#but syringes/vaccines/blood drawing...

[normalbeast-downformaintenance]

I like watching, I think it's fun. Also it doesn't hurt when I see it, I'm more likely to notice the pain if it takes me by surprise.

Needle-watch poll

So, I got some vaccinations the other day, and the pharmacy tech seemed unnerved that I opted to watch him insert the needle. And he is not the first to comment on it. I'm willing to accept I'm an outlier and shouldn't be counted, I'm just curious how much of an outlier.

[windwardstar]

that one t post

Since there's some of y'all who showed interested, here's the big rundown of my experiences with T. This covers being on T for 3 month at 26, stopping it for a few years, then the first 9 months of being on T at 28. Contains the changes that have happened while I’ve been on T + the interactions with my other health conditions + the process of accessing care. It’s safe for work/reading in public as far as any puberty/medical body talk is. Word count is ~8k.

T round 1 (2019 - I was 26)

If you followed me back in 2019, you might recall me getting on T at the end of that year.

I didn’t have a PCP and was in a very conservative state which made me concerned about finding a trans friendly provider, so I decided to go through Planned Parenthood knowing it was informed consent. The PP that had a gender clinic and was open on my day off was on the other side of the state/2 hour drive one way. But also, when I went to book an appointment they had one for the same week/the next day so I didn’t have to wait. I had insurance through my work that partially covered the visit, the lab work, and the prescriptions. This was out of network for my insurance so I paid more than if it was in network. My local pharmacy was the Sam’s Club which has $4 prescriptions for members- which is what I ended up paying as it was significantly cheaper than my insurance co-pay. (I did not get a prescription for a sharps container and bought one from the local store.) I got my supplies in 3 month batches and didn’t have any issues with the pharmacy.

At the appointment, I was given a big packet of “side effects” (aka the desired results) it included a handy chart of when certain changes would likely happen. My provider went over it with me to make sure I knew what to expect, and asked me a couple questions about my gender identity and transition goals to get a feel for me and make sure this was what I wanted. I was completely out at work and socially. I had very recently moved out of an abusive homelife and was catching my feet mental health wise, but I was in therapy at the time and on medications that had been as a consistent dose for about a year (aka: mental health problems were well controlled), so the doctor was comfortable prescribing me T. We decided to try weekly injections first to limit potential high/lows on a longer dose cycle.

The Labs for this provider were Initial Labs, 3 Months, 6 Months, Then Yearly. My 3 Month Labs hit right at the start of Covid Lockdown, I wasn’t able to get in for them (perpetually overlapping quarantines at work yo), the shift to telehealth hadn’t happened, and then I ran out of my psych meds (antidepressant and an antipsychotic/mood stabilizer) so my executive functioning skills went bye-bye for a while. So I couldn’t get my prescription renewed and had to stop T after like 3 months. 

I took Testosterone Cypionate (0.25 ML, 0.50 MG) by Intramuscular (IM) Injections in my thigh once a week. The syringes had a twist on/off for the needles themselves (bigger one for the drawing up, smaller for the injection). They hurt a lot for me. I’d get a bruise around the injection site and the muscle would be very sore for 2-3 days after and hurt when I walked or used the muscle. It wasn’t enough to make me want to stop, but it wasn’t pleasant.

(Because of the long drive, the doctor didn’t have me come back for the first shot, just confirmed I was comfortable administering it myself and knew the process. She said if I ran into problems there were youtube videos I could look at or I could call.)

I did have issues with my needle phobia, but before getting to the part of actually seeking out access to T, I’d done a lot of work to manage it. The few years prior to starting T, I’d had to get a lot of blood drawn for lab work, several IVs, and quite a few vaccines which had helped me calm down so I was no longer having panic attacks around needles. The biggest thing that helped though was mental work and visualization. I started out just contemplating the concept of T injections in the abstract, then read posts with people talking about injections, looked at visuals of needles/syringes and people administering them. The last step was then thinking about giving myself injections and visualizing it. The whole time I tried to associate it with all the positive things I’d hoped to get from T and reminding myself the injections/ivs/blood draws of the previous years had all been perfectly fine and my anxiety was not reflecting what actually happened. (I also got a tattoo a month or so before I started T and after the initial anxiety I was mostly just fascinated by watching the tattoo gun, which was what really made me think I could do the T injections.) It took a long time to get to that point. When I started, I was only able to think about needles for a few seconds at a time. But I was able to give myself my first T shot with only a little anxiety (my hands shook a lot). And with each successful injection, the anxiety went down.

The Changes on T (1-3 Months):

Increased body hair. I noticed the hair on my thighs thickening and darkening around the injection sites, but not really much else. The peach fuzz on my face increased and I got a few dark hairs but there wasn’t really anything to shave. I think I shaved my face once because I wanted to not because there was anything to really shave…

Voice Changes: I sang quite a bit so I noticed that my lower register got fuller and the lowest end of my range got easier to access, but other than that there weren’t any vocal changes that I noticed. I didn’t get any voice breaking or cracking.

Bottom Growth: Yeah, there was some of that. Enough I noticed. Things also got very very sensitive and painful. OTC pain meds and ice packs helped. Loose clothes. Also manspreading. 

Periods: They got lighter and less painful almost immediately, and I skipped one 3 months in. Then I ran out of T and got my period back the next month.

Acne:  I didn’t get acne until the 3 month mark or so, but that also coincided with the start of wearing masks. It got really painful so I started using the OTC acne cream I used in high school, and it cleared up to something manageable once I was off T. (My teenage acne hit HARD at 13 and didn’t clear up until I was 24.)

Nightmares: The first month I started getting a significant increase in nightmares/remembering them upon waking up. This may have been because I had just moved into my own place and escaped an abusive environment, but my therapist at the time mentioned that nightmares were a common thing for people starting T (it is a big hormone change so y’know).

Other Changes: there may have been some, but it’s been a few years so I don’t really remember.

T round 2: 9 Months (2022 started at 28)

The goal was always to get back on T. It just took a while. Cross country move (liberal state now yo), new job, getting new insurance. Once I did, I had to figure out where to get T again. The planned parenthoods were all booked months out and none open for gender clinic stuff on my days off. 

I went through my doctor’s office, found out they have a special gender health program for trans people and transferred care to them. I had to wait like a month to get an appointment, but it means my PCP/GP is versed in trans care and does all my hormones. The experience is fantastic. The whole office used my chosen name and pronouns before they got legally changed and had the ability to change the display name on my chart so everyone would use the correct one.

The initial visit was via phone. It was a lot of the same causal “tell me about yourself and your transition goals” as the last time. We skipped a lot of the “this is what t will do” since I already knew it, and folded it in with talking about my experience being on T previously, what I liked, what I hoped for, what I found difficult, etc. I was off the psych medications I had been on the last time, but since I’d been off for two-ish years and was stable, I was ok to restart T. We started me off on the same dose and frequency I had been on previously, but because the IM had been painful, we switched to SubQ.

I didn’t need any initial lab work done, but I’ve done them every 3 months after starting. I had to go in person to pick up my prescription (which I did the next morning after my initial telehealth visit, the pharmacist called the insurance to get the authorization & everyone there was super great) and meet with the nurse to administer my first shot. The doctor poked her head in to say hi in person.

My insurance covers the visits, lab work, and prescriptions. I did have to get prior authorization and have a letter from the insurance company stating my T prescription is approved for a year. I got a prescription for a sharps container this time since the stores did not have any on the shelves. (The pharmacy was out of the small ones too, so I ended up with the big gallon size. It takes up a ton of space under the sink, but it should last me several more years before I have to dispose of it.) My needles also just have a smooth pop on/off to attach to the syringe.

For the first six months, the depo was a 0.25ML/0.50 MG SubQ injection once a week. Because there were certain changes I wasn’t seeing, at 6 months my dose was increased to 0.40ML/0.80MG SubQ once a week.

The SubQ injections basically don’t hurt after I’ve injected them. A couple times I injected them too quickly (just sticking the needle in and pressing down on the plunger too hard and forcing the liquid in, then pulling the needle out immediately) and those are when I’ve noticed redness, swelling, and soreness around the injection site. So my process for minimal pain and bleeding: wait until I’ve got cool skin (not right after a shower), inject slowly, count to 10 before pulling out the needle. Warming up the vial in my hands so the T isn’t cold and making sure everything is dry from the alcohol swabs before injecting also helps with the initial injection pain.

The anxiety around needles has basically all disappeared so I have no issue giving myself injections.

(I have a problem with my T vials crystallizing. I’ve found they take ages to dissolve, so I stick them in a pocket/waistband to keep them warm against my skin for an hour or so as I go about my morning, shaking it every now and then to see how it’s doing. I do my shot on my day off when I generally have time to do that. This time it’s Fridays. Last time it was Wednesdays.)

I started T (again) in April 2022 at 28

(Idk how the math works on these changes when you start/stop/restart on T. I wasn’t able to find anything. Probably because there’s not enough data on it. Given the length of the break, the T levels in my system had definitely reset, and I hadn’t been on T very long previously. Some of my changes went faster than the expected timeline, some slower, some about the same. So know there’s a parenthetical +3 months to all of this.)

Voice Changes: I noticed a continuation of the pattern from the last time. My lower register got much fuller and easier. My upper range started getting harder to reach. Nothing cracking or breaking, but there were some notes I was struggling to reach by the time the choir concert rolled around in mid-May. I started off bordering soprano/alto and was clinging to the alto range before we broke for summer (1-2 months)

I caught COVID from work over Memorial day (~2 months in) and my voice cracked a bit. I went into COVID being able to talk, was sick for a week, and then when the Covid cleared my voice was fried. I sounded terrible talking. Singing wise, my lower range had extended and my upper had come down, but I was still easily able to slip into my head voice.

Started Summer Choir at the end of June. I spent the first few weeks feeling like the songs were a little low for my range. Then things shifted again (~3months) and my singing range shrank to about 3 notes, I could not reliably open my mouth and make a sound, my breath control disappeared. I had one volume I could sing in, no going louder or softer or the sound would disappear. I sounded like a squeaky clarinet. (I did a very good seagull impression.) It was terrible and I loved every minute of it because it was so euphoric. I didn’t sound like a girl. I was firmly in the Tenor range. I was experiencing the puberty I’d always wanted to. (It was hard to tell with the first drop since it happened while I had COVID, but the second time my voice really cracked, I also had a really dry and sore throat.)

Enter August (~4 Months) my range was starting to re-expand. The low notes/chest voice coming back first. I was also figuring out how to make noise with the new instrument, because speaking and singing is all muscle memory. Which meant everything I knew previously was basically irrelevant at best and counter productive at worst. My brain would know how to produce a note on my pre-t vocal chords, so it would try to do what it had done before and either a) nothing would come out because my vocal chords are no longer capable of producing those notes or b) it would come out but be much lower. (I’m still working on retraining this 9 months in. My mental voice and physical voice do not match. I still think I sound like my pre-t self. Like, the thinking voice in my head sounds like my pre-T voice, it hasn’t dropped yet. Which makes singing difficult because I don’t know intuitively how I sound now. I have to adjust once I start making noise.) I was able to make my way through the concert at the end of August, but there were things too high for me since I wasn’t able to access that part of my range yet.

September/October/November/December (month 5-8) my singing range continued to expand and stabilize, the lower notes got much easier, volume control came back, my breath control returned with practice, and some access to my head range. My voice fatigues easily, but that’s getting better too. The vocal fry/clarity of my voice is getting better as well. I had to stop multiple times per rehearsal over the summer, but by December I was able to make it almost the whole rehearsal before reaching my limit. I do not have a smooth transition between notes and get stuck in low gear so to speak. Pre-t my favorite things to sing were songs where I jumped around my entire range. I miss that flexibility, but there are new things to enjoy singing now. I’m also only 9 (+3) months in, and my voice is going to continue to develop. My goals right now are just to continue exploring my singing voice as things change, and to try and get my brain to match what the new pipes can do. 

(January 1st, Month 9 (aka today while I was waiting to do a final round of edits on this post) I had a moment where things finally clicked into place for my singing voice. I was singing while doing the laundry, and I was just able to actually sing without feeling any strain. It felt easy and natural coming out. I had to focus on what I was singing to a degree, but not to the exclusion of doing other activities. The sound didn’t crack or disappear on me, and I didn’t run out of breath mid phrase. I was able to actually sing. It was also a moment where I was able to hear my voice and think “this is what I sound like, this is my voice” as opposed to the transitory state it’s existed in since I first started noticing changes. It’s also just a sense of feeling completed and right. I cried, and there was joy, but the predominant emotion was just feeling that things had finally aligned into where they were meant to be and an overwhelming settling peace.)

My biggest thing right now is just how much more air it takes to make sound, speaking or singing. My laugh has turned from a giggle to just blowing air out through my teeth or a bunch of kekekekeke where the sound is from my tongue stopping the air rather than my vocal chords making noise. Singing, I am having to breathe much more frequently than before. Speaking, I sometimes don’t do enough air and sound doesn’t come out. I go nonverbal A LOT more than before because the physical act of speaking has become harder. That initial start up to making noise is sometimes more than my brain can figure out in the moment.

My speaking voice has also changed a lot. The pitch has dropped, it’s gotten much rougher, but I tend to speak in a very femme manner. People have definitely noticed it’s dropped, but it sounds more “cold/laryngitis” than “guy.” People have definitely started reacting differently when they hear me speak over the phone, but I’ve yet to get any comments and it’s not been enough to keep strangers from misgendering me. I have the ability to sound like a guy, there are times when I am relaxed and can hear it come out. The bulk of how my speaking voice sounds is from how I’m using it. I sound like a girl to others because of all those aspects of speech that have nothing to do with how high or low it is. (Aka sounding like a guy at this point for me is about technique not physical ability. This is where speech therapists would be useful.) My dysphoria over my voice has essentially disappeared. I love my voice now, and I’m filled with so much excitement over seeing what else unfolds with it as I get used to it and how to use it. 

Acne/Skin Stuff: First off, Puberty 1.0 gave me terrible acne. It set in at like 13. Regardless of what I did as a teenager, I was unable to really control it. I had products but they didn’t really work and my mother wouldn’t get me to a dr for it. My skin was dry and oily. It would crack and peel and bleed and had reactions to every product I put on it. It got better in my twenties and was mostly gone by the time I was 24. It came back when I started T the first time + Covid Masking at 26. But by that point I’d found an acne cream + lotion combination of products that kept things almost clear.

I expected to have acne bad again on T because that’s just what my body does with hormones. By the end of the first month the acne was back. It progressed to being painful cystic acne by 3 months. I told my doctor and got a prescription cream. I’m meant to use it twice a day, I did at first, but it made my skin too dry, so I use it mostly once a day (generally after I’ve showered). I use it + a plain lotion for moisturizing/keeping things from getting too dry. I still have pretty bad acne, my face is red and skin is perpetually breaking out. But it’s not painful, and that’s my biggest goal with controlling acne. Especially because I react very strongly to products on my skin.

My acne still gets worse around my periods, so I know a lot of it is hormonal stuff going on. There’s some slight increase in body acne, but nothing that I even have to put cream on as it’s not painful and goes away on its own. The acne usually appeared in spots where hair was growing in for like a week or so while the hair started growing in thicker/darker.

The rest of my skin also got super oily. And I got super sweaty. And smelled funky for a little while. Previously I showered and washed my hair every other day because that was the balance of keeping my scalp happy. My skin also couldn’t handle more than that as it would get too dry and crack even with lotion. 1-2 months in, I was showering every day, over the summer (~3-6 months) I was showering once in the morning and once at night (mostly because sweat, but also smell) and washing my hair every day. I did not really experience any dry skin. Somewhere around the 7 month mark, that all decreased. 9 months in, I’m showering every day (with an extra shower if I get gross) and still have no problems with dry skin on my body.

The T has affected my scalp*. I started reacting to the shampoo I’d been using for years about a month or so into starting T. I switched to a different shampoo that worked for the most part, but then started causing problems about 7-8 months in. I’m currently trying a new shampoo + washing every other day or so, and hoping it works. This is getting brought up at my next appointment either for medicated shampoo or a referral to the derm if the current shampoo doesn’t work. *I don’t know if it’s causing a reaction to the products, or if there’s some interplay of the increased oils + increased sweat + my hair being wet for longer + more washings causing more dryness and more irritation + the hair dryer causing more irritation. All I know is my scalp is hurting and I am trying to figure out why + what I can do to make it stop.

Aka: I had terrible acne during puberty 1.0. Puberty T.0 is running about the same in terms of getting acne, but I’m able to manage it so much better because I’ve a) found a lotion I can apply to my face to help with the dryness and b) got a doctor to prescribe acne cream that actually helps. I’m having worse scalp problems now though, but working to manage them.

Facial Hair/Body Hair/Head Hair:

I started getting dark hairs on my chin first. It was within the first 3 months. It also coincided with the acne. Because my skin is so sensitive and the acne was so bad, I decided to use an electric razor since it doesn’t cut as close and tends to result in fewer nicks and cuts and ingrown hairs. I would not have been able to use a razor without cutting myself at the start. I also tend to react to shaving cream so the electric razor allowed me to not have to figure that aspect out too. I started off every few days, then every other day. Somewhere around 6 months I started needing to shave every day to keep the stubble away. If I have a few days off in a row I’ll skip the shaving so I can see what it looks like, but I shave clean if I have to work.

I’m not really sure when the body hair started growing. I noticed the leg hair on my thighs started growing in a little thicker and there was a bit more hair on my belly 4-5 months in (mostly because the bandaids from my shots started hurting when I pulled them off lol.) At 9 months I’ve noticed the hair on my arms and thighs has gotten darker and a little thicker, and my belly has gotten a lot more dark and thick hair, and there’s some chest hair appearing. I want to say somewhere around 6-7 months, I really started noticing the body hair and getting euphoric and happy about getting fuzzy. (Idk about lower leg hair since I frequently shave it due to wearing compression socks and finding them sensory hell and painful with leg hair.)

(Also got more hair on the butt and the butt crack, which was making getting clean after pooping during colitis flares difficult. Solution I’ve found is shaving/trimming that area (you know how it works with long-haired cats and dogs?) and using wet wipes if needed.)

One thing I did notice for both my facial hair and body hair, is that my skin would get mildly itchy the week or so before I started noticing more hair growing, and would continue for that first week or so + there tended to be some ingrown hairs during that stage. It was rather similar in feeling to what my underarms or legs feel like when I shave them and the hair starts to regrow. The itchiness is pretty mild for me so I didn’t really do anything about it.

The spot I inject the T got darker thicker hair first. And by spots I mean like the circle immediately around the injection sites was noticeably darker and hairier than the surrounding body part. It’s evened out on my thighs since my SubQ are in my belly, and the belly is starting to even out 9 months in.

Head hair. It’s started thinning up top right around my part, and on the sides of my temple. Really only noticed it starting at the 8 month mark. I’m currently in the process of trying to figure out if this is related to the scalp issues (since they can cause hair loss) and reversible, or the permanent slow march of time kind of balding. I really like having long hair. It’s fun. I haven’t cut my hair (which would improve my chances of passing as a guy or at least not getting consistently gendered as a girl) because I like my hair. I want to keep it. 

I know finasteride and minoxidil are both things that can be used to treat it. I’m hesitant to use finasteride since it blocks DHT and I want the effects of that more than I want to keep my long hair. I’m worried about minoxidil exacerbating my scalp problems and causing more hair loss. 

I’m contacting family to find out more information about family history of hair loss (including the ones where there were auto-immune skin conditions that caused it) and will talk with the doctors to figure out what the best option for me is.

I was a lot more anxious about the potential balding when I first noticed, but after a couple months to process it I’m not as alarmed as I was. If I do go bald though, I like the idea of getting tattoos. It’s also something that hopefully will be slow enough that I’m not gonna lose everything right away and can still enjoy having long hair for a while. But also you know the meme, if you can’t produce your own, store bought is fine. Wigs do exist.

Muscles, Fat, and the whole Musculoskeletal Shit

My timeline on this is a little blurry. Mostly because I’ve always built muscle easily and been rather buff just through having jobs that require some level of physical labor. I’ve also got hypermobile joints + low back pain from falling down stairs in 2019 + chest, rib, & shoulder pain from binder (haven’t been able to bind since pre-pandemic) and bra. So my focus on/awareness of physical ability was less on ease of strength and more on whether or not I had pain that made breathing/movement difficult. I’m going to guess it was easier to build muscle fairly early since I did notice some other changes that would track with things being affected.

