#christmas is the time where i stay sleep until 11 am and barely eat so. yeah. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fairyoftbz · 4 years ago

Text

[06:20]

🎄 Day 11 of the Christmas project🎄

“I’m off to work, honey,” Sunwoo whispered as it was still quite early in the morning. You groaned in your sleep but turned around to lazily wrap your arms around your boyfriend’s neck to drag him closer. “You’re going already?” you tiredly mumbled as he softly giggled, lovingly kissing you on the cheek. ”Sadly I am, but I promise to come home earlier than last night,” he said, his low morning voice still laced with sleep although he woke up an hour ago. “Okay, love you,” you said as you let go of your boyfriend, who gently tamed down your bed hair before pecking your forehead. “I love you too, darling,” he said as he walked out of your shared bedroom, smiling to himself as he heard you turn around and go back to sleep.

Boy, he wished to have you in his arms right now, but work was calling him. He could barely keep his eyes open as the elevator went down, the ‘ding’ of the machine forcing him to wake up and start with his day. You allowed yourself to sleep past your alarm since your body needed some rest after the intense week you’ve just had. You took the morning off until 2 pm because today was a special day; your mission was to pick up Sunwoo’s Christmas present. He has no idea what you were getting him for Christmas, probably expecting some video games or a new bottle of his favourite perfume, but he was so wrong. On the rare occasions where you could spend your evening together, Sunwoo would rest his head on your stomach while scrolling through TikTok, his discovery page filled with cute videos, especially puppies. The number of videos of animals playing around or being cute was unimaginable. Between messages asking him at what time he was coming home and that you missed or loved him, your conversation was him feeding you with puppy content, so this planted an idea in your head. You’d get him one. That sounded like a great idea, plus I’d make you both become more responsible by taking care of an animal, as well as some company when lonely nights hit a little too close to home. Boxer was a dog breed that was quite redundant in the videos that your boyfriend always sent you. You had to admit that they were adorable, and it was getting harder for you not to want this kind of dog.

So before overthinking and reconsidering your decision, you get dressed up and walk out the door, swirling your car keys in hand before unlocking it by a swift click. Rubbing your hands together before setting them on the steering wheel, you let out a happy squeal and started the engine, excitedly driving to your destination. A few weeks ago, on a morning where your tired boyfriend got a day off and was soundly sleeping next to you, you were scrolling on the Internet to check the shelters in the neighbourhood. They all had cute animals, and you would adopt all of them if you could, but still no sign of a puppy that caught your eyes. After calling dozens and dozens of pet shelters, you finally found your sacred place. It was two hours away from where you lived, but you finally found a stray boxer who had given birth to three beautiful puppies. Refusing to buy an animal from a pet store, your task of finding the breed you were looking for was quite hard but ended up being successful.

“Oh hello!” the shelter owner greeted you as you pulled up to the place, locking your car before heading inside with the lady leading the way. “Your little boy is here,” she said as she gestured to a cage, hearing some claws, and yapping on the other side of the fence. You had come there a few days prior, so the little man must have recognised you, excitingly wriggling his small tail as you appeared in sight. “Hi! Hi baby, do you recognise me? What a good boy,” you said in your sweetest voice, the puppy stretching its small body to try and lick your face. You giggled as you avoided his scratchy tongue, gently petting him on the head as you tried to calm him down. Holding him in such a cute way that his little feet dangle in the air, you walked with the owner near the checkout to do some administrative work.

After a few more minutes of chatting with the woman in front of you and walking around the store to make your puppy say goodbye to his friends, you were out of the shelter, unlocking your car as it was trying to eat your dangling earring. “Oh my god, stop!” you laughed as you gently pulled the metal out of your puppy’s mouth, placing him in the little basket you had prepared for him before heading out of your house. He whined as you closed the door, carefully watching you walk around the car to sit in the passenger seat. The journey back home was a bit chaotic, the pup was trying to explore the world now that he was out of his former home. Controlling him while driving wasn’t the safest thing in the world, but you finally made it back home in one piece, with the Christmas gift for your loved one.

“Alright buddy let me prepare your little home, okay?” you said as you placed him on the floor, him immediately running around and sniffing everything. You hurriedly went to the cellar to get out everything that you had bought for the dog, setting everything between the couch and the wall for the moment, a quiet, discreet spot so Sunwoo wouldn’t see it when he first enters the room. You spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of the new member of the family, whose name you decided to be Choco. It wasn’t the most original thing in the world, but he was as dark as chocolate, the white areas on its body reinforcing the chocolate-milk look. Excitingly standing up when you heard the front door of your apartment open, keys being tossed on the table next to the entrance. Choco wanted to follow you, but you gestured to him to stay at his spot and hurried to the hall.

“Hi babe,” you greeted your boyfriend with a wide smile, wrapping your arms around him as he just took off his jacket. ”Oh, hi love,” he said in a breath before squeezing you tight against him, laying soft kisses on your temple. You unwillingly pulled away from the warm embrace and took Sunwoo’s hand to stop him from moving as he was about to go and rest on the couch.

“What’s up?” he asked with his eyebrows raised. You clutched his hand as you stood in front of him, caressing his chin with a smile. ”There’s your Christmas present in the living room,” you whispered, and his eyes widened even more, him suddenly letting go of your hand. ”But-“ “I know, Christmas is still in more than a week, but it was the only moment I could pick it up to have it on time,” you said, Sunwoo turning around to stare in the direction of the living room. Your little Choco started getting quite impatient of being ignored, so he yapped, the small sound making your boyfriend gasp as he looked at you, his mouth forming a small ‘o’ in excitement.

“No, Y/N. No, you didn’t,” he said, voice filled with hope as you followed him, pacing down the corridor. “Love,” he said in a breath, standing in the doorway, his face showing all the surprise and affection he could have in his body. ”Merry Christmas,” you said with a smile, and his eyes followed the small puppy, who was curiously walking towards the two of you. “Meet Choco,” Sunwoo cooed as he bent over to pick it up, the small creature starting to excitedly smell and lick your boyfriend, the action making your lover laugh. ”Y/N, you’re the best,” Sunwoo muttered as he petted the dog’s head, sneaking his free arm around your waist to draw you closer to him. You snuggled up against his chest, and he pecked the crown of your head, his hand lovingly rubbing your shoulder.

Feeling something wet landing on your hand, you quickly looked down and saw the dog wanting attention as Sunwoo stopped petting it. You gently rubbed its short fur on the head and looked up, only to find your boyfriend smirking at you. “I feel like this little dude is going to steal all the attention from my lovely partner,” giggling at your boyfriend’s words, you took the puppy and placed it down on the couch before walking back to him. You stood on your tiptoes and cupped his cheeks, fervently pressing your lips against his in a long, lingering kiss. Out of instinct, the man wrapped his arms around your waist and deepening the kiss, feeling him smile against your lips. The puppy repeatedly yapped as it was finding the kiss too long, making you both chuckle before pulling away, your boyfriend nestling his head in the crook of your neck.

You internally applauded yourself for choosing such a cute gift for your boyfriend as the evening rolled by. You had just finished eating dinner that you had cooked together, despite Sunwoo being exhausted from his schedule. Resting now on the couch watching TV, the puppy was whining from the leg of the sofa, wanting to be in between the two of you. Your boyfriend was laying on the side with his hand supporting his head, while your hand was lingering in his neck, sometimes caressing the warm skin. Sunwoo took one of the toys that were resting on the coffee table and wriggled it in front of Choco’s face, who barked while stretching its little boy, trying to get it. The little pointy teeth started showing, the puppy desperately trying to reach his source of amusement. You giggled as the puppy whined, only to have your boyfriend picking it up from the floor to place it on your laps. After sniffling your legs to check that it was a safe place, Choco laid down, not caring about the toy anymore as it rested its head on your forearm, eyes closing.

Sunwoo pouted as it preferred your warm legs rather than playing with him, only to have him scooting closer and rest his head against your stomach. You replaced the puppy a bit further on your laps to make space for your boyfriend, hand gently carding through his soft locks as he hummed.

“I can’t wait to raise this puppy with him,” you thought as you brought your attention back to the television, noticing only minutes later that the two boys resting on your body were now dead asleep, one of them snoring, stifling a laugh when you couldn’t tell who it was coming from.

118 notes · View notes

ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years ago

Text

Christmas Specials: Fishcake

CW: Some hint of dehumanization and references to Bahram’s depression/past breakdown at the end, some brief emeto references, but really this is just fluff. Oh, also brief unintentional ableism that Miah calls out.

---

BAHRAM’S NOTES

December 24th, 20XX 11:15 pm Mer in Residence: 71 Days

Miah showed up tonight with a Christmas present for me, and now I feel like a giant dick for not having anything to give her.

Christmas just isn’t a thing in my family. I mean, I have cousins who go overboard with it, kind of a fitting in thing, but my family never did. Baba does some kind of fast, but for Maman it’s just another day and for me it’s always meant mostly a day where I played video games all day because I didn’t have to be at school or work.

Oh, I need to call Baba and Maman tomorrow, note to self. She always gets worried about me right around the end of the year, what with how they figured out I was quitting school and everything.

I guess getting a phone call from a hospital leaves a bloody impression.

Anyway, Miah comes in with this big shopping bag in her hand, waving at me all bright and sunny and cheerful. She set the bag down long enough to berate me for - she assumed - having not taken my medicine on time.

For the record, she was right, but I didn’t tell her that.

Nearly drowning in saltwater made my lungs apparently terribly angry with me, so for the next eight days I’m on a run of antibiotics to handle a lovely case of bacterial pneumonia. Would’ve been far handier to get pneumonia right away, but instead I ended up in Urgent Care yesterday, paying 200 dollars and waiting two hours to see a doctor for less than ten minutes.

Dr. L says she’ll reimburse me the cost, but still.

Miah asked me how I was feeling, I said I felt fine, really, and then of course I had an awful coughing fit just to prove myself a wonderful liar. The coughing’s the worst part - every time I really get going, it’s like being underwater all over again. I can feel my lungs fighting to inflate, to take the air in, and I can hear how hard I’m working to get enough air to stop coughing at all. Miah can’t hear it, but she can see it all right, and she looked worried.

I signed, “I’m fine, it’ll stop, the doctor says it will,” and she frowned at me, but let it go, I guess. While she had her face turned away to greet the mer, I opened the pill bottle and dry-swallowed the meds really fast. Sometimes there are benefits to Miah not being able to hear things.

The mer - Kima, I can call him by his name in these notes, the ones only I see - was already at the side of the tank, watching us. He’s perked up a bit lately, since I started giving him live fish on the days Dr. L isn’t around and Miah brought him all these enrichment things. We’re doing what we can, but I know it’s still not enough.

Enough would be figuring out where his bloody family is and getting him back to them, but I just… I can’t even begin to explain, even to myself, the logistical nightmare of hauling a six-foot-long mer back to the ocean and finding someone who would take him back up north where his family likely is in the middle of bloody fucking December.

It’s the right thing to do, yeah.

But it’d just be too hard to pull off, not without losing… my whole taped-together life, yeah? Plus I’m still dealing with trying to figure out who exactly is my real employer at this point - who’s paying Dr. L - and what they want from the mer’s… thing he can do.

Miah glanced over at him and signed, “Don’t worry, I have something for you, too,” and Kima just looked back at her, head cocked to the side. She looked over at me and signed, “It’s a fish-cake.”

I have to admit, it took me a second to even begin to respond. My hands just… hung in mid-air, before finally I asked, “A what?”

“A fishcake. It’s like a fruitcake, but so much worse.” She leaned down to dig around in the big bag and pulled out a box, pausing to add, “I had to wrap it and box it or the car would have smelled horrible for days,” before she picked up and laid the box on my desk, opened it, took out something wrapped in layers of plastic, and unwrapped that, painstakingly slowly.

I glanced over at the mer, who watched with total fascination. Maybe he’d caught the sign for fish, he’s incredibly food-motivated. Which makes sense, of course, probably with his pod he’d spend a lot of his day eating and hunting for more, but

Bahram. Focus.

She was right - as soon as the plastic came off, I could smell it.

“How can you handle that? Isn’t your sense of smell… really good?” Ah, yes, I am always so proud of myself when I forget a sign for a word I want to say and have to sort of cobble together the spirit of it with other signs.

She looked at me with this sort of dry are you kidding me expression, then signed, “I’m deaf, B, not a superhero,” in a way that made me feel about ten inches tall.

“Sorry. That’s an awful smell, though.”

And it was. I like fish as much as the next man, but this was foul. She grinned at me and picked up the tupperware the fishcake was in using towels to protect her hands from picking the smell up too, I guess, and went over to the ladder up to the platform. Her back was already to me, so I couldn’t ask her the question I had, or tell her not to do that one-handed. Instead, I just sort of… got up and hovered uselessly while she climbed up without looking back, and then followed her up there.

The platform makes me… nervous, now. I stay closer to the ladder, farther from the water. I hope the mer, that Kima doesn’t think I don’t want to be close to him or something.

Miah took the lid off the tupperware and waited. Soon enough the mer popped up near us, interested in what we were doing on the platform.

I watched those nasal slits open wide when he smelled the fish. And I watched how his eyes went big and shiny with excitement. Whatever Miah had put in the foul thing, he wanted it.

She dumped it into the water - I didn’t see much, other than a sort of loaf-shape and a sense of texture I never want to think about again - and Kima tore into it. It was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen, and I have actually watched Kima eat raw fish that was living seconds before. I had to look away - and so did Miah, but she was laughing. She can’t hear herself, only feel the vibration in her own throat. Her laughs kind of sound almost honking, choked-off, just totally un-self-conscious noises she’s barely aware of.

I should tell her that I like the way she laughs.

Oh, I absolutely should not do that.

Maybe I should, though.

She grinned at me, still laughing, and signed, “This is disgusting!”

“It is,” I signed back, “And it’s your fault, don’t forget that!”

She was still laughing when Kima looked back up at us, fish bits smeared around his mouth, and she signed, “Merry Christmas, K-I-M-A,” to him. He stared back, signed yes, and then dove back under the water, present utterly devoured, leaving only gross little particles I will probably have to hose off the sides of the tank on cleaning day when the filters can’t quite pick them up.

Miah looked at me, and I just thought, you know, she’s really pretty even under the sun lamps, and nobody is pretty in that light. Then she signed, after this moment of stillness, “I bought you a present, too.”

“Me?” I pointed back at myself, blinking, surprised. “I don’t do Christmas, M, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “I know. But I still bought a present. Can I show you?”

“Um, sure.” I get nauseous when I’m nervous. For a second, climbing back down the ladder, I thought I’d just get sick all over myself. I was badly designed, my defense mechanism is just to vomit on myself to scare predators away, clearly my body thinks pretty women are dangerous and I have to embarrass myself until they stop looking at me.

Finally, though, we were back at my desk. The smell… lingered. I’ve since burned the candle Miah got me, and the sulfur from the matches and the scent of the candle itself have largely done away with it, but when we got back, it was still powerful.

She didn’t pull anything out of the bag, instead she just took a small card out of her back pocket and handed it to me.

I looked down at it. “Alborz?” I realized I’d spoken out loud, looking down, and looked back up quickly so I could repeat it in sign, so she could see. “A-L-B-O-R-Z? A gift card to a restaurant?”

She nodded, quickly, signing so fast I was having trouble keeping up. I guess… was she nervous, too? “It’s food like you grew up with, yes?”

“Yeah, more or less. I mean nothing is better than my mother’s food. But why-”

She reached out and grabbed my arm with one hand to stop me, leaned in so close that the smell of this super subtle perfume she wears was stronger, for a second, than the smell of fish. “B,” She signed, with heavy, slow emphasis, “Think about why I bought you this.”

I just looked at her. I didn’t get it at all, and told her so.

I’m so bloody dense.

She sighed, throwing her hands up in the air with an eye-roll and a smile, and then signed, “When are you taking me there?”

She had to repeat the signs three times before I realized she was asking me on a date.

So anyway, I don’t think I’ll sleep a wink tonight, and also I think I celebrate Christmas now.

Date-mas.

That was an awful joke. I’m leaving it there just to properly shame myself if I ever reread this.

---

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @slaintetowhump @moose-teeth @misspelledwitch @whumpfigure @whumptywhumpdump @boxboysandotherwhump @whumpywhumpwhump @yet-another-heathen @fanmanga1357-blog @justabitofwhump

#mer whump #christmas specials #signs of the sea #depression tw #breakdown mention tw #emeto references #mer whumpee #fluff #angst and fluff #all comfort no hurt #referenced drowning #bahram anvari #miah kirsse

90 notes · View notes

mkkhaikyuu · 4 years ago

Text

Autumn Skies: Chapter 4

previous | chapter 4 | next | masterlist

Horizons

Warnings: none (?) except for angst

wc: 3k

Coffee. You desperately needed coffee. And lunch, too, you decided, your eyes flickering to the wall clock across from you to look at the time.

You sat deflated in your seat at Miss Yukino’s office. You had just finished taking an English language assessment test for your Yale admissions that lasted around two and a half hours. It’s not that you had a hard time. You were confident that you’d managed to at least get a decent score on it. But you stayed up late last night, combing through your brain for the words to write in your college essays.

You vaguely recall 02:46 AM glowing green on the digital clock on your nightstand when you finally plopped down into your bed last night. And at 5:15 AM, the same clock had woken you up for morning club practice.

Practice had gone on normally that morning, which actually was quite unfortunate for you. Not only did you not get enough sleep, but you had to toss balls to each of the volleyball players for their spiking practice and had to clean up the gym afterwards. You barely had any energy left when you had your morning class.

It was the week before your final exams for the term so some classes were free so that students could get some of their own studying done. So after your first class that ended at 9:30AM, you were free for the rest of the morning. You then went straight to Miss Yukino’s office for the language assessment test. By the first hour of the exam, you were already beat.

Stifling a yawn, you looked over at the clock again. 12:03PM. You waited as Miss Yukino typed away into her laptop, shuffled through the papers on her desk, then typed away into her laptop again.

You decided to fish your phone out of your bag and found that Kenma had texted you.

Kenma (11:58am): y/n, where are you?

You (12:03pm): I’m at the guidance counselor’s office. I’m almost done here and I’m gonna go grab lunch right after. Why?

Kenma (12:04pm): what are you doing there? did you get into trouble?

You (12:04pm): No! What do you take me for? I’m here for my uni admissions. You know, that kind of stuff.

Kenma (12:05pm): what? I thought you were going to the university of Tokyo with Kuro. he doesn’t seem to be busy preparing for all that stuff right now unlike you.

Kenma (12:05pm): y/n... is there something you’re not telling me?

You grimaced at Kenma’s text. If he were here right now, he would have pinned you down with his calculating gaze. The guy was just too observant. It was hard to let anything get past him. Sighing, you typed in a reply.

You (12:07pm): oh yeah about that...There’s a possibility that I might not be attending Tokyo uni. Nothing’s set in stone yet though so I’d rather not talk about it for now. Please don’t tell anyone?

Kenma (12:07pm): okay, sure. but you know you can tell me about anything anytime, right?

You (12:07pm): yeah, I know :)

Kenma (12:09pm): anyway. can you come down to the clubroom once you’re done there? we can eat lunch together. i’ll buy you food. my treat :)

You (12:11pm): oh??? why’s that? but sure! thanks Kenma! You’re the best <333

Kenma (12:11pm): you’ll see when you get there.

You frowned in curiosity at his message. Kenma was not the type to initiate something like this. You wonder what was up. Exhaustion momentarily forgotten, you couldn’t wait to get yourself to the clubroom. Just as you put back your phone back into your bag, Miss Yukino calls your attention.

“Y/n, the testing center said that your results will be available next week. In the meantime, I suggest you work on your essays.”

“Oh, right,” you nodded.

“The deadline’s coming up. Don’t hesitate to drop by anytime if you need any help. The sooner we can comply with all the requirements, the better,” she grinned, raising an index finger.

You sighed in relief and stood up, smoothing down your skirt. “Thank you, Miss Yukino. I mean it.”

She waved you off, laughing softly, “I’m just doing my job. Don’t worry too much, okay? Now get out of here and have lunch. Catch up on some sleep tonight, too! You look like you need it.”

You grinned sheepishly, rubbing the back of your head. “Yeah, I will. Thanks again! Enjoy your lunch!”

You gave her a quick bow then left.

Once out of the office, you headed straight to the clubroom where Kenma asked you to meet him, jogging on the way. You were half worried that something was wrong and half relieved that you could finally take a break from the wave of draining activities you’d had since you stepped foot into the school this morning.

Reaching the clubroom, you reached out to grip the door handle and slid the door open slowly, hesitatingly, as if you were afraid of what you’d find on the other side. Peeking through the small gap, you see Yaku and Kenma staring back at you owlishly. They were seated at the table in the clubroom, Kenma holding his console and Yaku opening his lunch.

“Come in,” Yaku tells you, eyebrows raised at the way you hovered at the entrance.

“Is something up?” you asked them as you strode in and sat beside Kenma. You noted the takeout food and iced coffee that sat on the table.

“Eat first, talk later,” Yaku announces. He gestured to the food on the table. You wonder what was making him uncharacteristically serious but at the moment you were too hungry to care.

Right. Eat first, talk later.

“Here,” Kenma says, taking out the food he had delivered from the paper bag it came in and setting it in front of you. Your eyes glossed over when you realized that it’s katsudon from that pricey restaurant at the mall.

“The coffee’s yours, too,” he tells you simply.

“What the hell, Kenma? When you said it was your treat, I thought you meant food from the cafeteria! Not-” you gestured to the food he laid out in front of you, “THIS!”

You were not a crybaby. But maybe it was the built up stress you had been feeling from dealing with your feelings for Kuroo, managing the volleyball club, and working on your Yale admissions that had tears welling up in the corners of your eyes. You pouted at Kenma, touched by his gesture.

