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raifenlf · 3 years ago

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Why Loki’s Sylvie Is A Mary Sue

So I am firmly in the camp that Sylvie on the Loki series was/is a Mary Sue. The last episode made me feel better and like maybe the show was doing a thing where they were faking you out that she was a Mary Sue only to show she was actually sort of a bad guy and I liked that. But all the recent interviews make me think the show wants to go back to her being a Mary Sue.

But I feel like when I call her out for being a Mary Sue people tell me what are you talking about, she’s not a Mary Sue, bad things happen to her, etc. But that doesn’t actually make her not a Mary Sue.

Also, before we start, I know some people find Mary Sue sexist. But I personally use the term for guys and girls. I don’t use the term to belittle women. I use the term to criticize a poorly written character.

And I know Mary Sue is often used to describe fanfic characters. But to me, this series is kind of like a fanfic because the writers took a character who had been in canon MCU material for ten years and then created characters around that character. So, I kind of review it like I would a fanfic. It’s very different than if the writers had created a brand new show with all of their own new characters.

Anyway, if you are not totally familiar with the Mary Sue term, then check this out:

I know the term Mary Sue probably means different things to different people. But I have always used these guidelines when I write my own fanfic to make sure my characters never come off as a Mary Sue.

This article really gives you a full scale of what a Mary Sue is. If you start reading it, you’ll immediately see why Sylvie is. But I’m going to take out the parts that most fit Sylvie just to highlight why I believe she is a Mary Sue. I apologize for this being so long.

Mary Sue Character Traits

Personality

Erm... what personality? The typical Mary Sue doesn't have one per se, because she isn't meant to be a character; rather, she's an entity by which the author makes cool stuff happen.

I feel like that is Sylvie in a nutshell. She doesn’t have a personality. I feel like even though she ate screentime, I still don’t really know her at all. The writers love to say she’s badass. That’s not a personality.

Sometimes when I am writing stories for fun and creating new characters, I like to take surveys as my fictional characters. Like the kind of surveys you’d see in a magazine, like personality types, what’s your dating style, etc. I figure if I don’t know what my character would do in any of those situations, then I need to keep working on my character. And if I was trying to fill out a survey pretending I was Sylvie I would have no idea what to answer because she doesn’t have a personality. She’s just “cool”.

What little personality a Mary Sue has isn't as important as how other characters react to it. No matter how shy or socially awkward Mary Sue is supposed to be, other characters will be inexplicably drawn to her

This is so Sylvie. Loki falls in love with her...why, exactly? He falls in love with her in the big Nexus event moment...why? Because she had a tough childhood? Mobius spends like two seconds with her in a car and goes from hating her to saying she’s his favorite Loki. For. No. Particular. Reason.

She's extremely persuasive; everyone finds her opinions to be better than their own

She enchants Hunter B-15 and then immediately Hunter B-15 makes it her whole entire life mission to back Sylvie up.

And occasionally she'll be a complete asshole...This can manifest itself in several ways...The author wants to write a badass but doesn't know how. This leads to a character who mistreats everyone around her and is never called out on her abrasive, casually abusive behavior.

Sylvie talked down to Loki and treated him like garbage for all of episode three, but it was never portrayed as a bad thing and we never got any impression Sylvie later felt bad for the way she treated Loki

The author doesn't know how to hold back the character, meaning that she will succeed at practically everything. This means that when she encounters rules or authority figures who would otherwise prevent her from doing what she wants to do, she rolls right through them (and they praise her for her "boldness" in defying regulations). If a bad guy is violent and aggressive, she can beat him by being more violent and aggressive (with all that entails). It's impossible for her to go overboard because she's protected by Protagonist-Centered Morality.

Sylvie is shown as a kid to immediately be able to grab a Tempad and run away. And she can kick ass way better than Loki, for no known reason. She is always able to fight back against the TVA when they attack her. And she can kill lots of innocent TVA agents but it’s okay because TVA bad, Sylvie good.

Skills

She will always be superior to the canon characters, regardless of what canon has established they can do or whether it makes any sense.

Whose skill was needed to defeat Alioth? Sylvie’s. Of course. Sylvie needed to teach Loki her skills in order for him to succeed (!). And again, she is literally called the superior Loki.

Relatedly, there's no effort to her skills. She never actually trains or learns anything to become more powerful; she just wins the Super Power Lottery, or is a freakish natural learner, or is just Inexplicably Awesome

We’re told Sylvie literally taught herself magic. She literally taught herself to enchant people. That. Makes. No. Sense. Like, I have so many questions. Like, why would it even occur to her to teach herself that? And how???????????? This is really lazy writing.

Canon Character Relationships

Mary Sue is often designed to hook up with another character, often as a form of Wish Fulfillment. This isn't that bad in and of itself (okay, it is kinda weird), but Mary Sue accomplishes this without any sense of realism. She just grabs her lover's attention straight away, and their relationship will never face any obstacles or tension; it's true love from the start and nothing else. The biggest giveaway is if the love interest is explicitly the author's favorite character, and she essentially "cures" him of all the angst that ails him (at the expense of his characterization).

Yeah, so...this one should be pretty obvious to anyone who watched the show. Loki literally falls in love with Sylvie immediately, and then he suddenly turns from “villain” to “hero” just because of loving her. And this was definitely at the expense of his characterization. And Loki just knows he falls in love with her. There’s not even any moments of hmm what do I feel for this person? It’s just true love, immediately.

She will be related to a canon character in some way. This (marginally) helps explain such phenomena as her being a Copy Cat Sue and other characters accepting her so easily.

Sylvie is a Loki variant. They use this to help explain why Loki is drawn to her and why their falling in love immediately “makes sense”.

Most characters give her more heed than they normally would. The good guys never stop praising her

Seriously, it was so over the top and OOC for Loki to gush over her. He literally tells her she’s amazing. They don’t even make it subtle.

Characters' previously established personalities change in reaction to her. Proud, arrogant gimps suddenly acknowledge her superiority in everything. Reckless youths will listen to all her advice. Responsible leaders will defer to her instead. Villains will obsess with her to the detriment of all else. Extremely competent characters will become stumbling buffoons who require her help to do anything. Sweet, mild-mannered characters whom the author doesn't like turn evil and insult her. They all become unnaturally focused on her in some way.

Again, Loki’s whole personality changed in reaction to her. He became a buffoon who needed her help to enchant the Alioth because of course he couldn’t do anything without her! Hunter B-15 goes from doing whatever the TVA said to fighting the TVA just because of Sylvie.

Story Elements

Mary Sue is without exception a single-person Spotlight-Stealing Squad. The entire story hinges on her existence; if you removed her, there would be no story.

Sylvie undoubtedly drove the whole story this season. It all became about HER meeting the TVA heads because of HER trauma. Loki’s life was only saved at the beginning because the TVA was trying to capture HER. And SHE was the one who started the whole multiverse (!).

Mary Sue is The Chosen One, even if the setting already has one. There are many ways she can accomplish this: she can be a Sailor Earth type who "shares" the position with the canon hero; she may be vaguely "destined to help the destined one fulfill their destiny" (i.e. do all the work except the final blow so that the prophecy is still technically correct); or the canon hero may be revealed to be a Fake Ultimate Hero all along. Being the Chosen One doesn't necessarily involve her being a God-Mode Sue, especially as authors become aware of the phenomenon and try to avoid it, but it does make her critically important to the world and allows her to continue stealing the spotlight without the "god mode" label.

HWR wanted Sylvie to come with Loki in the end, like she was chosen all along right alongside Loki. Like one of the most important characters in the entire MCU is now this character who we only met a few episodes ago.

Most Sues have an unusually Dark and Troubled Past. It's often used to create a Sympathetic Sue, but any type of Sue can have one

They tell us, over and over, how hard Sylvie’s life was because she was kidnapped by the TVA in order to create sympathy for her.

She almost never does anything wrong. In the rare instance that she does, it's usually; (a) a way for the author to disclaim her being a Mary Sue by introducing a single imperfection (that has no bearing on anything anyway), and (b) designed to show her smarts by making her feel instant remorse, and she'll be Easily Forgiven anyway:

So this one hopefully will not come true, as a lot can change between now and when the show is taped. But if the show goes on the way the behind the scenes team is talking, Sylvie immediately felt remorse for betraying Loki, and Loki has already forgiven her and is desperately looking for her. Ugh.

Alternatively, she is more than capable of doing something wrong, be it in general moral terms or something that goes against whatever code she abides by, and she maybe even frequently does so, but don't expect the other characters or the narrative to ever acknowledge or comment on it in any real capacity. If the other characters do call her out, expect them to be treated like they're the problem for daring to criticize her at all.

Mobius calls her out for killing people, but Sylvie immediately says he’s a bad person and then Mobius agrees, because, of course.

She will often suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome; i.e., she has a trait or backstory that sets her apart from her group or race.

She is the only female Loki, thus making her the special one among all the Lokis in episode five.

Presentation

In visual media, the camera just can't stop staring at her.

The camera would follow her in fight scenes rather than Loki.

Mary Sue Tropes

Okay, so there are specific Mary Sue tropes that Sylvie is. One of those is Copy Cat Sue, which I think was referenced before.

Copy Cat Sue

A lot of fanfic writers...start to write something because of their passion for this character, but they find something about the character that doesn't mesh well. Maybe they're the wrong gender or are otherwise not close enough to the author's expectations...In any case, rather than put them through the Possession Sue process, they just get a Clone-O-Matic™ and out pops a Copy Cat Sue...the character might be intended as a replacement for the canon character, but without whatever icky traits the author hates. They'll then rob the spotlight, prove the canon character to be unworthy of his/her position, and either relegate the character to obsolescence or, perhaps, even remove them entirely.

Sylvie is basically a clone of Loki, she is a variant. But she absolutely robbed the spotlight of Loki’s, and they literally call her the superior Loki. I mean, they are literally not even being subtle about this. And there was a feeling by myself (and a lot of other viewers) that Sylvie might ultimately replace Loki in the MCU.

Black Hole Sue

Much like a black hole, this is a Mary Sue who "sucks in" the plot and characters to her. Characters will behave outside their personalities, logic will be defied, and rules will be broken for her sake.

Sylvie really does suck up all the plot and Loki definitely behaves outside of his personality just to fit the Sylvie show.

Jerk Sue

A Mary Sue who is mean or maybe even cruel, but are still treated as an ideal person.

Once again, Sylvie is basically a jerk all of episode three, but you’ve got Loki falling over himself to call her amazing in just the next episode.

Relationship Sue

A Mary Sue who exists to be the perfect mate for a specific character...this character has everything in the plot conspiring to enforce this One True Pairing...in Fanfiction, they are the perfect beloved of a canon character.

They literally have Mobius speculate that Loki falling in love with Sylvie is so extraordinary that it causes an entire Nexus event, that’s how huge this One True Pairing is (!). And Sylvie is the love interest of Loki, the only character who had been around before the beginning of the series

TLDR: Sylvie has all the tropes of a classic Mary Sue character. So calling Sylvie a Mary Sue isn’t being sexist or just randomly hating on the character. If you use common Mary Sue characteristics to examine the character, she just has too many of these characteristics to ignore.

#loki negativity #antisylvie #loki critical #loki criticism #antisylkie

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flickeringart · 3 years ago

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Neptune aspecting Mercury and Venus

(Continuation of my post “Neptune aspecting the Sun and Moon”)

Mercury aspecting Neptune

Mercury is representative of deductive reasoning, of communication and learning, of exchange of information and social interaction. Mercury is essentially representative of the mental faculties, the ability to draw conclusions based on the gathering of information. Mercury represents the intellect, the most commonly applied tool for understanding and navigating the world around the self. It’s the tool that makes connections, that defines and discriminates. The intellect is a divisive mechanism that breaks things down and distinguishes every little part to discover its function and purpose within the whole.

Mercury aspecting Neptune often lends itself to a very creative mind and an ability to articulate and communicate nuances. It also seems to lend itself to a vivid imagination – an ability to paint a picture with words or portray an archetypal energy through mimicry and acting. The conjunction is the most intense of the aspects and the benefits as well as the debilitations are felt more acutely. While Mercury-Neptune has the ability to “enchant” with words and easily navigate the world of imagery and fairytales, the real world void of magic can be less easy to navigate. Taylor Swift has the conjunction and she’s a great example of someone who is a storyteller through songwriting. She essentially takes the interactions of her everyday life and turns it into magic – something that is universal and appeals to people world wide. Music has the ability to glamorize the most dull and ordinary and elevate it to new heights. There’s a might to music and it speaks to people on the feeling level. Music, movies and theater for that matter have the goal to affect people, to mirror their inner life and strike a note on some level of the psyche. Mercury-Neptune comes with the risk of being easily affected by words and a tendency to read into things more than necessary. Sometimes the meaning of another person’s words can be distorted and made to fit the person’s own preferred narrative. This is a huge problem, especially for the conjunction - sometimes words that actually carry weight can be made out to mean anything. Furthermore, in overlooking the concrete – that which is spelled out loud and clear, there door is wide open to make mistakes and blunders when tending to details, and in real life this can have dire consequences. Reading too much into things or not reading enough into things seems to be the problem. Neptune refines whatever planet it touches and this can make for a real ability to work with subtleties, but the more subtle something is, the less dense and concrete it is. The more sensitive the instrument, the more susceptible it is to suggestion and manipulation. Fantasy and imagination is inextricably merged with the intellect with this aspect.

The trine and the sextile aspects from Neptune to Mercury similarly lends themselves to a feeling for subtlety when communicating and thinking. The trine is more of a natural modus operandi while the sextile is more of a skill that can be used and activated through conscious cooperation. Mercury-Neptune can potentially cause a propensity for lying, not because of a need for a control but because of a natural tendency to distort information. This is as true for the conjunction as the trine, while the sextile might take some deliberation. The tendency to convey information in the most romanticized and creative fashion might border on lying because it leaves people with no grasp of the cold and hard facts. Mercury-Neptune is not good with the plain, cut and dry message transferring – these people thinks in images and imbue everything they convey with a touch of story-telling.

The square from Neptune to Mercury, seems to make the native very serious in creative pursuits. There’s effort and strain that is required because of conflict felt between the intellect and the vault of dreams and fantasy. Usually, the native displays criticism of their work and is skeptically inclined toward their own influence or the value of their own artistic pursuits. Amy Winehouse had the square in her chart and she was quite hard on herself although the public loved her. Even in people who aren’t pursuing an artistic path, the Mercury –Neptune square will cause the person to undervalue any talents and dreams that they have, yet be pressed to develop and fulfill them. David Bowie is also a great example of this type of person – on the one hand there’s nebulousness and chaotic creativity, on the one hand there’s analyzing and mental discernment that is unforgiving. Donald Trump also has the square, quite the business man, yet he’s not someone who is able to stick to the purely factual– he manufactures his own story, his own narrative that people, to a large extent, wants to buy. He speaks to the masses and moves them emotionally, some say he’s profoundly stupid, some says his wits are underestimated. This is typical of the square, there’s tension between the two planets and one cannot take credit for both ends. Either one sacrifices Mercury and looks mad and deranged, or one sacrifices Neptune and appears overly critical and rational – even cold and unfeeling.

The opposition aspect is in turn linked to extremism – the native must try to balance intellectual discernment with emotional receptivity. Too much of one thing will be to the detriment of the other. While the square produces conflict and tension, the opposition can give the ability to abandon one planet in favor of the other. Yoko Ono has this aspect and she has obviously been a big advocate of peace and love (Neptune), sometimes to the detriment of rhyme and reason. She has suggested that “direct communication” is the only way to true communication, but of course, this is only possible in the womb, if even then. The great gift of the opposition is the ability to abandon reason, to experience everything and hold onto nothing, to not label and impose judgment. However, it’s not difficult to see the consequences for this sacrifice.

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Venus aspecting Neptune

Venus is representative of love and beauty, of femininity and sociability. The planet is linked to that which is of value, worthy of display and admiration. It also has something to do with preferences, style and talent. Venus is the one attracting Mars, that instigates desire, that draws him in. That which instigates our desire is powerful because it dictates action. Venus has a lot to do with money because it’s a marker and a measure of value – and people want to have as much as possible of it in order to be comfortable and socially desirable. Venus also has to do with partnership and marriage, and in order to catch someone’s eye, one has to be beautiful and appealing.

Neptune conjunct Venus is truly the height of love. While Venus is more personal and more social in nature, Neptune is the collective urge for redemption, the pull to touch something sacred. Neptune in us wants it all, the magic of enchantment that belongs to fairytales. Ordinary human love, which is more about feeling esteemed within a social context and desired for specific qualities, is not cutting it. With these planets conjunct, the person craves the total submerging with the one and only beloved in one’s heart and in other people’s hearts. Neptunian love is based on the mutual longing for something eternally blissful, the garden of Eden, the ultimate escape. This longing exist in all human beings to a larger or lesser extent, but it certainly unifies us and in some ways confirm our basic vulnerability and need for redemption. When Neptune and Venus are conjunct it would seem as if the person is very compassionate and understanding of people’s hearts. No doubt one can be very soothing and able to see the beloved one in all people one meets, which can be wonderful but also overwhelming and exhausting. The person is certainly capable of being accepting of all people, even to the point of allowing things that shouldn’t be allowed. Disillusionment can dawn brutally on these types since they have strong investment in the pure and untainted love that can only be kept alive in fantasy. These planets aspecting each other is a setup for being in love with love. Love for these types might not be about a specific person, they might seek out someone for their ability to mirror them. In other words, it would be difficult to love a person for their individuality because one would seek out someone with enough receptivity and mutability in order to find something of oneself in the other. Of course, this seems to be the nature of love despite Venus aspecting Neptune or not. We only ever fall in love with ourselves, although we’re unconscious of the fact. The only reason we’re ever drawn to someone is because we see something of ourselves in them. For people with Venus-Neptune contacts this phenomenon is taken to new heights. Liking and being fond of something yet knowing that that person or thing is different from oneself is entirely different from feeling a sense of union and yearning that is the oceanic deity calling a person home. With Neptune, the love object is the answer to all prayers and the remedy for all one’s troubles and pains. This is of course never quite true and the disappointment that follows upon the clearing of the intoxicating mist can be very scary and deeply depressing. Personal love, marriage and commitment might be idealized to the point of absurdity.

The trine and the sextile aspects are less intense compared to the conjunction, but they similarly denote a refined taste and a appreciation of artistry and music – anything that touches people’s souls inexplicably and profoundly. Typically, all Venus-Neptune aspects indicate a need to be loved unconditionally and to love unconditionally. Both of these harmonious aspects denote a very compassionate nature and a tendency to idealize and glamourize love. One is naturally very generous with one’s outpouring of affection, even when one’s own heart is broken. The trine indicates that the person is innately and naturally mirroring other people’s beauty. Escapism and distortion of reality is one’s way of being, it is not an acquired skill but rather something that’s a given. It’s probably easy to over-indulge in pleasure in order to escape the dreary everyday existence. In fact, when things get too hard, this is exactly what this type is likely to do. The sextile is more of a skill that is available for use. In other words, one is able to stimulate a bit of Neptune’s magic and universality in one’s style of expressing love – adding a bit of glamour, unattainability and fantasy in the mix. Conscious cooperation is required though, it’s not as if the sextile is going to cause over-indulgence as soon as one lets go of inhibitions.

The square aspect typically brings doubt and friction, when Neptune and Venus are involved, the conflict is between one’s personal value(s) and the recognition of oneness. Usually, the ugly side of Neptune comes out more readily. One wants to attain something special and magical but since one is not attuned enough or certain of one’s own preferences and values neither planet gets fulfilled or satisfied. Kim Kardashian has this square and she is never quite satisfied with her appearance (Venus), which is why she spends to much time perfecting it. She wants so badly to embody the ideal (Neptune) yet can’t seem to close the gap between her own personal look and the otherworldly refinement that Neptune represents. What ends up happening is that she becomes too artificial, some would even call her grotesque – she simply can’t find peace with imperfection – everything has to be sweet and pretty to the point that the coin flips and everything turns ugly. Although Neptune is usually associated with spirituality and the beauty of the divine, it is also associated with dissolution and disintegration – which often manifests as madness. Kim Kardashian has many times been rude or downright aggressive because of her vanity and venusian pride. Madonna also has this square and she certainly falls in the category of people who care enormously about their appearance, being attractive and young even up until old age. Venus is the goddess of youth and beauty and Neptune holds the promise of redemption through the planet(s) that it aspects. It’s easy to see how this square relationship between the planets could run amok. If youth is the gate to heaven, one would be willing to go very far in order to not let the imperfections stop heaven from becoming a reality. When it comes to love and relationships there’s inevitability of disappointment and uncertainty – one tends to look for the perfect partner yet no one can be it all in terms of fulfilling the dream because the standards are set too high. On the flip side, the standards can also be too low, because of the Neptunian tendency is to either be unrealistically idealistic or stubbornly accepting and passive in destructive situations.

