#and. have spent the last 7 hours.. absolutely nauseous and off the shits

[im-still-a-robot]

AH.

[wizkiddx]

hiiiii i love your stuff - could u do one where the readers ill but they have stuff to do and tom has to look after her. maybe if they were just friends before too but both pining? thankuuuuuuuuu

should I be writing this instead of revising? clearly fucking not. Did I make this little blurb req ridiculously long purely to procrastinate? Of fucking course.

but also this was v cute! I assumed u meant famous!reader, sorry if that's not what u were after at all anon x

summary: Tom Holland turns into the readers knight in shining armour when they get ill during promo

warnings: fainting / feeling ill

///////////////////

It couldn’t be today. Of all days, why today? You’d been at home for two weeks doing absolutely nothing, before this trip. And yet it’s when your itinerary is packed to the brim, people moving heaven and earth just speak to you. Two weeks of unrelenting press for Marvels next big ensemble movie. 

Your manager was speaking to you, reeling off a run down of todays activities but instead of listening you nodded along blankly - head rather cloudy with this heavy mist that was not shaking off, no matter how hard you tried. 

“You got that Y/n/n?” Lucy pointedly spoke, eyes almost physically knocking you backwards as if her eyeliner was battery rams. Fumbling with your thoughts, your answer wasn’t particularly cohesive earning you just a disappointed head shake. 

“I um… yeh I think. Who-who did you say I was paired up with?” 

“Y/n please for the love of god. Tom, like I said the past fifty times.” And to be fair to Lucy she wasn’t wrong. It was the first major major promo tour for the both of you and after just two days so far - you were both exhausted. She was more than allowed to be a bit short tempered. 

“But we-we hardly know each other? The chemistry won’t be there and-“

“As I said, I tried to re-jig it but Kevin is of the mind that acting is your job.” Her tone was sharp but as she glared across the opposing seats, in the little mini van Marvel had hired for you as transportation, her eyes softened. Lucy had been so wrapped up in her own stress she may have overlooked quite how gingerly you were sitting. By the time she had arrived at the hotel, your stylist had already managed to half save your ghoulish looking face, with sunken under eyes and tired skin, so it wasn’t so blatantly obvious how crap you were feeling.  “Is everything okay with you?” 

It felt pretty puny to say that the jet lag from flying to Tokyo had been weighing you down further than you wanted, or that the local cuisine top chefs had kindly prepared for you last night wasn’t siting well in your stomach. To be honest, even you thought it was just your body being a bit overdramatic. So in response, you put on your best happy-go-lucky face feigning a smile.

“No no I’m fine, just want to give the best interviews I can and you know…. I’m awkward as hell as it is, then pair me with the most talented actor that I share about two minutes of screen time with…it’ll be interesting.” 

The way Lucy reacted with a weird slow nod, eyebrows furrowed, meant it was quite apparent you had perhaps overplayed that one. Had you not been so over the day before it even began, you would’ve tried again to give a more believable act. But as you were, you turned your attention back out to the bustling streets of Tokyo and the high rise buildings bordering each pavement. 

You didnt have a problem with Tom, far from it in fact. Tom was hilarious and the times you had met him, you’d both built up this weird and sarcastic competitiveness with each other. It was a game of who could get the last laugh, each of you pushing each other with the Mickey taking just a little further. Of course, not in a malicious way, just the way you’d both lived pretty similar but parallel careers - when everyone drew comparisons between the both of you, it was nice to make it a joke. 

Like Tom you’d also started out on stage, had a ‘big break’ movie as a kid and then spent your teenage years on and off film sets - till marvel happened. Then everything blew up to epic proportions, changing your life forever. Actually, it was so similar to Tom’s story, plus the fact you were also from the south west of the UK. It was bizarre your paths hadn’t crossed more - He probably could’ve been a useful ally in the the whole ‘becoming famous’ thing. 

And yet, you could probably count on two hands the amount of conversations you’d had with him. 

Now that, that was the issue. Right from the beginning you learn what the press want and when you are publicising a movie you cater into it too. They’d all be asking for the insider scoop on set; what pranks you’d pulled on each other; what was the most annoying thing about each other. Which is hard if you’d only had 5 or 6 days actually on set together. 

By the time the cab had wormed its way through the Tokyo traffic and you arrived at the PR hotel, it was already 9:30 - making you 15 minutes late (blame it on the traffic). Instantly then you were ushered straight to the interview room for the evening, no chance of green room chat or grabbing a drink before. The place was stuffy, everything was draped with black curtains except the poster board that Tom was already sitting infront of. 

He’d scrubbed up well, no doubt about it. He was wearing statement-ish burgundy suit trousers, teamed with a black knitted but collared shirt thing - that was clearly tailor made for the man. As soon as he noticed you scurry into the room, his face broke out into a warm smile, jumping up to greet you in a friendly hug. It was brief, and as you pulled back you accidentally bumped your head on one of the overhanging lights. No doubt someone had spent a ridiculous amount of time configuring them so they were positioned perfectly, which you had just ruined with your big head. 

“Oh shit!” Tom just laughed in response, shaking his head slightly as he lead you the two steps across to your pre-positioned seats. 

“Making an entrance as always I see!”

“Yeh, you know me, a bit of chaos just to keep everyone on their toes.”

“Oh is that why you’re ‘fashionably late’” With a playful wiggle of his eyebrows, you just rolled your eyes, fidgeting on the chair to find a position that didnt aggravate  your stomach so much.

“I’m ready now though! What did I miss? Just having to pretend to be your friend for 15 minutes?” You stressed the words as though the thought of conversation with Tom was the absolute worst thing in the world - which you definetly didnt think. Scowling like you’d insulted his dog Tessa, it was almost visible how the cogs were turning in his head looking for a comeback. Unfortunately for him though, he was quickly shut up but the organiser bringing the first interviewer in . 

For what would, no doubt, be a long day. 

////

Everything had started off so well, the banter was flowing between you and Tom, no major spoilers revealed that meant Marvel would have to make the journalist disappear. It was once you hit an hour of back-to-back interviews that everything started to crack bit. Because yes, it had only been an hour but that was enough to exhaust you on this particular day. When Tom joked around you got slower and slower, similarly the  energy was zapped from your own answers. It’s not very compelling when someone says ‘you have to watch this movie’ in a monotonous voice with sullen eyes. 

As the interviewers were swapping in and out, Tom actually lightly nudged your shoulder.

“Everything alright? We’re trying to sell tickets and you’ve got a face like thunder.”

“Oh no-no sorry I just, I-um.”

“You want some water?” Now looking at your with more concerned eyes, as if he was just nervous he’d actually offended you for calling you a boring bastard. And you would’ve picked up on it and alleviated his concerns, if it weren’t for the fact your eyes were glued on the water bottle he was holding out to you. You were thirsty. You knew that, that wasn’t the conundrum. What you weren’t so sure about was whether your stomach would accept it, or more violently reject it. In a very non ‘we’re-trying-to-sell-a-movie’ style. 

But the lightheaded fogginess in your brain won out, as you nodded jerkily, taking the bottle and taking a little swig - too cautious to take anymore. 

Now concerned with how Tom thought you were being a Debby-downer too, you managed to perk yourself up for the next four interviews. They were easy, asking questions without any activity and though you did rely on Tom beefing out and adding to your answers, it was okay. Then the next interviewer came in, who you recognised as being from the BBC, Ali Plumb, that had interviewed you a number of times. From the way Tom jumped up to give him afirendly bro-hug, you guessed he also was familiar with him. As soon as he took a seat the cameras were already flashing with the red light, demonstrating his 7 minutes had already started. 

“Guys! It’s been a while.” 

“How are you Ali?” You started it off with the pleasantries, Tom echoing, before the speccy dirty-blonde asked his first question. 

“So the last time I spoke to you guys the universe was in chaos, Peter Parkers on the run and Aurora Blake was trying to strip her own powers, so I guess my first question is how are you both doing? We can use this as a therapy session if you guys need.” His very typical nerdy joke made Tom laugh, nodding as he leaned forward and repositioned a bit. 

You didn’t share the same humour though, more focused on this invisible blanket of stuffiness that seemed to have been thrown on top of you. It made you feel groggy, incredibly hot and so unbelievable nauseous. The lights weren’t helping either, it felt like you were pouring with sweat from your forehead. You thought Tom was answering Ali, even if you couldn’t really hear  - everything had merged into a deafening roar. Adrenaline coursed through your veins, unconsciously making you fumble yourself to standing, desperate to get somewhere with fresh air. The last thing you saw before your vision tunnelled into darkness was Tom, reaching out to try and catch you. 

Because next thing you knew, you were on the floor, wires from all the cameras and lights digging into your back as you looked up to see Tom on one side and Lucy on the other - both wearing a similarly panicked expression. You knew you hadn’t been out long, seconds if that, going by the fact everyone else was in the ‘oh my god’ phase of panic. It was a bit weird how calm you where, but then again all your life you’d been the ‘class fainter’. Waking up on the floor was something you were long since used to. 

“Y/n? You awake?” Rather stating the obvious Tom asked the question as you bent your head up - allowing you sight of all the concerned facing oggling you. With a defeated sigh, you flopped your head back. 

“If this is a dream then it’s a real bloody nightmare.” This time Tom didnt seem to appreciate your joke, looking at you without almost dumbfounded eyes, as you blinked repetitively and groaned. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Lucy appeared to want to lecture you, which to be honest wasn’t the most time appropriate. You were still on the floor, legs crumpled up under you, so ignored her. Instead you pulled yourself up into a sitting position, taking a moment to blink away the blotchy haze that threatened to takeover your vision once again, whilst the pair above you both cautiously rested their palms on each of your shoulders -trying to be useful. The room still felt cramped and stifling, as everyone around were no doubt looking at you. 

It took a few minutes but your body seemed to get over itself, sitting up normally and trying to make small talk with Ali - who, by the way, was still sat awkwardly in the chair. Still nestled on the floor, your back up against the chair you had been siting on as you raved with Ali of the Harry Potter theatre show. In a natural lull in conversation, Tom perked up - from the door where he’d been muttering with the organiser as Lucy bit her nails nervously. 

“Y/n you need to go home.” 

All of you knew what Tom said was impossible. Not being egotistical, but you were too important. Although you hadn’t been paying masses of attention for Lucy’s run down of your itinerary - you knew it was packed. 

So you just looked up and rolled your eyes at Tom, earning yourself a strong glare, before locking the organiser in eye contact.

“How many have we got till lunch?” 

“Um this gent here” He gesturned toward Ali, who was almost squirming in his seat now “then two more.”  

“And then lunch?” 

“Yes, then you have a personal appearance at a dinner, so transport will be coming to pick you both up.” This poor guy seemed obsessed with the clock and his timetable, looking at your with a mixture of panic and frustration. You should know this stuff, you should’ve listened to Lucy. 

“How fars the drive?” 

“At this time probably an hour and a half.” 

The plan was clear in your head, you’d sort yourself out in the car and be fully fine by the afternoon and evening engagements. Plus you felt almost fine now. So with a sigh, you hauled yourself up onto the chair, patting for Tom to sit back down. 

“It’s half an hour and then I’ll sort myself out at lunch - come on their waiting.” The way Lucy pouted showed she disagreed somewhat, except a stern look kept her from protesting, as Tom walked toward you. 

“Are you sure you don’t loo-“

“Let me stop you before you insult my appearance.” Snickering slightly at his worried face, you laughed it off , knocking his side with a gentle murmur of ‘don’t worry about me’. 

In fact after that little episode you did feel a little recovered, which meant you were properly noticing the change in the boy sat next to you. Throughout the remaining three interviews he’d done a complete 360 from earlier. Rather than trying to get little digs at you, he had become fiercely protective - jumping in if a questions wasn’t particularly appropriate or relevant to the movie ( meaning when an awfully crap man asked what underwear you’d been able to wear in your suit) ; taking the heat of the conversation as well as just watching you like a hawk. Each time you answered his beady brown eyes were watching you from the side, you got the impression it wasn’t only just because of the risk of spoilers. 

Quite remarkably, you survived the rest of the day pretty well, after a power nap in the car on the way over - even if it was a bit difficult when you had your manager watching you like a hawk from the seat across. It was as if Lucy had never seen anyone ill before, she seemed concerned that you were going to spontaneously stop breathing and die at any point. 

Though by the time all the official business at the dinner was done, your body and willpower had reached the end of their tether. You and Tom were both on a round table, surrounded by 6 CEOs and execs of what seemed to be a multimillion pound business enterprise. With the language barrier meaning you had to speak through the two people on the table who were fluent in both japanese and English, the conversation was already pretty jilted. Though to be fair, the six did seem to be enjoying the evening - something you werent able to reciprocate. Thankfully, five minutes after the main course dishes had been collected, Tom spoke up from his position opposite you.

“This has been lovely and we really appreciate your time and generosity but me and Y/n have a really early start tomorrow so I think we should probably get back to the hotel.” You swore in that moment you could’ve kissed him, and it looked like Tom could tell - by the way your shoulders sagged and you let out an exhale of pure relief. Apparently even if you’d managed to convince the hosts you were enjoying the evening, Tom easily saw through the performance. After some hurried goodbyes, Tom led you out of the hall with his hand hovering over your lowerback, trying to make sure your exit was as discreet as possible. 

Away from the bubble of chatter and activity, in the deserted hallway, Tom stopped you - lightly holding both hands on each of your arms. 

“Wheres your team?” 

“Um Luce is back at the hotel, she was trying to see if she could reschedule any of my stuff tomorrow.” You winced at the way he sighed, realising you were all on your own in some random business event hall in Tokyo.

“Harry -my brother- is waiting in the car at the front - is that okay?”

“No Tom, don’t worry abo-“

“Yeh well I am and I think you feel ten times worse than you’re letting on.” He spoke harshly, like a school teacher telling you off - except the hint of a kind smile at the end was a dead giveaway. 

“You sure?” 

With a relieved nod (Tom had thought you might be a bit more stubborn - you obviously were really really ill) he wordlessly shrugged his suit jacket off, wrapping it round your shoulders. He muttered something about not wanting you to catch a chill but to be quite honest you were a bit distracted by the woody cedar smell of Toms aftershave that enveloped your senses. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being fussed on by him? To be fair he wasn’t wrong either, you were in a strapless evening dress - you would’ve preferred to be in joggers, but Marvels press team had other ideas. 

After a quick pit stop at the toilets, the two of you managed to make an unnoticed escape out the building - into a big SUV which had seconds prior pulled up onto the steps. You literally melted into the nearest window seat, body hunching over as you probably crumpled Tom’s jacket beyond belief. 2 seats along from you, a frizzy haired boy gave you a sympathetic smile, which you returned weakly whilst muttering a ‘hi’. Meanwhile, Tom pulled the sliding door shut, sitting across from you. 

“Oh Y/n this is Harry and Harry this is Y/n.” In unison both of you replied with an ‘I know’ eye roll. Your response was somewhat more shocking to both Holland boys, you could tell from the way they had this whole nonverbal conversation with their eyes - they were very clearly brothers. Needing to explain you continued. “I like to keep tabs on my castmates, I’ve seen you on Toms instagram.” That had both boys smirking, Harry presumably just because you knew who he was; Tom more smugly, you’d just given away you slightly stalked him on instagram. 

Silence reigned for a moment, as the driver put his foot down slightly. 

“How you doing?” Tom asked. 

“Mhm…” you thought for a second, how to eloquently describe the sensation. 

“shit.” 

Both boys chuckled a little and even though you had closed your eyes in an attempt to dull the throbbing behind your temples, you could feel the eyes on you. 

“You want the music off?” Harry asked, referring to the indie-rock coming quietly out the speakers of his laptop, which was resting on his lap. With a shake of your head you refused, even if really silence probably would help your head, you were already causing the two Hollands enough trouble - no need to bore them during the journey back into central Tokyo, especially when you weren’t the most enthusiastic company ever. 

Thankfully the music stayed on a low volume, whilst the car seemed to settle into a comfortable silence. With a long exhale you fluttered your eyes open, seeing Tom focused on his phone, before you rested the side of your head against the black-out glass. Taking some relief from the cool glass, you huddled further into the corner of the car against the door.

Floating in the space between sleep and wakefulness, you were kind of aware of your head occasionally bobbing and jerking about - but really didn’t have the energy or willpower to do anything about it. Instead, the thing that perked your attention was hearing some supposed-whispering from inside the body of the car.

“I know she said she didn’t care but she was clearly lying-“ 

“Like you know! You’ve been desperate to try and spend some time with Y/n- maybe you poisoned her just so you could be all knight-in-shini-“

“Turn. The. Music. Off.” Tom sounded scathing now, and with a grumble from your other-side the cheery drum beats ceased.

“Happy now?” …and Harry was sarcastic. 

“Swap places with me.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

“Why?”

“So she can lie down.” 

“Well no because you would still be in the way if we swapped.”

“Yeh but she can lie on my lap idiot.”

“She can lie on me.”

“She doesn’t know you!”

“Well for 1, barely ten minutes ago she said she did know me. And 2, she doesn’t know you any better!”

If this was their version of whispering, you would love to hear what volume ‘shouting’ was. There was no reply for a short while, you imagined the two brunettes locked in some intense staring match.The next time Tom spoke he sounded more defeated - almost begging. 

“If I admit you beat me at the driving range the other day will you-” 

“I KNEW IT!” Harry yelped, the volume making you jerk, eyes flying open before reflexively closing because the light was too bright. There was a little mutter of an apology, then silence again. 