“Why are you doing this?” you eyed him warily.

“You looked like you needed some cheering up this morning,” he shrugs.

Humming, you run your gaze suspiciously between Yaku and Kenma. “Right... Well, in any case, I can’t accept this for free so I’m going to have to pay you back later.”

“You can try but I won’t accept your payment either,” Kenma answers.

“Can you two just eat already?” Yaku huffs as he chewed on his food.

You pouted at Kenma but he only stares blankly at you until you finally decide to relent. Sighing, you reached out to poke his cheek.

“Thanks, Kenma,” you told him with a soft smile before digging into your food.

---

Now that you’re done with eating, the food containers sat neatly arranged on the table, ready to be disposed. You sat back on the chair and sipped on your coffee, finally feeling alive for the first time that day.

“So, why did you ask me to come here?” you asked. Maybe they wanted to talk about the Christmas party you were going to have on Saturday. Were they planning a surprise or something?

Yaku met Kenma’s eyes briefly before he looked back to you.

“We need to talk. The talk. This is an overdue discussion,” Yaku tells you seriously, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” you said and raised an eyebrow at him. You turned to Kenma for some answers.

“Just so you know, this was his idea,” Kenma shrugs.

Yaku clears his throat before asking, “Okay, I’m not going to beat around the bush. Y/n, do you like Kuroo?”

You almost spit your drink. Being asked that question was the last thing you expected. “What? Like, as a friend? Of course, I do.” you say matter-of-factly. You have an inkling that that was not what Yaku meant but you were not going to give it to him so easily.

“You know what I mean. Do you have feelings for Kuroo? Romantically?”

Yaku leans back on his seat, a softer look appearing on his face.

“And if I do?” you challenge, raising an eyebrow at him. The libero’s face lit up at the revelation.

“I knew it! You like Kuroo!” he yells shortly before frowning at Kenma and muttering, “Wait. Don’t tell me you already knew all this and didn’t bother to tell us.”

You tell them to keep it down, quickly looking around in case someone was around who might overhear.

“It’s not my story to tell,” Kenma retorts.

“Okay, okay,” you quickly interrupt the two, tapping a hand on the table twice. “What’s with all the sudden interest about me liking Kuroo?”

At that, Yaku reveals that they’ve always thought that you and Kuroo had a thing for each other before Hana came into the picture. How the team thought you were secretly dating, and how it was only a matter of time before the two of you would announce it to the team.

“I’ve noticed how you two don’t joke around like you used to before. You two don’t talk as much. You both were so inseparable -- practically attached at the hip -- before. It’s so weird seeing you two be so distant with each other now,” he continues.

Kenma listened as he played with his console, occasionally agreeing with and adding to Yaku’s points. You allowed the two of them to speak up, preferring to listen instead. A few more moments of Yaku rambling passed before he quiets down.

A whisper of a frown was etched on his face. “We’re just concerned about you, you know. Ever since you showed up late that one time to practice and when you didn’t join the celebration dinner after the spring interhigh tournament on Kuroo’s birthday, the team is starting to wonder if something’s wrong. Not only that, I noticed how you’re often spacing out and acting distracted during practice these days, which is so unlike you.”

Kenma looked up from his game and turned to you. “Yeah. You always seem so tired these days. I know you’re stressing about your studies so you could maintain your grades and graduate at the top of the class, but I know you wouldn’t stress about it to that extent. I know you well enough to know that there’s something else that’s stressing you out. At practice earlier, you didn’t even look like you had a wink of sleep last night. That’s the reason why I bought you coffee.”

The two of them look at you expectantly, making you shake your head with a snort.

“I honestly don’t know where to begin,” you said, laughing wryly while running a hand through your hair.

“I was just as surprised as you, really. Kuroo never talked about Hana to me before. They just started hanging out after class one day, and since then he’s been spending less time with me and more with Hana.”

“Kenma already knows about my feelings for Kuroo, though,” you said, meeting Kenma’s eyes.

You paused, looking up at the ceiling, trying to find the right words.

Kenma nods in agreement. “He never talked about Hana with me either so we never saw it coming. The three of us were walking home after practice a few months ago when Kuroo saw Hana and told Y/n and I to go home without him. And weeks later, we found out that they’re dating.” He shrugs and goes back to his game.

“And how do you feel about them?” Yaku asks.

Your eyes scanned the room, as if the answers were written in the walls somewhere. “Hmm, I don’t know. I mean, at the beginning, I moped about it for a few weeks.”

You thought back on all the sleepless nights and the pints of ice cream and the junk food you binged on while you wallowed in your pain and sadness. If Kuroo had seen all that, he would have thrown a fit at the unhealthy lifestyle you had adopted. But of course, he hadn’t. And so it went on like that for days.

You remember your tearstained pillows, the bad score you had on a test for the first time in a long time, and all the acting like you were fine when deep down you felt like an open wound. And Kuroo and Hana were the salt on the wound that halted your healing process each time you saw them.

But maybe the worst of it all were the questions and the what-if’s that started to haunt you.

What does Kuroo see in her that he doesn’t see in you? What did all the flirting, the soft looks he gave you, the lingering touches when your fingers or arms brushed mean?

Was it really all in your head? Was everything one-sided? Did he not feel the same pull that you felt towards him? Not even a little bit?

What if you confessed to him before it was too late?

You inhaled sharply. It felt weird to lay your feelings out in the open like this. “I was crazy to think he felt the same towards me, you know. I guess I led myself on. I actually thought I was special.” You laughed humorlessly. “But I realized that’s just how he is to the people close to him. I see it in the way he acts around, Kenma.”

“What?! No, no,” Yaku interrupts. “Like I said, we all thought you had a thing for each other. We were so sure Kuroo had feelings for you. It’s different from how he is around Kenma. There was something more,” - he paused and met Kenma’s eyes - “At least we thought there was.”

The room was silent for a brief moment as the two quickly shared a look as if they realized that they said something they shouldn’t have.

“Well, in the rare times that Kuroo acts like an idiot, he does make sure he’s a big one,” Kenma says.

The room fell silent once more but this time, the air was buzzing with some sort of giddy energy. The three of you shared a knowing look.

And then --

“Pfft!” Yaku snorted, unable to hold in his amusement any longer. And just like that, the three of you burst into laughter, although Kenma’s was more of a snicker.

You don’t really know what the look they shared just now or what Kenma’s words implied, you just found it funny.

It was a few moments later when the laughter finally died down into a comfortable silence.

“It’s been a while since I laughed that hard,” you said breathlessly, leaning back on your seat and clutching at your stomach that began to hurt just a little at how much you were laughing.

Yaku and Kenma looked over at you with fond smiles, happy to see you happy.

“So, are you going to be okay?” Yaku asks softly.

“Yeah, I think I’m doing better these days. I’m slowly learning to accept it. I know can’t force someone to love me. And I’m not the type to beg and chase after someone. So...” you shrugged. “That’s that. I’ll get over it eventually.” You really hoped so. You know fully well that some things were just not meant for you and you just had to be okay with that.

“Are you sure? You didn’t seem okay this morning.”

“I’m fine! Really!” you reassured them, waving your hands off at Yaku.

Sighing, you said, “Okay, okay. So, I didn’t really want to bring this up just yet but there’s a possibility that I won’t be staying in Tokyo for college.”

Yaku’s eyes widened in interest. “Oh? Where are you going then?”

You grinned. “I don’t want to speak too soon since it isn’t final yet. I’ll let you know once I’m sure. So yeah, I’ve been busy preparing for my admissions these days. I stayed up late last night trying to write my essays. And then we had morning practice, which is why I probably looked like shit at practice this morning.”

“For real? Good luck then!” Yaku beams, giving you a thumbs up. “We’re here for you, alright? Just come to us if you need anything.”

Kenma wordlessly nods in agreement. Suddenly, the school bell rings, signaling that it was time to go back to class.

“You guys, thank you for today,” you gave them a warm, genuine smile. “I feel so much better now that I was able to talk about things with you.”

You opened your arms, inviting them in for a hug, to which they accepted. After giving them a quick hug, you reached up to ruffle their hair, much to Kenma’s displeasure. But he’d put up with it because it was you he’s used to it. Grinning, you let go and started cleaning up the table.

With the possibility of going to Yale on the horizon, you couldn’t help but be hopeful. Maybe some distance from Kuroo is what you needed to get over him. Maybe you were just meant to be friends and nothing more. If you can’t have him the way you want him, then you’ll learn to accept that being his best friend is enough.

Baby steps. You remind yourself. One day it won’t hurt to look at him anymore.

You smiled to yourself, feeling so much lighter for the first time in a long while.

You picked up your bag from the chair as you were about to head out of the clubroom when something catches your eye. On the shelf was a nekoma volleyball club jacket with the letters KT written in permanent marker on the lining. Was it Kuroo’s? He never leaves his jacket behind.

You gave it a second look, debating whether to take it with you so you could give it to him but ultimately decided not to.

previous | chapter 4 | next | masterlist

A/N: Hello! I know it’s been a while since I updated. I hope my readers are still around. Kuroo isn’t here but he will appear in the next chapter. I’ll be able to post the next chapter sooner since I already have it mapped out.

I apologize for being away for so long. Apart from being busy with studies, I also had a hard time mapping out the direction of the story.

You see Kuroo and Hana weren’t meant to be a couple LOL. Kuroo was just meant to like her but I was too excited to post the first chapter that I completely overlooked it so I had to think of a way to blend that into my original plan for the story hahahaha. Also, I had a bit of a writer’s block for a while and wasn’t so satisfied with my writing. But i’m back! Let me know what you think of this chapter! :)

(I was going to post this as a bonus chapter but I decided that this is important to the development of the story.)

See you in the next chapter of Autumn Skies!

Brace yourselves for more angst!

taglist is still open!

Disclaimer: Kuroo Tetsurou, Haikyu!! and other Haikyu!! characters belong to Haruichi Furudate.

💖: @elianetsantana @literaleftist @yeehawslap @starry-magicshop @atsunflower @saturnfarie @sakurahoshizora @kellyyween @donica95 @kyomihann @roseestuosity @brattyshirabuismybff @rirk-ke @-doublezero @yafriendlyfangirl @kagebunshiin @julie-ackerman @acsycharm @fmwaifu @piii-chan @melodyofroses

71 notes · View notes

tracle0 · 4 years ago

Note

hello hey hi and a splendid saturday to you, I come bearing a question for the wip4 gang and that question is: what is each of their most significant memories? additionally, are there any memories they would jump at the chance to get rid of? ok bye please have an excellent day \o/ (and before you yell at me I'm going to sleep now I swear)

I’m glad that when you even LOOK at me you think ‘oh sleep time’ I am Pavlov and you are my dog and this metaphor is stupid I will answer your question now

I’m gonna... assume this is uhh pre-story question because I know for a fact that at least three characters would change their answer to at least one question if it was post-story. My house, my rules.

Keaton’s most significant memory is p r o b a b l y the time when he was in year 12 (17), and he was called to the head of sixth form office. He’d been at this school since year 7 (11), and had realised he was trans in year 8 (12/13), and had then been fighting for the right to use his bathroom ever since. This had previously resulted in punishment. In year 10 (15), he made progress, being allowed to use the disabled bathroom, but he wanted the men's bathroom dammit.

Anyway, called to head of sixth form, assumed it was related to that issue. Pessimistic about the whole ordeal.

Turned out there was another student in like year 9 who had come out as trans as well, and the school had gone ‘UHHHHHHHHH LET’S DO BETTER THIS TIME’ so Keaton, being the only other trans student in this rural Norfolk school, was assigned as her... mentor??? I guess?

He was half like ‘fuck y’all’ and half like ‘I will not let this young woman go through the same shit you all put me through, I will guard her like a HAWK’. He was still not allowed to use his bathroom, but he makes her fight a little easier; she’s allowed to use her bathroom in year 10, after he left. They still meet up every now and then for coffee.

Memory to be rid of: First day on a Professional Set, he walked backwards whilst taking a tea order and fell into a bin. Terrible first impression. He still got jobs afterwards, but sometimes people will be like ‘oh yeah I’ve heard of you you’re the bin guy’ and he wants to punch them.

This is getting long already I’m gonna put the rest under a cut

I know you’re here for Mika so I’ll go to them, most significant memory: probably his first pride? He didn’t intend to go to pride, but he was in the city on the day of pride and just walked past all these rainbows and flags and people being so open and proud and themselves. He was maybe fifteen, and had been having those fun Gender Feels that you try and hide at age fifteen, because you’re only fifteen and most people tell you you’re not old enough to know anything about yourself, yknow?

Someone gave him a flyer at one point, and when he got back to his Ultra Christian Household, he hid it and would read through it some nights. When he had it memorised, he started to explore more about queerness online. He’s the guy who can tell you all about LGBT history due to this research. This was only done in the city on the library computers, where his trail couldn’t be tracked. It gave him some sort of start for labels, some sort of safe space, some sort of New Approach to everything he’d been feeling.

Memory to be rid of: last day in Ultra Christian School. He was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school and it wasn’t awful until he was about fourteen, at which point he started to grow his hair. They told him to cut it constantly. He was punished for it. He kept the hair.

It got bad but it wasn’t until he was about seventeen that it really buckled; first real notable psychotic episode. He told people, they were convinced it was some sort of possession, convinced he’d sinned, convinced of all these horrible things about him and drove him out until he could ‘act normally’ again. He did not go back.

In all honesty, the second he turned 18, he took his savings from various dead grandparents and a part-time job, bought a second-hand (maybe third-hand) camper-van and left home.

He goes back for Christmas only.

Mooooving on, Lynne! Who I do not talk about enough; she’s also part of the documentary squad, and actually the reason the whole squad exists. Producer and director, she’s very cool okcoolthanks

Most significant memory: That one time she was thirteen and her parents had officially declared their divorce. She was living with her dad and it was really, really weird and she was not enjoying it. Divorce is a big deal to some families, and this family was one of them, and she was really unsure about her entire future.

Cue Mika, young and mostly obedient, kicking down the door (not literally) and kidnapping her (again, not literally) to come pick blackberries with him (very literally). They stayed out until the sun went down in early Autumn. She forgot about the divorce for a small amount of time. They ended the day eating fish and chips straight from the paper whilst sitting in a tree and talking about nothing important at all.

They made jam out of the blackberries the next day. It was gross. Both of them refused to admit it was gross.

Memory to be rid of: She went camping one time with friends from school. Lynne is Muslim and so did not go to Catholic school with Mika, they just lived near each other, and so school friends went ‘hey we’re going camping you should come’ she did come.

It was a mess. They were fifteen and determined to drink, and English peer pressure to drink is weird, so she did take some drink but didn’t drink it. Someone threw up on her tent and blamed it on her. No-one bought any food or water, the only thing she was able to drink was lemonade bought for mixing and that had ants in it within two hours.

She woke up first and left them all there, then walked home because she was meant to be lift-sharing. It took an hour and a half. She preferred that to being in the car.

That group wasn’t her only group of friends, but it was her main group, so things were awkward for a while.

Moving on from Documentary Squad, Percival! Percy Percival who I wish I could call Percy because it’s so much easier to write.

Significant memory: winning an art contest when he was like. Eleven. Really living the high-life, ol’ Percival. It was a city-wide contest, with various age categories. He was part of the 11-18 clump, which put him at a disadvantage, but he still won. As a reward, his art was replicated on a mural in one of the shopping malls in town, and he got some fancy vouchers for a fancy art shop in the city.

Winning the art contest made him go ‘oh wait I’m actually good at this thing I really like doing I should learn how to do that more’ and you could barely pry him away from his sketchbook from that point on.

Those vouchers were stored away until he was 14 and doing art GCSE, at which point he bought a nice sketchbook and oil paints. He’s now very good at oil painting. I hate him for being good at oil painting. Oil painting SUCKS.

Memory to be rid of: I’m torn between three and they’re all similar so I’ll go for all of them.

#1 - losing an eye to Abby’s experiments. You read the lil short story I think (I know I checked just now) - she’s a very kind and loving sister who sometimes moves his body parts around. One time, he lost an eye and went blind for a few weeks. He had nightmares about it for months. It was very painful.

#2 - losing a finger. To Abby’s experiments. It was the middle finger on his left hand and it didn’t go back into place quickly enough - now it’s always numb and discoloured. Good news is he’s right-handed and not a musician so no worries about losing dexterity on that hand.

#3 - losing two ribs. To Abby’s experiments. There’s a very clear trend here. She wanted to try moving things she couldn’t see around. She moved two ribs away. She decided it was more dangerous to put them back. Now they just have two of Percival’s ribs lying around.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On that note, final person, this is very long. Abby! She’s fun. Most significant memory;

okay the word ‘significant’ has caught me off-guard several times cause like wow how do you figure out significant memories for people. I don’t have just one, yknow? But I think I know one for her.

She’s the eldest out of her and Percival and, for a while, people wanted her to set an example for him, which she tried to do, but she wasn’t good at what people wanted her to be good at. She’s good with people. She’s good at very specific parts of biology. She’s good at psychology. She’s not good at school and tests.

So, when Percival started to beat the standards she set for him, her parents almost... egged competition on. Played favourites, compared the two siblings. Nobody really noticed what she could do, they only cared about what she struggled with. And the parents were rarely around to help out with what she was struggled with. So she struggled on and tried to keep her head high.

Cue a family wedding, she was snooping around the snack table at the reception and overheard her parents talking about her. And how they were almost disappointed in her. How they were annoyed that she couldn’t be more like Percival, honestly, what did they do wrong?

She got bitter. She pretends she doesn’t care but she’s bitter, and with no parents around to lash out at, she lashes out at Percival, who isn’t even aware. Good times. Not good times. Significant times.

Memory to be rid of: Honestly? Probably hearing her parents talking about her at the family wedding. It stings.

A n y w a y this was extremely long I like going into detail with short stories, if you read this far then thank you I appreciate it I will give you a feather from my feather collection. Probably a swan feather. I have a lot of swan feathers.

#wip4 #keaton #mika #lynne #percival #abby #all five of them wowza #'hey trade are you doing sts should you answer the other questions in your inbox'#I should but I won't I'm going to sleep soon but thank you for asking #this was fun! thank you logan this was helpful and fun and now I know more stuff about the characters

11 notes · View notes

seungmin-wrecked · 5 years ago

Text

Literally no one cares but here's my worst travel story:

So I go to a school 2-3 states away. Which according to Google, the college is a 9 hour drive, however, bc my family can't just drive 18 hours in one day to come get me and drive home, I normally take a train that goes across states. This train ride is about 6/6 and a half hours long. Not to mention :) the time you can buy tickets for this train at midnight and 3 am depending on which station you're leaving from (so if I'm heading back home, the train leaves at midnight. If I'm heading back to campus, the train leaves at 3 am). Keep this in mind :)

So the drive to the train station is a long one. It's about 4/4.5 hours long of a drive since the train station is in another state than the one I live in. So my dad decided to book a hotel like 15 min away from the train station, but not in the same city as the train station since prices were cheaper that way. We left the day before my train was supposed to leave so March 7th. We left our house at like 1 pm, and I had slept till 11 am since I had stayed up a bit late the night before. I slept in the car on the way to the hotel and was feeling pretty good!

We decided to waste some time looking around the town we were in, ate dinner at 3 pm, and actually had to go hunting to go find a place to print my train ticket since I had forgotten to (we eventually found a Staples 3 towns over and an abandoned mall that had bad vibes from the outside). Time passes and we head back to the hotel about 7 pm, but there's still a bunch of time before my train left. My boarding time that day was 4 am since daylight savings time was ending so we were supposed to jump forward, so it was really like my train was still arriving at 3 am. Amtrak suggests getting to the train station at least an hour before your train is supposed to arrive, so my dad and I agreed to leave the hotel at like 1:15 am. My dad fell asleep, but I was still pretty awake since I had gotten so much sleep already so I decided to read Manga on my phone until it was time for us to leave. We left the hotel on time, arrived at the train station early and thank goodness it was pretty empty. I managed to sit by myself and the train ride was relatively nice! Like it usually is.

Now here came the issue. The city I was arriving in, I knew about three people who lived there. One person I couldn't ask a ride from, another one I could have but there were already issues there, and so I asked the third person I knew there first. She was able to come get me!

.... Once she got off work!

...... At 1 pm.

Now I'm still very thankful she agreed to come get me, and I always will be. I have no idea how else I was supposed to make it to campus without her help, even though I would only be on campus for two weeks before getting kicked off.

However, my train arrived at 9 am. I had barely any money in my bank account and I had too much anxiety after sitting at the train station to get up and go get something from the vending machines, not to mention, I had no small bills on me. It was nearing 24 hours without substantial food, what I had eaten were some gummies my friend had gotten me for my birthday on the train, and that's it. It also came to my realization that while I was sitting there in the train station my p****d had started. There was no one in the station until about 11, since there was another train coming.

This lady approached me when there were like 5 other people at the train station (4 of them were Amish) and she asked me if she could borrow my phone to contact someone because she had left her phone in the Lyft she took to get to the train station. I figured why not and opened the app on my phone to dial phone numbers. This lady messes with my phone a bit and then hands it back to me with a new tab open with Lyft's customer service page open. I figured she was going to call her phone! Nope!!!! Now remember that I was reading Manga in the hotel room? Well I still had the tab up, and I can assure you that it was the one she opened the chrome browser up to. You'll never guess what fucking Manga I happened to be reading :)))) it was fucking Sekaii Wa (I can't remember the rest rn) but it's that one explicit bl Manga, and I remember being at a part where one of the character's may or may not have been naked :)) so I was fully screaming internally at this point. This lady had seen bl p*** on my phone and had given NO REACTIONS. She had to come ask to use my phone a couple of times bc she was trying to figure out what to do and at one point she just. Walked away with my phone.