The opposition aspect doesn’t typically bring out the obsession with perfect love and beauty. It makes the individual aware that love, in it’s selfish guise of wanting another person or object tied to the self in some way because of good looks and style, is antithetical to universal love. In a sense, personal love must be sacrificed for communion with the source of life, that which many people call God – or, God must be sacrificed for ordinary human seduction, value and pleasure. These are the people who are only looking to touch the source of life through love and union, nothing more. They’re not looking to simple hedonistic pleasures or superficial adornments. If they do, they’re doing it at the detriment of true compassion and communion with all of life. George Harrison had this opposition in his chart and so had Bob Marley. Both were musicians, both used drugs and both had a deep urge for spirituality. Both emphasized the importance of the connection with God and pointed out the triviality of worldly matters. Venus, is to an extent, quite earthy and materialistic. She cares about being nice, looking nice and behaving in a way that causes others to admire her. It seems like Harrison lost his first marriage because of incessant drug use and infidelities. Neptune is boundless and is everywhere and anywhere – there was no way Venus, ruling marriage and social contracts, could conquer the pull of the promise of ecstatic union. With the opposition, either special partnership/marriage or God is the pursuit, neither can exists in conjunction with the other.

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snom-pixelates · 3 years ago

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Hi again! Thanks for answering my questions I really appreciate it! :) One of the questions I wanted to ask was how exactly would I describe depth perception in writing and how does it feel? Thanks! -📝

[sorry this is so late! forgot i had it in my drafts </3. There’s some fairly long rambling ahead, hoh boy, so I hope I made any sense at all! Feel free to ask me to clarify anything if you need me to and I’ll try my best!]

I’m working off of the assumption that you want me to describe the difference in depth perception as it specifically pertains to my kind of visual impairment. In that I only have one eye and the other has been removed--I am totally, completely blind on one side.

There are dozens of other kinds of visual impairment, so just keep in mind that this is my own personal experience living with one eye and it may very well be different for others who go by the label of being partially blind! i just wanted to point that out and get it out of the way before we delved on in! ^U^

I've never been able to experience having sight in both eyes, so I don't have a clear idea of what exactly is different for a fully versioned person and a partially blind one like myself when it comes to depth perception. Or how the exact feeling of it differentiates.

I can tell when things are fairly close or pretty far, but specific distance is tough for me to figure out. I usually misjudge the placement of things by about an inch. It's not a Huge gap. Just enough to maybe make me slightly frustrated sometimes, haha! Most specifically when I'm trying to be more Precise. High-fiving someone of giving them a fist bump, I'm always about an inch or two off from being perfectly center with their palm or fist.

For another example, we have a rack where we hang pots and pans in the kitchen and it tends to frustrate me because getting the hole at the end of the pot/pan handle onto that hook usually takes a couple of attempts. And whenever I miss the hook, it's always by VERY slim misjudgment of positioning--mere centimeters. Again, because my depth perception makes it difficult to get that precise measurement--in centimeters, inches, feet, whichever.

I'm sure someone who is less adapted to the visual impairment would have a way bigger gap of error and maybe require more attempts for precise things like that. And they may very well be far more off in their calculation than I am and miss grabbing things entirely [i usually manage to make contact first try. usually. since I’ve been able to adapt to my limitation over the course of two decades.] If the visual impairment is new to your character, then obviously it’s going to be far more difficult for them to perform these kinds of tasks right of the bat. They’re likely to be WAY off in their calculations until their brain trains itself on how to adjust to the lacking vision.

When it comes to writing these things out for a character, don't be afraid to have them fumble and be a little nervous to do things, especially if it’s a task that relies heavily on being able to judge distance or see on all sides of them--driving, biking, roller blading, steering something like a shopping cart, etc. Maybe your character has had years to adapt to this, such as in my case, but there are still going to be little inconveniences for them, like me and the pots and pan wrack or even something as simple fist bump. If the visual impairment is new to the character’s day-to-day life, these inconveniences I’d imagine would happen more frequently and with greater error until they’re given the proper amount of time to adjust to it. And don’t be afraid to show the frustration that can come with that. It can be very frustrating and encouraging at first, I’m sure.

Have your character fumble to grab things or bump into something. They might miss the cup while trying to pour, have difficulty catching a ball--or anything for that matter [please stop tossing things to me beloved family members and friends, for I will never catch those car keys or wallets]--or have a tough time navigating a crowd, or hesitate at stair steps.

If you WANT to do go more into the description of a lacking depth perception and how it feels different to having a full range of depth perception, I'm afraid that's where it becomes far more speculative for me, as I really don't have a frame of reference for what it's like being with full vision. I fear I might not be too much help in that department! ^_^;

I guess just a few key things I'll mention so I don't leave you off with nothing:

-It's not really depth perception that's the most difficult thing when it comes to seeing with one eye. Sure, missing things by an inch or so is a little frustrating but the Blind Spot also a great detriment, and I feel like not a lot of people talk about it. I'm blind on my right side so, naturally, I tend to bump into a LOT of things on that side. Furniture and people and walls and such. I usually have to be fairly vigilant in crowded spaces simply to make sure I'm not in the way. Into my teens, I was wary about steering shopping carts, afraid I'd accidentally hit someone with the cart going down the isle because I didn't see them or miscalculated the distance between us. I still don't like driving because of that huge section of my peripheral vision that's missing. My grandfather actually recently had to wear an eye patch and got to discover first-hand how difficult driving can be with such a huge blind spot. It can be nerve-wracking!

So, while the depth perception can be annoying to me, *I* would personally put the blind spot as being just as difficult to adapt to, if not more so. Bumping your hip or shoulder on door frames and walls and stubbing your toe on table legs and chairs--these are things that do still happen to me, sometimes even in my own home where I’m familiar with the layout. Not knowing when someone is approaching from your blind side can also cause a few scares. And accidentally stumbling into the person you're walking beside because you forgot to tell them--oh, hey, maybe come to the side I can see you on--happens pretty frequently, too.

It’s a struggle with both depth perception AND that huge blind spot. For a character, you can add this onto other things, too. Not just the mundane things like bicycling or driving. For example, if your character was once a great fighter who is now visually impaired, they might be nervous to pick up that sword or that gun or so on again. Given the hardships that do come with being visually impaired--the struggles with both depth perception and that blind spot--their fears could possibly be justified. Who knows.

-your character is likely going to tilt their head a lot or START tilting their head more than usual. I have a permanent head tilt to the right that's formed over my two decades with an ocular prosthetic. It’s very slight and typically unnoticeable to other people. I find it makes it easier to focus in on things when I tilt my head. The one eye is trying to make up for two, and that's simply going to tire it out sometimes. I tilt my head varying degrees of left and right just to look at things from a slightly different angle and that usually snaps things back into focus. I've noticed that the visual tire typically happens when I've been drawing on my ipad or staring at my laptop screen all day.

-another interesting thing that my doctors have talked about: a lot of people with prosthetics, especially if they got them when they were young, grow their bangs to cover the prosthetic. And why not, y'know? Not like you need to see from that side! Prosthetics are, sadly, never going to be perfect. Prosthetic eyes don't often move perfectly and I had a lot of kids ask why "one eye was bigger than the other" or that they "thought I hade a lazy eye" throughout my childhood. It never offended me--i was used to the questions--but if your character is a kid, then, yeah, that very well might get to them or impact them in a negative way. Even if your character is an adult, I can see these comments impacting them as well, to the point where they might start to grow their bangs over that eye. How you choose to handle that sort of character development is up to you--I personally grew out of the Bangs Phase but there are people with ocular prosthetics who don't, and that's okay. I don't think it's one of those things that needs to be overcome. If covering bangs is what makes them comfortable, it makes them comfortable and there's nothing wrong with that.

-People with my specific visual impairment can make out things like textures a-okay! I don’t believe texture has much to do with depth perception unless it’s purposefully done that way, such as with optical illusions--but those are meant to fool everybody! Nothing about having one eye makes you worse at being able to tell when something is sticky, scaly, furry, tiled, ect.

-light and shadows are also easy peasy, perceiving those shouldn't change much I don't believe?

-Color wouldn't change either for that matter, unless you're somehow color blind in one eye but not the other, haha!

Just in general: for those who have had one of their eyes completely removed, obviously they won’t be seeing anything from that side--not color, texture, nor light or darkness. I find, strangely, that people are confused about specifically not being able to see light or darkness out of that blind side. Not entirely sure why! The way I’ve always explained it is it’s like trying to see out of your finger. Your finger has no eye, and if you’ve had an eye removed, then obviously that part of the face now has the same problem as your finger. You’re not gonna be seeing anything out of that side if your eye has been fully removed. Hence that huge blind spot. Pft. Blip. Nada. Nothin.

-Magic Eye Illusion Books. I don't understand them. I never will. Can't make out the optical illusions.... Every other illusion? totally fine. But those types specifically, man....... On that note? finger sausage trick. ;V;

I'll never be able to make out this oh-so magical finger sausage.......

Hopefully, these little tidbits help at least a LITTLE bit with writing a character who is partially blind? Sorry I couldn't help more about detailing the depth perception and what that looks like! It's one of those things that's pretty difficult to describe when you can't compare notes... ^^;

But yes, a lot of things are going to be difficult for a character who is partially blind with an ocular prosthetic, and I feel no one should be afraid of writing that out. People with one eye do face specific struggles. We fumble and sometimes bump into walls or table corners. A good chunk of the struggling will come from that depth perception but I think that blind spot should also be mentioned and talked about because it really is both things intertwined that makes it difficult to navigate the world.

Again, super sorry I can’t detail out what the difference in depth perception looks like between those with one eye and those with two! I just don’t have a frame of reference for it and how the difference feels exactly because I lost half my vision so young.

Again, let me know if you’d like me to clarify anything and I will try my best!

#SUPER SORRY FOR THE LATE RESPONSE #I HOPE I MADE ANY SENSE AT ALL <//3 #prosthetic eye #asks #once more please feel free to ask me to clarify something #i'm editing this at 1am and praying i helped at all! haha ^^;#📝anon

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www-artforoddballs · 4 years ago

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Alright, so notice. Most of you probably know this, since you're following me for the Autistic Levi stuff (thank you, we're closing in on 100 followers!!!!), but people with autism can have "tantrums". I've kinda touched on this in a previous post (it's a full meltdown, but you can see that post here https://www-artforoddballs.tumblr.com/post/644803780958879744/autistic-levi-angstkinda-i-guess-this-is-him). For those of you who DON'T know, an autistic tantrum is not the same thing as what you'd think of in regards to a toddler or kid, it's just the word used for it. This is a mistake my mother and I made when getting the paperwork done while I was going through testing that later got cleared up lol

I had a tantrum yesterday, and so I figured that I could post about Leviathan having a tantrum, since it's still ready on my mind. I don't care if anyone else is proud of me for coping with it as well as I did, since it's a major improvement from last time I had one, but I am proud of myself!...with that in mind, here we go!!

There will be some angst in this post, like the last post in relation to this one, but like the last post, it turns out fine.

However.

Trigger warning for things such as self harm, both physical and verbal. If you or a loved one is self harming, either reach out to someone for help or reach out to that person to help, yeah?

OK on with the post.

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First of all, Levi's autism is part of why his brothers always agree to help when there's a raffle for tickets or something like that on the DDD messages, because he can get overwhelmed if they don't at least help, even if he doesn't win in the end.

They figured out that his autism was the culprit for this shortly after his diagnosis.

Now when I'm writing for Levi, I like to think that his diagnosis was around the early 1990s since, while autism was a separate diagnosis in 1980, it didn't really start becoming fairly accepted and expanded upon until 1987. Hence why everyone is mostly used to it by now, but are still sometimes off put by his odd behavior; for them, as beings that have been around since...the beginning of the universe, pretty much as far as we know, but for at LEAST since humans were around (so at VERY least 2.5 million years now, but potentially up to around 7 million years (if they haven't been around since the beginning of creation)), this would be like...I dunno, give me a second.

Waiting

Waiting...

Okay, so from 1990(earliest year I have in mind) to 2019 (the year it was released) is 29 years. That's a minimum of 1/86,206.89th of their lifespan, and a maximum of 1/475,862,068.96th of their total lifetime.

So this is a VERY recent development for them on the grand scheme of things, but I digress.

So they're still figuring everything out, especially as the human race continues to learn about the condition itself.

So the first time Levi threw a tantrum and they recognized it for what it was...it was certainly interesting.

What had happened was exactly the situation described; Levi had wanted to go to a concert in the human world and they were raffling off free tickets. Except, unlike now, his brothers hadn't offered their support. They hadn't in the past, why would this time be any different?

Except now they viewed it through a different light. Leviathan had an image in his head that he desired so badly and had asked his brothers to support him, hopeful, only to be rejected at every turn. That he was used to, but it was still upsetting.

He put that to the side, though. He really wanted to see this band, and these were VIP tickets where you got to hang out with the band for a few hours after the concert! They'd cost a LOT of human money, and while they COULD afford it, he knew Lucifer would be bringing hell down upon him if he used that amount of family funds on a concert. And his anxiety was already somewhat raised, so he decided to enter the raffle on his own.

He sat there for hours, waiting for the results to come in. He'd hyped this up in his brain the entire time; He'd win, go to an amazing concert, have dinner with the band, maybe even make some friends....!...and then the results came back. He hadn't won.

As per usual, our snek boi went into one of his rants about how unfair it was, but instead of going on a rampage or something like that, locked himself up in his room and cried, hating himself for getting so excited over nothing.

As I mentioned before, I've made another post about a tantrum/getting too overwhelmed slipping into something even more dire, as that's almost always what happens to me. This would be in the 90s, so this would be their first real incident with one of these moments where they had the proper diagnosis, so bear with me, there will be some angst here, but like the other post, it'll be fine.

So Mammon ends up feeling bad for rejecting his little brother, and, not knowing it was too late, decided to go to his room and offer his support. It was almost Leviathan's birthday anyways, and Mammon knew how rejection felt and how much it sucked. So, he knocked on Leviathan's door.

No response. He knocked again...still no response, but a quiet sob.

Right away, Mammon switched from semi-carefree to worried. "Levi...?"

Again, no response. He decided to just go in and check on his brother...

The door was locked. And he smelled blood.

"Leviathan, I need you to open the door," Mammon said with a half hearted chuckle, his voice now becoming slightly strained. "Because if ya don't, I'm gonna have t' break the door down."

"Just go away!" Leviathan cried from inside his room. "Just leave me alone, you jerk!"

"I ain't goin' anywhere. Either open the door or I'm gonna break it down. Those are your two choices."

A moment of silence, before Mammon sighs, stretching, as he transforms into his demon form.

"Alright, option two it is."

He rammed into the door repeatedly, before the wood finally splintered and fell to the ground with a loud thud. Mammon quickly looked around, eyes widening as he saw Leviathan digging his own sharpened nails into his arms, multiple raked wounds, made by the same culprit, carved into his skin.

"Levi...look at ya..." Mammon said, voice faltering, tears welling up in his eyes. "I...how long has..."

"Just shut up! Don't act like you care about me, I'm the freak of our family, remember?! I'm the one whose brain isn't right, I'm just a shut-in, good for nothing, re-!"

He was quickly cut off by Mammon going to him and hugging him.

"I don't care who you are. You talk about my brother like that again and I'll kill you. Alright? You're a little off, but you ain't a freak, and your brain works just fine as is. You're perfect just the way you are, and if anybody else says any different, I'm gonna beat them the fuck up. Including you. Got that? So what if you've got that fancy lable on ya now...? Labels like that matter, but it didn't change ya. You're still my cringe, annoying as hell little weirdo of a brother...and I wouldn't have ya any other way."

Leviathan fully listened to Mammon talk, before clinging to him, breaking down sobbing again, and trying to explain what happened through his tears, the older demon gently rubbing his back and allowing him to cry it out, making sure no more harm was done.

A while later, once Levi had calmed down, Mammon ruffled his hair.

"Let's get you cleaned up, yeah? Lucifer is already gonna kill me for breaking your door, but he'd be even more pissed if I just left you here with those wounds."

So they did. And Mammon, after telling a VERY angry Lucifer what had happened hours later, had surprisingly NOT gotten chewed out by the eldest brother. Instead, that day, the entire family had a long discussion, and they all agreed that if it was something as small as entering a raffle, or even if it was bigger but not an inconvenience to anyone in the slightest, they'd all help out from then on. It's not like it was hard, and it would save Levi from hours of stress and negativity toward himself and others around him.

They also made a plan for if a tantrum were to happen while someone was around, or if he became too overwhelmed and started to spiral...because, as annoying as he could be, Leviathan was still family. And they loved him, oddities and all.

---------------

Alright, so...that was the post! I hope it was okay. I know I've written about this type of thing before a little, but different situations can end up with the same negative outcome, like being in an overwhelming situation, or not being able to change your thinking and not easily being able to get over your expectations. I've personally suffered with both, and it's a regular thing for me, so I like writing about it, because maybe, just maybe, it'll help someone out, or help someone that isn't autistic understand a friend or relative or classmate or employee better. And I love these characters, I really do. The only ironic thing is that I see so much of myself in Leviathan, but I adore him and despise myself. Go figure 😂

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed, and if there's anything you guys have questions about (in regards to me and my experience), or any specific writing requests, asks are fully open!

Thanks so much for being here to support me, you have no idea how much it means to a little oddball such as myself.

#obey me #obey me headcanons #obey me leviathan #obey me belphie #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me beel #autism obey me #obey me autism #obey me neurodivergent #neurodivergent #leviathan autism #autism #headcannons #obey me hcs

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shima-draws · 4 years ago

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Aww yeahhh time for Kiyo to make his entrance!

I wrote an entire essay about him (again whoops) so it’s very long and under the cut for your viewing pleasure ;)

Kiyo

Age: 29

Hair color: Green

Eye color: Brown

Element: Stars

Kiyo, the Guildmaster of the Asterstone Guild! He only took up the position recently and has had the Guildmaster title for about a year and a half. He was the previous record holder for youngest Guildmaster until that title was stolen by Taku. (Kiyo holds a grudge about it but it’s playful.)

Kiyo, just like lots of other characters in ATS, was taken in by the Asterstone Guild at a young age. He’s similar to Shima in that he has no previous memories before showing up outside the guild one day, battered and bruised. (That marks three characters in this series with amnesia now! Wrow) He grew up under the watchful eye and tutelage of the previous Guildmaster, and because of how attached to him she’d gotten, it wasn’t long before he began to express desires to take over the guild once she retired. After a lot of thought and contemplation she eventually handed over the position to him. This initially resulted in a lot of outrage from the guild members because they did not think Kiyo was suited to be the Guildmaster, but he eventually proved them wrong once he stepped up to the plate and showed them he could act like a true leader!

They did have good reason to be nervous about that, though, as Kiyo is normally a very laid-back and carefree person and is strictly non-violent. This has lead into lots of situations where he’s opted out of fighting, leading his guildmates into lots of trouble when they needed a hand, and they labeled him as both a coward for avoiding necessary battles on missions (which is practically a requirement for a guild member going out on dangerous quests, you sort of have to have a battle prowess to take on any foes) and lazy for not participating when he should. Initially this bothered Kiyo a great deal, but the previous guildmaster assured him that not everybody is suited for battling others, and that he can still pave his own way to success in a non-violent manner. While Kiyo may not have a liking for fighting, he has an extremely smooth tongue and is very capable of talking himself out of sticky situations (mostly by bribing. He is VERY good at that lmao). He has a talent for manipulating others into doing what he wants them to, though he rarely uses this on people he considers friends. When Kiyo’s able to complete a mission and win the day without resorting to using their elemental powers in a fight, his guild members have to stop and think for a second like. Hold on. He just did that so easily, he made it look so simple, we really need to stop underestimating him and calling him totally useless (Kiyo: Hey. HEY).

Kiyo’s pretty close to all of his guildmates despite their constant ribbing—the one person he’s close to that adores him completely is Lacie, because he was the person to bring her into the guild (she was around 10, he was 17), and being the first person to genuinely show her kindness that wasn’t for ulterior motives, Lacie became very attached to him. Kiyo acts like an older brother to her, and Lacie supports him in whatever he does. She was thrilled when he took on the Guildmaster position, and he has a very soft spot for her :’) She always sings his praises to anybody outside who will listen, and gets angry at Emrys the one time he called Kiyo incompetent.

