#empathy Deficiency Disorder

[ice-cap-k]

So... Unstable Universe Parrot. I've got thoughts I want to get off my chest about his character, so I'm here to ramble about it.

Parrot kind of drives me crazy. I know I'm not the only one upset by some of his choices throughout the series. But something kind of dawned on me that put the guy in a new light.

Spoilers ahead. Tldr at the end.

Parrot's regularly proven himself to be a hypocrite, what with telling Wemmbu off about how stealing is wrong and you shouldn't stoop to your enemy's levels, only to immediately turn around and talk about stealing from Reddoons the next video later BEFORE he even realized there was anything wrong with Red or Capitol City's way of business. Then there's the blatant killing off of Dean and Wifies' pets while arguing it's fine for him to have an allay just to make it super obvious that, yes, he is a hypocrite.

Then there's the entire mess with Wifies during their fight. They "broke up," sure. Parrot ran away despite Wifies begging him to come back and then later accused Wifies of being the one to leave. Wifies has since apologized profusely and no longer made any attempt to argue with Parrot on the matter of his own safety because he fears Parrot will leave again. Parrot has not yet apologized as of the time I am writing this. Wifies may have overstepped by burning the compass, but Parrot refused to hear him out on a very real concern that Parrot is throwing himself into danger, and Wifies just doesn't want to lose him. Considering Parrot's hero complex, as shown by repeatedly jumping into fights that aren't necessarily his with little to no regard for personal safety, this is a very real risk.

And, you know, also hypocritical on Parrot's behalf for refusing to listen when he himself has expressed one-sided concern for Wifies' well-being during the entire confrontation with Clown. A scenario where Parrot literally refused to let Wifies help despite Wifies wanting to because he did not want to risk Wifies safety.

I think Parrot was telling the truth. He doesn't understand.

And that, when I really thought about it with this last episode, is kind of fascinating. Even when Parrot has lived through an exact scenario beforehand where he felt the desire to keep someone he cared about safe, he refused to listen when the situation was reversed. In fact, Parrot said his usual "I don't understand" multiple times after Wifies burned the compass and explained he wanted to keep Parrot safe.

He doesn't understand, despite having been in a very similar situation before.

The more I thought about Parrot's actions throughout the entirety of Unstable Universe, the more I realize that Parrot doesn't seem to experience empathy. At all.

He feels sympathy. He feels bad for the people forced to mine for ores to line Capitol City's koffers. He feels bad for Wifies being chunk banned and missed him dearly because he does care about him. He felt bad for Dean's predicament with the mafia and took him under his wing. He has a strong sense of justice. He helps people. He knows what's wrong and fights for what is right. In fact, Parrot is an objectably good guy. But he can't put himself in someone elses place. And when he does end up in the other person's shoes, he can't handle it.

Just look at how freaked out he was over Clown saying they were a lot alike. Something that had a profound impact on one, possibly more videos. Let's ignore the moral high ground Parrot tried to scrape together at the end that was absolutely unjustified and focus on Parrot's actions after Clown said that for the moment. Even after getting Wifies back from the threat of Clown almost killing his friend, Parrot STILL wanted to go after Branzy again despite very clearly seeing what that kind of a hostage situation would lead to. Even after experiencing the same threat to a loved one that he was trying to hold over Clown's head, Parrot could not make the connection that Clown may feel the same. That history would just repeat itself.

Heck, he doesn't even care that he's planning on dragging into a war a bunch of innocents who had only been trying to escape the mafia when he went to the Farlands. Despite the fact that he had his own civilization already taken over by the mafia.

Parrot has his hero complex and acts narcissistic and hypocritical because he can not make the emotional connection between his own feelings and others.

I'm no psychologist, but he strikes me as someone with Empathy Deficiency Disorder. People with this disorder tend to criticize or blame others without understanding where they are coming from, don't take responsibility for their own actions, have little to no patience, rarely show any appreciation for others, and regularly put themselves first and foremost.

Sound familier?

You could probably consider someone like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean as someone with something similar to this disorder. That or more of a narcissistic disorder, but those tend to go hand in hand.

I don't know if this was the content creator's intention as he wrote up his character, but it certainly helped me put Parrot's actions into perspective. It's really cool to think about watching a character go through the hero's journey without something as basic as empathy. While it's too early to tell, the only other character that might come close to such low empathy is Ash, who is literally the big bad. Then again, we see so little of Ash and his spoken word makes him an unreliable narrator regarding his own goings-ons. Not even Clown, who we've seen has plenty in common with Parrot. Clown experiences empathy, because he knew how upset Parrot would be if Wifies was threatened. Just as upset as Clown would be if Branzy was threatened.

Parrot has changed a lot as a character through the series, but his ability to empathize has remained static. I imagine at the true climax of the story whenever that may be that Parrot will somehow come to understand that other people can and do feel the same. And I'd like to say that will be a satisfying moment, but who knows what it might take to reach that point. A lot has been lost already.

(Tldr: I think Parrot's character has Empathy Deficiency Disorder and that's why he does the most frustrating, seemingly selfish things.)

[sourveggies]

🎨🖌️ i n k 🌈📝 — Headcanons! :

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷˚꒷︶꒷꒷︶꒷꒥꒷︶꒷ ˚ ꒷︶꒷꒷︶꒷꒥꒷꒥

🧠 Diagnosis/Disorders:

Autism

ADHD

Nihilophobia (Fear of nothingness)

A weak stomache (or whatever a magical skeleton monster has- as he throws up from feeling extreme emotions & sensations)

🌈 Sexuality & Pronouns:

Aro-Ace spec. (Canon)

Pan

He / They (Canon)

✒️ Other! (detailed bc uhh I’m very cool & smart or something-):

Ink’s lack of empathy isn’t due to his soullessness or a disorder that affects his empathy level, but a lack of social understanding, Autism & is used as a subconscious coping mechanism (Some with Autism have a more difficult time understanding others. This does not necessarily mean they have a deficiency in empathy, but may have a few more hoops to leap through to understand it in certain regards)(It’s also important to note his past, immortality, job, probably witnessing numerous deaths daily & the fact he’s an Out!Code as factors on his outlook on AU’s & its inhabitants). (P.S. I just think it’d be extra fascinating!)

Ink has a secret envy for childhood (as he’s never been a child before).

Ink’s vials are like meds! (As he needs them to function, survive & regulate him & his emotions!) (I, however, do NOT view them like a drug addiction! That would imply those on meds who use them to simply function are addicted to drugs)

He has a contradictory, simultaneous inferiority/superiority complex to cope with his isolation (he still feels isolated as he’s still “outside the box” from others, more “knowing” than them, like his past in his original, unfinished AU; even if he doesn’t remember it. It still greatly affects who he is today & why he may not see others as real as himself).

He constantly paces around!

He’s a total theatre kid

He collects things he doesn’t need (plushies, shiny things, art, etc!)

His memory issues are due to his ADHD & the mental break he experienced when he tore his soul apart in the past as some can get brain damage from having a break. Also, I would imagine that tearing one’s soul would probably cause some sort of damage to someone’s being somehow.

He indulges & enjoys child-like activities whether it be for fun or to calm himself down (cartoons, plushies, etc.)

He likes the taste of burnt toast!

He’s a complete dumbass in social situations (States the obvious, can’t read the room most of the time, will crack jokes at the worst times possible, embarrass others on accident, blurt, fall on his face, break things, uncomfortable silences, talks over others, talk about things that are unrelated to the topic being discussed, etc.)

He likes clowns & mimes & doesn’t understand why anyone would be afraid of them

He has a secret “Turning Red” - like sketchbook & would die of embarrassment if anyone found or read it (Reference to the movie when Mei was under the bed)(LMFAO-)

Ink belongs to @comyet

🌈🎨🎭🗯️🖌️

꒷︶꒷꒥꒷˚꒷︶꒷꒷︶꒷꒥꒷︶꒷ ˚ ꒷︶꒷꒷︶꒷꒥꒷꒥

[kaybreezy3000]

Bad Things (Five Hargreeves/Reader)

~Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, the inability to distinguish between right and wrong, poor behavioral controls, and behaviors that contradict social norms which then commonly result in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.

Enter, Five Hargreeves, everyone's favorite little psycho.

(Chapter Three Post)

---If you need to go back to read the summary and the first two chapters first, hit the link below. Chapter 4 through seven will be added soon...

Link to Chapters 1-2

Warnings and tags: Mental disintegration, psychological trauma, effects of isolation, masturbation, non-consensual voyeurism, explicit sexual content, bondage, POV altering, touch starved, obsessive behavior, inanimate object love, and many other sexually deviant themes all mixed with a lovely twist that you will hopefully enjoy...

---In this chapter, we start the POV switches, and they will be made clearer by large page breaks in-between.

Chapter Three: Creep

Running through his options, Five makes the quick determination that after what he just did, he can’t stay here. He needs to get the girl back inside her apartment, then he will get Dolores and together they will run.

Thanks to his fake ID, nobody knows who he really is, but as soon as the girl can, she’s going to call the police and have them search the apartments across from hers. His family will figure out what he’s been doing, and Five can already hear them going on and on about how disgusting he is.

Everyone already thinks he is a psycho, and this further proves it. His siblings may not throw him under the bus because doing so would obviously tie him to them, but it’s still possible that someone could figure out that the once famous missing boy Number Five Hargreeves is not dead like the world thought and he is not at all the person he was before he disappeared.

The possibility of the whole world knowing about the monster he has become is only adding to the heartbreak that the people he has cared about and fought for his entire life will hate him more than they already do. All this has Five questioning everything. 

They were all he lived for, and he lost them, and now this.

“You really screwed yourself this time you sick asshole,” Five angrily curses as he starts hauling the unconscious girl across the parking lot towards her building.

As if all that isn’t bad enough, Five realizes that he just ensured himself a lifetime of running from the law. This means no more trying to pretend to be a part of something he’s not, but it also means that he will have no other option but to resort to other, much less legal means of surviving.

He failed at life again and there’s a big part of him that just wants to throw in the towel and let them lock him away. But the same part of him that wouldn’t give up for the last sixty years is still there in the back of his mind screaming at him to keep fighting.

Committed to his plan, Five is about to start crossing the short distance to the girl’s building when a man in a janitorial uniform comes out the back door. Being taken off guard by his sudden appearance, Five inelegantly drops to his knees behind a parked car with the girl folding down with him on the dirty cement.

As the man crosses the lot, Five does his best to calm his heavy breaths to a more manageable level. He hasn’t had the chance to let his racing heart slow down since his extremely drunk sprint down the stairs.

Not being his usual stealthy, in control self and not being able to easily blink himself out of this situation is enough to make Five’s mounting panic much worse. The fact that he just heard the door electronically lock after the guy closed it isn’t helping either. It didn’t even occur to him that her building might need an entrance code.

“God, damnit!” he quietly hisses.

He could slip in behind someone, but that’s not likely at this hour, and not with the girl passed out in his arms. Hitting random buttons in the hopes that someone will buzz him in will get the police called or it will wake the whole building, so that’s a big fat no.

As the other man pulls out of the lot, Five makes a split-second decision based on his most recent plan being blown all to hell. He does not want to leave the girl outside lying on the ground, especially in this neighborhood. He’ll have to leave her in his apartment. He’s screwed one way or the other. It really doesn’t matter where he puts her as long as it is safe. He’ll grab only what he has to, and he’ll be gone before she fully comes to.

Five pushes his back against the car, using it to help balance him as he gets them both upright again. Then swooping the girl up in his arms, the alcohol gets the best of him and Five accidentally stumbles backwards into the car before moving forward towards his own building.

“I am never drinking again,” he declares, weaving with each step he takes. Five is trying so hard to push past how dizzy he feels, but drunk is drunk and it’s getting worse.

After the girl blew him off tonight, Five had the grand plan of passing out in a super sloshed stupor. The whiskey he tried to drown his sorrows in is catching up with him by this point and he’s realizing that finishing the whole bottle was just one more bad decision to add to the many others he’s made tonight.

When Five opens the lower-level door to his complex, he can see that no one is in the shabby hallway that leads to the elevator, and it seems like his shitty luck is changing because the thing is working, and it’s already on the ground floor. 

There’s no way he would have made it up the stairs at this point. Heavy feet scuffing along across the worn tiles, Five moves inside, throwing his elbow against the button for the seventh floor.

As soon as the doors close, he woozily drops his weight back on the wall, and sets the girl down, keeping one arm around the girl’s waist to hold her upright and the other angled across her chest to keep her from tipping forward.

Five can hardly grasp how quickly he just fucked everything up. A few minutes ago, he was in the throes of personal passion, about to blow his load all over his costly dress pants, and the next he sealed the deal that he was completely ruining his already ruined life.

Five is being consumed by his deeply depressing thoughts about himself as the old elevator doors close and it groans to life. The girl’s flowery smelling hair is rubbing up against the side of his cheek, and he can feel the heat of her body pressing back against him in a very tormenting way considering his self-self-absorbed cock brain hasn’t caught up to speed yet that he is not sitting there in his kitchen with his hand on his dick about to destroy his own lap with jizz.

His partial erection from that sad whack fest is wedged right between this girl’s warm cheeks, and it’s just like he was imagining positioning himself on her Monday night. 

Now that Five has the girl’s body pressed up next to his while he’s holding her in what many would think looks like it’s a very loving embrace, the truth that he has actually been violating her by watching her and getting his rocks off is impossible to ignore. 

You can’t imagine something if it’s right in front of you physically touching you. The entire fantasy he’s been creating in his head just completely disintegrated.

Now things just got very real and it’s not in a good way.

“I am so sorry I am doing this to you,” he hotly breathes, his forehead falling even more against the girl’s shoulder as he forces down the growing sickness in his stomach.

With extreme sadness, Five thinks about the trauma he just inflicted on this girl. Five knows trauma and his own experiences with it is what resulted in him being unable to put himself out there to have anything worthwhile in his life. 

He had wanted nothing more than to know what it was like to passionately hold someone he cared about and who also cared about him, but the horror of how it’s happening right now is unbelievable. It seems like this must be happening to someone else. 

Five is so tormented by all this, and intoxicated, that he doesn’t realize he hasn’t been holding any pressure on the girls’ neck since he carried her inside. Her knuckles make unexpected contact, hitting the bridge of his nose. Five eyes instantaneously pinch shut to the intense sensation of shooting pain that makes everything in his face burn and his eyes flood with tears.

The girl’s furious screech reverberates inside the elevator. “Get off me!”

Taking Five’s momentary inability to function, her other arm wiggles free from the arm he has around her waist. She pulls away, maneuvering her fist back and down at the same time, nailing him right between the legs.

“Ff-ah-ckkk!” 

Five’s sudden high pitch yelp comes out just as loud as the girl’s cry, but unlike her, his verbal alarm ends in a very hushed groan followed by a whisper of a wheeze as he frantically fights not to double over and also maintain his hold on the back of her sweater.

Five gags down his vomit that is threatening to make this even worse, and while he is immersed in the sensations of pure agony, she comes at him again. 

Somehow, Five manages to move his head back just in time, narrowly avoiding another jab to the face. Her hand hits his upper sternum instead and just as fast, her fingers find their way around his silk tie, yanking his head forward with it.

Five instinctively retaliates by violently twisting his arm around her neck.

“St-ooo-ppp,” he splutters as they choke each other.

“Let go!” she piercingly shrieks before she’s completely deprived of the air to do so.

Dropping her weight as her fingers dig at Five’s arm doesn’t have the desired effect of getting him to let go, so she digs her heels into the floor plowing backwards instead. 

Her reverse attack makes Five’s dress shoes slip out from under him on the grimy floor. The impact of Five’s head as it swings back into the metal wall makes a cracking sound that leaves the wall vibrating.

Totally in shock and seeing the brilliant scattering of stars filling his vision, Five’s free arm swings out, searching for the railing behind him, but he misses. He starts to lose consciousness. All at once, his full body weight is hanging on the girl’s neck as darkness begins swallowing up his remaining vision.

The girl lets out a helpless sounding whimper as they start to fall. 

Beyond faint and feeling equally helpless, Five inadvertently squeezes his arm tighter, using the girl to pull himself upright again. To his relief, her fingers suddenly release the sleeve of his dress shirt and her arms flop down limply at her sides.

DING!

At the same time the doors rumble open, the girl’s legs give out and Five almost drops her.

Unable to think let alone function like he normally would, Five hoists her back up then unsteadily stumbles out of the elevator with the girl’s feet dragging between his legs.

Light-headedly glancing both ways, he is beyond grateful that no one is out there looking to see what all yelling was about. 

Beaten and bloodied, Five makes it inside his own door a few seconds later and his first move is getting them both over to the bed because he still feels like he may fall flat on his face.

Five hastily drops the girl down next to Dolores, then he moves towards his kitchen, swaying as he navigates the short distance. 

After getting the shit beat out of him, he is quickly processing the fact that he needs to adjust his original plan to drop her and go. He is going to need to shake at least some of his drunken and concussed brain fog before he can walk even remotely straight. If he doesn’t, he may pass out in the street or his own hallway with his face smacked down in a pile of his own puke.

The idea of the cops finding him like that, with the addition of Dolores lying next to him, is enough to push along Five’s new approach to make this all still work out in both their favor. The most important thing he figures right now is that he needs to keep this girl quiet for a little while before he is functioning enough to leave.

Five throws open the utility cabinet, his unfocused eyes landing on the hook with the wound-up nylon rope hanging on it. The apartment’s previous other weirdo occupant had left many things behind, but unlike the loads of old stuffed animals, this was one thing that Five didn’t throw away being it had many practical uses. In this case, tying someone up.

“They are right, you are a psycho,” Five mutters to himself as he digs around finding nothing else useful.

Next, opening the first drawer next to the refrigerator, he grabs his switchblade and his revolver. It had been Five’s norm to always carry both these weapons, but he stopped when he figured out that there were no field operatives from The Commission coming after him in this new world because there was no more Commission.

