#depression be like ''hey catch this spin kick.'' and then you spend the next four years recovering

[tokillamockingbird427]

God I'm so funny. Had a breakdown like monday or whatever and my mom is being supportive so now I'll feel bad if I just become a vegetable and or die, so now I gotta plan shit to do with my life...

I'm making daily goals and shit so I can feel successful and less shitty. Affectionately called "Quests." Mostly what it's been is applying for jobs. Not even mad that I haven't gotten a call back yet. I even have side quests like draining my water bottle and exercising for like five minutes.

Today I decided my main quest is revising my life plan, so I'm taking the dead corpse that is the old one and Frankensteining a new one.

So far all i've got is:

Join the Army, go through BT.

????

Die.

Like bruh. Details pls. I gotta figure out what job I want in the army so I can prep for AIT. There's (potentially) a LARGE stretch of time between BT and Die. We gotta do something there man.

My brain stoutly refuses to elaborate. So it doesn't WANT to die, but also LIVING is too hard, NON EXISTENCE is not possible!! Make a choice you lump of fat!

Also I'm maybe talking to a recruiter. I did a thing and now they're texting me but I feel like if I don't have answers for the inevitable "What are your goals?" I'm immediately a failure so I just left them on read. I feel bad. But also they're getting paid for this. But also my mom wants me to succeed and I feel bad for not trying as hard as I maybe should. Even though I am trying very hard.

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[hexiewrites]

you love the sea: part one, clotho [creation]

setting: non-magical, mythical AU pairing: marcus flint/oliver wood word count: 2981 A/N: finally, we’re here! this fic is the result of my giveaway from a few months ago. dedicated to the brilliant and lovely @flintwoodandco, who suggested an amazing idea about selkies that I just kind of.... ran with. ;D there are four parts to this thing, and I’ll be posting the rest of them for the next three days (part 2 on sunday, part 3 on monday, and the final part on tuesday - if all goes to plan). I hope you all enjoy reading this one, because I’ve absolutely loved writing it! (as always, a big shoutout to my beta and cheerleader @nymphadoraholtzmann!!)

(you can also read it on ao3!)

I’m not excited, but should I be? is this the fate that half of the world has planned for me? I know I love you and you love the sea but what holy water contains a little drop, little drop for me?

- unbelievers, vampire weekend

The last of his bags landed with a thud on the wooden floor of the old cottage, and Marcus dropped ungracefully down beside it with a loud huff of exhaled air. He took a moment to catch his breath before he glanced around the room - there were boxes on every available surface and two duffel bags beside him at the door. His entire life, packed up and carefully wrapped and it looked like so much less stuff than it should have been - shouldn’t twenty five years take up more space?

Shaking away the morose thought that he had nothing that mattered and no one who cared, and that’s why this room looked so woefully empty, Marcus forced himself to his feet. He grabbed a small box from the living room couch, then padded into the small kitchen of the cottage, surveying the space as he went. He had purchased the place with the furniture included but this was his first time seeing it in person, and it was certainly as… quaint… as had been advertised.

Marcus dropped the box onto the small kitchen table and pried it open, digging through until he pulled out something that felt mug like. It took him entirely too long to pull off the paper that had been wrapped carefully around it to prevent breakage in transit, and he silently cursed Pansy for her over-the-top precautions, especially since it was just a stupid plain mug anyways.

He reached the sink and cranked the tap on, pleased that the water that came out looked drinkable. As his cup filled he glanced up to look out the window and when his eyes focused he nearly dropped the mug in awe. It was stunning. His friends had all looked at him like he’d grown a second head when he sat them down and explained that he’d purchased a small cottage in the Orkney islands in Northern Scotland, but now that he was here he knew he’d made the right choice. The cottage was a little ways from the nearest town and up on a piece of higher land, and from his kitchen window he had the most incredible view of the ocean. His property sloped downwards and ended in a sandy beach interspersed with large boulders, entirely private according to the girl who had sold him the property.

After Marcus’s father had died, he stepped back to take a long look at the life he was creating for himself. His father had been part of the Death Eaters, one of the most notorious gangs in London, and Marcus was set to join up as soon as he, according to Thoros, “pulled his head out of his arse”. Then there’d been a major raid, organized and carried out by some orphan police officer whose parents had been murdered twenty odd years ago by the gang, and now Marcus was an orphan with no prospects. By the time the press had figured out where he lived, he had fallen so deeply into depression he almost walked out into the madness of it all and surrendered to the inevitable.

And then Adrian had, quite literally, smacked some sense into him and told him to get out of town for a bit, move to the coast, recollect himself, and come back when he was ready.

Adrian hadn’t quite been expecting him to go this far, but something had tugged at his heart and this cottage showed up for sale and everything just… fell into place.

Marcus took a large drink of the water he had poured, and then without a second thought he dropped the cup in the sink and headed out the door. It didn’t take him long to find the staircase crudely carved into the side of the hill and he kicked off his shoes at the bottom, taking a deep breath before stepping into the water. It was cold against his skin and he let out a quiet yelp but didn’t move. Instead, he held still for a few moments, felt the motion of the waves push and pull against his skin, then he waded over to a boulder that sat on the beach and climbed up onto it.