After becoming the guildmaster, Kiyo actually does a good job at taking charge despite the general opinions that he wouldn’t. He’s still very casual about it though and is a bit more flexible with how the guild is run, preferring to let the guild members do things their own way and be less strict about the overall rules. He’s basically got the “Do whatever you want!” and “Just wing it!” outlook, and while a lot of the members don’t like this attitude, a lot of them do. At the end of the day they all do respect him, though! While he isn’t a fighter he’s very good at giving orders and keeping things in check around Asterstone lol

Despite Kiyo’s insistence on staying out of battles, he’s actually an extremely skilled fighter, and is probably the strongest and most dangerous person in the entire guild. The issue with this, though, is that whenever he gets into a fight, he tends to get too “serious” and starts going off the walls, treating the battle as a game and something fun and entertaining. This leads into him not knowing when to stop, and nobody else being able to stop him, so he’s seriously injured other people without meaning to—revealing that he’s actually terrified of violence because he loses himself in it, and why he prefers to stay on the sidelines. It’s only when Kiyo gets really serious in battles that a darker side comes out, and where the star mark in his eye appears. It’s only been seen a few rare times throughout his life at the guild, so nobody really thinks much of it or notices it. It’s only after the star mark appears that Kiyo passes out afterwards, having exerted a lot of power and extremely skilled battle prowess nobody has ever seen before. However, after a grand guild tournament where Kiyo faces off against Taku and gets too into it, revealing his star mark and almost slicing Taku’s head clean off, one of Kiyo’s advisors at the guild starts to look into it out of concern for both Kiyo’s safety and that of others.

In the middle of all this mess, Kiyo meets Toru, and after nearly forcing him to join Asterstone, the two start growing closer 👀 Toru joins the squad of not putting up with Kiyo’s bullshit, but that’s only after he gets over his starstruck fanboy phase. Because Toru is newer to the guild and because he’s a non-elemental not suited for fighting, Kiyo instantly becomes attached to him, finding similarities in their preferences and backgrounds. While Toru does think Kiyo’s an idiot sometimes he treats him very kindly, and is usually the first to defend him when the other members playfully tease him, so Kiyo’s just like you are an angel sent from heaven just for me and I adore you. Still though with Toru being a non-elemental Kiyo stresses about his safety CONSTANTLY, even after Toru gets official training in self defense. If Toru’s in danger Kiyo will blow off literally everything else to go rescue him first, which the other members have to get used to as it happens more often than they’d like akdasbmlads

Later down the line the guild is caught up in something terrible, and find themselves being targeted by a descendant of a great inventor and sorcerer (not Elymas this time tho lol). She’s apparently seeking what’s known as the Velle Nova, and has reason to believe Asterstone is in possession of it. After Kiyo’s forced to fight and unleashes the power behind his star mark, the descendant reveals that Kiyo has the Velle Nova, and then the truth finally comes out…

Kiyo remembers everything about his past. Years ago, his town had been caught up in a great disaster, and he was the only survivor. He was forcibly taken in by several scientists, one of them being the ancestor of the girl descendant. They were attempting to recreate the Velle Nova, one of the great sorcerer Elymas’ inventions, which is said to grant any sort of wish imaginable. They wanted to claim that power for themselves and possess the powers of the universe itself. However every attempt had failed, and without the real Velle Nova they couldn’t achieve what they were after. So they decided to pour all of their research into Kiyo instead, and try to create the weapon inside of a human being. This ended up making a twisted, broken version of what should have been the Velle Nova. But Kiyo couldn’t contain its power—it was going to unravel the universe itself and either destroy everything or alter it tragically into something unimaginable. One of the scientists working with the group realized how awful their experiment was and, being a Time elemental, decided to erase Kiyo’s memories (with some help) and send him centuries into the future so that the rest of the group couldn’t get their hands on him. Hence Kiyo winding up outside of Asterstone with no memories, and the truth behind his star mark. It had been granting Kiyo his wish the whole time—the longing to protect the things he cares about by being able to defeat any threat in his way. Of course with the unstable power that he can’t control, it usually leads into disaster;;

Kiyo, now having recovered his memories, realizes that the same thing is going to happen again, and decides to seal himself off to protect Asterstone and the world before the universe unravels. Cue an epic PMD-esque goodbye scene where he bids farewell to Toru, gives him his trademark scarf, and vanishes, escaping into a dimension between time and space where his power can be contained. *Starts playing I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye*

Toru, absolutely devastated by Kiyo’s farewell, decides he’s going to break time and space to save his man, except there’s one small issue...nobody else remembers that Kiyo even existed, and Toru only managed to by some miracle (and also maybe bc Kiyo handed him his scarf idk some magic soul connection thing). But after a while...a long while, maybe like a year or more...they finally unlock the key to finding Kiyo!!

Toru and Kiyo share a tearful reunion, and Kiyo cries a lot because it had been so lonely sitting in that black hole all by himself for so long. Toru begs Kiyo to come back, and suggests that Kiyo separate himself from the Vella Nova in order to live a normal life, but Kiyo informs him that he and the Vella Nova...are the same. They’re the same combined entity! Kiyo says that if he tries to unfuse, he’ll just end up destroying himself, because there’s nothing to separate, being one singular existence. So Toru points out uh hey since you’re the same thing, don’t you get a say on how your power is used? “It’s your power, Kiyo” yes we’re referencing Tododeku here we go

Kiyo’s like hmm uh yeah I guess you have a point;; so we went through all that for nothing huh. And Toru tells him you’re a fucking moron and Kiyo’s like ahh yes but you loved this moron enough to come rescue him from the void ;) And they kinda sorta confess but not really? Kiyo’s too nervous and Toru’s too distracted trying to figure out how to get them out of there but no worries they sort it out later. Kiyo tells him that hey I’m still dangerous and I could lose control at any given moment and Toru’s just like well I guess we’ll just have to stop you and bring you back to yourself. So with the knowledge that he’s got a whole guild of awesome people backing him up and a boy who broke the laws of the universe to save his ass, Kiyo and Toru escape the rift and finally return home together 💕 And that’s pretty much how their arc ends!

Extra personality traits

-He has a really short attention span so this makes things painfully hard on mission briefings, which leads to Kiyo usually screwing up the mission one way or another

-He often charges ahead without thinking and is the first one to become a target in a bad situation. Nobody really feels bad for him though because most of the time it’s his fault for walking right into it LMAO

-He can be very childish sometimes and most of the time he does it on purpose. His guildmates complain that their leader is a whiny, immature brat

-He is an expert on how to annoy people do not test him oh my god

-He can be incredibly selfish;; He’s gotten better with it during recent years, but he got scorned for it a lot when he was younger. He’s also very emotional, and you can read what he’s thinking like an open book! When his friends can’t read him that’s when they start getting worried.

-He has no experience in romance whatsoever and it’s the one (1) thing that can get him flustered. Nobody at the guild has ever seen Kiyo get mildly embarrassed or caught off guard, so they begin to think it’s impossible to make him blush. Then Toru shows up and ruins everything lmao

-He has a great sense of humor and can always make others laugh! He’s also very mischievous and sometimes plays pranks on other members of his guild.

-He’s very stubborn when he wants something and not in a good way. He also pouts a lot when he gets like this

-He loves his guild and his guild members man :'( If any of them are ever in any real danger he's quick to offer himself up first as a target. He's protective of his friends and will do anything to keep them safe!

-A very very affectionate person. He mostly shows this through physical acts like hugging and generally touching other people. In return he also craves affection and gets very soft when it’s given back to him. I’d probably say he’s a little touch starved despite being in close contact with others all the time lol

#Me: Time for a new OC! *Writes a novel-length essay about their background*#Kiyo #Among the Stars #ATS #Shima's OCs #This took me way too long to write fnaskbldads god #Original character #Character art #Character design #Digital art #Art #Character sheet #Character reference #Shima arts #Long post #shima-draws

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cherrynojutsu · 3 years ago

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Title: Like Gold

Summary: Sasuke grapples with love and intimacy regarding his developing relationship with Sakura after returning to the village from his journey of redemption. Kind of a character study on Sasuke handling an intimate relationship after dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt in solitude for so long. Blank period, canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric, lots of fluff and pining, slowly becomes a smut fest with feelings.

Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.

Rating: M (eventual nsfw-ness)

AO3 Link - FF.net Link - includes beginning/ending author's notes

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Chapter 4/?: Soothe

Sasuke arrives outside her building shortly before seven in the morning, an ubiquitous aubade sung by birds, polished and practiced for many years, lilting into his ears along the way. The village for the most part is still slowly awakening from its slumber; no merchants in the streets yet, and he only passes a few people here and there as light slowly seeps higher into the sky.

He carefully pushes open the glass door of the exterior portion of her complex, making sure to keep it quiet in case her neighbors are still asleep. As he goes up the stairs, he notices that all of the downstairs tenants’ lights are on, emanating from beneath the trio of entryways. Once he reaches the upper landing, he sees that Sakura’s light is on, too, though her other two neighbors' are not.

The doors of each unit are all painted different colors. Hers is sage green; he hadn’t been able to discern that previously, with the desaturation that night brings.

He's wondering if maybe he should knock to let her know he’s here, but then she emerges a few minutes early, beautiful and bright-eyed and full of life, pale yellow sunshine coating her from the large window with diamond patterning behind him.

She seems pretty awake already; she must be an early riser. She's carrying her tote bag again, and today she wears a dark skirt with a red top, along with a familiar pair of knee-high sandals. She's also wearing a smile, directed upwards at him.

"Good morning, Sasuke-kun," she acknowledges him softly, looking very happy to see him.

"...Morning." He keeps his voice low, because it is still a little hoarse. He tries to memorize her eyes again in the span of seconds before she turns to lock her door behind her.

It's 6:58 by the time they're out the glass door, her leading the way. They take the main road west a few blocks before turning to go north, this time. There are several more buildings that appear residential on her street. One of them has vines creeping up the sides, starting to bud after the warmer spring weather. He notes there is also a bakery on the corner, not open yet, but one that seems like the kind to also sell confections. He wonders if that factored into her apartment selection at all; he remembers she has a sweet tooth.

It is an easy silence they share on the walk there, bird calls lulling in as background noise again. There are more of them now, a more layered song than earlier, with a wider variety of voices filtering in and out.

Sakura leads them to a very small tea shop within five minutes of the hospital; it is quaint and simple, definitely not modern. It is also quite small, with only four or so small tables situated by windows, looking out towards the street. The entire establishment utilizes a spread of cinnamon-colored wood for its surfaces; floors, counters, and the shelving in the back, laden with neatly-labeled teas of several varieties in glass jars. He assumes the larger jars are store stock, with the smaller ones higher up on the shelves being available for purchase for use at home, if one decides they like a particular flavor enough.

He finds he likes the atmosphere. He figured he would. It's not a formal place, but rather one where you retrieve what you've ordered from the counter and can choose whether to stay or go. He supposes that makes sense; it’s closer to the busier part of the village. There appears to be a small area to the left of the counter where one can add cream, sugar, lemon, or honey, though he knows he won't. He vaguely remembers that she used to take lemon and sugar in her tea, and possibly cream, depending on the brew. Honey seems like something Sakura would like, too, now that he’s thinking about it.

He scans the menu briefly upon entering before deciding something hot with caffeine would probably be best. Sencha green tea is usually what he gravitates toward. He also enjoys black tea during cooler weather, and jasmine occasionally, though not often; it had been his mother’s favorite.

Once he orders, he says, "Hers, too," and glances back towards Sakura expectantly. She looks at him with a blush that rivals the color of her hair when she realizes he's offering to pay for hers.

"Oh! Um, lavender matcha. Hot, please."

His lips quirk upwards a little, because that is possibly the most Sakura thing she could have ordered.

It doesn’t take very long until it’s ready, as they’re not busy; they are the only ones there, thus far. He takes a sip while idling by the end of the counter as he watches her add honey and cream into hers, stirring carefully. It is one of the better blends of sencha he’s had, aside from a particular place nestled on the edge of the Land of Mountains, where he’s pretty sure the elderly woman who ran the place harvested the tea straight from her private garden. He had pilgrimaged there a total of five times on his journey, months scattered like the seasons in between.

It was an odd teahouse, more formal than this one and off the beaten path, not near any major landmarks, nor plotted on any map he’d seen before or after. The lady, who had wizened eyes of a crystal clear blue, slightly lighter in hue than Naruto’s, had served the brews in eclectic and sometimes chipped mugs and teacups, from which he had assumed after multiple visits must be a fairly vast collection. The china was different every time, but he had liked the tea itself so much he kept coming back, if he was anywhere near the area. Twice he had been the only customer there, the first two visits occurring during early morning hours, and there was something extremely cathartic about sitting at the table in the far corner, looking out the window as the sun rose higher in the sky until it no longer skimmed the horizon and the mountains in the distance.

The other three visits had occurred during the afternoon, so there had been at least one or two other people present, at those times. He had noticed that third time that other patrons were served out of much different teacups than he was; he had secretly suspected, after that, that the woman tried to match the stoneware from her collection to whatever she saw in her patrons.

There had been a father sitting with his daughter, who had looked to be around six or seven, on his third visit. The father’s teacup had been robust, solid with carved detail that appeared to have been created with something like a miniature chisel, and an earthenware glaze mix of green and russet, strangely looking similar to the color of seaweed. The daughter’s had been a smaller cup, dainty finery of opalescent sky blue, with a similar mother of pearl finish coating the inside. The girl had quickly drained her glass once she realized the inside was pretty, too; she had spent the rest of the time there in awe of its beauty, turning it in the light as her father watched with soft eyes, enjoying his own cup more slowly. Sasuke had thought it must have been an expensive teacup, not necessarily what you’d typically give a child that young, but the girl hadn’t chipped or broken it. Instead, she had been enamored by its beautiful finish, even more enthralled with the inside than she had been with the outside, and had handled it with great care.

He never saw the same cup twice, for him or any other customer there. He had hoped by the third and fourth time that this was a good sign, that it meant progress. Once he figured it out, he wished he’d examined the first two cups, near five months apart, with greater care; he had thought there might have been a lesson there he had missed. His first teacup, from what he remembered, had been rather plain: rounded, no handle, slightly hard to grip, a shiny black glaze with a burnt orange rim. The second time, he’d been served the sencha in another black piece of china, though this one must have been fired differently; there was no glaze at the very bottom of the outer portion of the vessel, bare toasted clay in an oatmeal color. Carved designs on the outer portion of the piece had nearly melted glaze off it, allowing for the viewer to see the true color of the clay body beneath, creating an effect of brushstrokes in the third dimension, rippling out of the darkness. That one had had a chip at the top, but it hadn’t compromised the structural integrity of the piece, and was easily avoided simply by sipping from the undamaged side.

The third cup had taken him off guard in its uniqueness, and is what had caused him to look to the girl and her father. He had analyzed theirs, and then his own cup closely for a long time that day, thinking. Still no handle, but it had been a bit more narrow, as well as taller, easier to grip. The glaze design was fascinating, a thick glossy black base coat overlaid with a strange dissolving mixture of sapphire and indigo. It had reminded him of a night sky in the middle of nowhere, tiny amounts of galaxy blues and violets barely visible to the naked eye in their sheer scope and complexity. The glaze itself also only covered around two thirds of the vessel, at an asymmetrical angle, with the remaining half left unglazed, as if it hadn’t dripped down to be fully covered yet because the artist had liked the way it looked as is.

When he went back for a fourth cup several months later, the lady had given him an entirely too knowing look, and served his tea in a somewhat misshapen mug, this time with a handle. The handle was awkward, too small, and slightly malformed; the mug’s overall shape seemed as though it may have been an artist’s first attempt, shoddily trimmed and uneven in many places. The glaze design itself was mesmerizing, though, something like a gradient this time, shifting from splattering black to sepia to a lighter color, akin to the inside of a water chestnut. It was almost as if the cup had been constructed by a beginner and then drenched in magisterial color by a master. The sencha had tasted just as good from that cup as it had from any of the others, despite the challenge of grasping it with any semblance of comfort.

The last cup had been only a few months ago: well-designed, with a near perfect handle, easy to hold. The foot and interior of the mug was a smoky gray, well-trimmed, but the exterior body of it was a white raku crackle, twisting patterns of scale-like ivory and black outlines, small dots sprinkled in between where the unevenness of the heat must have interfered in the firing process.

When he reached the very bottom of the vessel, having finished his tea, it had been gilded gold, metallic and astonishingly bright, catching the light of the sun coming through the farthest window, where he sat in the corner alone.

He had sat there staring at it for the better portion of an afternoon. It was a peculiar artistic choice.

This sencha is good, too, he thinks as he takes another sip, here with Sakura, also at a table in the farthest corner, looking out another window. Herbaceous, earthy, and light, and in a cup that matches hers. It feels cleansing on his sore throat, corrosion, not too hot but not lukewarm, either; a rather perfect medium between mellow and astringent. It is a nice way to greet the break of day.

“Thank you, Sasuke-kun," she murmurs, after they’ve been seated for a few seconds.

He nods; she’s still flushed as she says it. He can see it better now, in the bright light of the window. He takes another sip, and continues to enjoy looking at her.

“How is yours?” She asks.

“...I like it.” He considers his next words. “You didn’t add lemon.”

Her lips quirk upward, dimple appearing. “It doesn’t go the best with the lavender. They only have this kind on hand for the springtime.” She pauses, then adds, “I still put lemon in pretty much all my tea, otherwise.”

Sasuke inclines his head again, and she takes another sip.

They sit there for a while in a comfortable silence, watching more of the village wake up and people pass by from the window, on their way to work and other responsibilities. There are two small birds across the street, perched on the awning over an apartment building’s entrance. Finches, he deduces by their plumage and size. Perhaps they are looking for a mixture of materials with which to build a nest.

“It’s a good place to just sit and watch, in the morning,” Sakura mentions after a while, still looking out the window contentedly.

“...Is that your favorite thing about it?”

She meets his eyes, then, and smiles. “One of them.”

He looks at her expectantly, so she continues. “The tea itself is good. It’s close to the hospital, and I like... “ Her voice trails off, and she glances over at the station where she added cream and honey, lips still turned upwards. “I like that they don’t overfill the cup; it makes it easier to add what it needs.”

A ghost of a smile overtakes him. Practical, as always.

Sasuke finds himself contemplating what kind of teacup the elderly lady would give Sakura, if he took her there.

XXX

"You're a little on the skinny side for your height, now," Sakura notes as she writes down his information on the form he's given her, stepping off the scale; 163 pounds. "Not unhealthy, necessarily, but you should try to put on some weight."

They are at the hospital, in an exam room this time instead of her office. Her voice has shifted to something more professional, and Sasuke knows he is now with Sakura the clinician, though her affection is still an undercurrent in the way she's looking at him carefully with warm eyes. She’s already measured his height, and has his paperwork from his last physical to compare it to; apparently he’s grown another two inches since then.

He hopes he’s done growing, in that regard. It doesn’t seem likely that she’ll grow any taller; she’s twenty now, and they already have a considerable height difference. He doesn’t know how tall she is, exactly. He must hover over her by at least six or seven inches.

"Okay," He responds, because he trusts her judgment. Being away and mulling on his failures never gave him much of an appetite. Being back in Konoha hasn't much either, so far, but he can try. “How much?”

She looks somewhat surprised that he asked. “160 to 196 pounds is considered a normal range for six feet; I’d start with ten, and then evaluate from there.”

He nods. Her eyes linger on him, as if she’s contemplating saying something more. When she turns to set down her clipboard and grab the cuff typically used to measure blood pressure, he thinks she must have decided against it, whatever it was. He goes to sit in the patient’s chair, familiar with the routine at this point. He's gotten a physical near every year of his life that he’s spent in Konoha.

She sits on the wheeled chair that’s next to the desk, rolling it closer to him. He extends his right arm, and as she carefully adjusts the cuff, she tells him, tone casual, “You’ve got an inch on Naruto, now.”

There is a very stupid and juvenile part of him that takes immense satisfaction in this news, but she doesn’t look like she’s finished speaking yet. He waits for the rest.

She smiles apologetically. “He’s got about fifteen pounds on you, though. There’s some motivation for you.”

He pins her with a pointed stare, unimpressed but also a little amused. Motivation, indeed.

Her expression turns somewhat guilty, now. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I did his about a month ago; he came back from a mission with a cracked rib, and it needed to be updated.”

She starts increasing the pressure, and he suddenly becomes aware that she is closer to him than before, by the nature of the operation of the equipment. He had become aware of her physical proximity at roughly this point in the exam the last time, too.

He’s thankful it doesn’t seem to affect his blood pressure. “105 over 70; good,” she concludes, before reaching to remove the cuff from his arm. Her fingertips make brief contact with his skin, this time, and he has to fight an urge to shiver, even though they’re warm.

She picks up her pen to input this information in the appropriate slot, then sets it aside and puts away the cuff. When she turns back to him, she says, “Heart rate is next. Hold out your wrist, please.”