Klaus was right, he thinks. He was better when he had an evil taskmaster to keep him in line.

Staggering a little as he turns around, he sets the gun on the kitchen table and tucks the knife into the waistband of his pants. Next, making it back over to the bed with what he figures will be enough to keep the girl safely detained till he is more composed, Five is surprised to see that she isn’t waking up yet.

He says her name.

Nothing.

Five throws the rope on the bed, then picks up her wrist, checking her pulse. He doesn’t feel one, so his trembling fingers move to her neck, pressing against her throat instead. The girl doesn’t react to him touching her, and Five still can’t feel anything.

“Oh, no, no, NO, NO !” He says the girl’s name a few more times, and again he gets nothing. “Dolores, I didn’t mean to- Shit, shit, fucking SHIT!"

Feeling like he’s losing what’s left of his mind, Five doesn’t know what to say, and even though Dolores is right there, she doesn’t respond to his terrified ramblings.

Even though his mind is spinning out of control, Five’s years of training kick in. He jumps on the bed, rolling the girl on her side. Then he lifts her chin, putting her in the recovery position that you are supposed to do for someone when trying to revive them after being fully choked out. The maneuver makes the girl’s mouth fall open and Five checks to make sure that her airway is not blocked, or that her own tongue didn’t slip back in her throat.

Everything is normal. She should be able to breathe, but for some reason she is not, and she is not waking up.

Kneeling over her, one hand on her back, Five starts rubbing. “Come on, breathe! You’re strong, you just showed me how strong you are. Breathe damn it!”

He knows very well how this works, and giving her CPR will do nothing because this is not happening to her because of cardiac arrest.

Lifting her legs so that more blood moves to her brain is not that effective at helping to revive someone in this condition, and it’s sure as hell not going to work if she’s already gone. Five could stand her on her head and no amount of blood running to her brain will bring her back if she is dead.

“Come on! NO! You can’t die!” he angrily pleads, even as both his hands keep at it, one now methodically trying to massage life into her cold legs.

Counting the minutes in his head, Five can’t really say how long he would have been squeezing tight enough to fully deprive her of oxygen. He knows that all it takes is a matter of a minute like that and someone can face permanent brain damage or death. 

They were in the parking lot for only a minute or so after she swung the bat at him. He knows he let up on her throat enough during that time because she woke up a little when they were crouched behind that car. She was moving in his lap, and he heard soft moaning sounds coming out of her. Then as soon as the car pulled out of the lot, he carried her in, not choking her at all.

In the elevator, he fucked-up big time and he let her wake up completely. Five is sure that she was never completely out more than twice and for no more than about thirty seconds at a time. 

Right?

From where Five has himself positioned next to the girl, one of his knees is pressing against Dolores’s hip and with glistening eyes he looks from the girl to her. 

“I didn’t mean to do this,” he insists.

Again, Dolores says nothing to calm Five or reassure him like she normally would. His watery eyes plead with her, but he gets nothing.

“Oh my God, thank you,” Five cries, with his head swinging back to the girl. His hand on her back slowly begins to rise and fall as she comes back to life. “That’s it. Keep breathing, it’s going to be okay.”

The girl slowly begins to move her legs and Five puts his hands under her side, sliding her small body up closer to the headboard. She makes a small sound of complaint at being handled, but he still needs to restrain her hands, or she’ll be trying to fight him again the second she’s aware of what is happening.

Mechanically, Five flips open his long switchblade so he can quickly cut the correct lengths of rope with it. Then just as fast, he makes tight loops around both of her wrists. Seeing that he’s at least not totally fucking that up that lesson he learned over and over as a child, and that her arms are snuggly secured above her head to his headboard, he risks looking over at Dolores again.

“I think she’s okay. I know how this looks, but you know that I didn’t mean to do this. I was never going to go near her. It was only supposed to be just me waahh-"

Five can’t finish that one, and that is because saying that it was only supposed to be him watching the girl doesn’t make it okay. None of this is okay. His eyelids lower and he rubs the area between his eyes.

“Please talk to me, sweetheart. I don’t know what to do. I think something is very, very wrong with me. I need you,” he pleads, winching in pain as the trickle of blood from his nose continues to drip down over his upper lip.

Five gets nothing back, and right now, he needs his trusted voice of reason more than ever. In his head, he can only imagine that Dolores is not acknowledging him because she is questioning why he is tying this poor girl up like this if he supposedly didn’t mean to do this. 

To him, she is probably thinking that he is going to hurt her even more than he already has and that makes Five spiral even worse.

“Please don’t hate me. The only reason she’s tied up is because I need to stay here long enough to make sure she’s going to make it, and I can’t leave like this. I need time to clean up,” he tries to explain. “I will get us out of here. We can start over,” he promises. 

His blurring eyes dart from Dolores to the girl, then back again.

With tears starting to run down his face, Five gasps out a devastated sob, “Dolores, I need help. Please, talk to me!” Again, she doesn’t react, and his reddened eyes fearfully widen. “Dolores!” The quiver in his voice matches the quiver in his bloodied hands.

Nothing.

Five just drug in the near lifeless body of the very real girl from across the alley, placing her in the bed next to his beloved. Now, having them both laying there opposite each other, all he can see in the mannequin’s normally devoted expression of limitless acceptance is the actual lifeless object she is. 

Just like in the elevator with the girl right there with him, now Five is finding that he can’t pretend anymore.

Dolores’s face stares out blankly, the matte finished paint of her sky-blue eyes will not meet his. 

In Five’s entire time with her, this has never happened.

As Five moves himself down the girl’s legs, snaking the nylon around her ankles, he does so with the shock of knowing that Dolores finally left him.

Now he really has nothing to live for.

Feeling totally out of it, liquid dribbles from your slack mouth. You feel the softest tickle as the hair that’s stuck to your cheek pulls away.

“Wha thhh-ah," you start to mumble, but you are so groggy that at first you can’t even complete a thought let alone string two measly words together.

It feels like you are in bed, but you don’t remember going to bed.

In your jumbled thoughts, you recall going on a blind date with a guy from a stupid dating website. That obviously turned out to be a very bad decision. You should have known this guy was bad news when he showed up early and he somehow snuck inside your building instead waiting down in the parking lot. 

At the end of the night, the douche monger insisted on walking you to your door, and then he really upped his creep factor when he jumped on you.

You remember feeling extremely unhinged and completely repulsed by what he did. As such, you figured that it was a excellent idea to educate the prick on what would happen if he ever tried that date rape shit on anyone again.

As this all comes back to you, your eyes start to flutter open, but the room is dim, and your vision is badly distorted. 

More liquid slips inside your parted lips.

“Please, wake up,” the softest male voice worriedly whispers.

Hearing that, you immediately try to move, but like the voice, everything feels wrong. It feels like your arms and legs aren’t working right.

You feel a warm hand on your back slowly moving back and forth.

That’s when you remember that strange man in the parking lot.

“No,” you croak out, as you remember the unmistakable shape of his firm manhood pressing up against your ass as he cut off your air supply with the constriction of his arm around your already bruised throat.

It feels like something is still wrapped around your neck but whatever it is, it’s not painful and tight, it’s cold.

This doesn’t make sense.

Your mouth quickly shuts, your eyes flying open, as you try to sit up. Adding to your horror, you find that you can’t. Your arms flex and pull but they won’t give in to your request. Your chest and bottom rise off the bed only to immediately get pulled back down.

As your vision clears, you realize that someone is sitting next to you. 

Dark hair dangles over pale green colored eyes. 

The expression on his face is empty, not at all the way it was when you first laid eyes on it. Then, this lunatic appeared harmless. He even looked greatly concerned for your well-being. His eyes were conveying such open sorrow that it threw you off enough to let him approach.

He was acting like he knew you. He called you by name.

You open your mouth to scream but he quickly covers the sound with a thick fold of fabric that a second ago must have been around the cold pack that is now on his lap. His eyes narrow as his hand firmly presses the towel against your face.

As air wheezes through your partially blocked nose, he says, “Don’t. Do. That. Again.”

Every word out of his mouth is filled with warning.

Even if you weren’t already completely scared stiff, just the look in his eyes has the sound of your own blood thrumming in your ears and your heart feeling like it’s going to burst out of your chest.  

This can’t be the same voice you just heard speaking so compassionately.

Looking for help, your eyes try to take in the room behind him, but you don’t see anyone else.

Angling your chin backwards, you see someone illuminated by the small bedside lamp, but your own eyes grow even wider when you realize that the woman lying there next to you is not alive.

It’s an old, full body mannequin like you would normally see at a dump or in a second-hand clothing store.

You try to scream again but he pushes his hand down harder, completely muffling it.

“I said, DON’T!” he growls as you yank at the ropes binding your wrists. They won’t budge and that’s because you are tied to a very heavy-looking wooden headboard. 

Trying to move your legs again, you realize that each ankle is tied much like your hands, then fastened by extended lines of rope to opposite bed posts at the foot of the bed.

It dawns on you that this is his bed.

This perverted asshole saw what your douchebag date did to you. He has been watching you for who knows how long, and now he has abducted you. Your legs are spread wide, and your skirt is pushed up so high from your floundering that you know he can see right under it from where he’s sitting.

You can’t believe this is happening, but it is.

Again, you remember feeling this fucker pressing himself on you. He was hard.

This guy was turned on by squeezing the life out of you, and he has a plastic woman in his bed!

Oh, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!

This is so bad.

As you mentally lose your shit, his eyes never leave yours. One of his thighs is pressing against your side and he’s still holding the bottle he must have been feeding you with, but from the way he is sitting at the edge of the bed, you can’t tell if he is still aroused.

You want to scream at him to let you go but you can do nothing. You are entirely at his mercy.

The only reasons you can come up with for why he is doing this aren’t good, but you force yourself not to go there. You have to focus.

Since he’s not actually touching, touching you yet, you try to concentrate on the rest of your surroundings, looking for some way out of this.

There is an old looking electric stove in a small kitchen area across the room, with an equally old looking refrigerator next to it. A small beat-up looking table sits under one of the only two windows and it has an empty liquor bottle on it and something black that looks like a revolver of some kind.

Great.

You remember smelling the strong scent of booze on his breath in the elevator. He is clearly shit faced. Your eyes flit back to his. He hasn’t moved at all.

Oh my God, you are going to die.

Looking out again, you see that in front of the bed, there’s a very battered looking recliner. Other than the basics, there is nothing someone would have that would give signs that they lived there. There are no pictures on the walls. No TV, no shelves full of personal belongings. Next to the recliner, on the floor, you can just make out that there is a stack of books, but that is it.

You see what must be the door to get out, and one that is narrower and has slatted vents in it, meaning it’s a closet. Behind you, when you tilted your head back to look at what was holding you from moving your arms, you saw what appeared to be a tiny bathroom.

At first glance, you see nothing that can help you. It’s just some psycho guy’s shitty shoe box sized apartment.

His indifferent reaction as you look around his home is jarring. The flawlessly smooth skin on his face gives the impression of youthful innocence, but what he’s doing proves he is far from it.

You’re betting this fancy dressing Ted Bundy has got piles of bodies under his bed and body parts galore in his freezer. Now you see it; he’s totally the type!

SHIT!

His expensive looking three-piece suit didn’t make sense in this neighborhood. Now splatters of blood stain the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He clearly used the cuffs to wipe his nose based on the numerous red smears. 

You wish so badly that you’d hit him hard enough to break his whole stupid face.

You risk looking at more of him, and you see that he is missing the tie he had on before, and you can only assume that is because the first chance you had, you latched on to it and tried to strangle him with it.

He is clearly not taking any chances of that happening again.

Uselessly trying to wriggle away from him, your arms pull down on the ropes and the heels of your bare feet slide across his rumpled bedding.

He took off your shoes!

Your stomach sickens with the realization that he has already been touching you when you were unconscious. 

Again, you notice how high your skirt is, but he isn’t looking there, his cold eyes remain fixed on yours.

You can’t help it when you scream under his hand, but that only makes him even more scary looking. His features contort ominously.

“This is not what I wanted. I-” He suddenly pauses, a line forms between his eyes as they run over your face, down your body and back up again. “You never should have lifted that bat.”

You try to tell him that you don’t care what he wants or that he didn’t want his head bashed in, but your words are totally stifled by the persistent pressure of his hand.

“You kept fighting me. I had no choice but to do what I did,” he scolds, like this is your fault rather than his.

He reaches over to the bedside table, setting the bottle of water down, then he picks up another length of rope off of it. The moment he removes his hand from your mouth, he forces your lips apart, jabbing the cloth inside. His other hand is already behind your head, pushing it forward as he works the rope between your lips.

As he ties the ends at the nape of your neck you realize it’s to keep the gag in. Your mouth is so full of fabric that not even the roaring animalist growls coming out of you are even remotely loud enough to get anyone’s attention.

Your teeth bare down on the nylon fibers as you glare at him in blind hatred.

Eyes darting away from yours, he slowly starts to sit up, but he abruptly stops when you let out a pathetic mewing sound. Those green eyes of his give the faintest hint of something as he watches the burning hot tears rolling back into your hairline.

His hand comes up brushing his dark chocolate colored hair out of his eyes before tucking it behind his ears. His eyes close so sluggishly it is like it pains him to take in the very deep breaths he is all of a sudden taking. 

The heavy fringe of his lashes sweeps his cheeks covering the dark hued skin under his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, but the faint bruising that is starting to form is also from when you hit him, and it only seems to be showing at all because of how fair his skin is.

First, sexual assault and now you are finishing your fabulous Friday night off being this crazy prick’s new and improved sex doll. 

Is this really going to be your final fate? Live a subpar existence scratching to get by, working meaningless jobs to pay the rent, then die because some crazy asshole across the alley from you decided to remove you from the world for his own sick satisfaction?

You would laugh at your ridiculously bad luck if you weren’t crying and if you could actually laugh.

He’s going to kill you. There’s no other way out of this.

“Just let me go,” you beg him. It comes out of you, but with hardly any sound though saying it makes his eyes dart back to yours anyway.

His face is one of those that you’ve seen that can express the most heart wrenching emotion if he lets it. Right now, it seems it’s more of failing to hide it than intentionally showing that he’s not as cold as he is pretending to be. 

His prominent jaw line seems even more dramatic as you notice him clenching his teeth. It makes the dimple on his cheek stand out even more. He looks so sad, and that reaction is baffling because a moment before he looked like he felt nothing and didn’t even have the tiniest amount of remorse or humanity in him.

You swear you see his hand closest to you trembling.

That has to mean something.

You try to plead with him again, but hearing it, he steels his expression to nothingness again, he stands, preparing to walk away from you.

Christ! Even crazy vagrants on the street don’t have the gift to emotionally turn off and on as quickly as this guy can, and that’s no matter how long gone their minds are.

If you could just get through to him somehow, then maybe you’d have a chance, but how can you do that if he is mentally all over the place.

As he moves, you can see his entire body more clearly. He has straight shoulders, but he is hunching them forward in an odd way that doesn’t match his young age. His chin is angled down to the floor like he simply can’t stand looking at anything else.

His trim waist is defined even more by his tailored vest. He’s one of those guys who has that V-shaped torso that comes from having zero body fat. He’s all lean muscle and bone. Add the fitted black dress pants enhancing the slim look of him and you’d think he’s nobody to worry about, but you know already that he is not weak. Under this misleading appearance is hiding the very dangerous man that just took you.

Your eyes follow his every move as he travels over to the other side of the bed. Again, you swear you see the look of pure agony in his face as he lifts the mannequin and sets her down a few feet away over by the window on what has to be a stand because the thing is standing there dressed all pretty like she belongs in a 90's department store not this freak job’s apartment.

He goes ghostly still with one of his hands resting on the form of its narrow waist.

You hear him softly talking to it and it’s almost exactly the way you heard him speaking when you were coming to.

“Dolores, please… I love you,” he pleads. He is looking at the dummy like he is expecting it to answer him.

When you look to the window beyond him over there having this extremely bizarre moment with his plastic girlfriend, you see the flowers dangling from your own flower box blowing in the wind.

He was right across from you the whole time.

You look over again at the single chair pulled up at the small table next to the window. You can just imagine him sitting there in the dark, finishing off that bottle, watching you.

Being an opportunistic perv that gets turned on by peeping on others is one thing, but this guy was getting off by watching you get attacked and he was clearly also turned on by attacking you.

He’s a sexual sadist and while he rapes you, he is going to do his best to make you suffer even more!

Animalistic sounds of pure desperation erupt from your chest, and they get even louder when he abruptly turns away from his one-sided conversation with the mannequin and comes back towards the bed.

You see his expression change to something fierce and dangerous. His entire body seems to thrum like a bowstring drawn taut. You can almost feel the carefully restrained violence about to explode all over you.

His gaze is so intense that your whole body shudders and his voice comes out so achingly low that he sounds like a different person. “If you have already done the worst things a human could do, would it matter if you sealed it that the devil owns you?”

You do not like where this is going. You shake your head side to side, denying him. You refuse to draw the parallels he is trying to make in justifying what he’s going to do.

“I lost everything. There is no point in fighting anymore,” he whispers.

Even though you don’t want to give them to him, tears trickle down your cheeks again. Seeing them, the faintest trace of a sound comes from somewhere deep inside his chest.

There is something. Something inside all that coldness. He looks sad. You are the one tied to his bed, and he looks sad…

What?

After another minute of him seeming to consider something, he begins to hungrily study you, or at least it appears that way to you in that slow, languid way his eyes roamed over your body. When they hover over your chest, your breath hitches, and you think you hear his hitch too.

“Go fuck yourself, asshole!” you frantically cry, adding every curse word you know and even adding some new ones specially invented just for him. It comes out garbled, but you are sure he is getting the gist.

