit.

- Have safe filling foods on hand that are relatively easy to make. My go to foods are frozen chicken chunks that just need to go in the toaster oven, and white rice. If you can’t/don’t have the energy to make the rice you can cook a bunch ahead of time or a lot of grocery stores sell single serving containers of rice that just need to be microwaved. Another nice one is I sometimes have salt and olive oil popcorn instead of saltines. If the olive oil is too much than just salt on the popcorn is pretty gentle on the stomach and tastes different than saltines if you’re getting sick of those.

- If you have extra medication you need to take because of a flare up, write down the time between doses on a piece of paper and set alarms for your next dose right after you take your meds. This way you can relax and try to get some rest without worrying about skipping medication by accident.

- If you feel like pills are sticking in your throat eat a slice of bread in the biggest least chewed bites you can comfortably manage.

- A lot of medication causes constipation as a side effect. Ask your doctor what you can or should safely take with medication in case you have to take a lot of it in a short time. Drinking extra water and doing light stretching and exercise will also help.

- Get a pillow or several so you can comfortably be mostly sat up in bed. It’s a whole lot easier to eat like that and a lot of the time you can sleep propped up as well so you have to readjust your setup less.

- Bars in the shower are great. If you don’t have one and can’t get one shower benches are also great. You will probably get dizzy while in the shower at some point and you will want something to help make sure you don’t fall. The benches are also great if you can’t properly bend down so you can clean your legs more easily. Also hot water can make the dizziness worse so try taking more lukewarm showers or limiting how much hot water is getting on your head.

- More shower tips: if you have sliding doors on your shower/tub (especially if they can or regularly jump out of the track) you want something else to grab if you need to steady yourself. I had the bottom of one fall on my foot as a kid, they are sharp and it will hurt. I had to get stitches, so try to avoid this.

I've been disabled for almost 29 years. Here's what I've learned.

Tablets sink and capsules float. Separate out your tablets and capsules when you go to take them. Tip your head down when taking capsules and up when taking tablets. Liquigels don't matter, they kinda stay in the middle of whatever liquid is in your mouth.

If your pill tastes bad, coat it with a bit of butter or margarine. I learned this from my mom, who learned it from a pharmacist.

Being in pain every day isn't normal. Average people experience pain during exceptional moments, like when they stub their toe or jam their finger in a door, not when they sit cross-legged.

Make a medical binder. Make multiple medical binders. I have a small one that comes with me to appointments and two big ones that stay at home, one with old stuff and one with more recent stuff.

Find your icons. Some of mine include Daya Betty (drag queen with diabetes), Stef Sanjati (influencer with Waardenburg syndrome and ADHD), and Hank Green (guy with ulcerative colitis who... does a bunch of stuff). They don't have to be disabled in the same way as you. They don't even have to be real people. Put their pictures up somewhere if you want; I've been meaning to decorate my medical binders with pictures of my icons.

Take a bin, box, bag, basket, whatever and fill it with items to cope with. This can be stuff for mentally coping like colouring books or play clay or stuff for physically coping like pain medicine or physio tape.

Decorate your shit! My cane for at home has a plushie backpack clip hanging from the end of the handle and my cane for going places is covered in stickers. All of my medical binders have fun scrapbooking paper on the outside. Sometimes, I put stickers and washi tape on my inhalers and pill bottles. I used my Cricut to decorate my coping bin with quotes from my icons, like "I've seen enough of Ba Sing Se" and "I need you to be angrier with that bell".

If a flare-up is making you unable to eat or keep food down, consider going to the ER. A pharmacist once told me that since my eye flares can make me so nauseous that I cannot eat, then I need to go to the hospital when that happens.

Cola works wonders for nausea. I have mini cans of Diet Pepsi in my coping bin.

Shortbread is one of the only things I can eat when nauseous. Giant Tiger sells individually-wrapped servings of shortbread around Christmas or the British import store sells them year-round. I also keep these in my coping bin.

Unless it violates a pain contract or something, don't be afraid to go behind your doctor's back to get something they are refusing you. I got my cardiologist referral by getting in with a different NP at my primary care clinic than who I usually saw. I switched from Seroquel to Abilify by visiting a walk-in.

If you have a condition affecting your abdomen in some way (GI issues, reproductive problems, y'know) then invest in track pants that are too big. I bought some for my laparoscopy over a year ago and they've been handy for pelvic pain days, too. I've also heard loose pants are good for after colonoscopies.

Do whatever works, even if it's weird. I've sat on the floor of the Eaton Centre to take my pills. I've shoved heating pads down my front waistband to reach my uterus.

High-top Converse are good for weak ankles. I almost exclusively wear them.

You can reuse your pill bottles for stuff. I use my jumbo ones to store makeup sponges and my long skinny ones to hold a travel-size amount of Q-Tips.

Just because your diagnostics come back with nothing, it doesn't mean nothing is wrong. Maybe you were checking the wrong thing, or the diagnostic tool wasn't sensitive enough. I have bradycardia episodes even though multiple cardiac tests caught nothing. I probably have endometriosis even though my gynecologist didn't see anything.

You can bring your comfort item to appointments, and it's generally a green flag when someone talks to you about it. I brought a Squishmallow turkey (named Ulana) to my laparoscopy and they had her wearing my mask when I woke up. I brought a Build-A-Bear cat (named Blinx) to another procedure and a nurse told me that everyone in the hall on the way to the procedure room saw him and were talking about how cute he was. Both of those ended up being positive experiences and every person who talked to me about my plushies was nice to me. If you don't feel comfortable having it visible to your provider during the appointment, you can hide it in your bag and just know it's there, or if you're in a video appointment, you can hold it below frame in your lap.

Get a small bucket, fill it with stuff, and stick it in your bed (if you have room for it). I filled a bucket with Ensure, juice boxes, oatmeal bars, lotion, my rescue inhaler, etc. in October 2023 in anticipation of my laparoscopy and I still have it in my bed as of January 2025.

If your disability impacts your impulse control (e.g. ADHD, bipolar disorder), you should consider setting limits around your spending -- no more than X dollars at a time, nothing online unless it's absolutely necessary, and so on. Or, run these purchases by someone you trust before committing to them; I use my BFF groupchat to help talk sense into myself when I buy stuff.

Feel free to add on what you've learned about disability!