After that had happened, a girl who looked very nervous came over and sat next to me, and asked me about how the train works since it was her first time. I also had to pee very badly at this moment too; I had needed to pee since I got off the train but was too nervous to get up and just go to the bathroom, not to mention I didn't have anyone to watch my stuff. I answered her questions and then asked her to watch my stuff. At this point I could create a temporary solution to the monthly problem happening and continue on feeling better about that situation since all of my pads/tampons were in my suitcase.

At this point it was 1 pm. For those keeping track, that is the time that my friend said she was going to be in work till, and a total of 22 hours since I had last eaten anything substantial. I was on my monthly, starving, sleep deprived, because also at this point I had gotten barely two hours of sleep on the train, which means about two hours of sleep in total for 22 hours also, and now irritated. I eventually get a text from my friend letting me know that she just got off work and was going to head home to shower and then come get me. I was just happy to know she was close to getting me.

3 pm rolls around. She arrives. I am tired, starved, irritated, in pain, and now surprised since my friend was NOT the only one to come get me. Oh no. Her mother had driven her and her sister to come get me. Which her family is lovely, they're so nice and really helped me out right before Christmas break when I needed to stay somewhere in the city before going to the train station at midnight. They pick me up, all is good. I'm still super hungry.

I am mildly lactose intolerant and when I am on my monthly, coffee messes me up (this is important for this next part).

Her mom turns towards me and goes "we're headed to Starbucks, would you like something?" my immediate response? Yes. Absolutely. My brain that is reminding me of the already horrid situation I am in, and telling me not to get coffee won though and told her no. I thought we were going to leave immediately after we came back to my friend's house. But oh no. She had laundry to finish, a resume to finish, and her mom wanted to take her to the grocery store to pick up stuff for her room. I went with for everything and ended up buying the oddest assortment of things (including almond milk, mandarin oranges, and canned soup).

My friend finished everything at about 6:30 pm and we were good to leave. I am so hungry at this point. Her mother had given me a slice of banana bread she had just baked and I had to refuse anymore bc I knew I would have eaten the whole thing given the chance. That was the most food I had eaten since 3 pm the day before. For those, once again keeping track, that is 27 hours. Again, I am in pain, irritated, hungry, and tired. We get into the car and as soon as we pull out of my friend's driveway I turned towards her and said "Can we please stop at the closest McDonald's. I am so hungry" she laughed and said sure. We passed at least 5 McDonald's. She then hits me with the "there's a Burger King like 45 min away, close to the school, can we go there?" and I just nodded my head bc I was just happy to be given the chance to eat.

We get to the Burger King and I am not kidding you. I ordered a Bacon Whopper with a side of large fries and large drink bc I was so hungry. I ate all of it before pulling into the driveway of my school. That burger is the size of my head and has enough fucking mayo on it for it to be it's own producer plant of mayo. It was heavenly.

I got all my stuff to my room (which was on the third floor of a building that only certain people could use the elevator) and passed out on my bed for an hour, woke up to tell my friend I was on campus. Did Not Touch My Luggage. And then passed tf back out till the next morning :)

TL;DR: I had the longest and worst travel of my life that lasted from 1 pm on a Friday till 7 pm on a Saturday, where I barely slept, ate, used the bathroom, and got heavily embarrassed.

#Thank you #This was very therapeutic for me :)

4 notes · View notes

something-tofightfor · 6 years ago

Text

He’s Not Here - Part 15

Pairing: Billy Russo x Reader

Word Count: 6100

Rating: NSFW. zesty. steamy.

Parts 1-14 + the interludes can be found on my Masterlist (link in bio)!

Summary: New Year’s Eve with Billy... there’s nothing more to say.

Author’s Note: I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while. And... I think I’m gonna throw up.

Tagging: If you want to be added or removed, let me know.

@banditthewriter @breanime @obscurilicious @padfootagain @madamrogers @ooo-barff-ooo @agent-bossypants @suchatinyinfinity @chibiyanai @songtoyou @ethereal-heavcns @editboutique @marauderskeeper @drinix @ilkaeliseb @delicatelilyflower @king4thesirens @likethetailofacomet @blah-blah-fuckit-shit @ymariejp @mr-robot-x @rageshots @shinebrightlikeafanbase @littlemermaidprobz @jovialyouthmusic @zaffrenotes @introvertedlibrary @writing-for-a-chance @yesixoxo @ilikebeachessushiandsmallanimals @likeorions @swiftyhowlz @dylanobrusso @dreamwritesimagines @waytoobsessedwithmyfandoms @lexxierave @ms-delos @elanor-of-imladris @lynne1993 @dreams-with-thoughts @fireeyes-on-teller-dixon-grimes @traeumerinwitzhelden @bucky-is-my-precious @weallhaveadestiny @ladyblablabla @sweetybuzz25 @luminex3

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve passed uneventfully - Billy returned to work (on light duty only, supervising his clients but not actively sparring with them), and you were able to get a great deal done on your end, too. The office was always less busy during the holidays, and you were thankful for the quiet because it gave you time to think, to plan and to relax. On the 30th, you received a text from Billy that he was going to be late getting back to your apartment because he had a stop to make on his way home. Ok, vague, but that’s fine. You didn’t have plans, but he’d offered to bring over dinner, and you appreciated the heads up. Sending out a few final emails, you turned off your computer, flipped the light switch and left the office. Though you worked the week between the holidays, you’d chosen to take the following week off, meaning that you had ten glorious days of vacation to look forward to.

You took the subway back to your building, grabbing the mail before you took the elevator up to your apartment, and when you opened the door, you were surprised to see Billy sitting on your couch, an arm draped over the back as he turned to look at you. “Hey you.” You grinned at him, again struck by how normal it seemed to have him waiting for you, and as you set your stuff down he stood, walking to you. “Excited for your vacation?” With a nod, you leaned in and kissed him quickly, turning to look at the kitchen, where various pots and pans were bubbling on the stove. He’s cooking.

“Thought you were gonna be late, Billy?” He shrugged, arms going around your waist.

“Took less time than I thought… and since we’re going out tomorrow night, I thought I’d cook tonight.” He squeezed once before stepping away and into the kitchen, reaching up to the mounted magnet and pulling off a knife so that he could chop an onion. “Nothin’ special, though. Just making lasagna. It’s Maria’s recipe - she wrote it down for you.” You’d gone through the recipe book Maria had given you, marking down the dishes you’d wanted to try, and that one had been one that Billy could vouch for, so it had been at the top of your list. “Go change, get comfortable. I’ll get this in the oven and we can watch a movie while it bakes.”

The lasagna had been delicious - even Maria had been impressed with the picture you’d sent to her - and you and Billy had spent a lazy night on your couch, watching movie after movie, his arms wrapped tightly around you. “So, Billy…” You’d finally climbed into bed around 2 am after pulling the new drapes tightly shut, and were laying on your side facing him. “What are we doing tomorrow night?” You could barely make out his face in the darkness of the room, but you felt his breath as he inhaled, the stiffening of his shoulders. “I just need to know what to wear.” He laughed quietly, his long fingers slowly stroking up your side beneath the blanket and was quiet for a long time.

“What you wear doesn’t matter.” He moved his face closer, lips next to your ear. “You’re gonna be the most gorgeous woman in the room no matter what.” His voice caught as he spoke again. “We’re not goin’ anywhere fancy, though. Just - I wanna spend my… New Year’s Eve with you.” You nodded, mentally running through your closet and when he spoke again, you were caught completely off guard. “The first New Year’s I remember was with my mom.” Oh, shit. “I haven’t told you much about her, have I?” You swallowed, heart beating erratically.

“No, Billy. But… you don’t have to.” He sighed - a deep sound, one of resignation. “Do you want me to turn the light on?” His response was immediate.

“No. Keep it off, this is easier for me in the dark.” Billy shifted in the bed, moving into a half-sitting position against the headboard and you moved with him, leaning your head against his shoulder as his arm went back around you. Your eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and you could make out the lines of his body next to you, the paleness of his skin. Carefully, you reached out with a hand, putting it against his hip, the other one winding around his waist. “My ma used to have people over on New Year’s, she’d have a party, and when I was five or six - I can’t remember - she let me stay up until midnight for the first time.” He paused, taking a shuddering breath. “I don’t remember much about her, but I remember that night. The clock hit 12, and she picked me up, and she kissed me on the cheek and she said ‘It’s a new year, William. A new year for us. She never called me Billy, always William.’ There were people celebrating around us, loud and yelling, cheering, laughing… but she looked at me like she never had before, she looked … like she wanted me.” He scoffed. “I know now that’s a lie, but there were moments like that that I held onto even when I was in the system, moments like those and her rubbin’ my neck when I was sick that got me through the hardest days. My ma didn’t want me, couldn’t handle raising me, and she did what she thought was best - and maybe it was.” Billy was talking quietly and you could hear his heart hammering in his chest with each word. “I donno if she’s even alive now, or what happened to her after she dropped me off at that fire station, but I know damn well that if I ever got to see her again, I’d thank her first and then get mad at her.” What? “I might have been miserable for a lot of my life, and I might have had it rough with the other kids and the people like Arthur…” At that, your hand moved up, unconsciously tracing over the scars on his shoulder before your fingers settled onto it, squeezing gently. “But she gave me a shot to make my own decisions and to be who I wanna be, she got me to this point - right here, right now.” Billy took a deeper breath, letting it out slowly. “I’m gonna make somethin’ of myself, and it’s all because of her and what she did to me as a kid. What she forced on me.”

You were silent, not knowing how to respond for a minute but then you sat up, raising your hand to his face. “You already have, Billy. You’re a Lieutenant, you’re a Scout Sniper, you’ve proven that you’re brave and strong and…” You frowned, thinking. “You didn’t let your childhood define you. Yeah, you want more, but who wouldn’t, Billy? Who wouldn’t… want to be something, to have something worth fighting for?” He laughed quietly and you felt a dampness on your hand. He’s crying. Do I say anything? What… “You made it through, Billy. Through the hard parts and the pain and the… the bullshit. You’re here right now, right here, and you made it.”

“I did, didn’t I?” He laughed again, reaching up with one of his hands to swipe at his face, knocking your hand away in the process. “Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I wanna take you to some of the places I spent my New Years Eves growing up tomorrow… well, today. Nothin’ fancy, just dinner and some drinks, out of the city and … I donno, it’s fuckin’ dumb, maybe I shouldn’t…”

“No, Billy. That’s perfect. I hate being here while there are so many people, getting out and being somewhere else is the best idea.” Your conversation trailed off after that, Billy sliding back down onto his back and pulling you close, one hand curled around the back of your neck, the other firmly against your hip. As you drifted off to sleep, you could have sworn you heard him mumble something, but you were too out of it to hear him clearly.

---

“Alright, so this is my absolute favorite thing on the menu.” Billy pointed down at the laminated plastic in front of you. “After I turned 21, we’d come here after the bars closed and I’d eat an entire plate of them by myself… soak up the alcohol, you know?” Billy was absolutely beaming, biting on his lower lip as he jabbed at the menu. “Will you eat them?”

“Disco fries? Aren’t they just… poutine?” He laughed, and you watched as he shoved a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes.

“Yes. And no. No cheese curds.” He shook his head. “I promise that you’ll like them, they’re my goddamn weakness.” You nodded back at him, smiling, and he signaled the waitress over, a smile on his face. “Ok, so we’ll take an order of the disco fries, extra gravy. Two plates, though, and…” You let your mind wander as he continued to order, thinking back to the previous few hours.

You’d woken up at 11:30 am on opposite sides of the bed, but with Billy’s hand still flat on your back as he slept on his stomach. After showering - separately, because you needed to get ready, you walked out of the bathroom to Billy taking a phone call as he laid on your bed wrapped only in a towel. “Yeah, Frankie. Thanks. Not yet. We’re going out tonight to Jersey.” That had been the only hint you’d been given, and when Billy pulled you out of the house at 4:30, both of you dressed casually in jeans - him wearing the green shirt you’d bought him for Christmas - he’d been more excited than you’d ever seen him. The places he’d taken you had been simple - a bar in Manhattan, a quick walk along the waterfront before you caught a train over the Hudson and into Jersey, another bar for a drink, a movie … and by the time you’d settled into a booth at the Tick Tock Diner, which was Clifton, New Jersey’s prime spot for comfort food, you’d thought Billy’s face would crack open from how broadly he was smiling. It was only 9:30, but the place was nearly empty - it seemed that many people had made their way into New York City for the holiday, which was fine with you.

You were seeing another side of Billy with each place you visited, because he was freely telling you stories about himself - about his childhood and his early adulthood, about his friends, kids that he’d grown up with. Unlike other times when he’d said only a little and then immediately shut down, this was different - he was opening up to you, willingly filling in the pieces of his past, and you drank it in. When the waitress delivered your food, she winked at Billy and walked off, but he only had eyes for you, staring at you and holding out a fork. “You first.” Shaking your head, you reached out to take the utensil from him, gathering a forkful of potatoes and gravy and cheese before raising it to your mouth.

“Oh my God, Billy.” You spoke with you mouth full, eyes rolling back and he laughed loudly, finally picking up his own fork and digging in. “You weren’t lying.” Your conversation continued throughout the meal, and when you finished a little after 10, Billy helped you into your coat, brushing the hair away from your face as he stood in front of you, the diner lighting giving his eyes a chocolate brown look instead of their usual black. He’s different tonight. “Where next, Billy?” As far as New Year’s Eve went, this was entirely different from what you’d expected, but his next words still caught you off guard.

“Back to New York.” He sniffed, zipping up his jacket. “We should have enough time to get back to my place before the ball drops.” He was right - you made it to his building just after eleven, stopping only for a moment at his apartment to grab a spare blanket, a six pack of beer and two folding chairs, and then Billy tugged on your hand, guiding you back to the elevator and pushing the button for the top floor. “Last thing I wanna show you.” You followed him down the hallway, carrying the blanket and he pushed through the emergency exit door, which opened onto stairs that led to the roof.

“Holy shit, Billy.” You looked around as the wind blew, eyes taking in the lights of the city. There were remnants of a rooftop garden, scattered items that other tenants had left during the warmer months, and Billy led you over to the south facing wall, setting up the chairs next to each other. “This view… why have you never brought me up here before?” His building was taller than yours by nearly 20 stories, giving you a bird’s eye view of New York City, and you were stunned at the sight of it.

“I was saving it.” Billy sat, waiting for you to do the same, and he opened a beer for himself before handing one to you after you’d pulled the blanket around your shoulders. “I wanted to be sure that I could bring you here.” He swallowed. “And I am.” Billy took a deep breath and leaned into the back of his chair, his free hand moving through his hair. “I’ve lived in this building for nine years, and I’ve spent every single New Year’s Eve up here, alone with my beer and my memories. I visit with Frankie and Maria for a little while, but when the ball drops, I’m always here.” He looked over at you, a forced smile on his face. “I never wanted to spend it with anyone else before, you know? None of them...And now you… you’re here, and you… fuck.” He took a deep breath and turned away again, looking out over the city. You watched as his jaw clenched, one eye narrowing, tongue poking into his cheek. Billy opened and closed his mouth a few times, and you watched him straighten up, take a deep breath and start talking again.

“I told you about the first New Year’s Eve I remember, with my mom.” You nodded, but stayed silent. Billy took a breath and another drink of his beer before continuing. “But it was all of the ones after that that stuck with me. The two with her and the ones in the Home, and even the ones after.” Billy sighed, and with it, he sounded so tired that you wanted to tell him to stop, to tell him to be quiet, but you couldn’t, knowing that whatever he was leading up to was big. “I loved the parties. I loved watching the other kids decorate and play and gather around the TV to watch the ball drop. We always got a great dinner at the Ray of Hope, and it was just… nice. I liked it because everyone was together, everyone was excited, everyone was in the same room for once, talking and laughing, and making resolutions, wearing those stupid hats… we even had noisemakers sometimes.” He smiled, the expression on his face softening. “Christmas was nice an’ all, but it wasn’t the same. Everyone was lookin’ forward to the presents and the possbility of it bein’ their last Christmas without a home, without a family… but every year, I knew that that wouldn’t happen for me, no one wanted a gangly boy when they could have a cute little kid, then no one wanted the teenager with the shitty attitude. And so I accepted it. But I always looked forward to New Year’s, because I remember my mom’s words ‘it’s a new year, William’, and for me it always was.” He fell silent again, and you leaned over, reaching out with your hand to squeeze his.

“I get it, Billy.” He turned to look at you, eyes wide. “I can’t imagine what it was like for you to grow up like that, but I get it, a new year is a new start for everyone, no matter where you’re living or who you’re with.” He nodded, leaning over and cupping your cheek with his hand, pulling your face closer to his so that he could kiss you - softly, gently, such an unbelievably un-Billy kiss that it took your breath away. You breathed his name out, feeling his lips again press against yours. He pulled back, finishing his beer and opening another one, taking a long swig as he checked his watch - it was 11:40. Almost time. Almost…

“It’s not just a new year for me.” Billy spoke again after a few minutes, and his voice was steady, the words certain. “It’s not about the changing of the year or the resolutions.” Billy turned his head toward you, tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Today’s my birthday.” Your jaw dropped, eyes widening and you gasped, but he only smiled. “Frankie and Maria are the only ones who matter that know… and now you do, too.” He took a deep breath, shrugging his shoulders. “I never had a birthday party, but it was always like… everyone was celebratin’ for me anyway. We never made birthdays a big deal in the Home, but since everyone was together, it was better than a party, and I could pretend that they were all there for me. I was surrounded by people - by happy people, and that was enough.” You couldn’t control your heartbeat, and felt tears gathering in the corners of your eyes. His birthday? And he didn’t tell me until it was almost over? “I got to spend today with you, doin’ exactly what I wanted to do. This is the most perfect birthday I’ve ever had to go along with the Christmas you gave me.”

He stood, reaching out with one hand for you and you allowed him to pull you to your feet, right up against his chest. You reached up, wrapping your arms - and the blanket around his shoulders, cocooning both of you together. He looked down at you, hands at your hips, his fingers holding on tightly and an anxious expression on his face. “Billy…” You paused, wanting to be sure that you said the right thing, that you didn’t spoil the moment. “Happy birthday, Billy Russo.” He laughed, ducking his head to press his forehead against yours, lips parted in a grin. “I hope that this year is everything you want it to be.” He nodded and you tilted your head, lips moving closer to his. “I hope you never have to spend another birthday alone.” You won’t, if I have anything to do with it.

The blanket fell to the ground as you gripped his shoulder with one hand, the other moving up the back of his head so that your fingers could tangle in his hair, and Billy’s grip on your waist tightened as your mouths met, a long, slow sigh escaping from his throat as he kissed you. You’d been kissed by him many times and in many ways, but this felt like the first time, like he’d finally given you all of himself, and you groaned against his lips as he pulled you closer, fingers interlocking against your back after sliding from your hips. I love you so much, Billy. So goddamn much, and I can’t wait to tell you. You were startled apart by the booming of fireworks, and as you turned your head outward, lowering yourself so that you were no longer on your tiptoes, Billy pulled you closer, the thudding in his chest mirroring your own.

As you watched the city around you light up in celebration, you thought back through everything you and Billy had been though, everything that it had taken you to get to that point, and you realized how much it had taken out of him, how much he trusted you - how much his honesty had likely cost him in terms of the walls he’d built around himself over the years he’d spent alone. You realized, as you looked up at him, your fingers moving over his cheeks, eyes staring into his, that he might never be ready to tell you that he loved you - but he was showing you without words, proving over and over again that you were different, that he was different with you - and it was enough. “Billy.” It was a whisper, barely audible over the wind and the end of the fireworks, but his eyebrow quirked, inviting you to continue. “Let’s go to bed, Billy.”

---

Not even ten minutes later, you and Billy were back in his apartment, hands quickly ridding each other of your coats and clothing, but it was with a determination and precision. This is going to be different. You could feel it in his actions, feel it in the way he paused after removing each piece of your outfit - first the sweater, then the tank top, followed by your bra. He gazed at you, eyes darkened and focusing on each newly exposed part of your body but always moving back to your face before he continued on, his fingers stroking over your skin. Billy got you down to your underwear before he worried about his own remaining articles of clothing, undoing his belt and the button on his jeans before pushing them off. He was already straining against his boxer briefs, the outline of his length clearly visible to you as you stepped closer to him, skin against skin. His hands slid down your back, over the curves below your waist and settled at your thighs, squeezing as he bent slightly, picking you up off the ground. Your arms went around his neck even as your lips met his, legs wrapping around his waist.

As he carried you toward the bedroom, you realized that if what he’d told you was true, he’d never been with a woman on his birthday - never taken anyone to bed on a holiday - and had never shared such an important part of himself with anyone, except maybe Frank. You kissed him harder, biting down on his lower lip and he pulled sharply on your hair, already having removed one of his hands from your lower body. “None of that.” He nipped back at you, teeth catching on your lip. “Not tonight. Tonight I want…” What do you want, Billy? He set you down, hands moving to your hips and then upward as he nudged your head to the side with his nose, lips moving down over your cheek and to your jaw - slowly making his way down against your throat before he continued, kissing your shoulder, one hand tangled in your hair and the other gripping your bicep. “Let me take care of you,” he whispered with his lips against your clavicle, and then you couldn’t help but let out a low gasp as you felt his tongue moving along your skin, teeth barely grazing it, too.