He reaches for the bottle of water on the nightstand, his eyes roll back in his head, and he almost falls down as he proceeds to pound it. 

After stumbling and then tossing the empty bottle on the floor, he moves across the bed, crawling on hands and knees towards you. The mattress sags beneath his weight as he bends down on top of you.

His weight hovers over you, and your fingers curl into fists. Your arms pulled down but to no avail. 

Reactively, when his hand comes towards your face, you pull back as much as you can. He stops for a second, dark brows furrowing like he doesn’t understand your reaction. 

“Sweetheart, no, please. You know I'd never hurt you,” he slurs, then his long fingers gently run across your skin to wipe your tears away. 

You shudder. 

He still has that look. You know it even though you don’t know him. It’s the look of misery.

He brushes your tangled hair back and the frown on his face deepens. Those pale cheeks of his suddenly flush with…

Arousal? Shame? Murderous rage? You have no idea until you look between your bodies, and you see that his crotch region is definitely tenting in a way it wasn't a few minutes ago. 

Very slowly, he traces the bruises your date left on your neck with a finger. The sensation makes you shiver in fear, and you see him shiver too. You are sure he’s about to lower himself on you but then he rolls off, staggers to the bathroom, and then slams the door behind him.

Entering his bathroom, Five’s body falls forward over the small counter. He clings to the edge holding himself steady, while hoping he will be able to think clearer now that he is away from the girl.

Five is completely overwhelmed with unimaginable levels of sorrow and gross intoxication, but the worst of it is the very demanding reaction his body is having over seeing the girl laying under him on his bed. As bad of shape as he is in, Five can’t even link together any coherent thoughts other than that when he looked at the girl, he was seeing Dolores.

“Dolores, no,” he breathlessly cries in pure unfiltered agony over the gut-wrenching loss he feels.

Wanting to stop the pain and unable to operate on anything but pure brainless need, rather than hurt the girl because he has completely lost his mind, Five desperately begins to hurt himself.

He lowers his head even more, panting out panicked gasps for air as one of his trembling hands starts to rub the front of his pants.

“Please. Fuck. Help me,” he moans, meaning much more than the words can convey as his other hand fumbles to get his zipper down. 

Once he has himself free, Five is quick to start jerking himself with an intensity and cruelty that only makes his head spin even more than it already is. 

“Nahhhh-nnnn-” His instant moans of pleasure are followed by the top of his head accidentally banging up against the oval mirror hanging above the sink.  

Pumping his hips, Five rams the hand he is using to grope his tight balls, jamming it abusively right up against the edge of the counter. His angry touches feel so damn good despite the punishment that the combination only makes him moan even louder.

His knees bang over and over against the cabinet as he finds every way possible to inflict pain on himself while also giving in to that heady desire trying to consume him.

Five winces as his knuckles begin to split after making contact too many times with the hard surface, but he doesn’t stop doing it. He wants this sweet torture to drown out the rest of his unbearable suffering. 

Hair falling in his eyes and his skin feeling like it’s on fire, Five’s other hand continues taking care of the rest of his shaft. His fingers are circled around the end of the hard length, and they are moving up and down so fast that when he peers down at himself, all he sees is a violent blur.

“Yessssssss!”

Mouth hanging open, Five’s come begins to spurt out of him. The near iridescence of his release is somewhere between a milky white and a purely clear watery fluid, allowing it to blend in almost seamlessly into the fake chalky colored marble of his chipped counter. With a dazed expression, Five’s body twitches repeatedly as he watches it drip down into the bowl of his sink. 

As the waves of ecstasy all too quickly abandon him, Five’s bloodshot eyes turn up to the monster in the mirror. 

All at once, his fist slams into the face staring back at him. The glass shatters, raining down sharp blades of Five’s reflection, scattering his hatred at his feet and all over the counter.

As if what just happened when he was suspending his body over you isn't appalling enough, the sounds coming from the bathroom are making you really lose your mind. You yank at your constraints hard enough to make your quickly abrading skin begin to bleed.

It's very clear what he is doing in there; you don't need to see him to know that he took your advice and is actively fucking himself. The only good thing about this is that he is not trying to fuck you and he is in there and you are out here.

When the sound of glass breaking and things hitting the floor abruptly comes after a another one of his guttural groans, you are pulling so hard on the headboard to break free that it's banging against the wall behind it.

Not more than a minute later, the bathroom door swings open and he's back at the side of the bed looking down at you with those empty eyes. 

“I need you to be quiet a little longer." His words don't sound mad or even scary even though he just busted you trying to break free. He sounds very meek but that makes sense considering what he did in there.

You can't help your eyes from moving right from his to his fly, and sure enough, Mr. Psycho's Mr. Happy seems to be momentarily tamed.

Just when you are thinking you might be safe, he shifts himself over on the mattress where the mannequin was.

Just the act of laying down looks like it hurts him. His moist looking eyes open and shut like he can hardly hold them open as he lets out a very pained moan that makes him sound like a child that needs his mommy very badly.

You can see his hand is freshly bleeding but not bad. He doesn't even seem to notice.

“I am going to let you go. I just need to clear my head for a few minutes, and I am cutting you loose and leaving. This will all be over soon,” he hushes when the bed moves from you trying to wriggle away from him.

As he settles into the blankets and his eyes droop closed, his black vest pulls up as he stretches out and you immediately notice that he has some kind of knife tucked under his waistband. 

After a minute or two of laying like that, eyes closed still, he rolls over and his arm flops down over your chest, his hand landing way to close to your neck again. You try to shake him off, but you have nowhere to go, and he remains as is. 

This guy can say what he wants about letting you go, but him lying next to you, hand on your throat, with this fuck mannequin watching him resting up enough so that he can brutally rape you doesn’t have you feeling any less terrified. 

The only reason you are not screaming anymore is because you don’t want to set him off now that he is this close.

Less than a minute later of you laying there thinking this is it, his chin slides down the arm he has folded under his head, and as it happens, the choppy looking fringe of his hair falls over his face.

Holy shit… You cannot believe it, but he just passed out. 

His heavy breathing immediately starts to relax.

Whether he was lying or not when he said he wasn’t going to hurt you and that he was also going to let you go, you have no idea, but it doesn’t matter. Seeing your chance, your arms begin pulling again. You twist and torque your wrists, working the ropes.

The sound of loud vibration startles you and you go stark still, your eyes darting to the kitchen table as your heartrate flies through the roof. 

You can’t be sure, because it’s so dark, but you think there is a cell phone lying there next to the gun. Just as you start to wriggle your wrists again, the phone vibrates again and at the same time, he lets out an annoyed sounding grumble. “Leave me alone, Klaus.”

Klaus?

The third time the phone buzzes, his upper leg moves over, locking down over one of yours.

You close your eyes, willing your mind to take you anywhere but here.

Stupid phone and fuck you Klaus person whoever you are.

“Don’t wake up the psycho, I am about to shiv his ass! ” your mind yells at the offending electronic device.

Not long later, the hand at your throat begins to move away, but as it retreats, your crazy cuddle buddy snuggles his body even closer to yours. This new intrusion on your personal space seems to make him happy enough at first, but then all of a sudden, he must decide that he is not warm enough. He reaches back and flips the bed spread over you both and in doing so, the cuff on his right arm pulls up and something catches your eye.

He has a tattoo on the underside of his wrist. It’s the silhouette of a black umbrella with a circle around it.

What the hell?

You’ve seen that symbol before. You were a little too young when the superhero kids that belonged to the infamous money mogul Sir Reginal Hargreeves were all the rage, but you have heard of them. They all supposedly disbanded when they came of age, and from what you remember hearing, one or two may have even died before that.

They all were born with different unimaginable powers and were often seen in public as children stepping in here or there during major emergencies to show off their extraordinary skills. 

You’ve seen old posters with them, but none of their faces are coming back to you except the girl named Allison, and that is because she has been in the news over the years for different movies that she has been in. 

They were all exactly the same age, and this guy looks like he could be ten years younger than her.

He can’t be one of them…

Can he?

Whether he’s one of them or not, just like with your date tonight, as soon as you get free, you are going to show this sorry sack that he may think he knows you and you are just going to lay here and let him treat you like his little play thing, but he got it all wrong. 

He picked the wrong girl to fuck with.

If this loser was one of the Umbrella Academy kids, you haven’t seen any signs of his powers, which might be because you recall hearing that they all lost them at some point. If he is one of them, it appears he lost even more than that, and he is in luck because you are about to help him lose even more.

The rope painfully digs into your skin. You are so close. A few more twists and the ligaments holding your thumb together will slide, letting your bones pop out of place. Then you can grab his knife and it’s go time fucker.

Someone is getting a knife through the dick and it’s one hundred percent Mr. Umbrella Academy Tattoo!

The phone lets out another long buzzing sound then stops. He doesn’t say anything this time, but the disturbance must have disturbed him again because you feel his hand slowly start surveying your upper leg, his fingers gently tracing a line northward.

You begin to struggle. Your nasally whines of protest have him swiftly changing course, instead clamping that same hand at your waist. He pulls you closer as he presses his face against your neck.

“I am sorry, Dolores…” he whispers.

He is so close. Everything suddenly feels very hot.

His lips part then they start feather lightly, sweep along the coating of moisture he’s creating on your skin. When the heat of his pelvis moves tight against your hip, you are shocked that he isn’t hard again over violating you. 

This guy doesn’t make any sense. You thought that was part of the whole thing he was into, but when he popped a woody from touching your face and neck, as soon as he noticed it was happening, he took off like he was scared shitless.

Maybe right now he is just not recovered enough from his last weirdo whack session or...

Is it possible that he really doesn't want to hurt you. Maybe he wasn’t planning on it when he reached out like he did in the parking lot? 

Maybe you had it all wrong in thinking that he was enjoying watching you nearly getting raped. He had clearly been doing something by way of enjoying himself prior to sprinting out into the parking lot, but…

All of a sudden, it dawns on you that he actually looked very upset by what he saw happen. He sounded very upset by it. It was like he was so distressed by it that he ran down there planning to do something about it. 

He looked like he wasn’t expecting you to be there. He actually seemed very confused by it.

Was he coming after your date?

At the moment, you didn’t see all that, but now…

Well…

What the fuck?

He is obviously very messed up, but maybe not in messed-up in the ‘I’m going to violently rape you and murder you’ kind of way.

He did abduct you, but he just said he was going to let you go. He said that he was going to leave.

For some bizarre reason, he seems to be very in love with his mannequin and you are almost certain that right now he thinks you are her. He is so delusional; he probably can’t even tell the difference.

Again, your feet dig down into his mattress as he nuzzles your neck and makes one of those super soft whimpering noises.

This does not feel like he’s trying to hurt you. It feels like he is trying to do something else entirely.

Something is not adding up other than he is most certainly off his rocker.

He said that he has done the worst things a human can do, and you have no idea what he meant by that, but when he could have raped you while you were out or even now, he didn’t. Besides tying you up, the things he was doing before taking off to take care of his boner problem were all in an effort to help you. 

Add all this up and what he said about letting the devil own him, may not have been implying what you originally thought. The more you think about it, it seems like he could have been talking about killing himself, not giving in to raping and killing you.

You can’t see his entire face, but you can tell that his eyes are still pinched shut and it’s in such a way that looks so miserable.

You have no idea what is going on with the guy but it’s clear that something is very wrong with him, and it’s not just that he is mega wasted.

As your mind is putting all this together, he lets out a throaty sound that almost sounds like a sob before he begins placing soft kisses along your bruised neck while vibrating his next words across your skin. “Please don’t leave me.”  

His hand at the narrowest part of your waist slips under you, tenderly massaging circles against your lower back. His warm fingers very subtly dig in as if he’s trying to comfort you.

You can’t help it when a similar sounding whine comes out of you as your heels dig in across the bedding again. 

He is all over you and not in the hurtful kind of way. 

This is not what you’d expect from a sexual sadist who gets their jollies off torturing people.

As he kisses just below your ear in that very sensitive space that makes your toes curl, he does so like he has done this maneuver about a million times, and he lets out the most contented sounding sigh when your body involuntarily shudders from it. This has got you starting to think that you may have read this crazy perv all wrong.

He’s a perv but maybe not the type you thought.

What he’s doing is so unbelievably tender and loving that it has you trembling from head to toe and incidentally not just from fear.

“Dolores, please forgive me.”

Again, he’s not talking to you, that much is very clear.

After saying that, he stops with the kisses, his body motionless as he clings to you like his life depends on it.

After a few minutes of nothing but the sound of his steady breathing, you know that he is fully out again. 

To the feel of his chest rising and falling against your side, you start to work your wrists free again.

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

Thanks for reading.

(Chapter four, coming soon...)

If you are hungry for more, faster than I post it here, find this and my other Five stories at the first link below or visit my Blog to see all my Tumblr posts:

Master List Post to my Five Centric Stories and Art

KayBreezy | Archive of Our Own

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[cyrusclouds]

mental disorder headcanons for dsaf characters because i'm bored!! (I KNOW IM NOT A PROFESSIONAL OBVIOUSLY im just here to have fun y'all :3) dave miller - aspd, bpd, cptsd + autism henry miller - aspd, npd, ocpd, bipolar 1, ied, cptsd + autism :3 martha miller - gad jack kennedy - bipolar 2, npd, cptsd + adhd-i dee kennedy - gad, ptsd + adhd-c peter kennedy - ptsd caroline kennedy - mentally stable queen steven stevenson - ppd, gad, ptsd jake wilson - clinical depression, ptsd roger jones - ocd, ptsd rebecca - mentally stable queen walt - ocpd, gad, panic disorder, cptsd, schizophrenia + autism harry - npd, cptsd + autism joe - edd (empathy deficiency disorder), ptsd terrence - mentally stable king (somehow) everett - bipolar 1, ptsd + autism & adhd-c abel - clinical depression, ppd, cptsd matthew virginia - ppd + autism & adhd-h all of these hoes have ptsd. ANYWAYSS i think i got basically everybody... (please mind that 1 in 8 people suffer from mental health disorders and literally most of these characters have been through intense trauma)

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hi mbti-notes, I don’t know what to do about my long time friend, so I reach out to you for help. Your insights are always spot on and I want to thank you for this blog, I’ve learned a lot thanks to you. I’m xnfj, my friend is infp and likely autistic, we’re both 27.

She is really sweet, but I feel confused. The thing is that she doesn’t greet my family or people in general. When we were younger, it felt so surreal that I didn’t know how to react – so I ignored it even if it made me feel terrible. Later I asked her multiple times to greet at least my family members, as it makes me feel weird, she started greeting but only sometimes.

Not only she won’t greet first, but even when someone greets her, she won’t reply, which feels extremely inappropriate, especially when it is my family. It happens all the time when we go places, she won’t greet the host, etc. When I asked her why, she said it costs her too much energy to say hello.

Recently, me and my parent ran into her twice on the street. One time I think she was pretending not to see us, the other time she said hi only to me and quite literally ran away. (Yet I know that saying hi is not such an issue for her when it comes to people she likes, that’s when shouts hello even from across the street, which makes me feel twice as offended – to see this extreme difference of behavior towards some people that oftentimes she barely knows.) Then she acts as if nothing happened. Anytime I touch the topic, she denies it, explains it etc. and doesn’t understand that her behavior affects others – or she just doesn’t care.

I understand that with autism greeting can be difficult, but it doesn’t work for me – also when I made it clear that it makes me really uncomfortable. I feel like I have accommodated a lot of her issues out of friendship, so I am taken aback to see it is one-sided. I really wish we could continue being friends but I can’t imagine hanging out with her without feeling angry deep down.

And even if she started to greet, I would feel like it is forced and insincere. So my question is, what do I do? I am so confused and full of conflicting feelings. Break up? Distance? Explain myself? Or not? If you have any insight, I will really appreciate it. It’s been a month that I haven’t talked to her as I literally don’t know what to say or do. Thank you so much in advance and wish you a pleasant weekend!

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

You say you understand that it "can be difficult" for her but it doesn't sound like you actually do understand. You might feel bad to hear that, but this is not about assigning blame. I'm attempting to pinpoint the source of the problem in order to discover the best solution. As far as I can tell, there are two aspects to this problem:

Problem #1: Lack of Understanding

When someone's psychology is very different from yours, it's going to be very difficult for you to understand each other, because the other person's experience is simply too alien to "make sense" to you. I always say: Just because it doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean there's no sense to be found. This huge gap in understanding is not an insurmountable problem, but it is a significant challenge to grapple with. It requires you to push your empathy skills to the max.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological and developmental disorder. "Neurological" means that a person's brain is literally wired differently than the average neurotypical person, which is why we use the term neurodivergent to indicate the difference. "Developmental" means that typical psychological development is somehow interrupted, so autistic people will exhibit some deficiencies in information processing and difficulties with everyday functioning.

Perhaps an analogy can make it more clear: Imagine that a friend was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and was gradually losing muscle mass and control of their lower body. Even though they can still walk, they need a wheelchair most of the time because it quickly becomes painful to use their back and legs. Would you say to them, "Hey, I'm throwing a big party and since you can walk, I hope you will stand up and greet every person properly when they arrive at the door, otherwise they'll think you're rude and I'll feel uncomfortable and embarrassed by you"? I hope you would never dream of placing such a demand on someone with a physical disability.

A neurological and developmental disorder is not as visible as a physical disability, but it is just as real and can be just as painful. There are certain kinds of information that autistic people simply cannot process very quickly or at all, which means that their mind can easily get overwhelmed by sensory/information overload.

Unfortunately, being different from the norm, whether physically or psychologically, presents a lot of challenges in life. Since you've never had to deal with the kinds of challenges your friend faces, it might be hard for you to understand just how difficult it is to live in a world that not only doesn't accommodate you but actively pressures you to erase yourself. You are very lucky to have the ability to learn and adapt well in social situations. Please recognize that not everyone is equally endowed with this ability at birth.

