#and this time youre the one breaking it. but if you hadnt broken it youd have felt so much more miserable | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cloudycrystalkpop · 4 years ago

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SMOKY | Purgatory Within

Blind! Prince! Mingi x [unstated skin deformity] fem! Reader

words: almost 2k

warnings: abuse trauma, smut, death

au: crown royal au | moodboard

series masterlist: SMOKY

you became more and more concerned for your husband’s behavior as time went on. the young man who had once been so careful and gentle, now stood with a silent rage behind his empty eyes.

however, after you confronted him about his possessive behavior, you watched him break down at your feet.

“p-please... please don’t leave me...” his large frame was once again curled in on himself, shoulders shaking as he kneeled on the floor, hands fisted in your robe. his head was hung low as he begged you at your feet.

“Mingi, what has been going on with you?” you insisted, refusing to touch the man as he tried to bury his face in your lap.

“I can't- I can't let the Duke take you! or your whore of a knight! Please my queen please, take me instead, take everything I have!” the man let out a broken sob as you sighed at his words.

“enough.” you growled, grabbing a hand full of his hair and lifting his head. he yelped in shock, neck exposed to you as his Adams apple bobbed in fear.

“you are to be a king Mingi. you are a grown man, and I am your wife. you are not a little boy to be crying at the feet of his mother.” you pushed the man off your lap and stood. “and you will be a fool of a king if you let such foolish insecurity cloud your judgment!”

Mingi hid his head low, covering his face with his arms.

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry! p-please don't-” his normally deep voice cracked in terror. you stopped, anger at he man before you evaporated.

“Mingi...mingi I'm not going to hit you.” you spoke softly, gently falling to your knees on the floor. his body shook, arms still held to protect his face. “I hope you know, I would never do that.” your voice was sorrowful as you reached out a hand to his head.

he flinched when you touched his hair, but as you began to run your fingers through it, his muscles slowly relaxed. dropping his arms from his face you could finally see the puffiness around his eyes, the cloudiness of the dark pigment stared blankly back at you.

“...do you promise?” he hiccuped, turning his head to try and find the direction of your voice. you cupped the man’s cheeks, pulling his head to face yours. his eyes fluttered shut as he rested his head in your hands.

“oh my darling boy, who did this to you?”

Mingi found a small kitten in the garden. a runt, tiny thing. you had thought the bundle of orange fur was some nobles lost purse left out in the rain. he named her Daisy, saying her fur smelled of the flowers when she curled up in his big hands.

You rarely saw the man without her, the small kitten often purching on Mingi's large shoulders.

Your husband still held ribbons of his possessive behavior, however he began to distance himself from you. You rarely saw him now other then in passing on when the pair of you went to sleep at night. He also began neglecting pleasing you, but you assumed he was simply not interested as both of you often went to sleep without any contact.

Now you found yourself facing a different delema. You had always been a woman with a high sex drive, its one of the reasons you had chosen Seonghwa as a concort. However your poor knight had been frightened quite badly by yourself and your husband, and you knew he wouldnt return to you unless you seeked him out.

But you had also made Mingi a promis. One that was getting increasingly hard for you to keep.

"My lady, is everything alright? You seem lost in thought... If there is any responsibilities weighing heavy on you i am more then happy to help however i can!" the young Duke's voice was as sweet as ever.

You sighed, looking over to Yeosang, a man you had been trying not to look at for to long. His hair lay in soft curls around his face, lightened by the many years spent outside in the sunlight. Likewise his skin was warm in hue, tanner then the rest of your court.

You had heard some of the other ladies snickering about him. Yeosang surely didnt live up to some of the standards for desired beauty the royals had. A strange thought flashed in your mind. Is that why Mingi was chosen to be your husband over Yeosang? Mingi's frame was large, an incredibly masculine figure just looking at him, with dark hair and skin untouched by the sun.

Little Yeosang however, had small and dainty hands, with long thin fingers, his features were softer then Mingi's, even his skin looked soft to the touch. And the many years spent as a playmate for his sisters left him with an unthreatening demeanor.

Indeed it wasnt hard for you to imagine him, flowers in his hair, sat on a blanket in the valley, perhaps painting or writing for his own amusement. You shoved away such thoughts as you saw a line of concern crease in his brow.

"My lady..."

"I am sorry Yeosang. Truthfully ive been feeling a bit... Forgotten about in these last weeks. And its left me feeling distracted." you answered him.

"Forgotten... Ah, by your husband?" perceptive as always. You sighed, gase dropping to your tea once more, before nodding.

"Have you tried speaking to him? He has a shy nature, im sure-"

"Hes trying to help." you held up a hand to stop him. "He did not trust me, and hes trying to offer me space to show he does." you clarified.

"... I see." Yeosang chewed on his lip in thought. His lips were a pretty blush color, not as round as Mingi's but plump, they looked soft... Very soft.

You cursed yourself in your own head. His fingers, his lips, youd be lying to deny they hadnt crossed your mind when you bathed. Your hands wandering your own body, head leaned back and eyes closed. Imagining it was Yeosang's long fingers in place of your own as you gasped in pleasure.

You shooed away the maid who came to offer you more tea, informing her it wouldnt be needed. Lust was a vice that would only cause you harm as Mingi's wife. And yet, something stirred in your gut.

"Yeosang, will you come walk with me?" the Duke nodded quickly, standing to his feet to follow you deeping into the gardens.

Your husband would be furious. And yet, such a worry seemed to melt away as you let yourself become lost in his touch.

"My lady please, you must be quiet. Or else we shall scandalize some poor stable boy." Yeosang's voice purred in your ear, pressing soft kisses to your neck after speaking.

You bite your tongue as Yeosang let another finger slip inside you. You were right, his fingers were deliciously long, able to reach places within you your own faltered. His hand snaked up your skirts and inside your undergarments, the heel of his hand pressed against your clit, his wrist not forgetting such an important part as he rubbed it gently.

You could almost see stars as he began sucking on your neck, a third finger sliding within you.

"... I promised you, anything you ever needed, i will provide. If its council, wisdom, or even such sinful favors... I am at your service. Always." Yeosang's voice was honey on your skin. You pulled one of your hands up from where they were fisted in his jacket, tugging gently on his hair. He pulled away from your neck, eyes now staring into your own. A look of pride took his features, seeing the state of pleasure you were in at his hands.

Tugging his hair again, you let a small whine fall from your lips. He chuckled, increasing the pace of his hand, and before a moan could fall from your lips, he covered them with his own.

That night, cheeks finally faded with the glow of what yourself and the Duke had snuck away to do, you crossed paths with a guard.

“your highness! just who I was looking for~” dread pooled in your gut as you saw Hongjoong, cheerful grin on display, with a small kitten in his arms. Daisy shook like a leaf, eyes slit to spite the darkness of the hallway.

you opened your arms and Hongjoong placed the small cat in your hands. Daisy immediately pressed herself as far from Hongjoong as she could, a small hiss let out in his direction.

“how rude. if it wasn't for me she would have been stuck at the top of a lamp. ungrateful feline.” he huffed. you began to gently stroke the cat’s fur, in hopes of calming her down.

“an animal as small as this knows when it is in the jaws of a predator.” you stated. Hongjoong smiled, and your stomach dropped. humans are so stupid. Hongjoong is known as a cheerful and smiley person, but yet the cloud that follows him hides the nature of his grin. a wolf does not offer you a smile, he bares his teeth as a warning.

“and yet your little prince is so blissfully unaware of what he is toying with~” Hongjoong giggled. you simply blinked back at the creature before you. “you know, your fondness for that Duke will upset him. but if you wanted a straightforward solution-”

“I am not a fool like the other idiot humans that reside here.” you growled.

“oh no, absolutely not. but, witch, neither am i.” you narrow your eyes at him.

“I could have you hung for accusing the future queen of witchcraft.” you threatened. Hongjoong lay his head back and let out a hearty laugh.

“that would be a sight! do you really want to see what happened if you try and kill me?” Hongjoong stops himself before he begins laughing again. “actually I believe I know that answer. regardless, my offer still stands. just as our deal already does.”

“deal?” you feel panic rise in your throat.

“why yes, the silent one of course.” Hongjoong grins that same one that appears in your nightmares. the one that pulls his cheeks up and shows just a few to many teeth.

“you don't tell them what I am, and in exchange, I do the same.”

you awoke the next morning, without Mingi. his side of the bed was cold, and even Daisy had gone missing. you thought little of it as you rose to begin your day, however, you were not greeted by one of your handmaidens, but rather, a guard.

“your majesty, I come bearing news.” he swallowed nervously.

“oh? at this hour?” you inquired. you were then greeted by a sorrowful meow, Daisy crawling between the guards legs and hiding under your nightgown.

“your husband, Prince Mingi, was found dead in a poll of his own blood last night.”

who killed the king?

suspects : Yeosang | Seonghwa | Hongjoong

#smoky au #prince au #mingi x reader #mingi au #ateez x reader #Ateez au #yeosang x reader #Yeosang smut #royal au #fantasy au #demon au #knight au #Hongjoong au #Seonghwa au

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witchcraft-in-wonderland · 4 years ago

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Ships and Shells (Pt.1)

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There were a great many things that Virgil didnt know, how to solve complex math equations, how to balance a book on his head, how the ocean could be so close to him yet so obscenely far. Really that was what confused him, a title of 'Prince of the Seas' and yet he hadnt set foot near one once in his life.

For a kingdom based so heavily around aquaculture, it was rather odd that his parents seemed to fear water more than they feared the idea of poison in their goblets.

Of course, that didnt mean they'd halted the economy all together, oh no, it was perfectly alright for other people to do the dirty work of the oceans, so long as the nobility stayed away from it.

But that's the thing about keeping an eighteen year old boy trapped in an expansive palace with windows pointing out to a place he wasnt allowed to go. It never worked.

In the case of this particular rebellion, Virgil had strayed off nearly every day at night to watch the tides, to feel the water on his feet, to call out to the distant shore that seemed oh so welcoming when he wasnt allowed to accept its invitations.

And if he couldnt sneak out, he watched ships dock and leave from the harbor as often as he could, his mind swimming with ideas of what it might be like.

"But mother I dont want to go to my classes! The instructor is all boring and- creepy-" Virgil complained, dragging his nails along the table and pouting slightly.

"Well if you didnt want extra classes than maybe you shouldve paid more attention the first time," the queen responded coldly.

"Well how can I! You've placed the classroom right next to the ocean! If you wanted me to pay attention so badly why would you give me a view like that!" Virgil responded, throwing his arms up.

"Well I'd expect you to have a little more self control than that!" And that settled it, if Virgil's mother was mad, there would be no further questions. Virgil mumbled a bit before he stormed off to his classes, fidgeting with his hoodie strings as he walked.

Of course, he still didnt pay a single lick of attention, simply stared out of the window and cringed at his professor's comments until it was over.

And then it happened, he'd walked out of the study, and heard a loud crash from outside. He raced to a farther window, pressing his face against the glass.

A large black ship was docked in the harbor, and the harbor itself, was on fire.

Virgil had to duck as something hit the window, a quick look allowed him to recognize it as a grappling hook. So Virgil began to run as fast as he could, watching pirates was one thing, getting taken by them was another.

Unfortunately for Virgil, he was fast, but pirates with ropes were much faster. Virgil froze as he heard boots land on the floor in front of him, and attempted to turn back in the other direction, only to run into another pirate.

"Aaawwweee, poor thing, he thinks we're gonna hurt him doesnt he!" Said one of the pirates, cackling. Virgil looked up and spat in his face. The man blinked, pouting slightly.

"Well fine, since you want to be so rude about it, Janus? Roman?" The man looked over Virgil's shoulder, Virgil attempted to break into a run again, only for his arm to get caught by someone else. He swilling around and attempted to bite his captor, only to feel someone else press against his neck, his vision went spotty, and then faded entirely.

He woke up in a cell, the smell of salt water filled his nostrils, he had cloth wrapped around his mouth, wrists, and ankles.

"Terribly sorry for the lackluster greeting, we're not used to skittering mice," Virgil glared at the man standing outside of his cell.

"Gee, you could kill a man with those eyes," the man cackled. Virgil let out a low snarl.

"Oooohhh, I'm shaking in my boots!" The man leaned against the cell, lifting on leg up and propping it on a barrel behind him.

"Tell me, what exactly do you think you'll be able to do to me when you're stuck in there, and even if you were out, pompous prince like you couldnt even throw a proper punch," the pirate said with a grin, Virgil noticed silver fangs glinting at the front of his mouth. Virgil lunged at him slightly, only to end up falling on his face. The silver-fanged man let out another sickening cackle.

"And dont get any ideas about escaping, you're on Captain Remus Duke-Prince Kingsley's ship now, and you'll abide by my rules, or you'll find yourself hanging from a fish hook off the hull," the Captain's voice took on a sudden threatening tone that sent chills down Virgil's spine. Virgil watched as Remus turned on his heel and strode out of the room, wishing ever so intensely that he couldve broken his bonds and strangled the man before he even set foot outside the door.

It felt as though Virgil had been alone in that cell for hours before someone showed up, he was short, with messy auburn hair and bright green eyes. He looked guilty, sad even.

"Here's your food, I'll uh- get that cloth off now-" he stammered, slipping the tray through a slot in the cell, Virgil turned his back to the man, waiting patiently as he felt the man's fingers working through the cloth bindings. Almost as soon as he felt the last piece of cloth fall from his body he bolted upright and tried to push his way through the cage bars. The man who'd delivered his food gave him a pitying look, but didnt stop him. It wasnt until Virgil had managed to tire himself put and collapse onto the floor that he spoke.

"Well, I suppose if you're quite finished, youd like to ask questions, then?" He said, raising an eyebrow. His face was soft, even the mildly annoyed look spread across it now didnt take away from the rosy flush of his cheeks, nor the faint glimmer of his irises.

"Yeah, question one, what the hell do you think you're playing at," Virgil said, slamming his arm against the cage bars again, ignoring the vibration it sent through his body.

"Ok, dont get mad, which is probably a redundant statement since you already look like you're going to explode, but, I cant answer that particular question yet," he said, the guilty expression quickly resurfacing.

"Ok, sure, fine, can you at least tell me what you need me for? Because it clearly isnt a ransom or I'd already be dead," Virgil grumbled, smirking slightly at the worry this seemed to cause the man.

"Well uh, I dont have all of the details, but uh- well- Remus says- I think- we need your help with something? Like- finding something, he says we cant do it unless you're with us," the man stuttered, shifting his feet on the ground.