Billy pushed you backwards and you fell onto the bed, looking up at him as you propped yourself up on your elbows, waiting. What’s next, Billy? He winked at you, leaning over to open the top drawer of his nightstand, reaching in with one hand to grab a few condoms, tossing them onto the bed next to you. That done, he reached down, hooking his fingers into the waistband of his underwear, pulling them down and stepping out of them in a single, smooth motion. Billy straightened up, bringing a hand up to his hair as he rolled his shoulders back and you cocked your head to the side, smirking at him even as your heart continued to pound in your chest. He leaned forward, one hand flat on the bed on either side of your body and kissed the center of your chest before pulling back, looking up at you through his eyelashes. “Lift your hips.” You did as he asked, and Billy wasted no time ridding you of the final piece of clothing you wore, his eyes never leaving your face even as his fingertips danced over the skin of your thighs, causing you to shiver beneath his touch.

Billy stood up again, his hands falling to his sides and he looked down at you, his usual smirk replaced with a brilliant smile - one that you rarely saw in the bedroom. The mattress dipped as Billy raised one knee and then the other, climbing into the bed with you and lowering his body so that his chest was pressed against yours, his elbows resting on the mattress right above your shoulders as his hands smoothed your hair back, exposing your face to him. “Billy, what -” He cut you off with his lips, silencing you completely as his tongue delved into your mouth - not with the ferocity that you’d come to know from him, but instead with a purpose, as if he was still trying to talk to you, to tell you what was just beneath the surface without speaking.

Lowering yourself onto your back, you raised your arms, consciously choosing to follow his lead, to let him have the moment, and you allowed yourself - for the first time in weeks - to run your fingers tenderly over the bare skin of his back, fingers easily picking out the scars and marks on his skin but not lingering. You thought of your conversation from right after you’d started sleeping together about the scars on his body - back when Billy was still looking for a reason to cut you off, an indication that you were like all of the others; so focused on his looks that you didn’t care what was underneath - that you didn’t care about him. “I don’t think of them. They’re there, sure.... But everyone’s got scars, Billy....I’d like you just the same with or without them, I’m indifferent.” It was still true - and even moreso now that you knew the real him.

He kissed you deeply, the friction from his beard rubbing against the skin of your cheek the roughest thing about the whole interaction, and you felt a moan escape from your lips as your hands moved up to grasp his shoulders, holding him closer. He whispered your name as he pulled back to breathe, his face hovering over yours and you shook your head slowly, hand against his cheek. “What?” You licked your lips and he stared intently at you, waiting. This isn’t him, this isn’t…

“You don’t… “ He rocked his hips against yours once, which distracted you momentarily, but you took a deep breath, continuing. “Billy, this isn’t you.” He looked surprised for a moment but swallowed, telling you to go ahead. “Nothing you say or do to me is going to scare me away.” You moved the hand from his face, dragging your nails down his chest lightly, which caused him to hiss in pleasure, nose wrinkling. “You wanna be gentle with me, that’s fine, but I don’t need it.” You arched your back slightly, raising your hips to meet his. “You’re overthinking this, Russo.” Circling your hips against his, you continued. “It’s not too much, not with you, not ever.” His eyes widened, and you continued to move your hand down between your bodies. “You don’t have to treat me with kid gloves, Billy, you don’t have to try to be something that you don’t...” He gasped and then groaned, eyes closing as your fingers circled around him, sliding up and down slowly, thumb curled in toward your palm so he could feel the knuckle. “I’m right here with you, Billy. No matter what.”

“Who are you and how did I find you?” He was speaking in his normal voice, but it had an edge to it, as if he couldn’t believe you were there, that you were saying the things you were. “Fuck.” He ducked his head, pressing his lips to yours in a bruising kiss, pulling back far too quickly. “You just want me, right?” You nodded, watching as he ran his tongue over his lower lip again, reaching to his left for one of the small, square packets he’d put on the bed, ripping it open as he sat straight up. “Just me, no matter how fucked up or closed off or broken I am?” You nodded, not daring to look away from him, even as you removed your hand, fingers squeezing once final time. “Then that’s what you’re gonna get.” He rolled the condom onto himself, hand wrapping around his length as he shifted his hips slightly, his free hand flattening against your abdomen, thumb pointing downward and circling slowly over your skin. “But you gotta know somethin’” Billy looked down at you, head angled to the side and tilted slightly back, the same look in his eyes that he’d had in the diner. “There’s a lot of me that you haven’t seen yet.” The hand that was grasping himself moved slowly, and you tore your eyes away from his to watch it, whimpering and averting your eyes back to Billy’s face as you felt his thumb find its destination, parting the skin between your legs and pressing down momentarily before moving lower. “And I wanna show it all to you.”

His voice was low - loaded with need, and you gripped the blankets next to you, eyes squeezing shut and your back arching off of the bed as he replaced his thumb with a finger - then two - pumping slowly in and out, curling gently at the ends every few moments. “Billy, please.” You didn’t recognize your voice, but forced your eyes back open, meeting his even as your mouth fell open. “Billy, I need -” He groaned too, and you watched him wrinkle his nose as he bit down on his lower lip, a lock of hair across his forehead. “I w-” He shook his head twice and removed his fingers, using his hand to urge your legs apart and then moved between them, still holding himself.

Instead of watching him enter you, you kept looking at him, resisting the urge to shut your eyes as he slid in - slowly and deliberately, the movement calculated. Billy’s eyes widened as you bent your knees, lifting your lower half to give him a better angle, his hands moving to grip the tops of your thighs as he moved his hips slowly, giving you time to adjust. You nodded after a few moments, reaching for his forearms, and it was the only go-ahead that he needed. The lights in the room were all on, meaning that you had a perfect view of his body as he moved, the defined muscles of his chest and stomach flexing as he rocked his hips into you - gently at first and then with more ferocity, the rhythm familiar. You finally broke eye contact and turned your head to the side, crying out softly at how good it felt, how right it seemed to have him inside of you. Billy’s hands tightened on your legs and then moved down toward your hips, supporting you easily as he lifted you a few inches off of the bed, your calves pressed against the backs of his thighs just above his knees, even as your toes curled.

The two of you had always meshed well in bed, but like the rest of the day, things felt different. He wasn’t just fucking you, he wasn’t just in bed with you… he was with you completely. As Billy changed positions, he lowered himself down to you, mouth closing around one nipple even as he used an arm to prop himself up by the elbow, that hand sliding beneath the back of your head and cupping it. The sensation overwhelmed you - his hips didn’t falter once, and until one of your hands made its way into his hair, he kept his composure. But at the feeling of your nails raking against his scalp, tugging on the ends of his hair, he looked up at you, mouth still on your chest, tongue moving back and forth, thouh you couldn’t see it. You saw something pass through his eyes but he didn’t speak, instead using his free hand to find yours - linking your fingers together as he lowered his gaze back to your skin wordlessly. As he moved his mouth from your breast to the valley between them, kissing his way upward, Billy changed the speed of his thrusts, lengthening them. It’s like it’s two different people, he’s… I’m … I can’t…

Your joined hands ended up somewhere above your head, and as he straightened his body out, Billy again changed the positioning of his lower body, using one knee for leverage as he also changed the pace of his movements. His lips pressed into the hollow of your throat, the skin there taut as you looked to the side, and then he whispered your name, causing you to turn your face toward him. The hand that had been pulling on his hair slid to the back of his head, the tips of your fingers visible through the silken black strands. He was breathing hard - you could feel and see his chest moving rapidly but he was still focused. “I’m here. I’m not goin’ anywhere.” You nodded; it was all you could do, and then he tightened his grip on your hand, pressing your arm down into the bed and opened his mouth once more - but nothing came out. You breathed through your nose, the tip of your tongue poking out between your lips, just watching, eyes still locked on his as your bodies continued to move together, stroke for stroke. This is it, I can - he’s waiting, he - You widened your eyes slightly, taking a deep breath.

“Billy, I-” The moment he heard your voice his hips finally faltered, jerking against you once and then he broke eye contact as he lowered his head, kissing you hard and cutting you off - a kiss that you were used to, one that you expected from him. Even as you felt him deep inside you, muscles twitching as he came, Billy continued to kiss you, his lips and tongue moving against yours with determination and finality. He broke the kiss after only a few seconds, sliding his mouth down to your ear, lips moving slowly but clearly, and as he spoke, you felt your own body tip over the edge, two words that you wouldn’t have been certain he’d said, save for the fact that he made sure to say them loud enough that you could hear them over the beating of your heart and your labored breaths.

“I know.” He kissed the side of your face once more, his fingers tightening with yours again before his body relaxed, his forehead pressed to the pillow next to your head. Oh God. He... You were both breathing hard - both spent, bodies warm and sweat-slicked, but you knew that a line had been crossed - and he’d been the one to take the first small step. Neither of you spoke for a long while, but when his breaths had evened out, Billy cleared his throat, voice a little higher than normal. “Happy New Year.”

---

Three days later, you were in your apartment, curled up on the couch with a book in your lap when Billy walked in from work, the door closing behind him as he stepped into the apartment. Turning to look at him, your face broke into a smile as you saw the snow dusting the top of the black knit cap he wore along with the shoulders of his jacket. He paused in the doorway and you laughed as he reached up, swiping one gloved hand at his head, revealing his hair as he pulled the hat off and tossed it onto the table. “Dinner’s gonna be ready in a few. Welcome home, Billy.” The words slipped out of your mouth before you could stop them, and Billy froze for long seconds, the hand still near his head before crossing the few feet of space from the door to the couch in only a few steps. Shit.

He leaned down, pressing his cold lips to yours, but before you could even begin to enjoy the sensation, he’d pulled away, mouth open slightly. Billy licked his lips, took a deep breath and then, without breaking eye contact with you, he spoke. “I love you.”

---

246 notes · View notes

noccalula-writes · 5 years ago

Text

I wrote a long-ass essay about the entire experience with my father, as it was happening, because that’s how I cope with shit.

CW: parental death, discussions of abuse, medical situations, dying.

(7/4/2019)

It’s Thursday. The hospice nurses don’t think he’ll die tonight and I don’t either, but his breathing pattern is beginning to change. The rattling of the gathering fluids at the back of his mouth. The way he sleeps with his mouth hanging fully open, a much further drop than the way he’d nod off in his chair or on the couch, open enough to drool and snore but not the near-scream affectation of his jaw hanging loosely that I’ve been seeing since we arrived here yesterday by ambulance.

His jaundice is returning, albeit more subtly than it was before. Sometimes he sleeps deep. Sometimes his eyebrows move, knitting and raising and fluctuating like he’s in the middle of a very important conversation with someone who just isn’t getting the message. For some reason, I keep thinking he’s talking to his own father. I hope he is. I hope it’s a good conversation.

But his breathing becomes erratic and the emaciated curve of his chest starts to heave a little or goes too still for too long and then rises harshly, and I hold my own breath while I wait to see if his is coming back.

I want to be here when he dies. I will be here when he dies.

***

I had booked a flight on Sunday for 7:45 pm. I made it out the other side of the TSA checkpoint when I got the text that American Airlines had canceled my flight.

I called and explained the direness of the situation, and the best they could offer was 7am the next morning.

Monday morning, I flew into Charlotte NC with a 36 minute layover, just enough to let me pee and refill my water bottle and make it to the gate with less than an hour’s wait til boarding.

No sooner had I sat down than American Airlines sent out yet another text. “Your flight has been cancelled.” I was five and a half hours away from Jacksonville as a straight shot. The next flight they could put me on was at 2:45 that afternoon. The nurses had been encouraging me to come down due to my father’s rapid deterioration – I spent the entire transit up until that point only mildly afraid that he would die before I would arrive.

There in North Carolina? I was terrified.

I called, talked to yet another sympathetic courtesy clerk who could do nothing for me, talked to a far less courteous clerk at the actual airport desk, tried to see if they could just get me a rental car instead. I could either sit for a six hour layover or I could get a car and make it to Jax half an hour before my flight would leave.

Nothing.

I did not have the money to fly here – a dear friend bought my ticket – and I do not have the money to fly back. I’ll work that out after. I definitely did not have the money for my own rental car.

Finally, I went back to the courtesy desk, cried to the older gentleman behind the computer, and how quickly his face changed when I said my father was dying told me he too knew what it meant to need to get home now, now, now.

He handed me a comp ticket for a 1:11 flight that no one else had even brought up with me and told me I had to run if I was going to make it across the airport in time to board.

***

Yesterday morning, he had the last period of real lucidity, unreplicated since we arrived and began comfort-care treatment.

His main doctor came into the ICU and explained to both him and me, freshly awakened by the sound of her pulling his curtain, father and daughter both bleary-eyed but alert and trying to look focused at the importance of the situation.

“There is really nothing else we can do,” she offered with empathy, looking more at me than at him. I don’t blame her for that. It must be harder to look him in the eyes and tell him he’s at the end of the road. We both nod grimly and I ask him, just to be sure, if he understands what she’s saying.

The day before, he slept through my consultations with his kidney doctor and his oncologist and through the group meeting (myself, both half sisters, their mother) with palliative care specialists but naturally was awake when hospice came. The word ‘hospice’ knocked the breath out of him, his left hand searching feebly along the side of his hospital bed, trying to hold on to the edge like he was cresting a daunting roller coaster.

I was crouching to his right, trying to stay eye-level instead of looming over him. I think he reached for my hand. Maybe I reached first. All I know is I took his hand and he squeezed mine.

He asked for a day to consider it, and when that patch of lucidity was gone in twenty minutes, so was his consideration.

That next morning, however, with his lovely doctor standing over us both while I rested my arm and chin on the bedrail beside him, like were co-conspirators instead of a distant father and daughter with a contentious relationship whose power dynamic was about to shift considerably, there was no question of the conversation we were having.

“Do you understand why we need to do this?” I asked him after explaining that we were out of other options. My Great Aunt Jane couldn’t handle home care, even with me present, and he would never get a moment’s peace with her hovering and micromanaging. The hospital was at the end of their ability to care for him, and any measures taken to sustain his life were only delaying the inevitable.

I don’t know if he fully understood that last part, but he nodded, looking away.

I waited for a moment, summoning my courage.

“You understand this is metastatic cancer, right?”

Another nod.

Another moment of gathering courage.

“Your oncologist told me you’ve known about this since last year…” I was cautious, careful not to make him feel judged though I knew it might be a moot point, “Do you remember that?”

He paused, taking assessment, his eyes moving slowly across the ceiling as he pulled through his own memory to find the answer.

“No,” he said slowly, “I don’t… but I must have known.”

***

I arrived on Monday afternoon, my cousin bringing me straight from the airport to the hospital.

I slept on the small sofa in his hospital room both Monday and Tuesday nights. I only left for an hour on Tuesday to meet a close friend at a restaurant right on the other side of the business park from the hospital, a quick catch up to eat and get some take out for Tara.

When I start to worry that I’m doing this because I need to feel like The Goodest Daughter, like I’ve somehow exceeded everyone else’s efforts by miles, I remind myself that I’m still putting chapstick on him, rubbing lotion onto his feet, helping the nurses turn and hold him to change his diaper, enduring the vilest of shit (that systems-are-shutting-down feces is no joke), making sure his dentures are clean and his goatee is free of food despite the fact that he’s called me Tara more than once.

***

My father and I have barely spoken in the last several years.

Nobody seems to suspect that.

***

I’ve been trying to journal but it’s difficult to keep up with considering how tired I am – writing by hand is still a beautiful pastime but I’m at the point where my memory goes so quickly that if I’m not in front of a keyboard, I lose whatever nice prose I thought I had going.

I know from a self-care perspective that I should probably leave a little more often. Go for a walk around the property at a more leisurely pace than my panic-stricken power walk – big body, short little legs, shitty shoes means my legs have been killing me since the day I had to hoof it across the Charlotte airport all the way until I got back from my quick Target trip today, four days later. But I can’t.

The idea of him being alone and afraid makes me feel sick.

But he’s calm now. He’s been calm since we arrived at hospice yesterday afternoon, after I rode in the ambulance beside him that took us from his 8th-floor ICU suite to the Hadlow hospice center on Sunbeam Road, a road only slightly off the path that I rode with my father so many times. We’ve definitely driven down it before together, though, and I can’t stop thinking about time, about how eight years ago today he put “happy 4th, love ya” on my facebook wall and within three years of that we were so strained we barely spoke, existed somewhere not quite yet arriving at estrangement but somewhere further away from familiarity.

***

I’m working very hard to not let that anger I carried for him all the way up until the phone call came on Saturday that he was dying get transmuted into guilt. Of course, it’s happened to some degree, that much I couldn’t fight off – but I’m trying to remember that this anger isn’t the dysfunction of a spoiled kid who couldn’t quit butting heads with her father, but someone who tried very hard to build a relationship that never took, who eventually decided to take her hand off the burner because eventually she stopped accepting pain as a trade-in for affection.

One of the things that has emerged the clearest to me during this transition between ICU to hospice, between periodic lucidity and near constant sleep, is how different a relationship to him Tara has had than Alina or I had. Alina has always carried the bitterness of feeling unfavored atop the conflict that close proximity built between them – she spent the first 7 years of her life with him constantly, traded off every other week after that. She’s angry at him for things that he did or said, for how he chose to shape her life from that vantage point. I spent two months of every summer with him and every Christmas and birthday as they fall during the same winter break from school. I was a part-time visitor in the life he had with both of them; I came and lived in his life, on his terms.

Her anger comes from a sense of entitlement. Mine comes from an ever-present ache of abandonment. Alina has always resented him for what he did when he was there; I resented him for not being there to begin with. I ached for a relationship with my father. I called him sporadically – far apart enough that it wouldn’t cramp his distant style, but close enough that we could maintain a steady narrative of what my life was like (always mine, almost never his – my father was as cagey and distant with me as I often was with other people). The rivers of bad blood between his longtime girlfriend and all 3 of his daughters made matters worse; she was the sort of woman who never made it past high-school level social skills and let pain and depression turn her cruel and callous, and once their relationship was over my father very openly blamed her for the strain between him and his daughters.

I once countered to him that he had made the decision to not step in and stop her. To me, it was more his fault than hers. She was awful but he was complacent with it.

Never being able to consolidate world views in general atop my feelings of having been abandoned to my grief after my mother’s death in a house that felt more like a prison (I once left a cup of water unemptied in the sink and came home to find he had dumped it all over my bed – another time, I arrived home to find my dresser from Alabama pluming up smoke from the burn pile in the back yard without so much as a word to me, because he said he saw spiders in it) made it incredibly difficult to stitch the distance between us closed. I started leaving at 5am to go to my boyfriend’s house before school and have breakfast with his family (or, more often, sneak in and either go back to sleep or have sex). I begged to move out, to leave and go stay at my great aunt’s house instead, and he resisted me only until his girlfriend needed my bedroom for her kids when they visited. Then, I was allowed to leave.

He kept all of my social security survivor’s checks. I only saw the very last one. I worked at McDonald’s to pay for my own gas (I inherited my mother’s car, a 1990 Cutlass Cierra, when she died) and insurance, and I bought my own food as well so his girlfriend didn’t get upset when I ate at the house.

He judged my mother mightily for her mistakes and while my sexuality didn’t seem to hang him up too much – he nearly choked on chicken when I told him I had been dating a girl, but he recovered quickly with a shrug and a “well… shit happens” – and my defensiveness of her put us at odds with each other again. I tried to call and set up dinner dates or ask him to come see whatever new apartment my girlfriend and I were living in. He visited one once and then never again. I brought over a pizza to hang out with him one night and within thirty minutes, Cynthia called me to tell me that one of our cats had died. Spending time together got harder to arrange, and the more he seemed indifferent to how hard I was trying to forge a relationship, the more I resented him for it.

My calls went unanswered. Seeing him required going out of my way, every time. He rarely met me halfway, almost never if it required real effort on his part.

By the time Cyn and I moved to Pensacola, we had been living less than 10 minutes away from one another and had seen each other less than 5 times in a year.

By the time we moved to Columbus, Ohio, I didn’t even tell him we were going. It didn’t seem to matter.

***

The jaundice and edema have returned by Friday morning. His breathing is becoming more and more erratic. Morphine and Ativan are coming in through a subcutaneous port because he no longer wakes up to swallow.

I have to fight the urge to try to wake him, make him take a sip of water for his parched tongue. His mouth stays wide open all of the time now. I gently rub chapstick over his lips a few times a day so they don’t crack, but the corners of his mouth are bruising from the constant tension.

I am letting him die. We are letting him die. It feels like a failure somehow, even though I know I would absolutely encourage literally anyone else to do exactly what I am doing now in exactly this situation.

***

When I was 12 years old, I played my first live show.

My father brought me onstage at the bar where he played lead guitar in the house band, a vast waste of his natural talent, and had me sing Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” while he accompanied me. We drilled it night after night in his studio apartment during the summer that he split from Alina and Tara’s mother. We worked on Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” but there was something to “Time After Time” that we both really loved – I had only recently gotten very good with pitch control and my young voice was still high and soft, able to curl over the notes gently. Now I sing with the base of my chest and what I suspect are several vocal nodes, my voice getting weak quickly but frankly it suits my style.

I was shaking, I remember very clearly wanting to throw up, but my father beamed at me from his post on the barstool beside me and started to play.

Years later, my Italian macho-typical misogynist of a father would come to the local women’s center where I worked as a victim advocate for a sexual assault response team and play in our courtyard during our survivor event in April. He played an Ani DiFranco song and I sang.

***

Time is a swallowed bomb, waiting. You pay for the whole seat but you only use the edge.

***

On Friday night, they’re saying less than 24 hours. His breathing has changed again, growing labored and strange.

I almost have a panic attack when I have to go to the funeral home to sign papers for a cremation and fill out what of his death certificate I can remember.

Tara is staying beside him. Alina joined us for a while today, all three of us sitting and holding his hands, petting his leg while we listened to his favorite Splendor album and sang “Yeah, Whatever” to him. Hospice brought his lunch; he doesn’t eat or take water anymore. We stole his cookie and split it and talked to him about how good it was, teasing the way he always teased us. We reminisced, talked about the past and our mistakes. We all cried. We all laughed. It was as good a moment as we’d had together in a long, long time.