So first thing I noticed was that my hips weren’t as prone to slipping out of place as usual and the days where they were painful decreased as well as the level of pain. It got to a point where I basically wasn’t having hip pain except around my period (pre-T the pain would get worse around my period, this is a continuation of the existing pattern). I’m not sure if I noticed this by 3 months, but I did by 6 Months. My guess is that the T strengthened the connective tissues and helped build muscle to hold everything in place. When I did a lot of walking and fatigued my leg muscles, the hip pain would get worse pre-T, but now I don’t really notice that at all 9 months in. If I get sore after movement, it doesn’t knock me out for several days. I still have to be careful about how I’m sitting and sleeping as the joints can still get knocked out of place that way. But also, the threshold for pain happening is much higher and I have fewer days of it. I’ve also only had to use my cane a handful of times since starting T.

My rib/chest pain got less severe at some point… I know I’m able to tolerate wearing my bra all day without feeling pain most of the time. That shift happened some time over the summer. So 3-6 months. (This was because my body finally managed to heal from the injuries from binding and the stress injury from using the deli slicer 2-4 hours a day at work in 2018.)

My back pain has kind of been figuring out what makes it worse and better. It’s gotten better overall over the past 9 months, but idk how much I can attribute that to T and how much is just figuring out what makes it worse and not doing that. 

I’ve also noticed a significant decrease in flexibility. To the point I can stretch muscles I’ve never been able to stretch before. I can stretch my muscles without hyperextending joints. I started to resume a lot of the stretching I stopped in 2018 because whatever support my joints now have is enough that I don’t risk being too bendy to hold them all in place. My hands basically don’t dislocate/sublux any more, and the pain in them is gone. My grip strength has never been better. I can open water bottles without fucking up my fingers. (Aka T has definitely helped with the hEDS.)

My skin has also gotten thicker and less prone to getting cuts. If you follow me, you probably saw the post I made about the changes on that, but basically, my skin is tougher. It doesn’t get cut up as easily and I don’t bleed as easily. My mouth doesn’t get cut up as much by rough foods like toast and cereal and brushing and flossing doesn’t cause bleeding and tearing (no gum health issues this is just hEDS stuff, although I also notice the sensitivity of my gums fluctuate with my period), I don’t get papercuts as easily, sewing is a lot less bloody. This has made it slightly harder to put the needle through my skin for the T injections, it used to go in completely painlessly but somewhere around 6 months it started pinching a bit.

I also have a little adam’s apple now! Which I wasn’t expecting since I’m nearly 30 and I figured things wouldn’t shift too much. I started noticing it grow 3 months in or so when I would touch my throat and it slowly got just a bit bigger. 9 months in there’s something visible in my throat when I talk or swallow, just a tiny visible bump but it’s more than it was before! It also tends to sit REALLY high in my throat, which I know is also part of the problem I have with my voice being high and strained. I have a couple vocal exercises that lower it and my voice and reduce strain. But also this was one of the things I wanted but was realistically not expecting to get so !!!

As far as muscle and fat (re)distribution and such, I noticed somewhere around 4-5 months that when I looked in the mirror after showering so a) i didn’t have my glasses on and things were hella blurry and b) the mirror was somewhat fogged, I had a more masculine look. When my hair covered my chest (it was waist length at that point) there was just enough shifting of things to look masc. (My boobs have gotten somewhat flatter/deflated. Around my period I definitely get a feeling that they’ve gotten bigger/swelled back up.) 

Body wise, my shoulders have always been broad, and the ratio of tiny waist to huge hips has always been a source of dysphoria for me. There’s nothing T is gonna do about the underlying bones, but I have noticed my hips and thighs slimming down somewhat / my waist filling out. It’s changed my silhouette away from the hourglass and into something more masculine. It’s helped greatly with my dysphoria when I see myself in the above sink/counter level mirrors. (Full body mirrors/reflections are still hello dysphoria hips.) 

My shoulders also got slightly broader, my neck thicker, and my feet got slightly larger. I know for sure around 5-6 months, as I pulled out my long-sleeves for winter and the ones that had been tight and with no stretch the previous year were too tight to wear comfortably. I also pulled out my performance clothes which I hadn’t worn since month 2 on T, and had to let out the collar on my bowtie by a solid inch and get new shoes as the previous ones were too tight (again I’m almost 30, my feet bones didn’t grow but I did have to go up a shoe size).  I had thought around 4-5 months that my neck was getting thicker since it didn’t look quite as stick-like. Around that time my face also started looking a little swollen around the jawline. It may have been puffiness or just things shifting around. I’m faceblind so I don’t know if my face has changed, just around that time looking at my face made me think the jaws looked a bit like my sister’s did a week after getting her wisdom teeth removed. Whatever puffiness I saw then, I don’t notice now though.

Idk if I’ve gained or lost weight since I don’t own a scale and don’t actually pay attention to that because it’s not actually important. Shrug emoji. 

Periods & Bottom Growth:

If you’ve read this far you’ve probably guessed my periods didn’t stop early this time. As I stated, the first attempt at T, they stopped three months in. My third period came two weeks early this time when I caught COVID. We increased my dose at 6 months because my periods hadn’t stopped. My 8th period happened a week late. This month for the 9th I’ve gotten some light cramping and joint pain (but another week or two will tell if it’s stopped).

I did notice by 6 months the pain/cramping and other things associated with my period were less. (The flow decreased somewhat and the cramps were less severe. I was able to still walk and function with the OTC pain meds, and I had to take fewer for a shorter time frame to get relief. My blood pressure didn’t tank as drastically, so I wasn’t at risk of passing out every time I stood up on the first few days of my cycle each month. I didn’t get chills and shaking. I still get increased acne, bloated, migraines, and my joints all get loose and painful.)

(Outside of my period, my POTS has also drastically improved. Around 7-8 months, all I really started to notice is the tachycardia. The blood pressure problems aren’t forcing me to sit down to avoid passing out, my low blood pressure migraines have mostly disappeared, and my heat intolerance has drastically decreased. The heatwave in 2018 is what ended up with me in the hospital. I made it through the heatwave this year without too much difficulty. I still get migraines when I get too hot, and get weak and exhausted, but I recover within a day rather than a week. My migraines have tons of triggers, but overall I’ve gotten fewer of them since starting T. The only trigger that’s increased in causing them is my low blood sugar.)

Bottom growth has happened!!! I was ambivalent to slightly apprehensive about this part prior to starting the last time, but discovered pretty quickly I was actually really on board with it. For a while this time I was worried starting/stopping/restarting T meant I wasn’t getting any this time around. But the past month or so (month 9) has given me indications it was just taking a while to happen (like my periods not stopping 3 months as previously). This time, I haven’t experienced much in the way of pain + too much sensitivity, but the sensitivity has really increased in the past couple weeks so that may start again as well.

Appetite & blood sugar :

The increased appetite has probably been my biggest most noticeable thing in my day to day life and the only thing that has actually caused me distress (as opposed to annoyance and irritation with the acne). I noticed pretty quickly an increase in my appetite. This brought back problems with my blood sugar just crashing (and tanking my blood pressure with it) that I’d had while growing up. I would also wake up hungry in the middle of the night. 3 Months in it was the biggest change I noticed. 

6 months in I was up to eating every two hours, waking up twice at night, and if I skipped one my body would get ravenously hungry and would have headache and shaking. But I was also getting more used to the routine so I got better about keeping food on me and my blood sugar didn’t crash as often/as severely. My grocery budget effectively doubled so that was yikes to my bank account. I also couldn’t get full or stay full. I was constantly hungry. Since I had a history of food insecurity as a kid, the constant feeling of hunger was distressing and started making my anxiety and ptsd get worse. 

(There is a link between testosterone levels and blood sugar. Most of the data is on cis men. But the little information packet that comes in the box of my testosterone vial includes: In diabetic patients, the metabolic effects of androgens may decrease blood glucose and therefore, insulin requirements. Presumably, the doctors know to monitor this with diabetic patients and to mention it to them. But also, a reminder to read all the paperwork you’re given because neither of my prescribers mentioned this aspect to me, even when I mentioned having problems with my blood sugar dropping.)

9 months in, my appetite has decreased to pre-T levels which also coincided with getting heart burn/acid reflux for a solid week and a half. I’d never had a problem with that before, but I was also eating/drinking and then immediately laying down (aka eating right before bed and a midnight snack) for like six solid months, which is a big clue to the cause. The biggest surprise there is that it took six months to become a problem. I’ve been mindful of staying upright after eating and after a few days the problem went away.

Dysphoria, Mental Health, Mood and Energy;

T has been fucking amazing. Like. It’s fantastic and I’m thriving and have never felt so stable and capable of handling life. I can’t attribute everything to T because I’ve done a lot of work on my own mental health and my living situation improving (moving away from abusive family, getting engaged with friends and community, fulfilling job) but its positive impact on my mental health and general mood is undeniable.

My dysphoria is so much less than it was before. I love my voice now, I am starting to remember what it feels like to be comfortable in my body. There’re still a bunch of things that are dysphoria inducing that will take more time or surgery (top, hysto, bottom) to change and relieve, (and when I am reminded about the dysphoria inducing things like boobs and people misgendering me as a girl, it feels terrible and I want to crawl out of my skin). But the entire experience of being on T has been a daily blessing of euphoria as everything happens. 

I used to joke that you knew trans people were really trans because who else would willingly go through puberty a second time. Puberty 1.0 had been soul destroying terrible. I hadn’t had a single positive experience from it. Everything about puberty 1.0 had made me hate my body more and the changes just kept getting worse. I couldn’t imagine anyone willingly going through that a second time. Somehow despite knowing I wanted all the changes T would cause, my brain didn’t make the connection that I’d like the process aka puberty 2.0. I’d figured I’d suffer through puberty again and in the end I’d have a body I liked and was comfortable in, so it’d be worth all the suffering of puberty.

I was terribly wonderfully wrong. The first time I was on T, I didn’t really notice a ton of changes, but even the small ones I did I liked. It wasn’t terrible. And then, I was off T and the strength of my desire to get back on T and go through those changes was a physical ache. The past 9 months have been full of joy and excitement. Every little change I’ve noticed has made me happy and been something I loved to find. (Barring the acne, and hunger, and potential hair loss.)

Puberty 2.0 is so powerfully positive for me. I love it, and it’s letting me love my body.

My mood is a lot more stable than it was. With my dysphoria lessened, I’m not constantly feeling shitty about that which overall helped my mood. I’m not as depressed (and when I am, it’s so much more mild than before). My mood tends to be either in a stable state or hypo/manic. But there’s no irritability or violence or any of those fear mongering things. T didn’t suddenly change me into the TERF and bio essentialist’s boogey man. T doesn’t change your personality. If you have anger issues on T, you likely had them before. (Also I really want to stress this because I saw warnings about T and bipolar disorder for years: T did not make me irritable or angry or violent. It hasn’t changed the profile of my mood disorder to include symptoms that were never present.)

(As for crying. I don’t cry out of frustration or anxiety as much--which is likely because my mental health has improved and I’m not pushed into those strong negative emotions as often. But I tear up just as easily when I see heartwarming news stories or videos of puppies or see something heartbreaking on the news. I haven’t been cut off from health emotion, or healthy crying.)

Energy wise, I have so much more energy than I did before. I’ve managed to wake up easily all winter rather than take an hour to drag myself out of bed every day. I can work a 12 hour shift, and/or not take a nap and be fine with 8 hours of sleep (or less) at night. I can run around and do things on my days off. I have enough energy to function. I don’t have to have an entire day off just to sleep (although I still enjoy a good afternoon nap and sleeping in). 

I don’t notice my energy level fluctuating with my shot (I do weekly injections to avoid my levels fluctuating and causing other things to do so as well), but I did notice my energy levels increased within the first month. But! There’s also a lot of other things going on that are affecting my improved energy levels. Some of this might be because I actually started taking a vitamin d supplement (and I definitely notice less energy when I forget it). The lessening of my dysphoria has freed up a lot of mental energy for other things, the lessening of my dysphoria has lessened my depression* which gives me more energy, the reduction in joint pain + other chronic pain means I’m not constantly having that low drain on my energy and resting better at night, and the reduction in POTS symptoms means I’m not having that massive daily drain on energy reserves.

(*I’ve noticed an increase in energy at my stable baseline, and an increase in the sustained energy while hypo/manic from my pre-T mood cycles without an associated increase in the severity of other symptoms. My depressive moods have reduced in length and severity because there aren’t as many things fucking triggering me during them (which can also be attributed to the better living conditions and social connections, since I noticed this prior to restarting T), but I also have an increased energy during them as well. Which all tracks with the physical conditions improving and no longer draining my energy as much.)

(I still notice when my blood sugar drops, I get my period, or I have an anxiety attack that my energy levels for the day drop accordingly. But I’m also quicker to bounce back to my new baseline. My anxiety has more or less stayed the same. Also randomly feeling tired has become a much more reliable migraine aura because now being tired tends to have an easily identifiable cause.)

As I mentioned in the appetite section, there has been some downsides to my mental health while on T. The constant hunger was triggering for me, but since I'm in a stable environment and have money for food, it’s something I’ve been able to work through. I’ve also experienced more nightmares since being on T, especially around when I first started and when my dose was increased (biggest changes in hormone levels). But the nightmares also increased in general, which I also want to attribute to having more energy while on T. Before T I had a tendency to be so utterly exhausted I didn’t dream and/or I woke up too frequently during the night due to joint pain/needing to reposition that I didn’t complete sleep cycles and wasn’t dreaming/having nightmares. (The biggest argument for this is also that I’m straight up actually having non-nightmare dreams now too. I rarely had dreams and/or remembered them before. I get them decently often now. Which is nice! Dreams can be fun! And weird. Dream logic does not make sense upon waking up.) 

“Passing” / How people perceive my gender / General Reception

Gender is a party and transitioning is the grab bag. I’m basically completely on board all the physical changes T is making to my body (bar the acne and the balding). Presentation wise, I lean heavier into the men’s clothing than the women’s and would prefer to be read as a guy rather than a girl if people gotta gender me, but I’m not a guy and not actually interested in passing as a guy. So I don’t put any effort into passing as a guy. Being my authentic self and transitioning into my nonbinary genderqueer gender basically means I do what I’m comfortable with and just vibe (until someone misgenders me and then I dark side dysphoria vibe). 

Basically for those keeping track: I have long hair, I shave clean (and wear a mask anyway), my boobs are still visible (can’t bind), my hips are still a thing, and my voice sounds mostly like I have a cold (lower but with girly customer service inflections). My chosen/legal name is still femme. I’m also 5ft/160cm and relatively small. I dress in men’s clothes for the most part. Strangers still assume I’m a girl. Even in trans friendly spaces I get she/her’ed by default. 

(I’m out to management at work but very few others. There’s been maybe one person who might have noticed something. Most people I interact with through work--if they notice anything-- notice my voice change. But all the comments I’ve gotten indicate they think I’ve strained my voice from singing, have a cold, or it’s related to my breathing problems. (I had to wear a mask/scarf outdoors before covid due to the cold making it impossible to breathe, same with smoke. Also I caught COVID right before my voice cracked so…))

As I said, I don’t bind and my hair is long and don’t try to pass as a guy, so it makes sense I won’t. I’m sure if I had short hair and didn’t have visible boobs the default gendering by strangers would shift to a different percentage of girl vs guy vs awkward pause as they guess. So if you’re wondering how long it’ll take you to pass as a guy or confuse everyone, I’m not gonna be too helpful. But if you were concerned about being able to hide being on T/keep your transition on the DL until you’re ready to come out, you can definitely do it, just come up with some excuse for your voice because people will notice that.

Congrats I guess if you’ve read this far. Hopefully this was helpful and/or informative. The TL;DR of it is that the bulk of the changes kicked in somewhere between 3-6 months and are gonna continue for another good while. It’s having a lot of positive effects on my various health conditions (POTS, hEDS, migraines). I’m having a blast with everything that’s happening and am delighted by puberty 2.0. The drawbacks are just kind of inconveniences (and aside from potential balding, seem entirely temporary) and are nothing compared to the overwhelming joy and euphoria of slowly getting to exist more comfortably in my skin.

if you've got questions, feel free to ask. Just know depending on the question and whether or not I even know who you are will influence if I answer it or block you.

tagging myself so i can reblog if i need to @owlsofstarlight

[surginatalsurgical]

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[riyasworkplaceexperience]

Week 2 at the Clinic

This week was more interesting at the clinic. I was able to do a lot more handling and because I learned more about how they operate I was able help them be more efficient. I was able to practice drawing vaccines as well as handling and restraining several animals. This week helped me gain confidence in my animal handling and clinical pathology skills.

This week, I realized that I need to practice drawing up vaccines and handling syringes. I also need to improve my ability to use IDEXX machinery. Next week, I hope to get more practice interpreting slides and creating blood smears. I believe I could also improve my coordination to make assisting the staff with appointments easier.

[planmymedical]

Unraveling the Full Form in the Medical World

Introduction: In the fast-paced and complex world of medicine, acronyms and abbreviations are commonplace. One such abbreviation that frequently pops up in the medical field is "BD." Although it may seem simple, "BD" actually stands for "Becton Dickinson," a renowned global medical technology company. In this blog post, we will delve into the origins and significance of BD, shedding light on its full form and the impact it has had on the medical community.

Becton Dickinson: A Brief Overview: Becton Dickinson, often referred to simply as BD, is a trusted and established name in the medical technology industry. Founded in 1897 by Maxwell Becton and Fairleigh Dickinson, this company has grown into a global leader in the manufacture and distribution of medical supplies and devices. BD's primary focus lies in improving healthcare outcomes by developing innovative solutions for clinicians, laboratories, healthcare providers, and patients worldwide.

Expanding the Acronym: While BD has become synonymous with excellence in the medical field, many people are unaware of its full form. The acronym "BD" stands for Becton Dickinson, representing the company's founders and their commitment to advancing medical technology. By constantly innovating and addressing unmet medical needs, bd full form has revolutionized various aspects of healthcare delivery.

Contributions to the Medical Community: BD's impact on the medical community is far-reaching and multifaceted. The company is renowned for its expertise in manufacturing a diverse range of medical supplies and devices that are essential in patient care. Some of their notable contributions include:

Syringes and Needles: BD is widely recognized for its high-quality syringes and needles, which are vital tools used in various medical procedures, such as vaccinations, blood collection, and medication administration. Their products are designed with precision, ensuring accurate dosing and minimizing the risk of contamination.

Blood Collection Systems: BD's blood collection systems have greatly simplified the process of drawing and handling blood samples. These systems provide healthcare professionals with reliable and efficient tools to collect, store, and transport blood specimens, enabling accurate diagnostic testing and monitoring of patients' health.

Diagnostic Instruments: BD's diagnostic instruments play a crucial role in disease detection and monitoring. From advanced laboratory equipment to point-of-care testing devices, their innovative instruments empower healthcare providers with rapid and accurate diagnostic capabilities, leading to better patient outcomes.

A Commitment to Excellence and Safety: BD's success lies not only in its product offerings but also in its unwavering commitment to excellence and safety. The company adheres to rigorous quality standards and regulatory requirements, ensuring that their products meet the highest industry benchmarks. BD's dedication to safety extends to its focus on preventing healthcare-associated infections and promoting safe medication management practices.

Collaboration and Global Reach: BD recognizes that solving complex healthcare challenges requires collaboration and a global perspective. The company collaborates with healthcare professionals, researchers, and organizations worldwide to develop innovative solutions that address critical healthcare needs. By leveraging their global presence, BD extends the reach of their products and expertise, making a significant impact on healthcare delivery across diverse communities.

Conclusion: The abbreviation "BD" may appear simple, but it represents the legacy and impact of Becton Dickinson, a pioneering medical technology company. Through its commitment to innovation, quality, and safety, BD has transformed patient care and contributed to advancements in the medical field. From syringes and needles to blood collection systems and diagnostic instruments, BD continues to revolutionize healthcare delivery, enhancing the lives of patients and healthcare professionals worldwide.

[creampuffqueen]

realize i haven't posted a vet clinic update in a hot second! so i'm probably missing a lot since it's been a couple weeks, but here's how it's going currently:

getting lots and lots of practice on things! mostly vaccines, nail trims, and sephalic blood draws

working on getting jugular blood draws. those are pretty difficult. i've gotten flashes and half-syringes on my own but never gotten a full draw

the main assistant i hang with literally had a meeting with the other employees to discuss my training and what i'm capable of. because some people are trying to teach me how to give vaccines (which i've been doing since august with zero issues) and some people are all but handing their appointments to me to take over. so we kind of cleared up where i am lol

seen lots of neat things under the microscope! we've had a fair amount of hookworms recently, which i suppose makes sense as the weather warms up

got to remove both staples AND sutures from a dog yesterday. so so so satisfying. i loveee staple and suture removals

was taught how to take all the vitals! i've been doing weight and temp on my own for a while, but now i'm working on getting heart and respiration

also being taught to actually talk to the owners rather than just assist the tech. which i think i'm okay at. i have a great customer service voice (12 years of girl scouts and a year of working fast food/retail does that for you)

for spring break i worked out my schedule so that i work mornings instead of afternoons! this is great because it means i get to observe surgery :))))

and i'm reminded as i write this that IWAS ASSIGNED HOMEWORK OH SHIT

my supervisor wants me to learn about leptospirosis before i get into work tomorrow

anyway! that's all for now! if anything interesting happens i'll try to remember to post it on here!