New situations, by definition, present more unknowns, which makes them more unpredictable. Meeting someone new, in an unexpected time or place, means there's a lot more information to process and keep track of. In the best case scenario, an autistic person can push themselves through a new social situation with certain coping strategies, but it will exhaust them and perhaps ruin their day. In the worst case scenario, they will get overloaded and experience a mental breakdown, which would not only be deeply embarrassing at that moment but could damage their self-esteem in the long term if it happens again and again.

Since there is a lot less information processing to do when interacting with known people in predictable situations, it is quite logical for autistic people to prefer familiar social contexts. If they can feel comfortable, relaxed, and prepared enough, they might even be able to get energized and feel some joy in socializing, which could be a rare occurrence for them. It's possible that you have seriously misunderstood your friend's motivations.

Problem #2: Unreasonable Expectations

You fear the relationship is "one-sided", but that would only be true if the other person were actually quite capable of doing what you requested of them yet still chose not to. She's been trying to tell you that she isn't capable but you don't want to believe it. It seems you are viewing ASD as a psychological problem of "bad choices" or a personal "character flaw", since you still judge her by your own neurotypical standards. If you truly understood ASD, you would see how unreasonable and unfair it is to expect your friend to be like you.

Having unreasonable expectations means you are the primary source of the conflict. The discomfort and embarrassment you feel is yours, generated by you, which means they are your responsibility, and you need to learn to handle them better. Other people bear no responsibility for your feelings unless they have gone out of their way to make you feel a certain way. Is your friend purposely trying to inconvenience you or embarrass you? If not, why do you respond as though being personally attacked? Being NFJ, it's likely that Fe and Ni are playing a significant role in your negative reaction to the existence of someone who doesn't meet your expectations.

For example, due to Fe, it isn't uncommon for FJs to:

believe that similarity/commonality is the backbone of successful relationships, which leads to low tolerance for difference and even approaching differences with skepticism or contempt

believe that "successful" socializing involves everyone following the same social rules and customs, which means feelings of discomfort, embarrassment, or shame are easily triggered in social situations that stray outside the norm

believe that there is something "off" or morally "deviant" about people who don't follow social rules and customs, which leads to boundary violating behaviors that try to change, eliminate, or punish such differences

believe that individuals should downplay, even deny, the things that make them different for the sake of everyone else's comfort

For example, due to Ni, it isn't uncommon for NFJs to:

get stuck with one very narrow point-of-view, which leads to being too close-minded to see, let alone accept individual differences

hold themselves to high standards, which easily morph into unreasonable expectations of others

believe that they know what is "better"/"best" and try to remake the world to match their idealistic (read: unrealistic) vision

Every personality type has its set of common flaws, so it is likely that you have exhibited the above personality flaws unless you've undertaken some serious type development. If these flaws get in the way of your relationships, then you have a choice to make: i) Are you going to address the flaws, which would make you a much more open-minded, adaptable, and compassionate person in all your relationships? Or ii) are you going to decide that it's not worth changing for this one person and that it would be easier to only make friends with neurotypical people from now on?

Your question is about "what to do" in this situation. It's not my place to tell people what to do. I can help you understand the problem and even get to the bottom of it, but the solution should be chosen by you, based on what you believe is best for you.

[cauliarty]

Kirby Headcanon: The Three Matters

Every living creature is made up of three distinct forms of matter. These are Heart, Dream, and Soul Matter, and they exist in careful equilibrium in most creatures.

Heart Matter: The Body Heart Matter is the physical body of a being. The Heart of a creature influences their physical appearance, strength, and toughness.

Dream Matter: The Mind Dream Matter is the mind and autonomy of a being. The Dream of a creature contains their memories, personality, and ambitions. Magic is primarily drawn from a being's Dream.

Soul Matter: The Core Soul Matter is widely believed by scholars to be the being themself. The Soul of a creature is its very lifeblood. It connects and commands the other two Matters. At the end of a creature's physical or spiritual lifespan, a reaper will collect the Soul and bring it to the Underworld.

-

Some living beings may be born with a Matter deficiency disorder, which can impact their way of life. The severity of the disorder depends on the severity of the deficiency.

Heart Deficiency can cause weakness, chronic pain, and problems with organs and the immune system. Heart Deficiency shortens the physical lifespan of a creature through long-term health degeneration. It can be managed with synthetic Matter substitutes.

Dream Deficiency notably causes a being to feel apathetic towards everyone and everything in their environment. Dream Deficient beings tend to act recklessly or amorally and have very little spatial awareness. Dream Deficiency does not impact a creature's empathy, nor does it remove their need for social interaction.

Soul Deficiency does not occur naturally. A living creature always has a complete Soul. A being without a Soul is nothing more than a husk without any significant purpose. This disorder can only be caused by severe magic overuse. If a mage somehow runs out of usable Dream Matter to fuel their magic, they would be forced to draw from their own Soul. Cases of Soul Deficiency are thankfully very rare, but the end result leaves behind a hollow, uncaring husk of a person.

[melonnabar]

Idk how to reply to blog reposts but uh here

Addressing this, from what I can remember from bullseye, I think they didn’t do too much of a bad job on him. Keep in mind that he was mentioned to have pretty severe psychopathic tendencies, so ASPD comorbidity is a factor to consider.

I think if he wasn’t mentioned to have said tendencies, I’d be a lot more upset because then they’d be playing into the stigmatism where people treat us as if we are malicious and purposefully manipulative. People also cannot treat ASPD and BPD as the same. Whether they exist separately or are comorbid, they function differently.

Both ASPD and BPD exist on spectrums, like all personality disorders, so not every person with ASPD is a monster, and not every person with BPD is abusive.

People cannot choose to feel a certain way. Some people never chose to be born with an empathy deficiency. Same with sadism + the desire to manipulate and hurt people. However, acting upon those feelings is a choice, which is what makes Bullseye a terrible person. He is in waaay to deep.

Sorry for the long text 😭😭 I like talking about these topics

[neotrances]

Do you have Empathy Deficiency Disorder? It’s mainly found in boomers, but the way you interact with other people makes me wonder.

now what are you on about darlin?

[sycsubs]

[ENGLISH TRANS] SOOYOUNG ON ELLE KOREA AUGUST ISSUE INTERVIEW

Q: We were entering the countdown of ‘Not Others’.

Sooyoung: It’s been a long time since i’ve waited for my own work. After I finished filming i’m the type to let go of it cooly but ‘Not Others’ is different. I hope a lot of people will watch this mother-daughter story and this female narratives drama.

Q: On our last interview, you said “Even if the script is fun i don’t feel attracted to female character that’s being wasted” and we thought that ‘Not Others’ is the best match for that.

Sooyoung: Yes. There’s not much drama that Mother and Daughter is the main character in Korea? ‘Not Others’ is a drama that lower the barrier to entry with a heart touching story that brings out our empathy.

Q: How did you interpret character of the Daughter Jinhee? We thought you must have worries since there were some differences from the original.

Sooyoung: When i first heard that i’m going to do it with Hyejin unnie I thought “How am i going to style myself so that i could look more like her daughter?”. I reflected on myself right away. I realised that trying to look like a daughter is not the result that this drama wanted. So i focused on what a child will look like if she was raised by a cool and hip mother like Eunmi. She’s a faithful woman and won’t lack anywhere she goes but when you get to know her she secretly makes you turn around? (Laughs) i tried to draw a figure that makes you say ‘As expected of Eunmi’s daughter”.

Q: We heard that you’re a fan of Actress Jeon Hyejin.

Sooyoung: The reason i chose this drama was 80% to meet Jeon Hyejin. I met the actress i was a fan of in a drama and that’s not as boss or older sister but as my mom. I thought myself as lucky. If she didn’t have me when she was in high school i think this combination won’t even happen. Every moment on set with her was like a dream to me.

Q: Among the movies and dramas with mother-daughter relationships, such as Greta Gerwig's <Lady Bird> and Michelle Yeoh's <Everything Everywhere All At Once> which ones left an impression on you?

Sooyoung: Mother-daughter stories told by Go Dooshim and Go Hyunjung in <Dear My Friends>, the conversation that Jung Yumi had with her mother who had panic disorder in <Live>… and i like the mother-daughter stories drawn by Writer Noh Heekyung. Even though it’s not a mother-daughter story, i’d like to mention a work called ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, it’s about a mother-son relationship.

Q: Are you talking about Ron Howard’s work?

Sooyoung: Yes. The process of overcome the deficiencies of our parents generation was passed on to their children and the process felt like a growth drama to me. I think we are almost the same. Our parents' parents' generation went through war right? My parents generation grew up embracing the trauma of the war. As the parent generation went through the internal trauma of the IMF, our generation was placed in that lullaby. So I guess certain insecurities and deficiencies have been passed down from generation to generation. Me too. My parents also went through that process, and i tried to be a good daughter but at the same time I tried to treat it as a growing pain. I could relate to that point because it was incorporated into the work.

Q: Oh, you tend to appreciate a work deeply.

Sooyoung: I like that work as a book but i think the film is also well made.

Q: If we look only at the debut, Girls’ Generation activities and acting starts at the same time. However, the break in acting is a bit longer, since when did you feel comfortable and confident as an actress?

Sooyoung: I think it was about 2 years. The time i felt the set as ‘a failure place’ to ‘it’s okay for me to fail here’ took a long time to accept it. I always tried to be perfect. I had an obsession to do better than anyone else since i knew the way an idol turned actress was looked at. I went to an audition once, a casting director said to me ‘you are good but you seems like a person who’s afraid of not doing good’, that’s when i got chills..

Q: You’ve got the point.

Sooyoung: I always afraid of not doing well. I couldn’t focus on my acting since i was afraid that people would say something about my attitude. I was always anxious, conscious even though nobody cares I was wrapped up in the sense of a victim and couldn't be free. I think I trained myself to collect all that waste of energy into one place. So I thought let’s get hate for making up my mind, let’s get some swearing! Let’s be a bit bolder even if my shortcoming goes into the ears of people around me, i’ve been thinking like that for around 2 years now. After I finished <If You Tell Me Your Wish> and <Fan Letter, Please> I gained a little bit confidence. I think ‘Not Others’ is the highlight.

Q: Even though you were expressing your shortcomings, you have so many talents such as singing, dancing, being social and acting. Where does that DNA comes from?

Sooyoung: My mom did some music in the past. My dad is good at talking but i feel like it’s the Girls’ Generation DNA. I realised it recently, the vaguely experiences in my 20s has naturally been embodied into me. So now when i look at the society, in variety shows and on stage i can see myself move automatically because of the things I’ve experienced. In fact, I thought if hadn’t done this work I might be missing out the feelings of my peers. Of course there won’t be a part like that but i get it now. I’m also learning my own experiences and emotions. I feel that my 30s is the time to expand myself by using my past experiences.

Q: It is such a great realisation

Sooyoung: In the past I won’t be able to talk like this. Because my lack of confidence. But now that I’m about to accept failure i just throw it away. (Laughs).

Q: At 2022 MBC Drama Awards, when you received an awards and Yoona in the audience seat was on the screen, you said ‘Yoona, do it now. You have to cry.’ That was a spontaneous comment and it became a huge issue.

Sooyoung: Haha yes. In the past, a single word from an idol would be evaluated as a strict standard. Now, i think the public’s taste has broadened and they accept it in variety ways.

Q: Anyway, because you were born in the early year, you were called as ‘the family tree (age) breaker’ right? Do you have any special feelings as the early year born since the counting age system has disappeared?

Sooyoung: So Yoona who was born in the same year as me won’t have to call me as ‘Unnie’ anymore? And the members in 89line became my Unnies? Uhm.. Even without the counting age system i think we won’t change the way we call each other. Isn’t it great to be a year younger?

Q: You must have many experiences in human relationship since you started your social life early. Who did you trust in that process.

Sooyoung: Someone who’s consistent. Trust someone who has their own beliefs and standards. Taste may change often but I believe beliefs are not easily shaken.

Q: Do you consider yourself as someone who has her own beliefs?

Sooyoung: I’m so consistent that it became a bit boring (laughs). Someone need to have the charm of ‘don’t know where she’ll go’, but I can’t do that.

Q: What is the motto of the consistent Sooyoung?

Sooyoung: These days, i think about the word of ‘Failing Forward’ a lot. Let’s move forward while failing. In the past, i was a hesitant character. I had a lot of worries and anxieties. Now, even if it’s just not good, i’ll go forward no matter what anyone says.

Q: While filming <Not Others>, you must have thought a lot about your family, is your family a someone else?

Sooyoung: Family is a thorough another person and someone else. It’s not someone else in a negative way, but someone else who we need to be the most considerate, the most careful and the most caring in the world. Before i was the opposite. I was more busy taking care of other people than my family. I started living alone in my mid 20s, i think that’s when i started to think about my family again. The person you should respect the most is your family.

Q: We agreed with you. Are many people rude to their families just because they are close?

Sooyoung: Yes. That’s why it’s a problem.

Q: This is the last question. Where is the 33 years old Sooyoung standing now?

Sooyoung: I feel like i’m standing at the starting line. Did it feel like a full zero? I think this is the time where i have been trained mentally to be the most independent, the most subjective and to thoroughly objectify myself. It’s in that sense of zero, fully!

[galerymod]

Sociopath

Sociopaths are people who suffer from a dissocial personality disorder. They have difficulty forming long-term relationships. Others often describe them as unscrupulous, callous or manipulative. You are extremely willing to take risks and behave irresponsibly in the eyes of others. Sometimes you come into conflict with the law.

What is the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath?

In specialist literature, the two terms sociopath and psychopath are not always strictly separated, although a distinction is useful. Psychopathy is the most extreme form of a dissocial personality disorder. While the sociopath acts impulsively, the psychopath plans his actions precisely and acts coolly and deliberately. There are the following differences in behaviour:

Sociopaths have feelings such as fear or anger. They quickly feel attacked and then react aggressively. This behaviour gets them into trouble and ensures that relationships are usually only superficial and short-lived.

Psychopaths, on the other hand, have themselves well under control. They also lack compassion, but they are very good at covering up this lack of empathy.

Psychopaths are highly functional and usually well integrated into society. They are extremely manipulative and easily gain the trust of others. As they can exploit others cold-bloodedly and unscrupulously, they are very dangerous.

There are also thought to be differences in the development of both clinical pictures. Experts believe that sociopathy is more likely to be triggered by a childhood trauma. The typical sociopath has almost always experienced abuse, violence or neglect as a child. Their antisocial behaviour often even serves as a survival strategy. Psychopathy, on the other hand, appears to be innate.

In psychopaths, the areas of the brain responsible for impulse control and empathy are not properly developed from birth.

The treatment options and prognoses are correspondingly different. While a dissocial personality disorder can be treated psychotherapeutically - an approach that plays a major role in the reintegration of offenders into society - it is apparently not possible to cure a genuine psychopath. Some experts even assume that the symptoms can be exacerbated by treatment. Accordingly, psychopaths have the highest recidivism rate among offenders.

Why pursue therapeutic measures when one can simply engage in the overtly illicit act? One need only join a party, and the criminal behaviour will be resolved when one has sufficient influence to petition a judge.

mod

Regardless of the fact that the act is an assassination, the assassin has given the emotionally unstable individual and his party, which acts without moral constraints, a considerable advantage.

mod

Causes of dissocial personality disorder

How an antisocial personality develops has not yet been conclusively clarified. Most scientists today assume a combination of genetic and environmental factors:

Genetic disposition: the likelihood of antisocial behavior is higher if one or both parents have already been affected by the disorder. A scientific study of twins has also confirmed that there is an overall genetic predisposition to all personality disorders. Other favorable factors are probably anxiety disorders, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction and suicide risk in the family.

Traumatic childhood experiences: Physical violence, sexual abuse and other traumatic relationship experiences in childhood increase the risk of developing antisocial personality disorder.

Serotonin deficiency: A lack of the neurotransmitter serotonin presumably ensures that sociopaths are unable to react adequately to emotional signals and generally feel less fear. On the one hand, this explains the lack of empathy for the suffering of others, but also the strong tendency towards risk-taking behavior. Some experts assume that people with a dissocial personality are generally understimulated. This is why they are constantly looking for a "kick" - on the one hand in dangerous sports, but also in criminal acts on the other.

Neurophysiological factors: Imaging studies indicate dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex of the brain in antisocial personalities. This is likely to be the trigger for the extreme emotional coldness, especially in the strongest form of psychopathy.

Signs: How to recognize a sociopath

People with antisocial disorder stand out due to their socially intolerant behavior. This often becomes apparent in childhood and adolescence.

Possible signs of a dissocial personality can be

Lack of empathy

emotional coldness

pronounced egocentric behavior

Lack of a sense of guilt and responsibility

Low frustration tolerance

strong impulsiveness

violence

Problems entering into long-term relationships

High willingness to take risks

Disregard for social norms and laws

Diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder

Both the ICD-10 and DSM-V classification criteria can be used to diagnose the personality disorder.

According to ICD-10, dissocial personalities must have

character abnormalities such as egocentrism, lack of empathy and a lack of conscience and

there must be a considerable discrepancy between the behavior displayed and social norms. Criminal acts may occur, but are not essential for the diagnosis.

For a clear diagnosis, organic causes must have been ruled out.

In addition, at least three of the following characteristics must be fulfilled:

The affected person has a lack of empathy and shows callousness towards others.

He (or she) shows a clear and persistent irresponsible attitude and repeatedly disregards social norms and obligations.

He (or she) is unable to maintain lasting attachments or relationships with other people, although he (or she) has no difficulty forming relationships.

He has a low frustration tolerance and often behaves impulsively or aggressively.

The affected person feels little or no guilt and is unable to learn from negative experiences, especially punishment.

He tends to blame others or make excuses to explain his behavior, which has brought him into conflict with society.