He didn’t wake up, but we were holding his hands. We were keeping him safe.

***

I sing to him when we’re alone – his favorite Bonnie Raitt songs. Time After Time, of course. When I try singing Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart For A While,” I only make it to the second stanza before I can’t go on.

“When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun, keep me in your heart for a while; there’s a train leaving nightly called When All Is Said And Done, keep me in your heart for a while.”

I asked him for guitar lessons once. He tried to teach me a G chord, told me to keep it simple.

“With your voice, you won’t need to learn much,” he said, and I was so overjoyed for the compliment that I’ve never forgotten it.

***

My dear friend Diana comes in to see him, despite having only known him through me.

He would hate this, I think, but I need her to be there, if only for a few minutes.

We met at the abortion clinic we both worked at; she became my boss within two months of my starting and we’ve been close ever since. When she goes to leave, she addresses my father, coming to put her hand gently on his.

“Mister Vance, if I don’t see you again, safe travels.”

I don’t know where he’s going. If there is somewhere, though, it’s going to have so much music. He’s going to be playing his heart out, saying everything his pride never let him say with notes and bars.

Once, back in college, he called me and said nothing, setting the phone beside him on the couch while he absolutely nailed the Eruption solo from Van Halen’s cover of “Girl You Really Got Me Now.”

I have never thought of him as a good father. I have always thought of him as an incredible musician.

***

Back on Sunday, when I knew I would be flying out due to the severity of the situation, I told the nurse to tell Dad I was coming.

I didn’t think he was lucid enough to understand much of anything anyone said, but I missed a call from the hospital by margins of seconds. In an absolute tizzy over what might have been on the other end, I called back.

My father answered, his voice barely a hoarse whisper, his focus obscured by so much morphine.

“Dad? Is that you?”

“Bre?”

“Dad?”

“Bre?”

“Yeah, Dad, it’s Bre.”

His voice broke. “Oh, my baby girl.”

I felt my heart fall out of my ribs and drop down the staircase I fell down the year before and cracked my tailbone, shattered a tooth. I sat down on the stairs. I had been so worried he wouldn’t want to see me, that I’d get there and the ice coating would crawl back over our relationship and I’d have rushed down for little more than maybe a chance to say hello.

“Are you really coming?” he asked, over and over, like a child afraid of the answer being ‘no.’

***

On Saturday, he’s gasping for breath like a fish on a deck. It’s terrifying for me and Tara, who sit on either side of him wide-eyed and panic stricken, waiting for the higher dose of morphine to kick in. It’s violent to watch, but thankfully it starts to subside by that night.

The fear dissipates from the room, but we don’t forget the experience.

***

I show the night nurse pictures of my father with his long dark hair, his brown-tan skin, his brilliant green eyes. I show her pictures of him just two short years ago, round-faced and charming in his straw fedora as he played his guitar, blissfully unaware of all the shitty connotations of fedoras nowadays. She marvels at how handsome he is, how happy he looks holding a guitar. I tell her he’s a really good carpenter but he’s a much better musician, raised by a father who was notoriously talented as well. My father lit up onstage, not as towering as a front man but as the ever-present lead guitarist, just quirky and fun enough to draw your eye from the main microphone but practical, decades of practice and honed skill turning him into the kind of perfectionist he resented in his father.

The lead singer of the last band he played for comes to see him for the third time since Monday. He’s the kind of man who has a natural charm about him, a comfort with being the center of attention that most of us can’t cultivate. He’s sincere in his grief about my father, but he’s also the kind of person who acts as though it’s never dawned on him that not everything he does will come with applause. He performs a very dramatic one man show of his grief when it’s just him and my sister; when I’m here he holds court with his memories and talks about throwing back whiskey with my father at the bar they played at.

“He always said the doctor said it was okay!”

I fight back irritation when I respond, “The doctor absolutely did not say it was okay, he had liver damage.” It’s not this man’s fault my father took big gambles with his health and his addictions. It’s not his fault that my father has always loved a good time. It’s certainly not his fault my father lied about his condition to most people to avoid having to talk about it.

He makes open-ended statements designed to make us ask him questions about himself. Neither one of us do. This seems to bother him. It occurs to me that after a lifetime of being handsome and musically inclined, he might just be expressing himself the only way he knows how – from a vantage point where the world ends at the end of his nose.

Later, when his wife comes, it’s a complete 180. She is calm and warm and immediate, built small and slight like my mother, and between that and her unabashed Mom vibes I’m instantly glad that this virtual stranger is in the room. We watch my father struggle to breathe and she puts her hand on my back, one hand on mine on his, and for a second I shut my eyes and let myself cry – not the way I want to cry, I haven’t found the softest spot to rip that one open from yet, but quietly. If I keep my eyes closed, it feels like my mother is beside me. I can’t think of a not-weird way to tell her I’m grateful for that, so I don’t.

***

Tara and I hold vigil all day on Sunday. His lungs are full of fluid and his face is going grey. His breaths are gentle and small but he sounds like a coffee maker, an observation I make after waking from a catnap in the bay window.

It’s just the three of us and a Law & Order SVU marathon. Dad’s come to like police procedurals in his old age.

We put up a statement on Facebook asking people to send their well wishes via text and phone calls, that we are running out of road and we’d like to focus mostly on spending the last hours or days with him. Alina doesn’t show. She’s been present but sporadically, unable to bear the full weight of the reality of the situation perhaps or too distracted by her own personal demons. I wonder, of the three of us, which daughter will be the one living with the most regret. It’s probably between me and Alina.

When Tara finally goes home for the evening, the nurse comes back to check on him again. Between his blood pressure and his gentle, rattling breaths, he could easily go tonight or go into the morning.

I text my cousin and refer to my father as Captain Refuses-To-Die. She laughs. I feel guilty. She points out that no one would be laughing more than my father. I feel better.

On this, likely the last night we’ll ever have together, I read to him from the book I’ve brought from home (Dessa Wander’s My Own Devices, nonfiction essays that are beautiful and poignant), put Chicago PD on mute and play him Jeff Buckley. I read aloud from the chapter in which Dessa filmed the music video for “Sound The Bells”, and the ending lines crush me all over again: “Some places you need to go, even a chestful of air is too much cargo. Some places you can only go empty.”

I tell him, for the hundredth time, that it’s okay to go if he needs to. His blood pressure is lower and the rattling breaths are a sign we’re growing closer, but he’s still warm to the touch all over. If he’s mottling, we can’t see it. There’s gray in his face again but he reacts to the oral swab of moisturizer to keep his mouth from drying out by furrowing his brows, almost turning away but not quite. The nurses aren’t sure what to make of it. One of these literal angels asks me if I’ve tried telling him it’s okay to go – I tell her that might be what’s holding him up, because now that it was someone else’s idea, he’s just not going to do it.

I hear him in my ear sometimes. Quit rushin’ me. I’ll go when I want and not a moment sooner. Sit down.

We listen to three different versions of Buckley’s Hallelujah – instrumental while I read to him, live, and studio. We move on to the rest of the Grace album.

I’m afraid to go to the bathroom or take a shower when it’s just me and him, so convinced he’ll wait until the second the door clicks shut and then take his opportunity to slip away unnoticed, robbing me of the moment where I get to hold his hand and put some symmetry to our relationship. After all, he was there when I came into the world, purple and defiantly refusing to breathe until suddenly I sucked in air and began to scream. He saw me come in; I vow to at least be here when he goes out. I want to hold his hand the whole time, but if in all his wittiness he decides to kick while I’m half-sleeping on the World’s Okayest Cot, just being in the room will have to be enough.

***

When Alina arrived at my great aunt’s and found him on the floor, slumped against his bed bleeding and unable to get up, he told her he had become addicted to oxycodone since nothing else was helping for the pain. He told her he was done, that he was tired of being sick and tired of fighting.

Despite this, he’s still hanging on. I don’t think he wants to go. He’s only 61 years old. It seems far away to me now the way my mother’s 39 years seemed when I was 16, but now I am 32 and 39 gets more horrible and tragic every day. My father was the life of the party between his sense of humor and relentless flirting and I can only assume that on some base level, he’s not ready for the party to stop yet.

His fingers stopped searching for the fret board days ago. His eyes don’t move behind the lids anymore, and the shadows and bruises around them are coming in fierce. The Haldol is doing nothing to stop the secretions and he’s still in full brew mode, death rattle on all day long. It’s terrifying at first but after a while it’s just a rumble, just a purr. There are moments when Tara and I are perched in our respective chairs on either side of him, eyes turned to the TV or our phones, and this is… ‘fine’ isn’t really the word, but mundane. Just a thing we’re all doing. Boring, even. And then I glance at the bed and see my emaciated, sunken-faced father gurgling through yet another breath and it takes my own away how very not okay it all is.

He’d hate this, is the only thing I can keep thinking. He would hate all of this.

***

There’s a train leaving nightly called ‘When All Is Said and Done.’

Keep me in your heart for a while.

I love him with every ounce of my being. I’m so angry for all the time we missed. I’m so sad that he didn’t let me love him more.

***

It’s Thursday, again. The last few days have been a blur so emotionally exhausting I haven’t had the presence of mind to put pen to paper in any capacity.

When he’ll die is anyone’s guess. For a while yesterday his breathing changed so drastically, came in short little hiccups, that the PRN was sure he was breathing his last. Then, like nothing had ever transpired, he was back to the soft, shallow breaths of before, the rattling having disappeared within a day of its arrival. He started having spells yesterday where he exhales so hard that it engages his vocal cords, making a groan or soft moan like a zombie in a horror film; this terrified the shit out of Tara and me so badly that we grabbed the nurse. His eyes tried to open. It was incredibly upsetting.

The nurse explained that these were reflexive, the deep sighs were him fighting his own heart’s slowing down on some basal level. He’s been unconscious for an entire week now – the eyes opening are a reflex, not intentional and not a sign of any sort of awareness behind the lids.

When they opened after he was cleaned, they had rolled all the way up into his head, leaving nothing but a sliver of white, making me feel sick to my stomach. I knew dying wasn’t elegant and beautiful the way the movies would have you believe, but this is taking so very, very long and it’s so very, very awful.

It’s been a week without water now, so at some point something will have to give.

Tara has spent every day right next to me, sometimes holding his other hand, sometimes napping in the armchair while I nap on my cot. It’s often the two of us in comfortable silence for long stretches or cracking jokes over whatever is on tv. We share his trays when they come in – sometimes the worker slips us a second tray specifically for Tara – or she runs to grab lunch. We tried going out together a few times but no results; he would be exactly as we left him upon our return. Whatever he’s holding on for, he’s holding on with both hands.

I watch his pulse pound in the veins in his neck. I can see his heartbeat through the emaciation of his ribs. I wish to god this was a Death With Dignity state. I wish to god the end would just come gently for him already, and then I feel like a monster for wishing that. How do you want someone you love to die? How do you want them to stay and suffer? Damned if I do, fucked if I don’t.

I play him Joe Bonamassa, more Jeff Buckley, Bonnie Raitt, Bon Iver, Eva Cassidy, Warren Zevon. I sing every song he ever asked me to sing for him, even the ones he chastised me for singing too loudly for him to hear the radio. I hum when I can’t muster the energy to sing, which is increasingly often at this point.

I’m a ghost wandering the hospice halls. The staff greets me by first name and I know most of theirs now – Lisa, who is a literal angel, sent in a dining room cart loaded with sandwiches and chips when a big storm hit yesterday, thinking Tara and I wouldn’t likely go out to get dinner. Gloria dutifully checks on me and my dad and Tara. Jasmine, Victoria, Tinkey, Dolores, the cleaning lady named Cynthia (my wife’s name) is a particular comfort, going out of her way to talk to me every time she comes in to sweep.

The guilt is palpable. I miss my wife and my dog and my apartment; sleeping on this cot has triggered my already flared vestibular disorder and I am so dizzy I worry I’ll fall over at least once a day. I eat what I can when I can but my diet is garbage. I often forget to eat. I’m making it a point to drink as much water as I physically can without getting sick as it helps my headaches.

But I haven’t cried in what feels like days. I can’t anymore. I talk about the increasingly mottling on his fingers, his toes, his ears like it’s a matter-of-fact conversation about the weather. The sound of his sighs and groans still make my heart catch in my throat every time but I’m going numb to the rest. We’re just kind of trapped here in limbo between being able to care for him, which we no longer can, and being able to mourn him and grieve, which we cannot yet do. It feels like torture. I mentally calculate out how much therapy I’m going to need to get out the other side of this. I watch more cop procedurals than I’ve watched in years and hate every last one of them unless Olivia Benson is in them (except Criminal Minds, which I have a complicated relationship with but Tara and I both share a deep abiding love of Spencer Reid, so.)

I want to go home. I feel like dog shit for wanting to go home. I can’t leave him. Not like this. I don’t know how to ask for help but I feel like I’m drowning.

***

The only slices of time where I feel like I can breathe is when Tara and I run to Target for no good reason or when I’m in the shower late in the evening. At first I was too afraid to so much as use the bathroom, scared he would slip off the second I left the room in one final act of independence to prove once and for all that he didn’t need anybody else’s input or help.

Dad’s hospice room has a huge walk-in shower built to accommodate a sitting toilet for those who are still resisting the sponge bath with all their might. Dad was unable to walk for the three days he was in the ICU, much less now, so I drag the entire rig of pvc and toilet seat out into the bathroom proper and enjoy a shower with enough space to comfortably fit three people. In my apartment back home, we haven’t had a functional shower in months; the whole set up fell out of the wall, leaving us only with our very deep and very beautiful porcelain tub. It’s hard to complain about such a tub but the reality is that cup baths get tiring very quickly when you’re disabled and getting into and out of that gorgeous porcelain tank is real work.

This shower comes equipped with safety rails, which at the ripe old age of 32 send my chronically ill self into pure joy. I find reasons to stay in the shower longer than I normally would, water conscious as I try to be. My legs haven’t been so shaven so frequently since I was a teenager. I don’t always have the energy to slip off and stand in hot water for twenty minutes at a time but when I do I try to take advantage; we don’t know when he’s going to decide he’s had enough and I’ll be quickly packing our things into all these Zaxby’s carryout bags I keep hoarding.

***

At some point, this has begun to feel deliberate. Am I locked in one final battle of wills with my father? Is he testing my mettle – and Tara’s, for that matter – to make sure we’ve got the stones to follow up on our promises?

My father made a lot of promises he didn’t honor. Whether they haunted him or if he just forgot is anybody’s guess.

***

I’m on the lanai near my father’s room when I noticed a few people going in and out of the room. I tell my aunt Sharon, “If he slipped off while I was outside on the phone, I swear to god.” He hasn’t, but we’re close; they’ve repositioned him to try to help things move along. The doctor tells me the mottling has moved quickly up his legs and that we’re looking at hours now, maybe even sooner.

His eyes are partially open again. I grimace and close them gently. I remember my mothers’ open eyes, dead for hours when I found her, and it’s something that sixteen years of road between that moment and now have never been able to rub free from my memory. I wonder what about this will haunt me in specificity – the whole experience, sure, but the little things. If I’ll smell someone wearing his nurse practitioner’s perfume and it’ll send me straight into fight or flight. If I’ll be so consumed by my grief that I can’t eat but the second I can I find I can never eat trail mix again. If something will slip just under the edge of my self awareness and then one day I’ll be crying in the aisle at Kroger for no reason.

Bronze nail polish, unexpected splashes of Daffodil yellow, and “Girl You Really Got Me Now” stop me in my tracks in regards to my mother, but she was part of my life every single day. This man laying in this hospital bed is undoubtedly someone I love so much it makes my chest hurt to think of, but not much in my day to day life will change when he is gone – he wasn’t a part of it, hadn’t been for years.

A storm is rolling in. I call my sister.

***

He dies at 10:40 on July 11th.

Tara is asleep on the cot on one side of him, I’m sitting in the armchair on the other, listening to him breathe and texting my wife. Chicago PD is on because of course it is. I get a strange prickle of discomfort and pause, realizing that I no longer hear the heaving of his breath.

At that exact moment, my sister wakes for no reason and goes into the bathroom, passing me as I quickly come around the bed to look at my father’s face in the blue tv light, his eyes slit just barely open. His chest unmoving. The thrum of his heartbeat, so visible for so many days, stilled. I pressed two fingers to his neck, fought the urge to recoil, and pressed the call button to the nurse’s station.

We get an hour and a half with him before the funeral home arrives at nearly 1 am. With my mother, my shock and fear kept me from being able to go anywhere near her body after I dropped her when I tried to turn her over. My criminology studies made me slightly more comfortable around the dead but that quick recoil didn’t leave me and before long I was doubly nursing a burgeoning drinking problem and a crippling fear of death. I’ve done the reading. I’ve pushed myself past my comfort zone. When my beloved dogs died in 2015 and 2017, I spent time with them before burying them myself in the backyard of my aunt’s home.

When the doctor backs out of the door gracefully, quietly, I press my ear to my father’s chest and hear nothing. I put my arm over both of his. I let myself sob into his still, unmoving shoulder and I remember for a moment how he held me in my bedroom at his house the day I moved in, when my mother’s death was suddenly too real to stand under the weight off. How he let me lean fully into him and slid down to the floor with me, let me sob until I was too sore to keep crying, how for that one blessed moment he was the father I needed at exactly the moment I needed him.

They come to take him. The funeral home worker watches me with a soft expression as I dip down one last time and tell him, “On to the next adventure. Thank you for everything. I love you, Dad. Goodbye.”

***

I love you, Dad.

Goodbye.

***

I think I’m going to feel better but really, I’m just tired. Bone-deep tired. A tired I can’t put a name to. I want to go home and be held by my wife more than I want anything in the world. I spend the day with my sisters, alternating between being mostly-okay and having my breath snatched from me by how not-okay I am. Alina submits herself back to rehab to return on Monday. We make plans to go through his things, together, in September, when I’ve returned for a wedding. It feels okay-ish, and then it feels less okay, and then it’s so awful I can’t wrap my head around it.

And it will continue to be awful. I know that. But it will gradually become less awful, the edges rubbing down until it doesn’t cut me every time I brush against it. It will always be awful. But it will turn into a shape of awful that I can breathe around.

I take stock of what I’ve got left in my hands now that my watch has ended. I went from “my father is not in my life” to “my father is dying and I am caring for him in his final days after a lifetime of his antiseptic behavior to my attempts at building emotional bridges with him” to “my father is dead” in the space of about 13 days. There was no time. It all happened too fast.

On my last day in Florida, I drag both of my exhausted sisters to the beach. Alina sleeps on a towel. Tara and I wade out into the ocean, and I let the salt water of my sweat and my tears remind me how we all came from the sea, how we all return to the earth, and how one day this planet will keep spinning without me, regardless of whether I’ve left a list of things undone or not.

I don’t scream. I don’t cry. I just float for a while.

#personal #noccalula updates

10 notes · View notes

vickypoochoices · 6 years ago

Text

Christmas Countdown part 4.

Days 11-15.

[MASTERLIST.]

Day 16.

“ZIG! Coffee! Pleaseeeeee. I'll get on my knees and beg!” She flopped half way over the empty counter melodramatically, barely flinching as her cheek squished against the cool surface

It was barely 7am and she'd fled the apartment in a sleep deprived haze, having grown fed up with laying awake, staring at the ceiling and praying she'd finally succumb to the exhaustion. She'd drained her phone battery listening to every single piece of white noise ever created and calming lullabies that had the opposite affect when they failed to do the job in hand, instead pulling her from her bed in a rage.

“Uhh hey, can I help?” She sprang upright at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, eyes scrunching closed. It's okay, don't panic. When you open your eyes you'll see Zig, not some strange barista.

Peeling open just the one eye initially, she felt a rush of warmth flood her cheeks as an unknown barista gawked back at her incredulously.

Clearing her throat, she desperately tried to compose herself. And then a hearty chuckle gained her attention, exaggerated clapping following.

“Oh Trev, that was gold! Thanks for covering man.” Zig joined them, face filled with glee.

As the other barista walked out to the back, she rounded on Zig, pointing an accusing finger in his direction.

“Just what the hell was that shit Ortega?” She demanded.

Zig offered his trademark smirk over his shoulder, as he busied himself with a machine.

“That? Well I was just outside having a smoke before the big morning rush hits, and then you decided to make my entire morning with that little episode.”

“I hate you.” She mumbled, resuming her position sprawled out on the counter, this time bumping her head against the cool surface a few times for good measure.

“Aww don't be like that. You can't stay mad at me, I made your favourite.”

“We'll see about that.” She scoffed, sitting up straight and reaching for her drink.

“I've made you the same drink every morning for the last year…”

She scowled at him, before taking a tentative sip of scalding coffee. She felt a warm rush overcome her whole body as she struggled to keep her face impassive.

“This is...Eurgh I can't lie, this is glorious Zig.” She relented, suppressing a shudder as she took another sip, her body overjoyed at the caffeine consumption.

He grinned at her reaction, head nodding, her response entirely as he had expected.

“Hard night or tough morning?”

“Yes. Tick. All of the above.” She slumped forward, words muffled against the counter.

A sharp ding rang out from the doorway, a cold breeze sweeping in, prompting her to huddle closer to the steaming cup in hand. Zig let out a barely there sigh as a small group of people edged closer to him.

“Looks like I'm needed. I hope you get some sleep. Or figure out whatever's eating you. Or...well you never really said what was wrong. Just...Keep swimming?”

She felt herself thaw a little bit, a giggle managing to slip out.

“You are such a dork. Thanks Zig. I'll just swim home now.”

She quietly collected herself, slipping past the small line of people that had already started to form.