He holds out his right arm again, letting his elbow rest on the surface of the desk this time. Both of her hands come to grip his single one, lightly and carefully feeling for his pulse. He tries to hold very still, and to not think about how soft her hands are. He distracts himself by preoccupying his gaze with the clock on the wall behind her. It feels like a very long thirty seconds, though he knows by watching the hand tick that it’s actually not.

She doesn’t vocalize what the number is, just removes her hands finally and reaches for the pen to fill it in on the paper. He wonders if it was elevated.

“Heart and lungs next.” She reaches for the stethoscope, positioning it in her ears before leaning in to listen to his heart first, over his shirt. He looks to the ceiling.

It doesn’t take very long. “Sounds good. Lungs, next.” She gets up and comes around the chair slightly behind him. He shifts to pull the back portion of his shirt up to his shoulder; he remembers this from the last exam, too.

“It’ll be cold; I’m sorry,” she warns gently, before pressing the instrument to his back. She is nothing but professional as she asks him to take a few deep breaths. Routine, and very careful not to touch his skin with anything but the diaphragm of the stethoscope, cool metal.

It feels… different than the last exam. He had been a little on edge during this part, then, too, even though she was nothing but professional then, as well.

He is just… very aware that she is behind him, and that his shirt is pulled up, and she’s listening to him breathe and can see the skin of his back. And that he's kissed her.

The coolness slips away after a short amount of time. “Lung function sounds good.” He pulls his shirt back into place, feeling a faint sense of relief as he does so. She goes back to document her findings on the paperwork.

She then lays the stethoscope back in its appropriate place. Scanning the page, she asks, “Any issues with your hearing?”

“Not that I’m aware,” Sasuke responds. She dips her head in acknowledgement, filling in that box with what he assumes is non-applicable.

“Sense of smell?”

He recalls raspberries and antiseptic. “No.” She fills another box.

“Sinus or lymph node issues?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m assuming you’ve used the Sharingan and Rinnegan since last time, so I’ll look at your eyes towards the end.”

He nods, and she reaches for a light instrument to use to look at his throat, as well as one of the wooden sticks from a glass jar in the corner. “Throat next,” she says, flicking the light on.

He tries not to furrow his brow. He wasn't looking forward to this part.

He opens his mouth for the wood, reedlike and firm against his tongue, and then she’s shining the light in and frowning.

“Say ah, please.”

He complies, feeling quite undignified, though he knows it’s necessary and just part of her job. She removes the stick after a second, setting the flashlight instrument aside, and he closes his mouth.

"Teeth and gums look good, and your tonsils look fine, but your throat looks a little raw. Have you been sick recently?"

"Yes." It is technically the truth, though not in a viral sense.

She looks thoughtful as she’s making a note on her clipboard. “Within the past week?”

He nods. She must see him from the corner of her eye, because then she asks, while still writing, “Any other symptoms? Cough? Does it feel sore?”

“No.” He pauses, then clarifies. “No cough. A little sore. Not bad.”

Verdant eyes flick up to him for a long moment. He feels somewhat guilty; even if he knows the truth, she might be thinking right now that he’s been irresponsible, that he may have given her an illness via kissing.

She breaks eye contact eventually, and sets the pen down, standing to open the uppermost cupboard door in the exam room. His brow furrows, until she’s pulling down a small box that he sees has cough drops in them.

“We only have mixed berry; they’ll be kind of sweet, but it should help. Take a few for later, and put one in now, please.”

Sasuke blinks, and then takes a handful. He puts all but one in his pocket, and then unwraps the one left in his hand, putting it in his mouth, as she asked.

She arches to put the box back in the cupboard, and he forces himself to look elsewhere.

It does feel good on his throat, soothing. “...Thank you,” he says after a few more seconds, as she makes another note on his form.

“You’re welcome,” she replies. Then, back to clinical Sakura. “Any other issues? Abdominal, neurological?”

“No.”

She flips the page. “Infectious disease screening questions are next. Obviously you’ve traveled outside the village in the past 21 days, but have you been outside of Fire Country in that time?”

He thinks. “Rain, about thirteen days ago. Wind, 19 days ago.”

Sakura inclines her head, and writes in the information. He notices she keeps her eyes trained on the questionnaire now. “Have you, to your knowledge, had close contact with a person with measles, mumps, or chickenpox in that time period?”

“No.” She checks the 'no' box.

“Have you, to your knowledge, had close contact with a person or source in that time period for any of the following: botulism, diphtheria, E. coli, encephalitis, hemorrhagic fever, hepatitis, influenza, listeriosis, malaria, meningitis, pneumonia, rabies, severe acute respiratory syndrome, smallpox, or yellow fever?”

“No.” He watches her check several 'no' boxes.

“Have you, to your knowledge, had close contact with a person in that time period who may have exposed you to any sexually transmitted infections?”

He’s glad she’s looking at the paper still, even if that answer is obvious. “No.” She checks several more 'no' boxes.

“And you didn’t have a fever earlier.” She checks another 'no' box. “And sore throat, but no shortness of breath at any point?”

“No.”

“Vomiting or diarrhea?”

“...Vomiting, yes,” he answers honestly. “No to the second.”

She nods, as if she knew that already from looking at his throat. She probably did. She’s good at what she does.

“Any kind of rash?”

“No.”

That’s the last question on the page, so she turns to the next one.

“Next is bloodwork. We’ll do a cholesterol screening, in regards to heart health, and then we’ll also do a general workup and run it for any infectious diseases. I don’t think we’ll find anything if it’s just the vomiting and resulting sore throat, but better safe than sorry.”

She then starts getting out the necessary supplies with which to get a blood sample. It doesn’t take very long; he holds out his right arm again, and Sakura finds the vein easily. “You’ll feel a pinch.” Within sixty seconds it’s over, and she’s pressing and holding the cotton to the dot of red before taping over it, a small pressure dressing.

“Leave that on for a few hours, please,” she advises, and he nods to indicate that he will. She makes quick work of labeling the blood sample, and sets it aside with the clipboard, he assumes for the end of the appointment.

She scribbles in a few more comments on the sheet, he assumes for whoever is running the tests. “Okay, just eyes and arm left. We’ll do eyes first. Any deterioration in vision that you’ve noticed?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ll shine the light to check your pupils quick before I use chakra to look at them.” She grabs a different light tool, a penlight, and turns it on, before looking at him expectantly.

He blinks, curious what she’s waiting for, and then she asks softly, “Could you move your hair out of the way, please?”

Oh. He complies, and she shines the light in one eye, moving it slightly and monitoring the progress. She then does the same to his Rinnegan.

“Reactivity is good; no signs of defect.” She sets the penlight back where it belongs, then makes a note in his paperwork indicating that. Then she’s shifting her chair a tiny bit closer, so she can reach his eyes with her hands.

“Do you have a preference, which one I start with?” She asks. He shakes his head. “Okay; I’ll check the right eye first.” She reaches out with her left hand, pressing her thumb above his eye over his eyebrow, and her other four fingers lightly to his temple, just next to his eye socket.

Sasuke tries not to dwell on how close she is again as green chakra drizzles into his ocular system; he keeps his vision trained forward, as he knows he’s supposed to as she examines. There is a freckle on her right ear that he remembers focusing on, the last time; he does this time, too.

Around thirty seconds passes, before she informs him, “I’m going to funnel some chakra into the retina and optic nerve here; there’s some damage.”

He had suspected there might be, though his vision has not suffered; mostly there was just a bit of pain, sometimes. He hasn’t overworked it by any means, but he hasn’t completely abstained from using it since he’d last been healed by her, either. “Okay.”

The flow of her chakra works its way deeper, more of it now. This part has always relaxed him; her chakra really is quite calming, careful and gentle, threading its way behind his eye and wrapping around the nerve.

She works for about five minutes before the chakra starts to let up.

“...There. That should be a little better,” she says before lifting her hand from his right. “Look up, down, please.”

He complies.

“Left to right, now.” He does. “Good. Does it feel okay?”

He nods, meeting her eyes again finally. It feels stronger, no pain. He decides to verbalize that, even though he’s already nodded. “It’s better. Thank you.”

She smiles at him. “Good.” Then she’s detailing whatever she’s supposed to detail in the paperwork, before setting the pen down again.

“Left eye now.”

She repeats the process, frowning again. “There’s some damage here, too. I’ll fix it.”

This time, it takes longer; not quite ten minutes, but fairly close. He tries to focus on the wall behind her.

He had asked her once, when she was healing him following the war, if it used a lot of chakra. She had said not necessarily, but it depended on the level of damage. She also told him that it was moreso a delicate process, requiring careful manipulation, so he has tried not to talk during any healing sessions since.

When her hand finally pulls away, he’s gotten so used to the contact that it feels like a loss.

“Look up, down, please,” she requests again. Then left to right.

“Function looks good. How does it feel?”

“Better. Thank you.”

She smiles at him gently, just Sakura again for a second, before turning back to the form to finish the optical section.

Then, she turns the page. “Arm is last. Could you please roll up your sleeve to your shoulder?” He grabs his empty left sleeve with his right arm and starts shifting it upwards, rolling it so that it stays put once it’s to the top.

She touches the end of what’s left of the limb with careful fingers, soft but steady on marred skin and scar tissue. “I’ll look with chakra in a second, but any redness that you’ve noticed?”

“No.” He shifts his gaze forward, because her fingertips really are softer than he remembers.

“Any areas that occasionally feel warmer than is typical?”

He shakes his head.

“Swelling of any kind?”

“No.”

“Have you been stretching it as instructed?”

He meets her eyes, then. “Yes.” He wants her to know he listens to her recommendations.

Soft jade, and she’s smiling again. She moves her hands away momentarily, and grabs the clipboard with the papers, checking several boxes as he has indicated. He looks back forward.

“Any phantom limb pain?”

“Sometimes.”

“Residual limb pain?”

“...Sometimes.”

Her gaze flicks upward. “If you had to rate it on a scale, one being hardly anything and ten being the worst?”

“...Usually two or three.” He pauses, and she waits. “...Sometimes four or five.”

“How often, for the worst of it?”

He thinks. “Maybe twice or three times a month.” It’s a bit more often than that, but not by a lot.

She notes it on the paper; that must be a normal range. “Alright. I’ll check with chakra, now.” Her fingers come back to his stump, touching more firmly now. Green chakra starts to thread its way in.

Sakura frowns, after a second. “Nerve endings are a little inflamed. I’ll fix it.” The flow of her chakra increases, and he feels almost instant relief; he supposes it still hurt, faintly. Maybe he just got used to it. “Has it hurt in the last day or so?”

“...Late last night.”

She nods, as if that makes sense. “It won’t take too long. Maybe five minutes.”

He inclines his head just barely, not wanting to move while she’s working.

“You should let me know if it hurts again,” she suggests quietly, after a moment. “It doesn’t take much to fix.”

“...Okay.”

There is a comfortable silence for a few minutes as she works. He feels the chakra start to dilute a little towards the end of it.

“I’m going to stop my chakra and manually massage the tissue, now. It should help prolong the effect.”

He feels her chakra dissipate. She has done this to him before, throughout the rehabilitation process following the war; it was more important then, she’d said, to develop tolerance to touch and pressure of the residual limb. It had hurt, the first few times, but later in the healing process, he had secretly enjoyed it; it made it hurt much less, and the process itself felt… nice.

He had privately wondered what it would feel like on his back.

It elicits the same response now, too, kneading fingertips gradually increasing pressure to access deeper tissue, helping to work away pain that has lived there for a while.

"You wear your hair differently now," she comments after an incredibly nice period of time, still pressing tenderly in little circles, though the pressure is starting to taper off now, since they’re getting towards the end of five minutes; that was roughly the time she would do back then. Since there’s no chakra anymore, it must require less of her concentration.

He realizes he hasn’t shifted his hair back into place yet, then. He takes a moment, then responds quietly, furtively, "Most people dislike looking at the Rinnegan."

She doesn’t respond right away; just finishes massaging the end of his stump, then removes her hands to pick up her pen.

"Not me," she murmurs softly as she makes her final notations.

His heart flips in his chest, and he feels his face grow warm. He's glad she's focusing on the forms, so she can't see the effect her words have had.

The lozenge has dissolved fully, and his throat isn't as sore.

XXX

Sasuke goes to the Hokage’s office, after, to see if the dobe is there. He has some time to kill before lunch, and he wants to take him up on his offer to spar at some point, given that his eyes are freshly healed. Now that he knows Sakura’s schedule for the next few days, he can fill the rest of his time with whatever else. He’ll see her tomorrow at four, at the hospital, and then at Ichiraku’s on Saturday, and then for a bit after, too; they still need to confirm an actual time for that with Naruto and Kakashi. He assumes Sunday and Monday must be her days off. If they’re not, she works too much. He’s going to ask her tomorrow, he thinks.

Oddly, he finds only Kakashi in his office.

“Ah, Sasuke. Good morning,” he greets as he walks through the doors.

“...Morning.”

The copy ninja sizes him up with a single eye for a long moment, as if considering what to ask him. Sasuke braces himself.

"You got your physical done."

Sakura had said after the bloodwork was complete, she’d drop off the paperwork for him. "...I did."

"It went well, I assume."

"...It did."

"Wonderful," he says quietly, sounding pensive.

There is a very long pause.

“And the date, with Sakura this morning, before that? That went well, also?”

Sasuke deliberates. There is no teasing lilt to his old sensei's voice this time, just genuine curiosity, so he answers honestly, even though his neck warms and he doesn’t quite appreciate being spied on. “...It did.”

Kakashi gives him one of the widest and most genuine smiles he has ever seen him wear, beneath the mask.

“Wonderful,” the copy ninja says again, this time teeming clearly with pride and meaning.

“...Yeah.” Sasuke agrees, looking anywhere but at him.

Kakashi shuffles a few papers around his desk, and starts talking again, as if Sasuke has not just admitted to something he’s sure their sensei had suspicions about for the better portion of eight years. “Well, Naruto’s not here; I’m assuming that’s who you were looking for. Hinata’s leaving for a mission later today, around one, so I gave him the day off. I kind of assumed he’d use the opportunity to seek you out for a spar in the afternoon, after she leaves. He was going on about it yesterday, along with a Team Seven dinner on Saturday night; sounds like that will be at six.”

Sasuke just blinks, gears turning still; the scroll from yesterday is still on the desk, so he's not sure why he'd grant Naruto another day off so easily.

Kakashi further clarifies, smile shifting into something more sly. “I wouldn’t go over there before a little after one, if I were you.”

His first thought is oh, and he feels rather stupid. His next thought is gross. His old sensei is grinning, as if his reaction amuses him; he must have made some kind of face that belayed his internal thought process.

“Ah, love requited and besotten newlyweds. What a time." Sasuke's neck burns again, because he realizes after a second that the ‘love requited' portion of that is referring to Sakura and himself. Kakashi's moving on, though. "Anyway, now that I’ve given you too much information…” His voice trails off, and he looks at the intricate scroll tucked away at the table beside his desk, where Naruto usually sits. “If you’re not busy and want something to do until lunch, you could take a look at this scroll for me, since Naruto won’t be getting to it today.” He appears to be thinking, then adds. “For all his progress, he can still be less than perceptive, in certain instances. Your assistance could be invaluable, since I’m occupied with other tasks at the moment.”

Sasuke ponders for a bit; he has already read a good portion of the way through his books, and it’ll be a few hours before he needs to eat. It's not lost on him that this involves a level of trust in him on Kakashi's part, as whatever is in the scroll is likely not public knowledge.

He decides it can’t hurt, though he hopes he doesn’t get asked any more questions about Sakura. He makes his way to take Naruto’s seat, opening up the scroll.

He stares at it long and hard, rolling it out on the table to examine it more closely. Kakashi wordlessly grabs the stapler on his desk and sets it on the top end of the parchment, to hold it in place as he further unravels it. It appears to be a cipher, and quite a complicated one.

“...You think Naruto’s going to be able to crack this?” Sasuke questions incredulously, glancing towards his old sensei with his brows furrowed in doubt. His eyes catch as he does so on the framed photograph sitting on his desk; from this angle, the side instead of the front, he can now see that it’s their original Team Seven photo. He hasn't seen it in a long time.

Kakashi chuckles, not looking up from his paperwork. “Not at all, which is why I was helping him with it yesterday. It’s good practice for him, though, and at the very least, it does keep him busy when I don't have anything else for him to do.”

XXX

Sasuke ambles back to his apartment around noon. He made some progress on the cipher, enough that Kakashi said Naruto might actually be able to take it from there. It feels good to be of use.

It also feels good to have something to give the idiot shit over, when he goes to visit him later.

He empties the cough drops from his pocket into one of the cups he bought yesterday, and pops another one into his mouth before he starts getting out ingredients to cook. It feels good on his throat, menthol pleasantly numbing despite the slightly sweet taste. He pours a hefty amount of rice into a pot to start boiling, and then begins slicing carrots and scallions and mushrooms for takikomi gohan. It takes a while to slice with one arm, as holding the vegetables in place with one hand is a challenge, but he manages by summoning a clone. Once he’s done, he slips them in a pan with some salt and dashi stock. He also adds frozen peas before covering it with the lid to simmer.

Once that’s going, he washes his hand, then folds the comforter he had washed and left out to dry this morning, ultimately storing it in the closet. He stirs the vegetable mixture occasionally, after, reading more of his book while he waits for the rice to finish. The one about kenjutsu is more interesting than he thought it would be. He might finish it by the time he sees Sakura tomorrow.

He really hopes he can walk her home again; he hadn’t gotten a chance to kiss her today. She might not want him to, if she thinks he's sick, but somehow he suspects she likely understood it wasn't actual illness. She's good at what she does, and smart.

It’s a simple but savory lunch, a larger portion than he’s accustomed to. He eats all of it, albeit slowly, as he reads.

Uncannily, an abrupt and earsplitting knocking erupts on his door as he puts the last bite in his mouth to chew.

“TEME! Open up!” More incessant knocking. “I’m fucking bored, and Kakashi-sensei gave me the day off! Let’s spar!”

Sasuke rolls his eyes and closes his book before standing to rinse his dish, setting it in the sink to wash later, along with the pot and pan already rinsed and stacked there.

“Alright, dobe. You don’t need to bust down my door.”

He grabs another cough drop and removes the tape and cotton from his arm before he goes. It’s a little tender, but the blood has clotted by now.

#naruto #sasusaku #ssfanfiction #cherry writes #like gold #fanfiction #this timely update brought to you by my pure unadulterated spite for studio pierrot

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years ago

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Whumptober Day 8: Abandoned

CW: Some vaguely implied child abuse, domestic violence between spouses, blood - and like a lot of it, knives, pet whump, emotional abuse and manipulation, brief homophobia reference

I’ve been asked before about how Krista came to live at the safehouse with the others. Well. Here’s her story. Contains a reference to @whump-tr0pes‘s Honor Bound series.

—

Mr. and Mrs. Richardson had been fighting for months, and the girl had kept her head down. She’d kept quiet, stuck to her schedule. Bathrooms on Mondays, dusting and vacuum on Tuesdays when Mrs. Richardson is out of the house because Mrs. Richardson hates the sound of the vacuum, Wednesday is cleaning the childrens’ rooms, Thursday the kitchen, Friday the den and living room, Saturday and Sunday for everything she didn’t get to over the week.

The girl, who they called Sara, did her job. She stuck to her schedule. At night, she slept in her room, in her bed, and she knew that she and the children - teenagers, all three of them - listened to Mr. and Mrs. Richardson fight.

Sometimes about money, something about bank accounts that were supposed to have more in them than they did. Sometimes about women, and something about how the money in the bank accounts was going to women who weren’t Mrs. Richardson.

Sometimes about how their children were ungrateful, they didn’t understand how good they had it.

Sometimes they fought about Sara, and whether Mr. Richardson looked at her too much or in the wrong ways.

There were nights the fights were vicious and Sara was terrified of the way they screamed at each other, the sound of shattered glass on the walls. On those nights she crept out of her room and into the oldest child’s room, a girl who had just turned eighteen, and Miss Alyssa would let her lay in the bed while they both pretended to sleep, and both stayed wide awake.

Eventually, the two younger children - sixteen year old Mary and fourteen year old Evan - would creep in, too. The four of them would huddle together, the children and the Box Babe, and sit awake past midnight, waiting and waiting for it to stop.

Miss Alyssa would set her jaw and promise the younger two, eighteen and out, just get to college and you barely have to come back. Eighteen and out. I’ll be gone in three months and then we can start planning for you.

Eighteen and out. But Sara was already eighteen - Mr. Richardson told her her paperwork said she was 22, once - and she would never get out. When Miss Alyssa promised there was an escape to her siblings, she never quite looked at Sara.

