#but we'd go to talk about almost anything else with one another and i'd have to be like

[andiv3r-drawing]

11 year old me meeting current me is a fun concept. (ID in alt text)

[w2soneshots]

could you do something like the 24hr karting race and shes a driver for senor frogs, she finishes her stint and then like the new video they couldnt find the bed in the rv or whatever so they go into quadrants and theres only one bed and both her and harry need sleep si they have to share?? sorry im so bad at explaining

We’ll have to share -W2S

words: 1.5k+

warnings: unestablished relationship, spooning.

summary: while filming the annual señor frogs 24 hour go cart race you and Harry end up having to share a bed, but nether of you mind since your both majorly crushing on the other.

notes: hello love!🤗 I decided to write this asap even though I have so many requests but I wanted to get this out before everyone gets over the señor frogs high (If you get what I’m saying?). Anyways, enjoy!!💓🏎️

Today I'm driving for señor frogs in the annual twenty four hour go cart race. I woke up early this morning, took a quick shower, got ready, packed a small bag and then set off. It took almost two hours to get to Buckmoore Park and I arrived just after ten, ready for the practice that starts at ten thirty.

I've know the boys for years and are good friends with them all. After they dropped Callux from the team they asked if I would participate this year and after seeing how fun it looked last year I couldn't say no. I've done lots of practice in the last few weeks and I'm actually pretty good. I used to race with my friends for fun when I was younger but that's about all the experience I've had.

When I arrived I parked my car then signed in at the front desk. "Hey! You're here!" Chip's voice echoed through the reception. A smile spread across my face. We shared a quick hug then he walked me to our green room.

Harry, Chris, Will and Freezy stood talking. They turned to me as we entered. "Hi guys!" I set my bag down. I glanced at Harry, he smiled softly at me. They all said their "hello's" then we started talking about the plan for the twenty four hours.

Unfortunately the weather forecast wasn't ideal since it was supposed to rain for almost the entire time but that made it more interesting and fun to watch.

We sent Chip and Plum out for the practice and once that was done it was time for the race to begin. We were starting off with Chris. After getting into our suits all of us walked out onto the track. I pulled mine down so that it rested at my waist and I wore a comfortable black tank top underneath.

Once we'd finished doing some interviews the group headed back upstairs onto the balcony to watch as the race began. As soon as the flag was waved Chris raced over to the cart, accidentally kicking another racer on the way. Harry pushed the cart to give him a boost then he drove swiftly off, along with everyone else.

When twelve am hit it was finally my turn. I suited up and grabbed my helmet. I stepped outside onto the deck, Harry just behind me (who'd already done his first stint, just before Plum went out). "Jesus Christ it's hammering it down." I looked out at the soaked and slippery track. He placed his hands on my shoulder, squeezing. "You'll be fine," he reassured me.

I quickly walked down the stairs, taking a deep breath when I got to the bottom. I looked back up at Harry. He put his two thumbs up. I smiled softly, nodding. "I can do this. Let's hope I don't completely embarrass myself." I thought.

"Nervous?" The camera man asked as I waited. "To be honest I'm shitting myself," I replied with a shaky laugh. Plum pulled in and immediately jumped out, he gave me a quick wave as I passed him. I adjusted the seat insert, got in and then drove off.

As soon as I set off I heard Freezy in the earpiece. He was talking about what place I was and how carful I needed to be on the turns. I could barely concentrate since I was focusing on not spinning out and it didn't help that I couldn't really see out of my visor.

Around an hour in I'd gotten used to it and was now much calmer. I hadn't heard anything through the communications for a while then I suddenly heard Harry's voice. He told me that Freezy had gone for a snooze and that he was replacing him.

"That was really good, one minute nine seconds. Try and keep up that time," he said as I finished another lap. The rain was starting to pick up. "It's so fucking slippy!" I felt as though I wasn't in control, the wheels were spinning everywhere. I just desperately didn't want to spin out and let the boys down.

When I was finally told to come in I felt so relieved. I had no idea what place we were or how I'd done. I practically stumbled out, my legs and bum asleep from sitting in the same position for two hours. I pulled my helmet off as I passed Chip.

When I got to the boys I was met with what seemed to be happy faces. "We're fucking second place in class!" Freezy patted my back excitedly. Harry smiled wildly at me. "I told you you'd be fine." I smiled back at him, relieved that I hadn't fucked everything up.

I was completely soaked so I went to get changed into some comfy clothes that I could sleep in. Plum, Will and Chris had already gone to bed and me and Harry were going to do the same as it was now around two in the morning.

We walked together to quadrants bus, since there wasn't a proper bed in the one Chip had rented and they'd kindly said we could sleep in there's. When we got inside, out of the rain we quietly walked down the hall. I turned to look at him, my eyes slightly wider than a minute ago. "Is there only one bed left?"

"Shit. I think so," he replied before looking around to check again. "What are we gonna do?" I whispered. "Uh- you can have it." My brows knitted together. "No, don't be daft. They're pretty big... we could share?" I was really hoping I hadn't just embarrassed myself.

Harry's face turned red, though I couldn't really tell due to the dim lights. "Uh- uhm- yeah. Okay," he stuttered. I smiled slightly. "Come on then. I'm exhausted."

He got in first. It was slightly awkward since the last bed was at the bottom and practically on the floor. I slid in after, both now on our sides, my back facing his front. Turns out they were smaller than they looked.

Evidently Harry didn't know what to do with his hands, they were sort of hovering over my side. I smirked to myself then grabbed his hand, placing it around me my waist. I shuffled into him comfortably. I felt him physically relax. "You sure this is okay?" He asked quietly. "I'm sure."

I've had a massive crush on Harry since a few months ago when we spent the entire night together at a party nether of us wanted to be at. I laughed more than I had in a while that night and I really enjoyed spending time with him.

I was woken up a few hours later by Chip giggling. My eyes fluttered open and a small tired groan escaped from my lips. "You alright there love? Comfy?" He chuckled quietly, as people were still asleep. I was confused then I realised I was still pressed up against Harry.

Harry shuffled behind me, mumbling something and then shooting up. A loud bang was heard as he whacked his head on the roof of the bed. "Ow." He fell back onto the pillow and brought his hand up to rub his head. Chip laughed even more.

We got out and stood up. I sighed before glancing at Harry. His hand rubbed at the back of his neck, he looked slightly uncomfortable. Chip continued to tease us as we walked back to the green room and he immediately told Freezy and Chris that he'd found us asleep together.

"I knew it! You like each other!" Freezy exclaimed, standing up. My eyes widened. "Uh-" "you guessed it," Harry replied, interrupting me. My head snapped over to him. "You like me?" I blurted out. The room fell silent. "Uhm- yeah- yeah I think I do." My face softened. Freezy chuckled with a smirk.

It turns out they wanted Harry to get back in the cart once again, which he wasn't very happy about. But he ended up agreeing and he got back into his suit. I stood next to him on the balcony, both of us leaning our forearms on the barrier as we waited for the signal that it was his turn to go out.

"I like you too. Just so you know." I said, not taking my eyes off the track. "You do?" He turned to me, surprise evident on his face. I looked at him sincerely. "Mhm, ever since that party last month." A smile graced his lips. "So... did you wanna go for lunch or something after this?" He asked. "Are you asking me on a date Mr Lewis?" I teased. He chuckled. I gently nudged his side with my elbow. "I'd really like that."

"Harry! Time to go!" Chip shouted. I glanced at Chip then looked up at Harry, pushing onto my tiptoes and placing a quick kiss on his cheek. "Good luck!" I whispered. He smirked. "I'll see you in a bit." I nodded before patting his chest.

I watched as he quickly walked down the stairs then I turned to go back inside. I stopped as I noticed Freezy through the window. He raised his eyebrows with a mischievous look on his face. I groaned but I didn't really mind that he'd seen mine and Harry's encounter, all I could think about was the date I was going on in a few hours.

[sadcupcake]

Winchester in Mystic Falls Part 5

So far tailing Elena and her friends has been entertaining to say the least. I've learned that she's still friends with Bonnie and Caroline. Bonnie was never cruel to me, she just ignored me like everyone else in town did. Caroline on the other hand was right there with Elena. They both tortured me my entire childhood. Most of it was emotional, the name calling, making everyone in my life ignore me and pretend that I didn't exist. Sometimes though they would go on some sort of power trip and hurt me. Looking back on that now I remember being so scared of them both, but now they look like weak little dolls in my eyes. What they put me through made me who I am today, it set me down a path to meet my brothers and for that I am grateful to them.

It doesn't surprise me that the three girls are still friends, just like it didn't surprise me when I learned Bonnie was a witch or that Caroline got turned into a vampire. What did surprise me was the fact that Elena is a doppelganger. Apparently it was one of Elena's doppelgangers that turned Caroline. Another interesting thing I learned was that the originals where in town. Sam and Dean learned about how vampires came to be when they captured one and had a little chat. That vamp was about 900 years old so they still knew the stories of the originals, it even claimed to be turned by one. I had yet to see one running around town but from what I've gathered they came here to sacrifice my sister to break a curse. If I had to take an educated guess it would be the curse placed on the hybrid.

If it really is the originals in town then I really need to hit the books to find something to kill them with. All of the lore I've read up to now had never mentioned a way to kill an original. As far as I know they are truly Immortal. Maybe I could just kill all the non original vampires in town and then hightail it out of here before they get wind of a hunter. Lets be honest I'm going to end up dead by the end of all of this.

I haven't talked to Elena since I got interrupted before I was able to have a little chat with her. I assume she's told her little boyfriends about what happened by now, so me getting within 10 feet of her again is out of the question. So making a scene in public is now my only option to find out what she knows. This whole thing is getting tiresome already. If it weren't for the innocent people dying I'd cut my loses by now. But I am a Winchester and Winchesters never back down from anything. Hell not even from the actual devil, and the Mikaelsons are no Lucifer.

getting back to my hotel room I get comfy on the bed with my laptop, if I'm going to find anyway to kill the originals I have to channel my inner Sam. Full on research mode. After hours of sitting and looking at the computer screen I've come up with one possible lead, one impossible lead. White oak. It's almost too good to be true but It's all I got. Some hunter in New Orleans had a story passed down generations in his family. Apparently the only thing that could stop an original was an original themselves, or a weapon one of them possessed. A dagger dipped in White oak ash. If the ash from this tree could put them to sleep imagine what the real thing could do. Unfortunately all records of the white oak tree say that it went extinct centuries ago. Another dead end.

Deciding that I've had enough of the headache that is research I get dressed and head back to the Grill. I'm starving, one of the things Dean and I have in common is our appetite. I think he was secretly happy to have someone around to out vote Sam on where we'd eat. Maybe if I'm lucky I can run into Elena again there, kill two birds with one stone.

When I walk into the Grill I spot them right away. Elena and her little gang looking directly at me. By the look on dumb and dumbers faces she defiently told them what I was going to do to her. I  sit down at a table ignoreing them the best I can until I can at least have somthing to eat. While I'm waiting on my food I notice two guys sitting at the bar again. Talk about deja vu. The vibe coming from these two is defiently dangerous but there's something else I can't quite place, It's like a comfort almost. Just as I'm about to stand up to go to them I get snapped out of my daze by my food arriving.

While I'm enjoying my food I start to notice everyone slowly leave the Grill. EVeryone apart from Elena and her friends, and the two guys at the bar who have now turned around to face us obiously interested in what is happeneing. I look up from my food to see my sister and her friends walking over to my table. Bonnie and Caroline are behing my sister and her two boyfriends are infront of her. Anyone would think shes the president with the way they protect her.

"How can I help you Elena, would you like some of my fries?" I question her, I always have to have the first and last words. Something Sam and Dean both love and hate about me.

"No I don't want you're fries Y/N, I want to know why you're in town and how you know about vampires" Elena says, she looks so serious I burst out laughing.

"Sorry, you acctually think I'll just tell you because you asked. Wow you really have no idea who I am now do you Elena?" I stand up as I ask my question getting ready for a fight. By the way everyone clings to Elena's side I guess they are too.