[icemankazansky]

Hope it's okay to add onto this. Spoonie superpowers, activate!

Donating blood: Unlike a blood draw, in which a relatively small amount of blood is taken for tests, when you donate blood, they take a lot more over a longer period of time. They stick in a similar place, usually a big vein in the bend of your arm, but they use a much bigger needle. (Typically 16g for blood donation vs around 22g for a blood draw. Like with piercings, the smaller the number, the thicker the needle.)

This sounds a lot scarier, but in practice, it's not a big difference. The initial puncture is the worst for me; after that, you're much more aware of the feel of the needle in your arm than, say, when you have an IV. (The IV needle is thinner, for one; they use a cannula for an IV, number two; and they stabilize IVs with a "shield" that eliminates jostling and makes things more comfortable.) That in itself (feeling the needle in your arm) isn't really painful as much as odd (unless they have to adjust the needle inside your vein after they've stuck you, which sucks the entire time, but I have only had done once in more than 15 years of donating.) They put the bag you're donating into lower than your arm, but it's attached to you (if you're donating in a mobile blood unit, they sometimes put it in your lap), and the lines going from your vein into the bag lay against your arm, and you can feel them against your skin, and they're very warm.

It takes about 10 minutes to give a pint of whole blood (the most common form of blood donation). Then they take the needle out, which for me is less painful than having it inserted, and they'll have you put pressure on it and hold your arm up in the air for a few minutes before they put a pressure wrap on it. It stops bleeding quickly with the pressure wrap. It usually is a very small bruise at the injection site the next day. You may feel a little tired or light-headed post donation, which is why they ask you stay in the clinic or in your car a few minutes before attempting to drive, and they give you a snack and a drink.

IM Injections (Self-administered): Almost everyone has had an IM injection; almost all vaccines are given that way. Most of them are given in the arm. There are a growing number of people who take IM medications themselves at home; it is very difficult to properly inject yourself in the muscle of your arm, so you're usually told not to. Most people who self-administer IM injections do so in the buttocks or thigh. (See chart. It's like really, really high up on the buttocks, not where you sit.)

I'm going to talk about two different kinds of self-administered IM injectors: Syringes (like a regular needle), and auto-injectors.

IM syringes are not very thick, but they are noticeably longer than most needles you're used to seeing, because they have to be injected at a 90° angle past skin, fat, and into the muscle. I have been self-administering IM medications via syringes for more than 15 years, and I almost always inject into the buttocks, for one reason: The pain difference between injecting there versus the thigh is significant. If you inject into the buttocks correctly, you feel more pressure more than pain. You push the needle into the muscle at a 90° angle (perpendicular), which takes much less pressure than you think it will. Needle goes straight in, plunger goes down, needle comes straight back out (again at a 90° angle); this takes seconds. IM injections often do not bleed at all, but sometimes when you remove the needle, there will be a quick drip of blood. You press a tissue to it for a few seconds, and it stops bleeding almost immediately. I have had exactly one injection site reaction giving myself shots this way, and I think it's because I injected the same site too closely together time wise. I had a little knot for less than 24 hours. It didn't bruise; it didn't hurt.

IM auto-injectors are becoming very common. A lot of maintenance medications (something people take regularly all the time to manage symptoms of a chronic illness) for things like RA and psoriasis are now in auto-injectors. A whole category of new migraine treatments came out in the last couple years; most of those are auto-injectors. Epipens are IM auto-injectors. I use Zembrace, which is an Imitrex auto-injector.

Auto-injectors suck. They're horrible. They're easier to use than syringes, but that is their only perk. First, most of them require that you inject into the thigh, which is already a more painful injection site. Then, they're like if you decided to deliver the needle via shotgun blast. They just shoot into you at a high, high rate of speed, and then usually after the first puncture, you have to hold the thing in place while it pumps the medicine into you. It really, really hurts. And I have injection site reactions every single time in the form of huge, painful welts. 0/10 would not recommend.

Lumbar punctures: A lumbar puncture (also known as an LP or spinal tap) is a procedure in which a needle is inserted into the spinal canal to withdraw and/or measure properties of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). They usually do not sedate you. They usually give you a local anesthetic via injection (see lidocaine description above in OP's discussion of needle biopsies.) You will be in a medical gown for this procedure, usually curled up cannonball-style. You will still feel the LP needle in your spine. It's not necessarily painful, but it is very uncomfortable. If they are checking the pressure of your CSF while they are withdrawing fluid for testing, you will have to sit up during the test with the needle still sticking into your spine during the test. It is very unpleasant. After the test, you will have to lie flat on your back for the rest of the day so you don't spring a CSF leak, which in addition to being incredibly painful is generally no bueno re: your plans to continue being alive.

Therapeutic Botox: I got therapeutic Botox for migraine prevention for a couple years. This involves 40 injections into the muscles of your face, head, neck, and shoulders.

"Carly," you may be saying, "that's only 36 injections." Right you are! However, you are paying for more Botox than the standard therapy recommends (and no, there's no way around it, and it's expensive even with insurance), so if you have a good doctor, they're going to use the rest of the bottle on your trouble areas. This is like bee stings. Forty bee stings on your face, head, neck, and shoulders over the course of about 15 minutes. Even though these are IM shots, the needles are teeny tiny because there's not much flesh in these areas, but they're still needles in places with LOTS of nerve endings. You can't see what your doctor is doing, so mine would say, "Stick," as she punctured and, "burn" when she injected. And that's exactly right. "Stick, burn." It's a prick like a bee sting followed by a burn you feel spreading out beneath your skin as the medicine spreads out into the muscle. "Stick, burn." Forty times. (I want to say that if this therapy was effective against my pain, I would do it every fucking day. I don't know that I would ever willingly do it for cosmetic purposes, though.) Afterwards, you can't lay down or touch or put pressure on your face especially for a few hours, because it can make the Botox travel away from the injection site, and it's really bad if you paralyze the wrong muscles, especially in your face. You will have little pinpricks all over your face for 12-48 hours, and there may be some lingering bruise-y kind of discomfort, which after a few hours you can ice to feel better. Once the Botox starts working, you feel mostly normal except some places—between and just above the eyebrows for me—your flesh feels kind of ... heavy? And I couldn't move that specific area; like, my face was totally normal to look at except that normally where I would have a crease between my eyebrows when I wrinkled my brow, etc., there was nothing. It just stayed the same. Botox lasts for about three months, so you're doing this four times a year!

Nerve blocks: As this post has demonstrated, I have had many needles in me for many reasons. Nerve blocks are by far the worst needle-related experience I've ever had. Needles go in here:

Nerve blocks contain anesthetics like lidocaine (and occasionally steroids for inflammation), and since they're already giving you lidocaine, why would they do anything to prevent the pain of the injection? (They do not. They'll scrub you with antiseptic beforehand, then in with the needles!) It is the most pain I have ever had from an injection. You can feel the needle grind against the bone, and then there is this spike of red hot pain that feels like lightning running through that nerve. And afterwards, I couldn't turn my head for an hour. I went to another doctor years after this, and they told me nerve blocks were their only treatment plan for my condition, and I burst into tears.

What Medical Stuff Feels Like (The Stabby Bits)

Content warning for needles, blood, general medical stuff.

Also strong caveat that all of this is exactly one person's experience (mine) and so 1) may not be what you experience, 2) may not match up with other descriptions you've read, and 3) is not being written by a medical professional.

Blood Draw: Blood draws are generally done with a fairly thin needle that they stick in the crook of your elbow. It hurts, but from my experience it hurts the same way getting a flu shot hurts, just for longer--kind of a sharp pinch. If they're taking multiple things of blood, it takes longer, but they're not taking the needle in and out; it's one needle and then multiple vials that they attach, fill with blood, and then detach. If you're getting multiple tests, they'll take multiple things of blood.

Generally when it starts they'll ask you which is your better side, but often they'll check both sides anyway by looking at them/hitting the crook of the elbow with their hand to make the veins pop up. Then they tie the stretchy blue tourniquet around your upper arm (which kind of hurts) and have you make a fist. And then they stick the needle in.

For me, having the needle taken out is the part that hurts the most. After that, they have you press a little swab thing to it to stop it bleeding, and then they either put a band-aid over it (ideal) or tape the swab thing to your arm (less ideal, sometimes it involves wrapping something around your elbow, which then bunches up when you bend your arm, and it's annoying). This bleeds very little, but sometimes there's a small amount of blood on the band-aid.

IV: IVs are done with thicker needles and are left in your for longer periods of time. The three places I've had IVs are the crook of my elbow, my forearm, and my hand, and from my experience that is also definitely the order from "least bad" to "most bad". If you're admitted to the ER, they'll sometimes give you an IV to give you saline; that's actually a smaller bore than is required to give contrast, apparently, so if you then need to do an imaging test that requires contrast they may need to give you a second IV on your other arm (very not ideal).

Sometimes it'll be cold where the IV is, especially if they're giving you something like saline, because that spot is where the colder-than-your-body-temperature liquid is entering you.

From my experience, I have good veins for blood draws but not great veins for IVs, and they often have a hell of a time successfully getting a vein (which is, again, not ideal). If that goes poorly enough, it starts to bleed when they eventually take the IV out, which can be kind of scary.

If they're having a lot of trouble finding a vein, sometimes they'll use a vein finder, which is a really cool thing that projects a light on you that shows where your veins are. It's supposed to do something when the needle hits the vein so they stop poking around in you.

Like with blood draws, there's basically a port that's left attached to you, and they attach whatever they need to to it, like a saline bag or direct medicine. There doesn't need to be something attached to it, so often they'll detach you from something long before they actually remove the port. They don't to have to put it back, so it's left until the last minute.

IV marks will last longer/be visible for a while--I think it was months before the little dot on my hand finally faded. If they aren't done well or if it takes some poking around, they can also cause huge bruises.

Needle Biopsy: A needle biopsy is one type of biopsy, where they basically extract a piece of whatever it is that they need to study (this is as opposed to something like an excisional biopsy, where they take out the entire thing). From my experience, there are generally two types of needles actually involved here: lidocane (or some equivalent) and then the actual needle to remove the sample.

First, they inject the lidocane. Different people take different amounts of lidocane, so they usually have a few and will add more as necessary (to a point). This (mostly) stops it from hurting, though it doesn't stop it entirely, and it doesn't stop the feeling of pressure (which can be fairly strong depending on where they're taking the sample from).

Next, they use the needle to take the sample. At this point, it (mostly) doesn't really hurt, but from my experience you can still feel it. It also makes a noise, which they show you beforehand, I think mostly so it doesn't freak you out and so you don't flinch. It sounds like a stapler.

They take a few samples; if they're pulling samples from multiple things, I think they take a few from each. This means that each time, they stick the needle in, they make the staple noise, they take the needle out.

At least for what I was having, this was done aided by an ultrasound--I'm not sure if that's standard for all needle biopsies.

For at least a few days beforehand and after, I was told to only take acetaminophen (Tylenol) and not NSAIDs or aspirin, and I think that's pretty standard.

[innko]

when i go back to osaka and find new clinic(s) i want to try to go somewhere that doesn’t do the covid vaccine at all, i don’t like having to look very carefully at any needles they use on me to make sure i’m not the victim of an accident or an “accident”

[shorkbrian]

(Needles (aphrodisiacs!), blood, and medical paraphernalia ahead. No outright NSFW, but implied at the end)

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

Latex gloves snapped as they stretched over the man’s hands.

You were nervous.

“Sign here. It’s a consent form for the vaccines you’re receiving today.” His voice was level, almost monotone as he placed a clipboard and pen onto the counter next to your chair.

Three vaccines, routine injections.

You’d been putting them off, wary of needles, wary of people having to touch your body. You knew it would be an all-around unpleasant experience, but you had to get it done sometime, no matter how much you tried to avoid it. 

Originally it had just been two shots, but the Doctor, Chisaki Kai, had called back informing you that a third injection would be necessary.

A quick scribble with the pen before the masked man was whisking the clipboard away, confirming you’d signed the papers with a quick glance. He had pretty eyes, you noted - golden iris’s visible above the surgical face mask covering his mouth and nose.

Those pretty eyes snapped to yours, the man looking significantly bored. “All’s in order.” You watched him begin assembling the injections on the counter, needles by bottles, alcohol wipes and bandaids nearby.

“The first will go in your left arm, the second in your right, and the third in your left again. It will hurt.” His bedside manner left something to be desired.

He worked quickly and efficiently, plunging the first needle into a bottle, drawing back the plunger to fill it full of liquid before removing it from the bottle. “Please roll up your sleeves.”

Then he was stepping close, needle in one gloved hand, sterile alcohol swab in the other. You were watching him like a hawk, trying your best not to flinch when the cold wipe came into contact with your exposed upper arm.

A quick glance at your flinch, the slight bit of air hissing through your teeth at nothing but the coldness of the wipe had the man cocking his head, but he said nothing.

“Uhm, can you please-uhm, tell me when you’re about to do it?” You gulp, wide eyes trained on the far wall. Just don’t look at the needle, you’ll be fine.

“You prefer to know when to expect the pain?” It was less a question, more a statement, but you nodded nonetheless. “I’ll count to three.”

“One.” A gloved hand lightly touched your arm.

“Two.” Pointer finger and thumb smoothed over your skin, keeping it taut.

“Three.” There was a pinch, immediately followed by deep burning, stinging pain that had you gritting your teeth and wincing.

-----

The scent of bitter, sterile alcohol filled your nose, harshly jerking you to consciousness. Everything smelled like chemicals, latex and bleach and ammonia - not the most pleasant thing to wake up to.

Opening your eyes was easy, lifting your head not so much. You were slumped in your seat, head resting against the counter at your side, feet planted on the ground.

The doctor was crouched in front of you, a small wipe pinched between his fingers, held up to your nose. Golden eyes studied you closely, and upon seeing your eyes open, lashes fluttering, the doctor withdrew the wipe, subsequently taking away the chemical smell.

“You fainted.”

A blink as you gained your bearings, feeling disoriented and weak. You were still in the exam room, a tiny cramped space with barely enough room for a chair beside the exam table.

You swallowed, throat feeling dry, head fuzzy. God, did you hate needles.

“Have you had this reaction to injections before? It’s not uncommon in patients.”

“I.....no? I don’t-uhm-don’t think so...” It felt funny talking, as if you weren’t inside your body.

The doctor stood abruptly, quickly discarding the ammonia wipe into the trash, stripping his gloves off as well before donning a new pair.

“Stay there while you recover. Are you up for the other two shots today, or would you like to schedule an appointment for them at a different time?”

Why the hell didn’t he just give you the shots while you were unconscious?

“I wanna do it today please.” You sighed, reaching to feel the bandaid on your left arm. “I would hate to have to come back and do this again, know what I mean?”

Nothing else was said, just a brief nod from the man before he disappeared from the room. You shuffled your feet, closing your eyes as you leaned back in the chair. 

“(Y/N)? Do you feel ready to stand?” He was back, standing in the doorway and looking at you.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” You rocked up to your feet, rolling down your sleeve as the doctor stepped froward towards the counter. He gathered up the remaining syringes, bottles, and other supplies before stepping around you and back towards the door.

Again, you did your best to not shy away when he passed you, not wanting to make contact. Your skin was so sensitive, you hated touching people, or feeling their clothes brush against your skin. The man didn’t seem to notice, but that was alright. You were used to dodging threatening sensations in your life.

He guided you through the clinic, towards the back where a small office was situated, a comfortable-looking couch against one of the walls. His name wasn’t on the door - you remember now, Doctor Chisaki. 

Or was he a nurse? You didn’t know.

But his name wasn’t on the door. Was it okay to be in this office? Don’t they usually make you wait in the exam room?

“Have a seat, make yourself comfortable. I’ll be back shortly.” 

The door clicked shut behind him.

Today was your day off, the entire day devoted to getting your shots done, to overcoming this obstacle, handling the immense stress that came with it. It didn’t bother you to spend it sitting down and playing word searches on your phone. 

But still....

“Don’t patients usually wait in the exam room? Or in the waiting room?” You asked the man as soon as he re-entered the room, stack of paperwork in one hand as he shut the door with the other.

He gave you a once-over, body tucked into the corner of the couch, before he spoke. “Usually, but I want to make sure you don’t pass out where I can’t see you. That’d make me a bad doctor. This isn’t common procedure, sure, but I didn’t expect your body to be so-” weak “-easily indisposed.”

The tone of his voice kept completely level, hardly any emotions showing on his face, but still you felt... chilled by this man. There was no reassurance from him, no compassion or empathy.

“I’ll administer your remaining shots in 45 minute increments, that should give you enough time to recover between each one. You’ll have to lay down for them though, that’s why you’re sitting on that couch.” 

Polite, but it still felt like you were getting talked-down-to. He was patronizing you.

You gave him a curt nod to show you understood, before fumbling your phone out of your pocket to begin passing the time.

Doctor Chisaki sat down behind the empty desk, neatly placing his stack of papers on the wood before taking a sheet off the top and clicking his pen. From where he was sitting, you were in his direct line of sight, and you could feel him glancing at you occasionally as the scribble of his pen and the tapping of your fingers filled the silence.

45 minutes passed quickly, too quickly for your liking. You weren’t looking forward to the next shot.

Same instructions as before - roll up your sleeve, he’d count to three.

But the doctor paused after swabbing your arm clean. “You keep flinching. Am I  hurting you?”

“No, I mean, not really.” You shrugged. “I don’t like it when people touch me I guess, feels funny.”

“Well, try to relax.”

Easy for him to say, hard for you to do.

This time, with you laying down, the shot went much smoother. The doctor counted the three, you hissed in pain at the burning slice of the needle, but retained consciousness. Which frankly, was a success.

“That really hurts.” You breathed as soon as the needle slipped free from your arm. Even thinking about the thin point being in your muscles made you feel queasy. At least you didn’t have to look at it.

“That’s a common side effect. Muscle soreness because the needle is essentially causing a small injury to the fibers, and there are other reasons, but they're more complicated. You want ice?”

“Nah, it’ll be fine. I’ll just deal with it.”

The man blinked. “You have an interesting reaction to pain.”

“Uhhh...” You scrunched up your eyebrows as you glanced up at him, sitting up as you did so. “Thanks?”

“You’re extremely sensitive to tactile stimulation, like to know when you’ll be experiencing pain, but you don’t particularly care about relieving it. Have you ever given blood?”

The question caught you off guard, especially after realizing the man had been analyzing you more closely than you had expected.

“Nah. Does that matter?”

“Not particularly, I’m just curious I guess.” Doctor Chisaki admitted, once again stripping off his gloves and disposing of them before sliding on another pair.

He went back to his paperwork, and you to your phone, but his frequent glances weighed you down. Did you have something on your face? Was your hair messy?

“Could you point me to the bathroom please?” You rose to your feet slowly, making sure you weren’t going to faint as you stood up.

“It’d be better if you stayed seated.” Was his curt reply.

With a frown, you sat back down. Why couldn’t you use the bathroom? Maybe it affected..... something? With the vaccines? You didn’t know enough about how these things worked to really question it. Doctors were professionals, and they had their reasons.

Still, you’d feel a bit more comfortable if the man wasn’t watching you so closely.

45 more minutes of squirming until your next shot.

-----

Lay down.

Roll up your sleeve.

Try to relax.

Deep breathe.

“You smell.”

“What?” Your head snapped to the side, confused. You smelled?

“It’s not bad. What scent is it?”

Blinking back surprise, you relayed the scent on your shampoo and conditioner.  This doctor was a bit... unconventional. But his sudden question did take your mind off of the countdown, off of the pain. Smart.

“My nose is sensitive, most scents are overwhelming and while I like cleanliness I cannot stand the smell of bleach or most cleaning products. I chose the wrong profession for that, didn’t I?”

His version of a joke made you almost chuckle, a lazy grin stretching across your face instead. “You certainly did. You ever try Pine Sol though? That’s what I use for like, everything.”

The doctor shook his head, and you chattered on about the unoffensive-smelling cleaner, where you bought the bottle you have under your sink, how you use it. He listened intently as he plastered another bandaid over your arm.

“Alright, I can go now?” You asked, sitting up for the last time.

“No.”

“No?”

“Vasovagal syncope can still occur, I’d prefer you not faint and bash your head open on the ground. There’d be such a mess.”

Mouth snapping shut at the fancy medical term, you couldn’t help but sigh as you slumped back against the couch. 

“Bored?”