"Oh really? So if I were to- say, remove myself from the equation, you'd be at a loss hm?" Virgil said, the man let out a terrified squeak. Virgil gave a merciless laugh, for a pirate, whoever this man was, he was nowhere near as threatening as his captain.

"Well uh- yes- that's, how I assume it would work- but uh- I dont think it would be very beneficial to you either-" the man continued, his boots now tapping more frequently on the ground.

"You and I have very different ideas of beneficial," Virgil replied.

"Roman? Is everything alright my darling?" Virgil paused as he heard another voice, this one deeper, almost silky in tone.

"I'm alright Janus-" Roman replied, Virgil heard shuffling.

"Are you going to eat? I dont think it wise to starve yourself, after all, a prince of the seas die in the middle of the ocean? There are far less ironic alternatives, and with much more bravado than that," Janus said, Virgil muttered a bit before he turned to the tray, which was, by some odd miracle, still hot. He glanced in the direction of his co-captors to get a better look at the second figure. Janus was tall, with wavy brown hair that was parted to the right, the left side was shaved, there was a very prominent yellow snake skull drawn on the right side of his face as well, and he, to, had metallic fangs, though his were gold, and were visible even with his mouth closed, Roman, it seemed, had no such additions. Virgil eyed them both carefully before he started eating, and he hadnt realized how hungry he was till that exact second.

"And dont worry about excercise, you'll only be trapped here until we're in the next town, of course you wont be getting off the ship, so dont get any ideas," Janus said calmly.

"And what makes you think you can stop me?" Virgil said, glaring up at him.

"Who exactly do you think incapacitated you upon our arrival at the castle?" Janus said plainly, flexing his hands, upon which were gold accents that seemed to trace it like a skeleton.

"Well, enjoy your meal, and dont sit still for to long, it gets dreadfully uncomfortable for your joints to get that stiff," and with that, the pair were gone, Janus fixing his hat, and Roman clinging to Janus' arm like a lovestruck puppy.

And there was Virgil, alone, and very much unhappy.

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#cori writes #long post #ships and shells #ts remus #ts virgil #ts sides #ts janus #ts roman #tw kidnapping #tw drowning mention #tw suicide mention #roceit #romantic roceit #dukexiety #future dukexiety #romantic dukexiety #tw blood

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lununnunna · 4 years ago

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Waterworks || Dabi x Reader

angst in which you dont realize dabi physically cannot cry bc his mf tearducts out here like *burnt*

(again idk how 2 shorten my posts :( so apologies in advance) ((also couldnt stop thinking abt how dabi fr out here like ugly crying wo the tears i had an itch to write the angst))

part two

most times it made you lovingly roll your eyes. other times it made you laugh. but lately, dabis nonchalant and rather apathetic demeanor was weighing on you.

youve yet to see him cry, even when you two have your arguments and little bicker-fests, as any normal couple has. hes never cried, only yelled, or flashed bitter smiles and dark laughs. it unsettled you. hes never once shed a single tear, not even for your sake.

you began to question if he really loved you as much as you did, him.

surely if he loved you, he would cry in relief for your safety, or in sympathy for something that upset you, right?

you ultimately supposed he wouldnt really be one to cry to begin with, but what of that time you were followed home and nearly kidnapped? assaulted? he had merely burned them to ash for you, and carried you inside as you sobbed into his shoulder. he hadnt even done so much as comment; no whispers of relief, no ‘i love you’s, nothing to show you he was glad you were okay save for the kisses to your head and rubs on your back until you fell asleep. at the time, you felt he was focused on consoling you, and assumed he just didnt want you to know he was worried.

but now, you wondered if he even really cared.

a part of you told you you were being ridiculous, that he had to care if he was still with you, to bother saving you to begin with— but the hurt in your heart and concern in your head spoke louder, and drowned out any reason.

and so, here you found yourself, anxiety bubbling in the pit of your stomach and rising like bile into your throat. you had confronted him on the matter, only to be brushed off, irritating you until it had led to another petty argument.

you swallowed.

you wanted the truth, and you wanted it bad. you desperately needed to know what you truly meant to him. surely, if he cared, this would stir him, right? this would have to invoke some sort of feeling in him, right?

tears stinging your eyes, throat tightening and suddenly feeling dryer than the sahara desert, you spoke, voice trembling.

“i.. im leaving.”

he fixed you with his sharp, icy gaze.

“what?” he gritted out through clenched teeth.

“i said im leaving. we’re— we’re over. we should break up.”

you watched his reaction carefully, watching the way the muscles in his jaw flexed and tightened, before relaxing and a low chuckle escaped from the back of his throat. he ran a hand through his hair, scoffing.

he glanced over to you once more.

“you dont mean that, doll. look, lets just put this behind us. you know i love you, so give it a rest, yeah? lets just watch a movie.”

you could hear the irritation threatening to leak into his voice. your brows furrowed into a frown.

“do i? do i know you love me? because from where im standing, im not feeling it. i meant what i said. i think itd be for the best if we at least took a break.”

he was silent after that. you could see the anger brewing behind those oceanic eyes you fell in love with, staring at you, trying to read you, as if he thought if he stared long enough, hed be able to see and understand what you were thinking; feeling, and why.

you trembled. you wouldnt be able to hold back the tears much longer.

you took a deep, shaky breath.

“goodbye, dabi.”

he didnt say anything. he didnt say anything as you walked away, slipping on your shoes at the door. he only watched, frozen in place, mind racing with a million thoughts at once. dont forget your coat, he wanted to say. its cold out. its dark. stay safe, baby. call me the moment you feel scared or threatened.

but his body wouldnt respond. he felt numb, watching your retreating figure slip behind the door, the soft click of the doorknob suddenly sounding so much louder in his head.

he was trembling violently, anger and despair crashing over him in suffocating waves.

everything felt so fucking surreal. he felt like it was a dream, it wasnt real, you were only kidding, you were only testing him, you didnt mean it, youd be back tomorrow, kissing him and hugging him and gracing him with your sweet voice talking about anything and everything and nothing in particular.

but he knew.

he knew it wasnt a joke. it was real. you were gone, and he didnt stop you.

and that pissed him off to all fucking hell.

he snapped, letting out a scream of rage, bellowing into the empty apartment, knees buckling under the weight of his broken heart. fists and fire met anything he could come into contact to, wrecking the living room as his screams and shouts tore through his throat, desperate to be heard.

he wanted to cry. he wanted to cry, to chase after you, to wrap you in his arms and kiss you like there would be no tomorrow. he hated himself.

he fucking hated himself.

he wanted to burn the entire building down in his rage and sorrow, to burn the entire world so youd have no choice but to run to him. but he knew that was wrong. he couldnt control you— if you didnt want to be with him anymore, who was he to stop you? he doesnt want to be with him either.

yet here he is, all alone, caving, curling into himself as he dropped to the ground, the apartment thoroughly wrecked. stuck with nobody but himself and his overwhelming devastation. his face twisted in what could only be described as pain, scrunching and folding in on itself. he was bleeding. he must have popped a staple when he was screaming, but he didnt care, not even as they pulled and tugged ever so painfully as he choked on another shout of anguish.

there he sat, a pathetic being in the middle of the life he made for himself.

there he sat, sobbing tearlessly as the boy who couldnt cry.

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ask-the-party-god · 4 years ago

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Ask The Party God - Timeline

the pre-terezi-gang timeline post is here

height references over here

hi, im jade! everyones favorite party goddess and trans doggy girl~ but you already know that! if youre reading this, it means youre interested in learning more about my reality, because paradox space is fucking weird like that and you cant really be sure all the time

as far as im aware, everything up to the point where we beat the game happened without deviations from the alpha timeline? so this is what rose has talked about as a ‘terminal timeline’, or ‘post-canon’, or whatever the hell that is supposed to mean

we got to earth-c, and i settled in the troll kingdom because trolls are cool, dave and karkat were in the neighborhood, and the caverns are close by so i can visit rose and kanaya speedily as well! i still do have my old tower out on an island, with my workshop and garden, but i almost never sleep in it, too far away and isolated from everyone...

then one day i found this old active server in the furthest ring keeping tumblr active and i thought, hey, why not have some fun? ;D

as for the others...

my darling sis june egbert! she lives in the consort kingdom, but has been thinking about relocating elsewhere lately! she went through a rough patch right after the game, unsure of what to do and full of all sorts of doubts and questions, but shes doing a lot better nowadays! specially now that terezi is back, shes been a lot more peppy and hanging around with the lalondes particularly!

rose rose rose rose~ happily married to her wife kanaya, duh, but that doesnt make her any less of a flirty cutie! a while back she got really sick for a bit, and weve been keeping an eye on her just in case it happened again, but its been all good ever since! she helps kanaya at the caverns a bunch, which makes her schedule busy busy... and you didnt hear this from me, buuuut words out on the street that she and kanaya may be warming to the idea of having a kid! <3 well see how that goes!

one cool dude~ daves a little bit of a shut-in honestly! and honestly i dont blame him? he must be tired after all the timeline and time travel shenanigans, so he spends a good chunk of his time hanging out in his and karkats house! hes kind of awkward about opening up with feelings and stuff, and ive been trying to nudge him to be more open for a while! but with all the craziness thats been going down lately, and more people coming and going and getting together, hes starting to consider things he hadnt before~ hopefully, some specific someones? ;)

janey! my uh... ecto-mom, technically, although we see each other more like cousins than anything else! she still owns crockercorp, but ever since jasprose has been around, she has been spending a lot more time at home and just hanging out with her friends, which really, sounds a lot healthier than the big business thing she had going on a while back! she enjoys teaching me baking stuff, but doesnt have much patience for my decorating skills ;p

grandpa! and grandson technically, hehe, jakes kind of a weird case, hes a mixture of a shut-in, a celebrity and an adventurer! he can spend up to weeks at a time without leaving his manor, but then hell have full weeks of interviews and hiking, and thats not to say anything of when he and dirk put out another episode or two of their dumb comedy talkshow... hes often busy with stuff, but hes still a good pal and can clear his schedule in seconds if we need him for something!

one sweet nb dude! rox really is... something else, really! fun to tag along at a party, fun to chill at home playing games, fun to talk about more serious stuff and open up with him, he really is just solid as they come! hes been hanging out a lot more with june since she got out of her depressive slump, but sometimes i wonder if junebug finds weird to get flirty with roxy, considering im pretty sure we made out in front of her at some point or two... hehehe

dirk! if daves a bit of a shut-in, hes a shut-in times two, which is weird because youd think someone stuck in post-apocalyptic earth for so long would want to hang out more? not to say he DOESNT, though! hes around jake often enough, and keeps close to jane, roxy and dave specially! we dont see each other too often, but we HAVE been messing around with robots and planning out to upgrade our respective self-bots for funsies!

aradia! we only met briefly in dreams for the longest time, but i knew already that she was a riot! she came with terezis group after she finally found vriska, and seems pretty happy just... kind of... being around and watching shenanigans ensue! i actually dont know where she lives, but she drops by occasionally, because im apparently pretty ‘fun’... cant say i disagree ;)

sollux is blind, and not dead, and WILL kick you in the shins if you keep prying about how exactly he ended up like that, which is fair enough! he spends a good chunk of his time with aradia, and im not sure if theyre dating or not...? but hes been around the other trolls a bunch! specially kanaya, apparently theyre good friends that go way back! i guess they both DO style their hair similarly, with the side spike thingies...

the other half of the dave-kat duo! swooooon~ really though, i cant remember the last time i said “dave” or “karkat” without talking about the other shortly after... buuut theyre just roomies, and hell get awkward and grumpy if you even so slightly IMPLY otherwise, despite the fact everyone knows they fall asleep leaning against each other during friday movie night! roooolling my eyes~ with the rest of the living trolls having arrived, hes been a lot more willing to go outside, which im glad for! its healthy to get some fresh air from time to time, and specially hang out with friends!

oh-la-la, miss maryam-lalonde herself! kanayas the matriarch of the caverns, and quite the busy gal, having taken it upon herself to supervise her entire species reproduction and well-being... in my opinion, she needs a good vacation from time to time, and to be less of a workaholic! >:o ive been helping her occasionally in the caverns, and as of late weve begun trying to mess around with ectobiology for some troll-human crossing experiments with... not good results so far... but hey, rome wasnt built in a day!

terezis back, yes! after spending YEARS out there looking for vriska, she managed to find her and come back, the madwoman! personally im not sure why anyone would go to such lengths for... her... but also, its not my bond, not my place to speak, she obviously really loves her a bunch! with vriska no longer lost in the middle of the furthest ring, shes started to catch up with everything going on with earth-c, and i think shes really going to like being around! specially with how much june and the rest have missed her ;)

troublemaker extraordinaire herself! shes... well, shes vriska, im pretty sure she stole that eyepatch from sollux? so you just know she up to no good already >:/ speaking of her eyepatch, im not sure WHY shes wearing it? whatever kinda wound she got, she doesnt like mentioning it, despite bragging about defeating english at every chance she gets! terezi says they found her popping in and out of consciousness in the furthest ring with some messy wounds, and that shed probably been hovering out there after the fight for years... doesnt seem to have humbled her in the slightest <.<

callieeeee! theyre super sweet and wonderful but also really shy and awkward! they live with roxy but manage to outdo dirk in terms of shut-in-ness... they also totally like roxy but is unsure about approaching those feelings considering the whole species thing and whatever, ive been trying to get them to open up for a while now! weve written fanfic together and drawn grids, so i can definitely tell theres some attraction there, even if theyre afraid of acting upon it just yet <3

jaspie is roses bane, and the one cat that made me get used to their smell enough that i dont bark at them instantly anymore! im pretty sure she crashes at janes often, and is just as outgoing and flirty as i am around earth-c parties and bars, which is saying something honestly! i wont let her dethrone me as the party god, though >:)

and finally davepeta! theyre staying with june for the time being until they can get settled around and see what they want to do here! theyve also dropped by dave and karkats a bunch, which i most certainly dont mind! i definitely appreciate some help in bringing a romantic vibe into those twos lives~ ;o

and thats about it! theres also the nannasprites and tavrosprite and arquius, but they pop by so sporadically and rarely that i dont know what theyre doing a majority of the time... we lost track of gamzee after the session so hopefully hes totally gone, and we havent heard any message from caliborn in years... and with the furthest ring broken and the black hole sealed, leaving a weird white empty space right in the middle of reality, im not sure what our chances of bringing back the other trolls are :( but still, we keep living on happily over here and having our fun slice of life ending together!

id say after everything weve gone through, we deserve a big break, dont we? hehehe <3

also, particularly important events that happen and are recorded in this blog will be tagged as timeline shenanigans!