[melrosing]

I’ve seen your Joanna headcannons. What about lyarra stark? Part of me thinks she could be really wild but the other part thinks she could be a patriarchy enforcer like Rickard was. Then again my mom was a ceiling glass breaker but started to deter my sisters and I from that sort of behaviour as we became teens which oh course didn’t work we were tough nuts and party girls.

She's another tricky one... I'd love to know more about Lyarra but for whatever reason we know less about her than almost any other notable dead lady. Which is pretty fucking odd, given this is House Stark we're talking about - we know about ten times as much about Joanna and Rhaella (and they're a pretty low bar) - Lannister and Targaryen are the other two of the big three houses in the story, so you'd think we'd know about as much about the Stark matriarch as we do Joanna and Rhaella. but no lol. There are at least some sketchy details to work with with the UPOD (and she doesn't even have a name!!), and we even have more for Cassana Baratheon née Estermont and Minisa Tully née Whent - granted, no more than the fact that Cassana died in a shipwreck, and Minisa is vaguely remembered in Cat's chapters, but at least they're in the books. Lyarra is never even mentioned on the page - her name comes from an appendix, there's nothing else to go on. And this is really annoying to me lol

So I guess anything I imagine about Lyarra has no real basis besides my own tastes, but I do picture her as another parent who had favourites, and that hers were Brandon and Lyanna. I imagine her as having a bit of the wolf's blood in her as well, and she was proud to have children who shared it. We don't know how she died so I just hc her passing away of an illness (surprisingly few dead people in ASOIAF have just 'sickness' as cause of death lol it's like GRRM you don't have to say 'in childbirth' every damn time) in Ned's early-to-mid teenage years.

But yeah I don't imagine her as a perfect benevolent matriarch... this is definitely headcanon territory, but I picture Ned as having been a little bit of an odd one out in his family, where he ends up kind of pushed to the back behind all the big personalities, and with Brandon soaking up all the limelight and their parents' attentions. It's interesting to me that Rickard (and Lyarra?) worked hard on good matches for Brandon and Lyanna but seemingly never made one for Ned, so he was very much a second son.

And yeah the feeling I get about Lyanna is that she was a version of Arya who grew up with more validation and less judgement for the ways she didn't conform (hence why Ned is largely accepting of Arya's non-conformity as well) - so Lyarra was maybe an outdoorsy type as well who wanted to share her hobbies with her daughter.

Ultimately I don't imagine the prev gen Starks chafing much amongst themselves, and that Lyarra, whilst having favourites, wasn't ever unpleasant to Ned - but her preferences were obvious enough that it led to some private hurt on his part, and resentment towards Brandon, that then turns to guilt after Brandon's death (more thoughts on the Ned/Brandon r/ship here). However, I also hc Ned and Lyanna as very close in their youth, so being Lyarra's least favourite son is a little made up for in being Lyanna's fave brother uwu

[junipernight]

I stopped liveblogging Hurricane Milton somewhere around the eye, because there was too much going on, but I do want to write it down for my own sake, so here we go:

______________________________________________________

So the eye had come and gone. My wind chimes began to chime again, heralding the return of the wind, and soon the storm was as strong as it had been before, shrieking through the trees and making deep bass noises as it pushed against our apartment building.

We'd been spared the worst of the noise during the first part of the storm, because the wind had been buffeting the opposite side of the building, blowing from SE. The wind had been so strong then that it blew the rain into my neighbors' apartments in a steady stream around the edges of their tightly closed windows and doors. Now, the wind had shifted to come from the NW, and was forcing its way around our doors.

There was an ominous scraping noise. It was completely dark outside the window — no moon, no stars, no streetlights, only the sporadic green flare of exploding transformers. Inside the apartment wasn't much brighter. We couldn't see what was causing the sound, but Little Sister thought maybe the patio screen had been ripped off, staple by staple. The wind got louder and louder. A frantic knocking sounded at the door — it was our upstairs neighbor Bea and her eight-week-old puppy.

We ushered her in. She was apologetic about coming, but said she had wanted to get downstairs because "the wind was starting to sound tornado-y." I was glad she'd come, because I'd offered our downstairs apartment as a tornado shelter before, and also because the conversation was a welcome distraction from the wind. Sister was glad she'd come because she likes puppies. We talked and watched the transformers blow up for a while. There were so many of them... it was a little like that scene in Lilo and Stitch, when Stitch crash lands and the sky pulses with green light and Lilo thinks it's a shooting star. It was like a hundred experiment 626's crash-landed on Earth that night.

Something went Boom! and shook the building.

I was sure a tree had fallen on something or someone. We ran into the hall to see if everyone was okay. Almost everyone else was in the hall too, trying to figure out what caused the boom. One neighbor wasn't answering her door. She's an older lady, and she's starting to have some memory problems. She seemed the most nervous about the storm. We knocked on her door multiple times. I was afraid that maybe she'd had a medical emergency in there, but I couldn't just break into my neighbor's apartment to see if she'd had a heart attack or been squished by an oak tree or something. Another neighbor, Tea thought maybe Elder Neighbor was asleep and decided to text her.

Bea was worried because when she'd grabbed the puppy and ran, she’d been in such a hurry that she'd forgotten to blow out her candles, and she didn't want to leave live fire unattended with cats. I asked if she wanted to bring the cats down too, but she said they were hiding and we probably wouldn't be able to get them out. She also apparently had a fish tank she'd left on her balcony, tucked behind a wall, that she no longer thought was safe.

Was I incredulous that Bea had left anything, let alone living creatures, outside during a hurricane? Yes. Do I think this was irresponsible? Yes. But Bea had just driven home from Georgia the day before and was taking care of a new 8-week-old, so I’m trying not to judge.

So me, Bea, Little Sister and Baby Puppy all climb the stairs to Bea's apartment, carrying flashlights and solar lanterns, and then Bea does the unthinkable. She does the thing you're not supposed to do.

She opens a door during a hurricane.

She slides open the sliding glass door to her balcony in the middle of the eyewall, and goes outside to grab her fishtank.

Earlier that day, I had learned about a different neighbor, in a different building, during a different hurricane, who once opened a door into the storm; the wind ripped the door off it's hinges and put it in a tree.

Bea goes out into the hurricane, picks up her fish tank, and carries it in, while my sister and I stand ready to slide the door shut the moment she's back inside. And we do shut it, but this stupid balcony curtain is in the way, and it's blocking the latch. We have to crack open the door again and again, and try to push the curtain back out, but the wind is a sustained 80mph, and even with both of us we cannot force the curtain to stay outside, so we get it away from the latch and slam the door shut with half the curtain poking through. But it latches, so that's that.

That’s about when the gutter finally snapped free of it's moorings, and started flapping around outside Bea's balcony like a 40 foot metal kite. I took a picture, Bea blew out her candles, and we went back down to my unit.

The partially-ripped-off gutter was long enough to be seen from my floor, so we sat in the living room and watched the gutter flap and the transformers blow for a while, all the while hoping the gutter wouldn’t punch a hole in either someone’s windshield or my patio door. Eventually, Bea decided that the wind had gone down enough, and she went home.

I kept watching the window from the couch, and Little Sister did the same from the floor, where she was soothing her pets: Cat did not like being in the carrier one bit. Rabbit was eating hay like it was just another Wednesday. The gutter broke away and disappeared.

More transformers lit up the horizon, mostly green, some purple. One transformer was very very close when it blew out, somewhere behind us; it didn’t just light the sky, it temporarily illuminated all the other buildings in the apartment. The gutter blew back towards us, dragging along the sidewalk. It went back and forth several times before being caught underneath some cars in the parking lot.

Another transformer blew, and this one was different. This one was orange. This one didn’t go out after a few seconds, or half a minute tops. This orange glow on the horizon flickered.

Something was on fire. Something close. Across the street, maybe.

We were in the south side of the storm at this point, which for Hurricane Milton happened to be the dry side. So it was very windy and relatively dry and something was on fire.

We couldn’t go outside to see, and even if we called someone, no emergency departments would be responding to anything for several hours, so we just watched to see if it would spread.

Whatever was on fire stopped being on fire. Hallelujah.

The wind was still fucken wimdy, but I was dead tired at this point. It was sometime past midnight. Little Sister was staying up with the animals until she felt safe to let them out of their carriers, so we agreed that she would keep watch, and when she was ready to sleep, if things still seemed dangerous she would wake me up.

That’s more or less it. The winds died down. The sun rose.

Me, my sister, and all our neighbors all went outside at about the same time, dawn, to look at the damage. By 7:30, we’d cleared all the branches from the entry road, in time for the first evacuee to return home.

(Eldest neighbor was fine; she was sleeping. I still don’t know how she slept through all that.)

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

It's that time again, and I don't know what to say.

I'm here because I'm here. As I wrote last time, it's clear that I'm on Tumblr to stay, even if I abandon other social media sites. I took a sorta hiatus from Xitter this last week, because I had my first meatspace social engagement in months and because I'd just gotten into a fight with one of the only people I actually interact with over there, and I really don't feel like I'm missing anything. I really might quit using it this year, but Tumblr is a different story.

But I don't know what to write about, even so.

When I wrote the last milestone, my dad had just crested the peak of his post-stroke health, and still doing well enough that I thought he might actually beat the cancer. It killed him, not two months later. Did I ever explicitly talk about that on here? I don't recall. I did, back on Xitter. I took a week off the site after that happened, too.

Then Mom got sick, right before the family reunion in May, and ended up in the hospital three separate times. She's still not well, now on second- and third-order consequences of the original thing. So I came back to Kansas City, and I've been here all summer, again.

All told, the last 18 months or so I've simply felt like I have no real control over my life. Using the singular feels wrong; I have two lives, the good one back home and the bad one here, and basically no control over which one I'll be living at any given time. Everything hinges upon the biology of another human being, both cases one which I have only the most limited power to influence to take the actions that maximize future utility for either of us.

It's soul-crushing precisely because it's nothing new. I consider my 20s a lost decade because almost all of it was spent on dealing with my family's irrationalities and incapacities, instead of building the career which they spent so many years encouraging me to pursue. The pandemic didn't help and inviting a literal Randian parasite into the house towards end definitely didn't help. Since this latest round kicked off right before my birthday, my 30s aren't exactly off to a great start, either.

The nine months or so between taking my current job and Dad's stroke were, in retrospect, probably the best of my adult life. I thought the bullshit was behind me, and we'd finally get to have the sort of relationship I always wanted with my parents, and which I figured they wanted with me. We never got to experience that. Everything reverted to the mean and now I just feel hopeless. Will I get to live while either of them still does? With every miserable month that passes it seems less and less likely.

Compare the 27,000 post to this one. So full of optimism by comparison. (Don't believe what anyone says: I'm an insufferable optimist by nature. I expect things to go right the first time. Then they don't. Expecting the worst is a strategy that leaves me less disappointed when the actual results are significantly worse than whatever I imagined the minimum could possibly be.) Not even two years ago, and despite recognizing my own hand it almost feels like a different person must have written it. As I keep having to tell people, when I took this job I had two healthy parents. Now I can barely contribute to my team, because I'm just...exhausted. There's nothing left in the tank.

Maybe it gets better. That's happened before. But it's never stayed better remotely long enough for me to recover. The tank is dry and there's no reason to expect it'll get to refill. Outside view is great and all, but after so much pointless pain I can't make myself believe it, not where it counts.

If that day does ever come, maybe then I'll finally leave Tumblr like I almost managed in late '22 and early '23. Until then, I'll be here, sharing my small scraps of sanity with this insane world. It's not like there's anything else to do while I'm waiting.