As she reached for the handle of the door, her attention caught sight of the shop window. The bottom half of it was lined with paper, the same words repeated on each piece. She must have been more desperate for coffee than she realised before if she walked past this without even noticing. She felt herself gravitate towards the posters, feeling overwhelmed with the sudden knowledge that this was for her.

Day Sixteen - I am in love with a memory. I am in love with a future. I am in love with possibility. I am in love with you x.

Her vision blurred as tears welled up in her eyes, but she fought to keep them at bay. Reading over the words again and again, she tried desperately to memorize them, wanting to think back on them when she was in a better frame of mind.

Realising she was a partial obstruction in the doorway, she pulled herself together and out into the bitterly cold winter morning.

She shuffled along the pathway home, repeating the words constantly, until she came to a halt in front of a street light. Plastered around the base of the light was a copy of the poster, same words sprawled over the paper.

Looking up and into the distance of her route home, her eyes focused, and she counted four street lights and two information signs, the same poster clearly visible even from where she stood. He'd had a busy morning!

Continuing on at a steady pace, she reached the large statue that stood in the middle of campus, her mouth gaping open at the sight in front of her. It was covered head to toe in posters. How was that even possible? How on Earth did he make it all the way to the top? And is that James?!

He was stood, gloved fingertips smoothly running over the words, adoration etched on his face, oblivious to her presence.

“Looks like someone's got it bad.” Her voice was soft and low, yet James still stumbled backwards, clearly startled.

“So that's what a heart attack feels like. I always did wonder.” He exhaled loudly, tightly clutching on to his chest.

She raised an eyebrow in his direction. “If that's what you spend your time thinking about then I have to say, I'm a little concerned about you.”

He let out a low rumble, his broad smile proving to be infectious as she broke out into a grin of her own.

Taking a step closer, his eyes glossed over as he took the words in once more. Watching him intensely, she noticed his eyes shift awkwardly from the statue back to her.

Tugging on the scarf tightly wound around his neck, recognition finally set in. He was nervous. Had she just caught him admiring his own handy work?

Day 17.

“Can you even be in love with someone without knowing who they are? This guy could show up on Christmas day, have two heads, no teeth, a few extra limbs, and I’d still want to marry him!” Zack swooned.

“Oh God, well what if that does happen and I can’t find it in me to love him? Does that make me a terrible person?”

“The guy went all Spiderman and scaled a huge statue for you. He could have died for you! Are you really telling me you’ll turn him down after that?” Zack pointed a finger angrily in her direction.

“Zack you need to chill! We said we were having a crisis chat, let’s do this.” Kaitlyn said, standing in the middle of them both.

They both grumbled in response, heads reluctantly nodding.

“Now then, I may have got a bit carried away, but I’ve actually been working on this for a few days…” Kaitlyn continued, as she fumbled around the back of the sofa.

“Is that a binder? And are those highlighters?”

Kaitlyn clutched the binder tight to her chest, back turned to them as a touch of pink splashed her cheeks.

“You don’t have post it notes in there do you?” Zack queried, attempting to peer into the binder.

“Errr no?”

“You sure about that? You don’t sound it.”

“Okay you two, this isn’t helping, let’s move on.”

“Fine. But I’m adding you to the suspect list.” Zack retorted, eyes narrowed at Kaitlyn.

“Come on then. Where do we start with this? Tell us what you’ve got Kaitlyn.”

“I think we can narrow this down to three people. Chris, James and Zig.”

“And Kaitlyn. And Edgar.”

“No to both of those.” Kaitlyn worked hard to not give Zack the reaction she knew he craved.

“I agree.” She replied, before Zack could start up another argument.

“Fine. Be boring. Okay so Chris, James and Zig it is. Everyone knows you and Chris were together that first year.”

“We weren’t ever official and it wasn’t the whole year!”

“Well maybe that’s it! What if Chris always wanted it to be official and never wanted to break it off?”

“I hate to agree with Zack, but he’s basically just covered my Chris theory.” Kaitlyn added, ignoring Zack’s attempts at a fist bump.

“Hmm. Okay, who’s next?”

“Next we have my personal front runner, James. He’s always had a thing for you. He stepped back when you were with Chris, maybe he was waiting for the right moment? And do I even need to bring up the fake fiancee plot twist? I bet he secretly wishes it had all been real.” Kaitlyn chatted animatedly, pausing a few times to point out notes she’d made, and even a sketch of an obnoxiously large diamond ring.

“So that just leaves Zig.”

“Ahh Zigmund. Zig Zag. The Ziggster. Zig-azig-ahh.”

She raised her eyebrows at Kaitlyn, perplexed.

“Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Zig is a dark horse. Quiet, brooding type on the outside, but I reckon if we were to knock him out and crack him open he’d be all sweetness and light inside.”

“You couldn’t have just said he was a total babe?” Zack’s face screwed up in disgust.

“Well sure but he’s so much more. So here’s the thing, you and Zig were having a bit of fun before all that drama at my gig right? I know you’ve made up, but you never kissed and made up. What if Zig is harbouring strong feelings for you?”

“Okay.”

“Okay? That’s all you’ve got? This took me hours, there’s still so much more we could go over.” Kaitlyn whined.

“Who do you think it is?” She blinked, cutting to the chase.

“I told you, my money is on James. Aside from all the reasons I already gave you, these are big romantic gestures, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to make this perfect. Strikes me as the kind of thing James would be good at.”

“And I think it’s Chris. I remember how he used to look at you, and come to think of it, I’m certain he still does. Plus, he’s definitely up to something, that guy has been glued to his phone recently.” Zack added, nudging her gently in the side.

“Looks like I’m Team Zig then.” She smirked, teasing them both with a wink.

Zack sprang to his feet and rushed towards the door as a loud knock sounded out.

“Can I change my vote? I’m with Kaitlyn, because this right here is screaming out James’s name.”

He carefully retraced his steps, handing over a large glass candle, a bottle of bubble bath and a box of pretty bath bombs, trusty post it note stuck to the side.

Day Seventeen - The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it x.

“Yep. That is so James.” Kaitlyn muttered, as she read the note over her shoulder.

Days 18-19.

Tagging: @zigortega4life @emerald-bijou @krsnlove @darley1101 @syltti78 @mrsdrakewalkerblog @jared2612

#choices: stories you play #play choices #christmas fanfiction #fanfic #zig ortega #chris powell #james ashton #the freshman

10 notes · View notes

queencryo · 6 years ago

Text

Journal 3

now with readmore

Journal 3

So! After typing up the last blog post, it was like… 6 am, or some shit like that. And so I finally went to sleep, very very very tired.

Silly and I had planned for me to have the buffalo chicken dip ready before she got home form work, but I… fucked that up, and slept until like 630 pm. She didn’t seem to be upset by it, but I kind of was so. Anyway!

I started on the dip, and she came home, I welcomed her (I love welcoming her home. It makes me look forward to being here long-term). Dip didn’t get started in the crockpot until like 730, 8 (I had to heat freezer chicken so it was cuttable and not frozen, I used the stove) (normally I use regular raw chicken, but I got nervous while shopping with silly’s mom so I like. Just got freezer chicken.) It turned out pretty well actually! The freezer chicken tasted very good on its own, and I’m just now realizing that after a couple days in the fridge the chicken starts breaking down in the dip anyway (I didn’t realize this until silly pointed it out, cuz I’m a [not stupid, but I don’t pay very much attention to things around me])

On that note, me and silly have started, like. Trying to be mean to ourselves less. It started cuz she. Is very mean to herself, but I then realized I still am too, so we’re! trying to do that less. It’s neat I guess. I like it. Kindness is good.

Don’t remember what was eaten for dinner that night. Something? Went upstairs to watch something while the dip cooked.

The dip was good! Silly says it was good, and that makes me very very happy. I added like. A good amount of buffalo sauce after it was done cooking, cuz it still needed some more kick. Ya know? Some kick? (I’m typing this on my laptop so I’m like. Kind of zoning out while I’m typing it. Dw about it)

Around then I realized that silly might have problems eating that as a meal bc chips are carbs are sugar, so… bleh. Still, *I’ll* eat it as meals, nyeh. I think I’ll ocntinue using raw chicken for the dip at home, it’s nice to have the leftovers from it to put into spaghetti. Chicken spaghetti.

That night I resolved to just not sleep and stay up and eat breakfast with silly before she went to work, because that seemed very fun and nice ya know? Watched a lot of adventure time, I think I’m up to like. Season 5 now (the long one)

But… around an hour before she was scheduled to wake p I was like “oh well I mean it’ll be fine if I just… sleep for an hour and wake up with her…”

Long story short I slept until about 530 pm, and was startled to wake to an empty bed. Apparently I sleepily said I loved her before she left, though, so I guess that’s not a total loss.

So! Later that night, silly comes home all excited, and like. “Hey we should buy an xbox one”

And you know I am nothing if not someone who is willing to make very expensive decisions for like no reason. So long story short we go to gamestop, and make a delightful purchase of Halo: master chief collection, two controllers, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and NO t-shirts that say gamer girl >>>:(

Ate a place in town that is apparently The Local Wing Place. I got. Mild wings, which honestly were barely even hot. I guess I shoulda heeded the menu bit that said the mild was mostly butter. A fool am I. The fried pickles were spears not slices so they were like! Still good, EXTREMELY hot but still good.

Came home, set up the xbox. Halo requires downloading of all the games (because of course). It’s like. 70 GB, but we reduce this by setting Halo 3 to higher priority and disabling Halo 4.

Playing 3 with silly was very fun. She’s way way better at it than me, mostly bc she is smart and stays back whereas I, dumbo raised on normal difficulty that I am, rush in and die quickly in heroic.

She spent like. An hour and a half or something updating her old xbox account. Her new xbox avatar looks way better, and is extremely cool (like her). She says it feels really nice updating all of that to her new self. I can understand the feeling: ridding the wolrd of another footprint of a you that’s a lie is. Very nice, I think.

So we played more halo! No highlights, I think, but it was really nice. And fun. I’m a girl and I’m gay now and I love jesus, but I still love halo C:

I ALSO brought fable 2 along, and played it while silly slept. Gotdamn I fucking love fable 2. Silly says I’m cute when I’m really excited about something. I was REALLY excited about fable 2. I think this is the first time I’ve ever done a run that’s (hopefully) gonna be mostly strength, and possibly I’m gonna use a hammer, where before I always ALWAYS used a katana. But. I just unlocked third level shock (oo) and a very pretty steel cleaver (ooo), so… ….. hopin’ I’ll be a good bastard.

Next day. Went with silly to work, as it was Friday and Time For The Magic Commander (Commeownder, in the local parlance). I only played commander a little bit, though, before silly called me over “hey do you wanna join the draft so that there are 5 rounds and everyone suffers” (my words not hers), and of course yes, that sounds so fun.

So! What draft is is each table (of I think eight people?) opens a pack of cards for each person there. You pick out the card you want from that pack, and pass it on to the next person. Then pick a card from the new pack, then the next, then so on and on. It was very fun, and I fell kinda quickly into running a Golgari (green and black) deck, which went well for me I think? (Also I just. Like golgari. They’re cool, and not annoying like blue). I had a lot of undergrowth effects, which depended on how many creatures I had in my graveyard. MEANING, that I had a lot of creatures in my deck, and enough land to keep them flowing. So, at one point, I had a, I think, 13/13 or 16/16 (idr) Rhizome lurker (gains +1/1 for each creature in graveyard), so that was… cool? Neat?

I won my first match of the draft, largely due to my opponent offering me a lot of tips cuz I was new (the boyfriend (boyfriend, right? They’re not married?) of the person silly had an encounter with a couple months ago. I think that was before we were dating. But that guy was my first opponent, and it went well?) largely due to his help, I won te first game of the match, then the second game timed out.

Second match was against F, who everyone silly knows apparently has a crush on (I also have a crush on them (they/them)), they were very very sweet and I enjoyed my game with them a lot even though they kicked the love of god out of my ass. But they also like. Told jokes during it, so whatevs. (turns out a deck of flyers will kick a goglari deck with no reach/flying in the ass.) they also helped me edit my deck, so that was very very kind of them, and I very much appreciate it.

Uh… other highlights… uh, I played silly’s ex (they dated for like. I think a month? But still. He’s not nearly as big as silly described him), and apparently hurt his feelings because I am a. very very mean and abrasive person if you take the things I say seriously. I. feel bad about that. And I spent the rest of the night noting to please not take the things I said seriously. I ended the night with 1 win, 1 draw, 3 losses, but that’s? very very much better than I expected, tbh. I guess using a deck I actually had a hand in the creation of helps a lottttt. So that’s cool! Silly said my deck was good, but that as after F edited it, so idk if it counts?

Silly says she’s glad I actually enjoy magic and I’m not just humoring her. I do very much enjoy it! I don’t think I want to get to the level she is at (due to cost, if nothing else), it at the very least will be added to my long list of “things I have or had an interest in, that I have a dabbling or casual knowledge of that is beyond the average person by a degree ranging from slight to significant, but still pales in comparison to the knowledge of an actual practitioner”. … this list is much much longer than the list of things I actually know things about. ;;

Spent like 30 minutes after the draft talking with silly and two regulars. I was annoying and unkind, and felt very unhappy with myself following. I also had to actually leave the store after it closed, since that’s like. The Rules. Silence and isolation (waiting in the car) are not conducive to recovery from self hatred, so that festered a little bit. I was fine eventually, though. Uh… yeah! Had to make a mark in my calendar.

Tried to stay up and play fable, but ended up falling asleep like 10 minutes after silly (I am a fucking scourge and I fail regularly to sleep at the same time as her. I am a Night Bitch)

Oh, also I was unmedicated for the entirety of the draft night, so that’de, like… that’s why I was so fucking annoying all day. That just kinda happens when I’m off it long enough, I guess.

I don’t remember more from that night, so let’s move on.

Got up w silly the next day, ate cereal, went up to the store. Woo!

Sat down with silly’s ex, some other dude. Started reading the book gf gave me about Learning Magic Good And Shit, it was actually real neat and cool! Apparently that’s what he wanted for Christmas, so it was. Slightly awkward!

I read that for a while, then joined in on a magic game. Players: one of the regulars talked to last night before closing, some girl I’d never seen called E (who was very sweet, I now love her), and some dude I don’t remember at all.

We had two games, I only remember that in the second one I ran Estrid The Masked as commander, and that was a. Long Fucking Game. Partially because I had like 11 enchantments on the board at one point, and kept using Estrid and Oath Of Terezi (planeswalkers do TWO things on a turn). Uh…

Highlights:

I had “every time someone casts a spell, make them pay an extra mana or else you can draw another card”, which I then doubled with Estrid’s invocation (at least until I had too many cards to know what to do with, so I put some enchantments in the graveyard before I ulted with estrid) I ulted Estrid like 2-3 times, lmao At one point between ults, I had “all enchantments are creatures” on the field, and then E played “destroy all creatures that aren’t pirates”, so I. lost. Uh. All my motherfucking creatures, except Estrid (not a creature), and a God (had a mask). And ALL my fucking enchantments. WARB- anyway next turn I ulted estrid again and got them all back. Lmfao. at the end of the game it cost about 14 mana / creature to attack me, it was AMAZING, the guy who made fucktons of tokens couldn’t TOUCH me so anyway. I used sacred mesa, plus like 48 mana (untapping all my enchanted lands is GREAT) to create 24 pegasi, which then became 24 4/4 flying angels (Divine Visitation), which was GREAT holy DAMN

I lost in the end, got milled by regular dude for like. 55 cards in one turn.

I coulda prevented this by exiling the creatures he used to mill me, but I just… didn’t. Ever. :C because I’m a foollllllll I also could’ve prevented this by swinging angels at him at the same time I killed the other player (E left before then, I guess she had work or something), but I just. Didn’t do that, because I was scared something would happen to them? It was an eminently foolish thing to not do, especially since I could make So Fucking Many angels. Always. Jesus I could make so many angels.

Meanwhile, silly was moving a shitton of boxes for the Big Fuckhuge Sale the next day. I felt bad that I couldn’t help, but I couldn’t bc if I got injured I could sue. Fair, I guess, but doesn’t make it easier to just sit on the sidelines. At least I brought ibuprofen from home.

Said quick goodbye to regulars who were chill, and who I played my first couple of games with.

Silly got told to just. Go home when her shift ended yesterday, which was upsetting bc she’d been looking forward to playing magic like. The whole day. Not quite the same, but we did play a few games when we got home. So that was nice C:

I ate dip for dinner, silly ate chicken buffalo. She is so. SO bad at eating all the meat on the bones. She says it’s cuz gristle is gross, but like .it’s. it’s MEAT. Eat the meat. So I ate all the gristle off the end of her wings while she said I was disgusting.

We finished halo 3 last night. I felt like. Stupid and bad because I was bein a failure at it, but god that was like. Soooo stupid. Lmfao. I shouldn’t have done that!

I finally managed to log in to my Microsoft account. Apparently my fucking username was staffgripper36, and I have no goddamned clue why that is my username for that.

But I made an avatar and she’s like. Cool af and she has a sundress so I guess I can’t really complain too much, can I?

We also started ODST! It is Neat, and I really like it thus far. I can’t remember ever seeing that intro cutscene in my life, but I guess that’s cuz I was an impatient 12 year old at the time, lmfao.

Then I played fable 2 til 7 am while silly slept. I. Don’t know why I fucking did that. I did get married, though. To marion the bookshop owner. We live in the corner house of the bowerstone market, just like the one playthrough of fable wherein I remember the name of my wife to this day (Hannah the Traveller) That house is my Home, you got me?

Finally onto today! 2520 words in. If words were feet, this journal entry would be a half-mile.

Alright… it has now been more than a full week since I started this journal entry. I’m back in Texas, and I… feel bad for that. I fear how much has been lost.

So! Next morning, I get up with silly and we go to The Work Place. The Big Fucking Sale is going on. I still wished I could help more, but unfortunately that is… not a possibility…

Wandered around the store for a while. Picked up: 4000 AD, a very old-looking game that seems neat. Mostly bought it cuz it looked old and aged as shit founders of gloomhaven, a game I got cuz it reminded me of marielda Anime Chess, that’s not the real name but silly said she’d been thinking about buying it for like. A While, so I bought it because I hate her an AD&D character sheets book, that still had some old character sheets in it (fuckin score) some VERY old vampire the masquerade stuff, including what I’m guessing is probably the first book that offered playing a hunter rather than a vampire? Also the sourcebook as of like 1992. More is the same than is different, though I guess that’s also cuz I barely know modern world of darkness

Sat around and read the hunter book for like. Basically a couple hours or something? Idk. Talked a little bit with some of the regulars, T and her boyfriend.

Eventually, left and went to the ice cream store across the street, ate Goat Cheese Ice Cream Oh Boy, and started writing this journal.

I wrote school’s motto on the chalkboard there, and later heard someone say “I… don’t know what that means. Should I know what that means?

Was surprised by the entrance of Silly. Goodness me I love her so much.

We then went home and like. Chilled.

She made alfredo/lentil pasta (so she doesn’t die from carbs) and fish. I, meanwhile, attempted to make raspberry cheesecake.

I got kinda stressed by the cheesecake process, cuz I was trying to multitask but still didn’t feel like I was going fast enough. I started doing that dumb anxiety over-done stuff thing that I do sometimes.

I then proceeded to open a very-fizzed dr pepper and just kinda. Break down a lil bit. I managed to keep it together until I had the cheesecake done, at least, I’m kinda proud of myself for that!

But yeah. Then I started crying or something, I don’t fully remember. I remember I accidentally made silly cry because I am an idiot, and also I was feeling bad because I felt helpless and pathetic, and typical consolation doesn’t really help with that. I’m sorry for that, darlin.

Anyway. She’s a really good fucking cook, like she’s better than my mom and dad both. Like not to be the kinda person who overpraises ther significant, but :eyes: !!! who knew that adding spices and not cooking from a box improved things??? @mom

I don’t really remember the rest of the night, nothing interesting I suppose. We probably played halo odst or something, and cuddled.

The cheesecake was… not to my taste, personally. Silly claims to kinda like it, but personally it fell into the “this isn’t really that good at all, why do I keep wantng to eat it”, probably my favorite part was the pre-baked crust.

Yeah! Stuf like that.

We got up the next morning. Busy day!!! The next 3 days, silly had em off and we were gonna make this day fuckin WORK for us

So we went to like. The nearby game store

There was a cat! And also I bought some magic card boosters. No news. Why the fuck was there a shitton of pathfinder corebooks on the Shelf O’ Unloved Games. Rude.

Had a fun conversation at a pet store

The game store near where silly worked had some things. She got halo 5, meaning she had The Complete Collection, not that it matters cuz everything after reach sucks. But anyway. She also got an application for there! So that’s really good, yay! Woo!

The nearby hobby shop was very neat, it had a shitton of gundam stuff, and like. Model trains! Wow! Apparently model rockets don’t fuckin come with the engine or anything.g that seems a little silly to me. Also they had some 3-d printing stations, but they’re apparently out for now. Idk whassup there.

Got some jingle bells at the nearby craft store, or whatever. Ran into a coworker of silly’s. she revealed that she almost named herself Katherine, and would’ve shortened it to Cat, meaning we fucking skated THIS close to me just absolutely refusing to talk to her in that alternate timeline.

Ate at dairy queen bc I had a gift card

THRIFT STORES

I made some very VERY nice discoveries. Oh HO, how delightful… some nice mugs, that I decided not to get on account of I was already transporting 3 of the things back home. But uhhh…. I got some cute skirts I think, basically just some bottoms, from the first store. Learned that my feet are not made for thrift store women’s heels. Sob.