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chaandknight · 6 years ago

Text

Maybe | Roger Taylor | Smut/Angst

Summary: Breakup sex is never a good idea. 4k words.

A/N: This got away from me. I’m sorry in advance. Thank you to my beta @haveanaverageday I love you. Relationships are hard I would know, but remember this is just a fic, and not the best model for a relationship.

Requests are open

Tags: Smut, angst, swearing, +18

Maybe you two just weren’t meant for each other. Maybe all the time you had spent building something together just wasn’t worth it. Maybe the universe just had more plans for you. Maybe the constant time apart had drawn a wedge between you. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Your relationship with Roger was always filled with maybes. Maybe he would come home early from a party. Maybe you’d have for date night. Maybe he would call while on tour. Maybe you would come and visit him on tour. Maybe you got lonely while he was away and made some dumb mistakes. Maybe he did too. Maybe you both were to blame. Maybe.

Despite all that you couldn’t help the sinking feeling in your heart as you packed your things. You and Roger had been together for the longest of times, constantly on and then off again. You would always make up quickly, but this time was different. Both of you could feel it, it had been weeks since you had talked, seeing each other was an entirely different question. He had sent word through his personal assistant, and you in turn had replied. The messages were short, the calls only lasting for a second seconds. It all started with his message, relayed through his PA.

“He knows.” Is all he had said. You replied, saying that you knew about all the girls as well. There was no reply after that. After two weeks of contemplation, barely sleeping in your shared bed you decided. You left a message for him, asking him to organise your moving out. It was simple. Once you had found suitable accommodation you'd move. You'd take everything that was yours. He'd keep his flat. He even offered to help you move out, paying for removalists. Deciding to handle this like an adult, you accepted. You had surprised yourself by the way you had handled all this, how diplomatic you both were. Usually your ‘breakups’ were messy, arguing that would escalate into screaming matches. Sometimes turning extremely nasty when both of your prides were wounded, opting to yell out petty, personal things to one another. One of you would then storm out, the other following closely behind not willing to let whatever you had go. Sometimes you'd spend time apart, stewing in anger. Then would come the sex. A makeup fuck is what he called it after the first two times. Then it had just become habit, a vicious toxic cycle that would sometimes last days. You two had just fallen into your roles, accepting that this was how it would be. That was until now.

You would lying if you said there wasn't any good moments in-between. Those were the best, often taking off as a honeymoon stage all over again. You would whisper and giggle in each other's ears, unable to keep hands off each other. You'd fuck and you'd make slow love. He'd take you places, compliment you on everything and help with your various art projects. You would spend nights together, just in each other's presence doing your own work. That was until the next ‘break up’, where moments like this started becoming more sparse and arguments increasingly common. It was all too much. The both of you were relieved when the tour was announced, finally able to spend time apart without having to worry about discussing deeper things. Things that would be too painful, too complicated to talk about.

Maybe that’s why the sinking feeling in your chest wouldn’t go away. You couldn’t go into a room without being triggered by the memories you both had made. You swallowed the lump in forming in your throat, shoving the rest of your paints in the box and taping it closed, compartmentalising your feelings at the same time. This was for the best. You were both toxic to each other, this was definitely not a healthy relationship even if there was something between you two. You looked around the lounge once again. It seemed empty without your paintings covering the walls, your various pot plants on the window sill. You wondered if he would miss notice your things gone. What did you care though? You cast a glance around the room trying to pick out anything you may of left behind.

That lump in your throat reformed, threatening to choke you with all the feelings that were now rising to the surface. For the first time it finally hit you. It was over. You hadn’t talked or seen him in weeks and you most likely wouldn’t see him again either. His tour ended two weeks from now and he rarely ever came home, too busy with parties and recording. You noticed your acrylic paint still out. He wouldn’t notice an extra painting would he?

You wiped your forehead with your arm, pretty sure you had smudged some yellow paint onto it. You didn’t really care. The painting had made you lose track of time. The front door opened just as you realised you should of been out two bloody hours ago. You grabbed a large paint brush as your weapon heading to the door. Had someone broken in? Whoever it was seemed to have the keys to the front door. You tried to control your breathing and not let your mind run wild. You couldn’t help it though. Was it some crazy stalker fan? Would you be found dead in your boyfriends exboyfriends home? Your heart was beating a mile a minute as you flicked on the light, ready to use your paintbrush.

“Were you going to paint me to death?” His voice was thick with exhaustion, you lowered your paintbrush, not sure if you wanted a murderer in here more rather than face the man standing in front of you. The man you hadn’t seen in weeks. You had almost forgotten how bright his eyes were, how his hair was always dischevlied, the smallest hints of stubble on his jawline. All the emotions you had laid down in the canvas laying in the dining room behind came bubbling to the surface.

You tried not to let your voice shake as you spoke.

“You’re meant to be on tour” you said simply, not wanting to drag this out for long. He let his smile drop, his shoulders slumped you could see just how tired he was. He set his keys on the bench. Running a hand through his hair.

“You’re meant to be gone” he snapped. You tried not to let his words hurt you, but despite all the walls you had mentally put him the words cut through you like a knife through butter. You wanted to cry, he was letting you go so easily, without a care in the world. You took a breath, determined to not let him see how close you were to breaking down.

You turned around, ignoring his presence all together and heading to where your paints were laid out. You wiped your hands on the rag, screwing on the lids to the paint pots. You’d pack them all into their box later. His footsteps echoed off the tiles, you ignored his presence behind you and headed straight for the shower in the main bedroom - his room. The plan was to shower before leaving, your clothes were already lay out. You closed the door behind you, but it wouldn't close properly. You stepped back as he stepped into the bathroom.

He had a look in his eye that made your breath catch in your throat. He walked towards you, unknowingly you stepped back, almost tripped over the shower glass panel. It was as if he had you pinned with his gaze alone. You were like a deer caught in headlights, unable to anything but retreat further back. You stepped into the shower, he was still following you until you were cornered against the wall of the shower. You never were scared of him, even if he was yelling from across the room at you, however now, combined with all your emotions about moving out, the thought of being murdered and his words from earlier - you couldn't help the small hint of dear that plagued your mind. He was in your personal space, body almost touching yours. He looked down on you, and you couldn't decipher his facial expression.

Your heart was beating against your chest, almost threatening to break free. Your breath only quickened when he reached over, hand near your waist. You could almost feel him grabbing your waist, pulling you to him. But he only turned the knob to the turn on the water, soaking both yours and his clothes under the large shower head. His breathing was almost as heavy as yours, and you weren't sure if it was from anger or not. You opened your mouth to speak, but he cut you off with his lips.

The kiss was rough, filled with weeks of frustration. You kissed him back, trying to show your anger and hurt at all this. You were just now coming to terms with how you felt about all this, previously running on autopilot. He reached up cupping your cheeks, trying to pull you even closer as his took your lip between his teeth tugging harshly. You were the first to pull away, shock coming over you. You pushed his chest but he didn't budge.

“What the fuck was that?” You demanded, voice high. You resorting to pushing his chest over and over in an attempt to get him to move. You both knew you weren't actually trying, maybe it was just an act. Maybe. He grabbed your wrists, still looking down at you.

“Just” he started, getting distracted by your jaw. He pressed feather light kisses to your skin there. You were frozen on the spot, trying to piece together what the hell was going on. “Just shut the fuck up for once will you?” he said, nipping the skin at your neck making you gasp. Your hand found its way to his hair, running your finger through the wet strands as his kisses covered every inch of your neck, leaving the occasional mark here and there, every bite making the smallest of moans escape your lips. His hands were on your waist, pulling up your damp shirt the slightest bit. He pulled away from your neck, pulling your shirt over your head. He was rougher than he needed to be and it annoyed you. You retaliated, swinging a leg around his waist and dragging your nails down his chest.

“I don't hear from you for weeks and you expect me to come back to you?” You demanded, undoing the buttons in his shirt and pulling it off, throwing it somewhere in the bathroom. He kissed you again, stealing your breath before replying,

“Didn’t you get my messages?” He asked, trailing kisses down your neck, his hands working on undoing your jeans. You huffed, slapping his hands away, replacing them with your own. You didn’t accept his reply. As if sending half assed messages through his PA was going to cut it. As if it had a chance of keeping your relationship going. Did he seriously expect the “he misses you” messages to combat the whispers you heard from friends and the press about his antics?

“You're a fucking prick.” You hissed, pausing momentarily to look at him. You elbowed him, trying to get him to give you some space. He stepped back, just the slightest bit. You pulled off your jeans kicking them away, he had done the same. “You know that's not what I meant” you said, annoyed at your own lack of self control. You could never resist him.

“What did you mean darling?” He whispered, voice laced with hurt and something else you couldn’t quite pin down. “Did you get lonely without me? Is that what it was? Did you need me to reassure you every night?” he said, a dangerous tone in his voice. This was taking a turn into dangerous territory. You dragged your nails down his chest, watching him flinch the slightest bit. Good. You were hurting him.

“At least I don’t hire people to keep my fucking bed warm” you shot back, pushing his chest once again. He grabbed your wrists, this time squeezing them the slightest bit, a warning. You both seemed to communicate through your eyes. You looked up at him, daring him to come up with some reply to your words. He stood firm however, looking at you as if to tell you that you both were the worst.

“Can we just fucking stop? For once” he said finally, surprising you. He ran his hands down your arms, resting them on your waist. “I’m tired” as if that was an excuse. You fought the urge to roll your eyes. You wanted to fight back, push him away and make him work for it. But it was as if seeing his exhaustion had triggered your own. You were tired from packing, the sheer effort of shoving down your emotions had drained you. You let out the breath you hadn’t realised you were holding, running your fingers down his chest in a vain attempt to soothe the red marks from earlier.

“Fine, but if you start again don’t blame me for responding to your bullshit” you said, looking up at him. Both your words had different meanings. It was as if you were promising not to bring up the past again, at least not tonight. It was a mutual understanding. He nodded, leaning forward and kissing down your neck.

“Stay here tonight” he whispered, voice cracking the slightest bit. Did he actually feel a hint of a sadness about you leaving? Perhaps you did. You didn't spend this long with someone and not develop some kinds of feelings for them. You ran your hands over his chest, lean muscle from constantly drumming almost every night.

“Why should I?” you challenged, deciding that he'd have to work for it. You weren't going to let him have you this easily. He gripped your waist, lifting you up, your back brushing up against the tiles. His intention was clear, and you scrambled to wrap your legs around his waist to keep yourself from falling. You were now just the slightest bit higher than him. He looked up at you, leaning in to kiss you slowly.

“Because I'm asking you to” he said simply as he pulled away, peppering kisses over your jaw. You had no reply for him, running your hands through his hair just letting him enjoy your body. So maybe you'd never see him again. You knew this probably was a bad decision, it would complicate things further. Your mind however, could not focus too busy focusing on the brush of his lips against the skin of your neck. Yes, you'd probably regret this later on but why shouldn't you live in the moment now? He seemed to take your silence as a no and immediately started to untangle himself from you, trying mask his disappointment. You wrapped your arms around his neck, cupping his cheeks and pulling his face so you could look into his eyes. You gently traced his jaw with your finger,

“I will” your voice barely a whisper. He wasted no time in pressing his lips to yours, gripping your waist once more. You ran your hand through his hair, the both of you trying to pull the other closer despite being pressed together already. The kiss was desperate, weeks of pent of frustration, anger and hurt focused in on one kiss. He pulled away and you took the chance to take his bottom lip between your teeth, tugging the slightest bit. He let out a small groan, pulling you into yet another kiss. You didn't know just how long you both were there. Your back ached the slightest bit from being pressed against the tiles for so long and the water had ran cold for a while now. He would pull away every so often to trail kisses down your neck, his fingers straying between your legs, stroking against your core just so before pulling away. Your soft moans getting drowned out by the sound of the water. He'd whisper in your ear, meaningless remarks like missing you and wanting you so badly. You returned the favour, not even completely sure what you whispered to him. Your hips rocked against him, making him groan into your neck

You clung to him desperately, running your hands down his chest. Your lips hurting the slightest bit from him constantly nipping at them. You pulled away, breathing heavy. You wanted him to finger you properly, or at least for him to do something. The constant teasing was driving you mad. He could sense it too, pressing a kiss to the one of the many forming hickey's he'd left on your neck.

“You want me darling?” He asked, as breathless as you were. His lips were red, yours were probably the same. You nodded, trying to grind on him to get your point across. He run a hand over your jaw, tucking your hair behind your ear. You expected him to say something about the past, dig back into the scars that were seared deep into your messed up relationship. You weren’t sure if you could handle it, you wouldn’t be able to go through with this if he brought up the past now. He reached out, turning off the shower. Well that was definitely not what you were expecting. You ran a hand over his cheek, leaning forward and kissing his jawline, down to his neck. He carried you out of the shower, stepping over your discarded clothes. Perhaps if you weren’t so wrapped up in him you’d worry about falling, or him slipping and the both of you falling. However, you weren’t in your senses, too busy nipping at that one place that never failed to make him pause and shiver. You grinned into his neck, licking over the skin. You felt the bed beneath your back, he must of made it then. Before you could say anything his mouth was covering yours again, kissing you with the same desperation as before.

“The bed” you started between kisses, “It’ll get” you needed to take a breath, “wet” you finished. He snorted, trailing kisses down your neck

“Sweetheart, there’s only one thing getting wet that concerns me and it’s not the bed” he said with a grin, rolling his hips against yours eliciting yet another moan from you. You held onto him arms wrapped hooked around his shoulders. He kissed you again, almost pushing you down into the pillow. His hands were tracing along the sides of your body making your shiver. His hips slowly rolled against yours and you could feel his hardening length against you. He reached down, between your bodies and lined himself up. He pulled away from the kiss, watching your face as he pushed into you. You didn’t need much prep, thanks to all the teasing he had done in shower earlier, but god. It had been a while and you were already on edge from before. He knew how to angle everything, thanks to your history together. He had only rolled his hips against yours once and you were writhing underneath him, a mess already. You pushed against his chest,

“Wait, wait” you panted, leaning your head back and closing your eyes. You tried to control yourself, to try and maintain some semblance of control. He took his opportunity to lean down and kiss underneath your jaw. Your chest rose and fell as you tried to get your breathing under control. You rolled his hips after a beat, making you arch up, breathing out his name. He let out a breathless laugh, kissing you once again.