The DSM-V is based on similar behavioral patterns, but emphasizes the criminal component, which manifests itself, for example, in violations of the law. In addition, according to this classification, the person affected must be at least 18 years old for the disorder to be reliably diagnosed, and the conspicuous behavior must have been apparent since at least the age of 15.

[mossbark]

You are defining "gender affirming care" and "care trans people receive" and the people on the post are defining it as "care which is sought out and used to affirm one's gender".

You are correct that Viagra and HRT for menopausal cis woman are not medically exactly equivalent to HRT for trans people, but that is not the point being argued. The point being argued is that cis people also take medical actions that are primarily to make them feel better in their gender.

It is similar to the common point that a cis woman with a moustache who does laser hair removal for it is doing so because a moustache does not fit her idea of her own gender presentation; this is the same reason a trans woman might get laser hair removal.

"The point being argued is that cis people also take medical actions that are primarily to make them feel better in their gender."

The point I am actually making is that cis people are not taking Viagra or estrogen to primarily affirm their gender. They are taking them to correct symptoms of physiological dysfunction. This isn't a hard distinction to grasp.

"I can't maintain an erection, which makes sexual intimacy difficult if not impossible. (And/or) I also have concerns about high blood pressure." Viagra.

"I am suffering from fatigue, hot flashes, hair loss, osteoporosis, insomnia, unstable mood, and pain during sexual intercourse due to my body's natural hormonal cycle being discontinued as I age." Estrogen for menopause. Also, for what it's worth, there are numerous physiological risks associated with being estrogen-deficient long-term, including an increased risk of dementia.

I think it is utterly out of touch, and uncompassionate, to completely ignore all these symptoms so these treatments can be framed as being about gender identity instead of physical day-to-day functioning. Again, I cannot overstate, I am in favor of gender-affirming therapies for those who want them, but it is crucial to understand why it isn't fair, accurate, or helpful to declare apples are really oranges because they're both round fruits. Overlap can exist between treatment outcomes, but that doesn't make the treatment the same.

While I agree cis women, trans women, and anyone else who gets LHR (edit: Lazer hair Removal) likely do so for the same reasons, you're again comparing apples to oranges by saying medical intervention is similar to a cosmetic procedure. You can also get into a discussion that goes beyond the scope of this conversation about drawing the line between personal aesthetic and gender presentation, which I would argue is what most cis people are actually experiencing in these given contexts as opposed to gender dysphoria. A woman who feels ugly because her skin is wrinkling and her hair is falling out is experiencing body dysmorphia, a diagnostic category that can overlap with gender dysphoria, but also includes eating disorders. If this same women declared she felt like less of a woman because she doesn't feel beautiful, you should probably have the empathy to understand she isn't declaring she doesn't truly feel misaligned with her gender identity, but is lamenting her appearance. These are fundamentally different experiences that due to the limitations of language, may be expressed verbally in similar ways. Also, I think the discomfort *most* presented in the initial argument is wildly overstated.

My biggest contention with everyone who has engaged with my perspective is that they are prioritizing gender expression, which is reflective of their own lived experiences, over the realities of these given diagnoses. It amounts to speaking over the lived experience of patients. To put it in perspective for you, how does this argument break down if a trans woman has ED, but wants to have PIV sex with her partner? What if a transgender man, who realized his identity later in life and does not want to seek transition, suffers from osteoporosis after entering menopause, and opts for estrogen therapy to reduce bone loss? In these situations, the argument breaks down and is no longer about affirming gender. The ultimate point I am making, simply put, is that treatments meant to restore bodily function are not the same as gender-affirming care because of coincidental overlap. The targeted symptoms are different, and it is a blatant misrepresentation to claim that cis people seek out these treatments primarily to feel better aligned with their gender.

Its popular on this website to demonize the fields of psychology and psychiatry, because I suppose they can feel restrictive to people who are untrained and uneducated on why we abide by the DSM and other treatment guidelines. This conversation is a perfect example of why it requires a master's or above to even get a job in the field. It requires critical thinking, good judgement, scientific integrity, and a solid understanding to tease out the nuances of why one diagnosis over another. I think it has become common to assume bigotry is at the root of every distinction, and sometimes it is, but this particular subject is not one to take at face value.

Hopefully this clarifies why I think this conversation is getting redundant, because at the end of the day, it's an argument the OP admitted is based on their personal politics and desire to push social boundaries rather than an understanding of how the human body works.

TL;DR not everything is the same and it doesn't have to be.

[docgold13]

Hi Doc, I was diagnosed with a personality disorder a few months ago (antisocial) and I'm wondering if you've ever seen it run in families. My biological father and half-sister display very similar signs. Except the weird part is that I was adopted as a baby and never grew up around them. Are personalities genetic?

hi

Genetic epidemiologic studies indicate that personality disorders are modestly to moderately heritable. There is often a predisposition for a given difficulty or condition that can or cannot be triggered into bloom by way of environmental or experiential factors. Personally, I see ASPD as a largely organic/ genetic condition. The key facet antisocial pd is a deficient in empathy which in all likelihood is related to abnormalities in the limbic system of the brain. This is an area of the brain that can be effected by environmental influences but is mostly shaped by genes and inborn factors.

Personalities are not genetic but aspects and tendencies that are part of the personality very much can be inherited.

how we chose to navigate difficulties or undesired aspects of personality, however, is completely in our hands. Personalities are much more dynamic and capable of change than once thought. And attaining positive change has come to be much, much more feasible.

[kaybreezy3000]

Bad Things (Five Hargreeves/Reader)

~Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, the inability to distinguish between right and wrong, poor behavioral controls, and behaviors that contradict social norms which then commonly result in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior.

Enter, Five Hargreeves, everyone's favorite little psycho.

(Chapter One and Chapter Two Post)

Summary:

Having been left in a new world with nothing, his mental state growing more and more dangerous, Five Hargreeves finds something he feels will keep him from going off the deep end, but just like in so many things he thinks that are wrong, the fact that he thinks this already proves he has.

Note~The female character is written so that she's part OC but easily filled in as you or reader insert. When we are in Five's side of things, the OC/Reader/You will be referred to as 'her/she/the girl.'

Characters: Number Five, Dolores, unnamed Female OC/Reader insert, Klaus, and Diego

Warnings and tags: Mental disintegration, psychological trauma, effects of isolation, masturbation, non-consensual voyeurism, explicit sexual content, bondage, POV altering, touch starved, obsessive behavior, inanimate object love, and many other sexually deviant themes all mixed with a lovely twist that you will hopefully enjoy...

-comment if you want to be added to tag list (New chapters will be added weekly and this one is 7 chapters total with a Word Count of just under 50K) 😉

Chapter One: Dark Side

Taking the stairs since the elevator is broken and he can no longer teleport at will, Five ambles, step by step, up to his apartment on the seventh floor. For a young man, Five feels so old and not just mentally like he actually is at the cognitive age of sixty. 

With no end of world event in the foreseeable future, as incredible as that is, living in Reginald Hargreeves’s ideal version of the world has left Five with next to nothing.

As far as the world’s concerned, Number Five Hargreeves is dead. Normally, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing because Five doesn’t want people to know about him being back, but it is a problem if you’re not dead and you need to find work to feed yourself.

If not for Klaus’s help getting him fake ids and a shitty job doing data entry in the basement of a huge office building, Five wouldn’t even have a roof over his head. 

Five’s polished black dress shoes sidestep around piles of trash as he listens to voices of people screaming and yelling at each other behind the worn and dented doors he passes on the way to his own.

He does not live in a nice building or a nice area of the city. His low-income housing is a far cry from the life he’d once lived behind the secretive walls of The Umbrella Academy. His childhood home still exists, though neither he nor any of his siblings are welcome there.

In the new world of Sir Reginald Hargreeves, the status quo remains as it was before, with most having very little, while a very few have a lot. This time Reggie himself has a lot more.

Nearly half the buildings in the city’s skyline bare Five’s adoptive father’s name, but it would do him no good to go to him for help. Luther did, and not even getting allowed to see their dad face to face, he got thrown out on the street by security guards in front of the glamours monstrosity known as The Hargreeves Internation building, which is Reginal's current residence and seat of power.

In this world, the relationship between the world-renowned inventor and his remaining adoptive children was severed years ago, just as it was in their real timeline.

Most of Five’s siblings had places to go though, and that was in part how it was so easy for them to walk away. They still had their various places they crashed at or rented.

For all Five knew, it sounded like Allison still had her life, including her daughter back, but besides that, he knew nothing about her. After turning on them, she didn’t look back. Like with her and most the rest of his family, it had been radio silence when it comes to communication with him since the day that they walked away to move on with their life.

As much as Five needed it in that first year, after everything their father did to them, he vowed he’d never go to him for help again, so he remained dead. 

After carefully traversing the disgusting hallway that is the only way to the place that he calls home, entering the one room flat, Five is greeted with the polluted smell of city air blowing in from the window he left open.

He sees Dolores waiting for him.  She is still tucked in under the blanket on his bed, just where he left her.

‘I am so glad you're home! ’ she brightly chirps.

Other than her and the sense of love and radiating warmth that Five creates out of her, there is nothing here for him. Five has no one.

There is nothing of color, or personal flair or tasteful decor inside his residence. The furnishings weren’t even picked by him. They were discarded here. They are faded, old, and beaten and used, just like him.

Five feels ancient and worn, but physically he is not. His costly tailored suits are fitted to perfection, and they only make him stand out even more in stark contradiction to everything else within his personal space.

“Hello, Dolores.” 

His reply is flat and lifeless, but he can’t help it.

Terribly thirsty, Five crosses the room, moving to his kitchen. He reaches up, taking a milky looking etched glass out of the cabinet, then he places it under the facet at his sink.

Five took the subway most of the way home like he always does, but he still had to walk six long blocks after that. He tips back the entire glass of water he just poured, chugging it in a matter of seconds. He can’t help the bitter taste it leaves in his mouth when he thinks about what he did for his family and the heavy cost he’s paid for it. No matter the amount of time that passes, it never seems to make his resentment fade.

Since being abandoned by his siblings in Oblivion Park the night their lives were given back to them by Allison and Reginald’s collaborative effort to fuck them over, Five has been dealing with the repercussions of his many mistakes and doing it alone. It has taken less than two years for Five to age from a scrawny pubescent thirteen-year-old, to a man in his very early twenties. In this utopian world, The Commission is no more, and the treatments they gave him back when he was theirs have completely run their course and are no longer unnaturally crawling through his body keeping him from aging.

After being plucked from the apocalypse, The Handler wasted no time adding to her strict requirement that he worked exclusively for her despite the fact that his contract didn't say that. She informed Five that since she was the only reason he was saved, not only was he hers, and not just in an advisory capacity, unless he’d prefer to die alone, he’d be undergoing various improvements. Not thinking what that meant, being all that mattered was that he saves himself first so he could save everyone else, he agreed. 

The very day he got picked up, after that conversation and being treated to his first real shower in forty years and a real meal that he embarrassingly devoured like the starving man he was, he foolishly started to think things were actually going to be okay for once. Then, with that silly notion still tickling at his brilliant yet still somewhat childlike mind, things changed very quickly.

The Handler informed Five that he was scheduled for operations starting immediately. When he nervously declined, saying he didn’t want them, she tartly replied that she’d be happy to take him back to his wasteland and cockroaches, and that’s when Five realized he held absolutely zero power in the hasty agreement he’d made.

Through her perfectly fluid, red lipped charm, The Handler laced every word she ever had for him with contempt and malicious intent as she continuously threatened him with thinly veiled cruelty. Terrified as if he were a helpless child, though schooling his wrinkled features not to show it, Five followed her like a lost puppy, sickness from the amount of food he’d just eaten adding to his terror as they stripped him naked, then strapped him down to an operating table. 

With little explanation other than adjustments were often made, especially to older recruits, Five fought every instinct not to blink himself to safety as he impotently watched the room fade away from the sedative being injected in his arm.

Even if he had blinked or could have at that point, there was nowhere safe for him to go.

Waking in recovery, at first, Five didn’t feel any different. He was extremely sore and bruised, but not different. Not till later was he told he wouldn’t age, being that he’d been given a treatment that would prevent it for many years to come. When it started to wear off, and that would be based on factors they didn’t make known to him, he’d be given more, thus allowing him to continue his service for them indefinitely even though he’d only agreed to a five-year contract.

Five realized that now that they had him, they weren't going to just let him walk away, but still he held on to the hope that he'd figure out how to get back. Defiantly he marched on thinking he'd get the better of them.

Their special therapies made him stronger, more resilient, and he even healed quicker because his metabolism was working much faster than it was before. It all seemed like a good thing.

Five wanted to live.

He had to figure out how to get back to his family and save them and everyone else. He needed time, just a little more time and he’d have it. He was finally strong, not sick, not starving or fighting everyday just to make it to the next.

This was good.

Only it wasn’t.

There was more they did to him that day, only he didn’t know about it till later.

When asked if he could perform the tasks required to work for them, Five had confidently said yes. He told his recruiter that he had killed before.

Through their missions as children, the idea of killing was something that never made him think twice because it was all in the name of good. They were the heroes. Dad had told them they were born extraordinary for a reason. They had a purpose. 

Five always thought that the purpose was to help people. Later he realized that was very naïve of him to think because Reginald only had them on missions that benefited him in some way. They did not go around saving the world from the everyday tragedies that were always waiting around every corner.

Not till they ended up in the Sparrow's world and after Reginald drained them to nearly the point of death did Five realize the purpose of them being born the way was so they could be used like extraterrestrial batteries to fuel the reset of the universe. 

Just like with The Commission, everything with Sir Reginald Hargreeves was done for a reason and those reasons held many gray areas.

As months passed and his training with his new employer completed, Five found out just what it meant to work in corrections for a time preservation organization whose goal was to maintain what they felt was the generally accepted timeline. Human life meant little to nothing to them on a one-to-one scale. That meant more death. Lots more death.

Each time that Five pulled the trigger or had to take someone’s life, watching the color fade from their purple oxygen-deprived flesh when he squeezed the life out of them, he told himself it was all to get back. When he got back, he’d figure this all out. It would be okay.

It wasn’t okay.

Neither was Five. 

Along with their other thoughtful enhancements, The Commission gave him something that would never wear off. By the time he finally was ready to make the enormous jump through time and space to go back to his family, Five was not the same person. He hadn’t been since he woke up on that operating table over four years before. That was because while he was out, they blended his DNA with that of several well-known notoriously brutal serial killers, and it was all in the name of making him a better assassin. 

Five had become mercilessly cold, and not the way he was as an arrogant child who thought he was better than everyone. No, this near emotional opposite of snobbery and having any sort of compassion for his fellow man was different.

In four years, he’d killed so many times he’d stopped counting. In the beginning Five still felt it, the remorse, and the nausea when he thought of what he’d done. He’d break down in fits of tears and shuddering sobs when he was alone in his tiny Commission assigned apartment, nearly suffocating from the weight of his shame. 

They were killing innocent people and he let them turn him in to the deadly weapon they were using to do it.

By the time Five was done, his mind had altered how he processed things. It happened in part because of the alterations they made to his DNA, but it was also his own survival method, allowing him to continue; to keep waking up and to keep fighting for what he had to see through to the end.

When The Handler gave him a job as she ran her finger condescendingly across his cheek in that wicked way of hers, it let him know that he was nothing more than her pet and her vicious executioner. Five accepted it. He even relished in the peaceful quiet of death and the simplicity of delivering it so efficiently.

The Handler was extremely pleased at how she’d manipulated him so easily. Five knew that, but even knowing he was being used, Five was proud of himself. He savored her praise like the lost child he still was inside. Even old and gray, Five was still the boy who longed to be noticed and loved.

When Five took out the board of directors, he’d done it for her, but he’d also done it for himself. In that moment, his mind was on another level of depraved, finding joy in the sick pleasure he felt as the blade of his ax sliced through their flesh and the spray of the warm blood spattered his face.

Even before that happened, Five had lied to Luther when he told him he didn’t enjoy it and that’s because he was trying to pretend that he was the person he wished he still was.

Even as he lied, Five's words came out lack of any emotion, dead and toneless. Luther didn’t seem to notice. Like the rest of his family, they didn’t know him anymore. They had no idea how different their dad's Number Five had become, and they didn’t seem to care to know him, though all Five had ever wanted was to get them back.

Five was aware that killing was one of the only things that made him feel alive, but he was too focused on trying to save the world to dwell on it. Everything kept falling apart and with more important things on his mind, he simply didn't have time to think about it.

Now there was time. 

Turning from his sink, Five walks back to the sole armchair in the middle of the space that serves as his living room. He slips off his black suit jacket, draping it over the back. 

‘I missed you,’ Dolores says, her voice in his mind so hopeful. Five glances her way but can’t keep her eye.

His reply comes almost too quietly to hear. “I missed you too.”

Purposefully avoiding her, Five wanders over to his small kitchen table. He didn’t even bother to turn on the light when he entered his apartment. This entire time it’s been dark, save for the dim light filtering in from his two small windows.

Pulling out the single chair, he sits down on the cracked vinyl cushion, dropping his head in his hands as he thinks about what he is doing.

Looking up after a minute of trying to get his head straight but failing, Five’s eyes train on the widow in front of him. His nicotine yellowed curtains wave gently from the air moving in. Beyond his window, across the alley, the occupant of the adjacent apartment is home. Five knew she would be, that’s why he left the lights off. It’s also why he left his window open. 

He can hear her voice. It’s faint as she talks on her phone, but Five can hear it and make out parts of what she’s saying. 

She’s talking about work like she often is.

The girl comes to the window dressed in her uniform from the job she works at during the day. She dumps the water from her watering can in the flower box attached to the sill.

Five knows that she can’t see him, but he doesn’t move a muscle anyway. He holds his breath.

She’s so close.

He could almost touch her.