[rexregistries]

im quitting smut & everything nsfw!!

like straight up, cold-turkey, quitting. so far, we're 20 hours in.

heres why

this is gonna get REALLLL personal, buckle in.

i know not many ppl will see this, but its nice to just get it out.

tw: online sexual grooming and me being a minor thru it all

basically, im gonna talk abt how this all started (i should REALLY be doing homework right now, but i need to get it off my chest, and i only have 1 assignment left)

please bear with me! i only recently remembered all of this, and most of it is still terribly foggy, and hopefully shall stay that way.

when i was 8, i entered into a friendship with a 26-year-old man on roblox. we met thru our mutual like for percy jackson & the olympians, and i met him on a pjo role-playing game on roblox. mind you, roblox filter about 8 years ago was almost nonexistent.

the man, sam (found this out years into my "relationship" w him, to me he was cookie [cookieflame546]), asked my age when i first met him. i knew about stranger danger, obviously i did, i was born a girl. but i gave him my age anyway. so he knew.

this relationship lasted 5 years. 8 years old to 13 years old.

it started okay! we'd roleplay together, nothing too bad! the real trouble began when one of my ocs went into a romantic relationship with one of his ocs. he asked me if i knew anything about sex (the deed, the dirty, the devils tango, he called it something else that i dont remember) and i said no. obviously i didnt, i was 8.

he offered to teach me stuff, and i said ok. i trusted him for some reason. (NO GIRL STOPPP)

and boy. BOY, did he teach me stuff.

he bought a private server JUST to have sex w me. i'd go online, roleplay a little with my other online friends (who were my age, maybe 1 or 2 years older), and then once sam got on, i'd go to the private server. it happened maybe three times a week, i think? we'd roleplay w other people normally most of the time. i got discord at 10, because he asked me to.

when it started getting really, really, actually terrible (more than it already was) was when i got into the hamilton fandom in 2020. (also, since covid was happening, i was on everyday, so we interacted a lot more)

"kal, y is hamilton important?" well, when i got into hamilton, i got into wattpad. when i got into wattpad, i got into smut. when i got into smut, i got into actual fucking porn. at the ripe age of 12 years old.

i was so proud of my newfound knowledge. i wanted to show him all i knew. the sex got worse. he'd find ways to bypass the increasingly strong filter, and so would i.

the only thing im glad for is that he never sent nsfw pics, and neither did i.

it started tapering off once i got into 8th grade. i had more homework, i couldnt be on as much. we still had those little sessions, but they were more infrequent.

(BUT, in his place, came another friend. his name is alex. hes a year older than me, and we roleplayed almost exclusively sexually together. outside of roleplay, we would also message sexually on discord. some of got disturbing when i look back on it [he said he would find my address, climb into my window, and fuck me. bro i am 12 years old]

me and alex fell out of contact for a long time [something something i used to be really homophobic and our entire friendgroup, excluding him and i, was queer]. we say hi hello when hes online on discord, but we dont talk anymore)

slowly, me and sam went back into a regular friendship. we didn't talk for months, other than the occasional hi, hello, hru, im good. i stopped roleplaying, he didnt.

and then my brain decided "yooooo wait this was kinda bad.......im gonna make them forget it >:]"

and i did! i forgot about it. and then in freshmen year, at a winter camp for school, it all came rushing back. i cried about it to one of my closest friends (they moved, but we still talk. if ur seeing this joey [ur prob not], the second im 18 we r gonna see each other istg!!!!), and they told me to block him. i did.

i havent spoken to him since.

and then my brain did another little silly and said "im gonna make them forget it again!! >:]"

and guess what! i forgot about it again.

until i sat by myself, just having finished a brutal smut fic, crying, because, man, why the fuck was i like this? why cant i stop reading and watching and looking at this horrible shit? because it was ruining me! it really was! (it still is, but we're working on it)

andddddddd it came rushing back again.

finally, an answer! thats why im like this!

my most formative years were filled with sex! thats why im obsessed with it!

i know im partly to blame. i enabled myself by actively looking for nsfw. but im trying to fix that.

thank u for ur time :]

[kayandjayz]

I'm feeling very, very jittery and very, very chatty so I'm just gonna take some time to gush about my girlfriend because she's absolutely wonderful. click below if you want to hear a lesbian be sappy about her girlfriend because I'm just. So lucky.

So I've been lucky enough to be dating J for almost 2 years now.

We started dating on August 4, 2022. At this point, we'd been roommates for a year already. I'd known I had a crush on her since December, but had convinced myself that it was just a temporary thing. And also something that I needed to get over because at the time she was very anti-marriage due to personal reasons that I'm not going to get into.

We had been doing the whole long distance friendship thing that summer due to the fact that our hometowns are 4 hours apart. I had convinced myself that time away from her was going to make my little crush go away. If anything, it only made it worse. We were doing all kinds of phone calls and FaceTime calls. There were a couple of times that we had one day that lined up so one of us got up super early to make the 4 hour drive to the other's town just to spend the day together for the day and then make the 4 hour drive back that night.

None of this was helpful for my little crush. In fact, it made me convince myself that mayhaps she liked me back.

On one of my visits to her town, I had nearly convinced myself to confess my feelings to her. I made a joke about one of my friends joking about her being my girlfriend, something that had been a recurring joke for a while now with that friend. That friend is TBH the reason we got together, but we're not gonna talk about that.

She admitted that she had a crush on one of her friends from high school, crushing my little heart just a little bit.

However, she was still acting the same. We fell asleep on FaceTime. She got better and better at texting just so she could talk to me. No one else (even to this day) gets as good of a response time from her as I did/do. My friend finally convinced me to confess my feelings, so I wrote out a little thing and sent it to the "jury" to have it approved.

I sent it over text. Clearly it wasn't going to happen in person, so I sent it via text.

Still, nothing changed about our relationship. She said she needed time to consider her feelings. I gave her space. It started to feel like teasing. She eventually made another visit to my town. She didn't say anything about it.

A few days later, I was feeling hurt and frustrated. She still hadn't said anything about her feelings towards me, in either direction. She hadn't given me any indication whether there was something there or if I needed to drop it. I asked her to give me an answer one way or the other because I *really* needed to know.

We got on a call. There were a couple of times that I could tell she wanted to say something, but I wasn't going to force it. We fell asleep on that call. Neither of us had anything to do the next day, so we just stayed on the call. Around 1, she finally got the words out. "I think I like you too."

"Shall we make it official then?"

She blushed and did her adorable little smile that I just love so much and nodded. And just like that, it begins.

The next few weeks were a little awkward as we figured out how now being girlfriends changed our relationship. We moved back to our campus, both of us coming earlier than the crowd. Me for band camp, her for auditions. We both tiptoed around each other, nervous to make the move into physical intimacy.

We were watching a stupid Twilight knock-off when I finally got the courage to put my head on her shoulder, which ripped the bandaid off for our physical touch. We started cuddling with every movie night. Eventually, it got to a point that we admitted to each other that we had a hard time getting into bed after movie night because we didn't want to go to our separate beds, so we started sleeping in the same bed.

Eventually, we were playfully kissing each other's faces on the floor of the dorm room that we shared. She stops and says that she wants to kiss me for real. I tell her that I've been dropping hints that that's what I wanted all night long. We shared our first kiss.

I admitted to her that it was my first kiss ever. She asks me if she can kiss me again.

I don't remember how it came up, but I do remember that I was the first one to say I love you, some night curled up snuggling in bed together. She immediately said it back.

We spend our first Thanksgiving together, driving back and forth across the state to make sure that we hit everyone. I meet some of her family (I had met a lot of them on previous visits to her town) and she met the majority of mine. One of my grandma's brothers jokingly asked her to pray, causing her to have a minor freak out because she didn't know how my family would react if she said no.

Christmas break was hard. It was the first time that we had to spend a significant amount of time apart since we'd started dating. We didn't get to spend Christmas together, we didn't get to spend her birthday together.

Coming back to campus, I was a little worried that we would lose all of the progress in our relationship that we'd made before break, but we didn't. We immediately got to talking again, just like normal.

It was the most natural thing in the world.

We had some shenanigans throughout the rest of the semester, and supported each other through some really, really hard times (that was a *bad* semester for both of us). I joined her fraternity that she'd been pestering me about for years.

We start having bigger conversations. Getting married is now on the table. Not immediately, but it now becomes something that is on our minds. I start a google folder to start collecting ideas for it.

I spent the first few days of summer break that year in her town. We had more time to explore than we ever had before, so I really got to know the town a little bit better. We said goodbye, and it was hard. However, we already had lots of plans on the calendar that we could point to and say "hey, that's the next time I get to see you."

We spent our second pride together (first as a couple). She brought her friend who has kind of become our unofficial third wheel (if we are ever hanging out with only one of her friends, it is usually that one). My dad invited her on our San Francisco trip, so she tagged along for that. She ended up staying an extra day after she got back, so we got to explore the city that is closest to me more than we had ever gotten to before.

I had to move back to campus almost a month early, having gotten a job on campus that required me to be at the desk for that time before the school year started. I needed to be there for move-in and such.

We (by pure luck of my new boss being the nicest person ever) got to spend our first anniversary together in her town.

She moved back to campus for a wild ride. It was going to be her last semester on campus. She had her senior recital coming up, and mostly a lot of other lasts.

We were invited to attend a friend of hers' wedding. It was the first wedding either of us had gone to that our parents weren't at. She was an usher/the emcee for the reception, but it still meant that I got a crap ton of time around her that night. I think that put us both in our feels and we both start getting really mushy about the whole thing.

She has her senior recital on the bass trombone. It was over in a flash, but I could not be more proud of her. She did such an amazing job with it, and I could not imagine it going better. It was such a cool experience getting to watch her up there all in her element, doing the thing she loves most in the world. It is the biggest performance of her degree, and she absolutely NAILS it. We also get to hang out with one of my best friends from high school (who drove all the way to our college campus with her boyfriend {who I hadn't met anywhere that wasn't a funeral} just because she also wanted to support J in her recital).

For Thanksgiving break, we start packing up some of J's things. The stuff that she isn't going to need anymore. Anything that we can to make her big move our in December a little easier. We make more trips back and forth across the state to hit everyone. She gets to meet my family from out-of-state and hold a baby for the first time ever in her life.

The first few weeks of December are a mess. I'm trying to get my new major figured out while also staying on top of my incredibly demanding current major and prepping for juries. She is wrapping up loose ends as her time in college comes to an end.

We have the hardest goodbye we've ever had. Once all of her stuff was packed up and ready to head back to her hometown, there was no telling when we would see each other again. We were both going to be busy with work and stuff all of break, and she wouldn't be returning to campus in January.

By luck and luck alone, I had a three-day weekend leading up to New Year's. I texted her mom telling her that I was going to surprise her. By this point, we did have a visit day picked out for her to come visit at school, so I was able to hide my excitement of getting to come surprise her through being excited about that later day.

I knock on her door. She yells that she's not decent. I didn't want to let her know that it was me, so I knock again. She opens the door. Her jaw drops.

I get to officially meet her brother who lives out of the country and his girlfriend who is from the country that he lives in. I get to spend New Year's with them in person instead of via FaceTime in my room. Her friends come over. Her brother's friends come over. We all gather in the living room to watch the ball drop.

I get my first ever New Year's Kiss.

We say goodbye at the end of the weekend, easier knowing that the next time I get to see her is already all planned out. Still hard though.

I move back to campus and prep myself to start in a whole new major where I'm essentially a first year and I do not know *anyone*.

The first visit gets postponed for weather. She starts student teaching. That, too, gets interrupted a lot by the weather. Once the weather calmed down, she made her first visit back to campus and came to visit a meeting in our fraternity to say hello to all of our sisters.

I trudge through a lot of snow. Days that probably should have gotten cancelled due to being cold or icey. But really finding myself in it. Getting myself ready for my spring semester job that inspired me to change my major to begin with. The best job I will ever have.

We have more visits. We have more people pledge into our chapter.

Our spring break ends up lining up perfectly so we spend the entire time together.

We travel a few weeks later to watch the Sonic Symphony. I come to watch her conduct her first concert ever. The kids treat me like I'm a celebrity.

I finish the semester strong, stronger than I've ever had a semester in the history of college.

I get to watch the love of my life walk across the stage for her graduation. She graduates with having the honor of having the highest grades in our chapter. She also walks with the honor of the HIGHEST award that our school offers graduates. Only one person per department gets it. To get it, you have to have high grades and an amazing character. It is a medal that she gets to walk with.

She helps me finish packing up my car. We drive together to her town, which has now become our town as I now live with her.