His pace was languid, as if the both you had all the time in the world. He kept it slow, pressing kisses over your jaw and neck, adding to the marks he had already made previously. Almost as if he was trying to commit to memory the way your body felt underneath his. You ran your hands down his back, doing the same. It was unspoken, this agreement that it would be the last time. The two of you wanted to make it last. You tried not to let your mind drift, instead focusing on guiding him back to your lips, grinding your hips against his just so, making him moan. It was a slow bump and grind sort of pace, making you cry out as he would just brush against the spot that made your toes curl. You clawed at his shoulders, getting impatient. You wanted him properly now.

He seemed to get the message clear enough, gripping your hips and doing a particularly hard thrust. You groaned, dragging your nails down his shoulders. He panted in your ear, holding onto you tight as he pushed into you over and over again. You matched his pace, pushing up your hips to meet his. The two of you too caught up in chasing your own high to care about the other. You dragged your nails down his back, making him hiss and in turn, dig his own nails into your hips. Your climax was quickly approaching, and by the way he faltered in his pace you could tell his was as well. He reached down between your bodies, drawing quick circles on your clit. You clung to him as you came, muffling your cries into his neck. Your entire body arching up into his, drawing him in closer in a desperate bid to ground yourself. He had you quite literally seeing stars. You didn’t care about much else as you came, holding onto him tightly just riding out your high as he used your body to come to his own climax. He came a quick two thrusts later, crying out your name and slamming into you one final time. You both laid there for a while, just trying to level out your breathing and holding each other.

He was the first to move, rolling off you and laying by your side. You both cleaned yourselves up in silence, not wanting to say something that would ruin the mood. This was for the best. He laid in bed, a cigarette in hand. You crawled onto the bed with him, fitting yourself into side. He put out the cigarette turning to you again. Both of you had extremely little self control, going for another two rounds before falling asleep, tangled in the sheets.

You woke just as the sun was rising, an orange glow setting over the bedroom. You turned around to find Roger asleep, a hand splayed out on your stomach. You let yourself have a moment just to gaze at him, take his face. He looked like a child when he was asleep, free from the emotions he wore when he was awake. It took everything in you to not reach out and trace his features. Instead, you untangled yourself from the sheets. Your body ached from last night, it was bittersweet. You dressed quietly, casting one last glance at his sleeping form on the bed and walking out.

Maybe you should of left a note, but it would be too much for you. Right now you had to go or else you never would. The emotions from last night coming back to you, causing a dull ache to bloom in your chest. You grabbed the paints from last night, packing them away carefully and picking up the last remaining box of your possessions. He had enough to remember you by.

The painting you did was resting against the table leg. It was him, as he was when he was asleep, how you saw him through your eyes.

How you had loved him.

Maybe he’d throw it away or maybe he’d hide it.

Maybe he’d burn it.

Maybe he’d hang it up, cover it when he was home alone because the memories were too much.

Maybe Freddie found it once, and asked him where he got from.

Maybe his voice cracked when he answered.

Maybe.

#roger taylor #ben hardy #roger taylor smut #ben hardy smut #roger taylor imagine #ben hardy imagine #roger taylor x reader #ben hardy x readyer #you x roger taylor #you x ben hardy #bohemian rhapsody #bohrap #writings #roger taylor angst #ben hardy angst #ben hardy as roger taylor #borhap

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gumnut-logic · 6 years ago

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Gentle Rain (Part Nineteen)

Title: Gentle Rain

Warm Rain Series

Author: Gumnut

1 – 4 Mar 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: Sometimes it is so gentle, you don’t realise it is happening.

Word count: 3000

Spoilers & warnings: Virgil/Kayo, Scott/OC, Gordon/Penelope, spoilers for Warm Rain up to this point in the timeline.

Timeline: Six months after ‘The Proposal’, almost a sequel.

Author’s note: For @scribbles97 And here we are, the last chapter. There will be an Epilogue full of important stuff, I’ve started it. Also, those of you who follow me on Tumblr will have already read the first Tale of Gentle Rain – I kinda jumped the gun and didn’t want to officially publish it until I had finished this fic…which is pretty close now. So, there is more to come. Thank you ever so much to @scribbles97 who has helped me through this entire fic. Also thanks to @i-am-chidorixblossom and @the-lady-razorsharp who have also answered my frantic calls at various points in time – this fic was a nerve-wracker and I can be really insecure at times :D I would also like to give a massive thanks to all of you who have cheered me along the way. Your comments and feedback have kept me going. It makes it so much more purposeful to write if I know what I’m writing is being read and super bonus if it is being enjoyed. Thank you so, so much ::hugs you all madly::

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

Waking in hospital was not her favourite. She had done it many times in her thirty years and none of those events had been pleasant.

She could smell the hospital around her.

A frown. Vague memories of faces, words, it seemed like dreams, all leading back to that man from International Rescue.

A pair of blue eyes.

Scott Tracy.

She woke with his name on her lips.

And he was the first thing she saw.

“Em?” His voice was soft, tentative, and the hope in his face so strong.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” That smile of his still turned her insides to jelly. “How are you feeling?”

How was she feeling? A quick physical check and she found herself surprisingly good. “Good. I’m good.”

His smile widened.

A snuffled snort echoed through the room. She frowned. “What?”

Scott stepped back and she came eye to eye with Kayo sitting on a couch in the corner. The smirk on her face was amusing, particularly considering the man asleep in her lap. Virgil was snoring softly, curled up rather awkwardly on the too small sofa, still in his uniform. His baldric and toolkit were draped over the back of one of the chairs.

“Is he okay?”

Scott’s smile was reassuring. “He’s fine. Just tired. Stubborn idiot refused to go home.”

“Why?”

He frowned and she realised that he, too, was still in his uniform. “You don’t remember?”

Remember? A blink. “You caught me.”

“Yes, I did. But you were injured.”

Injured? Her brain didn’t seem to be functioning at full capacity. “How?”

His brow furrowed immediately. “You had a laceration on your leg. You lost a lot of blood.”

“I did?” She reached down and peered under the covers. Her left stump was swathed in bandages. Another frown and she forced her mind to think.

Scott speaking to her calmly, but firmly. Strapping her in. She had flown in a Thunderbird. Thunderbird One. Thunder was right. It had roared. So, so fast.

Then the hospital. Perth Hospital. Again.

Scott holding her. Her blood on his hands.

Worried blue eyes.

She shook herself. She must be on something. She was foggy.

“The bridge? The people?”

“We saved as many as we could.”

Virgil snorted again.

She frowned at the man as Kayo stroked his hair. A glance at Scott. “Why are you here?”

His eyes widened and his expression closed suddenly and considering their recent history she realised exactly how that might have sounded.

A blink. “No, you idiot. I’m talking about the broken arm, leg and ribs, not to mention the hole in your side that was stitched up a few weeks before Christmas.”

“Uh.” Now he looked uncomfortable, almost like a young boy who had just discovered he was in trouble.

Her foggy mind still wasn’t registering properly, but it still managed to calculate recovery times. She rubbed her eyes. “And what about Virgil? You know, the man who recently died.” In the corner of her eye she saw Kayo tense.

“It was necessary.” His stance straightened. “Besides, we had backup.”

“I noticed. But that didn’t seem to exclude either of you from the rescue.”

“There wasn’t time-“

“Exactly! You haven’t given either of yourselves enough time!”

Those blue eyes flared. “And what exactly did you expect me to do? Sit back while you fell off a bridge?”

And there it was, the blatant self-sacrifice that was going to kill these men. “You had back up! Let them do their job. Stop risking yourself.”

“I couldn’t leave you there.” It was quiet, but the words were firm.

She stared at him. “Your health is worth the risk, Scott.”

“Yours isn’t.” He glared at her. “I will not risk you.”

“Me? What about the other hundred or so people?”

His lips shut closed and he didn’t answer. Blue simply stared at her.

Her eyes widened. “You didn’t...”

“How could I not?” And suddenly he was so much closer.

“Oh, for goodness sake, kiss her already!” There was a thump and a groan, and they both looked up to see Virgil rolling off the couch. The man was obviously stiff as a board. “Have at it, I’m getting coffee.” And without a glance at them, he stumbled from the room, dragging Kayo with him. Kayo did grin back at both of them, however, her eyes sparkling.

Em frowned. “Are you sure he’s okay?”

Scott smiled. Oh god, that smile. “I thought you’d be familiar with Virgil Sans Coffee by now.” But he was leaning in and that smile touched her lips. As always, he was warm, his energy burning, reaching out and drawing her in. A brush of his tongue on hers and he released her. She didn’t want to let him go.

His smile became hesitant. “I believe I owe you an explanation.”

“Regarding your habit of flashing hot and cold?” God, honestly, she only wanted him to kiss her again. His hot was so hot. Screw it. “I’ve just had a major traumatic incident. I’m injured, and I’m pretty sure I’m high on pain meds. Can we save it for later? I’d really just like to you to kiss me again.”

His grin was as gorgeous as his smile, and god, when he wrapped his arms around her and took her lips with his, all the cares in the world could wait until later.

-o-o-o-

Em was only in the hospital for a few days, but in that time, she managed to have every Tracy march through her door plus Kayo and her uncle.

Uncle Crispin arrived with Sally Tracy along with Alan. Alan was looking a little green around the gills and the description he gave Kayo of what her uncle and his grandmother had been doing on the plane was enough to turn Em a little green in sympathy.

There were some things that you just didn’t want to know about the generations above you.

Uncle Crispin gave her the third degree on what had happened. This was quickly followed by him cornering Scott the moment he walked through her door on the way back from a meeting with the GDF.

“And what are your intentions with my niece, Tracy?”

“Kip!”

“Uncle Crispin!”

It was hard to tell who was more offended, Mrs Tracy or Em.

But Scott didn’t back down. He took a step towards her uncle and looked him in the eye. And he could. Not having seen Scott standing to his full height, Em hadn’t realised he was that tall. Though slimmer in youth, he could match every one of her uncle’s many inches. Wow. “And what are your intentions with my Grandmother?”

“Scott!” Okay, Mrs Tracy was the more offended.

Em glared at the both of them. “If you two gentlemen do not stop alpha strutting in my hospital room, I will ask both of you to leave.”

Scott’s response was immediate, probably feeling like he was already on probation and didn’t want to blow it. He backed down, but she didn’t fail to notice that he stepped immediately to her side. She rolled her eyes at that.

Uncle Crispin glared at him, but also backed off, stepping back beside Mrs Tracy.

“Now, Uncle Crispin, this is my business. While I appreciate your protectiveness, I find it rather ironic that you are attempting to protect me from the grandson of your paramour, and the leader of International Rescue, an organisation you greatly admire. You have a model Thunderbird and figurines, for crying out loud.” She turned to Scott, whose eyes were bugging out a little at her last statement. “And you, give your grandmother a break. Uncle Crispin is a great guy, I can promise you that. Stop snarling at him.”

Neither man commented, merely exchanging wary glances. God, men!

The tableau was interrupted by Virgil waltzing in with a get-well balloon tied to a blue teddy bear. Every face in the room turned to him. He stopped in his tracks and blinked. “Did I interrupt something?”

Em couldn’t help but smile. “No, nothing of importance.”

His eyes darted back and forth between his eldest brother, Uncle Crispin, Em and Kayo. “Okay, good, because Scott bought you a get-well bear.” He strode up and plonked it on the edge of her bed.

“I did?”

Kayo elbowed her brother. “Yes, you did, because that is what good boyfriends do when their girlfriends are in the hospital.”

There was a silence for a moment and Em stared at Virgil. The engineer smiled at her.

“Yes. Yes, I did and I do.” Scott said the words, but looked a little stunned.

Em bit her lip, but couldn’t help grinning at his expression. She picked up the bear. It had blue eyes and a perpetual smile. Reaching out a hand, she snagged Scott’s and pulled him towards her. “Thank you, Scott. It was a very kind thought.” And she was grinning up at him.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome.”

“Can I give you a thank you kiss?”

She couldn’t help but grin at the grin that immediately split his face. He bent down and, oh, oh, thank you. Thank you, indeed.

The bear was dropped to the bed covers and one hand was in his hair, the other on his shoulder feeling the flex of muscle through his shirt.

“My god, I’m surrounded by a bunch of lovebirds. Okay, that’s it, I’m making a point of being somewhere else for some time. Em, get better soon. Enjoy...my brother.”

Scott broke off their kiss just in time for her to see Alan shudder. Mrs Tracy grabbed the youngest before he could escape and said something quietly to him Em couldn’t hear before kissing his cheek. Alan rolled his eyes and stomped out of the room.

Em had a grip on Scott’s shirt and didn’t want to let go. Virgil was grinning ear to ear. Kayo had a smirk on her face. Mrs Tracy was smiling. Uncle Crispin, surprisingly, wasn’t glaring, but was thoughtful instead.

Scott was staring down at her in amazement.

She grinned. “Can I say thank you again?”

Virgil cracked up laughing.

-o-o-o-

Escaping from hospital did not equate to escaping from the Tracys. Kayo, despite being heavily involved into the investigation surrounding the bridge bombing, found the time to accompany her back to her apartment. Virgil had declared her hoverscoot deceased and promptly acquired her a new one. Her protest at the cost was met with a flat-eyed stare, and yeah, billionaires, money no object, yada-yada-yada.

It was a relief to slip back into a hoverscoot. The hoverchair from the hospital was just clunky and cumbersome.

While Virgil packed the car, she took the opportunity to sit down with Kayo for a moment in her own loungeroom. “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I can’t believe...” And she ran out of words.

“Em...” Kayo held up her hand. “Trust me, we are equal on all scores.” Virgil stuck his head in the door and grabbed two more of the small bags she had hastily packed and disappeared again. Kayo smiled just a little, her voice quiet as she stared after him. “We’re equal.”

“If there is ever anything I can do for either of you. Just ask.” She reached out and grabbed the woman’s hand. “Please.” She tried her best to covey how much it all meant to her.

Kayo turned to her and tilted her head a little. “If you do the same.” A small smile. “I hear rumour that is what friends do.”

Em couldn’t help but grin just a little. She felt like a teenager swapping friendship bracelets. The thought was just ridiculous.

But it meant so much more.

“Oh, I’ve got something for you.” Kayo reached into her pocket. “You should keep this on you at all times until Brains can set you up with something a little less conspicuous.” The security officer handed her the IR comm she had worn in New Zealand.

Em stared at it. “Are you sure?”

Kayo arched an eyebrow. “I’m sure.”

Em held it in her hands, the embossed IR logo catching the light. “That is something I’ve been meaning to ask. I left this behind in Wellington. How did you know I was on the bridge?”

“I planted a tracker in your hoverscoot.” There was no apology in Kayo’s expression.