“I’ve been here for almost four hours. You don’t have other patients to get to?” You didn’t think to check the accusatory tone in your voice.

The doctor put aside his pen, folding his hands on the desk as he stared at you with golden eyes. “They’ve been transferred to different doctors. My current patient has taken precedence. I don’t half-ass things like some people, I see my  projects to completion.”

You were a bit taken aback at the vehemence in his voice, the way his eyes dropped to slits, narrowing fiercely at you.

“That’s what it means to be in this profession. I’m here to cure people. I make sure that sickness doesn’t spread between humans like fire in a barn full of hay. What I do is important and deserving of respect, I’m ensuring the survival of humanity, am I not?”

The intense tension in the air built, the doctor staring you down. “I’m close to becoming a renowned doctor. Just one, one breakthrough will finally get the world to see me. ”

He cocked his head, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled beneath the mask. “I thank your efforts in being a volunteer towards my latest project. It’s been a bit difficult to find someone who readily accepted an unknown injection.”

Unknown.. injection?

“What are you talking about?” 

“The second injection isn’t a vaccine, more like a... pet project of mine. I can’t wait to see what it does.”

“You can’t-this is malpractice, I didn’t consent to this-” Your fists clenched as you stood.

“You signed the consent papers. They’ll hold up in court. Most people receive the vaccines you got today when they’re still teenagers, and under their parents care. Lucky for me, you’re afraid of needles it seems, so you’ve been a bit neglectful. Hard to get a parent to sign over their child as a test subject, easy to get a fearful individual to listen to their doctor.”

A twinkle in his eye made you want to punch his lights out. “What the hell dude, you call yourself a doctor? What did you inject me with?”

The man rose from behind the desk, moving until he stood in front of you. “You’ll see soon enough. I’m pleased that you’re so concerned with hygiene, that makes this easier for both of us.”

“What??”

“And you can forget about calling for help, not that you’ll want to. But everyone’s left for the day-” He checked his wrist, where a nice watch gleamed at you mockingly. “45 minutes ago. So feel free to disclose your symptoms as they pop up as loud as you’d like.”

The man sat down on the couch, easily sinking into the plush material looking up at you with a malicious gleam in his eyes. He had been playing you since you’d walked into the clinic. Was this some sort of prank?

“You’re messing with me.”

“I’ve told you, I see my projects to completion. This is the testing stage, and it might be a while before it’s over. Why would I waste time messing with someone else’s dumb little life?’

Your mouth felt dry, face warm. Why did your legs feel all pleasantly tingly? There was a slowly-building heat simmering low in your core, and if you weren’t standing directly in front of Chisaki, you’d rub your legs together. What did he do to you?

“Now, sit down, and tell your doctor what's bothering you.”

[argethara]

A/N: Hello, argethara reporting! I’m back from customer service hell. Here’s a piece to celebrate my freedom. A sweet crackfic from @levihanbaryo‘s pool of prompts. I hope y’all are still obsessed with levihan as much as I do. If not, why???

Oh, and btw! Levihan Baryo admins and participants are working hard to finish a zine for our beloved ship. Please support and root for our works soon! 

You can also hang-out with us in our Discord server. Just DM me for the link.

Okay, here goes my trash.

PROMPT: Levi got a huge crush on Dr. Hange Zoe so he decided to receive an extra dose of vaccine from them. 

C/W: Profanities, crack medical process (please this is the prompt given, don’t be mad)

(Context: Yes, this is COVID-19 vaccine. Yes, in our country, people get 2 shots of the vaccine and 2 booster shots. Yes, we don’t have a lot of the J&J brand.) 

It’s not everyday that a person like Levi Ackerman gets nervous as shaking, heart popping out of his chest kind of nervous. Heck, he wasn’t even an inch close to this scared when he was brought by his uncle to a clinic one random day to finally be an actual man. He didn’t even cry after the procedure. Didn’t flinch when he got home with a pain worth his life on his official man dong. And he’s barely eleven years old then. 

Levi “the strongest” Ackerman wasn’t this restless on his first job interview too. 

So why does meeting a doctor for a vaccination schedule make him squeak?

Goddamn, it’s more embarrassing to think that he does mixed martial arts in his free time and he’s acting all anxious on his seat for a second-long puncture on his skin.

“Neeeeext!”

Levi stands up and sits on the next chair. It’s almost his turn and he can feel the rush of blood in his veins more, the sweat profusely dropping and staining his baby blue button down shirt. His eyes grow when he tries to peek and the wetness shows on the fabric. He immediately closes his arms to his sides, sitting straight and looking around, trying to find that familiar face. 

And there they are. In one corner of the hall, he can see them talking with an elderly woman and throwing the used syringe in the biohazard bin. Levi starts gawking as his surroundings fade into view and his focus tunnels to the bird nest on their head, sliding his vision on the gorgeous bridge sitting nicely between their never-fading, blazing hazelnut eyes, crinkling as their wide smile brightens the whole place. 

 A noise ruins his pink slow motion filter. 

“Neeext!” “Neeext!” 

His knees start to wobble a bit. The nurse gives him a strange look. As he draws near, he realizes something that makes all his shakiness replaced with cold disappointment. 

After sweating and doing all the math in his head, the person they came for stands up and says, “Better get back to the hospital. See you tomorrow, Dr. Yeager!” 

“Thank you for assisting today, Zoe. Oh, if you see Eren around, tell him to go home early,” Dr. Yeager replied.

“Copy that, Doc! Your son really bakes amazing stuff, I’ll make sure to buy some eclairs for my interns.”

“You bet. Rest too, sweetheart.”

No, stay, Levi wishes silently.

The person laughed beautifully, loudly. Levi stops on his tracks, which the nurse guiding him obviously didn’t appreciate.

“Sir, it’s your turn-” 

And Levi does his mental calculation again as he watches the person fix their things, preparing to head out of the facility.

He looks at this Dr. Yeager which eerily reminds him of his spiteful mixed martial arts club mate in college. Who also likes to say, “Don’t let them know your next move” when he’s about to lose the match. 

Don’t let them know your next move

Don’t let  them know your next move

Don’t let them know your next move

He hates to admit but he does exactly what the pathetic monkey is chanting in his head.

He does the unexpected.

Looking at the nurse that is already frowning harder than he could, he frowns his hardest, clenching his chest with a fist, and kneels dramatically on the floor. “Eugh” “Eugh!” 

The nurse watches him heartlessly as she sighs. 

He drops down to the floor further with his hands on his chest, emphasizing the “Eugh” as he continues. He feels his face is so red at that point. He has never done this all his life. 

His eyes are still closed. He is becoming more self-conscious and realizes this is the most regrettable decision he has made. Or not, his mind debates. If he gets the attention of that damn doctor, bugging his wits to its end every night, then this shitty act might be worth it after all.

Good fucking thing that I’m a hundred kilometers away from my city.

The things I do, just so I could call you mine.

Mikasa’s playlist started consoling him away from his current state. Oh to do some stupid teenage lovesick bullshit when you’re in your thirties. 

“Sir, please calm down! I’m Pieck, a nurse. Where does it hurt?”

Levi opened an eye. The snobbish nurse is near him. 

Fuck, just get out here. 

He glances at where the person is and they are watching him. Good, he rolls a bit towards Dr. Zoe, bumping to some chairs.

The damn nurse held him in place by his shoulder. 

“Sir! Open your eyes. Please tell me where it hurts so I can help you. Try not to move much.”

Go fucking away!

Levi has the urge to yell but his act will be caught and he doesn't want his efforts to fail. He’s already doing a ridiculous way of getting their attention, and might as well succeed. 

“I- I, my b-brain an-d my heart fucking hurts,” he suddenly said.

Yes, my brain is at the edge. I don’t know how to keep up nor end this shit I started.

“Huh? Can you stand, Sir? What’s your name?” Nurse Pieck asked. 

God, help me. 

“No.” I won’t stand unless Dr. Zoe will get me up. 

The nurse makes him lie on the ground and he complies, not knowing what his next move will be anymore. Seems like he’s not stupid enough to pull of a stupid decision like Zeke does. His fist is still on his chest to keep the act straight.

“What’s happening?” 

Hallelujah. 

“Oh, Doc Zoe! He’s sweating and panting hard but I haven’t checked any vital signs yet. He said his brain and heart hurts. He’s been like this for two minutes now.”

“Alright. Thank you, Pieck.” Levi feels a presence on his right side. 

He opened his eyes to the brunette when they touched his forehead. 

The pants got harder.

Fucked. I am fucked. Why did I do this?

“Sir, can you speak? What’s your name?”

Their sparkling brown eyes are at him. Curious, like he’s a fucking specimen in the lab but that’s alright. He made them stay. 

His chest actually tightens. Breathtaking. 

Dr. Zoe chuckled and he blinked. Shit, he almost forgot he’s acting. 

“What’s your name?” They repeated.

“Levi,” he muttered. 

“Okay, Levi, I’m Dr. Hange Zoe. Is the pain still there?”

“A-ah, Y-yea. It’s… I can’t breathe properly.”

“Rate your pain from 1-10.”

“Earlier 8, now it’s 5.”

“Can you stand?”

“Yeah.”

“Now we’re talking!” They beamed at the nurse and the latter rolled her eyes.

“You can leave Levi to me now, Nurse. You can attend to the others.”

Pieck huffed, “I can handle this, though! You’re about to go out.”

“It’s okay. I still have some time. I’ll just go to the cafe next time.”

Pieck gives him a look one last time and goes back to the other people on the line. Dr. Zoe helps him to sit on a chair. They’re smiling like it’s business as usual but it’s enough for Levi’s heart to actually palpitate abnormally. 

“Ah, can you hold on for a minute?”

Levi nods as a response. He dares not to look around. He knows they’re still watching. Especially the witch that was assisting him earlier. Her eyes are sending laser beams from afar, he can tell. 

They step out and he watches them instead. 

When they get back to him, they give them a cup of water. And they both sit quietly as he downs the liquid.

The doctor takes a breath and smiles as he glances to their side. 

“How are you feeling?” They inquired.

“Better.” He muttered.

“That’s quite a scene, eh? Have you had any experience like that before?”

His ears turn pink. “This is the first time.”

“Can I?” They raised their manual sphygmomanometer. 

He nodded.

They measured his blood pressure. Staring at him closely from time to time. 

Damn, they smell like sweat and isopropyl alcohol. 

I should say something.

Shit, almost done?

They bite their lip when focused.

That’s sexy.

“It’s higher than normal but you’ll survive with a bit of rest and water. You should cool down if you wanna get the vaccine today, but you can return to-”

“No.” The doctor is surprised with his firm tone. 

“O-oh. You might be a busy person. I understand-”

“No, I’m not busy I, I just-” he stutters.

“Ahh… Oh!” Hange holds his hands in theirs and Levi almost freaks out. He likes it, though. They have warm, comforting hands.

“Do you have trypanophobia?” They whispered.

“Huh?”

The person is closer to Levi than he allows people to be with him on normal days. But he is now basking in their attention. It is a successful mission. No matter how fucked the method he did.

They nodded consolingly. “That’s okay. No shame on being afraid of needles. I know a lot of people who are the same. They even run away or faint sometimes. Some doctors do too! I’m proud of you for conquering your fears and getting this vaccine…”

Doctor Hange Zoe rambles about the benefits of vaccination and how to defeat his fears. He hears the name of a psychiatrist that can help him with his problem. Their speech goes from one ear to the other. The highlight of his day is not only that he managed to talk with the doctor this time, he was also touched, comforted. 

“...And you see, all the citizens of the world are being monitored right now. Paradis even has a database of all the people who already had the vaccine that’s been distributed. Oh! Good Ymir! I haven’t asked your whole name yet.”

“Levi Ackerman.”

And it happens so fast. He’s now sitting on a chair in one of the booths. Being taken care of by THE Hange Zoe themself. As soon as they’re done, he grabs the opportunity to exchange numbers. “I’m passionate about recovering from fears! Please get in touch when you’re ready to talk with a psychiatrist. He’s a friend of mine but I highly recommend him for his expertise you know…”

Another five-minute monologue on his mental health and he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. He rarely accepts opinions of others yet it feels like heaven that they’re overly worried about his well-being. 

The day ends with him taking an hour flight to Sina where he actually lives and works. 

On the following day, he wakes up and crawls on his bed with a heavy body, burning deep to his bones from the side effect of the vaccine. 

He smiles as the notification pops out messages from his precious Hange Zoe.

“Hi Levi! This is Hange in case you didn’t save my number. How are you? I’m sorry, I forgot to register your name yesterday! I was talking a lot and I forgot and I know it’s my negligence as a doctor. It’s a very rare mistake on my part. Please forgive me! I’ll do it immediately when I get to the hospital.” Sent 6:12 AM.

“You must be sleeping. I want to inform you about the registration. System says you already completed your set of vaccines in North Sina General Hospital a week ago. But maybe it’s a system error. Let me ask this to my colleagues.” Sent 7:00 AM. 

“Hi, Levi! Did you forget to take your last booster shot last week? I’m afraid I gave you a fifth one. Do you know that there are only 2 sets for the initial and 2 booster shots? I’ve committed two offenses against my practice already if that’s the case. Oh God! I was so careless, I forgot to check the database beforehand.” Sent 7:24 AM.

“Remember Dr. Smith, the psychiatrist? He said the database is very very updated. OMG. Can we talk?” Sent 7:50 AM. 

9 missed calls from Sunshine <3

He chuckles weakly. The fuck he’s gonna tell them. That he’s a stupid simp?

Levi presses their number to call them back. 

“Levi! Oh my God! How are you? I’m really sorry! I think-”

He laughs. They sound like they care about him.

“I- huh? Hello? Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry.”

“Huh?” 

“You don’t have to worry. It’s entirely my fault,” he coughs.

“A-are you sick?”

“No, uh yeah, but it’s just a side effect of the vaccine. It usually goes away after a day of rest.”

“So did I really give you a third booster shot?” They are sniffing on the other line. 

“Yeah.” 

“Oh no!” The cries get louder. 

“Shh, shh, hey. Doctor, listen. Can I tell you something?”

“Hm?” sniffs, “Yeah, anything. I’m really sorry.”

“You really don’t remember me?”

“What do you mean?” 

He sighs, “That’s disappointing. We even laughed with the children in the orphanage together.”

“Orphanage?”

“Yeah, five months ago, The Ymir’s Heart For Angels Foundation event.”

There’s silence. Levi looked at his phone, checking if they hung up already.

“You might’ve been too busy to remember me. Sorry for acting stupid. It’s not your fault. I didn’t know we could only get up to four shots. And a fever won’t kill me, you know that too. Someone told me you’re a doctor in Shiganshina and I happen to be in the area for business. So I tried visiting you but you weren’t in the hospital for two days. It’s almost my flight so I got desperate and went to the vaccination center.”

“Do you have a fever?” They cut his confession. 

“Well, yeah, kind of.” He admits. 

“You kinda deserve that.”

“Hm, yeah.” He laughs at their annoyed voice.

“Do you have family taking care of you?”

“I’m alone. Ah- I have a cat, if it counts as family.”

“Mr. Ackerman, I’m not joking with you.”

“Neither am I, Dr. Zoe.”

Someone is calling the doctor from their end. He waits and relaxes on their words he barely understands. Their end goes quiet after some time.

“Doc? Hange?” He asks.

“Don’t risk my license to meet me next time.”

“Wha-”

The phone beeps as his caller ends the call. 

“Call me tonight” Sent 1:15 PM.

[whumpmatsus]

Do they have to be whump related? Also Ichimatsu getting a shot pls

wasn't sure if you wanted a draw or a fic, so I did both!

and yeah, any draw or fic requests you send here should probably be whump-related since this is a whump-focused blog

though if you wanna send any draw or fic/scenario/reaction/etc. requests that AREN'T whump, you can send them to my general Osomatsu-san blog at @kisskissmatsu!

enjoooooy <3

-

-

Usually Ichimatsu is the sextuplet who’s fine being left all by himself.

Being in the hospital without his family, though, is a much different story.

It started innocently enough ― with a persistent cough that was almost certainly the herald of a cold or sore throat on the horizon. As much as he hates being sick, he sort of resigned himself to it. He’s the one among his brothers who’s forever catching what happens to be going around, despite the fact that he doesn’t spend a lot of time around other people. That’s why he started wearing a face mask when he does leave the house.

It was about a week or so of sneezing, coughing, and sniffling his way through various attempts to rest. His throat felt worse than it usually did with a cold, and even more alarming was that his chest felt like it was on fire, especially when he started coughing. Even though he started having trouble breathing, he thought maybe this was just something that would linger for a bit, something that needed more sleep to recover from.

When things didn’t taper off after that, since a week was typically all it took for him to start feeling better, the others started commenting on it.

When Ichimatsu started to spend more time in the bathroom with a sink full of hot water in the hopes that the steam would help him breathe easier, and it didn’t seem to be having any effect, they all got worried.

When Karamatsu blurted out, “I secretly took Ichimatsu’s temperature with a forehead thermometer while he was sleeping and it read 39.4!”, Mom and Dad immediately carted their fourth son off to the hospital.

It figures Shittymatsu would get him into this mess, but Ichimatsu supposes that the sneaky gesture was only out of care, otherwise Karamatsu wouldn’t have spoken up about a number that concerned him.

That doesn’t mean he has to like it. After a distressing, panic-inducing few hours of waiting and a date with the X-ray machine, the doctor diagnosed him with bacterial pneumonia. That particular diagnosis ensured that he had to be admitted into the hospital under quarantine, because as the doctor explained, bacterial pneumonia is extremely contagious and potentially life-threatening, particularly to someone with a fragile immune system like Ichimatsu. They can’t send him home to infect his brothers or the rest of the community, and even though he isn’t technically immuno-compromised, his tendency to get sick easily means that it’s better for him to be here in the hospital in case things suddenly take a bad turn.

Being in here is like he’s trapped in hell and can’t get out. Because he’s in quarantine, he never sees anybody. Which would be fine normally. Feeling so poorly is a significant reason for wanting his family nearby, though… and he can’t have them.

The most they can do is visit outside his room and talk to him through the speaker system. That’s even worse, seeing them all and not being able to have any real contact with him. Right now more than anything, what he wants is a hug from his mom. God, he wants a hug from his brothers.

It’s hard to even get any rest like he’s supposed to be doing. Most of his time is spent sitting up, trying to get a sufficient breath in while he listens to various TV channels. The idol news reminds him of Choromatsu, sports statistics remind him of Jyushimatsu, game shows remind him of Osomatsu, American dramas remind him of Karamatsu, and fashion shows remind him of Totty.

Those are just distractions, because it’s still hard to breathe. He’s struggling for most of his breaths, but too deep a breath will trigger a coughing fit. Which, in turn, makes it more difficult to breathe.

It’s barely been a day since he was admitted and already he wants out of here.

His brothers visit sometime after lunch, and they spend a few hours. Eventually the nurse gently chases them out, telling them that Ichimatsu needs to try to get some rest. Shortly after that she comes into the room, rolling her little cart with the tray on it.

“How do you feel today, Ichimatsu?” she hums, pulling on a pair of gloves. “Any better than when we admitted you?”

He shakes his head and tries to answer when another series of coughs interrupts him. Although it’s hard to cover his mouth when his whole body is aching, he does his best. After all, he doesn’t want to get anyone else sick. He’s already in quarantine, so all the doctors and nurses are taking their own precautions; still, he shouldn’t just give up and spread his germs carelessly. “N-not really.”

She nods and picks up a wrapped packet from the tray. “Well, to be honest, that’s understandable. It hasn’t been very long.” The packet is ripped open, and the distinct smell of alcohol fills the air as she carefully pushes his sleeve up. “The lack of improvement does concern us, though. So I just have to give you an injection of some medicine, okay?”

Shit. He thought that might be what was going on here. He knows he’s too exhausted to fight it, and yet, his brain evidently isn’t too exhausted to not be fucking anxious about it. “I… I have to get a shot?”

The cold wipe is rubbed against the top part of his arm. “Yeahhh… I’m sorry. This is penicillin, and it’s one of our standard treatments for pneumonia. The doctor thinks you’ll have better luck sitting still for one shot than for a whole pill-and-water deal, since you’re coughing a lot. I kind of have to agree, since you might accidentally inhale some water if you cough while trying to take the pills.”

Immediately he starts to panic. Most of the time the idea of a shot doesn’t bother him more than it might the average person ― he gets the yearly flu vaccine without any problems. Right now, however… the idea of a shot while he’s already feeling so terrible, the initial pinch and the ache that might happen afterwards and being alone, it just feels scary.

The nurse must hear the way his breathing starts to quicken, or maybe the way his hands start shaking. She gives his shoulder a little pat. “Ah, I know on your chart it says you suffer from some anxiety. Are you a bit anxious right now?”