He sat for a long time, thinking about the last week and how quickly he had ended up here; about all of the steps that led him here. Now that he had finally slowed down, all of the feelings that he had been pushing back for weeks started to slip through the wall he had been building. Before he knew it, a sob wracked his body and he began to cry. All Marcus could think of was his father - the stoic but proud man, who was a criminal but a good father, a harsh man but a gentle leader, a lonely person who had lost the love of his life and had carried on despite it. Tears rolled down Marcus’s cheek and as his sobs quieted, he realized he could hear them drip into the water below him.

Finally, Marcus took a deep shuddering breath and reached up to rub at his face with the heels of his hands, and opened his eyes.

And almost fell off the rock he was perched on.

Not ten feet in front of him was a seal. Large, with smooth dark grey skin on its head, and spots of lighter sandy beige across the front of its chest - at least, what Marcus could see peeking out of the water. The seal had large nearly black eyes which seemed to be… watching him.

Marcus frowned, and swayed slightly to the left. The seal slowly turned his head to track Marcus’s movement. Marcus swayed to the right, and the seal spun in the water, eyes never leaving Marcus’s face. When he met the animal’s eyes again, he let out an involuntary shudder - something ice cold had slithered down his spin and settled into his gut and he couldn’t help but grit his teeth against the unpleasant sensation. There was a splash in the water and when he looked up again the seal had moved nearly two foot closer, and then stilled in the water, never taking his eyes off of Marcus.

Marcus and the seal sat for what felt like an eternity, though was probably more like twenty minutes, and then finally Marcus felt the cold Scottish air and realized his toes were going numb now that the summer sunshine had started to set, and he let out a sigh and turned and headed back up the beach.

By the time he reached his house, when he glanced back to the water one last time, the seal had gone, and he wondered if all of it had been some fever dream brought on by lack of sleep and the acute stress of the last few days. At the very least, he decided to leave the packing to the next day. He dug out a blanket from one of his duffle bags and wrapped it around himself as he crawled into the cottage’s small bed and managed to fall asleep.

Marcus had been in the cottage for nearly two weeks, and he was finally starting to settle in. Minus two or three stray boxes he was completely unpacked, and he had managed to find his way into town to pick up groceries. The people in the town were nice, if a bit standoffish - understandable, as he was the city boy outsider. Besides, he hadn’t moved out here expecting to make friends; he had come for the privacy and was very much enjoying just that.

In fact, Marcus had just been thinking about how nice it was to spend his days never having to worry about other people when he glanced out of his kitchen window and down towards the beach.

And realized that something was wrong.

Because there was someone sitting on his rock. On his beach. On his private property.

Narrowing his eyes, he shoved his feet into the sandals that now lived by the back door and headed down the hill towards the beach, getting ready to give this asshole who was trespassing on his property a piece of his mind.

When he was about twenty feet away, he realized something was more than wrong. Because not only was there a person lying out sunning on his rock, but there was in fact a very naked man lying out sunning on his favourite rock.

“Hullo?” Marcus called out, forcing himself to look at the man’s face and not his body. That wasn’t a much better solution, unfortunately, because the man also happened to be… rather gorgeous. He had sandy beige hair that fell almost artfully across his forehead, and a smooth swooping jawline, and soft looking lips that left a tight sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Marcus cleared his throat and stepped a little closer. “Er, excuse me?” He tried again, a little louder, glancing around for any sign of who this man might happen to be. There was a pile of what looked like clothes next to the man, but it also looked almost… wet. And the texture seemed off from where Marcus was standing, though the sun was at an odd angle.

He took another step and then tripped on one of the rocks jutting out of the ground and let out a shout and a few choice curse words, and then - as if in slow motion - the man from the rock sat up and spun towards him. Marcus was still recovering from his trip and before he could say anything, the man grabbed the pile of clothes beside him and leapt off the rock and forwards into the ocean.

“What the fuck?!” Marcus shouted, stumbling forward as he rushed for the rock. “Hey!” He shouted again, and kicked off his sandals to climb up onto the rock. It might have been summer, but it was still Northern Scotland and it was far from anything considering warm, and this man had just dove into the sea. Marcus peered through the dark water and couldn’t see the man, and glancing out towards the horizon he couldn’t see a boat in the smaller cove surrounding his beach either.

Finally, he gave up. The man must have just been a fast swimmer and gone in a different direction - but it still didn’t make sense. Why would someone boat over to his beach, swim in, sun out on a rock right up on the land, and then take off? He clearly knew he was trespassing - but there were miles of unclaimed beach around him. Why not just go somewhere else?

Marcus lifted a hand to run through his curly hair and let out a sigh, finally sitting back onto the rock.

And then he heard a splash.

Convinced it must be the man finally coming up for air, Marcus glanced over towards the noise, and nearly shouted again in surprise.

There was a seal floating happily in the water.

Watching him.