Em stared at her. “What?”

“You became an IR concern. I needed to know where you were.”

“Why?”

“We are primarily a rescue organisation. However, our technologies are advanced and there are people out there who will do anything to get their hands on them. You know this, it has already affected your life drastically.”

“You think they might use me to get to you?”

Kayo shrugged. “Maybe. Possibly. There are a range of vulnerabilities in the equation. The tracker was to protect you and IR. In this case, we knew you were on the bridge and could act accordingly.”

“Is that what happened? Were they after me?” Her heart stuttered at the thought. To be honest, she had already considered some of the dangers involved. It was obvious. She had lost her family to a man who had wanted what the Tracys had.

Something flashed in Kayo’s eyes.

“No, a group has claimed responsibility. Lunatics. Don’t worry. Penelope and I are working on it. We’ll find them.” And Kayo stopped there, obviously unwilling to reveal anymore.

Her apartment door opened again and Virgil walked back in. “Anything else? I think I’ve about covered my rehab for today.”

Em mentally shook herself and smiled.

-o-o-o-

The stop at her apartment was exactly that, just a stop. She needed assistance and the doctors had only released her with the reassurance that she would have company.

So, bags packed and loaded, Kayo flew her back to Tracy Island, and she found herself in the same room she had spent Christmas. Cecil arrived to attend to her every need. The man was a like a clone of Gordon Tracy, though taller and skinnier. A ray of sunshine who never stopped smiling.

Scott bounced back and forth from the island every day, horribly busy, both with the GDF and the Thunderchick squads. Then a tsunami in Japan took every hand IR had available.

All the brothers came back from that pale and dead-eyed.

She caught him before he could escape to his room.

Even though she was prepared for it, it still hurt when he brushed her off. “Em, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. You should be resting.” His natural reflex was to lock it all up and process it alone, the same way he had when Virgil collapsed.

She hadn’t missed Virgil beelining to Kayo. Hadn’t missed her wrapping her arms around him, his head dropping to her shoulder in pure exhaustion. Her leading him away to their quarters.

Scott had glanced at them while removing his baldric and dumping it on the couch before throwing himself down beside it.

She steeled herself. “I’m fine. It is you who needs the rest.”

He looked up at her and the exhaustion and pain in his eyes broke her heart. Reaching out, she ‘scooted forward, dropping the ‘scoot directly onto the couch and took him into her arms, lying his head on her chest.

He resisted at first, his muscles tense, and she was forced to wonder how long it had been since this man had been comforted. She knew a good percentage of his history, had seen the care he doled out to his family, but who cared for the carer? Virgil, most certainly, but he would ever be younger.

Em would ever be older.

She pulled him tighter, running her fingers through his hair, and slowly his arms crept around her and returned the embrace. He didn’t fully relax, no doubt that would take time, but his breathing evened out and he rested his weight on her.

“I love you.” The words came out unbidden. She didn’t mean to say it, but it was said.

His reaction was immediate. He sat up, pulling away a little and staring at her.

Em felt the blood drain from her face. “I’m sorry, I-“

And he was kissing her, his strength pulling her close. His tongue begged entry and she let him in, as he crushed her against him. His cologne was overlaid with sweat and dirt, he desperately needed a shower and a shave, but he was in her arms and loving her in his own way.

She didn’t expect the words, not yet. If there was one thing she had learnt over the last few months, it was that Scott Tracy had a large family, but ultimately, he had been alone for a long time. As alone as she had been.

It was going to take time.

The kiss broke off, his breathing heavy, eyes glistening in the evening light. “Em...”

She reached up and placed a finger across his lips. “You don’t have to say anything.” He kissed her finger, his breath hot on her skin. “I will only ask you for one thing.”

His eyes widened in an expression very similar to the last time she had made such a demand of him.

“Ping me. Come to me. Seek me out.” Her fingers drifted into his hair and she leant forward to kiss his forehead. “I’m here. You are not alone. You don’t have to say anything, I won’t force you to talk, I promise. Just be...with me.”

It was all she could ask.

He stared at her for a moment, words bouncing about his eyes, but none finding his mouth. Eventually he drew her into his embrace, a soft kiss to her jaw, her cheek and her lips. There was no smile, no charm, no Commander of International Rescue, no big brother.

Just Scott Tracy.

He dropped his head to her shoulder, exhaustion in every line of his body. Em stroked his hair and just held on.

-o-o-o-

FIN.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #virgil tracy #scott tracy #kayo kyrano #em harris #virgil/kayo #scott/em #scott/oc #warm rain #gentle rain

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weheart-dianelockhart · 6 years ago

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So Little Time: Part Four

I’m back!! Here is part four (if you guys still remember what happened in the other chapters). The others are on my page and I will tag them with “so little time.” ENJOY!

With her stamina slowly returning, Diane began to resume small tasks. This particular morning, she turned her attention to making coffee. Kurt sat at the table facing the bay windows that filled the apartment with light. It was Saturday, a particularly chilly one, in late November. Diane managed to keep warm in one of Kurt’s flannels as she carried the two mugs to the table. She lingered at the doorway watching her husband read the paper. Closing the distance, she set the two mugs down and placed her hands on his shoulders letting her fingers drift up and down his arms. Tilting his head back, he looked up at her tousled hair surrounding her face.

Kissing his forehead, Diane took a seat beside him, propping her legs up onto his lap. Kurt folded the paper and removed his reading glasses.

“Thank you for the coffee.” He sipped and rubbed her feet with his free hand.

“How are you feeling?” He didn’t want to come across too pushy, but he’s been watching her like a hawk for the past two weeks since the accident. The doctors informed him that there was always a risk of infection which had put Kurt’s attention on high alert.

“Sore.” She pulled the paper toward her and put on his glasses, having left hers in the bedroom.

“Did you see they still haven’t found him,” she continued, referring to her attacker.

“I was just reading about it. I wouldn’t be surprise if he fled to Canada.” His hand rubbed up and down her lower leg.

“Well, if they can’t find him, I would rather he be in a different country than still in Chicago.”

Kurt didn’t reply, silently agreeing with her.

The couple drank their coffee, Kurt gazing out the window, and Diane solemnly reading the articles. This vaguely resembled normalcy for the pair. Enjoying their Saturdays at this very table discussing headlines, cases, or telling stories. In most cases, they would end up back in bed or on the couch (if they couldn’t wait long enough to make it to the bedroom) Except this was anything but normal.

“I need to go into the office today.” Her eyes didn’t leave the paper, knowing she would be met with a worried gaze.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She lowered the paper, but continued to read.

“You aren’t even looking at me.” He chuckled.

Flashing her eyes toward him, she squeezed the paper, “See!” She folded the paper and quickly got up from the table.

Turning his neck, he continued to chuckle, “I just don’t think you need to push yourself until—“

Diane clutched the door frame to steady herself. Kurt jumped up and grabbed her arm as she leaned into him.

“—until you stop taking the antibiotics.”

Diane kept silent, giving Kurt a hard side eye and a light elbow in the ribs. Picking up on her annoyance, he attempted to offer a solution.

“Why don’t I drive you?” Her eyes brightened, the dizziness had passed, and she headed for the stairs to get dressed. Pausing, she backtracked and placed a kiss on Kurt’s cheek.

Kurt knew he was not the cause of her annoyance. He was careful not to hover, an instinct he knew would drive her up a wall. Her grumpy demeanor came from wanting to get her life back to normal. She had remained the calm one durning all the mess and by taking things one day at a time, she was able to keep her worry at bay. Her assailant was no where to be found, which meant he could potentially hurt her again. But, what truly kept her up at night was the fear that he might go after Kurt. The man wanted her to suffer, he had said so himself, and she was terrified that he would hurt the one thing she loved most.

—-—

The short drive to the firm didn’t allow much conversation. Diane spent most of it on the phone reassuring a client that she would take care of this and that. At least that is what it sounded like from Kurt’s prospective. Pulling into the parking garage, Diane ended the call and turned to Kurt.

“So, I was thinking that you could come up with me. I’ll only be about 45 minutes and I could use your advice on a certain case.” He nodded simply, eager to be of assistance.

Only later would Diane reveal that she just wanted to keep him in her sight, as silly as it seemed. Plus, she truly did need his expertise.

The pair stepped into the elevator and found themselves alone. Saturdays eliminate the crowds that are usually flocking to the elevator at this hour. She slipped her fingers into his palm. He glanced at her face to rule out another dizzy spell, but her eyes were calm. Almost normal.

Two men in suits entered the elevator on the 13th floor. One carried a briefcase and spoke loudly into a phone while the other gave a friendly nod to Kurt. The man prevented any eye contact with Diane.

With a ding, the elevator opened and Diane stepped into the firm’s lobby. A hush fell over the room as people turned in Diane’s direction, surprised to see that she had returned. Adrian stepped around the corner, briefcase in hand and coat on, as he spoke loudly into his cell phone. As his eyes fell on Diane, he paused.

“I’m gonna have to call you back,” he dropped his briefcase to the floor and raised his arms, “Diane!” He shouted and the room erupted into applause.

Her face flushed. She gave a meek smile as Adrian gave her a tentative hug, careful not to disturb her abdomen. Maia and Marissa came speeding around the corner, both enveloping her in a hug.

“It’s so good to see you.” The two women gushed.

Before she could respond, Adrian intervened, “I will be back in an hour. I am so late for court. The emergency injunction for the Tracy Scott case.” He gave Diane a kiss on the cheek and boarded the elevator.

The fuss subsided and Diane made her way to her office, only to be met with a sea of flowers.

“They haven’t stopped coming,” Maia said as the four of them stood in the doorway gawking at the amount of greenery.

“Well, first thing, we clear out the greenhouse. I just stopped by to pick up a few files and have Kurt look over the Patterson murder.” She slowly maneuvered through the forest as Marissa removed the vases from her desk.

“Kurt, could you give me a hand?” Marissa practically begged as she attempted to carry three large vases. He picked up a few more and followed her into the hallway.

“I heard about the Moseley case. Congratulations.” Diane leaned on the edge of her desk, but after a chill ran through her spine, she moved to sit in her chair.

“Oh, well you pretty much left us with the strategy. We just got lucky with the evidence, that’s all.” Maia brushed off the complement.

“Maia,” Diane took her hand, “You did a good job. Thank you.”

Maia looked down and smiled, “You’re welcome.”

Diane turned to the file cabinets and began digging through them.

“So how are you really? I know I saw you a few days ago, but you seem to be in good spirits.”

Diane turned and sighed. She wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to be feeling at this point. There was physical pain that was a constant reminder, but she had been focusing all her energy on recuperating.

“I think I’m ok.” Maia squinted in confusion.

“You think?”

“I think Kurt is more rattled than I am. He’s being so careful not to get on my nerves it’s almost comical.” Diane, having found the desired file, sat back down in the chair.

“But how are you?”

Diane dug deep, finding that emotional spot that hurt worse than her wound. She sucked in air through her teeth and looked up at Maia. If she hadn’t spent the past few nights silently crying in fear, she would have broken down right there. But there were no more tears for the moment.

“I’m terrified.”

Finally speaking the words out loud, she felt a small weight lift off her shoulders as she continued.

“I can’t lose him.”

“Kurt?”

Diane nodded slowly.

“What makes you think you’d lose him?” Maia has never seen her godmother this distraught.

“The assailant said he wanted me to suffer like he did. His wife died,” she paused, “They haven’t found him yet and until they do I think I will be a nervous wreck.”

Maia was at a loss for words. She reached for Diane’s hand and she gratefully accepted the gesture. Maia noticed the bruises from the multiple IV lines in her hand.

“But I would never say that to him. I couldn’t.”

Her office door sung open as Marissa and Kurt walked in, both wore solemn expressions.

“What happened?” Diane asked, looking back and forth between the two.

“Oh. Nothing. Why?” Marissa forced a smile.

Diane was the first to break the awkward silence that had followed with a long exhale.

“Well then. Let’s begin with Patterson.”

Kurt and Marissa glanced at each other. They couldn’t tell her just yet.

#diane lockhart #kurt mcveigh #mchart #the good fight #the good wife #so little time #christine baranski #christina perri #part four

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the-daylight-here · 6 years ago

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helping a friend post escape

||this is pretty much entirely self-indulgent. I have like 5 requests I should be getting to, but it’s good to stop and take a break for a while and write what I want to. Hints of platonic yandere!reader. i hate asmr stuff but i partly was inspired by easton and emmaryasmr's “male yandere watches you sleep” three-parter. that literally gave me chills.

You’d found your old friend on your doorstep, bruised and battered, a desperate gleam in their eyes. You could hardly speak. You hadn’t seen Lee in months, and the first time you did, they didn’t resemble the cheerful, awkward photographer from before. You hoisted the dark-haired person to their feet and dragged them into your apartment.

For the first week, they didn’t speak. Mostly they whimpered and choked out sobs; never was it words.

“Sorry for being a burden,” they mumbled as you placed a plate of food in front of them. You looked at them, and their amber-colored eyes looked sad and broken. You smiled gently and hugged them. “You’re okay. I don’t mind helping you.”

They didn’t speak again for the rest of the day.

You felt really upset. Lee was honestly one of the sweetest people you’d ever met. Weird and sarcastic, yeah. Grouchy and sleep deprived? Absolutely. But under a rougher exterior was a person who just wanted to share things to make people’s days a little bit better. Who turned them into this shaking, silent, scared shell?

Another week passed, and they slowly started opening up again. You were cuddling with them on the couch, watching a movie. But there was a question that was scraping around the inside of your skull.

“Hey, Lee. I don't mean to pry, but… what happened?”

They looked at you, and then back at the screen. “Just a stalker situation that got really out of hand.”

“Can you say more, or would that be pushing my luck?”

“Please, (Y/n), not now. I'm still having nightmares about it.”

“It's not going to get better if you ignore it either.”

At this point, the two of you had separated, looking at one another. On one hand, you were glad they were talking. On the other, they refused to speak about what happened. You didn't like pushing too hard. You thought you might break them again if you went to hard, but it was driving you crazy.

They exhaled softly and curled up. A sign they were typically done talking.

“There was this guy who snuck into my room at night, apparently and watched me sleep. One night, he tripped over something and woke me up, so I kept my window locked and bolted at night after that. Three days later I was shoved in a trunk… I don't want to remember the rest.”

Lee was crying, and you hugged them, rubbing their back. They didn't hug back. You didn't blame them.

“Thanks for telling me. If that bastard comes back, I'll kick his ass,” you whispered, half-jokingly. It really upset you that Lee had to deal with that firsthand. You wish you could have done something to put their nerves at ease, but they didn’t let you baby them any farther. They started picking up slack around the flat and looking for a job, preferably at a quiet bookstore or something like that.