“Y… yeah…”

“Okay. That’s totally fine, you know? Different people get anxious about different things. Would it help if I distracted you, or if I gave you a countdown so you know when it’s coming? Sometimes that helps so it’s not a surprise… or, sometimes people prefer it to be a surprise. Which one do you think would be best for you?”

… Oh. He wasn’t expecting something like that. It almost feels like he has a little control over this, despite the fact that he has to get the injection either way. “C… can you… count down?”

“Sure, of course. No problem.” Then she reaches over with one hand, grabbing the syringe with the other. “Would you like to hold my hand?”

That’s kind of… babyish, isn’t it? “I-I’m not a kid… I don’t wanna…”

She chuckles. “Well, you know, earlier today I held the hand of an elderly lady who was getting a shot. It’s not just a kid thing. But if you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”

He takes a moment to consider that, then silently slips his hand into hers.

“Alright, just squeeze if you feel like you need to. I’m all set, are you?”

“I… I think so…”

“Okay, I’m gonna give you the countdown then. Here we go. Three ― two ― one.”

As soon as she says the last number, he feels the needle pierce his skin. It’s uncomfortable, a sharp kind of pinprick pain. There’s a slight feeling of tightness and soreness as the medicine is emptied into his muscle, and a brief jolt when the nurse pulls the needle out.

All in all, even though it isn’t a pleasant experience, it’s not as bad as it could have been. It’s certainly better than choking on a pill and a glass of water if he had to try to swallow the medication.

And, at least, it’s over now.

“There. You did great, Ichimatsu. Probably my best patient of the day!” With that, she sets the syringe back down on the tray and gingerly smooths a bandage with a cotton ball over the injection site. “That should keep you clean just in case any blood trickles out from the shot, and someone will come take it off later if the adhesive starts to make your skin itch.”

He nods and coughs into his arm again, giving a soft groan. He’s just so tired, from the fever, from the coughing, from not being home. “Is it gonna m… khh… make me tired?”

“Haha, it shouldn’t, no. You might feel a little nauseous, or you might have to go to the bathroom more, or you might get a small itchy rash… just press the call button if any of that happens or if you feel strange otherwise, okay?” Her cart is all packed up already, and she’s heading out of the room. “If you get tired, it’s probably because you’re sick and need rest. So, try to sleep as much as you can.”

“’Kay.” He just feels like this illness has drained everything out of him, and there’s a little throbbing where he got the injection. But, the more he sleeps, hopefully the sooner he can recover and go home.

On her way out, the nurse dims the lights. Practically as soon as she does, Ichimatsu’s eyes start to drift closed. God, he’s so tired.

He lies down, though the bed is still a little elevated since sleeping flat will just make him cough more. Sleep tugs at him, and he has to move a little bit so he’s not putting any pressure on the area where he got the shot.

Soon. Soon he can go home.

Just as soon as he gets better.

[boymeetsweevil]

the shape you make

Grouping: Reader x Johnny

Word Count: ~4.1k

Warnings/Themes: Halloweentown AU (again), body insecurity, slight allusions to speciesism, graphic smut, communication issues (as always), a very thirsty work friend

Summary: For both you and Johnny, there is something big holding you back from being intimate. At the yearly Harvest party, that something big becomes something known.

A/N: This fic is part of The Intimacy Anthology, and then Halloween came and ate it :) If you’re interested in the project and/or would like to see the works from the other talented artists, click the link!

“—I mean, we’re doing fine. I would say it’s perfect except for one thing.”

You frown down at the dragonling wriggling in your hands, partially in pity for him. Snickerdoodle is in for his first-ever check up and by the way he tries to burrow into the front pocket of your uniform, you can tell he’s uncomfortable. It’s likely that the coolant pills given to suppress fire during examinations are upsetting his stomach. You pat his rough belly. 

The rest of your frown is dedicated to a predicament you face with your boyfriend. 

You’ve been dating Johnny for three months. After being set up by two mutual friends who thought you’d be a good pair, you hit things off and decided to see where things would go. The issue was, while you’d had many a good conversation and even met his mother, you still hadn’t let Johnny get to know the real you. Which meant things between you felt too good to be true and you were preparing for an inevitable rebuff.

“What’s the problem again? He doesn’t want to go with you to the Harvest party?” 

Your coworker Nautilanita ruffles her wings anxiously as she hunts for the correct syringe for dragon skin and a few treats to distract Snickerdoodle. 

“No, we’re going to the Harvest party. The problem is that I want to go further with Johnny, but I don’t think I actually can.”

“Oh. That’s what I thought you said. But he’s literally perfect, so I figured I misheard you.” 

You roll your eyes. Despite being pair-bonded to another lovely griffin for almost 13 mating cycles, something about Johnny turns your friend into putty.

“I think that’s the problem. He’s hot, he’s sweet, he’s funny—”

“Ehh. I don’t think I’ve heard a great joke from him yet.”

“He’s funny in that cute, corny way.”

“Fair.” Nautilanita approaches Snickerdoodle with a dried newt and distracts him just long enough to give him the first of his vaccinations. “So, what, you don’t like perfect guys?”

“It’s not like that. It’s more like he treats me like I’m perfect.”

“Okay, did you just come here to brag?”

The flat look on Nautilanita’s face is enough to startle a laugh out of you. You’re glad for the tiny distraction and allow some nervous energy to leave you.

“You know what I mean. There’s things he doesn’t know about me that I’m pretty sure could ruin us. I’m not the perfect person he thinks I am.”

“What does not perfect mean?”

Nautilanita hands you a needle and switches places with you, scooping up Snickerdoodle. You take up a new syringe to draw some blood from between his wings for the examination. With quick work, you watch the gold liquid fill the barrel of the syringe.

“It sounds dumb when I say it out loud,” you whine while taking the blood away to the chemistry machine. Nautilanita smiles softly at you.

“That probably means it is dumb. And that you don’t have to worry about it.”

“You’ve seen Johnny, though.”

“Yes. Of course I have,” Nautilanita sighs dreamily. If it were anyone else, you might get jealous.

“He’s athletic and super buff. He’s normal. And I...”

“Yeah, I’m gonna stop you there. This is dumb. Do you think Johnny is a shallow guy?”

“Of course I don’t. I know he isn’t.”

“Then do you really think he’s gonna just drop you because you’re not 'normal’? I still don’t even get what that means.”

“No, but—”

The machine beeps and Nautilanita hands Snickerdoodle back to you to collect the sample.

“But what?”

“But I what if he doesn’t want me? What if he can’t be attracted to me?”

“Have you and Johnny kissed?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“And has he ever initiated a kiss?”

“Sure, lots of times.”

“Then I think he finds you attractive.”

You grimace to yourself. It sounded so easy put that way though you weren’t sure if Nautilanita even understood your worry. Maybe sitting down at that Leprechaun-run cafe after work with Nautilanita would help make your predicament clear, but at the moment you felt too exhausted. In an ideal world, it would be just as easy as Nautilanita said.

“What do you think?”

Mark holds up two button down shirts to his front for Johnny to compare. One is a saturated red and the other is a muted periwinkle blue.

“Blue one, easy.”

“Thanks. I’d ask Yeri, but she’s gonna be working almost up until the Harvest party. You’re lucky.”

“I don’t know who you’re calling lucky. I put sweat and tears into my outfits because I pick them all myself.”

“That’s bull. That one with the turtleneck and chains two weeks ago? There’s no way that was all you.”

“What? Yes it was”

Johnny tries not to eye the Harvest outfit he has laying on the chair at the other end of his room. The one that he’d recruited you into helping him with, over the duration of several days.

“Hmm. Not even when you’re shopping? Like when you’re in the fitting room and kind of flirting a little bit? Not even then?”

“Didn’t know you were such a hoe, Mark.”

"I have layers,” is all he says with flushing cheeks.

He’s glad Mark didn’t notice he avoided the question because the truth is that he’s never had such a moment with you. He’d like to, though. He’d like to be able to take you shopping with him, like normal couples do. Maybe you’d manage to sneak into the fitting rooms and give him a stack of things you’d want to see him in. Maybe half the time he’d come out shirtless just to see your reaction. Maybe at the end he’d pull you into the fitting room with him after one too many appreciative glances from you. But he can’t.

You’ve actually never seen him shirtless. Despite the fact that his thoughts sometimes go that direction when at the gym. Despite the fact that all his friends, Mark included, seem to think he’s already long since seen you bare and bared himself for you.

“You okay?” Mark asks when the minutes have ticked by and the conversation has screeched to a halt.

“Yeah, yeah. Just thinking.”

“What about?”

“What if, just as a scenario, we hadn’t done anything other than kiss.”

Mark’s eyes widen in the middle of folding his shirts and though he tries to hide the reaction, Johnny catches it.

“You mean you and—”

“Yeah.”

“So, just a peck or...”

“No! It’s definitely gotten, uh, intense. But I haven’t ever taken off my clothes in front of her or anything.”

Mark tilts his head, eyes narrowed above Johnny’s head. “Because you don’t want to?”

“That’s the thing. I do. But I’m pretty sure I’m not her usual...type.”

“Have you gone through a catalogue of her past relationships and found her type?”

“No, but—”

“Has she said she doesn’t like certain things about you?”

“...No.”

“Then why do you think that?”

“Well—”

The chimes of an alarm on his phone interrupt his explanation. Johnny turns off the alarm and gets up to the bathroom. He leaves the door open, not worried about privacy in the company of his best friend. Over the sound of running water and the aerosol of shaving cream leaving its canister he continues.

“I don’t want to make things awkward for her.”

“I mean, if you want her to look at you that way, that’s important. Even if she does have a type.”

“Right,” Johnny mumbles while running his razor under the tap. 

Mark comes to lean against the doorframe of the bathroom to hear better. Johnny’s lips purse at Mark’s reflection in the mirror. He feels torn.

“And if you’re wrong, then you can just move forward.”

“Right.” 

Right?

This year, the Harvest party is being hosted at the mayor’s house instead of at a corporate venue. There are probably hundreds of guests on the property all milling about and giving you a calming sense of anonymity. Johnny texted you earlier that evening telling you where you could find him when you finally left the vet clinic and made it to the party.

A few friends stop you to make small talk and instead of telling them you have to go meet Johnny, you let them delay you. A nymph from work brings you to the large kitchen to eat some rare berries she brought. Another friend from work ushers you onto the main floor to spin you a few times while a song that you like plays.

When the song changes, you exchange goodbyes and stumble off from them. Unfortunately, you bump into Nautilanita, who you had also technically been avoiding.

“Look who it is,” Nautilanita‘s talons curve dangerously around the stem of a wine glass.

“Oh, hey.”

“Guess who I ran into half an hour ago.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“Johnny?”

“Mhm. Your boyfriend,” Nautilanita snaps. “Why was he asking me where you were? I had to lie and say you got held back at work.”

“You weren’t required to do that,” you point out. Nautilanita narrows slitted eyes at you.

“I’m guessing you haven’t sat down and talked with him yet.”

“I haven’t. I do plan to, though. I’m just...”

“Nervous?”

You nod and suddenly Nautilanita is grabbing your arm and pulling you over to a darker corner of the house. There’s a group of people huddled loosely near the basement door, light smoke wafting up from where their heads are craned down.

“What are we doing?”

“Getting you some extra courage.”

“Nautilanita,” you hiss before darting your heard around your surroundings. “Did you forget we have weekly drug tests at work?”

“I’m not getting you drugs. I’m getting you some courage. It’s legal, I think.”

You stand off from the group, confused, as Nautilanita chats with the lady in the middle of the huddle. A witch, based off the purple ring she wears. The witch reaches into her bag when Nautilanita does actually ask for courage by name. Nautilanita returns with a small bag of bright yellow orbs that flash welcomingly in the low lighting.

“Open.”

You open your mouth obediently and chew the little rubbery yellow ball until it bursts into your mouth. It tastes a bit like dish soap but you swallow it.

“How long does this last?”

“10 minutes.”

“You mean I only have 10 minutes to find him and tell him everything?”

“Well, 9 minutes and 55 seconds now.”

You push past Nautilanita to circle back through the crowd and climb the staircase to where Johnny said he’d be on the second floor. He’s not in the billiard room at the end of the hall, but someone there points you toward one fo the guest rooms. When you find him he’s sitting in an arm chair in a corner guest room, scrolling on his phone when you enter abruptly.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he puts his phone down and makes his way over to you. “Why are you out of breath?”

“I, uh, ran up the stairs.”

“You ran up the stairs to see little ol’ me?”

Johnny’s smile is bright and genuine and suddenly you feel a rush of something. It must be the courage. You throw yourself into his waiting arms and press your face to his chest. He should know, you think. He deserves to know.

You’re about to pull away and confess to him, but then he’s lifting your chin with a finger. His smiles bleeds into his eyes and softens into something you think you could swim in. He leans down and catches your mouth in a kiss.

Instead of worrying about the courage running out, you focus on the kiss. With your eyes closed you can properly lose yourself in the feeling of the hard muscle under his soft sweater. The sweater he chose after frantic consultation with you. 

Emboldened by the way you relax into him, Johnny pushes further into your space. His bangs tickle your face when he swivels his head and presses a fuller kiss to your lips. Warm hands creep a slow path up from the flare of your hips to the hem of your work shirt. His breath hitches a little in a puff against your cheek when you push up into him and kiss him harder. His hands come to anchor himself on your lower torso again. This time your movements have pulled your work shirt up to expose your stomach. 

The drag of the skin of his fingers on your lower back has you yanking yourself back with darting eyes and a shaky smile. It pains you to ruin the momentum of the moment, but you know that if you don’t explain yourself before your clothes are supposed to come off, you don’t know how things will end. You’re not expecting to look up and find Johnny’s eyes filled with something that looks akin to fear. 

“Shit—I’m sorry.” He rocks back on his heels and lets his gaze bounce around the corners of your face looking for a cue. “Should we talk about this?” 

You think about the 10 minutes you have, and how much of it could possibly be left.

“Y-yeah.”

You gravitate towards the guest bed and he follows with a flop.

“I hope you know I don’t want to pressure you into anything,” he offers.

“I know you weren’t. It was just getting kinda heavy there for a second.”

“And you don’t want that to happen.”

“I want to make sure you still want to.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because...I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

Johnny can feel the prick of sweat at his hairline and across his shoulders. He kind of wishes you would just tell him you know what he’s hiding so he can begin to adjust. He knows it’s not what Mark would suggest, but he doesn’t want to lose you.

“I know humans say they like magical folk, but being friends with the magicals and being with them is really different.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And even if they really are fine with us, they probably still would prefer to be with other humans.”

He nods, and then replays your words in his head. You said ‘us’.

“Maybe you wondered why it’s taken us so long to be physical”

“I have, honestly. But that doesn’t mean you should rush to do that.”

“Well, it’s not because I really needed more time. It’s because I didn’t have the courage to before. I didn’t want you to see me like a monster from those old books.”

“Wait, are you saying you’re—”

Before he can finish his sentence, you reach for the buttons of your work shirt and undo them as quickly as you can with shaking fingers and courage long since run out. As the shirt loses its structure and falls away, he can see more of your skin than he ever has before.

Scattered in patches across your abdomen, breasts, and even your back are teal scales that reflect his shocked expression back at him in dozens of little frames with the clarity of a polished gem.

“I’m actually not human. I come from a long line of water sprites.”

The tears of shame in your eyes, another first sight for him, are the same iridescent teal and leave subtle crystalline streaks on their way down your cheeks.

He doesn’t mean to, but he can’t find actual words, and the laugh seems to jump from his throat. Low bubbling first it then grows as the seconds pass by. You look up from the bedspread because you can’t believe your ears. This isn’t at all how you imagined he’d react. He holds up a hand. He knows how bad the reaction is but he can’t help it.

When the laughter begins to subside a moment later, he attends to his own shirt. He hikes the material up over his head and reveals smooth skin. You’re not sure what’s going on at first, but then he removes the silver earrings he wears every day and fur begins to sprout from his torso, his forearms, around his face. His canines and nails lengthen before your eyes to sharp points. And suddenly you understand.

“I bought these from a witch who specializes in werewolf magic the day before our first date,” he reaches over and places the small silver hoops into the palm of your hand.

You look down at the jewelry and then back up at your boyfriend’s face. You’re surprised to see that he looks different, though not because of the sudden lycanthropic transformation. There’s a lightness in his eyes and length in his spine that makes you realize just how much his secret was weighing on him.

No words leave your mouth as you crawl into his space. A small smile graces his lips and he lays on his back to make room for you. You kiss him once more and you’re shocked at how different it feels to do so without a secret smothering everything. As you part his lips, Johnny lays his hands on your skin gently. When you don’t withdraw, he lets his hands wander. 

His palms skim over the cold patches of scales like he’s trying to warm them. He likes the juxtaposition of the warmth from your skin and the cool brilliance of your scales. He likes the way they pattern on you, lining your spine and sloping over your roundnesses. He kiss parts he can reach on your shoulder and when you stop to let him move more, his kisses follow the trail below your collarbone and between your breasts. When he tentatively swipes his tongue over them, you sigh and sink more fully into his lap.

You pull at the thick hair hear the nape of his neck and redirect him back to your mouth. It doesn’t escape you that your bare torsos are constantly brushing. Your nipples harden when he hugs you to him and shivers at the cool patches meeting his skin.

“Are we going to?”

“Do you want to,” his breath puffs against the side of your jaw.

“Please.”

The press of your rocking hips against his reminds him of just how much clothing there’s still left to remove and how much skin there still is to marvel at. After switching positions, he has you on your back and makes a start on removing your pants. He makes quick work of them by trailing a claw under the stubborn button. When the slacks are gone, he looks over the splashes of blue on the inside of your right thigh, spilling over the front of both your shins, wrapping around your left ankle.

He starts there, with a simple kiss to the sparkle on your ankle and then continues. Like skipping a stone through cerulean waters, he kisses over your shins and makes his leisurely way over the hill of your knee. His tongue makes an appearance at your right thigh, where you had been praying for it. He lingers there until he’s certain the area is no longer untouched. There’s an urge to mark up the other thigh as well so there’s some symmetry. He follows the urge with your hand fisting in the thick strands of his hair the whole time.

“Johnny,” you groan when he takes too long trying to mirror the pattern of your scales with small nips to your skin. “When I asked if we were going to have sex, I was asking about today.”

“Sure, I’ve got you.”

He pats your thigh in a placating gesture, and then slides your underwear off at an obnoxiously slow pace with a shit-eating grin. You try your hardest to level a glare at him, but you break eye contact to gasp when he slides a gentle finger between your folds with no prior mention. You briefly consider just letting him continue, but you’re chasing a very specific sensation.

You rake your nails up the part of his back that you can reach, parting some of the fur there. The shiver that wracks through his whole back has you biting your lip in an attempt to stifle laughter. But it also has him shifting so he can hover over you, his hips occupying the place his shoulders once did. While he balances his weight on his knees and one hand, he uses the other hand to get just free enough from his pants.

He replaces his hand when the button, zipper, and the waist of his pants and underwear bunch around his lower thighs. You reach down before he can do anything else and see what he’s working with. Johnny releases a shaky breath while you feel him up, trace the trail of hair that run from his stomach to his groin. Your other hand runs up his arm in an idle fashion. It’s unintentional but, still, the feeling of your nails running over his skin feels like a live current, even through the fur.

The concentration he exhibits is clear as his head lolls forward. You stop your exploration and nudge him into action with a squeeze of your thighs. He still leans down to plant a kiss on your lips before hooking one hand under your back and around a thigh and shifting so you’re seated in his lap once more. You lower yourself onto him fully and begin rocking. You had been ready to take him early on but you’re wet enough to surprise him. He fights the instinct to pitch up into the wet heat until he’s sure you won’t mind.

When you start to get a bit frustrated with the angle, you push him back and brace yourself on either side of his chest. He lets out a long moan as you ride him, fangs glinting when he throws his head back. His hands come to pull you down onto him more firmly. He doesn’t realize that the prick of his claws on the swatch of scales that adorn your hip spurs you on as well. Each downward snap of your hips he meets halfway until he can feel the tell-tale signs of his orgasm coming. He’s not expecting you to reach down and brush a fingertip against the tip of one of his fangs. Carefully so you don’t cut yourself while you continue to bounce against him, you brush your finger across his lips. He’s not sure why, but it sets him over the edge and he spills into you.

You watch the way his face contorts with the pleasure and ache to join him. Grabbing one of clawed hands, you bring it to the apex of your thighs and he quickly guesses your need. He does his best to rub at your clit while the edges of orgasm fade away from his peripheral vision. It’s just slick enough to get you there, and you finish soon after his fog lifts.

The first thing you do is collapse onto him as you recover. Johnny tries to take deep breaths that you can match and eventually the two of you are letting out twin exhales. When you’re able to, you lift yourself just enough to kiss him again. This time it’s one soft singularity.