But there were nights the fights weren’t bad enough to send the two younger ones in, and it was just Miss Alyssa and Sara. Miss Alyssa had told Sara one night, I think I like girls, but I think my parents would fucking kill me if I told them so.

Sara had whispered back, I think I like girls.

She repeated a lot of things they told her, it felt safer than screwing up by getting it wrong. But this hadn’t been repetition. It had been a confession.

Miss Alyssa had stared at her in the darkness, the sound of breaking glass the backdrop to the silence in the bedroom, and said, I thought they took everything like that away from you.

If they did, it didn’t work, Sara said, and the two of them giggled, half-hysterical frightened laughter, as Mrs. Richardson called Mr. Richardson a two-timing son of a bitch stealing from his kids’ fucking inheritance accounts and Miss Alyssa’s arms went around her shoulders and Sara clung tightly to Miss Alyssa’s waist, her hair a loose waterfall of blond. Mr. Richardson never wanted her to pull her hair up.

Sara was good at her job. No matter how frightened she was, no matter that the fights kept her awake, she was up at dawn to prepare breakfast, get the children their lunches ready, lay out school uniforms and Mr. Richardson’s tie.

She was good at being their Domestic.

Which was why she was so confused when Mr. Richardson ordered her into the car on a Tuesday. “But it’s-… it’s vacuuming day, Mr. Richardson,” She had protested, uncertainly, standing in the tank top and shorts she was allowed to wear, short enough to show a flash of her stomach when she had to go on her tiptoes to dust the top shelves. “Mrs. Richardson won’t like it if I still have to vacuum when she gets home.”

“I said get in the car, Sara,” Mr. Richardson snapped, his voice edged with the same violence she heard so often at night. “No one gives a fuck what Melanie wants any longer.” When Sara still didn’t move, his eyes narrowed and he stepped forward, grabbing her by the arm in a grip that bruised, dragging her out the front door.

“M-Mr. Richardson, it’s, it’s vacuuming day-”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sara repeated in a whisper, and obeyed.

The children were all at school when she was all but shoved at Mr. Richardson’s sleek black BMW, told to buckle herself in. The click of the seatbelt felt like the click of the collar being buckled around her neck each day after her shower, and she fiddled with the black leather band nervously, chin tucked down.

The radio played at low volume, and Sara looked from the corners of her eyes as they drove down the street. She had never left the neighborhood since the day that Mr. Richardson had brought her home as a Christmas gift for the family, and once they passed the four-way stop next to the sign for the subdivision, the environment around her was as foreign as another planet.

He drove in silence, ignoring her halting, soft attempts at questions. He turned the radio up each time she spoke, until Sara gave up speaking entirely. Had she done something wrong? She had always worked very hard, and Mrs. Richardson was always saying what a good job she did, and…

“Thinks she can fucking take everything from me,” Mr. Richardson muttered. “The house, the beach house, my fucking kids. She thinks she can fucking have all of that? Yeah, we’ll fucking see.”

“Sir, are you-… are you okay?”

They were stopped at an intersection and his head whipped to look at her. Sara flinched nervously backwards, dropping her hands to wring them over and around each other on the tops of her bare thighs, prickling goosebumps with the A/C on full blast.

“What? What did you say?”

“I asked, um, are you-… are you okay? You seem-”

Angry. Scary. I’m scared of you. I’m scared you’ll hurt me. I’m scared, I-

“-upset.”

“Yeah.” He laughed, bitterly, raking a hand back through his hair, jamming the gas when the light turned green, half-throwing Sara backwards against her seat from the sudden momentum. “Yeah, I’m fucking fine, Sara. Don’t you worry. Take your collar off for me, baby, all right?”

“Take the collar off, yes, sir.”

He never called her baby. That made her stomach twist in newly nervous, nauseous ways, and she slowly raised trembling fingers to the back of her neck, undoing the buckle and feeling her breath hitch, her heart start to race.

She couldn’t disobey the order, even though she felt more naked than ever when she slipped the collar off of her own neck and laid it in her lap, her thumb rubbing over the metal of the buckle itself, sliding over to the soft inner lining, then back to the metal.

“Good, good girl. Okay. Okay okay okay. Shit, fuck… you want some McDonald’s?”

“Want some McDonald’s?”

“You fucking parrot. Do you or not?”

“Um. Yes, Mr. Richardson, if you want me to want that.”

He bought her a chicken nugget Happy Meal and she picked at the fries and stared at the little toy inside, squeezing it to make Spongebob Squarepants’s eyes pop out of his head, then back in again.

Mr. Richardson drove for hours. They stopped at a rest area, and Sara used the pets-only restroom while he waited outside for her, and then they drove some more. At some point his phone started ringing, and he only snorted when he glanced down to see who it was, silenced the ringer, and kept driving.

Countryside passed them, rolling vineyards with grapes heavy on the vine, trees in other places ringed in pretty fences. Sara kept waiting for him to tell her what he was doing, where they were going, but he never did.

A new city rose around them, tall buildings she could barely crane her neck enough to see, and eventually he pulled into a small parking lot labeled EMPLOYEE PARKING ONLY and she knew he didn’t work here, but he parked, and he told her to hold out her left wrist, and she did, looking at him with pretty eyes, just a little large and wide for the thinness of her face.

He reached back behind himself into the backseat and pulled out some towels, soft, fluffy bath towels from home. She hadn’t seen him pack them, and blinked, confused, as he laid them out over the console, layers and layers of them. Four towels total. “M-Mr. Richardson?”

“Don’t scream,” He said, and she caught her breath in a sudden fear just as he brought out the knife and turned the volume up.

The car was running with the stereo at full blast. The noise was deafening inside the car, and no one could hear Sara’s tearful cries for him to stop, and her eventual screams, as Mr. Richardson cut the barcode off her wrist.

His knife slid beneath the skin, not carefully but clumsily, and she kept trying to jerk her hand free but his other hand was gripped with bruising white knuckles. She shook her head, her hair floating around her. She begged, she pleaded, she cried, and he never looked up, not once, until her wrist was a bloody mess of ruined flesh, the barcode was gone, and the towel beneath soaked up more and more blood.

He said something. She couldn’t hear him over the pounding of her own pulse in her ears, her own wails, her own fear of him.

He spoke again, and she shook her head, trying to pull her wrist back to herself. He kept his grip on it and shook it, and she let out a new burst of wailing tears, pulling away from him, panicked, kicking out without thinking. Her bare foot slammed into his arm and finally he let go of her. She desperately felt for the car door handle, and he spoke again but she only heard the click as the door opened and she fell off the side, landing on the pavement, right over the yellow line to mark a parking space.

She scooted back away from him. Her wrist was still pouring blood, it wasn’t stopping, she was smearing it all over herself, her little tank top and the skintight black shorts.

“There. If I don’t get to keep you, she sure as fuck doesn’t,” Mr. Richardson said, and he reached all the way over, throwing the towels at Sara and grabbing the handle on the door. The bloodsoaked bath towels smacked into her, and she clung to them instinctively, pressing them against her wrist.

“Mr. Richardson-… w-wait-”

He looked at her like she was nothing, not even an animal. “Good luck, Sara.”

“Good… good luck?”

He closed the door, and she had to scramble back out of the way as he nearly backed over her. The tires squealed as he pulled back out onto the road, and Sara stared dully after him. Her wrist throbbed, her neck was bare and empty and open, she was bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. He was-… he was gone, and she didn’t know where she was, and she… she belonged to him.

She slowly looked down, lifting the corner of a towel to look at the bloodied bared pinkish exposed meat where her barcode had been. It was-… gone.

She threw a second towel to the side, leaned over, and threw up onto it, losing her breakfast, losing the water she drank while she cleaned during the day, losing and losing and losing until she had nothing left to lose.

“Honey, are you-… holy Christ, are you bleeding?”

The stranger’s voice snapped her out of her disbelief and into terror, and Sara stared up at an older man looking down at her. He wore a three-piece suit and tie like Mr. Richardson wore to his office, and he gasped.

“Oh my God. Christ Al-fucking-mighty, are you okay? Did you do that to yourself?”

“I-I… I’m hurt,” She whispered. “Mr. Richardson h-hurt me.”

What else could she say?

“Do you need me to call someone? Do you have a phone?”

“Need you to call someone,” She repeated, weakly. Her heart thrummed like the hummingbirds Mrs. Richardson fed in the backyard garden with sugarwater that shone in the sun like stained glass if you looked at the feeder.

“Do you know any phone numbers, or…”

“No. I, I, I don’t know who-… who you could call, I…” She whimpered, curling over herself. She would have asked him to call Miss Alyssa or Mrs. Richardson but she wasn’t allowed to know their numbers. There was no one she could ask him to call who could come for her and keep her safe.

The man swallowed, then took his phone out of his pocket and dialed. Her head throbbed, weak and foggy, as she kept the towel on her wrist now, sniffling back tears. It settled in that she had been left here. He cut her barcode off so she couldn’t be scanned and returned home. He had abandoned her. She’d been a good pet, she’d done everything right, and he was gone.

What would Mrs. Richardson think?

What would Miss Alyssa think? Oh, she wouldn’t see Miss Alyssa again, would she? Or Miss Mary, or Mister Evan.

There were loud sirens, loud loud loud, and she tried to get back up, but dizziness dropped her back down again with a graceless thump onto the pavement, the bits of gravel sticking to her thighs. The strange man in the suit moved close to her, holding her by the shoulders, and she could only blink, struggling to keep focus, as the ambulance pulled up. He put a hand to her face and she leaned into it, closing her eyes, humming softly. She liked to be touched. That meant she was being good.

“It’s okay, honey,” The man said, softly, his eyes roaming over her not with the look of something wanting, but genuine, open, honest concern. He had a little pin in his tie, and she blinked as it glinted against the sunlight.

People jumped out of the ambulance, speaking too quickly for Sara to keep up with, but they stopped trying to speak to her when they saw the blood on her wrist. They spoke to the man in the suit, instead. He spoke back but their words were all running fuzzily together, and Sara was still bleeding.

“Hey.” Someone dropped into a crouch in front of her, a person in a uniform with short, messy auburn hair and an easy-going smile, a look of dedicated focus in their clear hazel eyes, and Sara thought they looked like Miss Alyssa, but older, a little bit, and not like Miss Alyssa at all. Not much older, either, maybe. But the focus was the same. “Hey, hi. Hi, there. Can you look at me, for just a sec? Meet my eyes? Can you focus on my finger real quick?”

They held up one finger, moving it slowly from side to side.

Sara blinked, nodded, met their gaze, followed the movement of their finger, and was rewarded with a slight widening of their smile. “Perfect. All right, okay. Can you tell me what happened?”

“My, um, Mr. Richardson l-left me,” Sara whispered, and the tears were welling up again, running out, and she shakily held out her wrist, still covered with the towel she was pressing down against it. “He left me.”

The person nodded, quick and brusque. “Did he do this to you?”

“Y-yes, he, he cut my barcode o-off-”

“He… your barcode?” Their eyes scanned quickly around them, and caught sight of something Sara had missed until now. Sara’s collar had dropped out of the car, and was lying nearby, unmistakable. “Shit. A pet. Okay, okay that changes things…”

“A pet?” The man in the suit looked at Sara - bloodstained, with loose blonde hair falling around her shoulders, wearing a spaghetti-strap cropped tank top and short shorts - and then at the ambulance people. “I didn’t-… Fuck, someone dumped her?”

“Sure looks like it,” The person crouched in front of Sara said. Their voice dropped slightly and their smile was gone. No, wait, smile again, I’m sorry I was bad. Sara raised a hand to try and touch their face, and they shifted slightly away.

“What kind of asshole dumps a pet? They can’t live on their own!”

“You’d be surprised. Can we swing by a place, Brad?” They raked a hand back through their hair, and Sara found a watery, fearful smile at the way it stood up from their head.

“Facility 1’s near here, we can drop her off at their clinic,” One of the other ones said, the others from the ambulance, the one called Brad. “They mostly just do the Box Boys but they’d take a Babe for triage, don’t you think?” He was prepping something in a box, a bandage? Something? Sara’s eyes weren’t focusing very well anymore.

“Fuck that shit,” The person said. “You know better than to tell me to go to that hellhole for help, Brad.”

“Yeah, good point. Shit, I always forget you went all lib on us after that thing with the Army-”

“Yeah, well, I fucking don’t forget it.”

“Do what you gotta do, man, just don’t get me fired.”

“Isn’t that our daily motto?” They turned back to Sara, giving her that slight, soothing smile again. “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ve got a better idea for you.”

Sara swallowed nervously. “Mr., um, Mr. Richardson-”

“Yeah. Just hold on.” The Brad-man came to her side and took the towel off her wrist, and the other person called someone, spoke to them rapid-fire. The pain of the bandaging kept distracting Sara, along with waves of dizziness, and she missed most of the conversation except for barcode’s gone, saw the collar, and she’ll need medical care right the fuck now, we’ll do the basics and you said I could call you if.

The man in the suit helped her stand up, and the two ambulance people led her to the back. Something about standing, though, made Sara’s head go soft and white around the edges, and she slumped sideways into the man in the suit’s arms.

“You’ll be all right,” The man said, soft and gentle. “They’ll help you and you’ll feel much better soon.”

The last thing she thought was, oh, he was so kind to me, and I got blood on his nice suit.

After that, things were dark for a while.

Then she woke up, and the ambulance had stopped, and there were no lights or sirens. Reddish-Brownish Hair Person was sitting next to her, watching her intently, and breathed out in evident relief when Sara blinked up at them. “Hey. We’re just waiting for someone, and then you’ll get somewhere safe, okay?”

“Safe? I, I need to go home. Mr. Richardson-”

“I know. He dumped you. I’m sorry. That’s the third fucking dumped pet we’ve picked up this month. You’re the first one I’ve caught before they took them back to the Facility, though. Good luck for us, huh?”

“Oh. Yes. Good, good luck for us.” Sara’s eyes moved down to look at her wrist. It had been thickly bandaged and throbbed pain under the layers of gauze, but the pain seemed oddly far away, and her fingers felt numbly cool, almost cold. She blinked - once, twice, three times.

Oh, drugs.

Sara remembered drugs from training.

She made herself relax, even as her heart raced again.

“Your friend’s here,” Brad called from up front, and Reddish Hair let out a whoosh of breath and pushed themself to their feet, bent over in the back of the ambulance, to open the back doors.

Brad added, “Just so you know, our GPS officially says we’re stopped at a gas station eight miles from here getting lunch. Which means…”

“I owe you lunch, plus a drink for fucking the GPS up for me. Trust me, you’ll get it. Okay, let’s get you on your feet.”

Sara heard the crunch of feet in gravel somewhere outside the vehicle, as the person helped her to her feet. She had to lean heavily on them, into the arm around her shoulders, as the white nearly overtook her again. She was carefully helped down, and didn’t even wince as her feet settled into the gravel. There were trees, and picnic tables, and-… was this a park?

“Who’ve you brought for me?” The woman who called out to them wore sneakers, jeans, and a flannel thrown over a t-shirt, a long brown braid streaked with gray down her back. She had a kind smile, and Sara blinked at her.

Pretty, pretty, pretty.

“Dunno. Abandoned pet. Owner cut her barcode off, I saw the collar or I wouldn’t have known. First one I’ve caught in time to make this work. What happens next?”

“Our house doctor’s waiting for her.”

“Who’s your house doctor?”

“Hey.” The woman sighed, and as she held out her arms, Reddish Hair carefully helped Sara move into them, shifting the support that kept her on her feet from one to the next. “You know I can’t tell you their name.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Anyone I’d know?”

“Probably not. Thanks for this.”

“No problem. Fight the good fight, all that shit. Never give up, never surrender.”

The woman brightened into a smile. “Don’t tell me you actually went and watched Galaxy Quest?”

“Look, just because you’re old doesn’t mean you don’t have good taste in movies, Yoder.”

“Well, damn. Never thought I’d see the day someone listened to my movie recs. You’re a good egg, kiddo-”

“I am twenty-two years old, Yoder.”

“Everyone under thirty’s a baby at my age. World doesn’t deserve people as good as you, you know.”

“Nah. All I do is patch people up.” Reddish Hair gave Sara one more smile, a slightly sad one this time, then turned and jogged back to the ambulance, hopping up into the back and closing the doors. Sara blinked, and they were gone. The ambulance pulled away, and it was the second vehicle that had left Sara in a parking lot while it was driven away from her.

This time, though, she wasn’t left alone.

“All right. Well. Time to get you in my truck and take you home, huh?”

“Take me home,” Sara repeated, dully. “But Mr. Richardson-”

“Not that home. A new home. Here, I’ll help you walk.” She led Sara across the gravel, her bandaged wrist clutched to her chest, and helped her up into the truck. Sara buckled her own seatbelt, and then sat back, closing her eyes. She should cry now.

No tears came.

The new woman climbed up beside her. “All right, first things first, I’m Natalie Yoder. I help pets like you, rescues and runaways. You don’t have to be a pet anymore.”

Sara’s voice was soft, wearied. “But I signed up for this-”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re free now.”

The word meant so little, but still it tugged at something in the back of Sara’s mind. Miss Alyssa, whispering to her siblings underneath the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Richardson’s fighting, one day we’ll be free of this shit, and we won’t have to hear them anymore. We’ll be free. Eighteen and out.

“Free,” Sara repeated, in a whisper. “Free.”

“That’s right. Come on. Let’s go home.

“Home,” Sara repeated.

“Right. You’re safe now, sweetheart, I swear.”

Home. Free. Out. Safe.

It wasn’t until they pulled into the driveway of a ramshackle old house in a run-down neighborhood in the outskirts of the city, with a tall blond boy waiting for them on the front porch, that Sara could even begin to believe her.

—

@astrobly, @finder-of-rings, @slaintetowhump, @orchidscript, @moose-teeth, @whumpiary, @burtlederp, @whump-tr0pes, @raigash @whump-tr0pes

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years ago

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Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems

By Valerie Tarico

Marlene Winell interviewed March 25, 2013

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting [3] the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers. But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion [4], written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin 2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” [8] have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

“I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.” Or consider this comment, which refers to a film [9] used by evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

“I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW. I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 years old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.”

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death [10].) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship [11] and there is a group organized [12] to oppose their incursion into public schools. I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

“After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

“I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.”

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism [13] tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding [14]” or “trust and obey [11].” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

“I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today?” Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.”

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

“I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.”

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

“My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.”

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometimes this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free [15] website and discussed in my talk [16] at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

“Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait...That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!”

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

“There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but I cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way I can have sex is to pay for it.”

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion [17], describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals. They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, non-theists are asking [18] how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation [19] in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma. More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls [20] showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums [21] for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help. For example, there are thousands of former Mormons [22], and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference. I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim [23] which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, [24] helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves. Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped. _______________________________

Statistics update:

Numbers of American ‘nones’ continues to rise

October 18, 2019

By David Crary – Associated Press

The portion of Americans with no religious affiliation is rising significantly, in tandem with a sharp drop in the percentage that identifies as Christians, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. …

Pew says all categories of the religiously unaffiliated population – often referred to as the “nones” grew in magnitude. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up from 2% in 2009; agnostics account for 5%, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2019/1018/Numbers-of-American-nones-continues-to-rise

_______________________________

Marlene Winell interviewed by Valerie Tarico on recovering from religious trauma Uploaded on January 31, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfABmbqSMA

24:12

On Moral Politics, a TV program with host Dr. Valerie Tarico, Marlene Winell describes the trauma that can result from harmful experiences with religious indoctrination. Dr. Winell explains that mental health issues are widespread and need to be understood just as we understand PTSD. There are steps to recovery, treatment modalities, and resources available as well. She now refers to this as RTS or Religious Trauma Syndrome. _______________________________

Links:   [3] https://www.biblestudyonjesuschrist.com/pog/ask1.htm  [4] https://marlenewinell.net/leaving-fold-former  [8] https://journeyfree.org/article/reclaimers/  [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thief_in_the_Night_%28film%29  [10] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+6%3A23&version=KJV  [11] https://valerietarico.com/2011/02/04/our-public-schools-their-mission-field/  [12] http://www.intrinsicdignity.com/  [13] https://www.maryjohnson.co/an-unquenchable-thirst/  [14] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+3%3A5-6&version=KJV [15] https://journeyfree.org/category/uncategorized/ [16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrE4pMBlis  [17] https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Religion-Psychological-Guide-Mature/dp/1425924166 [18] https://www.humanistchaplaincy.org/ [19] https://www.christianpost.com/news/london-atheist-church-model-looking-to-expand-worldwide-91516 [20] https://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/  [21] https://new.exchristian.net/  [22] https://www.exmormon.org/  [23] https://journeyfree.org/group-forum/ [24] https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/

_____________________________________

Get God’s Self-Appointed Messengers Out of Your Head

Valerie Tarico Which buzz phrases from your past are stuck in your brain? “God’s messengers” were all real complicated people with biases, blind spots, favorite foods and morning breath. They were not gods and they are not you. So how can you get them out of your head or at least reduce them to muffled background noise?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElfyYA420F0

#religious trauma syndrome #Marlene Winell #Valerie Tarico

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artificialqueens · 3 years ago

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Me and You Together, 7/10 (Taywhora) - Ortega

fic summary: The cardinal rule of having flatmates is that you Do Not Catch Feelings For Your Flatmates, because everything inevitably goes to shit and gets made horrifically awkward. A’whora and Tayce both know this, but being in first year of uni and making good decisions have never really gone hand in hand.

a/n: thank u so so much for all the continued love and support on this!!!! i am absolute dogshit at replying to comments but i do see them all and screech at everty single one, so thank you sosososO much for every like, ask, reply and reblog! in this chapter u all get some answers to the questions the last chapter brought up........apologies if ur not keen on them though xo

last chapter: the girls broke their own rules and had their own kind of kitchen "afterparty" after Lawrence's friend's flat party, but Tayce couldn't give A'whora the answers she desperately wanted.

this chapter: tensions run high in block 4 flat 10, as feelings struggle to stay hidden and truths begin to surface.