Once agin you must’ve drifted off because it felt like absolutely no time had passed when a firm but gently hand on your shoulder nudged you awake. 

Sure enough the boys had swapped position, Tom now sitting along the seat from you, Harry looked a little sulky from across the way. It was Tom who was reaching over, a gentle and peaceful smile on his face.

“You wanna lie down? Don’t want you to strain your neck.” He wasn’t wrong, adding to the throbbing headache, the cloudiness in your brain and the unsettled feeling in your stomach… now your neck hurt. Just bloody great. 

Had you been your normal witty and perceptive self, you might’ve teased Tom as to why him and his brother had done a switch - but everything hurt and all you wanted to do was sleep for a hundered years. So with squinting eyes you jerkily nodded, missing how Tom chuckled to himself. The guy undid your seatbelt, then sat back to let you balance the back of your head on his thigh, looking up at the roof of the SUV. Already your eyes were closed again, you kicked off your slip-on heels and bent your legs up to lean against the backrest - occupying the position you had been sat in before hand. You felt his hands reposition the jacket, pulling it round so it was now like a blanket tucked under your chin. 

To be fair it was much more comfortable than sitting up and you weren’t even aware of how quickly you dropped back into sleep. 

Though it wasn’t quick enough to miss Harry’s very sulky sounding comment, presumably meant only for Tom’s ears. 

“Still think you’re being fucking creepy bro.” 

<33 lemme know what u think! (would make me feel less guilty for not doing all the work I rlly should be doing aha)

tagging : @hallecarey1 @crossyourpeter @hollandfanficlove

[thirsty-pixie]

New beginnings

Warning: smut unprotected

Request for @captainamerica97

"Harry stop people are watching" I laughed and pushed harry away while he was trying to kiss my neck. I had been holding put from Harry for about two and a half weeks now and he was hating it. It started after a fight we had about one of the girls that came into the restaurant flirting with him and he said it wasn't a big deal. I was only mad at him about it for a few days but I decided to see how long I could do it just to drive him crazy. "If you two keep going like this you're gonna scare away the customers" I laughed and looked at Uma who was walking out with a plate of food. "Its all him Uma" I said nudging Harry off of me with my elbow he just smiled and winked at me.

That night Harry had invited me over for dinner, I couldn't resist since he said he would make me my favorite dish. He may not look like it but he is an excellent cook. I check myself in the mirror making sure my makeup and hair looked good before walking out the door. I had a cute dress that was probably a little too short but I knew it would drive him wild. I recieved dirty comments and whistles from some guys at I made my way to Harry's place, and I tried my best to ignore them.

I knocked three times on his door and the door swung as if he had been waiting right next to it for me. "Hello love" his low raspy tone mixed with his accent gave me chills. "Hello Harry" I gave him a kiss on the cheek befor walking passed him into the house. "You look absolutely enchanting in that dress" he said as he shut the door and followed me in. He placed his hand on the small of my back and lead me to the table where he pulled my chair out for me. "Thank you it looks amazing by the way" I chimed smiling as he sat down.

Throughout dinner we talked about out parents and everything else going on in our lives. Afterwards he smiled at me deviously and pulled an old bandana from his pocket, he curled his finger motioning for my to come to him. I blushed and walked towards him, he folded the bandana and tied it over my face blindfolding me. "I have a surprise for ya" he whispered in my ear sending a chill down my spine. He gently pushed me forward his hand lightly holding my shoulders as he guided me to the surprise.

"Ya ready?" He purred in my ear making me smile "yes" he pulled the blindfold off and I gasped. His room, that was usually a mess, was cleaned he had lit candles placed throughout the room and a bottle of my favorite peach rum and two glasses set on the nightstand. "Yep.... I'm pretty romantic" he stated proudly causing me to laugh. I sat on the bed next to him as he poured us each some rum, after a few glasses he was on top of me kissing my neck. I was running my hands through his hair breathing heavily as he pressed against me his hardened bulge pushing against thigh. He pulled back and looked at me his eyes trailing down my body then back up, "what?" I asked self consciously he just smiled.

"How did I get so lucky. I got the prettiest girl I've ever seen all to myself" I blushed and pulled him down by his shirt pressing my lips to his. I grabbed the hem of his shirt and gave it a small tug, he took the hint and sat up pulling his shirt off in one smooth motion. I traced my fingers down his chest lightly and over his abs stopping at his pant line, I looked back up at him and he had a smirk plaster in his face. I rolled my eyes and giggled he knew I loved his abs but I usually never feed into his mammoth sized ego.

Harry leaned down to kiss me while sliding his hands under me to unzip my dress, once he unzipped it he gently slid it off my shoulders and down my body. He dropped it off the edge of the bed and slowly started kissing my thigh. He kissed up my thigh gently biting my hip before continuing to kiss up my stomach. He placed his hand on one of my breasts and gave it a light squeeze before returning to my lips. His tounge trail over my bottom lip before dancing into my mouth flicking and twisting along with my tongue. He unclasped my bra with one had and slipped it off throwing it off the bed, he pulled away and began kissing and licking the freshly exposed skin causing me to moan loudly. I arched my back and I felt his breath on my stomach as he made his way between my thighs.

I felt his hook his fingers into my underwear and he slide them down my legs. I felt his finger slide down my folds slowly before sliding back up, he hummed then brought his mouth to my clit. He flicked his tounge slowly then rapidly changing pace every few seconds, he sucked and nibbled before pushing a finger in. He pumped his finger slowly as his tounge traced small circles over my clit. He added a second finger and began pumping faster and curling his fingers. I moaned bucking my hips trying to cause more friction driving myself closer to climax when suddenly he stopped. "Ah ah ah not yet love" he began undoing his belt pulling off his pants and boxers all at once.

I whined as he positioned himself over me, he slid his men up and down my folds agonizingly slow causing me to whine again. He pushed the tip in slowly and pulled out again teasingly, "H-Harry" I begged making him smirk. He pushed in slowly until he bottomed out a low growl escaped his lips and he began to thrust. He propped himself on one elbow the other hand holding my my up around his waist as he roughly thrust into me. I screamed and threw my head back, Harry brought his lips to my neck kissing and biting the sensitive skin causing me to moan louder.

He squeezed my thigh tightly his fingers digging into my leg most likely leaving bruises, he moaned and cursed while bucking his hips into me. His moans grew raspy and his thrusts became sloppy, meaning he was nearing his climax. He dropped my leg and sat up continuing to thrust as his thumb circled my clit, I arched my back and moaned and I finished. Harry stopped thrusting and sighed laying beside me he kissed my cheek and smiled. "Its been to long I'm out of shape now" he said making me laugh "Harry. It hasn't even been three weeks" he chuckled befor pulling the covers over us. We cuddle and talked until the last candle burnt out before we fell asleep.

I paced back and forth in my room holding passing the test sitting on the table with each lap I did. I combed my fingers through my hair and groaned "how can this happen?!" I sank dont onto my bed holding my head in my hands. How am I gonna tell harry.... I'm too young to have a baby..... "Y/n I'm home"

"Shit!" I whispered jumping up to hide the test as my mom came into my room. "Uh hi mom" she raised an eyebrow at me and folded her arms "are you alright? You look pale" I nodded and smiled "oh I'm just a little hungry" she nodded and said ok before leaving to go make lunch.

It had been about three weeks since the night I spent at Harry's, we had hooks up a few times since but he wore protection all those times. My shift at Ursula's was in two hours and Harry wanted me to come over an hour before to help set up some new lights he had gotted for his room. I chewed my fingers and looked at the tattered magazine that was now covering the pregnancy test. I set the magazine to the side and grabbed the test sliding it in my back pocket before heading down to the kitchen.

My mom had made me a sandwich and left a note, "went to the market to get more bread see you after work -love Mom" I smiled and grabbed the sandwich taking a big bit before running out the door to go talk to Harry. On the way I at the sandwich but had to stop and throw up because I was so nervous.

By the time I got to Harry's I was shaking. "Hey what's wrong?!" He asked as he sat me on his couch. "Uh we uh we need to talk" I stuttered felling nauseous again. He nodded with a concerned lookin his eyes, I stood up and began pacing trying to think of a way to tell him. He watched me nervously as I pinched the bridge of my nose, I felt like I was gonna throw up again and I broke down and state crying. Harry jumped up and hugged me rubbing my back and combing my fingers through my hair, "hey it's ok just talk to me..... you're scaring me babe" he whispered to me as I cried.

I nodded pulling away from him I slid my hand into my back pocket wrapping my fingers around the test, "Harry..... please dont be mad..... but I..... I'm pregnant" I pulled the test from my pocket and held it out in front of me. His face went pale as he grabbed the test "ya serious?" He asked his voice monotone like he had turned into a robot. He looked at me and smiled "can we keep it?" He sounded like a kid asking his parents is he could keep a stray puppy that they had found. "Um yeah if you want to we can" I mutter a little confused by his reaction.

He dropped the test and wrapped his arms around me I laughed as he spun me around. A weight lifted of my chest and he set me down and kissed me, he got down his knees and put his ear against my stomach. "All I hear is grrrurrrghrrrrg" he said looking up at me. I almost fell over laughing "Harry it's too small for that yet, plus I thing that's just my stomach growling" Harry gasped and went to the kitchen. I heard plates and pans clanking and he came back out with a plate full of snacks. My eyes began to water as I sat down, I was relieved he seemed happy about it.

~~~~

"Argh there" Harry groaned as he set the last box down. We had decided that I should move in so when the baby was born we would all be together. I smiled watching Harry as he bent down placing a hand on my belly "alrighty we got mamma all moved in...... oh my god Y/n I felt a kick!!" I laughed and kissed him. It had been about 7 months since I announced to Harry that I was pregnant and it seemed like life couldn't get any better. He was more excited to have the baby that I was it was the cutest thing.

[editorialsonlife]

Well

Welp, feeling like doing an update because there's been a lot going on to be honest. its one of those weird dichotomies where every day feels like an eternity and there's so much going on and then you look back and you're like oh, ok its just my brain making it difficult and making things take forever but anyway.

LOCKDOOOOOOOWWWWWWNNNNNNN

Lockdown life was good, apart from being thrust into it so suddenly dave left a banana on his desk. Wasn't great to come back to after 5 weeks out of the office - mummified mouldy banana!! Classic. We luckily got our first jab before lockdown started so that was good, and we were reasonably well stocked up on food and were generally a lot healthier this lockdown that last. honestly, there's a level of chill and serenity in lockdown that i just love. the ability to set my own schedule and only work the hours I actually work to get the job done? Amazing. getting 8.5 hours of sleep each night without having to wake to an alarm blaring? AMAZING. getting to go for walks every afternoon? SO FLIPPING GOOD. I love it so much, I really really do. I need this to be my life permanently.

WORK

Work is just ongoing and draining and honestly, coming back to the office was so fucking stressful and it was only one day. Being at home is just the fucking bomb. Pending home decisions, I wanna go contracting I think, but also ideally two part time contracts to have more flexibility? I dunno. You'd think a big 4 would provide variety but it really doesn't and honestly, with Richie leaving, wellington is just a sinking ship. Sean's off on parental leave, Kirstyn is down to four days a week, ben will be gone if he doesn't get promoted (and I don't think he will be tbh). Jack is just muddling along, Nigel wants to swap to consulting as well, Matt's going to be a shit leader in terms of bringing in work so it's just not going to work. and in our wider group it's going to get even more messy with heaps of the analysts leaving and a couple of senior hires too. so I think it's probably time to jump ship in general, pending the home stuff below. Also, coming back after a break again, I'm like, I don't actually like a lot of you? All the people I enjoy here are in other teams and groups, and I'll be sad to leave you all, but like, not enough to stay anyway lol.

Pending the home below, two options are to just going and get a job with a $30k payrise to make up for the maternity leave benefits I'm gunna leave behind when I leave this role - 18 weeks full pay, $100 a week for the first year back and a full year of maternity leave. It's basically 30k post tax which is a bit nuts to walk away from to be honest.

Otherwise the other option is to go contracting. Less security overall but holy shit so much money. If I went in as a project coordinator at the lowest rate to build up a bit of a portfolio I'd need to work 40 weeks of 40 hr weeks and Id basically match my current salary plus the lost family leave benefits and still qualify for govt maternity leave payments. Realistically I could go in as a project manager for $140 an hour ($60 more an hour than the above math) and absolutely smash it at that level as well so ya know, there's a bunch of other info. I like the idea of the flexibility of it and only having 6 months even if its a shitshow and beign able to walk away at the end of it. I really don't want to get a govt job and this is a v govt town which is fine but also, if I can avoid it that would be great. I just know I'm not gunna thrive in that environment.

Need to talk to Dave to get him across the line on the security issue part of that though. I've mostly come a long way in terms of my financial management (thanks YNAB) so I think he'd be ok with it mostly.

So there's a lot to toss up there because......

HOME

We got the reno plans done during lockdown, finally. which was super good. but holy fkn jesus $$$$$$ ++++++++++. The guy is coming around for the final quote on Thursday. We indicatively said $100k total because we're doing kitchen laundry bathroom and toilet. so only the most expensive rooms and when I was talking to him last week he said 'that might cover it' and they're seeing cost escalations of 7-10% a week which is just insane. we're not doing anything structural apart from putting in a cavity slider in the bathroom, and the quote they'll give us won't include flooring since they won't do it.

Meanwhile, the prefab homes I were looking at for our site were $425k fully done. Like, I'm not going to spend $130K on doing up my 1940s ex state house ya know? That's not good cost benefit ratio.

So depending on what that comes out at on thursday we'll be able to make some plans.

We also want to start trying for kids next year and need these renos done first - I am not having kids and no dishwasher lol.

Also we need bank financing so good to be in a permanent stable job for that application. the good thing is we have so much equity we know we can borrow whatever we need, I just don't want to spend that much money on it because it's fkn ridiculous. and if I'm going on maternity leave we need to be able to cover it all on dave's salary and whatever benefits I have as well so there;s a lot of financial planning and spreadsheeting going on at the moment lol. it's fab.

either way. we've got plenty of options up our sleeve. we've got friends who's brother owns a building company so we can talk to them, we've got the garage so we can get things prefabricated even if they're not installed til next year, Dave can get shit at cost through his work for whiteware, there;s plenty of things to like cost control we can do, we just need to know where we're starting from basically. thats the challenging part. but we'll figure it out, its just taking longer than I want it to basically.

We also planted up the vege garden for the spring/summer which was lovely, super jazzed about that. we've finally got the garden to a reasonably low maintenance level where everything is mostly under control and it's such a relief, honestly.

PERSONAL

Man what a shift to lockdown last year honestly. I think the last 8 weeks in particular has just been like, a massive reality check of how absolutely shit the last year was and how fucking glad I am to be rid of it. I spent a week absolutely spiralling 2 weeks ago now and honestly, I don't know how I lived in the state for more than a year. I actually don't know how I did it. and I could not be more glad that I'm finally on the other side of it, for the most part. There's still a bunch of other stuff to work through (hahahahahaha when is there not like damn) but fucking hell its nice to just not be anxious and nauseous and wound up constantly. life is actually accessible. miracle.

My workmate had his bebe - I went round and got newborn cuddles and was like, oh, is this what it is to be clucky? this is odd. so there's that as well. I think we'll probably start trying next year pending renos and jobs etc. If the renos can be done in jan I'll prob just stick it at the job to get the benefits but I dunno. it's a tough call to make really. we shall see. This all assumes we get knocked up without any issues which is questionable these days. I really want to feel healthier before getting pregnant as well, and part of that is losing weight. however, given discussing that is what triggered the spiral we're working on that one slowly.

Also, lets have a moment for counselling, because fkn bless anne and all her hard work honestly. I actually ended up emailing her being like, I;m losing my shit on the monday and then talked to her on thursday. And its so funny because it's such a counselling thing but I didn't realise until afterwards what she'd done but she was like you're clearly not doing well and then the night before dave got a fkn miserable migraine and he was up for like, 2 hrs powerchucking except he didn't make it to the bathroom in time so guess who was cleaning up vomit at 130am trying not to chuck herself but I digress. anyway, not doing well, couldn't even explain why, didn't even have words and super tired and she's like, what lynaire up to this week how's she going with izzy and chat about that and then be like how are you feeling about your body and then 5 more mins of chat about the cat and the chickens and then like bam hard question and then hows it going with x and y and z and its like, it wasn't til I was on my walk afterwards when I FINALLY started feeling marginally better I was like damn woman work your magic for figuring it out for me and helping me reregulate. all over the phone as well since we were still in lockdown. GREAT WORK FRIEND.

and then last week was like totally fucked theoretical discussion about religion and the role it's played in my life and fate vs free will and all this nutty shit but genuinely just a great discussion. She's the best and I love her. thank good for good counsellors. thank god I can afford to pay for it honestly.

Dave and I are just chugging along, god bless that man. I love him. its amazing. I miss having friends close by but understand why they had to move (boooooo f u house prices). Family is pretty chill, still not really talking to dave's parents which is nightmarish but we'll deal with that when we need to. gunna have to go and visit them at some point coz dave misses them and I feel for him, I really do. It's the whole boundaries renegotiation I went through with my family last year post wedding blow up and its just not a fun place to be. oh well. can't fix it for him but also I'm not putting up with that level of BS from either of our families once we have children. not gunna happen.

Either way, life is busy and full and fun and I'm enjoying it. Daylight savings starts this weekend too, its october next week WTF and I'm just waiting for 4pm to find out what's gunna happen to our girls trip. Clearly we cancelled our sept trip to christchurch and akaroa and hanmer springs so my covid travel curse continues. fkn ridic. Still dunno what we're gunna do with $2500 of flight credits coz if we get knocked up theres def no international trips happening any time soon.

thus concludes the almost 2000 word write up of life. hope you've enjoyed it. I'll throw up some pics in a separate post if people care about reno plans. such a good time!

[giogio-gucci-gangstar]

The Unwilling Wingman pt 4

this chapter is chaos, but the next will be even better!!!

Josuke had to physically restrain himself from rubbing his hands together maniacally, but he guessed he still looked pretty unhinged walking down the street with his hands stuffed in his pockets grinning wildly. Oh well. Koichi had just given him the best possible idea of how to brainwash Jotaro into loving Rohan. Okay brainwashing his uncle made him feel a little gross , and his plan absolutely did not guarantee love, but it sure as hell was a nearly foolproof way to get Jotaro to ask Rohan on a date. 

Koichi had reminded him of that weird guy obsessed with dogs from their psychology class, and he was pretty sure that if that Russian dude could condition dogs into salivating at the ring of a bell, he could condition Jotaro to ask for food at the mention of Rohan’s name. 

Josuke just needed to associate food with Rohan, which shouldn't be hard because the man looked like a wilted leaf of lettuce. Obviously he couldn't say that, out loud, because of Heaven’s Door, but he could make the link between Rohan and food in another way. Or specifically an association with Rohan and eating at Tonio’s restaurant so that the next time Jotaro sees Rohan (or more like when Josuke schemes for them to meet up) he asks him to go to Tonio’s. Damn brilliant if Josuke did say so himself. 