We have set specific financial goals that we would like to accomplish before we start saving for a wedding. We have set a number to have saved to start wedding planning.

We spent our third pride together, living our absolute best lives.

This August, we will celebrate our 2nd anniversary with her helping me move in because I am now an RA at our college and need to be there early.

I cannot even begin to put words to how lucky I am to have her. She is my absolute world and I don't have a single clue in the world of what I'd do without her. She is my rock, my confident, my everything. She has been there for me when I needed her. She always knows how to make me smile. She makes the every day stuff *fun*. I love getting to run errands with her, plan out our breaks so that we can make sure to visit everyone. We work incredibly well together as a team and we are able to compliment each other incredibly well.

She inspires me to be a better person, because she deserves the absolute best and I want to be the absolute best for her.

She treats me like an absolute princess.

She is the gift that I have been so, so, *so* incredibly lucky to receive.

I love her so very, very much. I'm living in a massive fairytale. There is nothing I could want more than I want to have her by my side for my entire life. I cannot *wait* to get to be married to her and build our entire lives together.

Das us, living our best lives ❤️❤️❤️

[ohgodmyeyes]

Hello love, I got someone else hooked to disassembly and we both can’t wait for updates to resume when possible ❤️

hey! i'd been meaning to do this for a couple of days, because you've been so unimaginably kind and patient.

i didn't anticipate ever needing such a long break from a creative project; but then, i've also never poured quite this much of myself into that kind of endeavour before. (*not sure whether i'm talking about disassembly by itself, or my anakin stuff in all its entirety, not that it especially matters in-context.)

anyway, because you trusted me enough to recommend it to someone new after watching it go so long without an update, i feel like i owe it to you to show you what i've written for it over the past couple of days. it's unedited, so there might be typos or notes or continuity problems or (most likely) egregious word repetition; despite that, i hope it measures up conceptually to the rest of the story.

i also hope it reassures anyone who's been in doubt that this fic means more to me than ever, and isn't far from being updated. i've loved working on it again, and i hope a few of the people who engaged with it before will enjoy coming back to it too.

i'm not going to shoot myself in the foot by deigning to offer a timeline, but i will say that there are approximately 700 words worth of SPOILERS for Disassembly behind the cut — including the baby's name!

if you would rather wait until the chapter is completed to read it, DO NOT LOOK BEHIND THE CUT.

for any/everyone else... well, i hope i'm off to a good start. (and for god's sake, pls be gentle if i'm not lol.)

...

...

"Liam. Do you like it?"

"Sure. I mean, I don't not like it. But I thought you said you wanted to pick something to make my dad happy, since Leia already used 'Ben'."

"...I thought I did. Didn't he ever tell you about his mom's old fiancé? They were going to get married; he treated your dad like he was his own kid, but he died before the wedding ever happened."

"...Oh. Right. I— I'm sure he must have mentioned him, at least once or twice."

...

Even now, you had no idea whether Luke had been feigning his familiarity with the name you'd chosen for your son. Maybe Anakin had told him; maybe he hadn't: Both possibilities seemed equally likely to you. All you really knew was that Anakin had disclosed the information to you while you'd been sitting on his couch with him, late one evening back at his old house. You'd been drinking that night, just passing a bottle back-and-forth while you watched the news scroll by together— not that you ever planned on revealing to Luke that particular bit of the story.

All Luke needed to know was the name itself, and the barest explanation as to why you'd picked it.

"I barely remember telling you about that," Anakin murmured from his seat next to your hospital bed, glancing up from the tiny bundle in your arms through a few stray strands of his own hair. His eyes were tired, but he looked happy anyway— happier, even, than you'd seen him since that last time he'd smiled at you in the car, after seeing his cardiologist. That hadn't been so long ago; now, though, it felt like another lifetime.

In more than one way, you supposed it sort of was.

Liam squirmed, prompting you to look down at him, too, but he didn't wake up. It had only been (maybe) an hour since he'd been pulled out of you; you'd placed him on your breast as soon as the nurse managing the ward had locked your bed into position and handed him off to you, but he hadn't suckled for very long before falling into what appeared to be a fairly restful sleep.

You hoped you'd fed him correctly: The next time he did wake up, you thought, you would have to ask someone for help.

"We'd both had a lot to drink that night," you said to Anakin, with as quiet a laugh as you could muster. "I'm actually almost surprised I remember— but something about it must have stuck with me."

Anakin chuckled back, but didn't appear to have anything else to say just then— evidently too wrapped up in the baby to give anything else very much of his attention. You recalled what you'd learned from Luke about how he and Leia had come into the world; by the time their dad had seen them with his own eyes, they were already more than a week old: Having been greeted, fed, changed, held, and dressed for days and days by people who weren't him.

Liam, in contrast, had almost certainly seen more of Anakin's face in his first sixty minutes of life than he had of yours— and it was Anakin who'd held him first, and taken photos of him first, too— not to mention given you the most helpful advice you'd received so far concerning diaper changes.

Fortunately for you, not knowing quite how to feel about any of that made it a lot easier to remember to try not to feel too much of anything about it at all.

"Have you heard anything from Luke yet?" you asked Anakin, not necessarily wanting to hear the answer.

"No, but I wouldn't expect him to call me. You should probably check your phone."

It had probably taken you the better part of an hour to shower and dress following your 'encounter' with Luke in the hallway, you thought; after that, you'd spent perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes in transit in the back of the taxi, and then another hour or so being evaluated before your c-section. Then there had been the operation itself, followed by your time in the recovery room, not to mention the time you and Anakin had already spent fawning over Liam—

"...You're right," you admitted, thinking about the way Luke tended to wake up early when he'd been drinking. "I probably should."

Your phone had been wrapped up in the clothes you'd come in wearing, and placed on the table next to the bed: Maybe by Anakin, or maybe by a nurse; you couldn't know. After gently depositing Liam into the bassinet on the opposite side of the bed (lifting your arms to do so precipitated a distinct stabbing sensation in the muscles close to where you'd been cut open, which you expertly ignored), you untangled it from your leggings and lit up the screen.

"Shit," you said— out loud, without meaning to.

"What?" asked Anakin, seeming almost to come out of a trance.

"...Luke thinks something happened to you. I— well, I think he might be on his way here soon." The prospect of Luke showing up at the hospital (maybe even still half-drunk) shouldn't have filled you with dread, but it did. By some miracle, your brain didn't even chastise you for your lack of enthusiasm; maybe, you thought, even it couldn't blame you.

Anakin paused, as if to think. He'd been doing a lot more of that recently, and so it wasn't difficult (for you, anyway) to remember to wait. It wasn't that his brain 'didn't work', as he seemed to have taken to characterizing it; rather, it was that it didn't work as quickly as he or anyone around him was accustomed to it working.

He was still himself, and he could even still act like it, too— just so long as you gave him enough time.

"...How does he know where we are?" he finally asked, all of a sudden making you regret your own patience, at least that time.

"What?" you asked back, this time intending to buy a few seconds for yourself instead.

"How does Luke know we're here, at the hospital? If he'd called, they would have told us."

Great job. Are you going to tell him about the dog tracker you put in his leg, now?

...No. No, fuck you.

"He must have told the computer at home that I lost my phone," you lied.

"Oh," said Anakin, followed by another long and thoughtful pause. "...Are you sure you're okay with that?"

You laughed, and laughed bitterly; you didn't mean to, exactly, but you also supposed that if anyone was liable to understand, it was almost certainly Anakin. "It doesn't matter whether or not I'm okay with it," you told him, stealing a guilty glance in Liam's direction as it occurred to you that you should probably start trying to be a bit more quiet for his sake.

"I think it matters," said Anakin. "If you don't feel like seeing him right now, then—"

"Then I'll see him anyway," you finished decidedly, looking down to offer a poke to your own still-tingling legs because you didn't want to look up at Anakin just then. Something like a cramp seemed to run through one of them; right up into where you'd been cut open, but it didn't hurt so much as it felt foreign: Enough to bother you, but not in a way that was liable to make you say 'ow'. "If I start treating him differently now, it's only going to make things worse for all of us."

"Before tonight I probably would have said the same thing, but—"

"But nothing. Did you forget what we talked about before— when I was still in the shower?"

Anakin shot you a look. "No. No, I didn't 'forget'— actually, I'm starting to think I remember it better than you do; I'm not the one who's been making excuses for him this whole time."

"I'm not 'making excuses'," you said, all of a sudden too tired to bother to mask the hurt in your voice. "I'm trying to hold all of this together long enough to give Liam the kind of life he deserves. He's only a baby; he can't grow up with Luke and I hating each other."

"He doesn't have to." Anakin looked past you, and over at the little hospital bassinet instead. "...I really wasn't joking when I said I thought you should call someone. If you leave now, Luke will—"

"Luke will dump you in the veteran's home, and none of us will ever see each other again," you hissed, cutting him off as sharply and deliberately as you could without shouting at him. "You say you haven't forgotten, but we've been over this more than once, and—"

"And every single time we do 'go over it', it gets worse! I didn't agree to move in because I thought it was a good idea; I did it to make you happy— because you thought we could keep flying under the radar, and I wanted to trust you. We're not anymore, though, whether we like it or not, and Luke—"

"Luke is going to be a great dad! You might not have been able to give him the tools to be a husband, but I know he's going to be a good father; all you have to do is let him try. Anyway, I need him as much as I need you... especially now," you added, with yet another glance in the direction of Liam's tiny, sleeping form.

"You don't need either of us," said Anakin, shaking his head. "You could do it alone, and I think you probably should."

You winced at his bluntness, not that you hadn't expected it. He'd said the same thing about Leia and her boyfriend, after all: Projecting his own fears around intimacy onto the people he cared about; pretending it was hard-earned wisdom instead. You supposed he could very well have been both 'correct' and 'projecting' at the same time, but...

...

...

...

AND THAT'S IT FOR NOW. i was tired last night and whatever else i wrote after that is still gibberish. back to it tonight, though, i hope. i would be lying if i said i didn't feel anxious and rusty, but it's okay to feel that way once in a while.

anyway... 'Liam' is a deliberate reference to Liam Neeson, because of course 'Qui-Gon' doesn't exactly fit into the AU. I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to shoehorn a brand-new character into anakin's past for the sole purpose of justifying the name, but at the end of the day, it's not the clumsiest thing i've ever done as a writer (even within this story).

there's a chance i might go back and add a scene to an earlier chapter so that it isn't too jarring to new readers, but part of me also thinks it's fine the way it is. they've had lots of time to talk, frankly, and we were never going to hear all of the conversations, were we...?

anyway, i'm obviously not going to tag the ships or let people reblog this... but if you happen to know of someone who might appreciate it, you're more than welcome to link them. hopefully i'll see you again soon.

thank you, @lilahelynora — and everyone/anyone else who's been in any way patient with me recently (i'd tag a few other special people too, but frankly i don't want to bother them). it all means more than you know.

[trinity-mia]

a story as endless as the ocean

the lightning thief

0.1 kronos ate the kids

warnings : kronos... eating his kids

word count : 3.7k

0.1 kronos ate the kids... yummy ( ? )

-- sixteen years later

In the absence of the sun, the day could've been observed as night as dark storm clouds gathered overhead. I was glad I'd checked the weather before getting on my motorcycle— I would just barely miss getting caught in the storm.

Normally, in New York City, you only drove yourself places if you were one of two things: rich or stupid (although, to be honest, it's astounding how often those two things coincide). The traffic of Manhattan is unbearable, but if you're that much of a show off, and you really want people looking at your car, you drive. However, while I did fall under the "rich" category (thank you random casting agent in Central Park when I was 2... I guess?), I wasn't driving because I wanted people to see the Harley my mom had gotten me for my 16th birthday the August before. Being entirely honest, I just needed a break, and sometimes yelling at people about how awful their driving is can be very therapeutic. 

But the clouds unsettled me in a way that I couldn't explain. A way that had me shuffling on my Harley and shifting my weight much more than my ADHD would normally have made me do. The weather had been off since I'd come back from Philly in December, so I was almost used to it at that point, but it was like a sandbag had burst open in the pit of my stomach, letting all of the particles of sand spill out, every time I looked up at the sky. 