Five can see her hair flutter in the wind before she laughs at something the person on the line must have said, then she leans back inside after plucking off a few dead buds, flicking them to the ground below.

The girl is young, similar in that she’s not much younger or older than Five's physical age. At his mental age, she is not someone he should be interested in. She is not someone Five should be watching like this, not that he should be watching anyone, but like so many things about himself that can’t control, he is interested in her.

Everything about her is animated and full of life. 

She’s the opposite of him.

Five is almost completely empty and deeply numb inside.

His fascination with her is in part because of that. He’s aware of this on some level, but he also realizes it’s for other reasons.

Bad reasons.

The immorality of doing this is almost no more than a ghost in his mind at this point. The more it happens, the less Five cares that it’s wrong.

Everything about him is wrong so why torture himself about one more thing?

With a dull, lifeless expression washing over his features, Five continues staring out, analyzing her every move as she moves about her small apartment. 

‘You can’t keep doing this. You need help,’ Dolores warns sharply, the same way she’s been saying it since he started this, the same way she says it every night. 

“I don’t need help, Dolores. I appreciate your concern, but I am fine,” Five grumbles back, not bothering to turn towards her, or finishing by lying to her again, telling her that it’s just a diversion, and it’s nothing more. 

Normally, when he comes home, Five would feel something when he sees the long-time love of his life. He still does, but the more he watches this girl, the less he’s been able to pretend with Dolores like he always has. It disturbs him but he can’t stop.

‘You aren’t eating enough, and you didn’t sleep again last night. I am so worried about you. I love you,’ she adds with that sound of unsuppressed fear in her voice that’s been getting worse and worse when Five comes in late, zombie-like after being gone at work all day and then wakes up acting almost exactly the same way.

Though it hurts him to do it, Five ignores her, pretending he didn't hear. Brushing the curtains aside even more, he lets himself become fully engrossed in the life across the alley.

Not long after being left by his family, Five had gone to Dolores, finding her standing tall on her pedestal in the used clothing store. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t take her then, that didn’t happen till later. He tried so hard to be normal and he knew that having her with him wouldn’t help in that endeavor.

After months of hardly hanging on, sleeping at Viktor’s some nights, on the streets others, then finally scratching enough pennies to get by, Five finally got his own place. Here in this hell hole, Five found that his new chance at living a real life was not at all what he’d thought it would be.

This time the idea of retirement and hitting the road to find his next big ball of twine left Five unbearably uneasy. He couldn’t let himself give into the childlike notions he had before.

Five had nothing. He couldn’t retire. Even if Klaus had wanted to drag him along to find their birth parents or something else pointless again, Five wouldn’t have let himself be tricked into it this time.

Last time that happened, he’d had this strange glimmer of hope light up his heart. He hadn’t felt that in so long. It was like getting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was viciously stripped from him again by impending death taking everything and sucking it into the mother fucker of black holes. 

Five was left in the dark again.

Now Five found himself feeling as alone in a world filled with people as he did in a world alone. He couldn’t figure out how to fit into society and that humiliating failure had him withdrawing inside himself even more. 

He tried to hold on to his usual anger, pretending it wasn’t his fault but even that failed him because he knew on every level that it was his fault. 

The isolation finally became too much for him, he snuck into the back room of that department store where Dolores lived. Not till the shop closed did he come out of hiding and steal her out of there, long legs and all.

She’s been with him again ever since, providing the love and comfort she always has. Only until one night, when Five saw the girl next door, Dolores had been enough to keep him satisfied and not feeling so alone. Since discovering this girl, a dangerous and obsessive pattern has developed. 

Every night when Five comes home, well after dinnertime, he leaves the light off so he can go to the table and watch the female occupant of the next building. She rarely shuts her blinds, and when she does, it’s not all the way. She may think nobody lives across from her because Five is gone all day and at night, even when he’s there, it looks like he’s not.

She may not care if someone is watching her, and that idea alone helps Five justify what he’s doing. That flawed perception of things is also making it easier for other thoughts to invade his already very fractured mind.

It started innocently enough. Curiosity mostly. She was pretty. Five told himself that it was normal to be drawn to beautiful things. She held odd hours, but she was almost always home for a few hours before bed when Five had nothing and no one else other than Dolores. To him, it felt like it was on purpose.

She’d either be home already or he’d get to watch her come in from one job, change for another, eat, shower, and go again. She’d water her flowers that hung in a box outside her window and then Five would get to be even closer to her. She’d even leave her windows open most nights, and Five would do the same, furthering the connection he feels is growing stronger with her.

Five believes that he knows this girl on an intimate level. He knows her name and where she works, and many other things about her.

This relationship is becoming real to him; as real as it is with Dolores.

Stepping out of what Five has determined is her bathroom, the girl bends down to pick up the towel that just slipped off her head. In doing so, Five gets a much better few of her ass that’s only covered by her very small underwear. If she’d just turn around, he’d see her breasts. 

“Fuck,” he whispers, “please turn around, for me.” 

She doesn’t, but Five’s right hand moves between his legs anyway. It always goes something like this. It starts as simple, silent watching, then as he justifies his actions with things that are entirely imagined, Five’s already defunct rationale dissolves completely. 

Five rubs his palm over the tip of his partial erection as it sits in a raised silhouette covered by the thin wool material covering his lap. Reacting to the pleasure of his own hand, Five spreads his legs wider, his fingers better working the hardening length as his lips slowly part to better accommodate his heavier breathing.

Five knows he could simply watch porn to take care of this perplexing and intensifying desire to be with someone real. It’s not like he’s opposed to it, it's just that this private show is for him and only him. This is special.

In his mind, the more he watches, the more he feels like this girl is part of his life, and that is the thing that he needs the most even though he can’t see the truth of it anymore. Intense denial and the refusal to see that he needs help, all comes from years of using this pattern to survive. It was even this way when Five was a child. Now it’s much worse and it’s fueling this fantasy, making him blind to the reality of what he is doing.

Five spends most of his days in a blur without sensation, existing but not living. But, deep down in a place he can’t open again, Five longs for something that he's only ever allowed himself to dream of.

Now, after everything that’s happened to him, Five is so broken he doesn’t know how to be with someone real which is making that dream feel impossible. He tells himself that it never really was possible; he's always been broken. This is all there ever will be. Just the idea of trying to open himself means letting someone inside and risking them seeing what he really is, and he can’t let that happen.

Five believes that he is nothing more now than a cold-blooded psychotic killer, living a meaningless life.

He can’t escape what he is, and he can’t go back to change it.

There is no one that can help him, and no one that would want to help him if they knew the truth about him.

This, what he is doing with this girl, is easier. It’s his only option. Five thinks he’s in control of it, just like with Dolores. Watching and touching himself like this, it’s enough. He won’t do more.

Five craves control and with this, he has it.

Now that he has her, Five is not alone. She is real, living and breathing. Five can even imagine the soft feel of her skin as he runs his hands up and down her smooth looking legs. He can feel her warmth on him, rubbing against his cock as he comes up behind her, wrapping his arms around her in a dominant yet affectionate embrace.

Wanting to tease her, Five smiles a little and says, “I bet you just couldn’t wait for me to get home. You love me, and you love it when I do this to you, don’t you…”

In Five’s head, she giggles a yes.

The girl flips her head down, blow-drying her locks. Again, the view isn’t bad. She dropped the towel around her and put her bra on while inside the bathroom where Five couldn’t see it. He didn’t get the full show he’d been hoping for, but she’s still a sight in her matching set of very feminine undergarments. Five can feel his hands roaming over her, the delicate filigree stitch of the lace fabric the only thing keeping him from having all of her.

Teeth studding into his lower lip, Five unzips himself, pulling the heat between his legs free so he can grip the girth tight. Heels digging into his linoleum floor, his lips twist with a dark delight as his eyes narrow. 

She is all his.

The girl flips her head back up, straightening herself as she shuts off the hair dryer and starts putting on her makeup. Five imagines himself shoving her up against the small, cluttered counter in front of her.

She drops her head back against him, moaning his name the moment she feels his bare flesh pressing against her in that way that means he's seeking more than just to rub himself on her.

She likes that too, but Five knows that she wants all of him tonight.

Licking his lips, his eyes trained on her body, Five’s voice comes out sweetly menacing. “I am going to fuck to till you scream.”

She arches into him again.

Five’s hand works his cock, spreading his pre-cum under his fingers, but it’s not enough to let his hand slip and slide and he doesn’t care. He likes to jerk himself hard and with no regard for being gentle about it. Pain and pleasure are the only things that make Five feel these days and this will give him both fixes.

Five desperately wants to feel.

“I love your perfect tits,” he grates out through clenched teeth. Then, in his head, he leans over, biting into the soft flesh of her shoulder as he suddenly fucks up into her from behind. He’s railing her hard and fast, and in his mind, she loves it as much as he does.

Or maybe she doesn’t and that’s exciting too even though Five knows that is wrong. It really doesn’t matter, because it’s up to him to decide, just like it always is with Dolores. With his cock in hand as the muscles in his calves flex and burn while his heels squeak across his floor, it’s all up to him and him alone how he finds his pleasure. 

Five is mentally and physically free to be the vile creature he is with no judgment and no fear of rejection. 

A thin sheen of sweat on his brow, Five grunts as he aggressively pumps his cock. His ass cheeks squeeze and contract as his hips jut upwards into his own hand. 

When the sound of the girl’s ringtone plays out, sending an upbeat song blaring, she drops her mascara on the counter and picks it up. Whatever the caller tells her, abruptly causes her to alter her usual nightly routine. Normally she’d be home for another hour getting ready, but instead, she hangs up, comes out in her bedroom area and haphazardly throws on her clothes and rushes out the door, leaving Five literally hanging. 

Hanging on to himself that is, with no more eye candy to get off on. 

The moment she’s gone, the reality of what he’s doing threatens to swallow him whole. Just the idea of having to face it has Five’s hand slowing and his heart clenching in the start of a panic attack.

No, no, no, no…

“I am not-" Five’s words stick as his mouth fills with the thickness of his mortifying disgrace trying to choke him.

His hands both come up, yanking at his tie as if it’s the thing stripping him of his ability to breathe.

Five feels like he is drowning. His once revered mind feels like it's breaking in two as it's being flooded with shame and hate.

He does not want to be this person.

‘Five, it’s okay.’ Dolores calls out to him, trying to help bring him back from the dark surrounding him. ‘I am here. We will figure this out! Please, sweetheart, just come to me. It will be okay. We can make it okay again.’

Dragging himself out of his chair, Five goes to Dolores. Once next to his bed, with blurry eyes looking down at her, he kicks off his pants and underwear, then rolls himself over on his side, burying his face against the cool hard skin at her neck.

“I am so sorry, darling. You are the only one that has ever loved me… I am so sorry I am doing this to you. I hate this,” he cries, the air heaving out of him as he reaches down under the blankets, taking himself in hand again. 

With more wet gasps, his free hand runs soft and tenderly up and down under Dolores’s blouse, trying to show how much he loves her in the way he handles her painted flesh. Five whispers apologies and words of love as he finishes himself, part thrusting and part still using his hand, while moving himself up against her solid and unforgiving leg.

Five may be laying with the mannequin that is the loyal love of his life, pouring his love out to her, but in his mind, images of the girl across the alley play over and over again.

Chapter Two: I feel So Close

Like usual, the next morning, Five finds himself awake way too early. He hardly slept again. It’s hours before his alarm goes off for work. He is bare assed with only his dress shirt on, laying with his face settled on top of the unforgiving shape of Dolores’s hard chest.  

Drowsily stretching his legs under the blankets, he cuddles in tighter, unwilling to open his eyes but also unable to turn his overactive brain off. Then, as sleep further evades him, he begins to remember what happened the night before.

Five’s hand glides up Dolores’s arm, coming up to her face so he can gently run his fingers across her cheek the way she likes.

‘Good morning, Five ,’ she coos back to his tender show of affection.

Peeking at her from under the fringe of his ruffled hair, Five does his best to smile when their eyes meet, but it comes off uncertain because he feels so bad for what he did.

Five never wanted to be a cheater, but Dolores has told him time and time again that she wants him to find someone who can be there for him in ways that she can't, and if he did, it wouldn't be cheating. The problem is this is not what she meant. It’s throwing his dysfunction and failure in her face when all she has done for the last forty-one years is support him. Then, after making her watch another one of his many falls from grace, he’s got the balls to come to her as a whimpering mess, going even more dysfunctional when he sets about selfishly dirtying her thighs and her pretty new skirt with his traitorous seed.

“I am so sorry,” Five quietly breathes, sounding so discouraged. 

Already his free hand is inspecting the damage under the blankets. It's not like he hasn't done these kinds of sexual things with Dolores before, it's just last night was wrong on too many levels. Dolores can do nothing for herself, and his intense shame over the way he used her and his innate need to take care of her has Five quickly untangling himself from her body.

‘It’s okay.’

“It’s not,” he replies on the way to the bathroom to get soapy washcloths.

Once inside, Five accidentally catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and just that makes his chest hurt.

“You fucking, pathetic bastard,” he mumbles, cursing himself as he goes about getting the supplies he needs to help bring some dignity back to his helpless partner.

Coming back to bed, he sets his things down on the nightstand and then picks up his own rumpled dress pants off the floor. He zips himself in, trying not to think about when he unzipped last night, but it’s impossible not to. 

Eyes on Dolores, he rolls the comforter back and starts cleaning her. Once he has her legs shiny and cleansed, Five glances across the room to the nearest window. Behind the fluttering curtain, he knows the girl is still laying in her bed. With even more remorse threatening to pull him under, he looks down at Dolores.

“I’ll change you into some fresh clothes, strip the bedding, and then you and I can make breakfast together, and I’ll read to you till I have to go?” Five says it as a question, sounding so hopeful she won’t reject his attempt to try to be the man he used to be for her.

‘That would be perfect, sweetheart. I would love that.’ As soon as her reply processes in his mind, it instantly makes him feel better.

Five makes good on his offer, other than his own shower, he spends the quiet pre-dawn hours at her side. He’s sure to right the rest of the wrongs from the night before by dressing her in the next best thing he has for her, then he remakes their bed with fresh linens and blankets, and carefully tucks Dolores in so she’s comfortable as she waits for his return.

After leaning in and kissing her on her cool rosy cheek, Five leaves for the day, dressed in his usual all black three-piece suit paired with a fitted white dress shirt and black tie.

Feeling a little more like himself and that he can make it through another day, Five’s smile before walking out the door is real and full of so much love. “Thank you for loving me. You are all I need,” he says in his head, doing his best to will it true, but it’s sadly not.

Like so many times he’s lied to himself, Five tries very hard to change this new pattern of giving into his darker urges, but as the week progresses, he can’t help but fall victim again to his inappropriate indulgence. 

The rest of the week, he manages to achieve his nightly end goal of blissful release without falling into another dark hole of mortification like he did after peeping on the girl on Monday night. Five’s success not wallowing in utter misery is not good in that it only further ingrains his deviant behavior and his fantasy that there’s something building between him and the stranger across the alley.

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

Friday after work, Five is sitting in his armchair, disdainfully eyeing his brother as he goes about, snooping around his small apartment. Five lets out a sharp sigh, then tipping his head back, he takes a drink of the extremely delicious coffee that Klaus used as an excuse to drop by.

"I know you haven't talked to Diego in a while, but I saw him last week and he told me that he's still been keeping an eye on our dear old alien dad."

Every time Klaus pays him a visit this topic comes up and every time Five refuses to take the bait. "Diego should stop trying to play superhero. He should just let it rest. Dad got what he wanted. He's got the world by the balls and even though we mean nothing to him, he let us live. Story over."

"I don't know, man. Diego said that Lila has been looking into things with him lately and there's something weird going on of there at the Hargreeves International building. Like more than an alien overlord hanging out in his penthouse basking in how small all of us insignificant humans look down here on the ground."

Five couldn't look more like he doesn't give a shit, so Klaus moves on to other things on his agenda. “So, work is good, things are going well then?” Klaus asks, leaning over Five's bed to give a tress hanging from Dolores’s wig a twirl.

Loathing the way Klaus is touching her, Five’s face melts into a purely sinister looking leer, but his brother doesn’t seem to get the hint and keeps on with it, twirling away.

“You could care less about my work or if I enjoy it. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate good coffee, but you don’t need to stop by and check on me. You haven’t felt the need to pay me regular visits up until recently and nobody else in our family of idiot misfit toys gives a damn, so you are welcome to join them in that if you are simply coming by to try and piss me off, which you are.”

Five defiantly cocks his chin the same time one of his shoulders rises in that uncontrollable mad tick of his as he gears up for the rest of his dismissal. 

“In case you forgot, I am a grown man and I have been taking care of myself almost my entire life. I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” he bites out, teeth bared.

Klaus nods, his lips pursing as he thinks for a second. “Yeah, all true. But you are pretty damn young to be living all alone like this.” He smirks. “Well, sort of.”

“I know your miniscule brain can't comprehend this, but I am not a child, and I am not alone!” Five defends much too loudly and quickly, his sneer transforming into a deep frown instead.

After that excessive outburst, both Klaus and Five look at Dolores. Klaus dips closer to her and whispers something. Five can’t help but internally curse himself as he watches his brother openly taunting him. He knows it’s pointless to let Klaus rattle him, but he can’t help it. Everything is setting him off lately. One of the reasons he prefers to be alone is to avoid things like this.

Five’s already very small world is closing in around him more and more each day and the worst part is that he is accepting it.

Shifting in his chair, Five’s clammy hand comes up to his silk tie, fidgeting with it. Just having Klaus in his apartment is making it feel harder for him to breathe and he knows that’s irrational but it’s true all the same.

In Five’s mind, Dolores is looking back at him with her customary expression of agitation that she saves for when he’s doing something she’s not okay with, yet the reality is, her face always remains that of pleasant neutrality.