~~~

“Oh shit ROHAN just texted me.” Josuke had taken Jotaro to Tonio’s six times by now, right after he mentioned Rohan, so now was the perfect time to see if it had worked. He tried not to stare at Jotaro but the stoic man slowly looked up from his notebook and frowned. 

“Have you had lunch yet?” So close, Josuke was sitting at the edge of his seat. 

“Nope! And man am i STARVING!” 

“Wanna go to Tonio’s” 

“YES OF COURSE I DO I LOVE THAT PLACE” Jotaro looked over at Josuke skeptically, and pulled down his cap with a soft yare yare. 

“Lets go now if you're done acting weird.” 

~~~

After another invigorating lunch at Tonio's, Josuke was ready to introduce Rohan into the mix. Enough test runs, hopefully the same reaction held when Jotaro saw Rohan not-so-serendipitously on the street. 

A few days later was the make-or-break moment. He had instructed Rohan to accidentally meet with them up at the corner near the park. Josuke, looked around frantically wondering where Rohan could be when he finally caught sight of his atrocious green hair. 

“Oi Jotaro is that Rohan over there?” Josuke was doing his best to act cool. 

“Maybe.” Replied Jotaro expressionless as ever. Oh shit, Josuke hadn't thought of what would happen if Jotaro was actually embarrassed over standing Rohan up last time… Josuke almost bent over laughing, the idea of Jotaro feeling something as stupidly normal as embarrassment was absurd. 

“OI ROHAN HI!” Josuke waved frantically trying to get the mangaka to look over nonchalantly. Of course he didn't, that little green bastard flipped his hair in the sun and sauntered over swaying his hips in an obscene way that made Josuke feel like he was watching something pornograhic in public. 

“Oh hello Josuke. And Jotaro, almost didn't see you there.” Rohan flashed a sly smile, god that was disgusting. 

“Josuke, is it time for lunch?” Oh god yes it was starting to work. 

“Yeah,” Josuke could feel himself getting light headed, being around them both was just too much, “but sorry Im not feeling so great gotta go do homework or take a nap or something…” This was not the previously discussed excuse, which he realized when Rohan threw him a pointed look. 

“Alright. Rohan do you have any lunch plans?” That was it the magical moment Rohan had been waiting for, his whole face lit up in an expression of happiness that had absolutely no right being on someone like Rohan. 

“I can take a break for an hour or two I suppose.” If Josuke wasn't feeling so physically nauseous from the combined presence of those two he would have slapped that gross little grin right off his face. But Jotaro was there and this was how he was getting paid… 

“Want to go to Tonio’s?” Jotaro suggested in that deadpan voice of his, but oh no! He was looking down and away, tugging at his hat.Oh my god that was just too much for Josuke he had to get out of there before his sneaking suspicion that Jotaro was blushing under his hat was confirmed. 

“Uh bye guys have fun or whatever gotta go!” He shouted as he scurried away. 

~~~~~~

Josuke spent the rest of the afternoon burrowing under his covers trying not to think about how he sold his nephew to a lunatic for the afternoon. Instead he tried to focus on the money he earned and what he would spend it on. Maybe some new shoes, or a new suit! 

It was around 7 when the doorbell rang. His mom was working late tonight so he hesitantly opened the door, to see Tonio standing there with a bag. 

“Oh what's up Tonio?” 

“Rohan wanted me to bring this to you as a ‘thank you’.” Tonio explained. Well, that was actually pretty cool of Rohan Josuke thought. He was also never one to turn down free food.

“Oh also, now I understand why you didn't want Pearl Jam to fix up your food all those other times with Jotaro. Watching him and Rohan heal together was miraculous.” Ok one sec, hold the fuck up. What did he just say? 

Josuke stood there dumbfounded for a few moments before he could spit out a soft, “Excuse me?” 

“They both had so many of the same issues it was apparent to anyone that they are extremely compatible.” It was starting to come back to Josuke, that odd favor Rohan had asked him in the beginning when he started conditioning Jotaro to associate him with Tonio’s. He had requested that Tonio not use Pearl Jam on Jotaro’s food until he was there.

“What did you do to them Tonio.” Josuke was wheezing. Surely Rohan put Tonio up to this, it was just to make him uncomfortable to make up for being nice and buying him dinner. Right? 

“I just gave them what they needed. Turns out it was each other, so romantic dont you think? Finding love in such a classic Italian restaurant such as mine?” Josuke stood there in stunned silence. Which Tonio took as encouragement to continue. In detail.

[theguardianangel-fanfiction]

⭐️

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines.  

Or, send in a ⭐star⭐  to have the author select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!

Thank you so much for submitting this! There’s one section of chapter 26 (We Hope For Better Things) that had me stumped for literal months, and I wanted to kind of discuss my thoughts and concerns behind it, its canon counterpart, and the ways that I intended it to be interpreted; however, any way that you interpret it is fine.

Fun fact: Chapter 26 takes place during episode 2, A House Divided, which actually came out on my 13th birthday (March 4th, 2014).

This will contain spoilers for Once Bitten, Twice Dead chapter 26, We Hope For Better Things. 

First off, let me talk about my grief with season 2’s treatment of Christa. Now, I don’t absolutely hate that she was, presumably, killed off; I dislike the way that they, in fast succession, killed her and Omid off, never mentioning the baby except for a very brief hint in episode 4 (Clementine closes her eyes and says, “Not again…” when AJ doesn’t immediately move after he’s born). Because of the fact that Clementine is literally around Rebecca for almost the entirety of season 2, I found her lack of reaction to Rebecca’s pregnancy a bit strange.

Like I said, my dislike of the handling of Christa’s pregnancy and Clementine’s thoughts about it have a lot to do with the following paragraphs. I’m all for Clem being able to actually stop and deal with her thoughts and somewhat deal with her emotions (I mean, shit, read my other series posted on AO3 and you’ll see what I mean).

In chapter 26, we get a discussion between Rebecca and Clementine about the baby, Alvin, and the circumstances surrounding this, something that leaves Clem feeling ill, anxious, and somewhat guilty about what she knows that Alvin doesn’t. But the discussion also leaves Clem thinking of Christa, and of her thoughts about Christa’s pregnancy. She is also very prone to comparing Christa and Rebecca, as seen below:

Clementine grasped her left wrist, leaning against the railing as she spoke, watching Rebecca’s mannerisms. She looked nauseous, though Clementine found it hard to tell, as she hadn’t exactly known Rebecca very long; Christa used to get sick, something Clementine could easily remember, when she smelled Omid cooking meat of any kind over the fire. At least until she started showing. In the later stages of her pregnancy, Christa didn’t have any sickness or dizziness. But maybe Rebecca was different.

This only adds to the way that Clem adjusts to and interprets Rebecca’s pregnancy, something that I intend to tackle in another chapter (somewhat in chapter 29, and likely a lot further than that).

Crossing her arms, Clementine spoke in a low voice. “I don’t know.” She hesitated, but then sighed as she thought of herself. She was still alive. But she thought of Duck – the only other child that she spent longer than a few hours with after the beginning of the outbreak – and she thought of his end, and how Kenny couldn’t protect him.

How Kenny couldn’t protect Katjaa, either.

She thought of Christa and Omid. She thought of their child.

This brings up the subject of Christa and Omid’s child, and why Clem is so uneasy about Rebecca’s pregnancy is also brought up. This leads into Rebecca asking Clementine if she wants to listen to the baby kicking. Now, in the game, I said yes, and the scene was absolutely adorable. I love the relationship between Rebecca and Clementine. But with Clem’s past with Christa, I found it to be a little bit unrealistic. Clem obviously has feelings about the baby, and because it was never explored, we as players don’t know whether or not the subject was traumatic to her.

Now, I have almost the exact same age difference with my younger sister that Clementine and AJ have. I’m 18, and my sister just turned 7, if that gives you an idea. Therefore, I remember what my mother’s pregnancy was like, and I remember the kicking and listening to her kicking – it’s a very surreal thing, and for someone like Clem, who for all we know could have witnessed the baby’s death, it can be downright triggering.

That brings me to Clem’s actual apprehension.

“She’s kicking.” Rebecca suddenly spoke, removing both hands from her stomach. She used one to push herself forward, and the other to reach out to Clementine. “Wanna listen?”

Clementine froze in her spot, still staring Rebecca in the face. Rebecca’s expression didn’t change, and she instead reached for Clementine’s hand, but Clementine’s mind was elsewhere.

Can you feel her kicking, Christa?

I don’t think she has feet yet, Clem.

Blinking, Clementine retracted her hand from Rebecca’s grasp and slowly shook her head.

“Can I… just… feel?”

Rebecca’s lowered smile was subtle, but she nodded anyway as Clementine reached out again, her fingertips barely close enough to feel the fabric of Rebecca’s shirt. Carefully, she placed her palm flat against the area that Rebecca guided her to; immediately, Clementine felt her heart racing.

The smallest thump against Clementine’s hand made her slowly pull it away again.

I believe there was a developer or writer for season 2 that claimed that Christa miscarried, but after the amount of misinformation and, might I say it, somewhat lazy writing that came from season 2 (don’t get me wrong, I love season 2), I don’t like this reason.

Why? Well, in All That Remains, Christa appears to be about 7-9 months pregnant. My own mother was about that size when she was 8 months along with my sister, though my mom is 5’2 and Christa looks to be closer to 5’10-6’0. But I digress. Anyway, since Christa was probably about 8ish months along, a miscarriage would probably have killed her. The baby would be nearly fully formed by then. But in OBTD, my idea was a little bit more realistic – not every baby survives birth, and some die before labor.

Clem’s canon reaction, as she looks at a barely conscious newborn AJ, kind of gave me an idea. Stillbirth is a much more likely reason for Christa to lose that baby, as sad as it is. Either that, or SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).

Therefore:

Clementine crossed her arms, but only to hide the sudden lack of feeling in her fingers as they trembled. Slowly, she asked, “Do you think she’ll be okay?” Just as soon as she spoke them, Clementine regretted it.

And just as soon as Clementine spoke and regretted speaking, Rebecca’s eyes became wide, her eyebrows scrunched. Clementine crossed her arms tighter, her shoulders arched as she did so, and mentally scolded herself. She shouldn’t have said that. She should not have said that.

Just because what happened with… Clementine’s thoughts were cut off when Rebecca spoke in a hushed voice.

And a little bit later, we have:

“I’m… I’m not trying to be weird.” Clementine turned back to Rebecca, “I just… I don’t know.” Once again, she crossed her arms and peered over the railing. Both Sarah and Sarita had abandoned the Christmas tree. “I was just… thinking.”

“About what?”

“Christa.”

“Your friend.” Rebecca placed her hand on her bump and looked into the same direction that she had before, as if expecting Alvin to walk back into the room at any moment. “Why?”

“She was pregnant for a while.” Clementine paused, biting the inside of her mouth and her tongue. She avoided Rebecca’s face. “And I don’t like thinking about it.”

Even later than this, we get a bit more confirmation and insight into Christa’s baby:

Clementine’s gaze focused on Rebecca’s bump just as much as she focused on the words that Rebecca spoke earlier – It’s not his. As in, it wasn’t Alvin’s. Rebecca wasn’t carrying a baby that was her husband’s. If Clementine’s very limited education on the art of where babies came from was any less, then she wouldn’t have even believed Rebecca. Yet, here Rebecca was, pretending that nothing was wrong. Flirting back to her husband.

Her stomach hurt, and Clementine locked her hand onto her opposite arm as she weeded through the other possibilities. Clementine knew that Christa’s baby girl (as much as it pained her to think of that cold, dead face) was Omid’s. She had looked just like Omid, after all, with very little of Christa.

There was, I think, a 5 month difference in this update from the one before this one. Now, I suck at updating as it is, but I will fully admit that this scene stumped me for quite a while. I had a conversation with my dad, and I recall saying to him, “I need a realistic reaction to seeing a pregnant woman in the apocalypse. [Clem] is supposed to have PTSD and her last interaction with a pregnant woman resulted in the death of the baby. You got any advice?”

My dad actually did help a little bit with a reaction; he suggested avoidance, and I was like, “Holy shit, that’s true.” And that’s how I wrote Clem. I have written Clem with implied PTSD and mild anxiety before, but I felt that this was a different situation, because this is meant to be a form of establishing her character in OBTD. She’s similar to one of the ways that I played her in season 2, which is someone who only really talked a lot to certain people (like Walter or Sarah) and was silent in certain situations (like at the dinner at the lodge or after Sarita’s bitten death in episode 4 when Kenny goes off on her).

I’m doing my best to be the best writer that I can, especially while writing from the POV of an 11 year old who has experienced violence, kidnapping, emotional manipulation, and has now seen both childbirth and infant death. Part of the reason that some of more recent chapters have taken so long is this reason, and the surrounding circumstances.

Because of how long OBTD is meant to go for (trust me, we are barely even started), I have to establish both Clem’s actual, legitimate fears and her more childish fears and quirks. I’m trying to do this without her being that mature for her age; yes, she is mature for her age in OBTD and canon, but she is not an adult and I absolutely cannot stand when people write her as so.

It’s different when we’re talking about season 4, where she’s literally been raising a child on her own for quite a while, but in season 2? No, she’s still going to have some childish thoughts, fears, and quirks.Her connecting Rebecca and Christa is, in my opinion, something that realistically would happen if the events of TWDG were real and she were an actual person going through this. The establishment of her issues in not connecting a trauma and a similar act are something that I think was somewhat touched upon in season 2, but I wanted to look a more realistic angle.

In summary, I’m looking to get further into her psyche and how a child in her situation would actually react, but in a more consistent way. Stories need consequence, and I think the small changes in the way that characters feel about each other should actually impact their actions. She feels uneasy Rebecca’s pregnancy, and later what she believes is an affair, and she feels guilty from keeping this from Alvin. Hopefully, I can do this justice as time goes on.