Still, there was no use complaining about the weather. If anything, I should've been complaining about the fact that I was still in the exact same spot I was ten minutes ago. Sometimes the City That Never Sleeps is really a pain in the ass. 

Danny was going to give me a real hard talking to if I was late for this field trip. It was supposed to be to some Greek and Roman history museum in Brooklyn, but most people weren't going to learn— they were going because it got them out of class. We only had a few weeks left of school, but Christ if we all didn't want the year to end sooner rather than later. And Danny only wanted me to go because of a role I'd recently gotten playing a Spartan queen, Aerlla, as though me knowing more about Greek mythology was going to win me another Oscar. 

I gave a sigh of relief as my next few turns weren't nearly as crowded. A bit of the traffic finally thinned out, so getting to school was much less difficult. Technically, with it being a boarding school and all, we weren't allowed to have our cars here. They figured we'd all try to leave and never come back if that were the case. It was only with a little extra money that I was allowed to be able to travel. No one else really got that privilege. 

Luck seemed to be on my side that day and I got back to the school just as they were loading the bus for us to go on our senior's (which was a whole story in and of itself, as I was supposed to be a sophomore. Thank God for online classes) end of the year field trip. While it might be the most boring thing you've ever heard of (yes, I thought that at first, too), Mr. Brunner, the coolest teacher I've ever had, was supposed to be chaperoning all of us. 

My luck ran out right after that, though, once I noticed our other chaperone was my insufferable AP calculus teacher from Georgia. She came to our school right after our first calc teacher had a nervous breakdown. She always wore a faux leather jacket and, although she was fifty, she looked like she'd drive my Harley into someone's locker whenever she wanted. 

"Allie, there you are! I was beginning to think you wouldn't make it on time," my friend, Grover, called as soon as I took my helmet off. I saw Mr. Brunner check my name off of the roll call list from beside Grover.

Grimacing as I realized I wouldn't have time to run by my room to put my helmet up and therefore would have to take it with me, I replied, "We wouldn't be in New York if I wasn't almost late."

We both boarded the bus, Mr. Brunner giving me a small smile as I passed, and luckily got a seat together. Much to my chagrin, however, it was right in front of the resident douche and pain in the ass himself: Nathan Bobofit. He gave me a gross smile and I could only just keep myself from getting up and bolting as the bus started moving. 

My teeth clenched together as Nathan reached around the back of my seat to grab my arm. "C'mon, Jackson, my lap's a whole lot more comfortable than sitting next to that weirdo."

I jerked my arm out of his hand as he tried pulling me up. "Don't fucking touch me," I snapped scathingly as I tried scooting as far away from him as I could. 

I'd had my share of rejecting him, but God if he wasn't persistent. And gross. Really, really gross. It was sad to say, but I was used to it. People on the internet don't exactly hold back either. And being an actress and model with a big following... yeah, not the best mix. People are creepy, I've learned that lesson many times. 

"I'm gonna fucking kill him this time. I swear to God, I'm not kidding," I grumbled as I felt Nathan's knee pressing into my seat, just enough for me to be able to feel. 

"Don't. Allie, these are the last few weeks you have to be in high school. If you get expelled now, you won't be able to go to Columbia next year and you'll be repeating your senior year at a different school. Just get through this, a few more weeks, and you're in the clear," Grover warned me. I huffed and leaned back, grumbling a 'whatever' to keep him satisfied. 

To be fair, he was right. Danny, my manager, would've been pissed at me if I managed to get expelled in my last semester of high school. He'd already done so much so I could graduate early and figure out a schedule for me to be able to go to some classes in person and finish the rest online. With how much time and effort he'd put into helping me get a good education, I'd hate to throw it all away because I couldn't keep my temper in check. 

And I'd hate for TMZ and all the other awful news outlets to get word of me having got expelled because I fought someone. God, I shudder to think of the fire that the media would light under my ass. Though, I thought, maybe if they figured out why, at least Twitter would be on my side. 

I was happy the trip was fairly short. I could only go so long ignoring the painfully obvious and gross comments about my body by the boys behind me. Grover and one of my cheerleader friends, Ivy, made sure they got directly behind me so Nathan couldn't. He'd been known to try things when left behind me and today I'd made a mistake by wearing a skirt. As we unloaded the bus, Mr. Brunner got us checked in and led the museum tour. 

Mr. Brunner was your average middle-aged guy, except for the wheelchair he had to be in wherever he went. It was a well-known joke for everyone around the school to try and guess why he had to use it. As far as we knew, no one was correct. Mainly because no one has enough courage to ask him. Popular theory was that he got stabbed during one of his sword demonstrations and accidentally got hurt. 

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for over two thousand or three thousand years. 

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top and us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, Mrs. Dodds would give me the evil eye.

Finally, I got fed up, my patience run too thin, and I snapped, "will you shut up?" at Nathan, the loudest of them all. And though I had turned towards Nathan, Mr. Brunner had stopped talking and I could tell he was looking directly at me. I could also hear a few stifled giggles coming for the rest of the senior class. 

"Miss Jackson, did you have a comment?" I turned back towards him and noticed his amused expression. 

"No, sir," I replied, trying to keep a blush from coming to my face. 

"Do you mind telling us what this picture represents?" He asked, gesturing towards a carving right beside him. I let out an internal breath of relief. Thank God it was something I recognized. 

"That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," he frowned, and I knew he was going to ask for a better explanation. "And he did this because..."

"Kronos was the King of the Titans and he didn't trust his kids, the gods, because there was a prophecy he heard that said they would overthrow him and lead the world themselves. So he ate them. Except, his wife, Rhea hid baby Zeus and gave Kronos and rock dressed in baby clothes to eat instead. Once Zeus grew up, Rhea gave Kronos a mixture of wine and mustard so he would throw up the rest of his children." There were a few disgusted outbursts at this. "Since they were immortal, they had been growing in Kronos' stomach the same way they would have. So then there was a long war between the gods and the titans and the gods ended up winning." 

I heard a scoff from beside me. "This is so stupid. It's not like our job applications are gonna have 'why did Kronos eat his children' as a question you have to answer correctly to get hired," Nathan stage whispered to his friends. They snickered in response. 

"And why, Miss Jackson," Mr. Brunner said, "to paraphrase Mr. Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?" 

I sighed and racked my brain for at least a semi-logical explanation, because truthfully, I couldn't think of one. "There's always something that you can learn from history and myths passed down by generations. By listening to the stories, you can ensure you won't make the same mistakes— in this case, you learn not to let your own paranoia control you?" 

He tilted his head as if debating whether or not my answer satisfied what he was looking for. He finally came to a conclusion. "Not quite the answer I was looking for, but full credit all the same. Your explanation was wonderfully done, Miss Jackson. After Kronos' children were released from his stomach, the gods teamed up together to overthrow their father. And they did so by cutting him into little pieces with his own scythe. Now on that happy note, Mrs. Dodds, could you escort us outside for lunch?"

I speed-walked out of there, Grover in tow, before Mr. Brunner could call me back in. If he needed to say something super important he could tell me outside, but I wasn't in the mood to get lectured right at that moment. 

We all gathered in various groups on the steps of the museum. We were positioned in a way that would allow us to watch the traffic on Fifth Avenue. The weather still worried me as the clouds had only gotten darker, but I forced myself to ignore it once I noticed no one else was paying attention to it. 

Most of the girls were gossiping in groups, most likely talking about how Gabby hooked up with a boy in our class, Tate Dare. I'd heard the story a million times— I didn't need the story again. 

Being famous did have one major perk: everyone wanted to be my friend, which in turn allowed me to know all of the school's gossip before almost everyone else. The boys were trying— and failing— to pickpocket a few tourists who'd stopped in front of the museum to take pictures. Of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing. 

I threw my head to the side, a gesture telling Grover to follow me to the fountain a little ways away, trying very hard to make it seem like we weren't part of the slightly-psycho group of teens. 

"Since you're my main source of news, what's going on school-wise?" Grover asked me once we'd gotten comfortable on the fountain. 

I shrugged. "Gabby, you know— the Gabriella who's on the cheer team with me— hooked up with Tate Dare. Lindsay Greene might be getting suspended for vaping in the bathrooms, but that's up in the air right now considering her daddy's a teacher. Uh... oh! Victor Ryles failed a drug test, so he can't try out for any sports next year. That's it, I think?" 

"Why do you know all of this? And can I have your apple?" 

I handed it to him and smirked. "Most people like me— well, they like my 'status' at the very least. If I want to know the gossip, they give me the gossip." 

Grover and I laughed and he was about to say something else but was cut off by Nathan 'tripping' over a crack in the sidewalk and tossing his food right on Gover's lap. 

"Oops. I got a little distracted by your beautiful eyes, Allie," he said in a faux British accent, his friends snickering behind him. 

The look on his face just made me angrier and he reached out to touch my face, but never got the chance. One moment he was in front of me, the next he was sitting on his ass in the fountain, spitting out water and a few coins. The weirdest part was the whispers. 

"Did you see—"

"— The water—"

"— Like it grabbed him!"

I clenched my teeth as I glared at him. I would've loved to say something super badass, and the words were on the tip of my tongue, but a strong grip on my arm kept me from saying it. I turned my glare to Mrs. Dodds, who was staring at me with the most triumphant expression. She looked as if she'd been waiting for this moment all semester. 

"Now, honey—" she said, using the nickname that never failed to enrage me. 

I rolled my eyes and interrupted her despite the situation I had put myself in. "Oh, whatever! What's my punishment going to be? See how long I can go without eating?" I snapped. 

That apparently wasn't the correct thing to say. The triumphant fire in her eyes only burned brighter. 

"Come with me."

"Wait!" Grover said, trying to force himself in between Mrs. Dodds and me, giving me a why-the-FUCK-would-you-say-something-like-that look. "It was me, I pushed him."

It wasn't the most believable lie in the world, especially considering I had much more muscle than him and it was very obvious he wouldn't have been able to push Nathan into the fountain. 

Because of the roles I'd done, I had to learn a whole bunch of shit I'd never use again, which include, but are not limited to, sword fighting, hitting many bullseyes with a bow and arrow, and lots of hand-to-hand fighting. From the weight training classes I take, I can bench press about 160 pounds, give or take, and cheerleading makes throw myself upside down while spinning. Grover looked like a twig compared to me (still love you, though, Grover). 

"I don't think so. Miss Jackson will come with me, and you can stay right here."

She didn't have to try hard to scare Grover, considering she already terrified him. He gave a small and stiff nod and looked at me petrified. 

"Thanks for trying, G," I whispered. 

He just stood paralyzed and kept glancing between Mr. Brunner and Mrs. Dodds, who was already at the front door. 

Wait, what? How did she get there so fast? I shook my head and walked after her. 

"Don't die in there, Jackson! Me and my friends still want to fuck you before we graduate! How about Thursday?" Nathan yelled at my turned back. 

I turned, gave him my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare and a middle finger, then continued walking. 

At first, I thought she was just going to make me buy Nathan a new t-shirt at the gift shop, but that didn't seem to be the case. Mrs. Dodds kept walking until we'd made it back to the Greek statues and paintings section. 

She crossed her arms with her back turned towards me until I'd gotten close enough. When she turned, I stopped walking. 

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said after a few moments of silence. 

At first, I thought she was mentioning all the random times paparazzi would show up at the front steps of Yancy Acadamy and demand my picture, but something told me that wasn't it. I decided to go for the safest option and chose to be polite. 

"Yes... ma'am?" 

She started making a sound from the back of her throat, almost like growling. She tugged on the cuffs of her jacket. "Did you really think you were going to get away with it?" 

I furrowed my eyebrows. The only thing I could think was, what the hell? The fire grew brighter. She looked beyond mad; she looked evil. "I'll... it won't happen again... ma'am," I shot out, saying the first response that came to mind. 

Thunder shook the building. 

"We aren't fools, Astraea Jackson."