Lately, Five hasn’t been able to connect to her on the same intimate level he has been for most his life, but his troubled mind hasn’t given up on using Dolores as an outlet to try to get through to him. Though she is not real, Dolores is still where Five keeps what’s left of his heart, and she is his lifeline just like she always has been.

I want him to go, Five tells her in their way that needs no words.

‘You know that your brother was not in the best shape when he first got here. It’s not Klaus’s fault he wasn’t able to be around more. He had things to figure out too. Relax, sweetheart. Just take your deep breaths like we talked about. He’s just trying to be nice,’ she gently offers, trying to calm Five down.

Since Klaus is back to messing with Dolores’s hair, he doesn’t notice the look of fear in Five’s eyes as he stares at her, or that he’s desperately trying to do as she said and take long deep breaths to reign in this feeling of impending doom that’s looming over him.

“It’s not that I don’t believe that you are fine,” Klaus goes on, “it’s just I can’t help but feel like you need to get out, you know… Like join the world of the living a little more now that you can.”

Five’s fingers clench on the arm of his chair but he manages to keep his voice level and his expression blank by the time Klaus looks his way again. “I do get out,” he flatly replies.

Klaus laughs. “I don’t mean going to work or picking up takeout.”

Unable to maintain his façade of cool, nervously bending forward, Five’s free hand grips tightly at his knee. “Look, Klaus, these little interrogation visits of yours are a blast and all but if there is nothing else that you’d like to talk about, then you can kindly see yourself to the door because I have more important things to do.”

“Like what?”

Five doesn’t respond and that’s because he doesn’t have anything to do. Well, not anything that he is going to admit to Klaus anyway. Speaking of which, Five raises his arm, anxiously drawing his cuff up enough to see his watch.

The girl should be home by now.

She is waiting for him. He heard her telling someone on the phone this week that she has this entire weekend off. Five has been looking forward to this rare break in her busy work schedule ever since because now he won’t be alone the next two days.

It takes everything Five has not to get up and go check on her, but he refuses to even look over at his window while Klaus is there.

An ache like need to get his brother out as soon as possible has Five’s jaw tensing as he tries to think of how best to do it. Just thinking about missing his chance to spend time with the girl has Five fighting to keep his knees from bouncing. He's about to come flying up out of his chair and physically throw Klaus out on his ass.

'Just breathe,' Dolores reminds him.

Trying to listen and just relax but with his nerves still getting the best of him, Five looks extremely bothered when he finally comes up with his lame answer, but at least he is not going postal on the one remaining family member that actually remembers he exists.

“I am trying to finish a book due back at the library, and I’d like to do it before bed, so…” he reports with a jittery looking rolling of his hand, implying it's time for Klaus to move on.

To that, Klaus flamboyantly flaps his arms up, beaming ear to ear like he’s got the best idea ever.

“Hey, you can finish your boring book later this weekend. It’s Friday, why don’t you come with me, and we go out for a night on the town! Let your super cool big brother show you a good time, I’ll even pay, and I know all the best places. There’s this one club that has these naughty cage dancers and I know from what Luther told me from our Dallas stint that you like to watch the sexy lad-”

“You are not my big brother!” Five snaps, interrupting him. “I am older than you by nearly thirty years and something tells me that your idea of a good time is not even close to mine, so no thank you. I am fine, so stop acting like I am some kind of freak of the family that you need to check in on every few weeks so you don’t find me hanging from a rope in my closet!”

Instead of getting the picture that he is only making Five feel even more uncomfortable about his disastrous life, Klaus flops down on the bed, making himself more at home.

Wishing he could spatial jump, and even worse still having the instinctual reaction to try to but coming up empty handed, Five grates his teeth in extreme frustration, then abruptly stands up, violently crushing his empty coffee cup before he chucks it over in the kitchen sink.

Klaus can clearly see the very irate, no longer boney thirteen-year-old, ex-teleporting assassin, yet still very much a ball of rage version of Number Five Hargreeves coming for him. Even though he himself can die permanently just like everyone else, he obviously isn’t frightened by his brother because he continues snuggling in and fussing over Dolores, trying to style her glued on hair in a more tousled look.

Standing over him at the side of the bed, Five swats Klaus’s hand off his beloved mannequin’s shoulder.

“Stop touching her!”

Klaus holds his hand as if Five actually hurt him, even doing an overdone pout to add to his show of disappointment. “Five, this is exactly why you need to get out more. Dolores is great and all and I know you love her, but everyone needs someone a little more… Aah-uhm, you know.”

“REAL!”

Five’s voice is too loud, his heart is hammering, and his nerves are shot. He needs Klaus to leave. More and more when his brother stops by, it’s things like this. It feels like everything said is to remind him how fucked-up he is and how his life isn’t even a life.

“Five,” Klaus sighs his name, not at all fazed by him yelling, “ever since we got here, I am scared you’re becoming a very lost soul and that’s getting worse as the days go by. Now that you are free and you don’t have a world to save or an evil taskmaster from The Commission to tell you what to do, you’ve been hiding deeper and deeper inside yourself. I know this kind of thing, man. I have seen it and I’ve lived through some pretty fucked up episodes of depression. I can help you, and as a spiritual leader, you should know that I helped a lot of lost people find inner peace. The way we grew up, and then being a hitman and living a lifetime alone the way you did, it would mess anyone up. I just want to help is all.”

“Do you want me to feel worse about this? Is that what this is!” Five throws a shaking hand back over his dark hair, yanking it out of his eyes. With his hand landing on the back of his neck, nails digging in, he begins to pace.

Klaus sits up, his smile gone the moment he realizes that his brother is actually getting really upset compared to his normal kind of upset.

“Five, that is not at all what I am trying to do. I just want you to be happy. You are so alone, man. It can't be good.”

Five stops, spinning on his heel as he shoots death daggers back at Klaus. “I may be a freak as far as the world’s concerned, but the world can fuck off. Just stay out of it. I am not alone, and I AM FINE!”

Raising his hands in a placating gesture, Klaus tries to lighten the mood again. “I am so happy you are good and all that.”

Klaus gently shrugs, biting his lip, giving away that he is aware what he’s going to say next probably isn’t going to get the reaction he’s hoping for, but he says it anyway.

“Maybe you need just a little something else to add to all your good, is all I am saying. It doesn’t have to be going out and trying to make friends or getting thick into the enigmatic world of dating. I get that one is a complicated cookie being you are twenty-ish going on sixty or whatever, but what the chicks or guys don’t know about you won’t hurt them. Just don’t talk about all that.” Klaus grins and winks. “Unless you do go for the hurting thing, you dirty old bastard. There are clubs we can go to for that too.” Looking at Dolores he adds, “I bet Fivey loves to spank that sweet ass now that you’ve got one.”

“Fuck you,” Five growls.

Klaus keeps smiling at Dolores. “I guess that means no cute Fivey daddy kink for you, gorgeous. Too bad.”

“Stop talking to her!”

Klaus looks totally thrown. “Why, you talk to her?”

“Because she’s mine, you shithead!” Five barks back, not sure what else to say about his extreme distress over this simple visit and he’s already regretting saying that because it only makes him sound even more nuts.

“Come on Five… Just chill out. I am just joking around. You need more of that. I also think you could use a little spice in your love life, even if that means just right here at home in your own little safe world of just you, your hand and this lovely lady and any other lady or guys that you’re secretly pining over in that genius but gloriously debauched mind of yours.”

Stunned at his brother’s latest comment that is hitting too close to home, Five can’t help turning his body just enough so he can look over at the girl’s apartment.

“Not out in the scary world of real people, I mean,” Klaus tries to correct, not realizing that Five is misconstruing what he just said, thinking he was talking about the girl next door and what he’s already doing with her.

Biting back another curse, Five narrows his eyes at Klaus, part in fury and part in embarrassed confusion because the girl’s lights are on, meaning she is home, and he feels like his brother is seeing right through him.

“How about instead of spending all your money on all these sexy suits that you have more than enough of already, you spend some money on a really nice blow-up doll. Or even just something that vibrates or something else exciting that has a little more give and play to it.”

As Klaus spits out his brilliant idea, his smile expands, and it matches Five’s wide eyes.

“Get a flesh-light,” he cheerfully suggests, “or you can adjust things with your new and improved big boobs love hole inflatable and add some Velcro to her hands or something else creative so she can give you a little affection back in the way of loving plastic arms wrapped around you while you hump the fuck out of her. We all need a hug, buddy.”

With that, Klaus stands and puts his hands out acting like he’s going to hug Five, but just as fast, Five steps back out of his reach, looking utterly appalled.

Again, not getting it, his brother offers a silly smile as he shakes a finger at him. “Settle down over there, old-man kiddo. You know what I mean… I am just talking about something a little more stimulating. You must be so horny and bored in here that you are going insane.” Klaus’s smile falters as he takes in Five’s tiny home and lack of anything in it in the way of character or signs of life. “You deserve more, buddy,” he finishes, the sadness he feels for Five seeping into his tone even though he’s trying to smile still.

“The last thing I want, or need, is for you or anyone to feel sorry for me,” Five seethes while jamming his hands in his pockets. His eyes move to the floor as he battles within himself to control the surge of desire to lash out both verbally and physically. Keeping his brother safe from either of those things, Five swiftly motions for Klaus to go. “Just go,” he nearly whispers because he's trying so hard to hide the quiver in his voice.

“Five?” Klaus tries.

“NO! I am done! I have done enough for you and everyone. Just leave me alone!”

Five yells it so loud, Klaus flinches. “I am sorry, I wasn’t trying to upset you. I am sorry about everything. I am just worried.”

“Don’t be. I am happy,” Five lies. He looks up a few seconds after saying that, his face again the usual mask of indifference, but Klaus can see right through it and wishes so badly he had seen it sooner.

Not knowing what else to do that won’t anger Five more, Klaus moves to the door. “Fine… I get it. I am a dumbass, and you don’t need anyone, but I am here for you, man. I am sorry I haven’t always been there to listen, but I am now.”

“Sure,” Five says, before shutting the door on Klaus.

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

Five slaps down the deadbolt, then flips the lights off.

“That fucking, fucker !” he mumbles as he swiftly moves across the small space to the kitchen window.

With a huge sigh of relief, he sees the girl must have just got out of the shower. He didn’t miss it. The anticipation of that addictive rapture she provides is already settling Five down and also revving him up as he lowers his body into his favorite viewing chair.

Just as Five is thinking that he can escape into his perfect place, with her towel wrapped around her and wet hair dangling down her back, he watches as she suddenly spins around from her bathroom sink and then rushes out into her bedroom area. It appears that she is frantically looking for something. Her head pops up several times looking towards her front door, then as if giving up, she slowly walks over to it.

When she opens it, Five is greeted with an unwelcome sight.

“Who the fuck is that?”

Not able to understand at first, and obviously not getting an answer to his question, Five leans over his table for a better look. His girl just let some guy in her apartment. And she did it while in nothing more than her bath towel!

“No,” Five whimpers when he sees her smile at this asshole in the beaming way that he believes is something she only deploys for their interactions. She smiles like that when she’s laughing about something or dancing around her apartment loudly singing while she cleans, and none of these things have anything to do with him, but Five is too gone to see that.

Watching her sauntering off to her bathroom as the other guy is also hungrily watching it, has Five gritting his teeth. His fingernails dig into the palms of his hands. Though he doesn’t want to believe it, now that this other guy is there, Five is piecing together that she is not prancing like that for him. 

"It never was for you," a seductively cruel version of her voice tickles through his mind.

"Yes it was!" he growls back, unwilling to give up on his dream.

There’s even more burning pain as his neatly clipped nails carve half-moons into his flesh. His hands start to violently shake at his sides.

The girl says something to the guy then she shuts the bathroom door, blocking both Five and this new guy out.

As soon as she’s gone, her visitor starts meandering around her tiny place like he owns it, but Five is certain that he’s never been there before. He’s going about it not at all unlike what Klaus just did to Five, only the girl is entirely unaware of it.

The creep digs through her things, including her underwear drawer, taking a pair, and hiding them in his inner jacket pocket. Then he opens another drawer, pulling out a small jar that Five has seen handled by the girl many times. He greedily digs in, helping himself to the girl’s hard earned tip money that she saves all week to pay for her groceries.

Five’s entire body is vibrating he is so mad.

“I am going to fucking kill you, you piece of shit!” he hisses, eyes locked on the guy as he carefully studies his every move, learning any of his potential weaknesses.

Five easily determines this guy is an easy hit, no weapon other than his hands will be needed to end him. Five can already feel himself snapping this guy’s fat neck. There is no way he is going to let him get away with stealing from his girl. Coming over to take her out is one thing, and that’s bad enough, but taking her underwear without her permission! That means death and Five is going to happily deliver it.

During Five’s near manic episode of having mental and verbal conversations with himself, and also justifying reasons for killing this guy, he is conveniently forgetting the fact that he’s been watching her without permission and taking sexual liberties for himself from her body without her knowledge. With the way his mind has been working lately, it’s not at all the same thing. This guy has her trust and he’s in her home. Five would never violate her like the way this guy just did. He’d never even touch her let alone her things.

Focusing on the kill, a rush of adrenaline-fueled hatred brings that calm before the storm feeling that settles like an old familiar friend into Five’s mind and limps. His trembling fingers steady.

When his girl comes out of the bathroom she’s dressed in a flowy little skirt and a tight fit top with a unbuttoned cropped sweater over it. She goes straight to the guy with that adorably beautiful and innocent look on her face, and that manages to crack Five’s newly composed homicidal state of poise. He’s never seen her in anything that nice. Why doesn't she wear that stuff for him?

She lets the guy take her hand, leading the way as they disappear out the door.

It takes everything Five has not to spring into action and race out the door to follow them. He knows that doing that will only result in one thing, and that one thing is going to be bloody and brutal, but it would feel so good to see her date bleed.

To do that, Five would have to trail them, waiting for just the right moment. The idea of doing that brings back so many memories of his time with The Commission. It’s both sickening and sweet. He knows he could do it without anyone seeing. The girl wouldn’t even have to know. It would be perfect. But…

Fuck.

Even though this is what he was made to do, something feels wrong.

He’s never gone so far as to take this obsession with the girl outside of his apartment and hers. This is their special place, their own private world. But out there…

“It’s not real! She’s not yours!” his mind screams at him.

Five is all at once beside himself with how to process this unwanted mental intrusion.

That’s not true. She is real. What they have is real, his mind corrects. Him being a coldhearted killer is sadly real, but he hasn’t hurt anyone since he’s been in this timeline. He promised himself that he wouldn’t. He doesn’t need to anymore.

Five wants it to be real with this girl so badly and he wants to kill this guy just as much.

But none of it is real.

Deep down, Five knows that he has no right to feel this way.

“FUCK!” he screams in pure anguish, his hands coming up to his face, fingers digging in as his eyes slam shut. “Why are you doing this!”

The question comes out of his mouth, but it’s just as much for him as it is for her. Five can’t reason what’s happening to him or why she’d be with a guy like that over staying here with him. He’s not a good person, but he’d never…

Five’s voice comes out broken and quiet. “God, damn it.”

Yes, Five is a highly skilled executioner and absolutely thrumming with excitement over the idea of murdering this guy, but then the reality of what he himself has done to this girl is being thrown up in his face. Five’s insides are revolting against him and that’s because he has abused the girl too. He didn’t steal from her, but yet, he did.

Five may be experiencing an extremely dangerous dissociation from reality and doing so more and more as the days go by, but what happened with Klaus earlier and this mental battle with himself now proves that he’s still aware on some level of what he’s doing.

He knows it’s wrong.

He is wrong.

Again, that overwhelming hatred threatens to take his breath away. Five’s vision starts to flood with murky blackness coming at him from all sides. It’s hitting him hard and fast this time. He blindly reaches for the chair in front of him just in time to prevent himself from tumbling all the way down to the floor.

In a heap, eyes misting from terrified tears, Five folds in on himself, wrapping his arms around his legs. His heart feels like it could burst right out of his chest.

“No, no, no,” he whispers in his downward spiraling mantra as he rocks back and forth. This time as Five slips away inside his own personal hell, not even Dolores is able to pull him back.

He can no longer hear her. It’s nothing but ash, blood, and regret.

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

Hours later, sitting at his table in the dark, Five brings his glass to his lips. The caramel-colored liquid isn't even giving him that delightful burn anymore as it glides down his throat. As if in slow motion, his blurred eyes drop to his hands.

They don’t feel like they are his.

They are, but they aren’t.

No matter how long he is in this new, younger version of himself, Five’s mind can’t weave together the new face in the mirror with the person he sees in his mind. When he was this age, he was not in good shape, but he was not this demon going around masquerading as a human. 

Seeing that his glass is empty again, Five reaches for his bottle of cheap whiskey with the intention of pouring himself more, but he’s denied for a second time tonight in his only remaining vice and that’s because there isn’t any left. It doesn’t really matter because Five already feels completely dead inside and it’s not the bad liquor making him numb.

When the girl and guy come bursting into her apartment not long later, Five is still sitting there in the dark extremely inebriated.

It appears from Five’s point of view that the creep’s mouth and hands are all over her in a very heated embrace. Five sits silent and still, watching as the girl stumbles backwards, her hand flailing out as if she’s surprised by her date's display of reckless desire for her. Then the guy forcefully kicks her door closed behind them, he swiftly scoops her up and he throws her down on the couch.

Five can’t even feel the rage, or the hate, or even the shame that he had before. He wishes so badly that he could, but it’s gone like the rest of him.

It appears to Five that the girl’s shithead boyfriend just manhandled her, but as far as he can tell, it looks like she’s totally into it.

The guy is on top of her in a flash, blocking Five from seeing her face as he pins her legs under his and he shoves her shirt up. 

Five’s eyes fall on her beautiful bare skin, mesmerized with the quick rise and fall of her chest. 

Her lover has one hand at her throat and the other around her wrists as he appears to smother her breasts in passionate kisses. 