Thank you for your ask, and thank you to anyone who made it to the end. 😊

[blackdragon-sama]

my breast reduction experience

i'm back home from the hospital after my reduction and i'd like to share my experience for those interestedalso to vent a bit about my nice-but-also-hella-annoying bed neighbour.

i went in on thursday morning, to get prepped, see the doc and settle into my room i was given the choice to either stay overnight before the surgery, or come in at 7 on friday morningi chose to stay overnight, since i knew it'd be much easier if i could just stay in bed until they wheeled me in for surgery. rather than having to haul my stuff and myself to the hospital with the bus, high on adrenaline and panicwas the right decision, too early in the morning, a nurse woke me and i went to change into the very sexy piece of fishnet they use as panties and the butt-free gown thingi swear, those mesh panties are the worst.but, i got a dose of lorazepam to make up for it, and was wheeled downstairs and into the wake-up room, from which i was wheeled in for the anaesthesia prep.a very nice lady (i don't know if she was an anaesthesiologist or assistant or nurse....) helped me put on the hair net and put an IV into my hand, chatting a little with me, which helped with the anxiety. at this point i was glad for the lorazepam, because i was nervous as fuck, even with it. they didn't make me count or anything, just told me to breathe in all that nice oxygen, and then they told me when they inected the good stuff and - like with the two general anaesthesias i had before - i went under complaining about the pain XDit's like, the last two seconds before you go under, your face, or in one case, arms, get really bad pins-and-needles, and it's one of the grossest feelings ever, but it's literally just a second or two and then you're out. the first thing i remember after coming to, is people coming to my bed and telling me to take breaths, or to breathe in deeper.i had a little trouble with my oxygen levels for a while, but they put an oxygen tube thingie into my nose, with a piece of sponge around it to keep it in place, i also remember telling someone i was feeling nauseous, and i think they gave me some medication for that. i was in no pain at all, just super woozy and confused why it was already around 3 in the afternoon. surgery must've taken WAY longer than 2-4 hours, since they put me under at 7:30, and i came to enough to ask the time at 3 in the afternoon.back in my room i asked for my phone and sent a few typo-heavy drunk texts to my mom and my girlfriend to let them know i was still alivestill no pain, dizziness, overall "just trying to sleep"-iness. a nurse came in some time later, to help me get up and pee. i didn't think i needed to, but she told me they put five liters of whatever (saline, probably) into me during the surgery and after, and i do know that getting up is important after surgeryso, she hooks me under and butt-naked me (surgical bra and mesh panties only. sexy. comfortable. not basically literally ass-naked) shuffles over to the bathroom, nurse carrying the big drainage bottles.i could feel my ears rushing and hearing static the moment i stood, but i managed to sit down and do the deed. on the way back to the bed, i nearly passed out, but nurse and another nurse got me back safely and i could sleep some moreduring the night, i am woken up a few times, by a male nurse who comes to open my bra and check the bandages and palpate my new tiny tiddies for anything bad.it's a bit disorienting to be subjected to someone messing with your boobs when you're more asleep than anything, but the whole staff was super nice and gentle with me, on saturday, post-op day 1, i managed to somehow pull at my right-side drainage and the bitch gave me trouble for the entirety of its stay in my boob, and it's still the more sensitive side >_>my new boobs looked soooo teeny tiny! to be honest, while i was excited, i was also a little scared that they'd become too small, but that feeling came and went, and looking back, i know it was simply the shock of the /difference/. day one was mostly spent entirely in bed, since my circulation was still pretty bad, and getting up gave me big troublesluckily, the nurses all were very very nice and refilled my water bottle for me and helped me get to the bathroom and back, and iirc, in the afternoon, i managed to put on some real panties and a shirt. MUCH better!also, on saturday, my girlfriend came to visit and it was really nice <3as for pain, i wasn't in any mentionable pain, other than that bitch of a drainage tube. that shit hurt like hell, while my boobs themselves almost didn't hurt at alli was, and still am, quite surprised they weren't painful. (given, i was taking ibuprofen 600 3x a day) sore, of course, and tender, and feeling about ready to pop with how taut they were, but not painful, i didn't and don't feel the incisions or the sutures/stitchesi stopped taking any pain meds yesterday, which was post-op day 5, and i only needed one ibu on tuesday) sleeping on my back is lame. and waking up on sunday, i had a major headache, that even the ibuprofen didn't manage to helpi think it was a mix of my neck being overly tense, plus leftover surgery and anesthesia meds that messed with my head (i read that having migraines puts you at a higher risk of post-op headaches) sunday was the day where i started to get lots better. i could get up on my own for the bathroom, and even the little trip down the hall to the water fountain dispenser thingie, and in the afternoon/early evening, i even managed to take the elevator to the ground floor and grab some well-earned sweets from the little shop there. the headache was the biggest discomfort, other than the drainage tube pulling occasionally, and my petty room mate... boy... by that point she was getting SO annoying. she had had surgery the day before me, a procedure to put an expander under the skin of her face, to grow skin to remove a mark from her face (i don't know what it's called, in german, it's a fire's mark, basically a large, deep red/purple mark that's puffy and you're usually born with it)i think she's russian? she had a heavy accent, and the first pieces of conversations i remember clearly were of her complaining about refugees and how they have so many kids only to cash in on social child support money (which is a thing in germany, but, well, for citizens, not for refugees...) i tried half-heartedly explaining that refugees aren't here for shits and giggles, and no, they don't get child support money from the state. they get, if at all, a bare minimum to feed and clothe themselves.... i didn't want to antagonize her, because in my drugged-up, post-surgery state, i was having paranoia she would try suffocating me in my sleep. (which i was aware of was purely my anxiety talking, but, y'know, i didn't want to pick fights either way, and delicate topics are best discussed if you have the opportunity to leave.)next thing i very clearly remember her doing was antagonizing the nurse that wanted to put a new something into her iv. the thing was, the nurse sneezed. into her shoulder. before moving to continue with the tubes. roomie gives her shit about that. how it's unacceptable that she'd sneeze onto the needle and get her germs all over the place, and how that's unprofessional and why she wasn't getting new needles and all that the nurse calmly explained she wasn't sick, it was just a little sneeze and she didn't get anything onto the stuff. discussions ensue. nurse sents me an "is this really happening?!" look, and i just give a helpless grin-shrug, because, yeah, it was happening. nurse was clearly heavily annoyed, but managed to finish putting the iv thing into her before leaving a little louder than necessary.i can understand voicing your concerns about hygiene and your worries. that's good. not good is picking fights with the people taking care of you. like... i caught myself thinking, every single time lady next to me went to complain or whine about something (which she did... /quite/ a lot) that, if i am in a hospital, dependent on the care of the staff, that the LAST thing i want to do is being a bitch to them?i'll do my damndest to be polite at least, friendly whenever i can, so they know i appreciate the help. being nice to your nurse means your nurse will do their best to care for you, and maybe put in a little more effort than absolutely necessary (like offering to fill my water bottle for me) and if someone has to sit me onto the toilet becauce i can't pee by myself, the least they deserve is me not bitching. seriously, the lady was nice enough, overall, but man... she also was entitled and just that special little snowflake kind of person. complaining about her boyfriend not taking the day off work so he'd be available all day to pick her up whenever she was discharged... i understand the thought behind it, but i also understand you can't just leave work just like that. and she was better off than me, mobility-wise, she could've taken a taxi or even public transport (given, i wouldn't have, either) or just waited for him until he could leave work)aaaaaanyway, on monday, headache was getting better, and my surgeon came in to check up on his work, he finally told me how much he removed, and it was WAY more than i expected or he estimated before,he'd told me, he'd remove about a kilo of tissue per side, which seemed a good weight, (i'd weighted them before, and they were about 2 kilos each, according to my kitchen scale XD )and it ended up being 1,4 kilos per side... that's almost 3 kilos! that's, like, two whole chickens! i was pretty shocked, but also excited, because, for the first time i really understood how HUGE my boobs had been. and how reasonable and right my decision was. i have no regrets and even in between never had any, but i had my doubts about the necessity of this whole thing, a lot of the time, i felt like it was a mood, or a phase, something i wanted out of a whim, rather than that i really needed it. it was my idea, and i wanted it, and as such, as a non-essential surgery, i was scared that i was doing something wrong. that it'd end up turning out bad, simply because of my paranoia-driven fear of karmic punishment for wanting something like that without it being unavoidable (like my gallbladder surgery) but hearing how much he'd removed, and given how much is still left, and how i now have an average pair of breasts for a woman of my stature, it took some guilt off me. also, by monday, i was starting to feel the first effects of the weightloss. i could sit up without using my arms (which was still being a bitch, because it'd pull on the damn drainage), like doing a situp, and it was sooo easy!even right now, i'm still too overall sore/tender to really notice a direct difference, but indirectly, it's already so amazing! i'm sitting up straighter without even noticing, i can breathe freely, which is odd, but i keep noticing how free my chest feels, like i'm expecting it to feel tight or heavy, but it isn't,on monday, the drainage tubes were FINALLY removed and it was glorious!i could stay until tuesday, and it was good i got to stay another day, because walking around was, and is, still somewhat tedious.on wednesday, i had a bit of an emotional crash. i guess it's the physical shock of surgery/injury and the medication wearing off, coupled with the relief of being at home and knowing you can relax now, i was dissociating a little, on and off through the day, feeling weepy and alone and all thatbuuuut that went away, too, and today, post-op day 6, i'm still a little tender and weak, but overall, i'm doing pretty fine!i can wash myself on my own, even my hair, and i am in SO much less pain than i expected. like... i was preparing to be out of commission completely for the entirety of the three weeks vacation i took off of work, but if things continue like this, going back in two and a half weeks will be absolutely possible. i catch myself being a little too enthusiastic sometimes, like trying to reach up to open/close my skylight window and getting a little reminder NOT to stretch up my arms all the way. or having to take a break from walking up the stairs and having to sit a couple minutes in the house's staircase on the way up to my appartment (we don't have an elevator)the most uncomfortable thing right now is the itching. the medical bra rubs against the edge of the steri-strips, where my skin is taut and dry and it's leaving mild imprints and it ITCHES and it's driving me insane, but it doesn't hurt, and it doesn't seem to mess with the stitches, so i'm trying not to complain too hard. all things considered, and with how weak and sore i was, right now, as i'm typing this, i'd do it all over again. i don't want to jinx anything, so i won't jubilate, but overall, i'm pleasantly surprised by how well things have been so far. i like my tiny new boobs, and i hate the itching, i love how much longer my torso looks, and i'm looking forward so much to buying beautiful bras and all the pretty swimwear i couldn't before, because it would never fit my boobs....aah <3next week i'll go in to have my stitches removed (they're not the dissolving kind) and i'm a little worried how the scars will hold, but i'm also eager to start using lotions and all the good stuff to help the skin recover i will recommend this procedure to anyone that's considering it, and i'm so happy that the surgery went well and my new boobs look perfect! (if still a little crinkly around the scars XD )

[everything-is-broken-here]

I am so beyond exhaused at the moment. On Thursday night for the first night ever I decided I would be the designated driver on a night out. My friend got absolutely smashed to the point where he couldn’t stand up basically and so I had to have him put his arm around me and walk him to the car, which was a 20 minute walk and my other friend, who was completely sober wouldn’t help despite the fact that I was basically dead lifting my friend because he had his entire body weight on me. My other friend thought that it was hilarious though and instead of getting on the other side of him and helping me to hold him up, she just laughed and pranced ahead and filmed me struggling. Anyway, about 100 metres from the car, my friend stomped his foot super hard and ended up standing on my foot (I was bare foot because I couldn’t physically carry him how I was with heels on because I kept falling, and he stood on me hard enough that it’s been bruised for days). I completely screamed in pain and swore because it hurt so bad, which set my friend off feeling so guilty that he was like “I’m sorry, I can walk by myself. I’m so sorry.” And he ran forward and started skipping and he ran into a concrete wall. This was at 1:20am. When I got to him there was blood absolutely everywhere, just pouring from his head and there was a massive pool of it on the ground. I sprinted to my car while my other friend sat with him and had to find a way to turn around and get to him which took like several minutes but it felt like a lifetime. We dragged my friend into the car and I had to drive him to the ER. Except there was nowhere to park outside of the ER so we had to park on a side street that was about a 7 minute walk. My friend couldn’t stand up at all at this point and kept almost passing out so we were trying to carry him, there was blood all over us and it was really terrifying. As we were walking, I saw an ambulance pass on the street that was connected to the one we were on and I was so relieved to see one that I took off sprinting again trying to catch it before it disappeared. I managed to get to it when it stopped outside the hospital and I was so out of breathe and just instantly just started puffing, “my friend. please. he needs help. please help us.” and that was all that I could get out before bursting into tears. And then I saw my friends coming down the road and I ran back over to them and we practically dragged him through the ER doors, blood absolutely everywhere. Despite time feeling like it had completely slowed down, we arrived at the ER at 1:45am so it only took us 25 minutes. They took my friend through and told us to wait in the waiting room. Every time we would ask for an update that would just tell us that he was asleep or that they hadn’t gotten to him yet which was beyond frustrating because there were only 2 other people waiting in the waiting room, which isn’t to say that they weren’t busy but it was still frustrating when you’re worried sick about someone. When we would ask about him they would just say “I’m sure he’s fine,” which was the least comforting thing ever because it wasn’t even a guarantee that he was okay it just sounded like they were too lazy to check and see how he actually was. At about 4am they told us they were going to have to put staples in his head because he’d cracked his head open. But then when we asked for an update at 5am they said they still hadn’t touched him. At this point I had been awake for an entire 24 hours, my day was hectic because I had back to back classes and the adrenaline of what had happened was wearing off, so I was exhausted and couldn’t control any of my emotions. I just wanted to go home to bed but I refused to leave until my friend was okay. At 7am the nurse came out and told us that his discharge letter was just being written up and he would be out shortly. I was so happy that it meant he was okay and that we could leave that I almost started crying, but I pushed it down and just victory hugged my friend instead. Then, not even 5 minutes later the nurse came back out and said that they decided to keep him in for observations for another 2 hours, which was when I stopped being able to hold in the tears. I was so tired that I just started crying and I was trying so hard to fight it but they just streamed. The nurse, who could see that I was exhausted told me to go home and sleep, but I explained that I couldn’t leave because we had called his dad 54 times and his mum was down south and nobody was answering their phones and non of his other friends can drive and just crying that he’s completely broke and wouldn’t be able to afford any way home so it was up to me to take him home and so I would just have to wait until they were ready to discharge him because there was almost no point in me going home by the time I got home I’d have had to go straight back. And I explained that once he got back to his house anyway there would be nobody to look after him because he lives with a housemate and she is always out, so he had to come back to mine. So the nurse said she would speak to the doctor and see what she could do. Finally she came back out and said that they were going to let him come home with me as long as I checked on him and made sure he didn’t have a concussion. They took us through to him and I was so happy that he was okay that I started crying of joy and gave him the biggest hug. So after 6 hours sitting in a waiting room doing nothing at all (because even my phone died), I finally got to take my friend home. The hospital didn’t clean him up at all while he was there and so he had crusty, dried blood all his face and in his hair. When we got back to my place, he was pretty much back to his usual level of energy except for the exhaustion, but he was still stumbling a bit so I had to shower him for him. It took me about 25 minutes to get the dried blood off of his face and out of his ears and off of his chest and then another 25 minutes to wash the blood out of his hair without getting soap ir touching the staples on top of his head. By the time we had finished cleaning him up it was 10:45am and we finally got to hop into bed, I was so overtired that I kept falling asleep but I could still hear my thoughts and I had an entire conversation with him in my sleep, which I do actually partly remember but mostly I don’t remember it at all. I have never been that tired in my entire life and it was such a weird feeling being asleep but being able to hear and feel and see everything around me, I’ve never experienced that before. I told him I would leave him alone and go and sleep in the spare room but he just pulled me in to him and gave me cuddles and thanked me for being there for him and so we both fell asleep cuddling. Despite being completely exhausted physically, mentally and emotionally, I only managed to get 3 hours of sleep and was awake again by 2pm, still feeling completely exhausted and in that run down state but I couldn’t go back to sleep because my friend had woken up at that point too and wanted someone to talk to. His mum ended up coming to my house to visit him (his mum is very abusive towards him and despite seeming lovely towards me he begged me to let him stay at mine instead of going back to her house with her). So she stayed for about an hour and then she left. Just as we were about to go and have a nap, my other friend that had been with us called and wanted to hang out. I begged her not to come over to my house because I was exhausted and wanted sleep but she refused to listen. I honestly have never pleaded with someone so hard in my life to just give me space and not come and see me, but nevertheless, she showed up 20 minutes later and I was beyond frustrated. I only managed to get a few hours of sleep again last night because I was still so worried about my friend, and even though I slept in a different bed to him for the first time in ages, it was the worst sleep I’ve ever had. I woke up this morning to a text from him because he was feeling nauseous and needed a bucket because he couldn’t get from my bed to the bathroom. So I woke up and got him a bucket and sat rubbing his back for an hour while he threw up. After he threw up, he fell straight back asleep and I went downstairs to clean out the bucket of puke so it’d be nice and clean for him if he woke up again and felt sick (honestly, friendship level 100). But I couldn’t stop dry wreaching while trying to take the bucket downstairs, so I was trying desperately not to look at it. I got downstairs to the laundry and got to the sink and looked that it was empty and quickly tipped the vomit down the sink and started washing the bucket (all without looking still), after I had gotten it to a point that was clean enough that I could stomach looking at it, I looked over and noticed that the plug had been in the sink the entire time, so I had to reach my hand into the sink filled with my friends vomit so I could pull out the plug and drain the sink. I have never been more disgusted, you think touching a piece of food in the sink while you’re doing dishes is bad, try touching someone elses vomit. After that horrific ordeal, I decided that I would try to sleep while my friend was sleeping because I honestly could have slept for about 80 years. Just as I crawled into bed and got nice and comfortable, a friend called me. We spent 2 and a half hours on the phone together!!!! And the whole time she just complained to me about how annoyed she was at my friend who hurt himself because he was an idiot and “hurt himself on purpose” and it wasn’t fair because now I had to look after him and do all this shit for him and she started telling me that she thinks he’s being toxic and I was just not in the mood for it because I couldn’t care less that I had to look after him, I was just glad that my friend was safe and okay. But yeah, I had to put up with the complaining for 2 and a half hours which isn’t great when you’re already so mentally and physically drained. Like my body has been aching since thursday because all of his body weight was on me while I was trying to carry him, I have bruises all over my body from it and I still haven’t had more than about 6 hours sleep since it all happened on thursday night. I finally got off the phone to my friend and was about to go to sleep and then my best friend called me 5 minutes later. I didn’t mind speaking to my best friend though because she was supportive and I enjoyed our conversation, but I was still just craving sleep. By the time I got off the phone to my best friend it was 4pm and my friend was awake so I couldn’t go back to sleep despite desperately wanting to. So I stayed up talking to my friend for an hour then got to a point where I was like “I’m so sorry but I really need to go and have a nap right now, I’ll be back in half an hour.” And then I was in my brothers room, almost asleep and my best friend called again having a panic attack and so I had to stay awake and talk to her (again, I didn’t mind but it’s like I couldn’t get 5 minutes to myself to sleep). After I got off of the phone I went downstairs and had some food and by the time I got upstairs, my friend was asleep again and has been asleep ever since, so I’m going to take this opportunity now, at 9:30pm on Saturday night, to finally get some actual sleep since I have had about 6 hours since I woke up on Thursday morning. It’s a miracle. I’m just so darn tired, the adrenaline used up so much of my energy and the complete and utter worry that I felt about my friend and hoping that he would be okay, spending 6 hours in a waiting room used up so much of my emotional capacity that I have just been empty since it happened, my body has been awake but I have been so dead inside and just in need of space from everyone, but I just haven’t been able to get it. So I’m excited to spend 20 minutes to myself and then go straigt to sleep. 