After a few months, they were almost normal. Sure, they were more cautious, but they were cracking jokes, holding down employment, and generally a more sociable person. You decided to go to the Renaissance Faire together. You didn't dress up, but your friend did.

They jokingly poked your toe with their staff and grinned. “C'mon, lighten up. We haven't been to the Renfaire together since we were in middle school.”

“I know, I just wish you'd rely on me more sometimes.”

“I'm an adult too. And I'd be a shitty friend if I didn't try to give back the support you gave me.”

You smiled and hugged them. Before the hour was out, it was your turn to get tickets. Lee flicked their hood up and stepped behind you after seeing the employee in the booth, grabbing onto your wrist. You looked at them for a minute. “Sorry about that,” you apologized. “Two tickets please, sir.”

The employee handed you the tickets with a smile and you two managed to enter after.

You two enjoyed your day goofing off, and Lee had even impressed a few people with knife throwing and archery skills. You knew they learned that type of thing merely because they were a huge nerd, but it made them look cool.

“So what was that at the ticket booth?” you inquired on the way home.

“He looked like the stalk— kidnapper.”

“Yeesh. Okay, that makes sense. At least you didn't have a full-on breakdown this time.”

“Thankfully.”

#yandere blog #yandere imagines #yandere reader #ocs #afgjjhkjjk #yeet

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asalegend · 7 years ago

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Note to self.

This is a note to myself. About her. About Martha. God Damn, it hurts. Y'all have no idea. Let me tell you this story from the beginning dumb ass. So that when you do doubt it, you remember everything. You met Martha in March, while all that’s dumb shit down there with Mel and natalie and even Naomi was going on. And you liked her since then. There was something about it and you just didnt know what it was. And she liked you, and you knew it after that day she kissed you goodbye. And from there it happened. You took her to the movies and for ice cream. Then you took her for wings 3 days later on was an actual date, where you both knew you were interested and you both were already invested. And it was super fun, and amazing ( side note, she fucked some random dude that night after she told you she was Home and asleep… But you found that out later) and thats how it went. On september 23rd, y'all had a real ass date, and you lost your virginity to her, and that might not sound important now, vut remember that it was super important to you Then. Remember that she told you she would only be with you exclusively if you had sex with her, even though you were technically a couple. Dont you ever forget that she literally, fucken forced you to have sex. That she threatened with pretty much cheating on you .Then she spend 3 days living with you at home while your family was out. And You both had a huge fight about Monica, and what she meant to you. And she wanted to break up with you, and incase your worthless ass forgot. You got on your knees and begged her to stay, and you told her you would never lie to her again. And guess what bro, you didnt. Not about important stuff. Not about being loyal to her. Not about how much you fucken loved her, and I’m proud of you for that, and you should be too. And remember that same fucken night, some girl text you. Asking your for dick pics and sending you fucken pictures so you’d go fuck her. And yeah nigga you were tempted as fuck, and yeah nigga you texted back. But then it hit you, the time you had just spent with Martha, and how amazing that felt. And how incredible she was with you. And you sent that bitch a text that said you had a girlfriend, and you loved her (even if you hadnt told her yet) the next weekend, was pricillas birthday/Halloween, y'all went out to tipsy, and Martha got fucken hammered. So hammered that she couldnt go home. So you called your mom and begged her to let Martha stay. You told her youd sleep on the couch or whatever. And that night, Martha told you how much she loved you, and how by not telling her you love her you were hurting her. And you realized what your fear had done to you, so you decided to deal with it. You both fell asleep and that morning you looked at her and said “Martha, tu eres mi Amor…. Te amo mi Vida” and you meant it. You meant it more that you meant it when you said it to larissa or Naomi. And things were going good, you had broken up with her over dumb shit, but the next day you were back together. And you realized that you were in a real relationship, so you became and adult about it. But she always held that against you, even if she had broken up with you because you lent her 20 bucks and was petty. Then one day, while you were in the car and she was having a panic attack she took it out on you. She told you that She could cheat on you whenever she wanted, she bragged about all the guys who hit her up, and how she could fuck one whenever. She told you that you would never fucken know if She did it too( she knew since day one…, what Naomi and larissa had done to you)…. She made you shake in fear, she made you beg her never to cheat…. She broke you emotionally… Then laughed and said to never break up with her over dumb shit again…. She thought it was a joke…. Exploiting your fears and insecurities. Then, it was holiday time… And terry slammed you with hours cause you were kicking ass… And she was slammed with hours… And you started to notice how much she like jose…. How she always said he was super cute and how shed get weak in the knees…. And you tried explaing to her that stuff was avout to get tough. You were working 22 hours a week at pho. 30 at LC and going to 4 classes in the mornings…. And she was working 40+ and getting out at 10pm. You didnt have time to work out or anything. And what little time you had, you gave to her, and all she wanted… It seemed was sex… But you were tired… Your were stressed…. You were exhausted…. And uncomfortable with how much she Needed it… You wanted a hug and she just wanted to fuck. So, you were going soft…. And she made fun of you because if it…. And she made it worse. Then, the second week of December she went with you to the lc party… And you never loved her more. You bought matching sweaters, and you were so deeply inlove with her, you thanked god ever day for blessing you with her in your fucken life… And a few days later, she went to her party, wearing your sweater. She told you “nilda said no couple baby, sunny is gonna give me a ride back, I wont drink ok” and you dropped her off… And you we’re worried… You could feel something was wrong… Very wrong…, you didn’t sleep that night, and she kept sending you pictures…. Telling you what she was doing… And the next day, she showed up at work, that moring she told you she left her phone in Jose’s car…. But, you thought sunny was giving her a ride. And that day she fought with you, and complained and tried pushing you to leave her…. And you could feel it in you soul that she did something…. Then you kept going. But things were different… She didnt care about you the same anymore… Fast forward past xmas (which was amazing tbh, she spent it with you and gave you great presents.., and you gave her everything she wanted) and your taking off xmas lights. Martha is complaining about how she’s itch and had a rash. Then has sex with you like its nothing( btw, her and jose were still besties here. Dont forget that)….. A few days later, you get a call to work, its her crying… She has hpv… (She knew that rash wasnt normal…. Yet, she still did it with you) and there goes your life…. 3 days later, its your birthday.you have an incredible time at LC, and when you pick her up she looks amazing, and she gives you a big gift she made, the basket…. And it almost made you cry… Because it was beautiful… And she got fucked up at your party….she insulted your mother and embarrassed you infront of your friends… But that wasnt the worst part… That night, you laid her down to bed and you saw her phone. And you knew…. You knew you had to check it, your heart was screaming it….. And whatd you find out…. She cheated on you… Tge night of her party, she fucked jose. And she was bragging about it to alex, she even sent her pictures of him and went off about how good it felt, how many times she came how big (or small in this case… That’s the only win you got that night) he was. And you woke her up, you confonted her about it. And she got violent, she pushed you and punched your and scratched you begging you to stay… And all you felt was cold and emptiness. And you took her to work the next day and disappeared. A few days later, she had her LEEP and texted you, and you stood by her that day even though you were hurt. And she went and saw you and you both talked… And you put your pride aside and got back with her, no matter how much it fucken hurt, no matter how much your friends and family saw you suffer and tried helping you…, because you loved her. But she started to poison you, against your family. And she was selfish. But you stood by her during the hpv. You didnt leave her alone, you helped her and you helped her move her life foward, you did her taxes and helped her with school programs and her diet and everything she needed for her hpv. All while you bottled up the fact that you thought you were gonna die because she got you sick(your fine now thankfully, and the doctor cleared you and told you that it was super lucky)…. And then your family forced you to leave her, in their way. And you did, and she got violent again… But you were dying, everytime you saw her… You saw what she did… What she described to Alex…. You saw that she didnt love you…, and you left her there, the next day she left to San Antonio. You were fine for a month… Then in April she reached out to you, and you let her in. She was “different” and you went for it. But this Martha was selfish, this Martha made you do things for her, this martha tried turing you against your family. This Martha didn’t support you ever, this martha believed that it was your fault things went bad, because you told your family she cheated. She called you a coward for how you dealt with the pain she caused you. And she started tons of problems with you family through facebook…. This Martha, was the worst one…. This one… Abused your love and made you feel like the bad guy…. This Martha…. Was a monster. And then Angie came to town, and gave you the examples of how a couple fights together. Because at the moment, going to san Antonio for her birthday was going to be a huge mistake at home. You never had peace at home, and every day you fought with you family about her. And she wouldnt support you, she would leave you to burn. So you told her, you couldnt go with her for her birthday…, and she broke up with you. So you left. Until last week…. Last week, after 2 months of her texting you, you broke…. You reached out and told her how much you missed her. You explained that you were afraid to love her cause of how much she hurt you…. And she told you you were the only one still, and how much she loved you and how she only thought about you. But it was all lies dude…. She was fucking Justin, who was her best friends man and baby daddy. And she messed around with other too…. She didnt even last a month with out doing it…, and yeah, she came clean after she build you up with lies and made you hope again…. And then she broke you one more time…, the last time remember that. Because remember that you werw going to move in with her this time..,, that she was coming back to be with you…. Remember how much you were going to risk based on her lies…. Remember… That all this… Is why you cant love her.., and it’s why your not gonna send that text, or make that call…. Because this^ is enough pain… All this,.. Is not love….

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lueluepanue-blog · 7 years ago

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"You're not perfect either."

This is what youd always try and point out to me almost every argument. This is what you tried to point out to me post breakup when I tried to get you to once see you were wrong. The thing is, everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect. The thing is, is theres a difference between what I “Did” to you and you to me. Yes. I was messy. Yes, I could have cooked more often. And then there’s the “controling” card you try and throw out as well. Controlling even though I endlessly gave you what you wanted or id never hear the end of it. And even if it bothered me inside-such as having sleepovers with girls youve slept with, or whatever it was that was “controlling”- I gave you what it was that you wanted cause my feelings were always underneath yours. The thing is, is i didnt pinch or squeeze you as hard as I could if I heard something or you said something I didnt like in front of friends and even family. I didnt get drunk and when wed get home id be throwing up or lose the soul in my eyes black out and choke you- (More then one occasion.) I didnt complain about everything you do for me. Wether it was the clothes i bought you, the phone my grandmother bought you, trips Id planned, dinners I bought, where we lived (especially with my family, even though we were homeless), trying to cheer you up constantly cause you were always mad or bothered by something… you were never grateful, always had a negative comment, always a flaw with what was being done for you. Nothing was good enough. I didnt take my anger out on you day in and day out. If you were grumpy you made sure I was grumpy too. And I’d try and reverse the anger by making you smile over and over. But youd get meaner and meaner hurting me and my feelings. I didnt hurt your feelings constantly or shun you away from kisses and hugs. And when my feelings were hurt and you were clearly in the wrong itd take me a good 3 hours to go through why you owe me and apology and what you did wrong. And even still most times you saw nothing wrong with your behavior in which id finally break down with panic attack telling you that you continuously hurt me and that you needed to change only for you to finally say sorry after crushing me down to the point where sorry should have been said so long ago it didnt mean anything. You said sorry too late too many times. Sometimes if I were lucky you’d acknowledge you knew you had a problem and that you couldn’t help it but that you loved me and if I loved you id put up with it. Making me believe it was okay for someone who says they love someone to treat them like that and that i had to basically be okay with how i was treated. Remember I was told by you I couldn’t drive the car for two years. Yet bitched cause you had to drive me everywhere. Remember how we always listened to your music? And not mine? Cause if it were something I wanted to listen to, or watch on tv you acted rude and huffed and puffed because you wanted to listen to your music. I never was continuously late to pick you up from work. Or forgot you cause I was too drunk at the bar. (Happened one time, regardless, you were 2 and half hours late and drunk at the bar before you even realized I was done with work). You were a nice drunk. Except for when you were alone with me. I never said things to embarrass you or upset you in front of family and friends on purpose if i were mad. I never left you during our relationship and fucked an ex and you at the same time telling both i loved them. I never kissed your mom drunk, or made out with people at the bar drunk then make an excuse for it. I never blatantly hit on your mom in front of you. I never pushed you in front of your mother either. I never stopped giving you attention, or stopped wanting to play. I NEVER. It goes on and on. There’s a difference between things people should work on to improve their relationship and straight up mental and physical abuse. “You act like I beat you.”-your words. Okay so because you didnt kick the shit out of me its not abuse? Pinching? Slapping? Choking? Squeezing? “You act like I did it all the time”- your words. Okay so because it didnt happen everyday the damage it caused my heart and mind is irrelevant? And then there’s the emotional abuse. Putting me down about being bisexual. Questioning me to the point no matter what answer i gave it upset you even if it were the truth. Calling me a whore. (Even though you slept with more people) ….**makes alot of sense*** telling me im disgusting over my past or shame me. Telling me i need to stop eating cause I was getting “big”. Justifying hurting my feelings in any shape or form making me believe i was worthless. In what right mind does someone get to hurt someone’s feelings and then get mad at them for getting upset about it. Oh dear my love I could go on and on. Mentally id rather take 12 punches to the face than deal with the mental side of abuse. So, finally one day I gained courage to leave the woman im in love with. I told you itd happen eventually over and over. That id take everything and end it. And that would make you mad. Shame on me for giving countless opportunities to turn everything around grow old with me. Shame on me for trying and fighting for as long as I could and finally breaking from the pain. So I left. And instead of saying to yourself I could have my home and family back if I changed my behavior towards my fiance, you were mad cause I took it away. And even still, I offered to help you out. I said all we needed was some space and for you to get back on track and wed be fine. But no. I was still the monster. I was a “whore” for sleeping with people who at the time hadnt even been slept with. I hadnt even slept with anyone and you were sending nudes and sexting on day three or four. I was a bitch and a cunt for leaving you with “nothing.” Instead of fixing the problem, you pushed me farther away. You were drinking every night. Threatening your life and threatening to crash my car. Name calling. Doing everything opposite of what a person would do if they were to actually fix things. So I started taking away my help. Stopped talking to you as often cause I didn’t want to be put down any longer. Everytime I tried after breaking up youd lash out and be mean and then clam down and tell me youd fix it. Except I had heard it a million times over. Heaven forbid i wanted you to prove for once you meant it. Once I became silent waiting for you, you started the statuses. Degrading me. Making me seem crazy. Making it look like it was me all along. And i wanted to kill myself. How could one person put me through so much and then make the public believe I was the one in the wrong. Then I got the apologies after you knew deep down you were gonna kill me. Then I got the kisses when i saw you again. Then I got the care and love i wanted when i saw you. But it seemed fake. I was so used to you hurting me i didnt believe you when you briefly gave me love those couple of times. After I wanted to die i was so numb and stripped of myself i slept with others. I started to lose hope in us. I wanted attention. And love. I wanted to feel anything other than what I was. And i closed you out still hoping youd eventually come knocking on my door to lift me up and kiss me telling me it was all gonna be okay now. Hoping you would have fought for us. Fixed your mistakes. Hoping id be able to have my family back together and that you truly loved me. After sleeping with them you sort of tried still. New girl was already relevant in your life at this point too. I wasn’t concerned though. You were giving me somewhat of what i wanted with her there. Kisses. Misses. Got a job. I thought you were finally getting it. I was ready for you to come home. And then you cut me cold. Told me I could have had you. Told me it was because I slept with others even though you were loving on me after that. Even though you were sleeping around too. Told me I couldn’t have you and it was my fault. Told me you were moving on with her. Little did i know you were with her long before my knowledge and still giving me false hope. According to facts she was your girlfriend may 11th just wasnt publicly announced. It took you only from the last week of march to the second week of may to forget all about 2 years of family and someone who really loved you. 7 weeks to move on. Meanst the whole time bitched at me for “moving on and seeing others” when im the one who stayed single and faithful to our family and youre the one who moved on. The one who moved on when they were the one who caused the problem. How humiliating for me. How unloved and forgotten and betrayed I felt. I had faith in you and us even after all the pain i was caused and I got shit on. How disappointing, I thought our love was real. I thought instead of finding a new girl to love youd wipe the tears from the one whos done everything for you, your family, and fix the broken. How unimportant and small i felt. How worthless and not speacial you showed me I was. And then I wanted to die all over again. My whole belief in anything and everything was crumbled. I spent two years trying to make it work for us. Gave everything I had in me to fight for us. Meanst while getting fucked in the head and hurt repeatedly. And i wasn’t even worth one attempt. I begged for you to realize. Begged for us. Begged for you to realize I was suffocating and the pain was all so much dying would have been easier. Mentally after everything i was fucked up in the head. Who wouldn’t Be? That’s when you told me “I need professional help and that I was sick.” Dear God, but boy oh boy you never saw you were the one who caused it. You never saw you should have fixed it. All you saw was me breaking down and that it was “my fault” cause I could have had you. I was nothing to you anymore. My screams for you to come home were just annoying noise and I “wasn’t” your baby anymore so you let me burn. And you watched. “You weren’t there for me when i wanted to die”-your words. Heaven forbid i told you i want a break and for once let you live with what you did. Thinking youd take me seriously about our relationship. You never did. You let it slip away. “Why would you wanna be with me if it was that bad and we always fought.”-your words. The answer is simple. I love you. I love all the good and the bad. I love the way you were when you weren’t treating me horribly. I even love your mental illness. However, I don’t love abuse. Mental or physical. I always told you I don’t want to change who you are, I want you to change how you treat me. And that was too hard for you. You didnt want to. And then I realized after all this you hadn’t fixed anything. You quit your job. You blamed me for us not being together. You got a new girl. And you ran away from your problems. All along the only reason I wanted you back was for the sake of I was seeing some improvements. And boy was I wrong after being shit on. Now i don’t know if you ever truly loved me or are capable of love. If you can do it to me- someone who loved you truly so much and did everything for you who you say you love- then youll do it to anybody, anyone. You see, I know you so well, I was the one person who saw your flaws knew to put you in your place, continued to try for us regardless, and at the end of the day still loved you and knew deep down you were better than it, and had faith in you even still. How sad to have let me get to this point. To push me aside. To disregard everything ive done, and spend the rest of life without me. And yet id still let you come back and always will. BECAUSE I DON’T GIVE UP ON PEOPLE OR LOVE JUST BECAUSE IT’S TOUGH. And maybe youll never realize, and maybe you will. And if you do, youll know what you have to do to truly make it right. And if you dont, that is a damn shame for you. And for myself.