The windows haven't been open tonight but in his head Five can hear her cries of pleasure as her date forcefully shoves her knees apart with one of his own, then grinds down on her. 

Five knows enough to know that doing that to her would feel so fucking good. Holding her under him... Directing everything...

It's too much for him to handle.

"Fu-uuck," he slowly breathes.

Being in control of everything is all Five knows when it comes to these things, so he easily lets the image before him become him. He is this guy. The only thing he would do differently is let his girl’s hands go free. He wants to let her feverously scratch and dig at his back as he presses his length between her legs. Five is so into this that in his mind, he can feel the pain of it.

He clings to that sensation, wanting to feel something. Seeing her body being treated in this way helps to pull Five back from the darkness in his mind, but it’s not the same as all the other times that he has been with her alone in their own unique way. This time she is a participant in the sexual act being played out before his eyes and Five isn’t sure if that’s why it feels different or not. 

Five realized the moment she walked out the door that this is not for him and everything about that feels horrible. Yet still he is still getting sexual stimulated by this, which is all the more fucked up and he knows it.

As silly as it is, the thought that she is doing this to hurt him seems all too real. Of course, she’d want to do that. Nobody can ever really love him.

Five lets out an absolutely maniacal laugh that fills his small apartment in the most horrifyingly unhappy way before he slurs, “Well played, honey. I deserve this and then some, but nobody is as good at hurting me as I am. It absolutely destroys me that you chose this loser, but I am not looking away. I know how to take a punishment; I have been doing it my whole life.”  

His hand slides down to his lap, the heavy feel of pleasure hitting him the moment the heat of his dick rubs against his equally hot palm. The full filling in his gut and the growing weight against his leg are all his usual physical reactions to seeing her in private like this, but this, her half naked under this other man as he aggressively dominates her, it’s bringing all sorts of disordered and confusing thoughts into Five’s mind. Something feels wrong, but he assumes it's him, so he begins to stroke himself anyway. 

“Fuck me over as you fuck him. I don’t care anymore, I can take it, baby,” Five grates out, his words running together as his hips begin moving up into his hand in their very practiced way.

Taking it further even than the couple across the alleyway have, Five hastily unfastens his suit pants and takes the end of his dick in hand, impatiently working it faster even though he’s not fully erect yet. In his semi-flaccid state, he tries to focus his efforts on the most sensitive area that's just under the tip, but his fingers won't cooperate because he is too shitfaced.

Unbeknownst to him, there is a disconnect happening between the alcohol and his hate for himself, his hate for this guy, and his new anger at the girl that he had tricked himself into believing loved him. 

To his dismay, it’s all manifesting in his inability to get rock hard like he’d normally be at this point. It’s just another thing he’s being denied, and Five is determined not to let go of one of the last things that makes him feel anything.

"Come on," Five urges both himself and them, his eyes trained on the other man who is also clearly fumbling as he tries to get his dick out of his jeans. 

If she wants to punish him, so be it. But he’s going to be the one to do the beating. Just like their relationship, it’s always been one sided, he only fooled himself that it wasn’t. 

He knows that he’ll hate himself even more for this, but in his screwed-up head, that’s exactly what he deserves. He wants to give in and just be nothing but the monster because it would be easier in so many ways.

After a minute or so of relentlessly jerking himself and finally getting hard enough that the head of is cock is pleasantly swollen and he's reaching close to his usual boner potential, the girl starts kicking her legs free. Five doesn’t grasp what’s happening, and that’s because he’s more focused on himself at the moment, rubbing the pearl of cum that's leaking out of him around and around as he pushes his thighs to lift and lower to the motion of how he envisions he's fucking her.

It feels so good, Five's eyes are hardly able to stay open as his head drops back and his mouth gapes and then closes and gapes again. He is making throaty grunting noises to the rhythm of his hand tightly jerking the base of his cock and the old chair he is on is creaking right along to his shameless song.

"Oh Fuck. That's it, suck it you dirty little slut," he groans.

In his mind, he just decided to pull out of her and then push himself straight in her mouth instead. The corners of his mouth pull back as a smile lights up his flushed face and that's because he just pretended to see that naughty twinkle in her eye that he can't get enough of. At this point Five has made up the idea that his girl is loving this and it's all a part of one of their normal little games which has him feeling much better about things. To Five, they just made up and it's going to be okay again.

"You are so perfect. Take me as deep as you can, baby," Five encourages her, his own hands working to give him that feeling of love that he so desperately craves.

When all at once, across the alley, his girl's actual man topples off her, falling onto the floor, Five can actually see the face he's been envisioning, and it doesn’t look happy at all and he doesn’t understand why. 

It looks like she is yelling as she pushes the guy off of her a second time. Her face contorts even more in the unmistakable look of pure rage. Even seeing this, Five still frantically searches for his release. All he needs is just a little more and he’ll be there in that addictive place where he can forget everything for just a few glorious seconds.

But then to his shock, the girl chucks the glass vase from her end table, missing her date by only a few inches. It smashes against the wall by the door and using the guy’s small moment of pause over that, the much smaller girl goes for another heavy glass object sitting among her other pretty things. This time she hits him with it in the crotch, and taking the hint, he bolts for her door. She’s right behind him, closing the door before flinging a chain lock across its bracket to keep him out. Even though Five can’t hear it, the visual slamming of her door feels like it sent a shockwave through him. 

He actually startles from it, his fuzzy mind coming back to him a little.

Five’s cramping hand on his shaft breaks its ruthless pace as he watches the girl slump her back against the door, her bottom sliding to the floor. She’s wiping her eyes.

Only now does Five know what he was missing in all this.

Watching her clean her own tears from her cheeks has Five suddenly realizing that she did not want what had just happened to her from the start, and that alarming fact hits Five like a ton of bricks. Following that drunken epiphany, an immediate explosion of hysteria hits him.

At the same time the girl gets up, crossing the room to pick something from beside her bed, Five hastily begins tucking himself back in his pants.

Five can hardly think, but one thing he knows is that this time he is going to kill that fucker.

As he races on unsteady feet for his own door, he looks back and sees the girl is no longer sitting there. He can’t see her anywhere inside her apartment but there’s no time to stand there and wait to see where she went. He assumes she went in her bathroom.

Five rips out of his apartment past the corroded elevator doors. He can hear the thing moving for once but since the lights still don’t work, he has no idea what floor it’s on. Crashing into a wall because he clumsily trips on some trash, Five curses himself for getting so messed-up, then takes off again, running as fast as he can to the stairway.

He bolts down the flights, his feet hardly making contact with more than a few steps on each one. When he hits the cement platform at the bottom and throws open the doors to the parking area behind their buildings, he comes out just in time to see his girl taking a swing at a flashy looking sports car pulling through the lot. 

She manages to clip off one of the side mirrors with her baseball bat and her date must be scared shitless because he doesn’t stop to have another go with her. Instead, he tears out on to the street, engine roaring and tires screeching. 

Hardly believing what he just saw and with his alcohol marinated brain not working even remotely right, Five comes her way.

“Holy shit,” he huffs as he tries to catch his breath.

The girl sees him coming, the look in her eyes so upset.

All Five wants to do is tell her he’s sorry. He wants to beg her forgiveness for being so fucked-up and angry with her that he didn’t see what was happening. He can’t believe that he just sat there, fucking himself while she was being sexually assaulted.

Her eyes grow wide as Five comes right up to her, but other than that, she merely stands there as if in a daze.

When Five makes the terrible mistake of calling her by name and then saying something about that asshole throwing himself on her like that, the girl no longer looks as unworried about the smartly dressed stranger approaching her in what she thought was concern.

“I don’t know you…” she says back, her confusion evident in her face and her tone. “There’s no way you saw…” She pauses but doesn’t take her eyes off the very unstable looking man in front of her. “How do you know that he did that?” she asks, terror washing over her face as she raises her bat.

Her eyes very quickly flit up then back down to the door Five just ran out of. As frustratingly slow as Five’s mind is moving, even he can tell that she is piecing together that he just came out of the adjacent building, and that since he just stupidly admitted to witnessing her date’s repulsive behavior, she knows that he was watching her somehow.

“Wait, I can explain. I care about you. It’s not like that-" He doesn’t know what to say, stumbling over his words horribly. “Please don’t be scared of me,” Five says, trying to correct his first verbal blunder, but it’s too late, and saying that only makes it much, much worse. She’s already backing away from him. He can’t help but panic, and in his current state of mind, he does one further in the wrong when he tries to reach for her. “Plea- OH FUCK!”

She swings at him. Five’s hand comes up stopping the bat just before it slams into the side of his skull.

“No! Just wait! I am sorr-” he tries and fails again to say anything helpful as he spins her around with it, maneuvering her body back up against him so he can detain her arms.

Undeterred by how easily Five turned the tables on her, the girl thrashes, throwing her head back to try and head butt him. He’s much more experienced in hand-to-hand combat than her and taller by just enough that he moves just in time and she misses her mark, her head flinging into his shoulder instead. Ripping the bat out of her hand even as she is stomping at his feet, Five binds one arm around her waist lifting her off the ground as he yanks her backwards with him. 

“Please, stop!” he cries again but she’s not having it. Just as she lets out a scream, Five covers her mouth.

The girl bites Five’s fingers. Filled with violent pain from receiving multiple puncture wounds at once, he drops her back on her feet. Five lets out a ferocious roar as both his arms instinctually come up, squeezing around her throat.

Now that her hands are free, she tries to claw at him but Five lifts a knee into her lower back, pushing in as he buries his face against her shoulder blades so she can’t dig his eyeballs out of their sockets. As the girl’s oxygen supply quickly disappears, Five knows it’s a matter of seconds before she will stop fighting him.

He bares down on her with a chokehold and his skill at taking someone down this way has the girl’s weight falling limply back against his body after less than ten seconds. As her head lolls to the side, he knows that she is completely out, but Five knows it’s not going to be for long unless he tightens his hold and keeps it there. 

If he does that, then it would be over for her.

Five does not want that. He didn’t want to see her hurt or be the one to hurt her. He didn’t want any of this.

He lets up the pressure, making sure she can breathe, but he doesn’t let her go.

Looking around the dimly lit parking lot, all he hears are the echoes of sirens in the distance and the usual humming noise from the traffic on the freeway a few miles away.

To Five’s surprise, it looks like nobody witnessed any of that, not the date who sped off and not this. It’s the middle of the night and there’s nobody around. Even in the window above with lights on still, Five can’t see any signs that someone saw them fighting. This is not the best neighborhood so even if someone did hear a disturbance outside, it would be nothing noteworthy.

But what now?

After what he just accidentally blurted, telling her that he has been essentially going full creep and stalking her, and then what he just did, Five can’t let her go.

If he does, then it would be over for him.

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

Thanks for reading if you got here.

(Chapter three coming soon...)

Updated link to chapter three below.

Link to Chapter 3

If you are hungry for more faster than I post it here, find this and my other Five stories at or check out my other Tumblr posts:

Master Post List to all my Five Centric Stories and Art

KayBreezy on A03

KayBreezy on Tumblr

Link to Bad_Kitty who created two of the pics for this fic and is an author who also loves to write Five Fics

[cyrusclouds]

mental disorder headcanons for dialtown characters because i had fun doing the dsaf one, except i have significantly less headcanons :3 oliver swift - gender dysphoria (duh), dysthymia + autism & adhd-c sgt norm allen - ppd, ptsd randy jade - clinical depression, gad, ocpd, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, ptsd + autism gingi - bipolar 1, bpd, schizophrenia, ptsd + adhd-c karen dunn - ocd + autism (canon) mayor mingus - empathy deficiency disorder, bipolar 2 if you're wondering where a certain character is, it's probably just because i don't have a good enough grasp on their personality and psychology yet to say anything confidently. also i should comment that i'm rather unsure about mayor mingus i just wanted to add her :3

[sukimas]

mental illness (general form) musings below the cut

i think in general that there are a lot of things that people don't want to acknowledge as actual ways a brain can be wired. e.g. people generally do not want to believe that someone can have no control of their actions

i think that this impulse is also present in psychologists/psychiatrists, and goes into how the DSMs are written. to be specific, diagnostic criteria.

diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses are often written extremely broadly, because they want to cover as wide of a category of behavior as possible. however, these broad diagnostic criteria often don't carve reality at the joints.

a tame example is ADHD; there is no practical reason that the inattentive and hyperactive forms should be considered the "same disorder". they do not have similar symptoms. oh, they both can be treated with stimulants and thus both likely come from dopamine deficiency? great! let's group every mental condition influenced by GABA under the same umbrella now.

a much less tame example is antisocial personality disorder.

the criteria as articulated in the DSM-V basically make it, when diagnosed "sort of a jackass who does some crimes disorder". however, the way people think of it socially (and the way even psychologists characterize it) is very different.

i personally believe that there is an abnormal brain psychology that exists that does fit the role of how people normally think of ASPD. that is to say: -little regard for consequences of actions on the self (probably from hyperbolic time discounting, lack of a future world model) -lack of impact of other people's emotions on one's emotional state (i state it like this instead of the vague term "empathy" because there's a whole mess of empathy arguments out there) -low tolerance for being around other people (if being around others doesn't positively affect one's emotional state there is less incentive to do so) -chronic understimulation (probably lack of future world model again)

these things lead to (to variable degrees) -lowered impulse control -lack of care for impact of actions on others -risk-taking behaviors -desire to inflict harm on others

these traits existing does not require the existence of all other traits on this list (i.e. you can have high impulse control wrt your actions on others but low impulse control wrt risks you take on yourself, for example) but i think that they are a closely linked cluster of traits leading from deficits in one's world-model

however i think that the overlap of people with these particular traits (even those who have all of them; the classic "sociopath") with people who have the diagnosis of ASPD is actually quite low, as the diagnostic criteria of ASPD are such that people get diagnosed with it for being a problem to others in some way (whether that's being an asshole or Crimes For Real) rather than actually fitting the above constellation of traits.

a summary of my thoughts on psychiatric diagnosis is: the DSM-V is Plato's cave, the diagnosed mentally ill are holding the shadow puppets, but that doesn't mean that (outside the cave) there aren't things that represent what the diagnoses are desperately trying to gesture at (and failing).

i hate the social sciences. dreadful.

[personally-probiscuits]

Raihan, the Dragon Gym Leader, the Confusing. The Narcissistic Selfie Addict.

Recently I've been researching different characters' personalities for a personal story, and Raihan's was the most complicated (Besides Leon, but I still haven't exactly figured him out).

The small "stub" on Raihan's Pokemon Wiki page wasn't enough information. Besides saying he has a "flair for taking selfies of himself" and that "Raihan respects Leon as a worthy adversary", I didn't learn much. So I went to trusty old Youtube and looked up Raihan Pokemon. I found a video titled "Raihan being himself for 3 minutes straight", uploaded by TheMeowthtuber (personally, those are my favorite videos, and gotta love the user name).

To begin this deep dive, let's start with a simple concept; Raihan's selfie "addiction". To anyone who watches the Pokemon series or plays Sword or Shield, it's evident that he takes selfies quite often. On his rare league card, the description says, "Raihan started taking selfies so as to never forget the pain of his defeats...," while that might sound like something that makes you feel sympathetic, the remainder of the sentence is really the thing that catches my eye, "but more recently he has been taking photos showing off his training routine, his fashion choices, and the like, causing some fans to leave harsh comments whenever he loses to Leon." This catches my eye for a number of reasons. One reason is that, while his habit of taking selfies originally started to document his humiliating losses, it bloomed into an active online presence, taking pictures of himself more frequently. I bring this up based on something written on 24fingers.co.uk, for an article called "The psychology behind a selfie", "People who take more selfies show higher levels of narcissism and psychopathy."

...Well, that's certainly not what you think of when you think of Raihan. Or rather, you don't think of the psychopathy aspect. Narcissism, maybe. Or maybe you don't know what either word means, don't worry, I got you.

"Psychopathy is a neuropsychiatric disorder marked by deficient emotional responses, lack of empathy, and poor behavioral controls, commonly resulting in persistent antisocial deviance and criminal behavior." -National Library of Medicine (P.S. All references will be put at the bottom of the post.)

"Narcissism is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment." -Psychology Today, Narcissism

Psychopathy and Narcissism share a lack of empathy and anti-social behaviors, but I think it's narcissism that mostly applies to Raihan. Let's go back to that video I mentioned. "...You shouldn't go around making trouble for a lady, and whatever I say goes cause I'm the Hammerlocke Gym Leader, Raihan." This was said by Raihan in the Pokemon Animation series, Pokemon Journeys. Taking away the flirty introduction of this quote, you are left with someone who sounds full of themselves. Maybe it's well founded since it is the truth, Raihan is the Hammerlocke Gym Leader after all, but still, that phrase "whatever I say goes," with or without the fact he is the Hammerlocke Gym Leader sounds self-absorbed.

But how does this tie into the photo taking? Well, to sum-up what Matt Monk wrote for 24fingers.co.uk, taking a lot (and I mean a LOT) of selfies = a self-centered and attention-seeking person. The league card quoted prior obviously shows how often Raihan takes a lot of selfies, and it can even be seen in cut scenes of the game prior to battling the MC. My belief is that Raihan, while not having a narcissistic personality disorder, has narcissistic attributes and a heightened sense of self-importance, both of which are negative attributes that can severely impact one's life.

I'm aware my research sounds more like a coffee-driven tangent, and not all the dots and citations connect, but I appreciate you for reading and I hope this helps you as it will help me write my story.

Resources:

Raihan being himself for 3 minutes straight, TheMeowthtuber

Raihan, Pokemon Fandom Wiki

The psychology behind a selfie, Matt Monk

Narcissism, Psychology Today

Psychopathy: Developmental Perspectives and their Implications for Treatment, Nathaniel E. Anderson and Kent A. Kiehl