[ladywithoutababy]

IVF Transfer #1: 6 weeks, 4 days pregnant

Ok, LOTS going on over here and it’s been a little while so I’ll try to capture everything that’s been happening.

The last couple weeks have been... eventful. Last Monday I woke up with a UTI (apparently very common in pregnancy, and even more common if you’re taking progesterone because it makes you more sensitive) and had a harrowing time getting a prescription for antibiotics because of the pregnancy. I ended up having to go into an urgent care, where I peed about 10,000 times while I waited for an excruciating two hours, and then they ended up prescribing antibiotics before the urine analysis was done anyway, and then they never even called me to tell me what the results were, so whatever. I took the antibiotics for a week and everything is fine now, although I spent the whole week paranoid that the antibiotics would ruin everything (even though, fun fact, there IS a pregnancy-safe antibiotic for just this purpose! Macrobid, aka Nitrofurantoin).

I’ll spare you the details on this next part, but I feel like I have to at least mention it because this whole blog exists to help other women going through it know what to expect: the suppositories are really becoming the bane of my existence. They’re not that bad to put in, but the um... how do I say this without you never wanting to look at my blog again... let’s just say they weren’t kidding when they said there might be some unpleasant discharge. There was one moment in particular where it was so... um... graphic, and unexpected, and gross, that I became briefly convinced I’d had a miscarriage. I summed it up to my husband (who did NOT want to hear about it, but that’s marriage for you) as body horror. (By the way, side note, I keep thinking about how unfair and ridiculous it is that miscarriages are never portrayed in TV shows and movies, given how common they are. I loved that Fleabag showed someone having one, and acknowledged her experience and her pain. We need more of this representation. It’s not healthy for women to have the impression that the moment you miss your period you are definitely going to have a baby in 9 months. Anyway.)

And THEN, this past Monday, of course, I woke up with a bunch of Coronavirus symptoms. Shortness of breath, dry cough, fever, body aches, chills, headache. I called my doctor, who was very clear that unless I could get a negative covid test result, I could not come into the office for my planned ultrasound (which was scheduled for today, Wednesday). Luckily, NYU is doing extremely efficient covid testing, and I was able to schedule a test for Tues morning with same day (!) results. The covid test (it’s the PCR swab thing) is as uncomfortable as they say it is – they stick it in basically to your brain and it burns and feels extremely unnatural – but it’s at least quick. They told me I’d have results by 3-4 in the afternoon, which of course didn’t happen, and by 5 or 6 my husband was raging. I think we were both losing our mind at the possibility of not being able to go into the doctor and get some information after 2 weeks of nothing. LUCKILY, we heard from them around 7, and there was no covid detected, so I was cleared to go in.

Ok here’s the good part.

This morning we went in for our first-ever ultrasound (well, I went in, and I facetimed my husband in from the car). I had absolutely 100% worked myself up to being convinced that it was going to be bad news. Here’s the thing: when you go 2 weeks without any new information, and when you don’t have any obvious symptoms, and when you have a history of fertility problems, it starts to feel literally impossible that you could be pregnant. My mind starts going to all these conspiracy theories: They confused my blood results with someone else’s. It’s a scam so people will keep going to this clinic. There’s no way a baby could survive the 100.3° fever I had. I’m not eating enough vegetables. If you’re not feeling nauseous it’s probably a sign that you already had a miscarriage. Etc etc etc. It starts to feel more plausible that you are cursed and that the universe is doing everything it can to prevent you from having a baby. It’s horrible. I started crying in the car this morning on the way to the doctor’s office because I was pretty sure it was going to be bad, but also because even if it’s good news, THAT SHIT WON’T LAST. 24 hours later I’ll be back to doubting everything, and I’ll have to wait another who-knows-how-many-weeks to get reassured again. It’s just too much to worry about all the time.

But I managed to stop crying, and I made it to my ultrasound. Aaaaaand somehow, miraculously, um, everything is good! The doctor said it all looks “perfect.” AND WE GOT TO HEAR A HEARTBEAT! She also confirmed that we’re 6 weeks, 4 days along, and that our due date (!) is March 11. (Yes, my husband is already in trouble for all the 311 references he’s making.) Here’s what this thing looks like:

Even though all we saw was this weird little blob, hearing a heartbeat definitely made the whole thing feel more real. I’m going to try really hard going forward to just try to embrace the situation and assume everything is fine unless I hear otherwise. One thing that’ll help with this: we’re graduating from the fertility clinic to a regular OB! It also helped that my doctor said that at this point (now that we’ve done genetic testing AND we can hear a heartbeat), there’s a very small (less than 10% chance) of miscarriage. So I think we can proceed with cautious optimism.

We also get to start tapering off all the medications soon, THANK GOD. We only have to do injections for another week, I start reducing the pills and suppositories a week after that, and then finish everything a week after that. So I think by mid-August we’ll be all done, which feels real good. I can’t even remember how long we’ve been doing this for, and don’t really want to know. Look forward, not back!

We’re very happy, and very emotionally exhausted. I hope the relief can last us until our next doctor’s appointment. 

[lillikat]

Dear Pervert – An Open Letter.

*Names will not be mentioned so as to protect the guilty. This letter may contain issues which could trigger those with a past history of sexual abuse or harassment - ie: most women*

Dear Pervert,

So we’ve been acquaintances on Twitter for what must be now 6 years or so.  You followed me, and I reciprocated.  I remember as I don’t find and follow many over there, only the truly fascinating, which you did not come under.

You whore your watercolour paintings on Twitter, occasionally asking for feedback and often not actually wanting it.  Just trying to “engage your audience” I suppose.  I gave feedback on works I liked and on aspects that you openly asked for.  Very occasionally you replied to me.  Nice, but busy and possibly rather self involved was my diagnosis of you from these interactions.

I believe you once sent me a spam message, whining about how you wanted me to promote you or join you on Facebook.  I ignored the crap out of that.  Perhaps there was more to that message, now I think about the way you treated me yesterday.

Your watercolours are supposedly amongst the best in the UK with your distinct style which you have given a unique name to (yes bitch, I did look you up and did some light internet homework after our interaction yesterday.  Some of these details were most unflattering, very eye-opening and brought some light to our interaction).  I was happy to retweet on my own terms, as I liked your use of light, perhaps even considered buying one at some point when I actually had money, obviously not now.  I wouldn’t want anything your fuckboy hands have been involved in anywhere near me now.

So despite our complete lack of personal interaction, really getting chatting to each other, you decided to push yourself on me yesterday.  Not the first, nor shall you be the last to demand my attention by DMing me out of nowhere, relying upon the fact I have manners and humanity, knowing that I would not outright ignore a simple greeting.  However, I smelt fuckery straight away.  You see a LOT of men seem to think I am here for their amusement, be that sexual or otherwise.

**Look boys, if your mum didn’t breast feed you enough or hug you, that is not my problem.   If you want me to be your therapist, I require payment and for you, “Dear Pervert” that price is tripled. **

So regardless of my thinking ��oh shit, another man looking for a mother or slut and I can’t be titted being either.” I responded to your ill conceived, terribly spelt attempt at communication. Perhaps I was wrong, after all, you try to sell work through this Twitter account, by DM nevertheless, there’s just no way you’d risk your professional reputation by being a creepy man on this account, would you?

Yet you did exactly that.  7 messages, that’s what it took you. No romance, no wooing, no paying attention to social cues like me telling you I am busy working, hinting (so clearly that a dog would have picked up my not so subtleties) that I wanted to be left alone and had no interest in you whatsoever.  You just kept going didn’t you?  Did not give one fuck that you might be making me uncomfortable, annoyed and deeply nauseous.  No, because your dick was in control.  You pathetic sack of crap, you let your base animal instincts override any sense of socially acceptable behaviour that you might have had.

7 messages of me saying I am working and you sending badly spelt trash, bibbling on about how your in bed and so tired.  “Go to sleep then you absolute fanny and stop bothering me I have work to do” was what I was thinking but instead I stated “I am working, I have a lot to do so it will be many hours before I can similarly relax like you are doing.”

You piled on ambiguous emojis like a schoolgirl who’s just got their first smartphone.  “Here check this shit out” I called to my husband as I stated I thought I had yet another live one on DM. That was on your second message - the third in our entire interaction.  Then you witter on about distracting me from work. ”Dear Pervert”, you really should've bowed out but oh no, not you.  You felt entitled didn't you?  You then had me reaffirm my I AM BUSY statement and then sent me a shot of your erection barely clothed by grotty hospital style pyjamas.

What in the name of anything sacred or sane were you thinking?  At no point did I state any interest in your grotty ass.  Not one smidgeon.  Not one cell of my being asked for your vague innuendo then shot of your erection.  Bam! Rank pyjamas and that, in my face.

Thank you, “Dear Pervert”.  Thank you for not reading my timeline or taking any blind bit of notice that I am part of the #metoo movement, part of the #SexAbuseChat survivors.  Only recently found my voice.  Only started to barely grace the depths of my survival and story.  Barely trusting, yet finding strength in the shared stories of my sisters of the internet, stronger perhaps than I can ever be, who have managed to out their pain sooner.  More succinctly than I.

Do you want to know my first thought “Dear Pervert”?  You made me flashback to the time when I was on holiday with my natural father in a Bulgaria.  The last time he forced me to share a room with him. You made me recall those 2 weeks in all their glory.  Buckle up buttercup, because this is what you had me relive and refeel in all it's hideous detail. Part one. The Flasher. Not my first, by now I am in my early teens.  I have faced emotional, physical, psychological and sexual abuse for many years.  That was my secret. I became good at keeping secrets.  But that’s a whole set of tales for another time, “Dear Pervert”.

Back to the flasher.  My second by this point.  I am waiting to get breakfast, it’s a raised static trailer, I am short and have to tiptoe to see over the counter edge.  I place my order, the man says just a minute and exits.  I step back and wait for what must be 5-10 minutes.  I am looking at my shoes, bored and bewildered, when out of my peripheral vision I see the cook come back in, with his dick in his hand, masturbating furiously.  By now, I know what to do. I am a child and already had faced so much worse.  "Reaction, this shitbag wants me to give anything" was my first thought.  Now my first flasher I shot down in flames by pointing at his penis and in my loudest, best stage laugh proclaimed if that’s all he had he’d better see a surgeon.  This one deserved more and less.  I immediately looked down at my watch swore about this guy being a lazy so and so, then walked off in the opposite direction to the nearest busy shop.  I was shaking,  I thought I was going to pass out or throw up.  I walked slowly so he wouldn’t know I saw him, then sped up gradually, afraid this man was going to chase after me.

Part two. Daddy Dearest. I got back to the hotel room I shared with my father, telling him about the incident in full detail, as soon as he arrived.  Surely he will do something or know who to tell, was my logic.  No, in my natural father’s true style, he decided this would be the perfect occasion to show me his throbbing penis.  Again for no reason.  We were both reading later, after dinner.  Father was in his underpants & t-shirt, which until then never bothered me.  He then yelled jovially “hey what do you think of this?” and as I looked over at his bed he whipped down his underwear to reveal my second unwanted erection of the day.  Again “Dear Pervert” I cannot underline, that even at this tender age, I was not a person to be reckoned with.

Let me break this down for those who have never experienced true fear.  Seconds, feel like hours.  Your heart races, you feel giddy, throat goes dry you swallow - it’s sand, you feel the shaking start, the adrenaline has kicked it now you have an eternity in this moment of horror.  Sadly, I had lived here before.  Many times. Fortunately, I have learned how to construct complex battle plans in those uncomfortable moments.  A few seconds was all I needed.

I took one look at my natural father’s erection, raised an eyebrow and told him he should take that shit on children’s TV as a puppet act.  Perhaps the broom cupboard on CBBC would take his act? I then went back to reading my book.  I knew if I had reacted in any other way, we would have issues.  Joke it off, brush it off as just a bit of fun then jam in the fact YOU ARE A CHILD in large letters, in hopes he will see.  From that moment on, things between my father and I got worse.  The brutal reality I had to face was that my father wanted me.  Completely, in every sense of the word.  My everything. I had to run. I had to survive, again.  This had become my normality. I could never let him know that I had been here before.  I knew even then, he would see that information as some sort of gateway for him to start full on abuse mode.  I was not about to let that happen.

So to put it succinctly “Dear Pervert” you triggered memories of my father.  For that I hate you.

In your scale of thinking it’s nothing, your junk was technically covered.  No, no and NO. No means no, by the way. Drinking is not an excuse ever (looks like this excuse might be a habit for you “Dear Pervert”, again you made me look you up).

As for having a bad week, which was the main crux of your excuse.  A bad week?  Try having a hellish couple of years in which you almost lose every damn thing including your sanity and will to live.  I’ve had that and not once sent pics of my flaps to random internet men.  I think I might be able to speak on behalf of most women and say none of us would do that shit ever.  I mean genitals are not attractive.

You don’t even remotely tickle my turnip “Dear Pervert” so why in god’s name would you think “oooh my barely covered erection is just what this conversation needs”?

You sir are a fuckwit.  A massive gaping, diseased one at that.  I have spent a day and a half by now (yeah writing this much vitriol takes time, it’s a craft) hating you “Dear Pervert” for the following reasons.

1: You hold a position of power.  Lots of followers on Twitter, prolific artist, seemingly professional.  I am an artist, just starting out, being sneered at for my style by the likes of bigwigs such as you.  That is why I spoke to you on DM, that is why I gave you the time of day.  I thought we shared a common passion, that you might be wanting to talk shop or art.  You entered into a contract of trust and you pissed all over it.  That’s what you’re doing when you randomly seek attention from a woman on the internet by the way. If they give you the time of day back, count your blessings behave like a gentleman and keep your dick where it belongs.  Off my DMs and not in my face.  You abused your position of power.  For shame!

2: Right at the exact time your fuckery started my dog decided to start violently throwing up.  Yet I had to take time out to yell at you & report you.  So I’m just blaming you for my dog being sick, because I think she saw your pathetic wang and it made her chuck.  That’s what I’m telling myself anyway.  It pleases me to do so.

3: I have had panic attacks, stomach aches & headaches since, thanks to the constant supply of panic adrenaline that my body seems to use as some form of defence.  My heart has been racing, I can’t sleep & can’t eat.  So thank you for that trauma.

4: You didn’t even care when I yelled at you and told you that I am not here to be an object of sexual gratification nor amusement to internet randoms, that I was a human with actual real feeligns attached to them.  I also informed you that I am married, and again I didn’t want your pervy nonsense.  Now every letter is riddled with hidden intent and double entendre.  Every character takes on new meaning in light of your behaviour.  You gave me eye rolled emoji like a fucking child.  You make me sick.

5: I now worry about the safety of other women on the internet. Oh but fear not “Dear Pervert” the whisper network is in effect. I can’t out you here, but I absolutely can tell my loved ones to avoid you like a dose of virulent crabs.  They have been told you are not professional and you are not a safe person.  I think we can both agree on those very simple facts.  My ladies will give you wide berth, they will tell other women who will tell other women who will tell other women.  So in short if you’ve done this before (which I have to believe you have & much worse) it will come out eventually.  If you really were just showing your dick to me and I was your special first, note if you do this again, the network will get stronger.  Why?  Because we are looking out for one another in trying times, as only real, actual humans do.

With that “Dear Pervert” I sign off.

Know the pain you have caused me and know you just pushed me to out pain and truth that I have never done before.  You broke me, now there might be a landslide of cathartic outings here.

Sisters of the internet!  You are not alone, together we are stronger.  You there reading this, yes you.  You are a Goddess.  No you are, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Men, treat every woman as the Goddess she is.  After all women have paid homage to your masculinity for aeons.  Return the favour.

If we all treat each other as Gods & Goddesses, with the full respect that holds, perhaps there might be less of this infestation of men believing they have privilege over woman’s domain.  Because random internet boys, we owe you nothing not one thing, therefore you have no right to demand anything from us ever.

We are not your sex toys.

We have feelings.

Yours Blistering with Rage

L

[your-iron-lung]

Mixed Up 22 | I Don’t Want to Die (In the Hospital) |

Chapter Word Count: 6106

Pairings: Zoro/Sanji

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Chapter Warnings: Strong Language

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21,

Next Chapter: 23

The first time he dyed his hair was with cheaply bought store dye that didn’t last for very long and almost washed out completely after the first rinse. He had surprised everyone in the house he was living in at the time when he emerged from the bathroom with badly bleached, splotchy looking green hair. He remembers how Kuina had first looked envious, and then laughed outright at him. He’d been proud of his first attempt, but the shit she gave him for it wounded him. Not that he’d ever let her know, though; he’d merely accused her of being jealous and found out that he was right. She was, so she then demanded he go with her so she could pick out some cool hair colour of her own.

They didn’t do any research into which brand of dye was the best, but they picked up a different brand than the one he’d used originally after the results he got were far from optimal. He bought himself another bottle of a similar looking green, and when they got back home they dyed each other’s hair, laughing at one another for the way they looked while they waited for it to set. When it was done, Zoro’s hair was a solid, definite green and Kuina’s was a deep, dark blue that matched her eyes well.

He never did outgrow that colour. That perfect, absolute shade of green.

“You could lay down on the lawn and lose your hair in the grass,” Kuina had once said.