Tonight I put these words visibly and clearly for my love. For myself. For us. For family.

I love you more than you will ever be able to comprehend. I miss you with every cell in my body. I see you in everything and everywhere I go.

However, I am strong. Please know its okay to be wrong

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luccy-eats-time · 7 years ago

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I walked into the room, and there you were. Sitting on couch opposite me. We locked eyes my stomach filled with every kinda flying insect imaginable. My heart raced so fast I could feel it thumping against my rib cage and at moments I tought it might just break the bones in the way. My palms began to sweat and I soon had to rub them on my pants keep them from getting too clammy. I felt like my soul had been touched, not just my heart or my head. When we locked eyes I swear my soul flew. Thats when I knew you were my “The one”. Every inch of my being felt it. And I wanted it from the start. After we spoke you has said you has felt the same thing. Yes, I was more than broken between my mind, my body and my surroundings. I knew I was hard to love still and it would be harder for you than me to stick around. I knew I shouldnt have, but I did. I didnt know how broken you were though, and the more I fell in love with you everyday the more I saw the broken pieces. I helped you day by day pick them up, hold them in place, and let them heal. I loved you with all of my soul. You brought me yourself and the wonderful family you had. You made me want all of it, made me want to mother your child, want to start a life with you and want to grow with you. But as I healed myself slowly and helped you heal, every piece of myself I had worked so hard to put back you chipped away at again. Sometimes just small little specks, just enough to make a sound or mabye a small piece of glass or two. Sometimes it was half of the piece. Sometimes it was a whole one. I dont discredit you for what you also did to help me heal as well, you did help me to take things on less anxiously, on a clear note and made me feel more than less safe. You did cheer me on when I needed it and you were there when no one else was. But after you would do those things you would chip, chip, chip away at those pieces that you just helped. Youd say things or do things that people wouldnt do someone they love. No I wasnt an angel, yes I fucked up. I can admit that, and I know that isnt or wasnt enough for you then. You say the “past is the past” when I say this but thats never how it is, or was. Youd hold things over my head from years ago before you even knew me. Youd bring up my past experiences with my mental illnesses and toss them at the floor infront if my feet. Youd pull every stick out of the pile from the past you could get your hands on, but suddenly on this topic its just “the past is the past”? “The past is just the past” isnt what you say when you get angry or upset or anything with me. The past is suddenly the present and Im a piece of garbage. Even things I hadnt done that you convinced yourself I had I was garbage for. The past is suddenly relevant or present when it benefits you. The past is not the past when I can’t get the person I loves voice telling me the horrid things they said over and over again. The past is not the past after the things that been done. We just need time to individually grow before we are ment to be. To see if things can be worked on, fixed and if our self repair changed anything. I wish it were different. Because you are my soul mate. And I know that is why I am having such a hard time letting you go even though I know its best for both of us. I still have all the pictures on my phone, I look at them every night. The ones of us, the ones of us and the kids. I hold my stomach every night and cry. I wonder if our bean is in there and pray that it is. The same way I did when we were sleeping side by side, your hand over mine on my stomach. The only differance is, then I wasnt crying because I was alone and missing sinething. I still want everything so bad. I want you, I want the kids, I want our family, I want pur future. But Im not sure if “The past is the past” can work within any of this situation anymore. I dont know how something so beautiful and joyful twisted to what it did. I wish it hadnt happened. Because then right now I wouldnt be holding my stomach, alone in bed, crying, missing you, angry with you, in love with you, and wanting nothing more than to have things go back to the way they were. But I dont have a time machine, and niether do you.

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Sickening, gruelling or frightful: how doctors measure pain | John Walsh

The Long Read: Suffering is difficult to describe and impossible to see. So how can doctors tell how much it hurts?

One night in May, my wife sat up in bed and said, Ive got this awful pain just here. She prodded her abdomen and made a face. It feels like somethings really wrong. Woozily noting that it was 2am, I asked what kind of pain it was. Like somethings biting into me and wont stop, she said.

Hold on, I said blearily, help is at hand. I brought her a couple of ibuprofen with some water, which she downed, clutching my hand and waiting for the ache to subside.

An hour later, she was sitting up in bed again, in real distress. Its worse now, she said, really nasty. Can you phone the doctor? Miraculously, the family doctor answered the phone at 3am, listened to her recital of symptoms and concluded, It might be your appendix. Have you had yours taken out? No, she hadnt. It could be appendicitis, he surmised, but if it was dangerous youd be in much worse pain than youre in. Go to the hospital in the morning, but for now, take some paracetamol and try to sleep.

Barely half an hour later, the balloon went up. She was awakened for the third time, but now with a pain so savage and uncontainable it made her howl. The time for murmured assurances and spousal procrastination was over. I rang a local minicab, struggled into my clothes, bundled her into a dressing gown, and we sped to St Marys Paddington at just before 4am.

The flurry of action made the pain subside, if only through distraction, and we sat for hours while doctors brought forms to be filled, took her blood pressure and ran tests. A registrar poked a needle into my wifes wrist and said, Does that hurt? Does that? How about that? before concluding: Impressive. You have a very high pain threshold.

The pain was from pancreatitis, brought on by rogue gallstones that had escaped from her gall bladder and made their way, like fleeing convicts, to a refuge in her pancreas, causing agony. She was given a course of antibiotics and, a month later, had an operation to remove her gall bladder.

Its keyhole surgery, said the surgeon breezily, so youll be back to normal very soon. Some people feel well enough to take the bus home after the operation. His optimism was misplaced. My wife came home the following day filled with painkillers. When they wore off, she writhed with suffering. After three days she rang the specialist, only to be told: Its not the operation thats causing discomfort its the air that was pumped inside you to separate the organs before surgery. Once the operation had proved a success, the surgeons had apparently lost interest in the fallout.

During that period of convalescence, as I watched her grimace and clench her teeth and let slip little cries of anguish until a long regimen of combined ibuprofen and codeine finally conquered the pain, several questions came into my head. Chief among them was: Can anyone in the medical profession talk about pain with any authority? From the family doctor to the surgeon, their remarks and suggestions seemed tentative, generalised, unknowing and potentially dangerous: Was it right for the doctor to tell my wife that her level of pain didnt sound like appendicitis when the doctor didnt know whether she had a high or low pain threshold? Should he have advised her to stay in bed and risk her appendix exploding into peritonitis? How could surgeons predict that patients would feel only discomfort after such an operation when she felt agony an agony that was aggravated by fear that the operation had been a failure?

I also wondered if there were any agreed words that would help a doctor understand the pain felt by a patient. I thought of my father, a GP in the 1960s with an NHS practice in south London, who used to marvel at the colourful pain symptoms he heard: Its like Ive been attacked with a stapler; Like having rabbits running up and down my spine; Its like someones opened a cocktail umbrella in my penis Few of them, he told me, corresponded to the symptoms listed in a medical textbook. So how should he proceed? By guesswork and aspirin?

There seemed to be a chasm of understanding in human discussions of pain. I wanted to find out how the medical profession apprehends pain the language it uses for something thats invisible to the naked eye, that cant be measured except by asking for the sufferers subjective description, and that can be treated only by the use of opium derivatives that go back to the middle ages.

When investigating pain, the basic procedure for clinics everywhere is to give a patient the McGill pain questionnaire. Developed in the 1970s by two scientists, Dr Ronald Melzack and Dr Warren Torgerson, both of McGill University in Montreal, it is still the main tool for measuring pain in clinics worldwide.

Melzack and his colleague Dr Patrick Wall of St Thomas Hospital in London had already galvanised the field of pain research in 1965 with their seminal gate control theory, a ground-breaking explanation of how psychology can affect the bodys perception of pain. In 1984, the pair went on to write Wall and Melzacks Textbook of Pain, the most comprehensive reference work in pain medicine. It has gone through five editions and is currently more than 1,000 pages long.

In the early 1970s, Melzack began to list the words patients used to describe their pain and classified them into three categories: sensory (which included heat, pressure, throbbing or pounding sensations), affective (which related to emotional effects, such as tiring, sickening, gruelling or frightful) and lastly evaluative (evocative of an experience from annoying and troublesome to horrible, unbearable and excruciating).

You dont have to be a linguistic genius to see there are shortcomings in this range of terms. For one thing, some words in the affective and evaluative categories seem interchangeable theres no difference between frightful in the former and horrible in the latter, or between tiring and annoying and all the words share an unfortunate quality of sounding like a duchess complaining about a ball that didnt meet her standards.

But Melzacks grid of suffering formed the basis of what became the McGill pain questionnaire. The patient listens as a list of pain descriptors is read out and has to say whether each word describes their pain and, if so, to rate the intensity of the feeling. The clinicians then look at the questionnaire and put check marks in the appropriate places. This gives the clinician a number, or a percentage figure, to work with in assessing, later, whether a treatment has brought the patients pain down (or up).

A more recent variant is the National Initiative on Pain Controls pain quality assessment scale (PQAS), in which patients are asked to indicate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how intense or sharp, hot, dull, cold, sensitive, tender, itchy, etc their pain has been over the past week.

The trouble with this approach is the imprecision of that scale of 1 to 10, where a 10 would be the most intense pain sensation imaginable. How does a patient imagine the worst pain ever and give their own pain a number? Some men may find it hard to imagine anything more agonising than toothache or a tennis injury. Women who have experienced childbirth may, after that experience, rate everything else as a 3 or 4.

I asked some friends what they thought the worst physical pain might be. Inevitably, they just described nasty things that had happened to them. One man nominated gout. He recalled lying on a sofa, with his gouty foot resting on a pillow, when a visiting aunt passed by; the chiffon scarf she was wearing slipped from her neck and lightly touched his foot. It was unbearable agony.

A brother-in-law nominated post-root-canal toothache unlike muscular or back pain, he said, it couldnt be alleviated by shifting your posture. It was relentless. A male friend confided that a haemorrhoidectomy had left him with irritable bowel syndrome, in which a daily spasm made him feel as if somebody had shoved a stirrup pump up my arse and was pumping furiously. The pain was, he said, boundless, as if it wouldnt stop until I exploded. A woman friend recalled the moment the hem of her husbands trouser leg snagged on her big toe, ripping the nail clean off. She used a musical analogy to explain the effect: Id been through childbirth, Id broken my leg and I recalled them both as low moaning noises, like cellos; the ripped-off nail was excruciating, a great, high, deafening shriek of psychopathic violins, like nothing Id heard or felt before.

It seems a shame that these eloquent descriptions are reduced by the McGill questionnaire to words like throbbing or sharp, but its function is simply to give pain a number a number that will, with luck, be decreased after treatment, when the patient is reassessed.