I flinched at the use of my real name. Virtually no one knew it, only my mother, the principal, and my manager. And usually it was because I was in trouble. I didn't like the way it rolled off her tongue. 

"It was only a matter of time before you were caught. Confess to what you've done and I might choose to be merciful."

"Okay, time for a pause. What am I even confessing to? What the hell did I do that was so—"

"Time's up!" 

And with that, she started changing. Her eyes turned red, her fingernails grew into talons, and her leather jacket started melting and turning into wings. 

"Holy shit!" I screamed, scrambling back a few steps as she shot into the air. Thunder rumbled again. 

"Allie!" 

My eyes didn't shift from the winged-bat-creature-thing my calculus teacher had just turned into, but my mind registered that it was Mr. Brunner's voice. I stepped back and turned and barely had a second to catch the sword flying towards me. Once I had it in my hands I turned back towards Mrs. Dodds, who was flying overhead like a vulture. 

Finally, she swooped down for the kill and I got into the stance my instructor made me do thousands of times over. Once she got close, I didn't feel any fear. It's just like a prop, do what you're supposed to and you won't get hit. 

My body did the only thing that came naturally; I swung the sword. 

She'd flown down in the perfect position, and the sword hit her left shoulder and passed through all the way to her right hip. She burst into a yellow powder and vaporized on the spot, leaving only the smell of sulfur and an uneasy vibe in the air. 

I didn't register the sword falling out of my hand, only the overwhelming desire to get back to my group. I felt like throwing up and like an awful migraine was about to hit. 

When the doors were in my sight, I sprinted the rest of the way and almost ripped the doors off their hinges to get out of there. Grover met me halfway down the steps and started to say something, but I just shook my head. I felt like I was about to pass out from the pain in my head, so there was no way I could've explained anything that had just happened to Grover. 

Just as I got off the last step, Nathan intercepted my path. "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your ass, bitch. Would've gotten you prepared for the main course," he said, still dripping from his swim in the fountain. 

I was about to punch his lights out, but a piercing whistle cut through the storm, re-irritating my migraine. I cried out in pain, clutching my head. I settled for shoulder-checking past him, leaving him to follow in Grover and my tracks. 

Mr. Brunner gave me a concerned look as I boarded the bus, but he didn't say anything to me. Once I got to my seat I pulled a Gucci hoodie out of my bag and threw the hood over my head. Grover sat down as I was searching for some ibuprofen. I relaxed as I found it and dry swallowed three pills. 

"You okay, Allie?" 

I shook my head. "Migraine," I muttered and our conversation ended there. The storm raged worse and the entire bus was silent as lightning cracked across the sky and thunder quickly followed.

*    *    *

previous | next

SERIES M.LIST | MAIN M.LIST | TIPS

[stillchugging-captisjuice]

DAY 2B

"Once upon a time, there were a trio of keeha playing in the marsh." They looked excitedly at each other, jabbering about how we'd been watching them earlier. "They were very independent, and decided to wander deeper in, away from prying eyes, when they saw… fire." They started looking uneasily at each other, and the kii stood up from where they had lounged in oddly-shaped puddles across the floor, some of them conversing among each other quietly. I stopped, wondering if I'd said something wrong; I knew they had fire, I'd seen some sort of firepit, and the keeha had talked to me earlier about how they'd made it.

"Did they do that?" Rethán asked me. "I don't know what they did," one of my companions responded, "we were unable to watch them for long." "Why would they leave?" "Leave? I don't know, what are you talking about? We're just telling a story." "Did they tell you about this? Are you making a prediction?" "They didn't tell us anything," I said. "we're pretending they did something, in order to…spark their imagination." "Imagination…." He muttered darkly under his breath. "They have no need of that from you," he said, though not sounding too certain, and suddenly turning away to talk to the other kii. One of my companions stood, "I'll end all this, don't worry." "No," I put a hand on his shoulder. "This is good, we need to see what this is about." Rethán came back, and addressed my companion, the one who'd first spoken to him, "You do lie? You admit to lying to us about our keeha?" His expression softens, "What else could you be saying?" My companion fumbled, and I spoke up, "This never happened, we are saying it did because…because we…." I realized in that moment that I didn't know how to explain whatever it was they didn't understand. "We're wondering about what interesting things would happen if they did do that." "They would never do that." "Why not?" Another of my companions spoke up. A different kii stepped over, "do more." Rethán turned sharply toward him for an instant, before addressing us again, "They need to grow, they need to take their proper shape, they cannot do that if they are unable to see what form they are to take." "What about independence? What about learning how to do things on their own? Do they always need to be watched?" I put a hand on his shoulder, and addressed the second kii. "I will do more if you want me to." The hallway quieted, and I continued on, "creeping toward the fire, they…" I wanted something very simple, since they weren't understanding. "…They see a single keeha lying in the grass." I pause, waiting for it to sink in, and to see if they'd rush off murmuring to each other again. Nothing happened, they seemed rapt with interest; slightly disappointed, I kept going. "Approaching the keeha, they noticed he was asleep, and decided to stay quiet and not wake him." "What…could he be doing?" A female asked. "He isn't real," I said. "None of this happened, I'm pretending it did because I like thinking about…uhh…interesting things, you know." "Interesting things?" A hand was put on her shoulder, and she sat. A keeha jumped up. "I can say it too!" He shouted in delight. "Once upon a time, I climbed up a tree!" The adults turned sharply toward him. "Where did you see a tree?" The same female that spoke before enquired of him gently. "I've never actually touched one, I just said I did because I like thinking about interesting things." His skin was rippling, little pinpricks at the surface bloomed all over, and several more arms grew out of his torso and back. Every eye was on him, and he settled down, a look of deep concentration moving across his features as he stared at me. Not long after, the keeha were rushed out of the building; but before they left, I noticed that the young keeha looked almost exactly like I did: down to the details of my face. The guard was switched out, and the lights were turned off, though it was still hours until dark.

[kyndaris]

Cubano Breaks

After several unsuccessful chats with men on the app, I turned my Hinge preferences to women only. Dikottir and Game Master managed to sneak past the gate, wherein I went on a few extra dates with them but they have been the sole surviving men who have made it through my exacting requirements.

So saying, Game Master has somewhat dropped off in terms of conversation in recent weeks. Either because he forgot or he's busy at work or he feels as if the chemistry has petered off and has moved on to someone else.

It...doesn't really matter.

As for Dikottir, we still chat and he's always eager to show off pictures of his pet dog. Of course, neither one of us are excellent conversationalists (and we may share personality traits that make it hard for us to be texting non-stop. Possibly because we're both secure in who we are and don't feel the need to constant bombard the other person? Who knows. I know there are days where I don't feel like I have much to contribute to anything and would rather just sit and play video games/ stream a TV show on Netflix).

But while men tend to message almost near constantly, women, are a different beast altogether. Weeks might go from liking a photo before you receive a non-committal response and you don't know if you ought to introduce yourself or just go into a tangent about a topic of interest.

It's always a bit hard when I'm shy, both online and in person, when it comes to meeting new people. But once the conversation starts, I can become quite gregarious when the mood takes me. And confrontational too as happened during one of the dinner dating experiences where I met Hong Kong and Jordan.

Anyways, suffice it to say, it's been hard trying to date women in comparison to men. Although, there have been a few I've managed to talk to now.

None of them, of course, being Rad from Good Game because, believe or not, I saw she had a profile on HINGE! And yes, I may have liked a photo in the hopes we could become friends. Alas.

Still, perhaps it's for the best. How do you approach someone you've seen on the internet anyways? And it would just be too weird. Like suddenly realising Natalie Tran of communitychannel fame were to reach out to me and declare that we're best buds. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from hoping I'd bump into her on the streets of Sydney one of these days and either hugging her or giving her a chill fist-bump.

As you do.

In so saying, one of my friends who reads this blog has a sister who only knows of the Kyndaris represented here in these words. And it's a little unnerving when I ponder the possibility of her ever meeting me in person because I'm certainly not as eloquent when speaking in person. Then there's the fact of my appearance. Honestly, I'm just afraid I'd disappoint.

Anyways, dating!

So, although it's nearly the end of the year on writing this post, I've not actually gone on any dates with women. Yes, we chat, but neither side is willing to take the plunge. And given the fact I'm more of a Wednesday rather than an Enid, it might take a very long time. Unless I gather up my courage and simply ask.

Unfortunately, though, my weekends have been quite packed with a lot of catch-ups with friends and (at time of writing) my poor grandmother was hospitalised after we went to check her failing eyesight at an ocular surgeon's clinic. And no, it's nothing serious and she'll probably have been discharged when this post goes live, but it's just another burden on me. Coupled with the fact my mum has absconded to China, it's not been an easy few months.

On the plus side, it won't be as weird if there IS a connection with a special someone and I decide to bring them back to my place? Not sure what we'd do, though. Maybe they can watch me play video games? Or we could just chat.

So, this isn't a story about going on a date with someone. This, dear reader, is a story about NEARLY going on a date with someone.

But how can you NEARLY go out on a date with someone, I hear you ask? Quite simple!

In early October, after my road trip with a few friends down to the Southern Coast, I was texting a woman - let's call her Senorita. We exchanged a chats about mythology, primarily in terms of Medusa and if Athena's actions were right or not. But while she was of the view Athena turned the woman into a Gorgon in order to protect Medusa, I told Senorita it depends on which version of the myth you read as the legends have been retold over the centuries with a new bent.

Plus, if Athena truly wanted to protect Medusa, why give Perseus a mirror shield to help slay the poor woman afterwards? In any case, the Greek Gods were a contrary lot and trying to understand their motives is an exercise in futility.

From humble beginnings, Senorita then asked if I was more of an impulse-driven thrill seeker or someone who liked to plan things out. The answer, I'm sure, dear reader, you can figure out.

After I gave her my answer, she told me to live a little and then asked if I was free on the weekend.

Unfortunately, I was not as I was catching up with friends and needed some time out after going on a road trip and then getting a hair cut, and then driving all the way to Central Coast to show it off to a dear friend.

So, then, I posed the question if Senorita was free the next weekend. Her response? She was going camping. Which, honestly, was fair.

She did, however, tell me she was free on Friday.

I, however, told her I was going to meet work friends on Friday in Parramatta to check out a festival involving good food, music and entertainment. Senorita, for some unknown reason, latched onto the idea of meeting up afterwards. But by afterwards, she meant about 6 PM, only an hour after the festival would begin.

Given the time constraints, and the fact I'd already agreed ahead of time to meet my work friends, I replied it would be tight but I would see what I could do. I even informed her it might have to be after 6, and perhaps 7, if we wanted to grab dessert or something for a quick meet-up.

Senorita agreed.

On the day, I caught up with my work friends at 5 PM, right outside the train station before we headed further into the festival of 'Parramatta Lanes.' Along the way, we admired the stalls, checking to see what kind of foods were on offer. I, of course, showed off my new haircut to their utter amazement as they hadn't expected such a dramatic change from me.

After heading down the main food street in Parramatta, we headed to the rooftop party at a local carpark. One foodtruck that caught our eye was Kurepu Crepes Harajuku, the most tiktoked crepe! Unfortunately, none of my work friends were eager to join the massive line.

Unsatisfied with the food options available, we headed to an actual restaurant. By then, it was 6 PM and I let Senorita know I was having dinner with my work friends. I even gave her the option of coming over to where we were eating: Coco Cubano or meeting up afterwards. For some reason, Senorita was reticent, telling me to enjoy dinner but not advising if we were going to meet up later.

By the time my work friends and I finished dinner, it was a few minutes after 7. Given I'd given Senorita that approximate timeframe, and with my work friends wishing to depart right afterwards, I messaged Senorita to see if they were keen for that meet-up.

As I walked to my car, I received no reply from the woman. By then, it had been a good thirty minutes since I'd sent her the message and I wasn't keen on waiting around for someone who wouldn't reply to me even though I had been giving her clear communication throughout the night, and she had tried to force a meet-up even after I'd told her I was meeting friends.