His hair was fading; he’d been in the hospital for too long.

Not only were his roots beginning to come in, adding a layer of dark soil for his blades of green hair to sprout from, but it’d been almost two weeks since he’d last dyed it. It was fading horribly, leaving him with the same look and quality he’d had when he’d first tried to dye it. One of his nurses (who had green hair of her own) kept making snide remarks about it, but the pain killers his doctor had him on and the fact that he was still pretty much bedridden prevented him from getting rightfully angry with her.

He could do little more than flip her off whenever she came to check in on him and taunt him with how brilliant her hair looked.

It’d been four days since the accident, and all Zoro really wanted to do was go home, drink a beer or six, and get Nami to help him re-dye his hair. Four days, and the doctor who’d removed his eye wanted to keep him there for who knew how much longer.

It didn’t make sense to him; they’d already explained how he would need to begin to care for his injury post-release, and even had a prescription written up for him for when he was able to go home- which they’d originally said he could do yesterday. The only reason they were keeping him hostage in the hospital was because those fucking painkillers they had him on made him too nauseous to leave his room. His only relief from the boredom and the irritating pain in his eye came in the form of visitors.

His whole team had come once, the day after the accident. They’d crowded the room and gave him a duffel bag filled with the things he’d left in his locker the day before and presented a huge, handmade ‘get well soon’ card to display by his bed. Even his coach had come with them, but he didn’t have any words to share with Zoro. They spoke of general things in an effort to keep the atmosphere light, but it eventually degraded into tearful apologies from those who had been on the ice with him when he’d been attacked and done nothing to help him. Zoro found it embarrassing, and so was quick to forgive them.

No one from his team had come back after the first initial visit, but he hadn’t really expected them to.

Nami came every day, but only stayed long enough to relay how Chopper was doing in her care and how work was going and who was giving his students lessons in his absence.

“It’s actually kind of cool to see Franky playing again, but he’s worried about you; we all are,” she’d said to him once, sighing melodramatically as she leaned over the railing of his bed.

“I’m fine,” he’d said, rolling his eye. “It’s just one eye; not like I went blind. I still have a backup.”

“Idiot! That’s not why we have two eyes!”

She’d made to hit him then, but showed enough self-restraint to keep it gentle. Their conversation had stalled out for a minute then as she somberly tried to avoid looking at the bandages across his face. She’d directed her attention to the small TV that was in the room Zoro shared with another man who also had severe facial injuries. The TV was locked on a channel that only aired soap operas, which had made her laugh at first but was now almost sort of comforting to her.

“I’ve been trying to get Sanji to come see you,” she’d said then, eyes flicking to the man who was happily watching the silent drama unfold on the television screen. “I don’t know what his deal is. He was so worried about you, but now it’s almost as if he’s afraid to see you.”

“I don’t need that idiot around here,” Zoro had said. “I’ve already got to deal with him.”

Zoro tilted his head towards his roommate, who’d turned a dumb smile onto the two of them that only Nami returned.

The man’s name was Duval, and he had, in both Zoro and Nami’s opinion, a rather uncanny resemblance to Sanji from what they could see around his bandages. His injuries were a result from what he’d called a ‘hate crime’ that had been committed against him because he was, in his own words, ‘too beautiful’.

“My looks sometimes make men act irrational with jealousy,” he’d explained on the first day that Zoro had been moved into the semi-private room with him. “It was a hate crime! The man’s girlfriend found my beauty too irresistible! He became enraged when he saw her talking with a man far more gorgeous than he, and yet he says I am to blame for flirting with her! I have no control over the way I look and how it makes women flock to me!”

Duval’s attitude and looks had reminded Zoro far too much of Sanji, but despite what he’d told Nami the day before, he did find that he almost sort of missed the bastard.

There was no one else in his life that could match his wits or rise to the physical challenges he issued. Johnny and Yosaku came close, but they were push overs and drug peddlers who only really chummed up to him so he’d buy their product.

Tashigi had filled that spot for him years earlier, but after the breakup-

No, fuck- he wasn’t going to think about her now.

Scowling, he turned his attention away from the TV he’d been mindlessly eyeballing and towards the various ‘get well soon’ cards and gifts he’d been sent during his time at the hospital. Stacked on the small bedside table was the huge card that had been signed by all his hockey teammates, and that one was surrounded by a few smaller ones that had come from his coworkers and students. Zoro didn’t care much for sentimentality, but if he were being honest, the card he’d received from Tony was his favourite.

The kid had neat handwriting, but his penmanship evidently didn’t transfer into his artistry, for the drawing he’d included of Zoro and him performing on stage together was shaky and scrunched up and overall very odd looking. The card itself didn’t tell him that Tony hoped his recovery was quick and painless, but instead included a rather thinly veiled threat that Zoro was certain the child’s grandmother had told him to write, as it said: ‘Don’t break your promise to me or else!’

If the doctors didn’t release him in time for the Solstice show, Zoro swore he was just going to walk out. Not that he hadn’t already tried that, but his attempt before had been so pitiful he didn’t think it’d work again unless he had some sort of help.

It was his legal right to leave the hospital if he were well enough to do so, wasn’t it?

And as much as his nurse Monet hated him, she wasn’t likely to help him slip out unnoticed. Zoro figured she enjoyed making his stay at the hospital as shitty as she could make it as much as he enjoyed making her job as hard to do as he possibly could. He’d even tried asking Nami once to help bust him out, but had gotten so severely reprimanded by her that he’d nearly decided to give up on escaping altogether.

That is, until Thursday came around and his way out appeared.

On the fifth day of his hospitalization, Sanji finally came to visit.

The door to Zoro’s room was closed when Sanji finally found it. The nurse that was working the station on the floor, though beautiful, had been entirely unhelpful in directing Sanji to the right room. As soon as he’d mentioned Zoro’s name to her, her demeanor switched from flirty to frosty before he could even finish blinking the hearts out of his eyes.

“Oh, that guy is somewhere on my floor. Down that hall somewhere taking up space,” she’d said icily, gesturing vaguely down the hall. Then she’d turned her back to him and proceeded to ignore him until he left.

He’d then spent the greater part of half an hour uneasily poking his head into various rooms to try and find where Zoro was being kept. Sanji hadn’t told Nami he was coming to visit, otherwise he would have asked her for his room number, but he’d been avoiding her the past few days. She’d been pressuring him so much to come that it had begun to make him feel uncomfortable whenever he caught her outside of his complex.

That, coupled with the guilt of knowing just made it seem… wrong, he supposed. Even if no one else blamed him, Sanji knew to blame himself. It had taken him days to work through the guilt and reason that, even if it was his fault, he should at least acknowledge what had happened to the man. He needed to see for himself the extent of the damage he’d caused, though he doubted very much that Zoro would want to see him.

The look on Zoro’s face when Sanji stepped through the door did little to change that feeling.

There was a huge, fierce scowl deeply embedded on his face that almost made Sanji turn around and leave until he realized that it wasn’t being directed at him. Zoro was sat upright in his bed with his arms crossed tight across his chest, frowning at the wall-mounted TV. When Sanji looked at it, he saw that it was airing some sort of drama that had apparently just reached a pivotal point in the story.

“No! How could she do that to him!?”

Surprised by the outburst, Sanji hadn’t realized Zoro was sharing a room with someone else until the other man burst out into emotional tears.

He turned to look at Zoro with a startled expression on his face before he took off the beanie and winter coat he’d been wearing.

“This,” Zoro said, gritting his teeth and finally turning to address Sanji. “This is what I have been dealing with for five fucking days.”

Sanji couldn’t help but smirk, relieved to see at least that the injury hadn’t changed Zoro’s attitude much. He set his clothing aside on a spare chair and pulled up another to sit next to Zoro’s bed. He glanced around the room, taking in how small the space was before he caught sight of the little bedside table full of gifts and cards.

“I didn’t know you had friends,” he commented, sounding bemused as he picked one up and read the standard Hallmark sentiment it contained.

“If I did, do you really think I’d be hanging out with you as much as I do?” Zoro bit out in reply.

Sanji was about to retort until he got a good look at the state Zoro was in. There was one large IV inserted into one of his arms, and a calmly beeping pulse monitor attached to his dominant hand. The bandages around his face did little to hide how tired Zoro seemed to be. His visible eye was dark-ringed and sunken, and his complexion was rather pale compared to how it usually was. They’d even taken out his safety pin earrings, effectively stripping him of his personality.

A twinge of sadness in his chest threatened to sour his mood and make him emotional, which was the last thing he wanted to do. Swallowing it down, Sanji replaced the card on the table and glanced back at Zoro.  

“Natural brunette, huh?” Sanji couldn’t help but say.

“Christ. And this is why I was glad when Nami said you didn’t want to come. Get your rocks off by kicking a guy when he’s already down?”

Sanji winced a bit inwardly, but outwardly grinned.

“You don’t look that down to me.”

And that was true, for the most part. Apart from looking like he hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep in a few days and the bandages covering his eye, Zoro looked, well, as fine as he could have been given his situation.

He’d only been physically injured, after all; it wasn’t like he was sick and recovering from that. Sanji didn’t think hospitals usually held people who’d been hurt like Zoro had for more than a day or two at most. Hell, emergency rooms didn’t even keep people for that long.

Which begged the question, “What are you still doing here?”

Zoro looked at him levelly for a moment, and then away with a shrug.

“This shit,” he said, tapping the IV that was going into his arm. “Makes me nauseous, but the anti-nausea shit makes me sick. They’ve caught me in a loop and won’t release me because they think I have the kind of money to keep paying for it all.”

“Oh.”

Frustrated, Zoro sighed. Sanji gave him a pitiable look as Duval cried out about the injustices of the show he was watching and demanded that the characters make amends. Begrudgingly, Zoro turned his attention to the TV to see what his roommate had been crying about as Sanji read another one of the cards.

“One of your students?” Sanji asked, holding up Tony’s card.

Zoro didn’t turn to look; merely nodded as Sanji took his time in appreciating the drawing. Whoever Tony was and drawn Zoro a little too tall and a little too skinny, but the angry expression on drawing was as accurate as it could’ve possibly been.

The visit was going much better for him than he’d expected it to, which filled him with an immense feeling of relief. Comforted by the feeling, Sanji replaced the card on the table just as Zoro swore loudly under his breath. Before Sanji could say or do anything to stop him, Zoro had jerked the blankets off of his bed abruptly and swung himself around so that his legs went over the non-railed side of his bed.

“What are you doing-” Sanji tried to say, completely taken aback as Zoro interrupted him.

“I’m done sitting here. You’re going to help me get out,” he growled, holding his head for a moment before looking around to give Sanji a stern look.

“What? No- how would I even begin to do that?” Sanji shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t think it’s even legal to leave before you’ve been officially discharged-”

“Shut the fuck up and close the goddamn door!” Zoro all but shouted.

“Oh my god you’re serious.”

Sanji backed out of the chair with a screech and hurriedly went to shut the door to the room before their raised voices attracted Monet’s attention. He turned back around to see Zoro struggling with trying to peel up the tape that kept the IV in his arm and shared a look of concern with Duval, who had suddenly lost interest in his show.

“You’re trying this again?” Duval asked, cocking his head to the side as Zoro finally succeeded, wincing visibly as he and pulled the needle out of his body.

“Again?” Sanji asked, somehow unsurprised as the needle was dropped to the floor.

“Shut up. Yes, again. Get my duffle bag under the bed,” Zoro ordered, ignoring the fact that he had begun to sweat with the effort of getting himself up. The nausea that had been plaguing him for the entire duration of his stay was beginning to flare up again.

“Fuck,” Sanji muttered as he crouched down so he could reach for the bag and bring it up. He set it down on the chair he’d been sitting on previously and then looked to Zoro, who had stood up with a slight wobble.

“Get my clothes out,” Zoro said, turning towards Sanji who had had to look away when he realized the hospital gown Zoro was wearing was untied and open down the back.

He tried to hide the flush from his face by busying himself with rifling through the contents of the bag, but knew from Duval’s laughter that he wasn’t fooling anyone.

“I didn’t know there was supposed to be a full moon tonight,” Duval cackled, leaning back in his bed to laugh comfortably.

“Shut the fuck up! Can’t fucking wait to be rid of you,” Zoro growled, wiping the sweat that had accumulated across his forehead away. He was more annoyed than embarrassed.

Zoro stood there stupidly for a moment, watching Sanji go through his bag before he had to sit back down on the end of his bed. He must’ve stood up too fast or something, as his head was beginning to spin, bringing the room around with it. Ignoring it as best he could, he watched as Sanji pulled out his pair of pants.

Sanji stared at the piece of clothing aghast.

“If Frankenstein had been a fashion designer instead of a mad scientist,” he said, holding the pair of pants up for Duval to see. “These would have been his monster.”

The pants in question looked as though they were made from two different pairs. There was an even split directly through the middle of the jeans going through the crotch so that one pants leg was red plaid and the other was solid black. Both legs had black patches sewn into them that advertised bands Zoro evidently liked enough to wear around.

“What’d I say about kicking a man when he’s already down?” Zoro snapped irritably, snatching the pants away from Sanji before he could find anything else about them to shit talk. “Find my shirt.”

“What, no underwear?” Sanji asked, then wished he hadn’t as Zoro began trying to stuff one of his legs into the pants.

“Don’t wear any on game days.” Zoro grunted as he struggled to work his way through the tight pants leg. “’s what jockstraps are for.”

Sanji felt his face flushing again, but thankfully it seemed as though Zoro was too preoccupied with putting his pants on to notice. He tried to force himself not to think about it too much as he continued going through the duffel bag, pulling out a thick, patched hoodie and a plain t shirt.

He politely averted his eyes as Zoro continued the struggle, grunting as he stood up briefly to adjust himself. After he finally seemed to have gotten his pants on and buttoned, Sanji handed over his shirt.

Zoro took it, but made no move to put it on. Instead he’d grown quite still, sitting back down on the side of his bed with his face screwed up in concentration.

“What? What is it?” Sanji asked, concerned as he noticed that Zoro’s complexion had become steadily greener over the duration of his visit.

“This is why he didn’t get very far the first time,” Duval said knowingly.

Zoro looked like he wanted to reply, but instead closed his eye and took a deep breath as he felt his stomach begin to want to heave.

“Take this- the fucking- take the pulse monitor off,” he said, holding out his hand towards Sanji who looked at it doubtfully.

“Won’t that just alert the nurse if you suddenly start flat-lining?”

“Fuck,” Zoro breathed out, still unwilling to open his eye. He put his hand back on his knee to steady it as his leg began to bob up and down.

Second thoughts began manifesting themselves in Sanji’s mind as he saw just how bad Zoro’s body handled the nausea that came with the pain reliving medicines he was on. Zoro looked like he would barely be able to stand, let alone walk down the hall to the elevator or even out the building.

“Maybe you should stay here,” Sanji tried to say, but went silent when Zoro’s head snapped up to glare at him deeply.

“No.” Zoro was sweating heavily at that point, and he had to wipe his face clean again. “I’m not staying here another fucking day.”

“I’ll wear it.”

Both Zoro and Sanji turned to look at Duval, who held up his hand to wave it at them. They were both confused before he clarified by saying, “The pulse monitor. I’ll wear it so she won’t know.”

“Won’t you get in trouble when they find out you duped them?” Sanji asked with a frown.

“Not if I was asleep when you slipped it on me without my knowing,” Duval replied with a grotesque wink that made both Sanji and Zoro wince.

Despite being unsure that this was the right course of action to take with Zoro in the condition he was in, Sanji helped to transfer the pulse monitor over onto Duval’s free hand. It went quickly, and no noise or other indicator was made by the machine tracking his pulse other than an inconsistent beep for a second that a swap had been made. Zoro seemed relieved by this, but his nausea was still going strong and was actively trying to gain the upper hand over him.

He had Sanji help him into his shirt and hoodie with pauses in between as he tried to keep himself from succumbing to the overbearing sensations his nausea produced. His stomach was seizing, his head was spinning, and he’d already begun to sweat through the shirt he’d just put on.

Again, Sanji was faced with doubts with what they were attempting to do.

“Help me put my boots on,” Zoro said, using all his concentration to keep his body sitting upright instead of curling over to ease the sensation.  

In any other situation, Sanji would have told him to fuck off and do it himself if he wanted to get out so damn badly, but he didn’t. Instead, he knelt down silently by Zoro’s feet and did his best with shoving them first into socks and then into his classic cherry red Docs. After he finished lacing them up, Sanji came to a stand and took a good, long hard look at Zoro.

He was still green tinged and sweaty, but appeared resolute and determined to walk out regardless. Sanji wasn’t sure he’d be able to, no matter how strongly he wanted to leave. He wanted to ask if Zoro was certain he wanted to try and go through with it, but instead asked, “Won’t the nurse recognize you if you just walk out?”

“She doesn’t care,” Duval and Zoro said at the same time.

Duval laughed, but Zoro could only smirk weakly.

“She watched him walk out the first time,” Duval said, smiling reminiscently. “Even walked with him a ways before he collapsed.”

“Okay, well, she might not, but what if someone else recognizes you? Like your doctor? You don’t exactly have what I’d call a ‘forgettable face’. Your hair alone sets you apart.”

“That’s the point,” Zoro said lamely.

“You dense motherfucker, I know that’s your whole shtick but even if we make it off the floor, I don’t think we’re going to make it out of the building if everyone recognizes and knows you’re still supposed to be hospitalized.”