This procedure doesnt impress Professor Stephen McMahon of the London Pain Consortium, an organisation formed in 2002 to promote internationally competitive research into pain. There are lots of problems that come with trying to measure pain, he says. I think the obsession with numbers is an oversimplification. Pain is not unidimensional. It doesnt just come with scale a lot or a little it comes with other baggage: how threatening it is, how emotionally disturbing, how it affects your ability to concentrate. The measuring obsession probably comes from the regulators who think that, to understand drugs, you have to show efficacy. And the American Food and Drug Administration dont like quality-of-life assessments; they like hard numbers. So were thrown back on giving it a number and scoring it. Its a bit of a wasted exercise because its only one dimension of pain that were capturing.

Illustration: Matthew Richardson

Pain can be either acute or chronic, and the words do not (as some people think) mean bad and very bad. Acute pain means a temporary or one-off feeling of discomfort, which is usually treated with drugs; chronic pain persists over time and has to be lived with as a malevolent everyday companion. But because patients build up a resistance to drugs, other forms of treatment must be found for it.

The Pain Management and Neuromodulation Centre at Guys and St Thomas Hospital in central London is the biggest pain centre in Europe. Heading the team there is Dr Adnan Al-Kaisy, who studied medicine at the University of Basrah, Iraq, and later worked in anaesthetics at specialist centres in England, the US and Canada.

Id say that 55 to 60% of our patients suffer from lower back pain, he says. The reason is, simply, that we dont pay attention to the demands life makes on us, the way we sit, stand, walk and so on. We sit for hours in front of a computer, with the body putting heavy pressure on small joints in the back. Al-Kaisy reckons that in the UK the incidence of chronic lower back pain has increased substantially in the last 15 to 20 years, and that the cost in lost working days is about 6 to 7 billion.

Elsewhere the clinic treats those suffering from severe chronic headaches and injuries from accidents that affect the nervous system.

Do they still use the McGill questionnaire? Unfortunately yes, says Al-Kaisy. Its a subjective measurement. But pain can be magnified by a domestic argument or trouble at work, so we try to find out about the patients life their sleeping patterns, their ability to walk and stand, their appetite. Its not just the patients condition, its also their environment.

The challenge is to transform this information into scientific data. Were working with Professor Raymond Lee, chair of Biomechanics at the South Bank University, to see if there can be objective measurement of a patients disability due to pain, he says. Theyre trying to develop a tool, rather like an accelerometer, which will give an accurate impression of how active or disabled they are, and tell us the cause of their pain from the way they sit or stand. Were really keen to get away from just asking the patient how bad their pain is.

Some patients arrive with pains that are far worse than backache and require special treatment. Al-Kaisy describes one patient let us call him Carter who suffered from a terrible condition called ilioinguinal neuralgia, a disorder that produces a severe burning and stabbing pain in the groin. Hed had an operation in the testicular area, and the inguinal nerve had been cut. The pain was excruciating: when he came to us, he was on four or five different medications, opiates with very high dosages, anticonvulsive medication, opioid patches, paracetamol and ibuprofen on top of that. His life was turned upside down, his job was on the line. The utterly stricken Carter was to become one of Al-Kaisys big successes.

Since 2010, Guys and St Thomas has offered a residential programme for adults whose chronic pain hasnt responded to treatment at other clinics. The patients come in for four weeks, away from their normal environment, and are seen by a motley crew of psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational health specialists and nursing physicians who between them devise a programme to teach them strategies for managing their pain.

Many of these strategies come under the heading of neuromodulation, a term you hear a lot in pain management circles. In simple terms, it means distracting the brain from constantly brooding on the pain signals it is getting from the bodys periphery. Sometimes the distraction is a cunningly deployed electric shock.

We were the first centre in the world to pioneer spinal cord stimulation, says Al-Kaisy. In pain occasions, overactive nerves send impulses from the periphery to the spinal cord and from there to the brain, which starts to register pain. We try to send small bolts of electricity to the spinal cord by inserting a wire in the epidural area. Its only one or two volts, so the patient feels just a tingling sensation over where the pain is, instead of feeling the actual pain. After two weeks, we give the patient an internal power battery with a remote control, so he can switch it on whenever he feels pain and carry on with his life. Its essentially a pacemaker that suppresses the hyperexcitability of nerves by delivering subthreshold stimulation. The patient feels nothing except his pain going down. Its not invasive we usually send patients home the same day.

When Carter, suffering from agonising pain in the groin, had failed to respond to any other treatments, Al-Kaisy tried his new combination of therapies. We gave him something called a dorsal root ganglion stimulation. Its like a small junction-box, placed just underneath one of the bones of the spine. It makes the spine hyperexcited, and sends impulses to the spinal cord and the brain. I pioneered a new technique to put a small wire into the ganglion, connected to an external power battery. Over 10 days the intensity of pain went down by 70% by the patients own assessment. He wrote me a very nice email saying I had changed his life, that the pain had just stopped completely, and that he was coming back to normality. He said his job was saved, as was his marriage, and he wanted to go back to playing sport. I told him, Take it easy. You mustnt start climbing the Himalayas just yet. Al-Kaisy beams. This is a remarkable outcome. You cannot get it from any other therapies.

The greatest recent breakthrough in assessing pain, according to Professor Irene Tracey, head of the University of Oxfords Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, has been the understanding that chronic pain is a thing in its own right. She explains: We always thought of it as acute pain that just goes on and on and if chronic pain is just a continuation of acute pain, lets fix the thing that caused the acute and the chronic should go away. That has spectacularly failed. Now we think of chronic pain as a shift to another place, with different mechanisms, such as changes in genetic expression, chemical release, neurophysiology and wiring. Weve got all these completely new ways of thinking about chronic pain. Thats the paradigm shift in the pain field.

Tracey has been called the Queen of Pain by some media commentators. She was, until recently, the Nuffield Professor of anaesthetic science and is an expert in neuroimaging techniques that explore the brains responses to pain. Despite her nickname, in person she is far from alarming: a bright-eyed, enthusiastic, welcoming and hectically fluent woman of 50, she talks about pain at a personal level. She has no problem defining the ultimate pain that scores 10 on the McGill questionnaire: Ive been through childbirth three times, and my 10 is a very different 10 from before I had kids. Ive got a whole new calibration on that scale. But how does she explain the ultimate pain to people who havent experienced childbirth? I say, Imagine youve slammed your hand in a car door thats 10.

She uses a personal example to explain the way perception and circumstance can alter the way we experience pain, as well as the phenomenon of hedonic flipping, which can convert pain from an unpleasant sensation into something you dont mind. I did the London Marathon this year. It needs a lot of training and running and your muscles ache, and next day youre really in pain, but its a nice pain. Im no masochist, but I associate the muscle pain with thoughts like, I did something healthy with my body, Im training, and Its all going well.

I ask her why there seems to be a gap between doctors and patients apprehension of pain. Its very hard to understand, because the system goes wrong from the point of injury, along the nerve thats taken the signal into the spinal cord, which sends signals to the brain, which sends signals back, and it all unravels with terrible consequential changes. So my patient may be saying, Ive got this excruciating pain here, and Im trying to see where its coming from, and theres a mismatch here because you cant see any damage or any oozing blood. So we say, Oh come now, youre obviously exaggerating, it cant be as bad as that. Thats wrong its a cultural bias we grew up with, without realising.

Recently, she says, there has been a breakthrough in understanding about how the brain is involved in pain. Neuroimaging, she explains, helps to connect the subjective pain with the objective perception of it. It fills that space between what you can see and whats being reported. We can plug that gap and explain why the patient is in pain even though you cant see it on your x-ray or whatever. Youre helping to bring truth and validity to these poor people who are in pain but not believed.

But you cant simply see pain glowing and throbbing on the screen in front of you. Brain imaging has taught us about the networks of the brain and how they work, she says. Its not a pain-measuring device. Its a tool that gives you fantastic insight into the anatomy, the physiology and the neurochemistry of your body and can tell us why you have pain, and where we should go in and try to fix it.

Some of the ways in, she says, are remarkably direct and mechanical like Al-Kaisys spinal cord stimulation wire. There are now devices you can attach to your head and allow you to manipulate bits of the brain. You can wear them like bathing caps. Theyre portable, ethically allowed brain-simulation devices. Theyre easy for patients to use and evidence is coming, in clinical trials, that they are good for strokes and rehabilitation. Theres a parallel with the games industry, where theyre making devices you can put on your head so kids can use thought to move balls around. The games industry is, for fun, driving this idea that when you use your brain, you generate electrical activities. Theyre developing the technology really fast, and we can use it in medical applications.

Illustration: Matthew Richardson

Pain has become a huge area of medical research in the US, for a simple reason. Chronic pain affects over 100 million Americans and costs the country more than half a trillion dollars a year in lost working hours, which is why it has become a magnet for funding by big business and government.

Researchers at the Human Pain Research Laboratory at Stanford University, California, are working to gain a better understanding of individual responses to pain so that treatments can be more targeted. The laboratory has several study initiatives on the go into migraine, fibromyalgia, facial pain and other conditions but its largest is into back pain. It has been endowed with a $10m grant from the National Institutes of Health to study non-drug alternative treatments for lower back pain. The specific treatments are mindfulness, acupuncture, cognitive behavioural therapy and real-time neural feedback.

They plan to inspect the pain tolerance of 400 people over five years of study, ranging from pain-free volunteers to the most wretched chronic sufferers who have been to other specialists but found no relief. The idea is to find peoples mid-range tolerance (theyre asked to rate their pain while they are experiencing it), to establish a usable baseline. They then are given the non-invasive treatments such as mindfulness and acupuncture and are subjected afterwards to the same pain stimuli, to see how their pain tolerance has changed from their baseline reading. MRI scanning is used on the patients in both laboratory sessions, so that clinicians can see and draw inferences from the visible differences in blood flow to different parts of the brain.

A remarkable feature of the assessment process is that patients are also given scores for psychological states: a scale measures their level of depression, anxiety, anger, physical functioning, pain behaviour and how much pain interferes with their lives. This should allow physicians to use the information to target specific treatments. All these findings are stored in an informatics platform called Choir, which stands for the Collaborative Health Outcomes Information Registry. It has files on 15,000 patients, 54,000 unique clinic visits and 40,000 follow-up meetings.

The big chief at the Human Pain Research Laboratory is Dr Sean Mackey, Redlich professor of anaesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine, neurosciences and neurology at Stanford. His background is in bioengineering, and under his governance the Stanford Pain Management Center has twice been designated a centre of excellence by the American Pain Society. A tall, genial, easy-going man, he is sometimes approached by legal firms who want him to appear in court to state definitively whether their client is or is not in chronic pain (and therefore justified in claiming absentee benefit). His response is surprising.

In 2008, I was asked by a law firm to speak in an industrial injury case in Arizona. This poor guy got hot burning asphalt sprayed on his arm at work; he had a claim of burning neuropathic pain. The plaintiffs side brought in a cognitive scientist, who scanned his brain and said there was conclusive evidence that he had chronic pain. The defence asked me to comment, and I said, Thats hogwash, we cannot use this technology for that purpose.

Shortly afterwards, I gave a talk on pain, neuroimaging and the law, explaining why you cant do this because theres too much individual variability in pain, and the technology isnt sensor-specific enough. But I concluded by saying, If you were to do this, youd use modern machine-learning approaches, like those used for satellite reconnaissance to determine whether a satellite is seeing a tank or a civilian truck. Some of my students said, Can you give us some money to try this? I said, Yes, but it cant be done. But they designed the experiment and discovered that, using brain imagery, they could predict with 80% accuracy whether someone was feeling heat pain or not.

Mackey finally published a paper about the experiment. So did his findings influence any court decisions? No. I get asked by attorneys, and I always say, There is no place for this in the courtroom in 2016 and there wont be in 2020. People want to push us into saying this is an objective biomarker for detecting that someones in pain. But the research is in carefully controlled laboratory conditions. You cannot generalise about the population as a whole. I told the attorneys, This is too much of a leap. I dont think theres a lot of clinical utility in having a pain-o-meter in a court or in most clinical situations.

Mackey explains the latest thinking about what pain actually is. Now we understand that pain is a balance between ascending information coming from our bodies and descending inhibitory systems from our brains. We call the ascending information nociception from the Latin nocere, to harm or hurt meaning the response of the sensory nervous system to potentially harmful stimuli coming from our periphery, sending signals to the spinal cord and hitting the brain with the perception of pain. The descending systems are inhibitory, or filtering, neurons, which exist to filter out information thats not important, to turn down the ascending signals of hurt. The main purpose of pain is to be the great motivator, to tell you to pay attention, to focus. When the pain lab was started, we had no way of addressing these two dynamic systems, and now we can.

Mackey is immensely proud of his massive CHOIR database which records peoples pain tolerance levels and how they are affected by treatment and has made it freely available to other pain clinics as a community source platform, collaborating with academic medical centres nationwide so that a rising tide elevates all boats. But he is also humble enough to admit that science cannot tell us which are the sites of the bodys worst pains.

Back pain is the most reported pain at 28%, but I know theres a higher density of nerve fibres in the hands, face, genitals and feet than in other areas, Mackey says, and there are conditions where the sufferer has committed suicide to get away from the pain. Things like post-herpetic neuralgia, that burning nerve pain that occurs after an outbreak of shingles and is horrific; another is cluster headaches some patients have thought about taking a drill to their heads to make it stop.

Like Irene Tracey, Mackey is enthusiastic about the rise of transcranial magnetic stimulation (Imagine hooking a nine-volt battery across your scalp) but, when asked about his particular successes, he talks about simple solutions. Early on in my career, I used to be very focused on the peripheral, the apparent site of the pain. I was doing interventions, and some people would get better but a lot wouldnt. So I started listening to their fears and anxieties and working on those, and became very brain-focused. I noticed that if you have a nerve trapped in your knee, your whole leg could be on fire, but if you apply a local anaesthetic there, it could abolish it.

This young woman came to me with a terrible burning sensation in her hand. It was always swollen; she couldnt stand anyone touching it because it felt like a blowtorch. Mackey noticed that she had a post-operative scar from prior surgery for carpal-tunnel syndrome. Speculating that this was at the root of her problem, he injected botulinum toxin, a muscle relaxant, at the site of the scar. A week later, she came up and gave me this huge hug and said, I was able to pick up my child for the first time in two years. I havent been able to since she was born. All the swelling was gone. It taught me that its not all about the body part, and not all about the brain. Its about both.

Main illustration by Matthew Richardson

This is an edited version of an article that appears on Mosaic. It is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.

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