***

A’whora is happy.

Really, why would she not be? She gets to hang out with and sleep with the girl that’s been on her mind for months and months and months. They go out for drinks with the others and fall into bed together afterwards, steal glances at each other in the kitchen which end in holding hands and pulling each other into one of their bedrooms. They’re incredible and intense and their chemistry rages like a fire and A’whora can never get enough.

The thing about Tayce paying for brunch on Valentine’s day is that they’re caught in a cycle of having to pay each other back, one that A’whora doesn’t ever want to break. They go for lunch after lectures and treat each other to dinner and walk around the city together where they look through the windows of the designer shops and gawk at the bags and shoes. Tayce brought her car up from Newport at the end of last month and she’s driven A’whora anywhere and everywhere too, day trips to the beach and the forest and the huge reservoir just outside the city. They smile at each other across tables and link arms when they walk and laugh and chat like it’s easy. It is easy. It’s nice and it’s comfortable and it feels right.

They’ve started sleeping over too, sometimes. If it’s late and they’re both that sleepy, overwhelmed way after they’ve tired each other out, Tayce will chuck A’whora one of her huge t-shirts and a pair of pyjama shorts and they’ll curl up together, Tayce spooning her with her arm around her waist and resting on her tummy. It’s strange- A’whora’s always felt a little self-conscious of her stomach, the way it isn’t flat like a supermodel’s despite the fact she knows that’s not how human bodies work. But when Tayce is holding her like that she doesn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed; just appreciated and protected, like she’s as beautiful as Tayce tells her all the time.

It’s funny knowing how Tayce sleeps: the way she flops over onto her side and stretches out in the middle of the night, the way A’whora will sometimes get an arm to the face or a kick to the shin; because if a single bed isn’t enough for the pair of them at the best of times it’s certainly not enough to accommodate Tayce trying to spread her entire body over every square centimetre of it while unconscious. What’s equally strange is having Tayce know how she sleeps too. A’whora’s always been a sleeptalker, she knows this, but it gives sleeping next to Tayce a new element of terror any time she wakes up to her giggling, telling her the stupid things she’d been saying punctuated by forehead kisses. A’whora worries that one night she’ll say something she’s deliberately been keeping hidden.

Because even though she’s happy...she’d be lying if she said she doesn’t want more. Not much more. Just to be able to call Tayce hers properly. She would love to tell Tayce just how much she likes her; more than a friend, more than a friend with benefits.

“Why don’t you just be honest with her?” Ellie had asked, when they’d gone for a debrief drink together after a lecture that had ended at six at night.

They’d had a couple of these kinds of drinks; the first being the evening of Valentine’s day after Ellie and Lawrence had inadvertently walked in on them both. Ellie had practically dragged A’whora to the nearest bar and demanded to know details, something in her sparkling eyes growing dull after A’whora had told her it had been going on for over a month. A’whora had felt guilty- aside from Tayce, Ellie is her best friend in the flat, and not telling her about what had been happening between her and Tayce had admittedly felt weird. It was clear that keeping it from Ellie had hurt her too even if she didn’t say it, and even after A’whora had apologised twice she’d still felt guilty even though Ellie had batted her away with a ‘don’t be silly!’ and ‘it’s fine!’.

To make up for it, A’whora has let Ellie be her agony aunt about all things Tayce-related ever since. Which has been great, until she gives her ridiculous suggestions like telling Tayce how she feels.

A’whora remembers scrunching her face up as she sipped her too-strong cocktail, shaking her head in a no . “There’s no way. I’m not risking her telling me she doesn’t feel the same, are you insane?! It’d totally ruin the friendship.”

Ellie had choked on her drink in a laugh, rushing to explain herself to A’whora as she gulped. “Babe. You’re literally shagging without putting a label on it. You ruined the friendship a long time ago.”

A’whora had shared the laugh but something heavy and uncomfortable had settled itself in her gut in response to Ellie’s words.

It’s the same feeling that settles in her gut whenever Tayce reacts to Lawrence’s jokes. On the whole, the reaction from the others to her and Tayce sleeping together has been relatively muted- Bimini will just smirk at them every so often, a knowing smile on their face, while Tia will just grin at them all dippy and tell them that they’re cute- but Lawrence has really gone off the deep end. She sends memes to the flat group chat about them (a screenshot of her Google searching ‘can you write fanfiction about your flatmates’ springs to mind) and will constantly poke fun at the apparent ever-present sexual tension between the pair of them.

A’whora knows Lawrence doesn’t do it to be malicious; it’s half borne out of jealousy, as A’whora knows by now how much she’s infatuated with Ellie. If she’s being honest, she actually doesn’t mind the jokes. Even though they’re a bit embarrassing, they serve as a little illustration to A’whora that she and Tayce are in this together. Lawrence joking about the pair of them is like a validation; that they’re good together, that they work, that they’re seen as a unit by others. It’s silly, but it’s almost contributing to the argument that they should be together for real. That they should be girlfriends.

Girlfriends. Even just thinking about being Tayce’s girlfriend sends 100 volts through A’whora’s bloodstream.

But Tayce doesn’t seem to appreciate Lawrence’s jokes like A’whora does. At first Tayce had given them a courtesy snort, the sort of reaction an adult would give a child telling a weak knock-knock joke. But the more jokes Lawrence makes, the less time Tayce seems to have for them. She’s started firing back with biting quips of her own about Lawrence’s own single situation, balls of rolled-up barbed wire lobbed at a friend just trying to take the piss. Of course, Lawrence being Lawrence sees that Tayce is bothered by the jokes and uses this as an invitation to continue making them. She enjoys winding her friends up because it always comes from a place of love, and A’whora knows this. She knows they’re just jokes.

She doesn’t get why Tayce doesn’t appreciate them the same as she does. The wondering puts doubts in her head, ones she wishes weren’t there.

A’whora’s glad, then, when the heat is off them and on the other couple in the flat- the official one, that is. It’s an ordinary Thursday evening and Lawrence is rifling through the fridge looking for something to make for dinner from the sorry selection of food in the fridge. Bimini is perched on one of the sofas with their head in their phone smiling slightly at the screen as they type, and Ellie is at the other end with her head in one of the books she needs to read for her course, a frown deep on her face and her mouth moving silently as she tackles each line. A’whora is cuddled up next to Tayce on the other sofa, both of them on their laptops as they allegedly begin research for their final essay of the year but are simply using it as a guise to watch old Vivienne Westwood runway shows.

It’s calm and it’s quiet and it’s chilled until Tia nearly boots the fire door down, an excitable smile on her face like a puppy as she carries her open laptop in her hands, Veronica in tow behind her.

“Ladies and gentlethem, a moment of your time please!” she announces with a grand gesture, making all heads snap her way. Having got everyone’s attention, Tia places the laptop on the dining table and claps her hands together with pride. “I’ve decided...I’m running for activities officer in the student elections!”

There’s a small cry of delight from the girls, but the moment is short-lived as Bimini snorts a laugh from the sofa. Horrified at this out-of-character unkind moment from her friend, A’whora whips her head around only to find Bimini’s head still in their phone. Suddenly realising eyes are on them, Bimini blushes red, flinching a little as they look up.

“Shit, sorry. Just Asttina...sent something funny. Anyway, sorry, activities? G’wan, girl, you’ll nail it!”

Veronica pipes up with pride beside her girlfriend. “Oh, she absolutely will with what we’ve just put together. Come see!”

Intrigued, A’whora shares an amused gaze with Tayce as they slide off the sofa, gathering round the laptop with the others and waiting with bated breath as Veronica hits play, Tia standing bashfully beside her.

What follows is what can only be described as a hallucinogenic trip. It’s Tia standing in the middle of the campus square as Tik Tok by Ke$ha plays in the background, and a second later she begins singing.

“ Wake up in the morning thinking we need more, we need more space, we need more storage, we need more sup-port…”

“STOP!” Lawrence yells with delight, reaching out and clutching Tia’s arm in excitement.

A’whora, for her part, genuinely can’t tell if it’s the most iconic thing she’s ever seen or a total disaster. The campaign video rolls on with Tia singing the parody of the song as a soundtrack to her popping up around campus; in the union, in lecture theatres, in the square outside the graduation hall. She can’t quite believe it when it reaches the chorus, though, and Tia, Veronica, and a couple more students start dancing in what appears to be the library foyer.

“ Vote Tia for Activities if you want bet-ter facilities, it’s al-right, I’mma fight for more events on inter-site…”

“Oh, Tia. What is this?” Tayce giggles beside A’whora. She doesn’t miss the glare Ellie shoots her way.

“Shut up, ya shady cow! I think it’s brilliant.”

“Did you just get random fuckers off the street to do that dance with you?” Bimini inquires patiently.

“They’re my flatmates. You’ve met them,” Veronica explains, not without an edge of irritation.

The video continues for the full duration of the song, and when it’s over A’whora has to fight every shady urge she possesses and clap for Tia, because she does look proud of what she and Veronica have made, even if it’s making A’whora cringe so much she feels her muscles constrict.

“Fuckin’ brilliant babes. You’ll walk it wi’ that,” Lawrence thumps Tia on the back encouragingly. Her face turns scheming as she opens her mouth again. “When you do become the activities officer, d’you think you could officiate some kind of anti-sickness pill for whenever Tayce and A’whora start cuddling on the sofa?”

A’whora can’t help the laugh she blurts out as she curls her fingers around Tayce’s. Tayce’s don’t wrap around hers in the same way. Instead she stiffens, smiles falsely at her flatmate.

“Yeah, Tia, do you think you could officiate some sort of anti-bullshit procedure for whenever Lawrence opens her bloody gob?”

“Aw, alright, alright. I’ve clearly touched a nerve,” Lawrence protests apologetically, but the twinkle in her eye suggests there’s more to come. “Although not as many as A’whora’s touched, clearly, aren’t there 8,000 of them in the clit?”

“Lawrence!” A’whora yells in outrage, but she’s laughing like the others are in spite of herself. Her heart drops though when Tayce tugs her hand away, crosses the room briskly to the hall door and wrenches it open, gone before she knows it.

All that’s left is a silence as awkward as it’s long.

Bimini bites their lip as they move first. “I’ll go talk to her.”

A’whora frowns. “Should I-”

“Best to leave it a bit, yeah?” Bimini advises apologetically, opening the door gentler than Tayce had before they disappear.

The silence only resumes for a second before it’s Ellie that breaks it.

“Lawrence!” she hisses, narrowing her eyes at her. Lawrence’s mouth drops open, shocked as she is offended.

“What the hell did I do?!”

Ellie gives a derisive laugh before A’whora can even say anything. “Are you joking?! You keep winding her up and it’s so obvious she doesn’t like it. You need to stop that shit.”

“Would you chill out? Tayce will be fine in about five minutes. The girl’s got a life threatening case of cannae-take-a-joke-itis and she fell and bruised her pride. I didn’t fucking...come in her mouth.”

Ellie gives a colossal roll of her eyes, folds her arms over her chest. “Cut the jokes out for a goddamn minute. You’ve hurt your friend’s feelings, are you not even going to go see what’s up with her?”

Lawrence gives a light shrug, unbothered. “Aw, listen to yourself! You’re being so overdramatic, Tayce is my friend, it’s just banter. She knows I don’t mean it. Anyway, it’s not like A’whora minds!”

“Well a relationship consists of two people, Lawrence. Not that you’d know,” Ellie snaps. Her bluntness shocks A’whora and she’s vaguely aware of Tia and Veronica making a slow, awkward exit from the room, but this doesn’t stop Lawrence from firing back.

“Aw, says little miss loved-up herself? Where’s your fuckin’ other half then, eh? Since you know so much about relationships, clearly?”

For a moment, Ellie’s face is slapped with a look of pure hurt. It’s clear she didn’t expect Lawrence to match her energy, hit her with words she doesn’t mean just like Ellie has done to her. But then her expression steels and her jaw sets tight before her mouth opens again. “I might not have a boyfriend or a fucking girlfriend but at least I have the common sense and emotional range not to rip the piss out of my flatmates’ fragile fucking friends with benefits setup!?”

Lawrence scowls back, shakes her head with derision. “You know what, maybe you would have somebody if you didn’t spend half your fucking life moping about your flatmate, who by the way, is in love with her girlfriend and has been for fucking months!”

“Well at least I have feelings! What the fuck are you, a joke book in a skin suit?” Ellie retorts quickly.

All of a sudden it looks like part of Lawrence crumbles. Shutters fly down behind her eyes and A’whora can see Ellie regrets her words. It’s too late, though, because they’re out, and before Ellie can say anything else Lawrence is turning to A’whora and laughing with a sneer.

“Jesus Christ, who left the gate to the cunt farm open?!”

“Fuck you, Lawrence,” Ellie spits, before storming towards the door just as Tayce had done minutes earlier.

All that’s left is A’whora, Lawrence, and a tense silence. A’whora bites her lip. She knows she should go after Ellie, and she will. But Lawrence is standing rooted to the spot, her eyes trained on the door Ellie’s just left through, and they’re drowning in a deep regret.

“Lawrence,” A’whora starts, making to comfort her even though her mind is still on Tayce and what the matter with her is too.

“A’whora, it’s fine. I’m not arsed,” Lawrence waves her away, crossing the room to the kitchen. “Well, the human fucking joke book is gonny go make her dinner, if you’re wanting a bowl? I’m just making bolognese-”

“Babe,” A’whora cuts in again, without really knowing what she can say. Just then the door opens again and her heart rises with the thought that Tayce might be on the other side of it, but it’s Tia and Veronica, concern on both their faces.

“Sorry. We thought it was best to give you both a minute,” Tia explains, hovering nervously with her girlfriend at the door. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, Tia,” Lawrence sighs, her back turned and her shoulders heavy as she grips the side of the countertop. “I’ve just…”

There’s a pause that’s left lingering in the air like a heavy fog that not one of them can see clearly through.

“...fucked it with the girl I’ve liked for two years.”

A’whora watches Tia’s face contort in recognition. “...Ellie?”

As Lawrence sighs, her shoulders sag. “Yeah.”

Tia blinks, appeals to Veronica as if she would have any more of an idea. “Oh, Loz. I never knew.”

“To be fair, you’ve been pretty wrapped up in tiny blonde puppy love since the end of January,” A’whora says, unable to muster up the joy or good humour to make it into the joke it’s intended to be.

“Well if she was never going to see me as anything more than a friend before, she definitely isny going to now,” Lawrence says quietly, shuffling her feet as she moves to the fridge. “Especially since she’s got her heart set on someone else.”

“Who?” Veronica asks. A’whora holds her breath. Tia and Veronica clearly hadn’t heard what Lawrence and Ellie had said when they’d been arguing. If Lawrence is angry at Ellie for the things she’s said, now would be the perfect time to throw her under the bus, to make things awkward between her and Tia.

But Lawrence just shakes her head as she starts taking out her ingredients for dinner. “It’s not anyone you’d know. Someone we know from back home.”

A’whora takes the opportunity to distract the two girls, namely since her head is beginning to fill up with worst-case-scenarios involving Tayce. “Did you two hear Bim come out of Tayce’s room at all?”

Veronica shakes her head at the same time Tia speaks. “They’re still in there.”

A’whora nibbles on a little ragged nail on her right hand. Is Tayce annoyed at Lawrence or is she actually annoyed at her ? She doesn’t know what she’s meant to have done. Lawrence’s joke was lukewarm, fair enough, but she can’t help but think about Tayce’s reluctance to take her hand, the way she didn’t even crack a smile at the joke.

She shakes her head to clear her mind and moves to the kitchen door at the same time. If Tayce is busy with Bimini, she’s at least going to be there for her other close friend in the flat. “I’m going to go talk to Ellie.”

Before anyone (Lawrence) can protest, A’whora’s making her way down the hall and knocking on Ellie’s door. There’s a rapid snuffling before a thud of heavy, irked footsteps on the other side, and then the door is thrown open to reveal Ellie; mascara smudged, eyes red, and her mouth set in a line of irritation before her expression softens when she realises it’s A’whora.

“Can I come in?”

Ellie relents and opens the door, snuffling as she pads back to her bed and grabs the soft and well-worn Piglet plushie from on top of it, curls up into the foetal position, and thuds her head against the pillow.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay,” A’whora says softly, crossing the room and sitting down on the edge of Ellie’s bed beside her. “Obviously, like...things were said.”

“Obviously,” Ellie snorts out snarkily. A’whora narrows her eyes at her before realising Ellie’s got tears in hers, and her voice is thick with upset as she speaks again. “Fuck...I’m just so hurt and angry but I feel so guilty at the same time? I know I was nasty to Lawrence, and I know we argue all the time but this was different. This was real, and I hurt her, and…”

Ellie sniffs and wipes her nose on the back of Piglet’s ear. A’whora fights with every embryo she possesses not to screw up her face at the action.

“But fuckin’ hell, Lawrence...she hurt me too, you know? I mean she knows how much I liked Tia, and it’s taking me a while to get over her, and fuck, I know that’s stupid because we didn’t even go out, but like...I fucking take things to heart, you know? I care, and it’s not my fault she’s never cared about anybody other than herself.”

“Lawrence cares about you,” A’whora says, and it’s out before she knows it. She bites her lip as if to prevent any more words from coming out, but if Ellie’s picked up on her transgression she doesn’t show it. Ellie’s scowling as she sits up in bed, fixes A’whora with a disbelieving glare.

“She’s got a funny fucking way of showing it, then, doesn’t she? Lawrence’s default is just joke, joke, joke, deflect, and then joke some more. She’s incapable of being serious.”

“Ellie…” A’whora tries to interrupt. She doesn’t know what she wants to say, and she doesn’t know how she can make Ellie understand without revealing Lawrence’s secret. All she knows is that her exasperation at Ellie’s blindness and Lawrence’s moping is reaching a boiling point, and she’s never been so dangerously close to letting things spill.

“I mean I know that joke book in a skin suit thing was harsh, but she said it first, not me! She said that ages ago on my birthday night out, when I’d been upset about Tia and she was trying to cheer me up. And she’d said she had a heart underneath it all but fuck that, she doesn’t know the first thing about feelings.”

“Ellie-”

“Do you know of all the years we’ve been friends, she’s never once told me about anyone she likes? I mean I’ve told her every single time I like someone new. But it’s like, if she can’t even open up to me, who’s like, her oldest friend, then really who the fuck will she open up to-”

“Ellie! For fuck’s sake, listen!” A’whora cuts in, exasperated and at her wit’s end and still all too aware of the fact Tayce ran from the kitchen and hasn’t returned or attempted to see her. Squeezing her eyes shut and apologising to Lawrence in her head in case this goes disastrously wrong, A’whora opens her mouth again. “Lawrence likes you. Properly.”

It’s only when it’s out that A’whora feels the drop in her stomach, not least because she’s questioning how loud she actually blurted the whole thing out. She wants to say it’s worth it from the way Ellie’s left silent, slack-jawed and wide-eyed, but the possibility that she’s just completely wrecked a friendship only makes the guilt and dread sink in her stomach like a stone in a canal.

“I…” A’whora begins, unable to formulate her words properly for the upteenth time that day. She wishes she could be more like Bimini- think first, speak after- and, with a stab to her heart, she imagines what Tayce could be telling them in her room, how she could be opening up to Bimini in a way she couldn’t with her.

“Well,” Ellie finally formulates, her mouth still wide like a goldfish’s. “That’s, um. Unexpected information.”