Zipping up Zoro’s duffel bag, Sanji sighed and set it on the floor so he could reclaim the seat, trying to think of a solution that could work in preventing the punk from being recognized on his way out. The eye bandages that took up a third of his face were already something the staff of a hospital would notice; it would be hard enough trying to smuggle him out based on that fact alone. He could always wear his hoodie with the hood up, but given the anti-social clothing he was in, Sanji supposed that Zoro already cut too much of a foreboding figure to risk going out with the hood on.

Some self-righteous security guard or something was certain to stop them then, especially with the size of Zoro’s duffel bag that he would be carrying.

“Weren’t you wearing a hat when you came in?” Sanji looked up at Duval, who was smiling curiously at him from across the room. “Hats work well for hiding hair.”

“Shit, now you decide you want to be helpful?” Zoro said, still trying to keep himself from shaking. “It only took you a fucking week to do.”

“Well, if you leave I can finally turn the volume on for my shows and the season finale for this one comes on tonight! I’m pretty pleased to see you go, actually.”

Wordlessly, Sanji got up from his seat and grabbed his beanie that was lying atop his coat. He tossed it to Zoro, who grabbed it as it landed limply on the bed. He put it on and pulled it down, making sure his ears and forehead were covered entirely before he shot Sanji a ‘is this good enough?’ look.

“I guess that’ll work,” Sanji said, scrutinizing the way his beanie masked most of Zoro’s more recognizable features.

While Zoro didn’t look quite as conspicuous as before, the bandages on his face still stood out. There wasn’t much either of them could do about that, though, short of taking them off, which would have been a worse idea than this already was.

“Good luck, guys,” Duval said, giving the two of them the most horrific wink either of them had ever seen and which almost made Zoro throw up then and there.

Sanji retrieved his jacket and put it on hurriedly, opening the door to Zoro’s room to make sure the hall was clear before they made their attempt. Monet was still at her station, which was mercifully located at the opposite end of the hall from the elevator. They wouldn’t have to walk past her to get there, but it was in clear view of her desk; if she looked up from whatever she was doing at any point while they were moving, she’d definitely see them.

It was a risk they’d simply have to take.

Turning back around, Zoro had come to a stand and was waiting by the chair with his duffel bag on it. He was definitely paler than he had been and looked as though he’d be sick at any moment. He was swaying on his feet, and Sanji couldn’t tell if Zoro was aware of that or not.

“We’re going to have to walk fast,” Sanji said, going to grab the bag and hoist it over his shoulder so Zoro wouldn’t have to struggle with anything other than himself. He studied Zoro seriously for a moment, trying to find any last minute flaw he could to try and convince them that this was a terrible idea. He couldn’t. “Let’s go.”

Sanji led the way but quickly realized that Zoro wasn’t going to be able to keep up with the quick pace he’d set. He was already breathing fast and had a weird, disoriented glazed look about him as he followed behind. The elevator was only a hundred feet away, but it might have been a hundred feet that Zoro couldn’t walk.

His footsteps were hard and heavy as he sluggishly moved along, trying his best to concentrate solely on the effort of escaping and not letting his nausea get the better of him. He could barely even register where it was he was going, and only knew to follow after Sanji’s form. The lines on the linoleum flooring helped to guide him as he did his best to at least keep walking straight along them, but for some reason they liked to lean and curve at random points.

“We’re almost there,” Sanji said, speaking quietly as he fell back to match Zoro’s stride. “You can lean on me if you need.”

Glancing over his shoulder back to Monet’s position to make sure they were still in the clear, Sanji felt his heart sink in his chest when he saw that she was obviously watching them. She had a smirk on her face, but didn’t seem to be trying to alert anyone to Zoro’s escape. Instead, she blew Sanji a kiss and waved them goodbye.

Sanji’s heart fluttered for a moment before he felt Zoro suddenly grab hold of his arm. Startled out of his brief romantic longings, he saw that Zoro had taken him up on his offer and was now using Sanji as a support. Neither of them said anything about it as they finally reached the elevator, with Zoro breathing heavily through his nose and sweating profusely.

They thankfully only had to wait for about a minute after they pressed the down button before the elevator stopped to let them in. The only person that had been inside got off on their floor, but not before they shot a quizzical look at Zoro’s condition.

Sanji flashed them what he hoped was a reassuring smile before he hurried them onto the elevator and pressed the button to close the doors repeatedly until they obeyed. Zoro heaved a huge sigh as he shut his eye and rested back against the elevator wall, waiting to be transported down two floors. Sanji pressed the lobby button and hoped Zoro would last long enough to walk out the front of the building; the hardest part was yet to come.

There were going to be more people waiting in the hospital lobby, which meant there was more of a chance for someone who worked there to spot Zoro before they could leave. It was also a longer walk from the elevator to the sliding glass front doors, and if Zoro had struggled just to make it to the elevator in the first place, then how the hell was he going to be able to surmount that greater distance without drawing attention to himself?

One glance at the man told him that he probably couldn’t. All they could do was try.

“You can’t lean on me when we walk through the lobby,” Sanji said, adjusting the duffel bag’s strap as they descended. “It’ll be too obvious.”

“Won’t need to,” Zoro said in response, opening his eye to up at the ceiling.

He was nearly drenched in a cold sweat and had a hard time keeping his head from spinning but felt like he was getting a good handle over his nausea regardless. His stomach told him otherwise, but Zoro was certain he could keep it contained at least until they were outside and away from any prying eyes. The empty socket was throbbing now, pulsing in time with his rapid heartbeat but hadn’t yet begun to hurt. Despite the fact that it gave him debilitating nausea, the morphine at least did its job well.

“When we get outside, you wait out front off to the side somewhere and I’ll bring my car around to get you,” Sanji said, watching as the elevator counted down their floors. “I had to park in the deck. It’ll probably be easier for you to wait than to try and walk to it.”

“Fine.”

Before anything else could be said, the elevator dinged and opened to the lobby floor. There was a small crowd of people waiting to get on as the doors opened, prompting Sanji to quickly step out, hoping Zoro would keep up with him. It was obvious now that Zoro was struggling, but he managed to follow after him easily enough.

Sanji could hear the heavily labored breathing from Zoro as they slowly began to make their way towards the exit. They walked side by side, passing through the main lobby at a slow and general pace. Sweat was sliding down the sides of Zoro’s face as they progressed, but amazingly enough, he didn’t falter a single step. He kept his eye locked in a stern gaze at the doorway and focused only on moving with Sanji towards his perceived freedom as though he’d been jailed and just been released.

Perhaps due in part to the grungy clothing Zoro was wearing, Sanji noticed that as they walked through the lobby no one looked at them twice or tried to stop their progress. Zoro had a mean, deterring look about him that Sanji had noticed on the first day that they’d met, and was relieved to see that it worked on the general public as well. They made it out of the hospital without anyone trying to stop them, which was nothing short of a miracle in Sanji’s humble opinion.

Zoro sucked in a deep breath of the outside air as they moved quickly out of sight of the front desk, moving down the sidewalk several feet before the nausea finally demanded its host sit. He sat down as carefully he could on the side of the curb, resting his arms on his legs and letting his head hang down between them.

“I’ll get the car,” Sanji said, to which Zoro simply gave him a thumbs up in response.

He hurried away, hoisting the duffel bag up high onto his shoulder and disappeared down the walkway. Zoro hoped that the trick they’d pulled with Duval would buy them enough time for Sanji to pull around the car up and drive them off before anyone noticed and tried to reclaim him.

As warm as it was in the hospital, Zoro hadn’t minded being as sweaty as he was, but when the wind went by he shivered dramatically and remembered it was the middle of December. The sweat trapped two layers down against his skin had already been cold enough, but was now sticky and empowered by the chilled air.

His stomach heaved again, and this time he couldn’t stop it.

Thankful that he hadn’t eaten yet that day, all his stomach could force up was liquids. He puked hunched over with his head between his legs, his stomach coming up onto the pavement between his boots. There was a brief moment where he felt instantly better before his stomach convulsed again and started a cycle of painful dry heaving.

There was no one nearby to hear him groan as some of the pain of his eye surfaced in conjunction with the pain in his stomach. When Sanji finally pulled up, Zoro was still hunched over.

Parking as close to the curb as he could with the passenger side door closest to Zoro, Sanji got out and tried to help the injured man to his feet. At first it seemed as though Zoro didn’t want to uncurl, but after his stomach convinced him to spit up all the liquids it had left inside, he did finally come to a stand. He was trembling noticeably, but Sanji ignored it as he helped Zoro slide into the passenger seat.

Sanji didn’t badger him about buckling up as he pulled away from the hospital front, and in return Zoro didn’t have anything to say about the pop music that was playing through the car speakers. He sat with his eye closed, curled up as best he could on the car seat with his head pressed firmly against the cold window, breathing hard, yet still trying to fall asleep as Katy Perry sang to him on the ride home.

[julystorms]

‘Tis Update Time

I didn’t exactly die or turn into an automaton who reblogs posts and never adds any commentary, but hey, that’s close!

Last week I had surgery on my face and it didn’t really go as well as hoped. In fact, it was kind of bad.

Pretty bad?

Really bad.

The bone they thought was in my jawbones...kind of wasn’t entirely there, forcing the dentist to back out the implants after putting some of them in so that he could re-angle them (and hope they hit bone). They did hit bone. I have eight metal posts in my jawbones (four on top, four on the bottom) and some of them are sticking out at odd angles.

The point of these posts is to hold a pair of dentures in place down the road. There is not enough bone to ever do individual implants or even a palette-less upper denture. It’s this or nothing. Boy is it great having options!

Anyway, I’m not terribly surprised that the condition of my bone was so poor, mostly because it’s been since 2009 since my molars were all yanked so, like, obviously a handful of years. Not a big deal if you had your teeth pulled due to an accident, but for me it was a hereditary lack of enamel that caused rot damage, so you can assume my bone was probably deteriorating as my teeth were falling apart, well before I actually had them all pulled out.

Anyway, I was awake for this procedure (fun, I know!) and had nitrous and of course a lot of shots of Novocaine. In fact, several times he started drilling and :) I :) felt :) it :) so that led to even more shots. So many shots that my lips were horribly numb (well beyond normal). 

Anyway, the procedure over I had a pounding headache (read: migraine), my ears hurt, and--actually, my entire face felt like one of those videos you see of a watermelon getting shot and just exploding everywhere. TERRIBLE. Squirtles, I was dyin’.

I had some doubts about taking Tylenol with Codeine due to the stomach lining problems I had earlier this year (bye-bye nsaid medications!), but by the time I was out of there I wanted to take something so bad I can’t even describe to you how desperate for relief I was feeling. 

It didn’t...touch...it.

So after the first six hours I took two of the suckers and a Tylenol PM and finally found...a small amount of relief. Six hours after that, I took one w/ Codeine and two PMs and six hours after THAT my ass was grass. I woke up the next morning and felt okay for about ten seconds. Then I was nauseous. 

And here I thought I’d feel okay enough to go to work! HAH!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hauled back to bed and laid there unable to feel comfortable and way too sick to even consider eating (so that I could take some pain meds). An hour later I puked for the first time in 20 years, and I was a shaking, dehydrated, pukey mess all morning. It was so bad I laid on the bathroom floor until well after lunch. 

My husband came home for lunch and I’m on the bathroom floor with the lights off in the dark (my migraine was bad) just feeling terrible. So bad I couldn’t do anything ‘cause just sitting up a bit made the world spin. Eventually I had to get up to do something and BLURAGGHGHHH I puked again, after which I downed a swallow of Mylanta and Pepto hoping they’d settle my stomach enough that I could eat and take pain meds. I didn’t leave the bathroom though. It was my new home and I had a blanket nest in there on the floor.

(Lemme be real with you, I was so far beyond caring how gross that was at the time. I couldn’t stop shaking.)

So my husband calls the dentist and I forced myself up and into the shower and went back in to be told it was probably a reaction to the medication and...just take Tylenol. Okay.

Back home again, I felt like shit and knew I’d miss Friday too at work, which is like...just great. 

I had to fling all my leftover PTO on those days I didn’t intend to miss and eating was The Worst Experience in the World (hello and welcome to Everything I Can Eat Safely Makes Me Wanna Gag, a new show run by your host: me, the toothless wonder). By the way: yes, Ensure does taste as fucking terrible as I remember!!!!

I spent all weekend in pain and staring blankly at World of Warcraft (god do I love that game when I feel like dying idk there’s something about killing 7 wolves for their hearts or whatever that makes me feel like I’m accomplishing things when I’d kinda rather sob into a pillow except crying would only make my face hurt more). A good and fun time. For absolutely no one.

Things are much better now, though it’s a bit hard to get comfortable sleeping. I’m kinda slowly figuring out how to eat like this. Good news: bone loss should be partially averted like this! YAY. Bad news: it won’t stop my entire jawbone from shrinking just the front. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers. 

Also bad news: I have to wait 5 months to see if these things will take and heal well/adhere properly instead of the projected three, which means...I don’t get to surprise my family on New Years with cool affixed dentures! In fact, instead, I get to sit through holiday meals watching people eat tasty things while I try not to gag on my 87th serving of mashed potatoes that day.

Right now the bottom implants hurt a bit, I have one hell of a lisp (plus I have to talk slowly like how dare you slow me down u pieces of shit metal u can’t tell me what to do) and I keep getting headaches, but my need for pain meds has dropped substantially. Like I didn’t take any for 12 hours and yes I had a headache from hell but I wasn’t like out of my mind from it. I do consider that an improvement.

So here’s to hoping things look up. From here.

If you made it this far don’t forget to buy my cool memoir, Rot Tooth, which I will totally definitely for-sure write someday. ;))))

And in unrelated news, my latest annoying obsession is watching how-to sewing videos and daydreaming about having a sewing room. And a fancy sewing machine. And other pipe dreams. It’ll be back to your regularly scheduled fandom bullshit in a few days. Probably. But in the meantime I’ll just keep daydreaming about being good at something because boy is it fun to imagine I could be.

[northernwinedregs]

Max Reaper, Chapter One - Humanity’s Virus

 Max C. Reaper: sex icon; owner of no less - or more (but it'll be Christmas soon and he should hopefully get some money off his Gran to get another one) - than two very cool full-length leather jackets, like in the Matrix; ranked 43rd in the world (if you go off aggregate Match Points, and ignore the Asian leagues) at Blood Mansion 7: The Unslaying; and soon, following a successful job interview, an Unpaid Intern at the NoJam Detective Agency in London, awarded Best Small-To-Medium Detective Agency (albeit by an in-office magazine written by the owner of the award's recipients, having being overlooked by the UK Detective Agency Golden Lost Cat Awards three years in a row).

 Max is a confident 28 year-old alpha male who combines alluring charm (a lot of staring) with a low-key approach to personal hygiene. Women shy away from him (awed by his powers of seduction) and men laugh at him (nervous in the presence of such a great guy). He puts the 'no' in Casanova. He puts the 'die, man' in ladies' man. He puts the 'get away from me, you misogynistic creep' in 'get away from me, you misogynistic creep.' Max likes to keep it real by living at home rent-free and not bothering himself with the lesser work of household chores, cooking or trying to better himself in any way. And if this first chapter gets more than ten notes, he just might be about to find himself at the very centre of the biggest case the NoJam Detective Agency has ever seen.

  Chapter One

  Max turned away from his computer screen and rubbed his tired eyes, which prickled and stung, and only prickled and stung worse when rubbed with hands covered in a fine fluorescent dust of artificially cheesed snacks. He drained the last retch of Cowsweat Energy Drink – a poor gastronomic and ethical choice at the best of times when its fortnight's worth of recommended caffeine produced a spike of anxiety masquerading as energy, but a terrible decision this late in the evening, when it could result only in unsettling dreams about getting chased by naked shame – and made his way to the grimy bedroom window, pausing only to ironically, he assured himself and anyone secretly documenting his life, stagger over the improvised art installation of dirty plates, unwashed clothes (all black, all ill-fitting) and emptied Cowsweat cans.

  He stared out of the window, his focus lifting from a dust-freckled window-ledge hosting a cemetery of dead flies (even they, who had liked in life nothing more than tucking into a fresh, warm deposit from the neighbour's thoughtful dog, had not survived the mould-encrusted tomb that Max insisted on calling a hospitable place to live) to the scenery beyond, a messy wash of grey half-light and tendrils of fog – or mist, Max reasoned, having never learned the difference between the two – where rows of terraced and semi-detached houses stood silently screaming with their sickly yellow eyes and gaping icterine mouths. Plus, there was a cat licking its genitals.

  This city, Max thought, staring out into the gloomy gloom. This god-damned city. It's taken everything from me. You can smell the stench, he added, his thoughts now tumbling into some incohesive monologue. It's not the bins, his narrative continued, although since the council dropped collection rates to once bi-monthly, the bins certainly do contribute to the stench. It's not the rats, or the money. It's the people. We're all sick. Sick with need. Sick with urgency. Sick of our own humanity. We're like rats, he thought, contradicting his earlier statement that the malaise of the city was not because of rats, unaware of the use of a simile. We don't need to fear a virus. We are a virus.

  Contrary to Max's unearned cynicism (what has a twenty-eight year-old middle-class white man ever experienced to justifiably make him cynical?), it wasn't a grimy and desolate urban wasteland that could be seen from his bedroom, but quite a nice leafy suburb on the outskirts of London, those outskirts being absolutely miles away from what you could reasonably decide was within commuting distance to the actual city itself. The town of Small Idle had relatively low crime rates, good schools and a number of independent shops. If there was a stench, it probably just was the bins. And the council was trying to manage a translucently thin budget to try and accommodate monthly bin collections at the very least, but to Max, all he could see from his window was the stink of corruption and the disease of humanity.