He sighs against your lips, and when he pulls back there’s a bemused smile on his face.

“I can’t believe you thought I was human.”

“Yeah,” you close your eyes. “I don’t know how we managed to fool each other for so long.”

“I was actually shaving five times a day since the first date.”

The thought makes you smile when you think back on all the times he would go to the bathroom and come back with a pink face.

“Now I’m sure you can guess why I never washed dishes at your place.”

“Would you get more scales,” he asks while brushing his thumb over the apple of your cheek.

“Close. My fingers would turn blue and web.” You wiggle them for effect.

“You know what? I don’t even think either of us actually said we were human. I guess we just assumed.”

You nod and wonder how things would have been if you came out earlier. The idea of surprising a Johnny that thought you were human on the 2nd date with webbed fingers makes you break your composure. He must follow your train of thought because he begins laughing too, shaking the two of you with the force. When you quiet down again, there’s a heavy calm settled in your ribcage. You suppose this is what courage can bring. Johnny rubs your back as you start to nod off. The last thought you have is that you’ll have to remember thank Nautilanita.

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

I was about to make a joke about Logan getting a blood test and it's just water but then I realised metal syringe so... has Logan ever had blood drawn?

i admittedly hadn’t thought of a way around getting blood drawn specifically, but i do know that Dr. Sherwood (in his continuing theme of “committing fraud in an attempt to make sure this child has at least some kind of healthcare”) has Logan marked down as immunocompromised and therefore exempt from vaccines

so, presumably, unless there are blood drawing needles made from something other than surgical steel, its a no. and to be fair, Dr. Sherwood would probably know that any blood work he did for Logan would be useless

HOWEVER i HAVE just thought of a hilarious scenario in which Logan goes to college and has to somehow figure out a way to get out of that blood-typing experiment biochem classes sometimes do

[pricklerick]

magnum opus

Quick disclaimer: I don’t usually post warnings on my blog, but I’m going to now - this is a ficlet/summary of a huge Rick and Morty story that I’m completely unqualified to write. DEAD DOVE; DO NOT EAT. Guys, this is dark. Trigger warnings for incest, underage sex, pregnancy loss, postpartum depression, attempted suicide.

I’ll preface by saying that this is a story that’s been bouncing around in my brain for a while now. But I don’t feel that I have the maturity or life experience to tackle the subject matter and do it any justice at all. These are heavy topics that have affected many people, and the last thing I’d ever want to do is exploit them, minimize them, or misrepresent them.

So, if you choose to continue, know that you are responsible for the media that you consume, and know that the things I write (or the perspective of the characters that I write) do not necessarily reflect my personal opinions.  

Okay, that being said, have an angsty fic summary!

Morticia (known as Tish) and her Rick have been fucking for years. Tish knows that to Rick, she’s an easy lay - an accessible warm body at best. But to Tish, Rick is everything.

She’s seventeen, and Rick gets really antsy about an adventure to a universe where space herpes is airborne. He insists that Tish get a series of ridiculously painful alien vaccinations that leave her shaky and nauseated for a week. Tish puts up with it, because Rick gets what Rick wants, and Rick wants a very specific isotope of Nihonium that can only be found on Space Herpes’ Andromeda galaxy. Once Tish is feeling better, Rick drags her off to spend a single afternoon harvesting rocks. The whole thing goes off without a cinch for once, and Tish totally forgets about it.

But it’s not long before Tish starts feeling off again. She’s exhausted, can’t eat or sleep, and one night when Rick grabs her tits and squeezes just like she needs him to, Tish screams at the sensitivity.

Rick stops cold and just looks at her, that same look that he gives to a gadget that’s not behaving how he wants, and in that moment, something grows cold in Tish’s stomach.

She knows.

She takes test after shitty drugstore test, spends close to $100 at the gas station down the street. On her third trip, the cashier looks at her in undisguised pity, and Tish has to stop herself from punching him in the face.

“Rick, I think I’m pregnant.”

She doesn’t think, she fucking knows. Rick’s face stays carefully blank. He keeps tinkering with the android in front of him, the only sign that he even heard a quick blink and the subtle movement of the muscles of his throat as he swallows hard.

“Rick?” she prompts.

“Jeezus, Tish, I’m old, not deaf. Fucking heard you the first time.”

She huffs, lets her left hip rest against the countertop where he’s working, folds her arms across her chest to hide her shaking hands.

Rick sighs, swiping the goggles up so that they catch in his hair. “Not a problem,” he says evenly, carefully looking in any direction but to her.

Tish blinks. She’d expected… more. An explosion, a few curse words, hell, even some pointed fingers.

Rick is reaching for a drawer, pulls out a syringe that’s filled with a vicious purple fluid. “I mean, really Tish, there’s a whole— a whole multiverse of options out there. And you - you still insist on using fu-fucking horse piss!”

He’s coming at her with the needle. Tish’s body reacts before her brain even comprehends the situation, and she backhands Rick hard enough to send him stumbling. The syringe shatters on the floor, and Tish gasps, her hand stinging from the impact.

Rick is looking at her, both hands supporting his weight on the countertop. His chest is heaving. He spits blood, glaring at her, and Tish’s heart sinks to her toes.

"Fine,” he hisses. “You wanna play Mommy? Wanna tell your mother that you’re pregnant at seventeen? Knock yourself out, baby. I’ll fucking let you. At least nobody will think twice about your retard baby - you’re dumb as rocks, Tish, stupider than dirt.  And when this crashes and burns, like I know it will, when you’re in over your head and you hate yourself and that little mutation of genetic material that’s percolating in your gut like a goddamn tape worm, you remember this.” Rick looms over her, leaning so close that Tish can smell bile on his breath. “You remember that Grandpa Rick fucking told you so.”

And in a swirl of vivid green, he is gone.

Weeks go by and Tish is as sick as a dog. Beth is too busy grieving the loss of her dad to notice Tish’s hollow eyes and vacant expression; in fact, Beth seems to blame Tish for Rick’s disappearance.

And she’s right to, Tish thinks.

Tish doesn’t say anything. She loses a lot of weight - her cheeks are hollow and her jeans hang from her hips. All the while, she replays Rick’s words over and over again…

You’re dumb as rocks, Tish.

Tish knows she’s sick in the head. It’s sick to fall in love with your abusive grandfather, and even more sick to sacrifice everything for your abusive grandfather’s incest-baby. Tish can’t explain it. She’s always been good for nothing - not much to look at, useless at school, no real talent to speak of.

And then, one night when she was thirteen, Rick drunkenly grabbed her hand and dragged her through a portal, and Tish found her purpose.

She was good at playing side-kick. Dumb enough to shield Rick from his enemies, just smart enough to do (mostly) what she was told, and unquestionably devoted. Like an animal, she overheard Rick say once. Throw her a treat every now and then and she’ll come running.But Tish had thrived with Rick, despite everything. She followed him, pandered to him, drunk-sat him, memorized all of his quirks and habits. And when she was fifteen and neither of them could deny the draw of their bodies any longer, Tish had given herself to him, had quaked and keened beneath him as he mapped her with his hands and lips and tongue…

Tish was Rick’s, as sure as she was anything, and Rick, Rick was everything. And now, she had a part of him. A little piece of Rick, growing inside her.

Rick and Tish, forever and ever.

Tish is stupid, but she knows this much - if she does nothing else in her life, nothing at all, she’s going to do this. She’s going to leave her mark on the world, her mark and Rick’s.

She’s going to have this baby.

Still, that’s a hard thing for a seventeen year old to articulate, and Beth is less than supportive. Tish says nothing. She just dwindles away until one morning, 84 days after Rick left, she passes out in the middle of remedial algebra and wakes up in an ambulance. The paramedic refuses to hear Tish’s pleas of “low blood sugar; I skipped breakfast,” and Tish finds herself ushered into the ER, complete with ass-baring gown and oversized hospital socks.

“Congratulations,” the idiot in the white coat says, hardly glancing up from his clipboard. “You’re going to be a mom!”

Tish tunes him out as he prattles along about ultrasounds and hyperemesis gravidarum and dangerously low potassium levels. He tells her that she’ll be monitored overnight, and that her parents have been notified.

She must have fallen asleep, because when she wakes, holy fuck, Rick is there, staring at her with glittering eyes. Above her, Tish hears the blip-blip-blip of the heart monitor as it speeds.

Rick’s eyes never leave her face, but his hand snakes under her blanket, searching. He skims past her cunt, pausing as if to linger there, but then settles northward, fingers slaying wide over Tish’s pelvis as he palms the barely-there knot that rises beneath the dip of her hipbones. Tish’s whole body trembles. There’s something feral in Rick’s eyes, something deliciously possessive about the heat of his hand against Tish’s clammy skin.

“You’re an idiot,” Rick tells her solemnly.

I know, she starts to say, but it comes out as a moan.

The secret is out. Beth is casually disappointed in Tish for “repeating the same mistakes,” but admits that she hadn’t expected much better from her younger daughter. Rick explains away his absence with a bombastic story, complete with waving hands and drunken sound effects, and things go back to normal.

Rick refuses to talk about the baby. Tish only brings it up once, to let Rick know that she’s decided on adoption. He grunts and shrugs, and that’s that.

But Tish notices Rick watching her out of the corner of his eye. When they’re on adventures, Rick seems to move a little slower, to make more space for Tish, and once, Tish swears Rick shifted his body between her and and a hostile Gromflomite, almost as if he were protecting her.

And the sex.

The sex.

Rick worships her body in a way he never has before. At first, Tish assumes it’s because her tits are a little fleshier, but that’s not it. Rick can hardly keep his eyes and hands off of her, is always eyefucking her in the kitchen at breakfast, or cupping her ass as he slides past her in the hallway. He catalogues the changes in her body with his tongue, undressing her slowly, even massaging her lower back after a grueling day. When she doubles over at the dinner table with round ligament pain, Rick is in her room that evening, massaging her belly with a special alien oil. When her jeans won’t button, he takes her to an intergalatic shopping mall. He bitches the whole time, but he parades Tish around with his hand on the small of her back, and nobody bats an eye.

Tish loves it and loathes it. She basks in the glow of the moment, then cries into her pillow at night. It’s stupid to romanticize these little moments with Rick. He’s capable of altruism when it suits him, but it’s not like he loves her or anything.

Tish knows that she can’t keep this baby - she can’t raise a child alone, and, selfish as she is, she won’t give up her life with Rick.

She can’t.

But this baby, Rick’s baby… it deserves more than a shitty life on a deadbeat, backwater planet.

And Tish can give it that.

So with Rick’s reluctant help, Tish selects an off-planet adoption agency that is willing to place humans. She interviews potential families in her spare time. “I have an appointment,” she’ll announce, and Rick will sigh, blast a portal into the wall, and accompany her to the office. He hangs around, hovering at her shoulder until the receptionist calls her in, and then he disappears without a word. When the meeting ends, Tish finds a portal waiting for her in the corner of the reception area, and Rick tinkering in the garage.

They don’t talk about it.

There are more things that I’d like to work in here, but honestly, guys, I’m just not gonna. This is a fic that deserves some real life experience and at least 100k words, and I can offer neither. I want to hit on Tish’s lack of self worth - at this point, she’s living for this baby, because she views it as an extension of Rick. To Tish, this kid is the only thing of worth that she has to offer the world, and it’s the fact that it’s Rick’s, not hers, that she thinks is important.

On Rick - he loves Tish, in his own twisted way. He’s not at all interested in the baby, but because Tish is, he’ll play along. The idea of anything happening to Tish is absolutely unacceptable to him, and he was totally monitoring her (and the baby) while he was away. He couldn’t help himself. That’s why he came back when Tish was hospitalized. He wanted to make sure that Tish wasn’t going to kill herself trying to have this kid. And he missed her.

I don’t want to shy away from the darker aspects of the story. Namely, the incest and abusive/unhealthy relationship that Rick and Tish have. I imagine Tish worrying about the potential for genetic abnormalities, and wondering about the ethics of addressing this with potential parents. Maybe she brings it up to Rick one day, and he immediately whips up a little gadget and scans their baby (I really like the idea of Rick performing an amniocentesis, but I don’t know if that’s a little too much). But either way, I imagine Rick saying, “She’s fine,” and Tish just bursting into tears, because their baby is going to be just perfect, and also, it’s a girl.

And Rick just kind of fingering Tish’s hair and tolerating her crying it out.

Pregnancy kink. Rick is a kinky bastard, and I think a huge part of him is going to be hella turned on by the changes in Tish’s body. She’s literally growing a part of him. His baby’s baby is having his baby. It’s fucked up and it’s science, and Rick is gonna be so here for it. I’m not a smut writer, but I would love somebody who is to just take this and run with it.

It’s going to start with sex, but eventually, the further along Tish gets, the more possessive Rick is going to be of Tish. Yeah, it’s kind of hot that his granddaughter is carrying his child under their family’s nose, but there’s probably a deeper part of Rick that is just screaming for acknowledgement and absolution. THIS IS MINE. SHE IS MINE. I want to see jealous, anxious, overbearing Rick. And as this thing forces them to confront some ugly truths, I want to see that possessive, kinky, fucked up side of Rick soften into something that’s more protective and positive. I want to see him openly praise Tish’s body, and then eventually, praise Tish. I want him to slow down when she needs him to slow down and create space for her when she needs space. I want attentive, careful, gentle Rick.

But guys, Tish is going to lose this baby.

She’s like eight months along and begging Rick for a real adventure. She feels good, and she’s tired of sitting on her ass. And some stupid little thing goes wrong. Maybe she misreads a situation, or mishandles a weapon, or uses the wrong code word. And she falls, or maybe she takes a bullet and then she falls.

But she loses the baby.

Tish is not okay. This is postpartum depression meets miscarriage guilt. She blames herself for losing Rick’s baby. For eight months, this is all she’s lived for. She knew that this was her one shot, her one opportunity to leave a mark on the world.

And it was Rick’s baby. The thought of destroying anything of Rick’s is just unbearable to Tish, and it’s her fucking fault. She is useless on an adventure, and more than that, her stupid body is useless, sacrificing her baby to keep her alive.

Rick is fine once he realizes that Tish is out of danger, so Tish tries to be fine, too. She takes a week or two of bed rest, but she can tell that Rick is uncomfortable acknowledging her loss, so Tish tries to let it go. She goes on adventures, forces a smile, makes herself get out of bed and come to meals.

Meanwhile, Rick is kind of coming to his own conclusions. I imagine him holding the body of his daughter and thinking how perfect she is, how tiny, and how she looks exactly like Tish. And that thought, the thought of this tiny little Tish that could have been running around on some planet… well, that stings a lot more than Rick thought it would.

I mean, he’s okay. He doesn’t need another daughter, and he sure as hell doesn’t need a great granddaughter. He looks over at Tish, resting pale-faced in an alien hospital bed, and he hears the blip-blip of the heart monitor, and he knows that he’s complete.

But still, he can’t help but wonder, and something in his chest throbs as he does.

But Tish bounces back as well as he could have expected. Sure, Rick sees the shadow in her eyes, but when she grips his hand and says, “Where are we going today, Rick?” he answers her, because that’s so much easier.

Tish is fucking drowning. I’m not sure what the tipping point will be, maybe just a tiny misunderstanding with Rick, or a bad grade, or a joke about teen pregnancy at school. But she’s done. She’s fucking done.

She tries to slit her throat in the bathtub.

Once again, she awakens in an alien hospital, and once again, Rick is staring at her with glittering eyes.

And he’s pissed.

“That’s the second time I’ve found you in a pool of your own blood,” he says. He’s gripping her hands too tight, baring his teeth and hissing. In the dim hospital light, he looks absolutely feral, and Tish is terrified.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers hoarsely.

Rick’s face crumples, and something inside of her shatters at his disappointment. “I’m sorry!” Tish wails over and over, tears running hot down her cheeks.

She’s sorry for everything.

Rick crawls into bed with her, monitors be damned. Tish is crying so hard that she can barely breathe, and suddenly, Rick is there, curling around her, tucking his face into her neck and burying his fingers into her hair.

“Shh, shh,” he shushes her. He holds her tight, murmuring senselessly in her ear as she babbles to him. It all comes out, all of Tish’s fears and failures, like the bursting of a dam. Tish couldn’t stop it if she tried. Rick never says a word, but his grip around her tightens, his fingers working little patterns into her skin as she speaks.

“Fuck,” he breaths as Tish runs out of steam.

“I’m sorry!”

Rick sits up. “Don’t!” he hisses, then looks away, as if ashamed. Tish tenses, but before she can respond, Rick reaches for her hand and squeezes tight.

“If I have to hear you say you’re sorry one more goddamn time…”

Tish bites back an apology.

Rick swallows hard, clears his throat. His fingers twitch in the way that Tish knows means he misses his flask. She notices for the first time that Rick isn’t wearing his lab coat. He’s still sitting up in the bed, gazing at the floor as if he can’t bear to meet her gaze.

“Do you know… Tish, do you have any idea - fuck. Don’t - don’t ever, Tish. Please, don’t ever make me do this again. I - I can’t…”

He breaks off, shoving a fist into his teeth and grimacing, and the image is so incongruous with the Rick Sanchez that she knows that Tish can’t help but reach for him. He pivots at her touch, and there are actual tears in his eyes.

“Tish, it’s you, baby. Just you. You’re… you’re the only - the only good thing. All the rest of it, the adventure, the science… It fucking doesn’t matter, okay? Nothing matters.”

Tish’s breath catches.

“No, you’re still not…” Rick makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “You’re the best thing I’ve ever done, the only thing I’ve ever... ever… Fuck!” He throws his hands in the air. “You’re... you’re my magnum opus, okay? You complete me.”

“Oh,” says Tish stupidly.

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Rick mocks. He’s flushed, biting his lip and running his fingers through his wild hair. “I can’t believe… just, just, Tish,” he looks at her now, dead serious, “Don’t make me say it again, okay?”

Don’t make me lose you again. Please.

“Okay, Rick,” she agrees, crawling into his lap and tucking her head under his chin.

And like, things aren’t magically okay. It’s never a healthy relationship. Tish never gets over losing her baby, and Rick never mentions it again. But there’s something about Rick calling Tish his “opus magnum” that really satisfies me in a way that no fic I’ve read has yet. And I like to think that they are a tiny bit more open now, or at least, they know each other better. Tish might never have any self-worth, but she knows that Rick values her, and that’s the best feeling. And Rick is a little softer with Tish, and he never quite loses that protective streak that he picked up while she was pregnant.

[allstarsstorymode867]

All-Stars -Story Mode- CHAPTER 5 [RE-EDITED]

I had decided to re-edited this chapter since I had gotten better at my writing. I had add new words and editted out mistakes. Please enjoy the Chapter. ^^

-Chapter 5-

-Later on after 12 hours passed…-

Demoman was sleeping in his bed, passed out drunk for close to 12 hours, nearly to 13 if longer, ‘’what a nap!’’ I wrote here.

Clank! Bang! Clink!

Demoman, his real name being Tavish Finnegan DeGroot, heard a hammer hitting from outside of his room and it caused Demoman’s eyes-er, eye to flutter open, his brown eye now opened as he come to terms with the realization that it’s 4:00 in the morning, he listened for a moment for the sound and sure enough it did, so he just layed back down on the bed.

Bang! Bang! Clink! Clank!

he tried to go back to sleep but the sound of hammer hitting the nail had persisted through from outside his room, causing the black scottish man to groan “That bloody toymaker….!” in annoyance and then getting out of his warm bed as his head swirls from a hangover he had last night. He grabbed his eye-patch and then tied on his left eye that had been lost as he thought ‘’Why the bloody hell would he be makin’ something in 4:00 o’clock in the morning?’’

He jumped when a thunderbolt crackled from the sky, he groaned ‘’Bloody hell…Not right now storm…’’ and then in nothing but a tank-top and boxers, he stumbled out of his dorm room and then into the hallway to get to the main room that has the nearest exit.

Bang! Clack! Clank! Bang!

He stumbled to the door as he places both hands on it to steady his balance while he muttered “Engie, keep that racket down...!”, then he goes to the doorknob then turns it, opening the door and letting himself through it and into the lobby with his throbbing legs from a hurting hangover, he was expecting Engineer was working on his one of his buildings as usual but what he didn’t expect was to find his team with four men he had never seen before all in the lobby together, boarding up the windows as his eye went wide open upon seeing this.

“Yes, they are indeed taking a blood sample from one of them just in case a vaccine will be made if it is…. No Miss Pauling, we do not know if it’s a wide pandemic or not, it’s a chance to see this though… Yes, yes…” Spy speaking into a microphone attached to an old radio that was once used in World War II too.

Two doctors and Engineer are at the table with a corpse wearing a nazi uniform and it appeared to be it had been into some kind of accident. Medic said ‘’Und it brought zhem back to life?’’ to Richtofen who nodded as he gave Medic a scalpel and then unscrews a cap from a syringe before carefully giving it to his fellow German doctor..