There’s another silence where A’whora is just about to apologise, but then Ellie speaks again, wiping her eyes with her tears now completely gone. “Did she tell you this?”

A’whora scuffs her foot awkwardly, bites her lip before she lets her words out. “Lawrence told Tayce a while back. And Tayce told me. But nobody else knows, I don’t think.”

Ellie exhales heavily. “Okay. Good.”

There’s another pause where A’whora reaches out and takes Ellie’s hand. “Babe, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin anything-”

“No, you’ve not. It’s just…” Ellie looks up to the ceiling, then squeezes her eyes shut. “...fuck, it’s complicated.”

A’whora’s stomach stops twisting with anxiety at Ellie’s words, and instead she finds her eyes widening a little as her curiosity is piqued. Ellie clearly notices her response and huffs a little sigh, tense and anxious and reluctant to reveal what it is that’s bothering her.

“Like...two years ago? Three years ago? A while back, anyway...I had feelings for Lawrence,” Ellie mutters into her plushie, and A’whora can’t stop the way she gasps Panto-style in shock. She would never have guessed that at all- in fact at times Ellie's friendship with Lawrence seemed one based on mutual exasperation- so to know that she had once felt the same about her friend is a revelation to say the least.

A’whora’s managed to elicit a smile from Ellie at her over-the-top reaction, and it seems to prompt her to keep going. “We were still in high school and we lived on opposite sides of the country...it would never have worked, and fifteen-year-old me knew that despite what I wrote in my diary and the initials I drew hearts round in my notebooks. So my feelings just ended up...dying off, I guess. We ended up being friends, and that’s been fine, you know? It’s not like I’ve been hiding a crush from her for years. But now...knowing she feels like that about me...it’s weird. It’s like all those feelings from when I was fifteen…”

“...have all come flooding back because you know Lawrence is a possibility for you now,” A’whora finishes for her, completely in sync with how Ellie’s rationalising things. Ellie rapidly points at her and nods emphatically.

“That’s exactly it! It’s strange. Like even though I know she’s my friend and nothing’s changed between us...I know I’m blushing, I can feel it, and my stomach’s got wee nervous butterflies. For fuck’s sake,” Ellie shakes her head in exasperation, covers her face with her hands. “It’s so embarrassing. And it’s awkward? What the hell am I meant to do, just go through there after a bust-up and be like ‘oh by the way, heard you fancy me’ ?”

A’whora hums in understanding. She thinks for a moment, both girls sharing a comfortable silence that’s cushioned by the secret that’s just been shared. And then she speaks. If only she’d had the wherewithal to do things in that order when she’d been with Tayce.

“You don’t need to do anything about it now. I’d say re-establish the friendship first. Sit on it for a bit,” she says. “See how you feel about her knowing what you know now as time goes by a bit.”

“Yeah,” Ellie nods slowly. She smiles gently, squeezes A’whora’s hand in gratitude. “Thanks, chick. I’m lucky to have made you as a friend.”

A’whora smiles back in affirmation, and she’s about to say the same when the door to Ellie’s room cracks open a little to reveal Bimini on the other side.

“Sorry to interrupt,” they say, apologetic and quiet. “I’m off round to Asttina’s. Just thought I should let you know so you could go talk to Tayce, A’whora.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks, Bim,” A’whora frowns minutely, a little thrown by their phrasing. She’s about to dig a little deeper when Ellie interrupts, a mischievous smile on her face as she addresses her other flatmate.

“Bimini, what’s actually going on between you and her? I know a lady never tells, but what about an enby?”

“Depends ‘ow much wine you put in ‘em. Laters,” Bimini winks, tuning on their heel and letting the door shut behind them. It leaves A’whora and Ellie alone to laugh, and then fall into a comfortable silence.

“I know you’ll want to talk to Tayce. I’ll maybe phone Anne. Talk this fucking...Eastenders episode of my life through with them,” Ellie laughs, shaking her head in disbelief and running her hands down her face. A’whora’s thankful for her permission, and she gives her hand a squeeze in return as she slips off the edge of the bed, pads softly to the door.

“Wish me luck. Got a feeling I’ll need it.”

Ellie bats her away flippantly. “‘Course you won’t. It’s Tayce. She’s so bloody gone for you it’s ridiculous.”

As A’whora smiles shyly and waves Ellie goodbye for now, she really hopes her friend is right.

The walk to Tayce’s room from Ellie’s is only a matter of metres, but with every step A’whora takes it only seems to drag longer, the mixture of apprehension and dread a deadly cocktail in her gut. She finds herself replaying Lawrence’s joke and her own reaction to it in her head, trying to figure out what she’s done wrong. She can’t come up with anything. So why does she feel responsible?

Finally reaching Tayce’s door she knocks gently and hesitantly, everything in her body tense as she waits to hear the yell of permission to enter. What comes instead is a come in that’s so muted A’whora’s left wondering if it’s even Tayce’s voice at all. She pushes the door anyway just in case, and as it slowly opens it reveals Tayce sitting on her bed with her knees up to her chest and her phone in her hand, her thumbs twisting furiously as she taps out a message on the screen.

Presumably a message to her friends back home about how much she now hates her. Good.

Tayce’s gaze flicks up from the screen when she enters, and unlike in Ellie’s room where she chose to sit on the end of the bed, A’whora remains at the door. “Hey. Am I alright to come in?”

Tayce gives a disinterested shrug. “Free country.”

A’whora feels her shoulders sag in response. Well, we’re off to a great start here.

Trying not to get too disheartened too quickly, A’whora moves to sit on the chair at Tayce’s desk. On top of it are scattered sketches, pieces of paper with little brush strokes of paint samples that resemble the colours cast against a wall when a diamond catches the light. In amongst the clutter of creativity, the scraps of insight into Tayce’s mind, A’whora’s eyes are caught by a sketch of a girl she thinks looks a lot like her.

“What’s up?” Tayce tugs her out of her observations, reminding A’whora why she’s here.

“Uh, just wondering what that was all about in the kitchen there,” A’whora checks her nails, picks at one of her cuticles nervously. “Just wanted to check you were alright.”

As A’whora looks up, she finds Tayce with her eyes still on her phone and her eyebrows raised. Her body language is tense as she nods slowly. “Mhm. I’m fine.”

A’whora can’t help the exasperated laugh she gives, finally prompting Tayce to look up from her phone with annoyance. “Tayce, come off it. You never hide how you feel. You practically held a UN summit that time Tia accidentally knocked your chicken shawarma on the kitchen floor. Look, don’t take anything Lawrence says too seriously, you know she just does it for a reaction.”

“I’m not annoyed at Lawrence,” Tayce says almost immediately, throwing her head back against her pillows and staring up at the ceiling before covering her face with her hands.

A’whora’s stomach feels tight. She’s never seen Tayce this in her own head. Normally she’s honest about her feelings, upfront and real. Throughout their whole situation together, Tayce has always been open about the fact that they’re only hooking up, that they’re just friends that happen to have good sex, to the extent where it sometimes hurts A’whora’s own feelings. It doesn’t make sense that she’s in such turmoil about a pathetic joke.

“So you’re…” A’whora puts the pieces together, frowns at her deeply. “...what, annoyed at me?”

Tayce doesn’t reply. Her hands are still over her face. A’whora’s gut ties itself in a knot.

“How come? What have I done?” she asks, instantly hating how pathetic her words sound as soon as they’re out of her mouth.

“I just feel humiliated, alright, A’whora?” Tayce sighs exasperatedly, hands suddenly launching themselves away from her face. She won’t look at her. “I’m sick of being embarrassed while you laugh along with the shitty jokes like an idiot. There. Happy?”

A’whora’s bottom lip sticks out in response to Tayce’s words, feeling like she’s been punched in the stomach. It’s the delivery that’s almost worse; Tayce isn’t a shouter, and her anger isn’t loud, instead quiet and muted and so out of character. Her annoyance clashes so violently with the way she expresses other emotions that it knocks A’whora for six. She’s confused and she’s hurt and that feeling of dread just won’t go away.

“Tayce, I can’t...I can’t apologise to you and make up if I don’t know what I’m apologising for. I’m really sorry I’ve made you feel like shit but...I don’t get how me laughing at Lawrence’s stupid jokes has affected you that badly?”

“Brilliant. Because famously any apology that’s followed by a “but” is always an award winner,” Tayce finally looks at her through narrowed eyes, sarcasm dripping from her words.

“You’re being unfair,” A’whora says, unable to help the way she glares back at Tayce. The upset and the guilt is slowly being mixed with frustration and irritation, the emotions seeping together like watercolour paints down a drain when Tayce washes her paintbrushes. “I want to give you a proper apology, but I can’t if you don’t tell me what I’ve done wrong. You’re this upset over me laughing at a couple of jokes? I don’t buy it. Tayce, what are you not telling me?”

Tayce gives a laugh of irritated disbelief, launches herself up to a sitting position. “Oh my God, do you hear yourself? You’re literally telling me I’m not allowed to be as annoyed as I am about the situation? ‘You can’t be this upset over a couple of jokes’, well what if I am?”

A’whora falls quiet, but she can feel the fury bubbling in her blood, simmering under her skin until there’s goosebumps forming on her arms and she has to fold them across her chest, hoping that the slight hug she’s giving herself is going to make her feel better. She bites her lip as she flounders in her thoughts, not quite drowning but not quite keeping her head above water either. She needs some coherency. Nothing seems to make sense.

“Tayce, please. What is going on? You’ve been off with me for a while,” A’whora sighs helplessly. A little puzzle piece slots itself together in her brain, a small speck of clarity in the chaos of her thoughts. “In fact things haven’t been the same since everyone found out about us.”

“Don’t just start making shit up,” Tayce shakes her head, but her voice is quieter and with less conviction than it held previously. It sounds as if even she doesn’t believe what she’s saying.

It’s with this that A’whora seems to find another puzzle piece, and then another, and then another, until they all fall together as a clearer picture with only perhaps one or two bits still missing. The fact Tayce hates the jokes. The fact Tayce gets embarrassed when A’whora laughs at them. The fact Tayce only seems to be herself when they’re together just the two of them.

“Oh my God,” A’whora says quietly, realisation making her face drop. “You hate that people know.”

“You know what? Yeah. I kind of do,” Tayce’s voice is heavy with exasperation, and she huffs another sigh that seems to rip through her whole body. The irritation flares up at A’whora’s heart again like a pilot light, and she feels her hands fly out wildly and her voice raise as she speaks again.

“Christ, Tayce, well if the idea of the others knowing we’re shagging is such an embarrassing prospect to you then where the fuck do we go from here?!”

Tayce shakes her head, rubbing her forehead with a free hand. “I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. So what now, then? What, you just want us to stop?”

And then it’s only in the way Tayce avoids her gaze and the silence of the pause that follows that A’whora feels her worst fear launch itself into the forefront of her mind, so visceral and powerful that it seems to grab her throat in a chokehold, rendering her incapable of saying anything more.

Another puzzle piece falls into place. The fact that the reason A’whora secretly likes Lawrence’s jokes is the same reason why Tayce doesn’t; because they’re a reminder that, for all intents and purposes, that they’re together, that they’re seen as a unit.

Maybe Tayce doesn’t want that.

A’whora finally speaks again, her voice plaintive and small as it breaks the silence like a mirror. “Tayce?”

Just as Tayce exhales, runs a hand through her hair, and opens her mouth to speak, there’s a cataclysmic screech from down the corridor in the direction of the kitchen, followed by a litany of swearing in a voice that couldn’t be anyone but Lawrence’s. They both immediately look at each other in horror and, even though there’s still a sick feeling of dread in A’whora’s stomach, she shoots up from her seat and opens the door to Tayce’s room. As she runs down the corridor urgently, Tayce is following after her.

What they find in the kitchen is nothing short of chaos; Tia and Veronica are standing in the middle of the room helplessly while Ellie stands near Lawrence in the same way a lion tamer would approach a lion, as Lawrence hisses and growls and clutches her hand. It soon registers to A’whora what’s happened judging from the blood on the countertops, the blood on the kitchen knife, the blood on a half-chopped carrot, and the blood that’s currently flowing out of either Lawrence’s fingers or her hand (A’whora doesn’t want to look hard enough to check).

“What in the name of Christ has happened here?!” Tayce asks quickly, as Lawrence looks at her with exasperation.

“I don’t know, Tayce, I’m no Taggart, but it would appear I’ve sliced my fucking finger off!” she bites back sarcastically, tears of pain in the corners of her eyes as Ellie tries to hand her the kitchen tea towel. Lawrence looks at it as if Ellie may as well have handed her a toddler’s shit-filled nappy. “Not the tea towel, are you off your nut?! I cannae mind the last time we washed that. I’ve sliced through my fucking finger, I don’t want to add sepsis into the fuckin' mix!”

“I’m just trying to help!” Ellie fires back, equal parts hurt, worried and cross.

“I’ll get a clean towel,” Tia says quickly, running through to her room with urgency.

“Should we call an ambulance?” A’whora asks, biting her lip and unable to do anything except watch the events unfold. Veronica shakes her head.

“It’s not really life threatening, we shouldn’t phone 999.”

“Not life threatening?!” Lawrence cries in outrage, as Tia returns with a towel and hands it to her. “Have you seen the amount of blood I’m losing? I’ll be amazed if I’m still alive within the hour!”

“Don’t be dramatic. It looks worse than it is,” Ellie shakes her head, helping Lawrence wrap the towel around her hand and getting blood on the sleeve of her jumper in the process. The gesture renders Lawrence less hostile towards her than she seemed to have been before, and she grips Ellie’s hand with the one she hasn’t injured.

“I think it’s Accident and Emergency or Minor Injuries for something like this,” Veronica explains calmly, looking at her phone where she’s presumably just looked the information up.

A’whora turns to Tayce quickly. Even though they still haven’t resolved their argument, their friend is still in need of help and they have to work together. “Could you drive her?”

Tayce pulls an awkward face, looks at the blood splatters surrounding Lawrence. “Is there not a bus that goes out to the hospital? I’m just thinking about the stains in my car-”

“Aw aye, that’s right, yeah. I’ll hop on the number six out to A&E just so you don’t get blood stains in your ‘13 plate fuckin’ Corsa,” Lawrence snaps, Ellie looking at Tayce with a similar incredulity.

“No, no, you’re right, fuck, of course,” Tayce shakes her head, running her hands down her face. Even after everything they’ve said, A’whora feels her heart hurt for Tayce; she’s clearly distressed by the sight of the blood, and A’whora can see her growing more tense with each passing second.

“If you drive I can come with you and keep an eye on Lawrence while you concentrate on getting us there,” she suggests. Tayce nods with a grim acceptance.

“Okay. I’ll need someone to direct me anyway, I’ve got no idea where the fuck I’m going.”

“I can come and sit with Lawrence in the back and A’whora can do the directions?” Ellie immediately suggests. It seems as if her argument with Lawrence has been forgotten, and the two of them are still holding hands.

“Okay, great. I’ll get my keys,” Tayce shrugs, dashing out of the room.

Tia turns to the rest of the girls. “While you guys are gone, me and Ronnie can clean up? I don’t know if we’ll get our deposit back at the end of the year if there’s blood stains on shit.”

“Tia, babes, there’s a human element to all of this, fuck the deposit!” Lawrence hisses, her eyes squeezing shut in agony. Ellie’s face is distressed, and her eyes dart to the kitchen cupboards.

“Do you want ibuprofen? Might help with the pain?” she suggests. If the situation wasn’t so dire, A’whora would laugh.

“Are you joking?” Lawrence asks incredulously, then upon seeing Ellie’s face realises she isn’t. A’whora watches as Lawrence pulls a face and a tight, uncomfortable smile takes hold on her face. “No. I don’t think ibuprofen is going to do much good somehow. But thank you for offering.”

Tayce returns with her car keys and rallies the four of them out the door, getting some odd stares from the other students in the courtyard as they run past frantically, Lawrence’s entire hand still wrapped in a too-big towel. They have to jog for a considerable length of time to get to Tayce’s car, the busy nature of the winding city streets rendering parking anywhere near their flat nigh on impossible. Usually A’whora wouldn’t mind the distance. Usually she’s happy to stroll easily, one hand in Tayce’s and the other relaxed by her side, butterflies in her stomach and a tug in her chest as they talk about their plans for wherever they’re headed.

This time, though, with an argument still hanging over their heads like a thundercloud which isn’t yet resolved and a friend with half a finger hanging off, the journey to the car is more than a little unwelcome.

Soon enough though they’re all scrambling to get inside, Ellie helping Lawrence with her seatbelt in the back seat and A’whora scrolling her phone ferociously to bring up Google Maps for the directions to the hospital. Tayce drives irresponsibly with scant regard for road safety regulations. In any other situation, A’whora would find it insanely attractive that Tayce is driving like she’s in a game of Gran Turismo just to get Lawrence to A&E quicker. Fuck, she does still find it attractive. But her stomach is still in a huge tangled-up knot over the note their conversation got left on.

“What actually happened, Lawrence?” Tayce asks, A’whora having to hold in her gasp of a reaction as Tayce narrowly avoids getting rear-ended while pulling out into the overtaking lane of the dual carriageway.

Lawrence gives another hiss of pain before she answers. If A’whora didn’t blink she could’ve sworn she saw Ellie squeeze her hand in the rear-view mirror. “Was talking to Veronica and Tia while I was cutting up the carrots. They said something and I turned around to respond and I didn’t look as I chopped. Stupid fuckin’ cow.”

“You’re not stupid. It’s an easy thing to do, I’ve nicked myself so many times when I’ve been cooking!” Ellie placates her. Lawrence gives a laboured chuckle in response as A’whora checks the map and tells Tayce to take a left at the next roundabout.

“Aye, fuck’s sake. The most un-co-ordinated, clumsy bitch is sat beside me with all ten fingers in tact after nearly a year of having to fend for herself meanwhile I’m sat fighting for my life. Honestly, if you fell in the Clyde you’d come out wi a salmon in your mouth.”

A’whora sneaks a look in the mirror to see both girls giggling softly and quietly, their gazes either in their lap or out the window. They’re still holding hands. A’whora thinks it’s ridiculous to be jealous of two girls who haven’t even so much as kissed, but their soft friendship and what could eventually become a mutual crush makes her nostalgic for what she and Tayce used to have.

They eventually arrive at the hospital, and once they’ve all collectively recovered from the prospect of having to pay £5 for parking they run into A&E and up to the little desk, where it takes an infuriatingly long length of time to check Lawrence in. They then are required to wait amongst the other invalids of the city on four hard blue plastic chairs, which are uncomfortable after five minutes, never mind how long Lawrence will inevitably have to wait to be seen.

The little whiteboard on the wall says that the wait time is eighteen minutes.

The conversation between the four girls is stilted; it’s not the free and easy style A’whora has come to expect between any of her flatmates. But there’s still two sets of arguments without a resolution that’re preventing them from interacting like they usually would, and a hospital waiting room that’s already covered in a blanket of tense, awkward silence shared between strangers is not the place to reconcile either of them.

Eventually, and long after the promised eighteen minutes, Lawrence’s name is called. She half-walks half-jogs up to the nurse at the little door through to the hospital, then hesitates as she reaches her.

“Can I have one of my friends in with me?” A’whora hears her ask, her voice still strained and the pain she's feeling evidently still very much present.

The nurse nods kindly, and as Lawrence turns around there’s a sudden hesitation to her usually confident body language.

“Ellie?” she calls over, gesturing with her free hand for the other girl to come with her. Ellie barely even looks back at A’whora and Tayce as she gets up from her seat quickly, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she follows Lawrence into the hospital.

There’s a moment’s silence where A’whora looks at the squeaky green linoleum floor, and then Tayce speaks.

“Aw. You’re welcome, love,” she says, soft and sarcastic and already putting a little smile on A’whora’s lips. “All I did was drive you out to the arse-end of the suburbs to get your finger sewn back together. But go on. Pick Ellie. Heard getting stitches is a great time to shoot your shot.”

A’whora laughs softly. Maybe this whole situation has been forgotten about. Maybe their entire argument was just a dream (a nightmare) and she’s just happened to have woken up in a hospital waiting room.

And then Tayce gives a heavy sigh, her body tense beside her own. No such luck.

A’whora thinks it’s apt that they're stuck in the waiting room. She feels like she’s waiting herself. For what, she doesn’t know. Waiting for an end to her and Tayce’s conversation from earlier, waiting for closure. Waiting for Tayce to reassure her that things are okay between the pair of them, or at least for her to explain what she’s meant to have done wrong. With every passing minute her stomach grows tighter, to the extent where it’s almost painful. She feels like following Lawrence and Ellie through those doors to get it checked out. Her heart rate alone would probably break the machine.