And it wasn’t just any seal. He wasn’t entirely sure how he knew, because obviously there was no way to be really sure - he hadn’t seen that many seals in his life, after all - but he knew that it was the same seal that he had seen before. He caught the creatures eyes and blinked, shook his head, and opened them again. The seal was still there. And still watching him.

Marcus shook his head and turned away from the water. “I need a whiskey,” he grumbled aloud, hoping it would snap him out of whatever it was that had him convinced strange men dove away into the ocean and a seal was stalking him, and then headed up off the beach back towards the cottage.

Three weeks later, Marcus saw him again.

He had just come back from his daily run and had been wiping the sweat off his forehead and seriously contemplating jumping in the sea for a quick refresher when he realized that, once more, there was someone on his rock.

This time, he walked down towards the water as quietly as he could, making sure not to trip over anything in the sand. He made it to only half a dozen or so feet away from the man, and this time took a moment to scan his eyes over the other’s naked form. He knew it wasn’t really alright, to be staring at someone who seemed to be nearly asleep in the high midday sun, but it was his rock and his beach. And he hadn’t really seen many people at all in the last month, and certainly no one as fit as the sandy haired man was.

Swallowing, he decided on a different tactic. “Hey there,” he tried, voice softer and not as aggressive.

It still didn’t seem to be enough, because the man shot up again and had one hand on his pile of clothes before Marcus was able to get another word in.

“Wait!” He managed, and luckily - shockingly - the man paused. “Hi,” he tried, and then cleared his throat and forced himself to focus on the man’s face instead of his gorgeous body. ��I’m Marcus.”

The man seemed to hesitate, and Marcus watched as a pair of stunning sea blue eyes flicked over his face. Just when he was about to give up, the man spoke.

“Oliver.”

Oliver. Marcus couldn’t help but roll the name around in his mind, and as it settled he decided he quite liked it. The man had a Scottish accent that sounded charming, and Marcus briefly thought that it was an accent he could get used to hearing. “What are you up to, Oliver?” He tried, not wanting to scare the man off but still not entirely sure why he was on Marcus’s beach in the first place.

Oliver frowned, his eyebrows drawing together and his lips narrowing. “Didn’t you-” Oliver stopped then, and seemed to think this over for another long moment and just as Marcus was about to say something else, he shook his head. “Just enjoying the sun.”

It was Marcus’s turn to frown, and he glanced up at the sky. Sure, it was a relatively nice day all things considered. There wasn’t too much wind on the beach, and the sun was doing it’s best to warm the day up. But it wasn’t what he would call warm, really.

“I, uh, live up in the cottage there,” Marcus said, suddenly not sure what else to say to the strange man, and turned to gesture up at his cottage. As soon as his back was turned, though, there was a splash, and he nearly shouted as he spun back only to find the rock empty.

He took a deep, frustrated breath, and shook his head.

Maybe he needed to go back to London for a weekend. Clearly the solitude was starting to drive him actually crazy.

It didn’t take long for Marcus to discover that the previous owner of the cottage had left behind more than just furniture. One day, while walking along the beach, he stumbled across a small shed that was mostly sheltered from the elements - as well as his view. It took him another day to break open the lock, and when he finally did he was delighted to find a small two man sailboat stashed away inside.

The next day he made the trek into town and returned with arms filled with bags. Resin, sail thread, sealant, everything he could think of and remember back from the days when his father had signed him up for lessons in the summer at the local yacht club to “keep him busy”.

For the first time since he moved up north, Marcus felt like he had a purpose. He worked on the sailboat for nearly a week straight, and occasionally after long nights and too much resin work, he glanced out to the water and was convinced he could see the head of a seal bobbing along in the surf.

Finally, he had a nice day - with clear skies and a relatively stable wind, and he hauled the boat out to the water and pushed off. When his sails puffed out with wind he let out a whoop of laughter and tightened the main sheet, pulling the tiller and heading off into the water.

He’d been out for nearly an hour when he realized that he wasn’t alone in the water. Turning his boat into irons, he glanced around to look for the sound of a splash he was sure he’d heard. A minute later, the familiar seal’s head popped out of the water and Marcus couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Hey buddy,” he said, reaching a hand out towards the creature. He had decided earlier in the week that there was no way it could be the same seal, but it also didn’t really matter (or so he was trying to convince himself), and so why not be friendly? Marcus splashed his palm against the water and then the seal gave a kick and was suddenly right next to his boat.

Tentatively, Marcus reached out and ran his hand along the side of the creature and couldn’t stop the grin that broke out over his face. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was expecting, but the seal was soft and smooth and Marcus let his hand drift over the creature a few times before he finally pulled his hand back to pick up his main sheet and turn his boat back in the direction of his home.

He still wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he decided to pack up and move to a tiny island in the north of Scotland, but he was starting to be more and more grateful for whatever bit of fate that had tugged him in this direction.

(also tagging, because I think you might be interested: @pctter, @mxrcusflint, @oliverwvvd, @flintwoods, @provocative-envy, @dramione84 - if you want to be tagged in the next parts, let me know!!)