‘’Of course, 115 may be solution for power and making veapons warfare but it can be like a virus if you’re exposed to it or having it injected into you with too much doses.’’

‘’If a rock of it is in you?’’ Engineer questioned as he cutted it’s liver out with a scalpel, then he handed the severed liver with brownish red blood covering it to Medic who simply took it like it was a normal medical operation.

‘’If it’s been shoved in you, there’s a slight chance of you turning one of zhem or become a superbeing if not two rocks at once, Nazis had once tried zhis, und it’s the result of two rocks in one body.’’ Richtofen answered as he handed it to Medic.

‘’But uh, it’s dead right? I mean ‘’Dead dead’’ dead right?’’ Scout asked as he rubbed his arm up and down uncomfortable when he saw the corpse of a zombie in the lobby with them. “We wouldn’t have to worry about them right?

“Wrong, Scout.” Takeo answered as he kept his attention on his sword stained in the blood of the fallen before continued with ‘’But unless you cut of its head or destroy it Scout.’’ as he cleans his katana sword with a cloth while he sits down.

“Zhe samurai has a point, Herr Scout.” Medic mumbled as he puts on a glass plate that is used for samples from germs and something medical, he then gets an empty syringe and then plunged the needle into the liver and slowly and carefully pulled the plunge back, drawing and filling the syringe with the blood of the undead as he said “Zhese creatures vere like us, zhey can be killed vhen ve go for zhe head.”

‘’Yes… Of course we will… What?! They are after you for…? Fantastic….’’ Spy spoke as he’s taking a cigarette between his fingers. Demoman was completely speechless upon seeing this, he was in shock and silent in horror of the scene before him, he had no idea what to do as he became fully sober enough during this till Scout noticed him, smiled and said, ‘’Hey! Look who woke up!’’

Everyone looked at Demoman in unison, Takeo was ready to fight but Nikolai stopped him as he held his hand out to halt as he whispered “Wait Takeo.”

‘’Good morning Demoman!’’ Soldier greeted with a smile as Scout said ‘’It’s still night Solly.’’

Demoman finally snapped out of his shock as he finally found the words for him to say it out, he yelled ‘’BLOODY HELL!! What is that thing?!!’’ as he points at the corpse, demanding answers from anyone in the room.

Suddenly, Spy then groans in frustration ‘’UGH! Alright fine!” before turning off the radio, ending the conversion with her and then putting it away in his hidden coat pocket then turning to everyone and saying “She says we all have to get to her quickly.’’ as Heavy looked over at Spy with concern, ‘’Mrs. Pauling had said that? Where was she? Is she alright?’’ he asked the Frenchman.

‘’Yes, she is but she is now hiding from some type of otherworldly army she called ‘’The Helghast” with a ruthless colonel named ‘’Colonel Mael Radec’’ or someone other who now out looking for her so,’’ Spy turns to face everyone again ‘’This may be or not be worse than those dead things outside but now we are her only hope of rescue.’’

‘’Could someone tell me what is going on?!’’ Demo demanded with anger toning his voice, then hard knocking came from the door winch nearly jumped and were going for their guns but they heard Sniper’s voice calling out like an alarm.

‘’It’s me! Let me in!’’

Heavy undid the board that was keeping the door closed to prevent the dead from getting in, opening the door for Sniper to get in and when they looked at him, with ripped vines and flower petals all over him a little bit, he looked like he had gone to a garden that has been created by none other than the Devil himself. ‘’I’m sorry mates, I couldn’t clear a path to the bloody train…’’

‘’What? What happened?’’ Takeo questioned with concerned and worry had printed on his face, Sniper grabbed one vine that is on his right shoulder and threw it on the ground as he said ‘’I know this is crazy for me to say but a big deadly flower had blocked the way, I fought back but it just kicked my a@# and handed it to me with no trouble at all!’’

Now Dempsey isn’t the only one that everyone thought had finally gone crazy, he said, ‘’Are you serious?’’

‘’Aye, unlike the man with a dice for a he-’’

‘’DON’T start it up Sniper.’’

‘’Speaking of deadly flowers, are you alright Sniper?’’ Nikolai said as Pyro got up and handed Sniper their blanket with ducks on it they had covered them, Sniper grasped lightly on the cloth as he looked down ‘’”Define” Alright Nik… Thanks Pyro.’’

“You’re welcome!” Pyro mumthed.

‘’Can we all make this quick please? I want to be paid very quick and well for this job.’’ Spy stated as Scout walked by with a bat on his shoulder as he muttered ‘’If we survive…’’

‘’UGH!! First ve’ve been sent to medieval times in zhe Middle Ages period und now this!’’ Medic declared angrily as he threw both the scalpel and the blood-filled syringe but luckily Engineer caught it by it’s plunger thankfully not the tipped needle as he yelled ‘’Doc!’’

Engineer held it as the Medic calmed down then put the cap on the needle so they could use it later for research then looked at the Medic.

‘’It’s not really everyone’s fault for this, it’s not like the last time after what the other Doctor told us.’’ the Taxen assured him, Demoman’s went wide as he closed the door upon hearing what was happening while he was asleep.

‘’No way! Did we travel back in time again?!’’ Demoman exclaimed towards the two geniuses, ‘’Nein, zhis may like it but on the other zhis time Demoman.’’ Medic explained as he retrieved the scalpel but Engineer steadied him to hestaition as he said ‘’That’s quite enough for right now Doc.’’

‘’And you must be Demoman?’’ Takeo asked as he looked at the black scottish man with an eyepatch, ‘’Aye, who is asking ye? Are ye with--’’

‘’It’s alright Demo, they’re with us for right now man.’’ Scout said as he held his hands up to gesture to him to calm down. ‘’True, they became our allies after they helped us killed these undead rotten ugly creatures known as--’’ Spy said till he was cut off by Demoman saying ‘’They were zombies you killed?’’

‘’You knew what Spy was saying?’’ Dempsey asked.

‘’Me ma once told me a lot about these things and what they will do, she told me that the only way to destroy them is-’’

‘’Is to go for the bloody head, thanks, we learned that already.’’ Sniper interrupted as he looked at the Scottish with anger because he had slept through everything like a rock. ‘’Listen, vhatever happening here is something else threatening the multiverse zhan another one previously. Vinch ve are trying to figure it out right now.’’ Richtofen told them, Demoman turned to everyone with shock.

‘’Multiverse? Where are we then?! What happened here while I was asleep!?’’ Demoman demanded, Medic turned and walked over to the Scottish with an angry expression and said ‘’You didn’t zhink zhat we vould be zhe same predicament as you?! Ve vere fighting vave after vave of zombies zhat tried to kill us for zhe past 12 hours! Und vhat had surprised me zhe most is zhat your own bombs didn’t voke you up!’’

‘’Hey Doc, I was drunk! How can it be happening?! With random people from different world this time?!’’

‘’Not only different worlds but different timelines of each universe,’’ Edward once again began ‘’I had no idea vho or vhat was bringing us here but I am sure zhat ve can stop it.’’

‘’How can we do dat when we’re the ones that need to be savin’?’’

‘’I don’t know!’’

‘’If we got here first and already met people from different worlds across time and space, there’s no doubt that there is more to come than zombies.’’

‘’Tank’s right ‘bout that.’’ Engineer added as he cleans his hand with a cloth as it was stained in blood.

‘’We need to destroy the enemy before it gets worse in this war! For the good of mankind and the universe!’’

‘’Soldier, we need help if we were going to do so.’’

‘’And we are going to need a lot of help we can get,’’ Nikolai corrected Engineer as he walked up to one of the boarded up windows, ‘’Things are going down hill from where we stood.’’ as he was looking through the wood boards he can clearly see 5 helicopters flying by across the plains just outside of the fortress as zombies took notice of them.

Everyone then goes to the windows to watch the dead looking at the aircrafts going by towards the far south.

They then began to follow the copters away towards the south as others stood back and watched them leave the area with relative peace.

‘’Well, at least they are leaving us alone for frickin’ once.’’ Scout sighed in relief as Richtofen perked up ‘’For now until dawn. Best not let our hopes up high just yet.’’

Dempsey turned to everyone as he loaded his pistol once more.

‘’It is almost dawn, better be ready for what comes next.’’ Dempsey said.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s now 7:00 AM after three hours of sleep, as the sun slowly rises from the horizon overlooking the fortress, zombies had left the area overnight after the helicopters as they headed for the south.

*New day is here.

Back in the lobby, the group are preparing themselves for a mission to rescue their employer in distress. They talk amongst each other while they’re preparing, wondering what they will do next after she was rescued from this otherworldly army.

‘’Hey! Give dat back!’’

‘’Nah!’’

Sniper was looking at the comic that he had taken from Scout’s hands awhile he chuckled, Takeo is sharpening his sword as well cleaning off the blood off it, Nikolai is helping Engineer and Heavy packed up canned food and bottled water they will need for the trip, Engineer had invented a pocket-like device for each member in his team; he called Back-Pit, it would contain anything for survival: Tents, Weapons, clothing, food, water, anything you need when you’re going camping!

Primis Crew had never seen and used Back-Pit that engineers had invented since they were from the early 1900’s but he showed them instructions on how to use it since he had written down notes to go with each device after he had stayed up all night working on it.

‘’Is everyone ready for this mission yet?’’ Spy said as he took a drag of cigarette while everyone turned to face him and Medic all dressed up and ready.

They are in their usual clothing when they wear it in war games, ‘’Uh, guys? Do you think that ya be worried about getting them dirty?’’

‘’Nein herr Scout,’’ Medic answered, ‘’Besides, we can’t be mercenaries if we can’t look our best.’’ Spy added to winch Scout shrugged as he said ‘’Okay then, but don’t come crying to me when you’re all covered in mud and blood-’’

‘’We are always covered in mud and blood everyday Scout.’’ They both said as Dempsey chuckled humorlessly.

*Burned.

Scout glared at them two supporting mercs while Soldier and Demoman are looking at the weapons on the wall, then a sword sheathed on the Scottish’s back suddenly spoke up ‘’Do we really have to chop off zombies’ head?’’

‘’So, you’re bringing the Eyelander.’’ Soldier said as he looked at his friend, ‘’Aye, if I had ever ran out of ammunition, I would use him since I had own him.’’

‘’But do we really have to kill zombies? I want to chop off the Helghast heads instead.’’ Eyelander complained as Demo’s eye turned yellow, to winch he replied ‘’Shut up ye overgrown toothpick.’’

‘’Are you sure? Your eye is turning yellow. I don’t think it’s such a good idea.’’

‘’I can control him Jane, trust me.’’ Demoman assured him, then he looked over to the photo that the Soldier had in his hand. ‘’And ye’re taking her photo with you on this trip.’’

‘’Yeah, I am.’’

He calmly holds the photo of Zhanna, Heavy’s sister to winch he loves when he first meets her as he looks at the photo. Spy then begins to speak up ‘’Gentlemen, this is now the one thing we may have never experienced before in our lives. Never once we would’ve thought of this might happen again but differently this time with enemies we have never known. As long we will fin--’’

‘’Don’t give off the speech Spy, we don’t even know what was out there. Out there is all f*&%ed up! We’re all gonna die, over and over, this is much worse that dat!’’

‘’Don’t doubt everyone about this Private! We are going to survive this war!’’

‘’OoOoh yeah, like that would be comforting to know Soldier when these things could come back!’’

‘’If you know what was good for ya, you would shut it before you will say something you might regret maggot!’’

‘’ENOUGH!!’’

Heavy’s yell silenced everyone in the room around him, Scout had muttered something then walked away.

‘’Yelling at each other isn’t going to help anyone in this problem, we have to be ready for war.’’ Heavy said as he tossed a backpack onto his back then turned back to face everyone ‘’And crush little dead men along the way.’’

‘’Alright then.’’

Engineer then looked over to Pyro who was holding and looking at the Balloonicorn in their hands, they looked worried as they kept looking at it. Engineer walked over to Pyro, placed his hand on their shoulder, smiled softly and said ‘’Pyro, don’t worry about him, he’ll wait for us till all of this is over and done with. Just make sure you bring ammo and warm clothes with you okay?’’

As Takeo and Nikolai looked over to the two, the sergeant wondered if Pyro was like this before. More likely long before these… events happened, ‘’Maybe they had a mind of a child.’’ he thought.

‘’Still though,’’ Spy began once more ‘’as soon after we found her and mission accomplished, 9 of us and four of them will go on our separate ways before she would notice them.’’

Dempsey looked at the French with a mix of anger and confusion, ‘’Why would she notice us with-’’

‘’Mistakes you four for mercenaries and gets all of you hired? It’s what I am concerned of at the least of it.’’

‘’But ve are not mercenaries, are from a different plane of existence. Vhy is zhere a reason for her to-’’

‘’It’ll be based on judging your talents you’ve got, since you are from a different universe and all.’’

‘’I see.’’ Takeo said as he looked the other way as his allies did the same.

Sniper looked down as Engineer took noticed that other of his teammates is worried, so he asked ‘’Is there something wrong?’’

‘’The only way out of this area is by train, but we can’t get to it because of a bloody giant flower.’’

‘’Even if you’re really crazy for being alone too long or not, you are still a part of the team through the Gravel War and through when robots tried to destroy Mann Co. There’s nothing we can’t fight back Sniper.’’

Sniper looked at the Texen as his hands rested on his arms after he crossed them, he then smiled softly as he said ‘’I am willing to bet that we can still win Engie.’’

After preparing for the journey ahead, they picked up their weapons and headed out through the doors, leaving the lobby behind to find Mrs. Pauling and rescue her with a song in their hearts but just in case the zombies are still around, they stayed cautious and keep their eyes open for anything with legs and is dead.

They had looked around as they walked past the corpses they killed a day before and passed the Panser that tried to kill them as Demoman looked at it with curiosity. ‘’Could any one of ye explain this to me?’’ Demoman asked the Spy who was walking beside him.

‘’The day before?’’

‘’The day before I woke up lad, please’’

‘’Well, while you were asleep, we were transported to this part of the world but in a different dimension somehow. Then Medic met Richtofen who is the doctor like him but from a different timeline like us, then more things happened when we met Dempsey, Takeo and Nikolai long before I met them in the Respawn Room before Soldier destroys it with the RPG. when 12 of us were finished killing off the dead, the armored zombie, to switch the Samurai called it the ‘’Panzer Soldat’’ from what I can recall, came out of the sky then tried to kill us but Heavy, Medic, Scout and Engie had killed it first before it could. As much as you can tell, I know that you couldn’t believe it on what we saw, if it’s not going well with you, then your mind is more f*&$ed up than it was.’’ Spy told the black Scottish man.

‘’Ah… I see that now...’’

‘’But still, you were their demotion expert, why were you drunk at a time like this?’’

‘’I didn’t realize it was bad timing till now, I had been an alcoholic, even when my liver left me then came back. Yet I’ve still alive for you to have a sobered Demoman until the mission is over!’’

Nikolai looked at Demoman who had his eye closed with a confident smile with a stare before saying ‘’...And what good will come from that?’’

‘’Roasted’’ The Eyelander spoke as Demoman went wide eyed upon hearing this response from Nikolai, he turned away as he said ‘’W-well, when ye’re in the same slate as me after you sleep through the whole bloody thing, ya’ll be something like…’’ he then looked over to a rock before saying ‘’A rock!’’

‘’Why a rock, Demoman?’’ Nikolai asked.

‘’It’s uh… represents strength a-and if it had been hit by a hammer, over and over until it breaks into a few pieces to winch… You can repair with what’s left of it into something new and making it more stronger with others for you to help.’’

Nikolai gave him a look of confusion as he said ‘’Are you sure that you are not drunk before this?’’

‘’Demoman means to say is to keeping your spirit strong despite being broken already and staying with close to your friends Nikorai.’’ Takeo corrected.

‘’Exactly lad!’’

‘’Even after the Em-’’

‘’I KNOW Nikorai and I rather not speak of it in the moment.’’ the samurai sneered as he walked faster away from the Russian and Scottish. ‘’Was there something wrong with him in the past?’’

‘’Of course, but he would keep an eye on those who would do things that will betray his trust and to where the suspicions and betrayal come from; he rather not speak about it in the moment Demoman.’’ he said as he too walked fast away from Demoman to catch up to Takeo, leaving him alone with the sword on his back.

‘’In his words; In life you can easily trust someone, but once the trust is broken its very difficult to trust anyone again.’’ Eyelander quoted as Demoman glared him with envy and anger ‘’Oh, now ye’re the one being wise?’’

‘’Someone needs to be taught about such things Demo, now about the heads-’’

‘’You will have the chance to do so in a moment after we deal with these zombies first Eyelander.’’ Demoman said as he kept walking to catch up with the others as they followed Sniper to where the train station is.

They expected to find a road clear to the railway but it was blocked off… with vines with thorns, everyone looked at the vines with confusion and curiosity. ‘’They…. Weren’t here yesterday when we were here.’’

‘’Why were there vines here man?’’

‘’I don’t know’’

‘’Something’s not right about it…’’

They whispered amongst each other as they looked around the area then at the vine, Takeo suddenly getting the feeling about these vines, they reminded him of the vines back on the island after his other self was betrayed by… No, no no. he can’t think about it right now, something else is controlling them and it’s not a Thrasher this time.

‘’Sniper?’’

‘’Yeah mate?’’

‘’Was this the ‘flower’ doing this?’’

‘’Yeah.’’

‘’If it’s really doing this, we should follow the vine to the source of this.’’ Takeo stated, Sniper nodded to this agreement as others began to think of the same thing to investigate. So they followed the vines to the railway station where they spotted something that wasn’t there before: an orange petal peeking over from the roof.

This strengthens their curiosity upon seeing the petal, why is there an orange petal peeking out from the roof? Takeo looked at the petal in confusion, he had never seen a flower that big before, not big enough to have it’s petals peeking over from the roof of a train station.

Takeo then gets a feeling that this is no normal flower and it may be dangerous as he said ‘’I now believe this is the flower that Sniper spoke of, we need to remain cautious for this.’’

‘’I was going to say the same thing about it Takeo.’’ Spy said as he got a revolver out from the back pocket of his coat while they walked towards the entrance to the station and saw there was a giant flower but…

Meeting Cagney Carnation

Not like what Sniper had said, it looked like a harmless friendly giant flower as he gently held his leaf-hands to his face like he was very shy when he saw a group of humans come to him in full view with dumbfounded looks on their faces.

‘’Heh… Cute.’’ Scout commented as he placed the bat over his shoulder.

‘’A ’Deadly Flower’ huh? Unbelievable… Un. Believable…’’ Spy groaned in disbelief.

Sniper too was in disbelief upon this discovery, this isn’t what he remembered when he first encountered him last night and as for Takeo, looked at the giant flower with shock but for a reason he held on as he looked at it, the feeling of danger gotten stronger and didn’t fade away without fail.

‘’My my…’’ Flower began to speak that startled everyone ‘’Hello there little humans!’’ with a kind cherry voice as Pyro waved hello to the flower as they mumbled ‘’hello! Who are you cute flower?’’ in an excited child voice.

‘’Oh how nice of you! My name is Cagney, Cagney Carnation.’’ the flower introduced himself, then he asked ‘’Golly, what brings you all here to this train station?’’

‘’We need to ride the train out of here Mr. Carnation. We are doing something very important so, if you could kindly move the vines away so we can be on our way.’’ Spy answered, ‘’Spy…!’’ Takeo mustered a worried tone under his breath as Sniper looked .

‘’Oh really? You want to go through to get to the train?’’ Cagney asked.

‘’Yeah, that’s why we came here for man.’’ Scout said with a confident smile, ‘’If you want to go through me…’’ the Flower’s tone suddenly turned sinister that caught everyone off guard by this sudden change in this endeavor.

‘’Then you’ll just have to fight me…’’ He continued as the group noticed Cagney’s friendly form begins to change; thorns grew on his stem, leafs turned hands as he covered his face from everyone as they watched the flower turned.

‘’Then rip it off from my cold dead VINES!!!’’

Cagney’s 1st phase

Everyone looked at the flower with terrified expressions, as Sniper said ‘’See what I mean?’’

‘’Yes, yes we now do see it, you are a man of your word.’’ Spy said while Heavy nodded, Dempsey then loads the StG-44 as he said ‘’Less talking, more fighting!’’

‘’If you can fight!’’ Cagney said as he sent the vines flying through the air, Everyone tried to run but ended up being wrapped up in vines one by one as they tried to dash to different directions. Well, all but Takeo and Scout.

*The vines had captured your new found friends and allies, *All but you two. *It is now harvest time.