Thrift shop two I found some very VERY nice things, including BASEBALL MOM SHIRT, and also a shirt for a basketball team for the immaculate conception high school, or some shit. I’m so excited to reveal that one. Also some things that were actually women’s tops, that might actually fit me or some shit (spoiler, they will not once I retry them on) (lol)

I uh… THINK after that we went home? And made tacos!!!!!! Holy shit silly makes such good fucking tacos oh my god. Like. I used to hate taco night at home, cuz that meant like. Dry hamburger meat with Taco Seasoning from HEB, in a hard taco shell.

But. I have discovered the truth of mixing a bit of salsa, corn, and beans into the meat, and getting it all moist, and also applying sour cream to the tacos. God they were so good holy fuck. Holy fuck. What a goddess.

We then proceeded to, I think, finish halo odst. What absolute heroines we are. I think we also watched all of otgw. I gushed about, like. The painfully o bvious metaphors and stuff that I knew about, and silly thought I was dumb I’m sure. But she did cry at the end, bc it’s very good and also because I was crying.

Stayed up later than silly did. Cried a little bit before I went to sleep because I. love her so much. Dear fuck I love her.

Ate breakfast the next morning. Returned from showering to find that silly was shooting me with a nerf gun. The fucker. We had a nerf gun fight and I’m PRETTY sure I got the better of her, because I’m very good and also extremely cool. :3 side note but she’s so amazing and I love her so much. NOT tearing up a little bit about how I am so extremely blessed to have met her. Jesus.

But uh. After that it was time to start packing, kind of. There was a not-small amount of crying. And divvying up of stuff, since I like. Did NOT have space for all of my things. Three piles: taking with me, hopefully to have mailed back to me (seriously, I need some of that stuff please. :C ), and Giving to silly because I love her and I love giving her things.

In that last group was: my first fountain pen (idk if that one or the one leye gave me was the first one I owned. But hey. Meh.) (I’m just gonna pronounce that as Ley-yey for the rest of my life. For anyone who’s not me, though, it’s like lye). She used it to write poetry on the piece of paper I used to demonstrate how to use it, and to get the ink going, and stuff. She then folded it up to look like a heart, because she’s the biggest dork on earth and also my favorite person ever to live. She did this while she was, in her words, “picking stuff out of the downstairs laundry baskets”, which is why I walked in on her doig this. The second time a ploy like this was foiled by my walking downstairs. What a loser. And yes I cried a LOT on reading that poetry, because, just… jesus. How could I not. my tentacle skirt. Please take care of it, it’s important! Hopefully I have found suitable replacements for it… probably some other stuff? I don’t fully remember… sorry….

She gave me the shirt for the now-defunct electric company owned by the Shithead dad of her childhood friend. Holy FUCK the perfect gift for me. Wow. I love artifacts!!! (we are both magpies lmao)

Never did find that pair of compression shorts she gave me last time I was down. I hope those turn up sometime, they were super handy.

Uh… so yeah. We packed up. Got most of my stuff sorted out, and figured out an outfit for the next day. I think here was where we watched otgw, actually. But yeah! Uh…

I don’t really remember much more, except hugging each other and crying. And remembering that soon I would be apart from her and feeling a deep, yawning sense of loss. And a longing to graduate so I can join her up north.

I tried to go to sleep with her, but I failed. I ended up closing my eyes for a little while, then stealing the 8.5x11 boarding pass I printed and gave to her (we each got one of the boarding passes, and one of the like. Ticket printed things? Of when I went up there. Even), and wrote her a letter on it with my/her fountain pen. I don’t remember much of what it said, beyond that I loved her in a way I never thought possible.

Went to the airport. Cried a little bit on the way there. Focused more on keeping intact for both of our sakes, since we were going on the Frightening route to the airport. I started to break down as I started getting close, thugh. Cried into her arms a little more as I got out of the car and left her behind for another few months. God, Ihate it so much.

Writing these journals this far after the fact is bad both because I don’t remember as much, and also because I start missing her all over again. :C:C:C:C:C

But uh… yeah, Ithink that’s it. Became emotionally dead as I went through the airport. Had to rush to make my first flight. Cuz… wanted to spend as much time as possible with my beautiful girlfriend before we had to go to the accursed birds’ nest. The TSA saw me as a girl. That was cool, but then they patted me down real fuckin thoroughly. Ate a biscuit after getting through. Basically slept through the rest of the thing.

Only started crying again once I got home.

Alright. We’re done here I think. I know I forgot a lot and that *hurts* me, but it’ll be alright. Honk.

These journals will likely get less detailed as time goes on. But as their number is yet small I think it’s okay.

#blog #ohio trip 2

3 notes · View notes

mygiantesslove · 6 years ago

Text

Christmas Eve at My Cousins Feet

Spending Christmas Morning With Bianca (17)

Christmas Night 11:37pm

You were Lucky (in a way). the thing you had been fearing the most was if Bianca’s feet would start to sweat horribly, but since it was December and it was so cold out, Bianca’s feet were only lukewarm. There was only a slight amount of sweat perspiring through her skin and that was when you stayed in one place on her foot for more than an hour.

Not wanting to be drenched in your cousin’s foot sweat you had to move to another spot on her foot every hour. You barely slept at all and when the first drop of foot sweat dripped into your mouth you immediately moved to another section in her sock. This included her heel, arch, the ball of her foot, and each toe.

Christmas morning 8:00 am

Bianca had woken up after a pleasant night’s sleep. She was dressed in her white pajamas and she had morning hair and even though it was all over the place, it still looked cute on her.

"MMMMMMMMYEAHHHH. That was a great night’s sleep. Hey? My right foot is a little warmer than my left? Jake should’ve only warmed up the spot he was under but…..did he....?"

Bianca leans forward and speaks into her right sock.

"Jake. WAKE UP. I have a question to ask you."

Jake heard the booming voice of his giant cousins orders and began to squirm in her sock hoping to please her foot and avoid being stomped on.

"I want to know if you moved all around my sock and used your body heat to warm up the bottom of my foot for me?"

"Yeah I did, I moved all over your foot because it was Swea…" before Jake could finish his sentence Bianca squeals happily and says

"OOOOOO that’s such a good trick Jakey and I didn't even have to teach you it. You’re really going to be a Great footslave. One day when I know you’re completely trained and won't escape I’ll loosen my socks up so you can move to my other foot and warm them during the cold harsh nights.

Bianca wiggles her toes in your face and squeezes you softly and affectionately without hurting you. For some reason, you start to like this smooth, soft feeling of her toes massaging your face and begin to rub your face from side to side against the bottom of her toes. Bianca feels your affection and says

"That’s right tiny, be a good little pet and rub your face against your master’s toes."

As soon as she said this you realized how humiliating it was to be doing this to the bottom of your teenage bratty cousin’s feet and stopped immediately. It’s almost as if you’re getting too used to your new life as your cousin's slave, but you still want a chance to escape.

Bianca finished petting her toy and got up to get changed into a comfy pair of slippers. She took off her sock and dumped you out into a pair of furry white bunny slippers. You were sitting on the edge of the heel and looked up at your titanic cousin as she stood there like a god who had just gotten out of bed.

"Since you were such a good foot slave last night I’ve decided to let you stay outside my sock while I open up my presents and eat breakfast. But if you disobey me or try to escape you’ll go right back inside them while I do a few hundred jump rope exercises. Now climb into my morning shoes, I want you to be at the top of the ball of my foot."

If you didn’t move now, you would be positioned under the full weight of her heel. you scrambled inside her slip on bunny slipper when you saw her barefoot rise above and begin to descend into its shoe home.

Bianca combed her hair and then walked into the living room where the large decorated Christmas tree stood with a mountain of presents under its branches. Trixie had already awoken and opened up some of her Christmas presents without anyone’s permission. Bianca noticed that Trixie was still wearing the same socks when she got here and thought about Trixie using Jake as a foot toy. Having your own little sister use you as an insole would be even more humiliating than a younger cousin, but Bianca wanted to use him for herself until her pet was properly trained. Trixie jumped in glee over her new cell phone. After a while, everyone woke up and joined the two youngest family members to open presents. (Actually, there were three people in the room).

From inside your white slipper prison, you can hear everyone talking in joyous, happy voices about the presents they got. You sulked, crushed under Bianca’s foot as the only present you received was smelling a giant smelly foot and being made into a bratty girl’s servant for the rest of your life. But a glimmer of hope lights in your chest when you hear these next muffled words.

Karen, Jakes mother says "Hey, has anyone seen Jake? I just went and unlocked his room and there was no one in there. He’s got a bunch of presents here; you’d think he’d want to open them?"

Bianca’s mother Michelle says "No I haven't seen him since yesterday when you grounded him, Karen."

Melanie opens up an expensive bottle of perfume and says "The little crybaby probably ran away after you grounded him, but don’t worry Auntie Karen if there are presents involved I’m sure he’ll be back to claim them later on."

Jake cried a little as he realized there was no way he was going to be getting those presents unless they discovered he was being used as an insole by his cruel, but beautiful teenaged cousins foot.

Bianca says "If Jake doesn’t show up can I have his presents."

Trixie shouts "No, I want ‘em"

Jennifer says "Girls calm down; I don’t think that Jake is going to not come back and get his own holiday gifts. Who would be Crazy enough to do that?"

The exchange of presents went on for a while and you couldn't stop crying for some reason no matter how hard you tried to fight it. you would've done anything to get out of her shoe and be opening up presents like everyone else.

Eventually, every present was unwrapped (except yours) and every person had a smile on their face. even grumpy old Uncle Mike who got a portable, self-cooling keg from his wife. your dad got an ear and nose trimmer, your mother received a new pair of earrings and matching necklace. Aunt Michelle got a new pair of designer sandals and a new blouse. Jennifer got a new sturdy bra to contain her massive breasts and Samantha got a white winter jacket with matching leggings and boots. Melanie got many unique bottles of perfume, nail polish, and lipstick. Since Trixie was the youngest she got tons of new clothes, toys, and candy but your mom quickly took the candy away to help save her daughters teeth from another trip to the dentist.

Bianca got the most expensive of gifts including a new MP3 player, an iPhone, new clothes, shirts, pants, socks, and underwear. but her favorite gifts were the new pairs of shoes she got. she looked inside the insoles of her sneakers, flip-flops, ballet flats and clogs and pictured Jake there squirming to get free but eventually accepting his fate and lying there waiting for her foot to come down on him.

"I have so many shoes I want to try Jake in. I can't wait till everyone leaves then I can have some alone time with him. I wonder if my feet will still fit in my shoes from when I was only a preteen? it would be a tight fit, but I can't wait to see the expression on Jake's face when he sees he has to go inside my old shoes from when I was a kid hahaha."

Aunt Michelle says to everyone "Okay everybody lets get into the kitchen and I'll make everyone something tasty to eat."

From outside your shoe prison, you heard the sound of 8 pairs of feet trampling far away and then felt Bianca get up off the floor and take her first step into the dining room. because she was wearing soft slippers you could feel the hard tile of the dining room floor and preferred the softer feeling of the living rooms carpet when Bianca stepped on you. but this is just another thing you will have to get used to as the foot slave to Bianca the teen giantess who owned your life.

#giantess #g/t #g/t writing #foot crush

16 notes · View notes

lilyvandersteen · 6 years ago

Text

Puppy Eyes Chapter 11

This is again from Kurt’s point of view. A bit of a filler chapter

This chapter is unbetaed, because let’s face it, I’m unable to get the new chapter written in time to let my wonderful beta @hkvoyage have a look at it before it’s update day again… I’m at home with the children for two weeks and barely have the time to write.

Thank you so much to everyone who sends me feedback - you’re wonderful and you spur me on to keep writing :-)

This story is also on AO3 and on Fanfiction.net.

The other parts can be found here: Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10

Chapter 11: Bedridden

After the holiday break, Kurt did whatever he could to make enough money to pay off his credit card debt. He’d never spent that much on a whim, but he’d been so furious at all those wishy washy cowards that called themselves curse breakers that he just had to DO something.

He’d been thinking about seeking out Mr. Zakharov ever since Blaine had told him how he’d gotten cursed. He’d scoured the internet for any and all information about Alexei Zakharov. When he found out that the man worked at a big corporation in Russia, Kurt had gotten a passport and applied for a visa just in case. As a last resort if nothing else he tried worked out. He’d known full well that it was a long shot. That it was crazy. And dangerous. But with anger thrumming through his veins, he hadn’t cared at all.

Now, though, he knew that the airfare and hotel bills would automatically be deducted from his bank account later that month. So he sold his vintage designer clothes to a consignment shop, hoping he’d be able to buy them back before someone else snatched them up. And he crammed his schedule as full of dog walks as he could, getting up at ridiculous o’ clock and only going to sleep when Blaine practically frogmarched him to bed.

Blaine had changed since their Christmas vacation in Ohio. Kurt didn’t know if it was because his father had let something slip, or if Blaine had just grown closer to Kurt by spending so much time with him and his family.

Whatever the reason, Blaine had really dialled up the affection he showed Kurt. He’d always been touchy-feely, ever since Kurt had moved in, but now he offered back massages, and slept in Kurt’s bed, holding him.

Could this mean that Blaine was starting to care for him? In more than just a friendly way? Or was it just Blaine being Blaine again and not realising how this affected Kurt?

It was becoming harder and harder for Kurt not to get his hopes up, and that was why he welcomed the distraction of work, work and more work. So when he felt a tickle in his throat, he just bought a roll of lozenges and sucked them around the clock to keep the coughing at bay. His nose was runny, too, but that had to be from the cold, right? And that headache was surely from too little sleep, not because he was ill…

Kurt plodded on like that for days, though he felt steadily worse, and any time he bent over to clip or unclip a leash, his head swam, and he had to hold on to the wall or sit down for a minute.

He could barely eat, because swallowing hurt like hell, so he subsisted on protein shakes and instant soup, and only ate solid food when Blaine made him sit down for a home-cooked dinner in the evening, and insisted on him eating more than just a few forkfuls.

Kurt was relieved when Friday rolled around – at least he’d have a little more time to himself in the weekend – and he went to bed that night when prompted without so much as a murmur.

He woke up to a strange hand on his forehead, and a slightly familiar voice urging him to sit up a little, please. “The doctor needs to examine you.”

Kurt blinked hazily, and yes, there was a doctor there, already putting her stethoscope on and holding out a thermometer to put in Kurt’s mouth.

Kurt shivered when the cold metal of the stethoscope touched his skin, but obeyed the doctor when she asked him to take a deep breath. A split second later, he wished he hadn’t, because it made him cough – hard, racking coughs that burned his throat and made it feel like his ribcage was about to crack.

The doctor listened to his lungs and frowned. Next, she checked his temperature, and her eyebrows went up. Way up.

“I can see why you insisted it couldn’t wait until after the weekend,” she said. “He’s got a very high fever. A bad case of the flu. He needs bed rest for a week, a fever reducer every six hours and light but healthy food. Is that chicken soup that I smell? That’s perfect. But the main thing is sleep, sleep, sleep, so that his body can recover. As soon as he can sit up, he needs to do something about that ugly cough he has. Eucalyptus vapour treatment. I’ll leave you instructions. I’ll come back in three days to check on him.”

“Thank you, doctor,” said the slightly familiar voice, and Kurt turned his head in that direction. The guy he saw was definitely someone Kurt had seen before, but he couldn’t place him, nor his surroundings. Where was he? What had happened? Why was everything moving and morphing like in a kaleidoscope? He felt so dizzy.

“Please,” he croaked, closing his eyes and feeling nauseous. Please make it stop.

An arm curved around his back and helped him sit up. “Okay, drink this. You’ll feel better when you do. It makes the fever go down, and it makes your throat hurt less.”

Kurt drank, wincing at every swallow.

“Good. Now let’s get you to the bathroom first, and then you can sleep for the rest of the day.”

Kurt felt someone lift him up and carry him. The bathroom was cold. Kurt shivered violently. The guy murmured an apology and draped his cardigan around Kurt’s shoulders, carrying him back to the bed as soon as Kurt had relieved himself. Kurt sank back into the pillows and drifted off.

He woke up to loud barking. Dogs! He had dogs to walk! Kurt sat up, meaning to get out of bed and do his duty, but his head whirled and whirled and he blacked out.

When he came to, he heard the slightly familiar voice berating the dog. “See what you did? You woke him up! He needs sleep, the doctor said so. I’ll take good care of him for you, I promise. You don’t NEED to stay here, I’ll look after him. Go with Paula.”

The dog growled, loud and menacing, and then Kurt felt the bed dip in and a warm body spooning his. Grateful for the extra body heat, Kurt turned around, cuddled up to whoever was lying next to him, and sank into a deep sleep.

He slept for what felt like weeks on end, only waking up every now and then for a bathroom break. The somewhat familiar guy was usually there when he opened his eyes, offering assistance to walk to the bathroom and making him drink medicine and tea and soup. Other times, it was a woman taking care of him, holding a cold washcloth over his forehead and spooning yoghurt with fruit granola and honey into his mouth. It took so much effort to swallow that Kurt was glad they were sticking to soft stuff.

The body Kurt used as his personal space heater in bed was always there, too, and Kurt never heard a murmur of protest when he pushed his ice-cold fingers and toes under the hot body to warm them.

It took a long time for Kurt to escape from the tired haze he’d been caught in and become more alert. When the haze finally cleared, the first thing he noticed was that he was sleeping in Blaine’s room. And that he’d been sleeping next to Blaine in his dog form.

Kurt’s stomach was growling, and his body as a whole felt like he’d been run over by a car.

Blaine must have felt him fidget. He turned, and when he saw Kurt was awake, he let out a loud bark.

The guy who’d been looking after Kurt came storming in, in pyjama bottoms and with his hair a bird’s nest, hissing at Blaine to let Kurt sleep. When he saw Kurt had his eyes open, he said, “Oh, you’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Kurt considered the question, and then croaked, “Awful. Everything hurts.”

“You think you could eat?”

Kurt’s stomach growled again, and the guy laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes. Does spag bol sound okay to you? I know it’s not breakfast food, but you need something filling and soft for your throat.”

Kurt nodded.

“I’m Trent, by the way. I used to be Blaine’s roommate.”

And now the pieces fit together, and Kurt remembered where he knew Trent from. Remembered how angry Trent had been the last time Kurt had seen him.

“Thank you,” Kurt said.

Trent smiled. “You’re welcome. Blaine should be turning back into a human any minute now, so he can take over the nurse duties then.”

Kurt’s mouth fell open. “I’ve been in bed for a WEEK?”

“Yep. You were completely out of it. The doctor wanted to hospitalise you at one point, but I managed to talk her out of that. I’m glad we’re past the worst of it now. I’ll go heat up your dinner.”

Kurt sank back into the pillows and stared at the ceiling. Somehow he’d lost an entire week. He’d missed his classes, and he’d missed so many dog walks without even warning the dog walking agency. They’d never want him back now, for sure. And he still hadn’t made enough money to pay off his credit card bill, and it would be deducted in full on the 25th of the month!

He winced, thinking of the overdraft charges he’d have to pay. Well, he’d have to find some other source of income. If his dog walking career was over for good, he could always go back to the Starlight Diner.

A hand touched his forehead, and Blaine murmured, “You don’t have a fever anymore. That’s good.”

Kurt turned towards him and then squeaked. “You’re naked!”

Blaine raised an eyebrow. “I always am, just after transforming back.”

“Well, put some clothes on!” Kurt demanded.

Blaine chuckled. “Bossy! You must be feeling better.”

Kurt glared at him, and Blaine slid out of bed to pick an outfit from his closet.

By the time Trent came back with a tray for Kurt, Blaine was holding out two bow ties for Kurt to choose between.

“Go with the striped one,” Kurt told him.

Trent put the tray on Kurt’s lap. “There you go. I’m not much of a cook, that’s more Blaine’s domain, but it’s edible.”

“Thanks,” Kurt said, and started to twirl spaghetti around his fork. “So… You’ve been looking after me all week?”

Trent shrugged. “Yep. Me and Paula. We took turns taking care of you. And taking Blaine out for walks.”

Kurt stared at him, forgetting to eat. “Wow. Why would you do that for me? You don’t know me at all!”

“You’re important to Blaine,” Trent said. “And I owed Blaine for leaving him in the lurch in April last year. Paula offered to help, so we came up with a schedule so that one of us would always be here to take care of you both. At first, Paula wanted to take Blaine in for a week, but he refused to leave you.”

Kurt felt Blaine grab his hand and squeeze it, harder than what would have been comfortable, but he didn’t protest. Instead, his heart started to beat a little faster, and he squeezed back, finding Blaine’s eyes and smiling at him.

“I’m so glad you’re doing better,” Blaine murmured. “You had us all worried, a few days ago. Oh, when you’re up to it, please call your dad? We’ve been giving him updates, but he’ll want to hear from you.”

“But eat first!” Trent insisted. “You need food, you’ve only eaten soup and yoghurt the past week.”

Kurt put a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth and started to chew, not really noticing what he ate. He focussed more on how heavy his arms felt – like lead – and how exhausting it was to do something as simple as eating. It tired him out.

Blaine noticed Kurt having trouble, and took over the fork, feeding Kurt, and handing him a glass of water to wash his dinner down.

“Well, now that Blaine is back to normal, I hope you won’t mind if I go back to my fiancé,” Trent said.

“Fiancé?” Blaine asked.

Trent blushed. “Ashton proposed to me two months ago, and I said yes.”

Blaine jumped up and down on the bed, making Kurt feel queasy, and then thankfully bounded off the bed to hug Trent and twirl him around.

“That’s just the BEST news!” Blaine shouted.

“Congratulations,” Kurt added politely.

Trent smiled ear to ear. “Thank you.”

“So when’s the wedding?” Blaine wanted to know.

“In August. The fifteenth. Blaine… Would you…? I’d like you to be my best man, please.”