It wasn't until I finally got home that I received a message from Senorita over Hinge telling me she didn't think I'd be able to make it and that she agreed to go to a gig with a friend. She then told me we could reschedule the meet-up (which, honestly, should have happened beforehand with her realising I wasn't going to ditch my friends over someone I'd only just chatted to on the internet). I wished her luck at the gig and she told me she would.

Since then, we haven't chatted since although I was very tempted to unmatch her there and then.

What I got out of the entire experience was the temerity of some of the people on the Hinge app. Why force yourself into a night out when I was already seeing my work friends? And then later flake even though I had told you exactly where I was and the approximate time I'd finish?

Utterly no respect!

My eye was constantly on the time but I didn't want to be rude to my work friends and brush them off.

In the end, though, if given the same choice, I'd pick my work friends every time over a woman like Senorita.

It also soon transpired that Senorita worked Sunday to Thursday. So, if you were available to meet on Friday, dear Senorita, why were you only camping for a day on Saturday? Is it even camping if you don't do it overnight?

Anyways, it was good riddance to a time-waster.

I'm not sure if the other women I'm currently chatting to will burn me just as bad as Senorita, but it's the risk one takes by putting oneself out there. At the very least, I'm getting to meet new people. And hey, if it doesn't work out, I still have my fictional boyfriends/ girlfriends to keep me going. Along with my Squishmellow Snorlax.

[kudos-si-do]

move along (or you might as well be dead)

they tell me: sooner or later, life is going to look like it did before. i don't think that's true. when i was ten, my dad promised me that we'd come back to a place that came to mean more to me than anywhere else in the world. he died before we had the chance. sometimes i look at the pictures, at the curves of roller coasters gleaming above lake erie, and i wonder if he knew that his cancer would kill him.

it's been a long road. the chemo they used to save me — to poison me just enough to only almost kill me — almost killed me again, more than a year after remission. neuropathy, they said. common with chemotherapy. especially common with how much you were treated with.

it doesn't matter, what they say now. i hit the ground headfirst from somewhere around eight feet up. i don't remember it. you're getting better, they say, but then they take another look at me and i'm placed back into the prison i've only ever been paroled out of for a few scant days, a few golden hours.

there's blue ice cream on my tongue. they don't sell this specific kind here. i laugh as i say it's a gel or a liquid, banned on airplanes. freedom, taken back. blue, blue, blue.

you tell me that my family isn't normal. i've been told all my life that every family is its own kind of mess, that my family wasn't any messier than anyone else's. that maybe we were lucky, getting the family we had. i believe only part of it now, but before you, i believed it completely. yes, it's true that humans are messy. we get our messes everywhere. but it isn't so normal for someone to throw away your possessions and laugh while you sob, scoff as you dig through the dumpster for pieces of your childhood you can never get back. or is it normal? am i making everything about myself again? am i being dramatic? i've been told that all my life — i'm too dramatic. i walk on three broken bones and i don't complain.

your family isn't normal either. someday i'll send hockey postcards to your father without an ounce of guilt. someday i'll look another member of your family in the eye and disagree, even though i was supposed to be agreeable, even though i promised i wouldn't do anything to make your life harder. smile, smile, smile, i told myself. be at your best. don't let your cracks show through.

my dad was supposed to teach me to drive, to threaten my significant others, to walk me down the aisle. all my friend was supposed to do was grow up. she'd be an adult now. her birthday was last month. the sixteenth anniversary of her death was a less than three weeks ago. she's dead, frozen in time as a kid with a feeding tube up her nose and a bucket hat on her head, always pink or purple. i remember thinking that she was the bravest person i'd ever known. my dad was brave, too. does bravery always beget bravery?

i'm going to die. one day, if not today. if not tomorrow. if not next week, next month, next year. i'm trapped in the same few hundred square feet as i'm always trapped in. you're late by an hour to pick me up from the airport. i think i should be annoyed about it, but i only shake my head. i wonder what adventure your adhd has taken you on. when i hug you, there's relief in the action. i'm tired. my head is spinning. i'm not quite there, not quite right, but i want to be. i'm a little bit trapped in my mind, i think. am i being dramatic? later, i'll hit my head lightly on a support column in the barn while you're trying to teach me to dance. it will bruise, just barely, but enough to betray me. i'll have bad migraines for days, and i'll be too scared to talk about it. i find the fucked up basement we joked about and i make sure you see it.

i don't touch people much. most days, i don't like to be touched. i remember that my dad's hugs felt like the safest place on earth. i wonder if there's anything left of him below the ground, eighteen years later, or if it's all just bone. i've lived much longer without him than with him. i try to project safety through my arms and hope that's enough. or at least something. anything. i can touch people i'm comfortable with, most of the time. every time i thought you looked sad, i did my best. i swung my arm around your shoulders. shook your arm. made a face. i hope it made a difference. i know it was hard, being where you were, doing what you did. i hope you knew that i was proud of you.

i'm scared, but i'm not allowed to be. i fight with my brain, frustration growing. i watch your family with suspicion, with disapproval that they might or might not have earned. i try to be friendly, project myself in a way that makes me enjoyable to the people around me. i'm not that person, not really, not always. one of my friends says i'm much different in person than i am otherwise. is that true? who am i, really? am i someone who can be seen, whose flaws can be pushed away enough to only show the light? when i looked at them, who did they see looking back?

it was odd, hearing my name with a different sound to it. everyone used the same pronouns, but not the ones i'm used to hearing. it's funny, i think. gender means nothing to me, but at home, i hear a different set of pronouns. sometimes i wonder what it would be like, but i don't dwell. it wouldn't be dangerous, i don't think, not in the way a lot of queer folk are in danger, but it would bring more harshness and hardness to my life than i think i can currently bear. i wonder if you think that i'm a coward. am i a coward?

i'm in bed again. you were supposed to be here this week. i watch the plans sift out of my hands like sand. the pressure in my chest is enormous. it hurts to breathe, sometimes. my head is tangled up. they think i'm having seizures. i'm spending more time inside the hospital than i have in a long time. it curls in my chest like fire against bare skin, but i have to bear it. you're lucky, they tell me. it can always be worse. can't it?

i was raised by a religious mother and a non-religious father. once he was gone, there was nothing left to protect me from it. i spent years entrenched in it. i remember one of my teachers bragging that they didn't take money from the government so that they weren't beholden to their requirements. they didn't have to hire the gays, she said. i remember how one of my bible instructors told me to keep my mouth shut. i had too many questions. i ruined too much. the only time i blatantly cheated, it was on a test to name the chapters of the bible. i was caught and suspended. the teacher looked at me like i was scum the rest of my time at that school. am i fake, made of plastic and metal? am i real, flesh and bone and sinew? pulling out of that hate has taken a decade, and i'm still not done.

i stand amongst the protesters, those early months of the pandemic. i wonder, even then, if it will make a difference. years later, my cousin hangs a wooden flag with a blue stripe above her door. i burn underneath my skin. i say nothing.

i found the churro ice cream in the freezer section with a "new!" label around the plastic tamper shield. i bought both of the pints that they had and put them in the freezer. i got a pint of half baked, too. i prefer phish food, myself. i look up the closest scoop store and wonder what it would take to get there. i don't touch any of the pints.

i'm not allowed to drive. my car sits, unused. i rankle as i pace the same endless walls. i trip on nothing. i sit back down, mutinous. i haven't been kind to the breaks in my pelvis and femur. they twinge from the cold, or from overuse, or from both. i remember walking around the oncology floor years ago, spurred by the sheer amount of steroids i was on to offset the effects of the difficult rounds of chemo. there was no leaving, nothing but the same floor and the same walls and the same enlarged pictures of flowers. i got paranoid enough to think that they were watching me. in some ways, i think they're still watching me.

there aren't any flowers in my room. i don't like to see them, outside of in nature, but sometimes i understand the desire to receive flowers. i've never been given them. i've never considered myself as particularly desirable. i've dated, and the relationships have ended in failure. but i loved them, once. i still love them, in a way. i'm not sure if there's a wrong way to love, so long as you're loving in good faith. i wonder if i'm lying to myself about love, if i even have the capacity to love. i wonder if i'm lying to myself about any good traits i think i might have more often than i care to admit. i'm not a good person, i think. i try, scrape and scrabble my way up mountains, but it never feels like enough.

i forgive you for not braiding my hair.

but you knew that, didn't you?

[abetteranglican]

Hearing the doorbell ring and knowing he was there was delight. As I knew he grew nearer I would stay downstairs, pacing about the living room, going back up and picking something off my bedroom floor, annoying Stevie. Anything to dull the ache of his not being there yet.

It was that awful feeling of hanging on, almost falling because the strength of my attachment was so unbalanced on one side. Off kilter, when I heard him I would skid to the door, as if the string tied under my left rib had been yanked. I would see brown curls through the little frosted window, open the door and grin up at him. His dark eyes would be so excited. I'd press myself into him for a few moments, perhaps a kiss after my parents knew we were dating, and then I'd hurry him upstairs into my room. He always took too long removing his shoes by the door, which agonised me.

I would run to the top of the stairs and beckon him up from behind the banister, needing so badly to lie in the comfort of my bed with him. Once herded into my room I would close the door behind and kiss him properly, and then he would start to kiss me. Relaxing into his full attention I felt the sense of peace that thrives off quiet anxiety below. He would cup my small face in his large, warm hands with the beautiful little moles and keep me very, very close. The heat and ecstasy of his devotion made me sore from knowing that it would dissolve if ever seen or judged by another person. But there was no one else in my room, so it was almost real.

He would draw me on to the bed and we'd choose our route for the next hours. He might lie down with my head on his chest and I would nestle in and listen to him talking. Or we'd each begin to touch each other in that familiar way, my breath catching and he slid his hand under my shirt and around my bare waist. Or we would do that, and my breath would catch purposefully, because I didn't want to feel the weight between his legs pressing into me but I knew I'd say nothing of that and may as well let him find joy in my body if I couldn't find it anywhere.

In each scenario I would feel that the floor was slipping away beneath me, as the time marched on and his leaving ran closer and closer to me. Sometimes I would cry when he checked his watch and said he'd 'have to start getting ready to leave in a little while', but I would try not to. More often I would become depressed and slow and stupid, very rarely did I feel safe in his going away.

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

Autie Things: The Buildings of New Haven

Like most of my random hyperfixations, what I'll talk about in this post will get... Weird. To say the least. You onboard?

I grew up in and around New Haven, Connecticut. I frequently go through it or have to go there.

Years and years ago, my father used to live on a hill overlooking that whole city. New Haven is nothing like, say, New York. Or even fellow CT cities like Hartford. It has some fairly tall buildings, like the CT Financial Center and the Knights of Columbus building, but nothing truly towering. From my dad's house, however, the view showed me a nice assortment of different buildings of varying design styles. Many of them marked by the eras they were planned and built during.

The upstairs part of my father's house had a wide room, which he had used as the TV room and our room for when we'd visit on the weekends. There were two windows where one could look out, and on almost any day... You could see the whole city of New Haven. All of it, almost like it was laid out on a line. Every single building. One of my aunts would often tell me, "When you looked out those windows, you'd always say 'Castles!'"

And, thinking about that, in a way... To a roughly 4-year-old autistic kid, the eclecticism of those buildings would indeed suggest "castles"...

The above photo was taken by me in early 2022. The skyline was about the same back in the mid-to-late '90s, minus two buildings seen here: The wide and tall one off to the left was finished around 2009, ditto the tall rectangular one (that you can see between the two telephone polls). There was also another very visible building that used to be right next to the Yale New Haven Hospital... Come to think of it, it kinda looks like 4-bars forming a hand flipping the bird...

(Photo credit: Cuozzo Realtors / iStock)

The building that stuck out to me the most was the Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital... This... Very strange looking thing:

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From a distance, those top story windows with the blue paneling (?) looked like... Weird sorta "eyes" to me. Like it was a three-eyed alien building or something. Staring straight at me, looking out my dad's house's top floor windows... Okay, I probably didn't think it a creature or anything, but it always looked so weird and so idiosyncratic to me. It was, after all, probably the newest building of the bunch, as it had been finished in 1993. Everything else spanned roughly the '50s to the '70s. That Knights of Columbus tower, for example, was finished in 1969. It used to be right next to the New Haven Coliseum, which was destroyed in early 2007. I stood and watched the implosion, too, out in the cold that morning...