‘’Takeo! Do what the text said to do!’’ Nikolai shouted as he struggled to break free from the vines with the others. Takeo and Scout turned to face the Carnation who is doing a dance, ‘’Fools who attempt to fight this will leave with allergic rhinitis!’’ the flower taunted at them with the overconfident smile.

‘’Unless you will be cut down like a tree!’’ Takeo spat back as Scout nodded while he readies the bat to attack. Cagney’s head then turns into something that resembles a gatling gun with the hand on the crank and then turns it to fire seeds at the air and then fall onto the duo.

‘’Incoming Tak!’’ Scout shouted as he ran to the left, Takeo ran towards the right as seeds came crashing down from the sky as Cagney’s head changed back. ‘’Good job but can you dodge THIS!?’’ he said before luging his face towards the two with his hands wigging.

‘’OH GOD THAT IS JUST CREEPY AS @#$%!!’’ Scout screamed as he and Takeo ducked and covered their heads from Cagney’s attack, Takeo then noticed the Ray Gun that Richtofen dropped on the ground after the vines got him, he crawled for it and then grabbed it then aimed at the flower and opened fire.

Cagney hissed in pain as he contacted his face back to his head to rub it and feel the marks where the Ray Gun had left, to winch he turned angry as he said ‘’Oh not like the other time I had been beaten! Not like the last time!’’ Then he put both his hands together then made three acorns appear as he spread his hands apart as they spun.

Then they quickly stopped spinning then fly towards the two, Scout dodges the acorns but was hit by one of them as he screamed in pain ‘’Medic!’’

‘’I am occupied in the moment Scout!’’ Medic shouted out towards his injured teammate as he struggled.

Cagney then does his magic hands trick again, Takeo then gets his sword out, turns it to the blunt side and then hits all three at the right timing to send flying fast back to Cagney with full hitting force.

One hit the side of his head, one hit him on the left arm then last one hit him on the stem and he became furious than ever as he pulled on his own petals in frustration. ‘’Grrr… NOW you asked for it!’’

‘’Asked for what??’’ Everyone asked that question, to winch Cagney answered ‘’THIS!’’

Then the Flower buries his arms into the ground as Takeo and Scout looked down at it in shock as they felt rumbling while the small pebbles are shaking and hopping, then sudden vines sprouted out of the ground, taking three chunks of the ground with the samurai and RED Member with them as Cagney’s appearance changed once again to more monstrous look; his teeth had become sharpen, his petals became sharpen and straighten and more thorns and vines covered his stem, making it tougher than leather armor.

(From Cuphead Wiki respectively)

‘’Extreme pollination and total domination!’’

Cagney then laughed hard at them as his tongue turned hand-like and pointed at them in a funny manner. ‘’I can’t decide what is worse: The bread monster or him!’’ Engineer shouted as he watched helplessly with everyone who gave up struggling to get free from the vines that wrapped them up.

‘’If this is the worse thing up to this point, then yeah!’’ Scout shouted as he rummaged through his bag for his scattergun as Takeo stood for his defense. Cagney then launched his attack on the two, vines rose up from below and they had to jump over to the next platform before the vines would fully wrapped all over the previous one.

‘’Hurry Scout!’’

‘’I AM hurrying!!’’

Scout then began to rummage through his bag faster for his scattergun as if his life depended on it as Takeo was cutting through the vines with the sword til Scout finally found it and got it ready for him to open fire at the flower as Takeo does the same.

Cagney screamed in pain then growled as he launched vines at them once again from below, Takeo jumped to the middle platform but Scout wasn’t fast enough to escape the vines in time as he was caught in them, making Takeo turn around in surprise.

‘’Scout!’’

‘’Go on man! Don’t worry ‘bout me! I’ll be alright!’’ Scout said as he struggled to break free from the vines. ‘’Oh I won’t be worrying about him if I were him,’’ Carnation stated ‘’You will never know when life was being squeezed outta ya!’’ then begins to squeeze everyone, causing everyone gasping for air for a few moments until he’s done as Takeo yelled ‘’No!!’’

‘’And what are ya going to do about it?’’ Cagney smiled a smirk.

‘’I will defeat you, you dishonorable carnation!’’ The samurai spat at the flower who let out a laugh with a confident grin. ‘’And how are ya going to do that?’’

Then the officer took out his sword and then swung it at the vine, cutting it as it was going towards him, Cagney winced in pain at the sudden stinging feeling but was soon being under fire by Takeo with the Ray Gun.

Cagney then roared and fought back with pink and purple bullets at Takeo, he reacted and struck the pink bullets first to his surprise they disappeared as soon as he hit them but he immediately knew that the purple ones didn’t do the same as their pink counterparts.

Vines under the platform he was on were about to attack but he somehow knew there was a vine then jumped to the next platform, much closer to the deadly flower with a glare as Cagney grinned wider.

Before he could attack, Takeo opened fire on the flower with the raygun, he screamed in pain as the samurai kept firing at him.

‘’Hey! Stop! STTTOOOOOOPPPP IIIITTT!!!!’’

Takeo fired one last shot at Cagney, finally defeated him in his own game as he was screaming to the sky while his eyes became black and hollow as Takeo watched.

Knockout!

You won! Reward: 50 Gold and a Fabled Ribbon

Cagney eventually stopped screaming as the vines dropped his comrades to the ground, some of them fell flat on their faces while most of them landed gracefully on their feet and looked over to Takeo.

‘’Takeo! You have saved us all!’’ Nikolai started,

‘’You have killed the enemy’s super weapon!’’ Soldier proclaimed.

‘’It may be but I can tell that this isn’t what 115 would do to plants like how it did some of them on an island.’’ Takeo said as he looked at Cagney, then a bird came by and landed on one of the vines before pecking on it.

‘’Still Takeo, you had saved us from zhis flower und killed it.’’ Richtofen said as he walked over to the plant, examining it in detail as he noticed it is cartoon-like, ‘’Mate, this is…’’ Sniper said as he is somewhat satisfied with Takeo defeating Cagney but disturbed to seeing him like this.

‘’This is… Is the creepy sight…’’

Heavy then perked up ‘’Little Japanese had killed flower but it is too easy.’’ as he pointed at the fallen flower as Richtofen walked over to the fallen flower.

‘’Herr Heavy is quite right about it, it seemed that you can’t beat zhe dandelion zhat easily vith just one person.’’

Richtofen then knocked on the stem, only an echoed hollow thunk responded as he knocked on it again while he said ‘’Unless you vere counting on something zhat is killable but zhis isn’t it, it’s hollow! A husk even.’’

‘’Hollow?’’ Takeo asked.

‘’The flower’s unkillable?? Aw man! If this day can’t even worse than this.’’ Scout said as he cautiously looked around nervously for any signs of the flower that tried to kill them with no mercy.

‘’Calm down herr Scout, if... Cagney is it? If Cagney really is unkillable and leaves his old body as a husk zhen there’s a chance he will-’’ Medic said as he noticed something on the ground that had sprouted and began wiggling, something green and some type of a leaf as if it’s dying to be a plant,

Medic smiled upon this discovery and said ‘’Ah! Exactly as I thought he vould do! Don’t vorry Mr. Carnation, I am zhe doctor. Let me help you out of zhe dirt.’’ then grabs the leaf between his index finger and thumb and begins to gently pull the sapping out of the dirt, coughing as it grew into a normal-sized flower as others looked on at this.

Others looked at this with interest and yet fear as Cagney bloomed while his petals peeled away from his face, he is in his beginning form and this time he is much smaller than a big flower.

‘’This isn’t fair!’’ Cagney shouted ‘’I was going to win!’’

‘’I guess the odds aren’t in your favor when you’re trying to kill us.’’ Dempsey said.

‘’And yet now you really looked like a cute flower now!’’ Heavy bellowed out as others laughed.

‘’This must have been embarrassing dishonor for you, Cagney.’’ Takeo stated.

‘’Look who’s saying! I just wanted to be stronger to beat guys like you to a plump!’’

Takeo gave him a pitied look as he sheathed his katana away, kneeling down to Cagney’s level and asked ‘’Why would you want to be stronger? You’re only a flower.’’

Cagney looked up at Takeo with nervousness in his eyes and guilt deep down, then he looked in a different direction to avoid his gaze.

‘’W-well,’’ he began as his voice was shaking, ‘’You see… I wanted to d-defend myself from anyone who wanted to d-do me harm so I uh… I kinda made a deal with someone that is…’’

‘’That is what?’’ Nikolai asked.

‘’The Devil.’’

Others but Medic and Richtofen looked at the flower like he was crazy til Richtofen asked ‘’You sold your soul to the Devil?’’

‘’Pretty much and that’s how I was… Well, like that before being beaten by the two kids who had also lost their souls to the Devil and eventually had beaten him and freed everyone’s souls that had unfortunately sold their souls to him as well. If that’s not enough to justify everyone’s justice, they had managed to beat the Devil's good-for-nothing lacky, King Dice in his own game.’’

‘’King Dice? The one with a dice for a head?’’

‘’Yep, has he tricked you too?’’

Dempsey raised an eyebrow at this response.

‘’No,’’ Dempsey answered ‘’I have only just met him the day before, Why would he-’’

‘’He’s the Devil’s right hand man, he can manipulate people with only reason so they can make a deal with the Devil. I am now sure hopefully none of you got caught up in his charm or-’’

‘’Uh oh!’’ A familiar voice that Dempsey heard had caught everyone’s attention and turned over to King Dice who appeared out of nowhere, standing there with his arms behind his back and with the same grin on his face.

‘’Did I feel my ears burning?’’

Dempsey turned to anger as he said ‘’Why are you here?’’

‘’Just stopping by when I saw your friend defeat that flower, and heard a chit-chat about the two brothers who sold their souls. You really are full of surprises, are you Dempsey?’’

‘’You are talking about the two children who had made a deal with a demon?’’ Nikolai growled.

‘’Of course! There are a lot of stories spilling out today like there’s no tomorrow,’’ Dice said as he adjusted his glove on his hand. ‘’Bunch of questions are asked after they were told like one for example: How did we get here after we’ve been snatched and taken. Like how ol li’ Cuphead and Mugman!’’

‘’How should we not know if you and Devil was behind it all?’’ Takeo asked.

‘’Nope, none of us are behind the snatching and taking of anybody here. To be honest with you sinners who started swinging. I like that! Every one of you are sinners of your own deeds.’’

‘’Are you suggesting that we should surrender our souls to your boss?’’ Richtofen confronted him with a glare.

‘’Heh… Of course not! Not now that you guys know about me and the big cheese. But if you all are willing to make a deal, just call me by name alright? Right then! Hi-De-Ho!~’’ he said as he had once again toralls again and fell down the hole he came from and then it shrunks.

‘’I swear I will kill him…’’ Dempsey muttered under his breath as Richtofen walked up to his side, ‘’Good vill come to those who vait but now… Ve need to leave zhis place.’’

‘’Yeah yeah…’’

‘’Um, Cagney, if you don’t mind-’’

‘’Yes! I know! I will let you all pass! Just don’t worry about me alright?’’ Cagney bellowed out with anger.

Scout looked at Cagney with concern, ‘’Are you sure about that? Zombies, you being small flower, they will kinda-’’

‘’I’ll be fine, I’ll just be back to my big old self in no time before they could. Now get out of my sight.’’ Cagney said subborningly.

Vines that are blocked off the path begin to separate and moved upward til the pathway is cleared. Sniper looked down at Cagney and said ‘’Thanks mate.’’

‘’Don’t mention it, all of you proved to be tougher than I think but don’t think that I would end up meeting you guys again.’’ Cagney replied.

‘’We won’t, see ya mate.’’

With the footsteps passing by the Carnation and then passed by as he watched them go to the train station.

They walked the rest of the path to the train station until they finally got there, feeling accomplished by reaching their goal but they know that there could be zombies lurking in the station since they couldn’t waste anymore time than they already have to complete the search and rescue mission.

‘’Does anyone know how to drive a train?’’ Nikolai asked everyone, then the Engineer came up to him.

‘’I can drive that thing son, after all I am an engineer but what can I say? I have many talents.’’

Dempsey chuckled ‘’Well, I can’t argue with that one Dell.’’

Spy walks over to the cargo, ‘’If we are done? We better get going before the dead or this ‘’King Dice’’ fellow comes back.’’ he then opens the door and then ushers his teammates to get on. “After you, Bushman.”

‘’Right.’’

Everyone then hopped on the train in a single file, while Demoman used black paint that he found from the ticket booth to write the cargo the words ‘’The Pain Train.’’ he hears a train whistle pierced the air, he then hops abroad on the cargo as the train begins to move it’s wheels against the rails then goes forward as 3 to 8 zombies comes out of their places in attempts to catch up with the train but wasn’t fast enough to catch up as the train goes quickly out of the station.

Scout looks out of the cargo door and laughs at the undead’s failed attempt, ‘’See ya later zombies!’’

Richtofen sighs out a breath of relief as Takeo sat down on a crate while looking outside with the others. They see the old red western buildings and blue 60’s era buildings before the train leaves the fortress and away from it as they watch.

‘’That was close.’’ Sniper said as Dempsey nodded, ‘’Indeed, a little TOO close.’’ Richtofen added.

‘’Still through, I am so glad that we’re out of there and away from those abominations that are created by none other than Lucifer himself.’’ Spy said as he again took another drag, Medic jumped up to the comment with sweat formed on his forehead as he said ‘’Oh Ja! Of course glad!’’ The others looked at him like he was more crazy than usual.

‘’Although Doctor, you seemed jumpy when Cagney mentioned the Devil before King Dice appeared after he said that he is the Devil’s right hand man. Mind explaining that one?’’ Nikolai asked.

‘’Me? Scared of the Devil?’’ Medic excused, ‘’Nein, nein. I vas only surprised zhat zhe Devil might be real. If Cagney is his debtor zhen zhat means-’’

‘’There are more than just one that owes the Devil their soul.’’ Dempsey interjected as Medic said ‘’Hey!’’

‘’That must’ve explains why Laddie.’’ Demoman as he drinks his scrumpy as Nikolai turns away. ‘’What do you think where Pauling is?’’ Nikolai asked.

‘’She said that she’s in an abandoned town, she had said that it looked like that war had rampaged and ransack it for 80 years or so, not to mention that she said it’s far from the fortress we were in.’’ Spy answered everyone.

‘’Far from the fortress huh?’’ Scout said, ‘’Hopefully we won’t encounter zombies there when we get to the town.’’

‘’I will not get my hopes just yet Scout, Richtofen had said that they can always one step ahead of us.’’ Takeo said as he looked outside of the moving train to view the land, he noticed a few trees that he is so familiar with when he is growing up in Japan.

‘’If this is another world, do you think that there are others taken here as well?’’ Nikolai questioned, ‘’Perhaps, in studies of alternate timelines, there are different worlds as vell.’’

‘’Cool.’’ Scout said as he laid down the crate with his hands at the back of his head.

Everyone looked outside as the train kept moving on the railway tracks to the old town as the hours had passed until the sun began to set over the horizon.

Takeo begins to notice that something is happening with the blossom trees, everyone else soon takes notice of them when the sun disappears behind the hills to make way for night time to begin.

The cherry trees began to glow white as the wind began to blow, allowing the blossoms to fly free into the breeze while everyone looked at them with wonder and amazement. They looked like they were stars being blown away by the wind in outer space as they watched them danced in the dark star-sprinkled skies.

‘’Wow…’’

‘’They don’t normally do something like this…’’ Takeo muttered as he watched, Nikolai walked up to his side and said ‘’Well, in this world, it doesn’t matter…’’

-End of the Flashback…-

[puppyexpressions]

5 Types of Skin Cancer in Dogs

The skin is the largest organ of a dog, and tumors affecting this structure are common. Between 60 to 80 percent of skin tumors in dogs are benign, meaning if you notice a lump on your dog’s skin, there’s a good chance it won’t be anything to worry about. However, the visible appearance of a growth can’t be used to predict whether it’s cancerous. Therefore, any new lump or bump you detect on your dog’s skin should be evaluated by a veterinarian.

Many skin tumors can be cured with early surgical removal. If a growth is removed from your dog’s skin, it should be submitted for evaluation by a veterinary pathologist. This is the best way to determine if further treatment is necessary. The following is a list of the more common skin tumors seen in dogs, along with basic information about their behavior and recommended testing and treatment options.

Mast Cell Tumor

Mast cells are immune cells normally involved in allergic reactions. They contain packets of chemicals (called granules) that are released upon stimulation by an allergen. Mast cells are located throughout the body and dogs have a large proportion located within their skin. Mast cell tumors are found more frequently in Boxers, Boston Terriers, Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, Beagles, Pugs, Shar Peis, and Bulldogs.

A diagnosis of a mast cell tumor can usually be made via a fine needle aspirate. A small needle, the same size that’s used to draw a blood sample or give a vaccine, is introduced into the mass and a syringe is used to extract cells. These cells are distributed onto a slide and evaluated either by your veterinarian or submitted to a lab for analysis by a clinical pathologist.

Surgical removal is recommended for all confirmed mast cell tumors. A pathologist will review the sample and assign a “grade” to the tumor. The grade is the best predictor of whether follow-up testing and treatment is recommended. Low-grade tumors are usually cured with complete excision, whereas high-grade tumors are more likely to grow back and spread to distant sites in the body. In those cases, radiation therapy and chemotherapy are recommended to extend survival time.

Melanoma

Unlike people, most cutaneous (skin) melanoma tumors in dogs are benign. Melanoma occurs more frequently in dogs with dark pigmented skin. Cutaneous melanoma tumors are usually solitary and appear as small brown/black masses. They can also appear as large, flat, or wrinkled tumors. Fine needle aspirates can be done on such tumors; however, they are less likely to exfoliate (distribute into the syringe during aspiration), so the sample obtained in this manner might not be diagnostic. Most melanoma tumors are diagnosed after they are removed. Malignant (cancerous) melanoma occurs less frequently, but can be an aggressive disease. Distinguishing a benign melanoma from a malignant one is done via biopsy. Benign melanoma tumors are cured with surgery. Malignant melanoma tumors can spread to local lymph nodes and lungs and additional treatment with chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy for treating melanoma is recommended.

Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Squamous cell carcinoma is a rare form of skin cancer in dogs. Tumors are found more frequently in light-skinned, hairless, or sparsely haired portions of the skin. At-risk breeds include Dalmatians, Bull Terriers, and Beagles. Most squamous cell carcinomas of the skin appear as firm, raised, and often ulcerated plaques and nodules. Tumors can often grow outward into large masses and have a surface that resembles a wart. Squamous cell carcinoma occurs more frequently in Keeshonds, Standard Schnauzers, Basset Hounds, and Collies. Short-coated dogs who spend a long time outdoors also have a higher incidence of squamous cell carcinoma. Treatment includes surgery to remove the primary tumor. Incompletely excised tumors should be treated with radiation therapy to prevent regrowth. These tumors infrequently spread to local lymph nodes and the lungs. Some dogs develop multiple cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma tumors. These can be challenging cases to manage and may require medical treatment with either oral or topical drugs.

Tumors of the Skin Glands

Most glandular tissue tumors in dogs are benign (e.g. sebaceous hyperplasia or sebaceous adenoma). Malignant glandular tumors include sebaceous gland carcinomas, apocrine gland carcinomas, and eccrine carcinomas. Sometimes benign tumors can be recognized visually, but it is still best to remove any questionable mass and submit the tissue for biopsy. Most malignant glandular tumors can be treated with surgery alone. However, if the tumors are incompletely excised, radiation therapy is recommended to prevent recurrence. Dogs with malignant tumors should also be screened for any evidence of spread of disease via imaging tests (chest X-rays and regional lymph node aspirates).

Hair Follicle Tumors

Like glandular tumors, most hair follicle tumors are benign and cured with surgical removal, despite their intimidating assortment of names (e.g. keratinizing acanthoma, trichoblastoma, trichoepithelioma, pilomatricoma). Malignant hair follicle tumors include malignant trichoepithelioma and malignant pilomatricoma. Differentiating a benign tumor from a malignant tumor can only be done via biopsy.

Epitheliotropic Lymphoma

While technically not a skin tumor, another common cancer that occurs in the superficial layers of the skin is epitheliotropic lymphoma. Lymphoma is a blood-borne cancer of lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. Lymphocytes are found throughout the body, including the skin, where they offer protection against various pathogens that this organ can come into contact with. There are several forms of lymphoma in dogs, and epitheliotropic lymphoma is a specific variant diagnosed via biopsy of an affected region of skin. Treatment of choice is chemotherapy. The prognosis is usually guarded; however, dogs who are diagnosed earlier in the course of their signs and have not received previous treatment with steroids can do well long-term. Epitheliotropic lymphoma should be considered as a diagnosis in dogs with persistent and progressive skin lesions that do not resolve with typical treatment for more common skin issues (e.g. food allergies or skin infection).