Sitting in the heavy emptiness of the lack of conversation, A’whora attempts to muster up the courage to breach the topic they both had to drop so frantically earlier that day. The thing is, she doesn’t want to. The fear of not knowing Tayce’s response to her question- the fear of the worst-case-scenario answer- is enough to lock A’whora’s jaw shut. If she doesn’t speak, they’ve still got what they’ve got. If she doesn’t speak, their relationship hasn’t changed.

She’s not even fooling herself.

Sure enough, Tayce eventually gives another huge huff. A’whora can see her turning to look at her but she doesn’t tear her eyes off the floor. She doesn’t want to acknowledge the conversation that’s about to take place.

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked me earlier.”

A’whora stays still and quiet, like a child hiding under her duvet. Tayce’s tone doesn’t hold a lot of promise. It’s flat and quiet and sincere and so lacking in life that maybe A’whora can try and pretend it’s not her that’s speaking at all.

“And I think, yeah. I think we should stop.”

A’whora is glad she’s looking at the floor. It’s suddenly an anchor that she never knew she needed. The walls of the hospital seem to crumble, the people around her seem to disappear. Her gaze is concentrated on the shiny green, that horrible shade of shiny green, and she holds onto it because if she lets go she’s going to have to look at Tayce and she can’t look at her right now. Not if the way her eyes are stinging painfully and her heart has dropped into her stomach and her throat has gone all tight and constricted as if she’s being choked is anything to go by.

“I think things have changed between us and I don’t want to lose the friendship we’ve got. And to be honest, the others knowing is weird. And we said it’s only awkward if we make it awkward, and I think at this point things are awkward. So...yeah. We should go back to just being friends,” Tayce continues quietly.

A’whora barely even registers her words, just their pitch and tone that burrs like an organ at a funeral. There’s a horrible, sickening sense of finality that grips her body, so much so that she feels as if she can’t move. If she moves she’s acknowledging that life goes on, that Tayce’s decision is final. The small background noises that were once so present in the room seem to cease to be, and instead a ringing, buzzing silence fills her ears. She blinks and she’s relieved when tears don’t appear. She takes one slow, deep breath and takes her time before she trusts herself to speak.

“Okay.”

What else can she say? She’s not going to sit and plead and ask Tayce why, even though she doesn’t really understand her reasoning. Tayce doesn’t owe her an explanation; they weren't girlfriends, she reminds herself cruelly, and it’s not as if they’re breaking up. They’re just...stopping. Going back to being friends, just like that. As if nothing had ever happened. It’s something that’s clearly going to be easy for Tayce to manage.

A’whora feels like an absolute idiot. For being in too deep, for doing exactly what Ellie had said would happen way back in December when she first got with Tayce. She feels like she’s sunk with her heart to the bottom of the ocean and has to swim to the surface and her lungs are so tight as she tries to keep her breathing steady that she feels like she might as well be drowning.

She’s being dramatic. Maybe she isn’t. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what this is all meant to feel like.

Tayce doesn’t say any more, so neither does she. She keeps her blinking methodical and her breathing deep, having to concentrate on doing both. When she’s sure she’s mastered them, she brings her hand up to the pocket of her hoodie and takes her phone out.

How can it feel weird to move?

Her fingers are slow and deliberate as she hits each letter on the keypad. Ellie’s Whatsapp picture stares back at her, her happy smile clashing so violently with the situation at hand. Maybe it’s a strange first reaction, but A’whora is just going through the motions like a robot. Anything beyond not crying in front of Tayce is a bonus right now.

A: me and Tayce not together anymore please tell the others x

She stares at the screen after it’s sent, reads it over and over again torturing herself. She hopes Ellie will read it before she and Lawrence come back. Having to act as if everything is normal is so far beyond her at the moment.

It takes what must be her twentieth time reading her own message to realise what she’s sent, and in spite of everything she feels like laughing at her mistake.

Because she and Tayce were never together.

13 notes · View notes

beca-mitchell · 5 years ago

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you are my favorite thing (1/1)

Summary: Beca and Chloe find themselves alone in their apartment after the instruction comes to self-isolate. Set pre-PP3. Just pretend PP3 doesn’t exist.

Notes: Apologies for this fic. It stuck with me...and I had to write it before it drove me crazy. I know it's not that good but hopefully it brings a small smidge of levity to your lives. <3 I promise I'm working on other stuff, just haven't been feeling well lately.

Word count: 3.1k

Rated M/E.

Read below or on AO3.

When the announcement came that it would be in everybody’s best interest to self-quarantine and self-isolate, Beca hadn’t really known what to expect. In fact, she feels kind of bad for not taking this more seriously and leaving Chloe to pick up the slack. Chloe, who had been almost zealously preparing for the “worst to come” by her standards.

And now, apparently the CDC’s standards.

With the rampant news updates and social media seemingly tearing itself apart at the seams, Beca kind of wishes she had picked a career that required her to be on her computer less but now as she lugs her two laptops and three pairs of headphones home from the label’s head office in midtown, she supposes that she has no choice.

“Oh good, you’re home,” Chloe says upon seeing her. She reaches out automatically to help Beca with her bags as Beca belabours the fact that they live on the fourth floor of their walk-up. She tries to smile gratefully at Chloe, but Chloe is already pacing across the small kitchen space in front of her.

“No welcome home?” Beca jokes. She shrugs off her blazer and moves towards the rack of clothes so she can hang it up neatly. Chloe quickly places a hand on her chest but before Beca has a chance to squawk indignantly at Chloe’s hand placement (Beca totally doesn’t think it’s nice or whatever...because she doesn’t care), Chloe stares at her seriously.

“Do we have enough groceries?”

“Did you eat all the groceries from two days ago?” Beca asks, confused. She turns on her heel to open the fridge to check. “Nope, we literally have all the food that we still haven’t eaten.”

Chloe slumps, moving to sit at the table instead. “Sorry, it’s just been super hectic today. I know we just went to get stuff, but my parents are stressing me out so much.”

Beca smiles sympathetically. “I get it, my dad was messaging me all day today. I told him it would be fine. It’s just a matter of waiting it out.” Beca injects some optimism into her tone. “Plus, Amy isn’t around this weekend so…” she trails off hoping Chloe will understand.

Chloe brightens. “Trashy television night?”

Internally Beca groans, but the smile on her face is genuine because it’s worth it to see Chloe smile.

— — — — —

So the whole having a crush on your captain/co-captain/best friend/bedmate thing?

Kind of overrated. Beca’s over it—or she wants to be over it.

She wants to stop thinking about how nice Chloe’s smile is or how effortlessly Chloe can lift her when she overenthusiastically hugs Beca.

Or how ridiculously happy Chloe makes her.

All those dumb things and dumb feelings that she never really felt to any extreme or significant levels with Jesse. And definitely not that one night stand after her break-up with Jesse.

It’s just that Chloe had somehow always been there, somehow slipping through the cracks and all the crevices of Beca’s carefully constructed walls—places that Beca didn’t even know were available to fall victim to Chloe’s special brand of love and care.

But if there’s one thing that Beca has come to love about Chloe, it is exactly that care—that specific way Chloe somehow makes her feel like she’s the most cherished person in a room. In the world, maybe.

It’s gross and cheesy.

Beca loves it.

It just kind of sucks that all of this pondering—all the pondering the world, maybe—wasn’t enough for Beca to be wary of what it would mean to be stuck twenty-four-seven in an enclosed space with the girl she’s in love with.

— — — — —

With how busy their lives have been, Beca realizes with a pang in her heart that she really hasn’t had time to just sit down with Chloe and just be. It’s Tuesday and after a weekend spent just catching up with Chloe and meal-prepping for the rest of the week, Beca realizes that this whole situation could be a lot worse.

I’ve missed you, is what she wants to say.

Like most things when it comes to her feelings for Chloe, it just sticks inside her head instead and she settles on saying good morning to Chloe.

“It feels weird,” Chloe admits, sitting down next to Beca on Tuesday morning. She scoots her chair closer to press her cheek against Beca’s shoulder.

Beca scrolls lazily through her social media feeds, a habit she picked up from Chloe. Naturally, her body turns into the warmth offered by Chloe’s close proximity. “What feels weird?”

Chloe sighs. It is a large enough sigh to shift Beca’s shoulder as Chloe moves against her. “Not having work.”

Unlike Beca who was permitted to work from home, Chloe’s supervisor suggested that she just take some time off. It wasn’t like Chloe was really being paid a lot to begin with, as a temporary veterinary assistant, but Beca knows that the blow must be hard on both the financial and emotional level.

“You can be my assistant for the day,” Beca suggests. “I have to finish finalizing a few tracks on this album. You can give me feedback. It’ll just be like the old days. Just, um, don’t tell anybody about it. And no posting on social media.”

Chloe immediately brightens at that, like Beca just offered her the entire world on a silver platter. The kiss that she presses to Beca’s cheek is absolutely worth it.

— — — — —

Chloe is, as Beca has always known, incredibly attentive. She also has no real concept of personal space.

Beca knows however, that if she had bothered to say anything to Chloe about that, Chloe would have backed off years ago, but Beca kind of likes that it’s their thing. Kind of.

So when Chloe leans right over her shoulder to watch her work, Beca says nothing.

Whatever.

This is way better than being stuck in an office.

— — — — —

“Hey,” Chloe says, drawing Beca’s eyes up from her screen. “I’m just going to shower, do you mind.”

Beca shakes her head, no, because she doesn’t mind. Chloe lives here too. Chloe can totally walk around half-naked if she wants. She’s confident about all that. Chloe can toss a towel over her shoulder and hum to herself. Chloe can squeeze Beca’s shoulder in affection. Chloe can step into their dingy bathtub, draw back the curtain and proceed to strip off all her clothes in front of Beca—almost quite literally—and just shower a few feet away from where Beca is accidentally deleting an important layer in her audio editing program.

Chloe can do whatever she wants because Beca and Chloe are roommates and that’s what roommates do.

— — — — —

Chloe doesn’t need to shower every day, Beca’s sure of it.

She’s not really complaining. It’s not like she can even see anything, though the reappearance of her rather vivid sex dreams about Chloe on Thursday night is alarming.

But honestly, Beca’s not really complaining even though she hundred percent moves her seat at the kitchen table on Friday so her back is towards the shower.

She thinks Chloe pouts at her on the way to her shower, but Beca’s too busy renaming arbitrary files on her computer to really pay attention to that.

— — — — —

It’s crazy that it is in these circumstances that Beca is really truly considering that she should just tell Chloe how she feels. It’s just hard, wanting to kiss Chloe all the time. It’s hard because they’re really and truly alone and Beca has nothing to do but stare at Chloe’s stupidly perfect face and her lips and she has to see her sweet smile.

It’s gross. Beca’s gross.

(It also doesn’t help that sometimes she catches Chloe staring back—with the same degree of affection to boot. The same care, affection, and desire in her eyes that Beca knows must be shooting out of her own like fucking spotlights.

But she supposes that she could be imagining it too.)

“Beca?” Chloe asks. “Are you watching?”

Chloe’s voice cuts through Beca’s thoughts gently. Beca gazes up at Chloe who has not moved her attention from the screen. She takes the moment to genty observe the curve of Chloe’s nose. The fullness of her lips. The way her lips gently part as she expels a breath.

“Yeah,” Beca says before slowly dragging her eyes back to the screen with some reluctance.

She’s fucked.

— — — — —

Beca Dude where are you

Fat Amy At a friend’s place, don’t wait up xoxoxo

Beca What???? Come home now Amy?????

— — — — —

“Remember college and how I said I wish I experimented more?”

Beca chokes on her water.

“N...yes? Why?” Beca demands, ignoring the way her heart races. Being in close proximity to Chloe tends to do that to her. Nothing new.

Chloe hums to herself. “Nothing. Just lots of time to think today.”

“Oh,” Beca says. “Okay.” She quickly refocuses on her work.

Chloe sighs and returns to her textbook.

— — — — —

Beca blames the long, extended time spent inside. She kind of forgets that they had dinner plans. Or that she probably should have sent that email to her boss.

It’s so easy to forget that they’ve been confined to their apartment for days, but Beca can’t complain.

Mostly because Chloe’s tongue is in her mouth doing absolutely sinful things.

And well—now they’re kind of tumbling onto their deeply uncomfortable but satisfactory for the moment bed, Beca grunting as her back hits the mattress heavily.

“Sorry,” Chloe pants out, drawing back. “Are you—”

“M’fine,” Beca mumbles, pulling Chloe back down for a kiss. Chloe responds eagerly, not-at-all minding that she had been cut off. Instead, she makes a happy little sound, curving her body neatly into Beca’s. The warmth of Chloe’s body on top of her own is driving Beca crazy—that and the distinct lack of friction between her own legs. “Wait,” Beca says, after pushing lightly at Chloe’s shoulders. “Wait—can you—”

Chloe’s brow furrows. “What is it?”

“Just…clothes,” Beca mumbles.

“Oh!” Chloe grins then. “So forward.”

Beca’s cheeks heat up spectacularly. She both loves and hates that Chloe can still tease her like this, even though they’ve both completely eviscerated whatever fragile lines they had set up in their already-confusing friendship.

Chloe, ever the master of making Beca feel many things at once, doesn’t stop there, however. She smiles, leans back—sits all the way upright for Beca’s viewing pleasure—and pulls off her shirt in a smooth motion that makes Beca’s mouth go dry.

Then, when Beca thinks that it can’t get worse…

“I like it when you’re forward,” Chloe murmurs, leaning back down to cup Beca’s cheeks before kissing her so thoroughly and deeply that Beca thinks she might soak through her jeans completely.

Speaking of her jeans—

Beca whimpers into Chloe’s mouth when she feels Chloe’s thumbs expertly popping open the button on her jeans before Chloe is pulling away again to slide the offending material down her legs. Beca scrambles to sit upright so she can pull off her shirt quickly.

It is all pent-up urgency and flying clothes as Chloe climbs back over her, all messy hair and flawless skin, and pulls her into another sweeping kiss. It ought to be illegal, the way Chloe’s tongue flicks through her mouth, desperately seeking out Beca’s. Chloe somehow has made making out a high-level art form and Beca is only all too willing to pay full price for admission to that particular show.

Beca has imagined this, she would be remiss if she weren’t going to admit it right off the bat. It is just difficult reconciling her imagination with this reality because the reality is making Beca’s imagination look very, very weak.

Chloe’s arms come around her, pressing against the mattress before Chloe is rolling them all at once. Beca groans, moving to straddle Chloe which proves to be a mistake, somewhat, because suddenly she can feel the ripple of Chloe’s stomach—damn abs—right against her soaked center. She bites her lip, leaning back slightly and watching with rapt attention as Chloe follows, folding Beca into her arms again.

“I want you so much,” Chloe rasps, voice hot and low against Beca’s neck. “Like, right now.”

Have me, Beca wants to say. I’m yours.

A whole slew of clichés float through Beca’s mind, but all she manages is a guttural moan because Chloe chooses that mount to eagerly palm Beca’s stiff nipple while sucking a nasty hickey into the side of her neck.

“Was that a yes?” Chloe murmurs.

“Fuck yes,” Beca grits out, holding Chloe’s head against her as Chloe’s kisses descend lower so she can envelop Beca’s neglected nipple in her mouth. The sensation of Chloe’s lips, her tongue, the graze of her teeth—all of it right against Beca’s sensitive flesh.

— — — — —

So how that happened is kind of a long story and it might or might not be Beca’s fault.

The short story is that Chloe wanted to watch a movie and Beca had agreed because movie nights with Chloe usually meant cuddling.

But strange times call for unexpected occurrences, though upon reflection, the build-up had been there all along.

(Literally. For years.)

Beca just didn’t really expect the whole making out thing. And the sex thing.

Oh—

And the whole ‘watching Chloe sleep next to her while she runs her fingers through beautiful red hair to calm herself down because her heart is threatening to burst out of her heart’ thing.

That thing.

— — — — —

“You’re horrible at picking up signals,” is the first thing Chloe says to her when Beca wakes up on a bright and sunny Saturday morning.

“I am,” Beca agrees, rolling into Chloe’s body with no intention of going outside ever again. “But maybe you’re horrible at dropping hints.”

“Maybe,” Chloe murmurs, breath hot against Beca’s mouth.

— — — — —

“So this is week two,” Beca says in the most dramatic voice she can muster. She grins at Chloe’s little delighted giggle as she pulls the sheets over both of their heads. It is early Monday and Beca’s phone has been on silent pretty much all weekend. She and Chloe pretty much only left the bed to shower and eat, both of which were activities that could be pleasantly underscored by sex.

“It is week two,” Chloe echoes, pulling Beca in for a slow, muted kiss. It reminds Beca of the kiss Chloe had woken her up with after their first time—the mild disorientation had faded away quickly.

“Whatever shall we do?”

— — — — —

Beca thinks that morning sex absolutely should be part of her regular routine—no matter the circumstances.

Chloe trails gentle fingers down Beca’s neck, between her breasts. Beca waits with heavy breaths, watching Chloe’s progress as she maps out invisible lines on Beca’s body, like an artist at work. Beca clenches her hands into fists, resisting the urge to pull Chloe into another messy kiss. She kind of likes this slower pace—this care and attention bestowed upon her. Chloe’s eyes are incredibly blue as they track over Beca’s body carefully, like she doesn’t want to miss a thing.

“You’re so…” Chloe trails off, sighing happily as she presses lazy kisses around the curve of Beca’s breast before leaning up to suck gently at her nipple. A familiar sensation now, Beca’s back still arches obediently as her breathing quickens.

She doesn’t need Chloe to finish her sentence. She just needs Chloe to continue whatever she’s doing. Naturally, Chloe settles between her legs after a few more torturous minutes of lavishing attention on Beca’s chest. Beca’s hips rock up impatiently, almost of their own accord. She is wholly aware of how uncomfortably wet she is and she knows she’s going to need another shower, but she doesn’t care about that at the moment. The ache between her legs only intensifies when Chloe’s fingers finally make their way to her aching clit.

“Oh fuck,” Beca mumbles. She slowly moves her hand to tangle her hand in Chloe’s hair, needing to feel Chloe closer on all accounts. She spreads her legs wider to accommodate her lover, heaving a breath when Chloe shifts closer still and leans up to press a kiss against Beca’s neck delicately.

“I think I love seeing you like this the most,” Chloe murmurs.

“Like—how?” Beca squeaks out when Chloe’s fingers press down more firmly against her clit. A soft whine escapes her lips.

“This. Spread open. For me.”

Chloe says that like it is the most natural thing she could say to Beca. She says it like she is simply discussing a reading assignment or that she thinks Beca should add another layer of harmonies.

Not at all like she's describing exactly how much Beca wants her; how wet she is; how much she needs Chloe between her legs before she combusts.

Beca pulls Chloe in for a messy kiss, already aching for Chloe’s tongue in her mouth. Chloe indulges her for a few moments, sweeping her fingers through her wet folds. Up, down. Around.

Beca cries out, muffled against Chloe’s mouth. She rips herself away from their kiss. “Chloe, please. Fuck me.”

Chloe grins and leans back in to nip at her lower lip gently. “I thought I was?”

Beca groans in frustration. Fucking tease. She tightens her legs around Chloe’s waist, moving her hips so that Chloe’s fingers almost slip inside her. At the sensation, her head falls back and she lets out a broken whimper.

“Oh,” Chloe murmurs. “You meant like this.” Chloe gently pushes a finger past her folds and Beca clenches hard around it. Chloe begins a slow rhythm, curling her finger every now and then. “And like this.”

It is such a slow, steady pace that Beca has no real reason to complain. Uncomfortably, her neck arches. She reaches down to grip at Chloe’s wrist with a trembling hand, but she does not stop her. “More,” she whimpers. Begs. “Please, baby, more.”

Chloe seems to perk up at the pet name (or the begging—Beca thinks she should do more research; she can absolutely do more research with all the time in the world at her disposal) and to her credit, she listens to Beca for once. She picks up the pace, this time adding a second finger to join the first. Beca grunts at the fullness, blinking up at the ceiling for a brief moment before she squeezes her eyes shut only to see stars explode behind her eyelids. She grunts again, louder, slackening her grip on Chloe’s wrist. Automatically, her hand drifts to her momentarily-neglected clit and she rubs at it with as much pressure as she dares.

Chloe growls—full-on growls—and nips at her throat before using her free hand to move Beca’s hand out of the way. “I want to,” is all she says when Beca opens her eyes, ready to demand Chloe explain herself.

Oh.

Well, if Chloe wants to do that, Beca isn’t going to stop her. They’ve got weeks to figure it out.

— — — — —

Beca Amy, nvm, you should probably stay exactly where you are Just to be safe yknow thanks

fin.

#bechloe #beca mitchell #chloe beale #anna kendrick #brittany snow #pitch perfect #its dumb i know #au #gif #my fanfic #mine #queue #mine:au

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