So, as a kid, whenever I'd visit my dad on the weekends, we'd go a lot of places. That meant, I saw this skyline from different angles all across the border of the city, and on the shores of various beaches as well. Lighthouse Point, for example, has a great view of the city. Two massive rocks overlook the city as well, West Rock and East Rock... Imaginative names, but whatever! The university I went to is right next to West Rock, which was always cool. And I've been up both of those rocks many times. And it was neat seeing the buildings in a different order, different from the view from my dad's house: From different angles, some buildings off to the side while others are a lot more front and center. My focal point was always the hospital, so it was interesting seeing it go from the far left to the middle and sometimes even the right... And then out of view! Such as this view from a cemetery at the bottom of the hills...

I also took this photo in early 2022.

But really, there's a charm - to me - with a city this size and all this land around it rather than just water. Driving through different sections of town, seeing this city - which I feel has a distinct character of its own, then and now - from all the different angles... Maybe this all, in some way or another, informed my general love of layout in animated movies. The perspective with which everything was mapped and planned out. Or just a general fascination with perspective, the way anything - be it a city or a small object - is drawn or photographed or shot...

As you may expect, if you've followed me for a while, I drew this city skyline quite a lot! I incorporate Connecticut settings, New Haven especially, into a lot of stories I write. As a child, I always asked my dad to pull out his New Haven County Atlas. Yes, I was a weird kid who could look at the atlas for like an hour or two. I'd draw maps of New Haven myself, because I was one of those auties who had to recreate things to understand them and break them apart and such... And also, I just found them fascinating! The ways the roads looked like grids, the way the highways and exits were all noodley and curly and such, it all just... Well, to put it the way the cool kids put it, it was SATISFYING to look at... It was to the point where my classmates knew me as the map-making kid. I loved globes and world maps and geography. The way things looked when drawn out, how some continents had weird shapes, etc... You'd guess right that I played SIMCITY a lot. I also had this... I wanna say it was a catalogue-order educational game from the late 1990s called MAKE-A-MAP 3D. I'd play those for hours! I'd fixate, as a teen, on the overhead maps seen in games like the GRAND THEFT AUTO entries or JAK II. And as an adult writer/artist/comic creator? You better believe I make maps of the locations where my stuff takes place!

The other day, when I thought I had gotten lost during a long night drive, I used those core memory New Haven County Atlas readings to help me find my way back without the Maps app! I knew one day, that "useless" knowledge I collected in 2nd grade would come in handy!

I'll go a little bit off track here, because that's what I do... Part of this was also fueled by... Fear...

There was a building that we went by on the way to my father's house back in the day. It was very visible from the highway. It was an apartment complex, and its first floor housed a bar and grill called Humphrey's. A massive, orange, cursive neon sign hung from the side of this complex, going vertically up the building. A very unique idea, for sure. Not the side of the building as a sign that juts out from the building itself, nor on top of the roof... Plastered onto the brick wall. At night, it glowed very brightly. It was freakin' BIG.

And for some reason, it FRIGHTENED me when I saw it close-up. From a distance, it weirded me out, but I was even more afraid of it when seeing it up close. I couldn't tell you why... Was it the weird cursive? The orange color? I already had a thing with neon signs because I assumed they'd burn me, like a light bulb would. I would have nightmares about the sign, such as particularly mean one (thanks a lot, brain!) where I was at my dad's house... And on the window, at night, was the sign. Plastered right against it! Ahhhh!

Sometimes, my autie brain couldn't wrap my head around how weird certain things looked... While, strangely, accepting other weird things. Even weirder things, stuff that was **meant** to be scary. Around the time I feared the "Humphrey's sign", I was watching shows like COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG no problemo. I was a weird kid, okay?

Anyways, part of my interest in the county atlas was knowing where that Humphrey Street was. Where's that scary neon sign? But also, where is everything else?

The sign was taken down years and years ago, because all the Humphrey's Grille & Bar restaurants in the state went out of business. I had actually eaten at one of the suburban locations prior to closure, and found it to be... Okay? The owner, funnily enough, was arrested for tax evasion of all things! They should've included "giving nightmares to a young autistic!" hahahaha.

The only photo I could find of the sign, lit up no less, was on Flickr via uploader Adam Sears. So, if you're out there Mr. Sears, thank you for preserving proof of my childhood nightmares!

So where was I... Oh yeah, the skyline of New Haven... So, that's ingrained in me. An early hyperfixation/special interest, that came back every now and then...

And one time, it came back to chomp me in 2007. When I was turning 15 years old, entering sophomore year of high school, and about to mentally collapse due to a series of circumstances I won't get into on this post... There's a road that's largely lined with trees and houses that actually has a unique view of the city. Since it's a main road and you really can't stop on it, there wasn't really any way that I could feasibly get a picture of New Haven from that angle. At least, not back then. But what my dad did once, during that period, was take me up to the high school on the hill above that hill. Of course, on a weekend, so that we could get in. And there, I snapped some okay shots of New Haven... But they weren't exactly the same, but I made due with them. They were for a scene in a story that was specifically planned for that tree-lined road. (Can't you tell, newcomer, by this point that I'm not all there in the head?) Every time we'd go down that road, I'd look - as my dad was at the 40mph speed limit - at the skyline as it whipped by!

I had gotten my license when I was 19, in the year 2011, but I immediately got so scared of driving after an accident... that I wouldn't even dream to drive in and around New Haven. At least, nothing significantly far from home...

And my fear of driving wouldn't be fully kicked until a few years ago, a little before the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was spreading. I had gotten a new vehicle in 2019 and started driving more, starting to have more confidence in myself on the road... But then after COVID-19 first broke out in March of 2020, I wasn't doing... Much of anything, let alone driving! And I didn't practice much at the time, until it was kind of a necessity... A way to escape from certain issues, if you will. I started driving more in mid-2021, and then worked up the confidence to go to places I would've never imagined going. Once I mastered those trips, I was like... I can do anything!

So one day, in January 2022, I finally did it... I went to that road, parked somewhere on one of the neighboring small streets... And tried to get that angle... Tried, being the key word... There's just too many trees here...

And you're probably looking at that, thinking, "What... All that, just for that crumby view??" Yes, it's a crumby view from the photos. Actually being there, I always found it to be unique, and it kinda means something to me. One of those weird "the little things" scenarios, really. Maybe it's something, a feeling that a photo cannot capture.

I'll always love those "castles" and the land outside of those castles, even if they aren't New York's iconic skyscrapers or Los Angeles' landmarks...

[humanityinahandbag]

@jaybren No problem, my good dude

-

Eddie was going to die.

He was going to die right here, on this bed, in Steve Harrington's room.

He was going to die on the bed in Steve Harrington's room while Steve Harrington rummaged around inside of his closet.

See, here's the thing. The thing was.

The thing was that Steve had taken him upstairs. Just grabbed him by the wrist and told the kids that they'd be right back before walking him oh so calmly towards his bedroom.

Eddie didn't even get ask what they were doing before Steve was sandwiching his face between two large hands and kissing him.

Steve backed them up (still very much attached at the lips) until the backs of Eddie's knees hit the bed and he stumbled to sit.

And then, like it was just another Tuesday, Steve stepped, put his hands on his hips, and said, "alright so here's the deal."

Which was why Eddie was where he was now.

Dying.

"Alright. Here's the deal." Steve stood in front of the bed, hands on his hips. "I feel like we're just wasting time dancing around each other and we should just, yunno. Hop to it!"

Eddie stared.

"And I was gonna do this the right way. Take you out in the car. Really lay out the Harrington Charm and give you the whole experience. Because listen. And don't be upset. But I talked to Wayne about this, wanted to get an idea about what kind of flowers you liked, and he said that you've had a crush on me since High School. Which is, like, super sweet. So I figured you'd want the high school Harrington experience."

Eddie stared. He couldn't breathe. He was pretty sure his jaw was on the ground.

Not that Steve at all minded. "And I'm just gonna leave it all out on the court, Munson. I know you don't like labels, and I respect it. But I do like them. I like labels a lot. So we're gonna need to workshop some after this. Sound good?"

Eddie stared. When Steve raised an eyebrow he managed a little, "uh huh?"

Steve beamed. "Sweet!" And then he held up his hand. "Up top!"

Eddie's hand practically moved on its own, too confused to do anything else but tap his palm to Steve's.

"Oh!" Steve snapped his fingers. "That reminds me." He scurried over to his closet and took out a few jerseys, holding them out in front of himself. "Robin says I'm the most honest person about love stuff, which is true. So I'm gonna be honest with you right now. That shot you made? With the paper?" He shook his head, still beaming. "Hot, Munson. Very, very hot. And that got me thinking. You know what would be hotter? If I took him upstairs and put him into one of my old jerseys and give him a good first time."

Eddie made a sound in the back of his throat. Maybe the bats had killed him? Maybe he was actually dead this whole time and he'd ascended? He'd never believed in heaven, but this was cutting it real fucking close. Exceeding it, actually.

He finally managed a full, shaky breath. "Um... Harrington? Steve?"

"Yeah?"

"What, uh. What's happening?"

"Oh! Um. Well. We'd been flirting for a while, so I thought maybe I'd, yunno. Actually make a move?" His face fell. "Oh God, am I moving too fast? I always move too fast. Robin tells me I fall for people faster than the speed of... light? Sound? Whatever. I fall fast and-"

"Steve." Steve stopped talking. Eddie swallowed. His face must have been pink now. His fingers were clutching at the bedspread. He kind of wanted to cry. Might have already been crying, actually? Which. Was not cool. At all.

"Steve," he tried again. "I didn't even know you... you liked..." He floundered.

It took him a moment, but the understanding eventually cast a shadow across Steve and he took a step back. "You didn't... oh." He swallowed. "Shit. I'm sorry. If you want to just forget this-"

"I absolutely do not." Eddie was off the bed almost too quickly, and he steadied himself before grabbing Steve's arms. "Steven Harrington. I have been staring at you. For years. I just- I didn't think you'd look at. Yunno."

The light crept back into Steve's eyes, until his whole face could have lit up the dusk outside. "I'm looking at you right now, Munson." He leaned close and kissed the tip of Eddie's nose.

Eddie knew he was blushing.

Whatever. Blushing was metal, probably.

"Listen." Steve stepped back. "We can take it slow, I'm fine with that. We can just go on a few dates first and-"

Eddie's arm shot out, nabbing one of the jerseys out of Steve's hand. He held it in front of himself. And then, just because he could, he grabbed the other jersey, balled it up, and tossed it into Steve's laundry hamper. It landed oh so perfectly inside.

Steve grinned. There was something soft and sharp about it all at once, and Eddie tried to memorize it, store it away, etch it into his ribs.

"I'll grab stuff." Steve gave him a soft push, tugging gently on the curls that had fallen just in front of his face. "You get that on, Mister Three Pointer."

"Go team," squeaked Eddie and jumped onto the bed.

Story where Eddie spends weeks pining after Steve, mourning the loss of something that he can't have, becoming the physical manifestation of Gay Longing™.

To be clear; Steve is blatantly flirting with Eddie but getting zero traction because Eddie is essentially spending all of his time sighing out the window like a goddamn tragic hero because he'll never love me the way I love him.

And Steve can be patient. He can take his time. He can woo very softly and gently and wants to do this right without scaring Eddie off.

Until, after a frustratingly long D&D planning session, Steve watches from the couch between a fighting Dustin and Lucas, as Eddie tears out paper and balls it up before tossing it into a trashcan in what can only be described as a glorious nerdified three pointer.

And that would be the tipping point.

Because Steve Harrington is a goner for pathetic, half feral nerds.

But a pathetic, half feral nerd with a good arm?

Forget about it.

(Also, to be clear, Steve would use this moment to politely explain to a blue-screened Eddie that he'd very much like to ravish him while Eddie wears Steve's basketball jersey, pretty please.)