  His neighbour, Tim Idman (47, dreamed of getting a bus to Bathenswaite but never found the courage) , who was at that moment attempting to coerce the aforementionedly self-licking cat back into its house, noticed Max glaring from his converted roof-space bedroom and offered a cheery wave with a cardiganed arm, which Max only met with a sullen nod of the head, having realised that nodding any other part of his body would be confusing. The cat, indifferent both to the unattractively morose Max in the window and the gentle cooing of her owner, returned to its task, only to find one of its legs abandoned in the air without any recollection of what it was doing there.

 This fucking city, Max thought for a second time, turning away from the window. It changes you. It gets under your skin. One day it's kissing you and the next it's charging you for a turkey and mayonnaise sandwich on rye. One minute you're walking along with sunshine up your arse and soon enough someone asks you for the time and you're on your way to Shit Town. And there isn't even any buses that go out of Shit Town. Not on a Sunday at least. But I'm going to change all that, he decided resolutely to himself, a decision marred only by the way he'd been living for the past twenty-seven years (admittedly he was pretty good at being one year old, absolutely nailing the whole 'how to walk' routine that new parents seem to find so impressive). I'm going to clean these streets, although not literally. Just like, make them less corrupt or something. I dunno, I'm tired. I should go to bed.

  Max should indeed go to bed, for tomorrow he had a job interview with Malcolm Jenkins at the NoJam Detective Agency, and although turning up with only a couple hours' sleep would make him seem as cool and rebellious as he definitely was, even the irresistibly impressive Max was aware of his one and only flaw: he tended to feel a bit nauseous if he didn't have enough rest, and worried that not even someone as devastating as himself could charm his way through an interview in a room in which he'd been recently – or at all, for that matter – sick. So prudently he collapsed into his bed, bending back the crust-brittled sheets and kicking his shoes out from under the duvet, but leaving the rest of his unkempt clothes all to your imagination. He rolled onto one majestic side, pausing only to dislodge an errant pork scratching that had escaped his notice from the day's medically ill-advised breakfast, popping  it into his mouth and crunching the just-about-edible thing both sexily and thoughtfully.

 The only thing that occupied him before a short night of caffeine-terrified dreams was his routine visual lullaby: seven seconds of a skippable advert of an ethically appalling company, who were attempting an inclusive message to try and make the viewer forget about all the animals it tortured in the name of research and profit; before three and a half minutes of an animation that involved an impossibly proportioned woman, and three giant animorphic creatures that boasted not only incredulously large genitals, but seemingly nothing except violent intentions towards the woman. Spent long before the moment that all four characters shared the screen (just about), and adding one more reason as to why he slept under sheets as firm as damp cardboard, he turned his wilting attention towards sleep, and how soon he would cleanse this city in a holy fire of unpaid detective agency admin work.  

[alanaparliament]

Panama to Colombia

Hello from the Cartagena Aeropuerto! We made it safe and sound across the rough seas from Panama to Colombia (although I did not think we would during some points). I’m going to rewind to Panama City. Our days there were very chill, just as the rest of Panama had been for us. For the last two nights we stayed in a really nice hotel called the Tryp by Wyndham. It had a pool, a steam room, a sauna, a buffet breakfast, and a nice room for us to organize our things before our big 5 day sailing trip. I bought a GoPro before leaving the city because Eric’s had stopped working as long ago as Costa Rica. We really wanted one for the boat, and for the rest of South America - and I’m glad we did as I have some amazing footage to show you! On our final day in Central America Eric and I ventured to the Panama Canal to see the famous Miraflores Locks. There was an interesting museum; but what we were most interested in was getting to see the canal in action with a cruise ship! I’m glad we left the hotel for that. The rest of our final night was dedicated to packing and getting ready for the early 5am bus pick-up.

Sailing Day 1:

‘The 5am bus pick-up and the windy road to the boat day’

I really didn’t need to get motion sick before going out on the water, but that drive did it. We were taken out to our beautiful catamaran “The Santana” by a small boat and were greeted by our friend Greg - the Captain. After organizing passports and assigning beds (he gave Eric and I the biggest one closest to the back - thank god), we were sailing around the San Blas Islands. While we were sailing, a pod of dolphins started swimming right in front of our boat! They were jumping and playing and keeping up with us. I love them! Our first stop wasn’t too far from our take off point, and it was paradise. We parked in front of a tiny 400 meter long Island covered with Palm trees and white sand. After a beer or two Eric and I went for a snorkel. We saw huge starfish, a mini lobster, a mini eel, and several fish. It was pretty good for our first time in the water. After that it was dinner and socializing with our new friends (17 of us in total).

Sailing Day 2:

‘The oh my god I can’t believe I got trapped on the reef twice day’

We woke up, had breakfast, and did a short sail to our next stop in the San Blas. Greg parked the boat in front of two small islands perpendicular to each other. This is where we would spend the day and night. So we hopped in the crystal clear water and began our snorkelling adventure. The water and the reef at this location were breathtaking. Eric and I were so into what we saw that we didn’t realize we were being pushed towards to the shallowest part of the reef. There came a point where the sharp coral was only inches below us, and the breaking waves only pushed us further onto it. We were both at a point where we were literally stuck on the reef and we couldn’t make our way back to the deeper water. It was very painful as the waves hit and my body was scraped up against the rock. Our only option was to walk along the coral to the shore of the beach. However, there were sea urchins everywhere! Every step was a gamble of stepping or not stepping on the spiky creatures. Not to mention the waves didn’t help with balance. Someone from the shore threw me his fins so I could walk to the beach. Eric did it barefoot, and luckily we both made it. However, I had massive scrapes, scratches, and sea urchin sores on my arms and legs. It was not fun. After that traumatic experience, we walked the length of the beach in search of a different snorkel destination where that would never happen again. So after a few pictures and one of Eric’s famous backflips we went back into the water at the tip of the island. Well, guess what happened? Everything was going smoothly until I got to the point of the waves hitting the reef. The water started getting shallower and shallower, and I was carried to a point on the reef where I was trapped again. This time I had a major breakdown because again I was getting tossed on top of the rocks. I caught my balance, sat on the reef and cried. I didn’t know what to do or why something so stupid happened twice within an hour. Again, sea urchins surrounded me, and my only option this time was to get past the breaking waves to the deeper water which seemed impossible. Eric swam over and talked me through it. I slowly made my way to him and somehow made it out of reef prison. Once we were in the deeper water, we were able to snorkel along the reef and not over top of it. It was so amazing, and near the end of our experience a beautiful eagle ray joined us. He glided around us and with us for about 15 minutes. Thank goodness for the GoPro and the footage we got of him. After that we swam back to our boat for lunch. Then Greg took our group to the other island where we hung out for the afternoon. We played beach volleyball, swam in the ocean, and enjoyed each other’s company. Then it was back to the boat for dinner. Lobster dinner. Fresh lobster dinner. It was probably the best lobster I have ever eaten. After dinner half of our group went to bed and half of us went back to the island for a bonfire and some coco locos (rum filled coconuts). On the mini boat ride over a another pod of dolphins decided to join alongside. It was dark, but Greg had a flashlight so we could see the dolphins playing. The bonfire that night was fun. It was very chill, but a great way to end a beautiful day.

Sailing Day 3:

‘The we’re not actually leaving for Colombia today because of the wind so everyone gets a bonus Day day’

Greg asked if it would be okay if we stayed where we were for one more night instead of hitting the open water that day. We all cheered. I went for a little snorkel by myself that morning (making sure to distance myself from the shallows of the reef), and came across an octopus! It was so interesting to watch him camouflage to whatever colour surrounded him. He put his defence up when I put my GoPro in his face, so fair enough. I felt so lucky to see him so close! I wanted Eric to see, so I swam back to the boat to get him. A group of us went out together in search of the creature but couldn’t find him. We came across a neat looking sting ray, but that was really it for animals we saw besides fish. We went back to the boat for some lunch, then Eric and I decided to go on a big snorkel expedition the other way along the reef and island. We geared up and were in the water for about 2 hours. The reef was absolutely stunning. We saw a trunkfish (like a box fish), a stonefish, and a massive pufferfish. By the time we got out of the water onto the beach we had goosebumps even though the sun was blistering hot. We were definitely in the water too long. We were pretty tired out, so swam back to the boat for an afternoon siesta. That evening we were invited back to the Island for another bonfire with another boat. So off we went to meet a whole new group of people and kind of celebrate my birthday. It ended up being another great night.

Sailing day 4:

‘The it’s my birthday, but all I want to do is die day’

I took a gravol in the morning thinking it would save me a little bit. Well I was wrong. I slept a lot of the day, but the ocean was so rough, that when I got up I couldn’t hold anything in. I threw up about 7 times while I was awake. I couldn’t eat anything, or move. I literally felt like I was dying. It was horrible. Eric was feeding me pills (which I threw up), and food (which I threw up), and water (which I threw up). Thank god for him looking after me and watering me like a little plant he was trying to bring back to life. But I just couldn’t. I slept as much as possible to avoid the feeling...

Sailing day 5:

‘The shit we still have about 24 hours of open water sailing, I’m going to try to sleep for 23 of them day’

Yep. We were still on the ocean every time I woke up. I had to plan my bathroom trips, and when I would try to eat something, and when I would drink water as not to become dehydrated. I mainly slept though. A lot of people slept. It was like the rocking of the boat put everyone to sleep. There was a point where I got up and watched the sunset and actually appreciated being at sea. But that lasted 20 minutes tops, because I felt nauseous right after that. So I slept.

Sailing day 6:

‘The I’ve never been more relieved to see a city skyline and hear the drop of an anchor day’

It was 5am, and the rocking of the boat stopped. My head was still swaying, but I was so happy to see the skyscrapers of Cartagena line the bay. We wouldn’t get off the boat until about 9am, so I went back to sleep. They fed us breakfast that morning, and once Greg sorted out immigration we were free! I stepped on the land and felt so dizzy, yet was so relieved. Eric and I went to our air bnb right away. It was a nice apartment in the city with AC, a shower (thank god after 6 days), a kitchen, and laundry. We spent our first day in Cartagena doing laundry, cooking, and re organizing our things after being on the boat. That night our group met up in Old Town at a bar called the Black Parrot so we could have a few drinks together and get our passports back. Lewis (the cook on our boat) baked me a birthday cake and everyone sang! It was such a nice surprise and I felt pretty special. After the birthday I had puking on the boat, I was so happy to be celebrating with everyone in Cartagena.

Overall, I am glad I did the sailing trip from Panama to Colombia. It was an experience of a lifetime, and the time spent around the San Blas Islands were amazing. I really liked our group as well. The people were awesome - passengers and crew. However, I don’t think an open water sailing trip on a boat that size is in the cards for me again. I am realizing more and more that I am not a boat person. I’m not “motion” person really. Rollercoasters are sliding down on my list of things to do as are sailing trips. It’s all good now! We’ve been in Colombia for 3 days, and are currently flying to Medellín (I’ve left the airport and am on the plane). The past couple days in Cartagena were good. Eric and I explored a Spanish Castle (more like a Fort), went to a museum, walked around the old town, ate the food, met up with friends, and really enjoyed the scorching hot city. Our next stop is the home town of Pablo Escobar! Like I said we’re all caught up on Narcos, so I’m excited to explore Medellín.

I should go now, the motion of the plane is making me a little dizzy 😉

AP 💕

[ramle17-18]

10/7/17

ok so i missed like 2 weeks of journaling cool cool cool cool cool

i’ll try to see if i remember what happened lmfao

so the sunday after rosh hashana - we had an enrichment activity that was really just nurit talking to us in the english center and eventually us discussing our expectations of her, ourselves, and each other. wow this feels like it was so long ago lmao but she said something that really bothered me. she was talking about the different ways she interacts with all of us or whatever and she basically looked at me and was like “jami, i feel like i don’t know anything about you, you’re so reserved and closed off” or something and it made me feel really fucking awful for a couple days lmfao. she even said like “i want you to talk to me, i don’t even know if this is something you would’ve preferred i talk about with you privately” which...no shit? why would this be a conversation i would want to have in front of everyone lol?

i later brought it up kind of passive-aggressively while talking to matt and marleigh and it just turned into a whole slew of ignorant pop psychoanalysis and “well if you know it’s irrational to be upset about it then don’t be upset about it” which just left me feeling infinitely shittier.

we also pulled names from a hat to make rosh hashana cards for one another and sultana and i pulled each other, i wrote something really long and gay and dumb but she made me a cute apple-shaped card and wrote some really sweet stuff

monday - we had our last pedagogical training. it was useless as usual until miriam’s guest came in, who i think is an actual professional pedagogical instructor, and she gave us some awesome (and organized) insight and ideas/materials.

tuesday - thursday we had our final observation days. personally i think 3 was too many, especially because we had already spent several days at the school, but whatever. i don’t really know if i gained a whole lot from those days.

wednesday night we went to jaffo to eat shakshuka at this place marleigh and matt are obsessed with (called dr. shakshuka - it was good, but imo not obsess-worthy) and then we went to an outdoor showing of the breakfast club, where i drank like a quarter of a bottle of wine and was sufficiently tipsy enough for everyone to think i was hilarious 

thursday night we had the mixer dinner/activity with the latinx community of ramla, but (aside from rachel) we mostly ended up talking amongst ourselves and we left sort of early. sultana and i were gonna watch a movie, but then i decided i wanted wine so we went and got 2 bottles, and all of us except marleigh (who was in a bad mood and was in her room) ended up playing never have i ever, truth, and then arguing politics until 1am. it was a fun night

friday was erev yom kippur, so as far as i remember i didn’t do anything

saturday was yom kippur, and i fasted. during the evening we went and met nurit to go to a synagogue and listen to the shofar, and i really really disliked it. it was the first time i’ve seen women and men separated for tfilot, and like...it would’ve been one thing if it had been men and women in the same room with a rope separating them or something, but instead all the women (and screaming children) were shunted off to a little side room with very little room, not enough chairs, not enough siddurim, and a very obscured view of what was happening in the main room. we could barely hear, too. and yet when the shofar was blown several women were still crying. it was astonishing to me that they were still able to connect enough to be so emotional when it felt like they were given the absolute bare minimum to work with

sunday - i FINALLY got to see jerusalem!! it was beautiful. i loved it. so much. first we went to this church where jesus was crucified and buried and then resurrected, which was actually really cool. just the idea of people who lived thousands of years ago standing where i was standing, touching what i touched, was so novel and impactful to me. at home when i get that feeling it’s because someone 300 years ago was touching it, now it’s 3000 years. it absolutely blows my mind.

then we went to the kotel!!! i did end up tearing up a little bit. i prayed for a few minutes and also stuck a note in the wall, it was pretty spiritual. it was also smaller than i thought it would be for some reason.

after that we went to the city of david, which was cool. we walked up and down a lot of stairs and then went through this ancient aqueduct thing, which freaked a couple of claustrophobic people out but didn’t bother me.

after the tours we had about an hour and a half of time to explore the shuk in jerusalem, so we got these awesome malawha (?) sandwiches sultana knew about and then ended up at a bar. the bartender was a 19 year old blonde girl and she was literally one of the most beautiful girls i’ve ever seen in my life. we ended up sitting with a couple of bat yam people, and gabe was flirting with everyone and even flirted with me a little bit which somehow resulted in some stupid and ugly infatuation for a few days (which i am now over).

we were late to the bus and ended up getting yelled at lmao

i don’t even remember what we did that evening after getting back.

monday - more talking about stuff with nurit in the english center, then we went to her other sister’s house with her sister and nieces and nephew to help build a sukkah. it was an ok time, matt and i got kind of snippy with each other at some point and i think i ended up feeling kind of shitty.

tuesday - the last good day! lmao 

sultana and marleigh invited me to the beach and then to see ‘it.’ i originally said no but then changed my mind, so we went and spent a few hours at the beach. sultana invited sydney and “jokingly” told her to bring gabe, and it bothered me just because i wish she would ask before inviting people lol. i already hadn’t wanted to go and decided to go, and i just think the considerate thing to do would’ve been to ask marleigh and i if we were okay with it, rather than waiting until afterward to tell us. 

after the beach sultana ditched us to go find sydney, who didn’t wanna see the movie, so marleigh and i went by ourselves. it was AMAZING. didn’t scare me, but i really enjoyed it. i thought overall it was just a really well-made film.

when we got out of the theater sultana, sydney, and rebecca were sitting at a table right in front of the cinema talking to gregg lmao. he had just happened to be there and we talked to him for a few minutes, and he directed us to a good burger place.

on our way to get burgers we ran into harry and sarah, which was really funny. and then finally got to the burger place. the burgers were good, but i only ate half because it was so much food. i was sitting across from rebecca and, as far as i can tell, my suspicions that she doesn’t like me were only confirmed.

overall it was a good day. and then...

wednesday - i woke up feeling like complete and utter shit! i think i have the flu or the stomach flu or something, and i’m still getting over it. literally i’ve spent the past 3 days in bed doing nothing. it’s been so boring and i feel like shit. last night i was feeling well enough to eat and made the mistake of eating the other half of my burger, which was a bad move. i still feel nauseous.

i’m sitting in the living room right now but i genuinely think i might go lay down in my room again. also, rachel is in malta, madeleine is in china visiting dan’s family, sultana is in paris, and marleigh left yesterday for jerusalem, so it’s just me and matt in the house which is kind of weird.