Blaine beamed. “Yes! If I can help with the wedding planning, you just say the word!”

Trent shrugged. “Pretty much everything’s arranged already. I’ve been planning my wedding since I was five.”

“Me too,” Kurt confessed. “I used a lot of it for my dad’s wedding when he remarried, but I’ve made new scrapbooks since then.”

Trent cocked his head to the side. “Your father married again and you helped with his wedding?”

Kurt scoffed. “Not just HELPED. I planned the whole things, and in just two weeks, too.”

“But why would you do that? Weren’t you mad at him for remarrying?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “No. I was the one who introduced him to Carole in the first place.”

Trent’s mouth fell open. “Before or after the divorce?”

“My mom died when I was eight,” Kurt said flatly. “And Carole’s husband died shortly after their son was born. There was no divorce on either side.”

“Oh, sorry!”

Kurt offered Trent a stiff smile. After all, the guy didn’t know him or his family. Plus, he’d looked after Kurt all week.

“I’ll take your plate back to the kitchen, if you’re done,” Blaine announced, and he left the bedroom.

When he was gone, Trent turned to Kurt with a forced smile of his own. “So how long have you and Blaine been together?”

Kurt blinked at him. “We’re not… together.”

“Really?”

Trent sounded disbelieving.

“Really. I’m here to act as a dog sitter whenever necessary.”

“Then why is he sleeping with you?” Trent asked.

Kurt slowly sat up straight and stared at Trent, hard. “Excuse me?”

“He’s been in your bed all week. He barely left your side. We had a hard time coaxing him outside for a walk.”

Kurt deflated. “Oh… That’s… That’s new.”

“So you guys aren’t dating? But you’re in love with him, you’ve said so several times this week.”

Trent saw Kurt’s eyes widen, and explained, “You babbled a lot while you had a fever.”

Kurt bit his lip. “Yes. I’m in love with him. But he just wants to be friends.”

Trent let out a short laugh. “Well, doesn’t that sound familiar! He pulled that stunt with me for twelve years. Making me think I stood a chance and then friend-zoning me over and over. So, a word to the wise: don’t waste your best years on him. I don’t know what it is with him, but he doesn’t seem to realise where the boundaries are between a friendship and a romantic relationship. So don’t let yourself be fooled when he does stuff that makes you think he’s into you. He doesn’t do it on purpose, I swear, he’s a good guy, but he’ll never fall for you.”

Kurt shrugged. “Who would? But I’ve got to try. He’s only got two more years before he turns into a dog for good.”

Trent gaped at him. “What?”

“I went to see Mr Zakharov about the curse. And he said true love’s kiss could break it. And that Blaine had two more years to make that happen.”

Now Trent’s eyes were popping out of his head. “You went to see Alex? Weren’t you scared? Did he curse you too?”

Kurt shook his head.

“True love’s kiss,” Trent mused. “Well, then, Blaine and I were never meant to be, I guess. We kissed when we were seniors in college. Went to a party and got drunk and started to make out while dancing. And I was thrilled, you know? So when Blaine said he wanted to go home, I was all, like, okay, because I thought we were finally gonna have sex. We came home, and I wanted to kiss him some more, but he turned around and threw up all over the floor. By the time I’d cleaned it all up, I wasn’t in the mood anymore, and he was in bed, snoring. He hadn’t even taken off his shoes. So I get into bed with him, thinking, well, there’s always tomorrow, right? But the next morning, he didn’t remember a thing. And I didn’t dare push. So it all came to nothing in the end.”

Kurt’s lips quirked up a little. “That sounds like Blaine all right.”

Trent sighed. “Yeah. But you can’t help loving him anyway.”

Kurt’s smile widened. “True.”

Trent slapped his thighs and got up. “Well, I really got to get going. I texted Ashton I was on my way.”

“Thank you so much for looking after us!” Kurt said, plucking at the bedsheets. “I don’t know how I can repay you for your kindness.”

Trent hummed, then said, “You could invite us over for dinner from time to time? Ashton and I aren’t really good at cooking, and we both miss Blaine’s food so much.”

Kurt grinned. “I can imagine. Tomorrow, 7 p.m.?”

“Awesome! See you tomorrow!”

And with a wave, Trent was gone.

Kurt got up and winced at how stiff he felt. All over. Like he was ninety instead of twenty. And his legs felt wobbly, struggling to carry his weight.

It was only a few steps to the bathroom, but the exertion made him pant like he’d just run a marathon, and while standing in front of the mirror to run a washcloth over his face, he had to grab the sink so as not to fall.

Then, all of a sudden, there was an arm around his middle, supporting him. “Do you want to take a bath? I can help!”

Kurt, startled, turned his head so fast he got a crick in his neck. It was Blaine, of course.

“I can lend you some swimming trunks if you don’t want me to see your junk,” Blaine offered.

Kurt thought this over, and then nodded. A bath sounded like a really good idea.

Blaine flashed him a smile and zoomed out of the bathroom. Seconds later, he was back with the most ridiculous swimming trunks Kurt had ever seen. A picture of a kitten was on the crotch, and it was eating pizza and tacos.

Kurt made a face that cracked Blaine up.

“My brother sent me these as a birthday gift one year,” Blaine explained after he’d gotten over his laughing fit. “I’ve never worn them, for obvious reasons, so that’s why I picked them. You sit down and put them on, and I’ll run you a bath.”

When Kurt had taken off his pyjamas and put on the swimming trunks, Blaine picked Kurt up like he weighed nothing, and deposited him carefully in a cloud of lavender foam. “I’ll be right back with clothes for you. What should I pick?”

“No more kittens, please,” Kurt requested, and Blaine chuckled.

Half an hour later, dressed in a comfy hoody and a pair of yoga pants, Kurt lay on the sofa with his feet on Blaine’s lap and a warm blanket wrapped around him, watching Cupcake Wars. Kurt felt relaxed and drowsy, and though he’d planned on staying awake, he didn’t even last five minutes.

He woke up in the afternoon, and shuffled to the kitchen, bleary with sleep.

“Are you hungry?” Blaine asked, making Kurt jump a foot in the air again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Do you want an omelette? French toast? Pancakes? What are you in the mood for?”

Kurt just blinked at him.

“Not really awake yet?” Blaine chuckled. “Okay, I’ll go with the omelette. Here’s a mug of coffee for you. Bet you’ve missed coffee.”

Kurt sniffed the mug and took a large sip. Aaah, bliss!!

“I hear you’ve invited Trent and Ash for dinner tomorrow? I’m going to invite Paula too. To thank her.”

Kurt looked up, feeling a bit guilty that he hadn’t asked Blaine first. After all, this was Blaine’s apartment.

Blaine misunderstood his frown. “You don’t mind Paula coming, do you?”

Kurt shook his head.

“The doctor’s coming to check on you again in about an hour,” Blaine informed him.

Kurt’s eyes widened. “That’s… not really necessary, is it? I’m better.”

Blaine tutted. “I knew you were going to be like that. But you’ve been at death’s door, and I want you to be checked again, and to take it easy for the next few weeks. You’ve been driving yourself too hard, and that’s why you were so ill.”

Kurt bit his lip, and then mumbled, “I can’t afford doctor’s visits. And I have to work. There are some big bills coming up, and if I can’t pay them in full on the 25th, my credit will be ruined for years.”

“I’ll pay the doctor, of course,” Blaine said. “And you have enough money in your bank account for those bills. I made sure of that.”

Kurt gaped at Blaine, who shrugged. “You went to Russia for me. To help me. Helping you out financially is the least I can do.”

Blaine set a plate before Kurt and handed him a knife and a fork. “And some bread and butter, hang on…”

Kurt sat frozen on his chair. Clearly, his dad had blabbed. How much did Blaine know? And how would that affect the outcome?

#puppy eyes #chapter 11 #my fic #klaine fanfiction

22 notes · View notes

kurtwarren54 · 4 years ago

Text

Pregnancy 2 // First Trimester

Figured I would do an update on how the first trimester was for Baby 2! Things have been different and more intense the second time around! Excited to share the details with you below.

WEIGHT GAINED

I haven’t tracked my exact weight for JUST the first trimester but at my 16 week appt I had gained 9 pounds which my dr said was normal and on track! I will say the pounds started packing on WAY faster this second time around. Almost to the point I was freaked out. But you have to think that everything is growing and taking shape faster and as long as I am on track with my doctor I am feeling great. It is always also strange coming off fertility treatment into pregnancy because I am not fully myself. I had been doing fertility medication for almost a year and that always adds some start weight. But, like I said, it’s all part of my story. All part of my process. And honestly, the fact that I am here, it all doesn’t matter. I am so grateful to be pregnant and have a healthy baby!!

HOW I’M FEELING: PHYSICALLY

Nausea

GOOD GOD. My nausea was 10x worse this time around. At 6 weeks, I went on diclegis prescription for nausea and took 2 pills at night. Despite being on meds, I still struggled through most of my first trimester with extreme nausea. Luckily I did not have vomiting but man… the nausea was REALLY bad. To be honest with you, none of the “tricks” worked for me either. Sure snacks, small meals, ginger, etc etc but nope. Massive unrelenting nausea. The hardest part about it is that being the mom to a toddler means you don’t have the luxury of resting like you do as a first time pregnant woman. Having to take care of an active child while struggling with feeling ill is miserable. I have to thank Blake for pretty much taking over the minute he would be done with work to help me as I was doubled over on the couch. It was rough. And rough knowing just how long the first trimester is. What I did make sure to do was ALWAYS have a snack in the mid afternoon. If I didn’t have some kind of snack between 2-4pm, I would be even more miserable. Saltine crackers were always on my nightstand along with bold chex mix, and goldfish.

Growing pains

I experienced some more intense round ligament pain in my groin area this time around. I noticed it mostly at night. Especially when I needed to lawn, or sneeze or make a bigger movement I would get a twitch of pain from it.

Pregnancy Brain

Like my first pregnancy, pregnancy brain is a REAL THING. I swear the moment I got pregnant my brain turned to mush. It’s hard to explain but I can’t remember anything to save my life. Lol!

Exhaustion

I was a new level of tired being pregnant and chasing a toddler. Truth be told being in a pandemic didn’t help either. Not being able to take him places etc. I was very tired but the sickness bothered me more than being tired.

Constipation

Sorry if that’s TMI but wow the constipation was bad this time around. The first month or two was tough and I know it also has alot to do with how much progesterone is in my body. Since I wasn’t drinking coffee after my transfer right away, it was extra tough. I always feel like coffee gets me moving. HA! I know. So much TMI. You’re welcome.

Baby bump

This time around I feel my belly popped out a lot sooner! At 14 weeks I feel I had a tiny little bump. I am sure I will look back and be like, WOW that wasn’t much of a bump but it’s when I felt there was a defined transformation.

HOW I’M FEELING: MENTALLY

I think similarly to my first pregnancy, after so much loss (with each of our failed embryo transfers) you keep waiting and holding your breath as each week passes you by. Each week it’s own milestone. And you find yourself thinking, “Oh I will feel good once I hear the heart beat!” “Oh I will feel good when I hit the second trimester.” But really, I think there is always a sense of unease as you move through the process. I think it’s healthy to be a little bit nervous. It’s honest. I think things have just been more stressful with the fact that we are still in a global pandemic because of Covid-19. That has put alot of stress on us keeping our family safe during these times and staying as isolated as we can while also being aware of taking care of our mental health. We are very fortunate living where we do to be able to spend time together outdoors and that has been great for the mind and body. Really, I go to bed, and wake up every day just so damn grateful knowing that I am growing life and repeating to myself that I AM PREGNANT. And THIS IS OUR CHANCE. This is our miracle. It’s been such an emotional roller coaster to get to this point and really, despite any outside stressors buzzing around, I am just so grateful and smile so big everyday knowing that next Summer I get to make Otis a big brother.

WHAT I’M EATING

First trimester for me was CARBS. CARBS and MORE CARBS. Honestly most days I barely had an appetite because of how sick I felt but I know how important it was to nourish my body. So I would basically have to force myself to have my meals. ESPECIALLY when it came to dinner. I had no appetite at all at night. It was bad.

That being said, I didn’t have any coffee for weeks. First off because I avoid caffeine after my embryo transfer and didn’t feel comfortable drinking it until after I heard the heartbeat. At a certain point, when my nausea would allow in the am and I was in the mood for coffee, I started to drink it again. I started with decaf but then had some headaches and my doctor always encourages me to have 1 cup of caffeine to help with my headaches. What I was drinking and couldn’t stop was bubble water (or carbonated water) whatever you like to call it. I usually prefer lukewarm drinks but this pregnancy I was craving ICED COLD bubble water. We actually ended up getting this carbonated water maker and we literally use it EVERY SINGLE DAY. For some reason the cold bubble water just helped with my nausea believe it of not.

Thankfully eggs were a lifesaver for me and I could tolerate them. My favorite go to breakfast that didn’t make me want to throw up: a piece of toast, a tiny bit of mayo, and a sliced hard boiled egg with salt and pepper. I basically ate that every day. I also had a lot of bagels with cream cheese when I wasn’t feeling great. Food was just tough so we didn’t meal plan as much so I could eat more what I could stomach that day.

As the first trimester went on, I was able to eat more regularly. I always try to eat protein for breakfast (like egg) to help really nourish me. I also try to make smarter choices and slip some protein in my afternoon snack. My favorites: string cheese, chocolate covered almonds, toast or apples with almond butter. Don’t get me wrong, some days I have a bowl of chips, a cupcake, or something else that is naughty. I think it’s all about balance and sometimes, you just have to indulge.

HOW I’M SLEEPING

First trimester sleep was rough. With the waking up to pee almost every night that was one element. It’s likely the hormone changes that always get to me. Last pregnancy I had to take unisom to get some form of normal sleep. Since I started the diclegis at 6 weeks with 2 pills at night, I found that helped me sleep MUCH better. So for now, I am sleeping ok. Some nights are better than others. I do toss and turn alot.

EXERCISE

I didn’t really work out at all till at least around 10-11 weeks. Of course I was doing my daily walks with Otis etc and getting my steps in and my blood pumping. But I wanted to take it easy and honestly I didn’t have the energy to do anything before then. Starting at 11 weeks I started short 10 minute workouts on my elliptical that we have in our garage and Blake got me for Christmas. I try to do that, or just walk briskly on our treadmill for 10-15 minutes. There are weeks I barely get 1 “workout” if you even want to call it that. Basically I just try to get my blood pumping whether I am walking for Otis’ morning walk or doing something else. I also started prenatal yoga class (virtually online) every week and its been music ot my soul. Great stretching and a great time for me to sit and connect with my body and the baby. It’s something I really enjoyed while pregnant with Otis so it’s a sense of comfort being able to participate even from my computer at home.

MEDS IM TAKING

For most of the first trimester, I stayed on alot of my IVF medications. I stayed on my prednisone steroids till 9 weeks and then weaned down my estrogen patches as well as weaned down to 1 progesterone injection a day. During this time, I did get some hormonal headaches with all the fluctuations but luckily they weren’t horrible and only lasted 2 days. I finally was able to stop all my meds (with the exception of baby aspirin and my diclegis) at my graduation appointment from the fertility clinic at 12 weeks!!! This was a HUGE milestone after literally doing injections and taking medications for almost a year in prep for each of my FET (frozen embryo transfer) cycles.

CHALLENGES

The biggest hurdles this pregnancy have been knowing and believing that feeling like crap would likely get better at the end of the first trimester. After a year of hormone meds, and then feeling awful my first trimester, a UTI, a yeast infection from the meds of the UTI (sorry TMI!!) I got to the point where being in my own skin was just frustrating. Being pregnant is a WILD things because your body is completely taken over. It’s beautiful in many ways and also still really emotionally challenging in others. I am so thankful to see the light at the end of the tunnel of the first tri. But anyone else that is “IN IT” my heart hugs yours mamas. It’s tough!!

WHAT I’M WEARING

I feel everything comes on sooner with the second pregnancy and the need for stretchy things came sooner. When it comes to leggings, I still wear my pre-pregnancy lululemon align leggings which are high rise and so stretchy as well as my alo leggings that are really soft and a little lower rise. Both still fit comfortably and fit over my growing body. Toward the end of my first trimester, I ended up buying these maternity leggings from beyond yoga and I LOVE them. They feel like second skin and are so buttery soft. They come all the way up over your bump or you can also fold it down to go under. Highly suggest them as they are SO comfy.

Also because I don’t leave my house often (because of Covid-19) I wear a ton of sweats. These sets from Michael Stars have been a guilty pleasure because they are SO soft and made of terry material. I also love my sweat set from Tan Lines that Sivan sent over. The material is SO soft and I feel like a cool mom in them. Although Blake made fun of my crop top sweater. HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT IS COOL!!! I do enjoy wearing more cropped tops when pregnant to let the belly have it’s little bit of room. I did end up getting one pair of maternity denim from jbrand that actually fit great toward the end of my first trimester also. Will report back when I wear them out. Equally stretchy too.

I did buy 3 bras from skims that I have been loving too. This scoop bra, this triangle bra and this nursing bra are all GREAT. I wanted to see what the hype was about with this brand and I have to say the materials are ON POINT. VERY comfy. If you plan to order, SIZE UP and size up big time. I got at least size L in everything because my boobs are enormous now and I feel their stuff runs small. I also have a ton of bras from Otis’ pregnancy. From last pregnancy, I have my hatch and bravado bras that I wear weekly also.

It’s different for the second pregnancy because you start showing and feeling bigger sooner (at least in my case) so you are in that in between period of not fully having a bump but feeling large and awkward if that makes sense. I have to say, a perk of pandemic life is the fact that I am mostly in lounge wear so I have been able to avoid real clothes for most of the first trimester aside from doctors appointments etc.

SELF LOVE

First trimester was just really challenging with not feeling well constantly. Hard to give yourself self love, in a pandemic, with no childcare help. If anything, I tried to listen to my body, and lay down when Otis was napping and try my best to give my body the much needed rest it was craving. Nearing the end of the first tri, showers and a blow dry were my self care routine and even an at home mani/pedi. Feeling better was already such a treat and allowed me the time to do some other things for myself. I think it’s just so important to listen to your body and slow down when you need it.

FIRST TRIMESTER PURCHASES

Purchases for me:

Skims scoop bra

Skim maternity nursing bra

Skims triangle bra

Beyond yoga maternity capri leggings

Aarke water carbonator

Lululemon align leggings

Summer fridays babymoon belly balm

Purchases for baby:

Kyte baby rainbow onesie

Kyte baby toddler blanket

Moby mickey wrap (blake bought this for me!)

Letterfolk sign

Masongrey baby bundle

BABY PREPARATIONS

So we didn’t do much to prep for baby in the first trimester except for me sharing our good news with my good friend (and interior design guru) Anne! She helped to plan out the interiors of our whole home including master bedroom, living and dining rooms, and most recently Otis’ nursery. I basically texted her and forced her to dream up Baby #2 nursery ideas so we are currently working on that! IT’S GOING TO BE EPIC.

WHAT’S NEXT

I am looking forward to more ultrasounds!!!! I can not WAIT for my anatomy scan at 20 weeks to get some more face time with baby. Other than that, it’s check off each week as an incredible milestone and try to remain as active as I can to help get my body strong for delivery again. It’s exciting to near the half mark and be buying things for baby, talking to Otis about the baby and just imagining our life together as a family. I honestly am still in shock everyday. I feel lucky everyday. Our rainbows have brighten out life immensely and I am so excited to continue to share our journey with you all. Big love from all of us.

The post Pregnancy 2 // First Trimester appeared first on eat.sleep.wear. - Fashion & Lifestyle Blog by Kimberly Lapides.

from Wellness https://www.eatsleepwear.com/2021/02/17/pregnancy-2-first-trimester/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

elizabethcariasa · 4 years ago

Text

Pregnancy 2 // First Trimester

Figured I would do an update on how the first trimester was for Baby 2! Things have been different and more intense the second time around! Excited to share the details with you below.

WEIGHT GAINED

I haven’t tracked my exact weight for JUST the first trimester but at my 16 week appt I had gained 9 pounds which my dr said was normal and on track! I will say the pounds started packing on WAY faster this second time around. Almost to the point I was freaked out. But you have to think that everything is growing and taking shape faster and as long as I am on track with my doctor I am feeling great. It is always also strange coming off fertility treatment into pregnancy because I am not fully myself. I had been doing fertility medication for almost a year and that always adds some start weight. But, like I said, it’s all part of my story. All part of my process. And honestly, the fact that I am here, it all doesn��t matter. I am so grateful to be pregnant and have a healthy baby!!

HOW I’M FEELING: PHYSICALLY

Nausea

Growing pains

Pregnancy Brain

Like my first pregnancy, pregnancy brain is a REAL THING. I swear the moment I got pregnant my brain turned to mush. It’s hard to explain but I can’t remember anything to save my life. Lol!

Exhaustion

Constipation

Baby bump

HOW I’M FEELING: MENTALLY

WHAT I’M EATING

HOW I’M SLEEPING

EXERCISE

MEDS IM TAKING

CHALLENGES

WHAT I’M WEARING

SELF LOVE

FIRST TRIMESTER PURCHASES

Purchases for me:

Skims scoop bra

Skim maternity nursing bra

Skims triangle bra

Beyond yoga maternity capri leggings

Aarke water carbonator

Lululemon align leggings

Summer fridays babymoon belly balm

Purchases for baby:

Kyte baby rainbow onesie

Kyte baby toddler blanket

Moby mickey wrap (blake bought this for me!)

Letterfolk sign

Masongrey baby bundle

BABY PREPARATIONS

WHAT’S NEXT

The post Pregnancy 2 // First Trimester appeared first on eat.sleep.wear. - Fashion & Lifestyle Blog by Kimberly Lapides.

0 notes