#everything.

[futuristicanoe]

nothing could have prepared me for that. wow.

I just felt my heart shatter right there. I don't know what you put in that last sentence but fucking hell I literally felt it like a precisely aimed bullet.

"But I just wish it would have come to me in a different way, a more pleasant way. Not like this. Not when I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m dealing with sleepless nights not over someone else’s crying, which should have been yours, but my own."

"I wanted something that would sway with the wind, that would bend but not break. Something that I could watch bloom despite it all…He said he would do it when he wasn’t so afraid of letting something he planted grow again."

my god.....

"That love, when it is that enormous, does not simply disappear. It does not simply dissolve into nothingness like you seemingly did. It lingers with nowhere to go. He made me love myself once. And maybe all of it together — the way he loved me, the way I loved him — caused this much love for you to spark in such a short time. We only just got to know you.

I don’t love myself anymore."

:((((

"I feel envious of the ones who got to have a headstone, a place to go, a physical marker that proves their loss was real. I wish you would have at least given me that. You gave me nothing, and yet, somehow, you took everything."

Okay, OKAY. !!!

It couldn't have been more beautiful, and it's truly impossible to explain how it made me feel because words fail me and you just do not fail anything. Perfect. Ughhhh.

I can't cry, but if I could, I'd spend the rest of the weekend clawing my eyes out over this, and I'd be immensely grateful because, hey, even just being able to read this is such an honour itself. Thank you. 🫂

(And oh, I have a willow tree right outside my house, actually. And now I don't know what to do with myself.)

Twilight

to climb back up from my oblivion

warnings: 1st person pov, talks of pregnancy, miscarriage, feelings, and sex. 

word count: 7k

It is the last day of winter.  

The sun should have shown itself by now, should have crept back into the creases of the earth and returned his freckles stolen by the cold, made us blush under its rays. But the sky remains bolted shut and there’s nothing on his face other than the purple that now seems embedded under his eyes. Shadows where warmth used to be. I bet mine looks just the same — though I still refuse to look in the mirror. I don’t need the confirmation. I know what I’d see: a face that doesn’t belong to me anymore, a stranger carved from sleepless nights and something nameless.  

For two months now, I’ve been paralysed with fear. I think I am living a nightmare, a dystopia. A world where things are just a little off-kilter, where reason slides just out of reach. I read, I listen, I try to understand the impossible. I try to untangle the logic of things that seemed reasonable before, but which oneself can no longer reach with feasible arguments. It’s like running my hands along a wall looking for a door that isn’t there. And all around me, people keep pretending. Pretending to be going about their lives, pretending all is business as usual, pretending they don’t hear the static growing louder.  

I keep looking out to winter trees, bare and brittle, skeletal in their stillness. And he…he is seeking achievements one after the other, as though that will fill the space. As though stacking accomplishments brick by brick will build something strong enough to hold him up. But I see what he’s doing. He’s turning off the soul — too much transparency bothers, you see. Too much honesty, too much feeling, and it would all come apart. So he moves forward, while I remain here, watching the trees, feeling the wind hollow me out.  

There’s a lot of negative emotion I am feeling. 

But that word — negative — doesn’t quite capture it. It’s not just sadness or simple dread. It’s something continually sprawling and seeping into everything. I keep wondering how this collective psychosis is possible? How the world can split in two, between those who see it and those who refuse to? And him. How can he believe that ignorance is the one thing that embodies the solution to all worries, problems, anxieties, and fears that your absence caused? He wants to un-know what has already carved itself into the marrow of things. He wants to believe he can choose not to feel it. And maybe he can. Maybe he’s learned something I haven’t. 

I feel like a cat looking at a calendar, staring at the little squares marked with days and not understanding the meaning of them. Time is streaming, spilling, slipping, and I don’t know how to be or what to do in the remaining time I have to urge for myself. To claw something back before it’s too late.  

I wish I could say it directly.  

But ultimately, I believe that in these circumstances, it is the only choice — to keep it buried, to play along. So that we can continue in the paradigm of the perfect reality and not in the nightmare of despair we’ve been given. Because to accept it, to speak it out loud, would be to let it consume us whole.  

I didn’t realise until now that souls could have a patina.  

Perhaps it’s that thing where you get wiser with age and experience, and so maybe your soul develops a patina over time. A thin film of time and sorrow, a dulling of the once-bright edges. It’s kind of a beautiful idea, in theory, to think of the soul as having a patina. It sounds very poetic. But I just wish it would have come to me in a different way, a more pleasant way. Not like this. Not when I had to come to terms with the fact that I’m dealing with sleepless nights not over someone else’s crying, which should have been yours, but my own.   

There’s a kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.  

You have no way to know, but it’s the kind that settles in your bones when your days are filled with things that don’t move you, but they settle, deep and slow, like water sinking into wood until it ultimately starts to rot. It’s the kind that lingers in the hollow of your throat and makes you choke on nothing. It’s not the tiredness that comes from doing too much, but from doing too little of what makes you feel alive. And the worst part is that I don’t even know what that is anymore. I try to go through the motions like before. Ticking off everything on my to-do list, fulfilling obligations, pretending the structure is enough. But something essential is missing. And maybe it’s not that I need more rest, but that I need more of myself in my own life — more of the things that once made time disappear, made my heart race in my chest so hard I thought it might burst out, those that remind me why any of this matters in the first place. But I can’t find the thread to pull myself back. I said a time “before”, before you that was, but now I realise there’s no before, for there’s no after. 

There is only this.  

It is not a metaphor I’m trying to make out of this ache. It is not something that can be translated into prettier language, not something that can be softened. It is simply what it is. It hurts in a way I’ve never known before. No animal could be as cruel as a man. No man could be as cruel as God. No God should have ever taken you away from me.  

It’s as though the world wants to calcify me.  

To make me hard, to make me unfeeling, to coat me in layers until nothing raw is left. But I don’t want to be unfeeling. I don’t want to be numb. I just don’t know how else to survive…

What have I done?

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold. 

When it is summer in the light and winter in the shade, and you don’t know which season you belong to, caught between the thaw and the lingering frost. The first days of spring in the non-astronomical season, in that strange liminal space where the earth is undecided, as if hesitating to commit fully to warmth.  

It felt childish, but early in the morning, I asked Alex for a willow tree in our garden, which I know is too small for one — the roots would surely outgrow the space, the branches would brush against the house, probably the neighbours’ too. Much too wild, too untamed for something so contained as the space we live in. But I wanted it anyway. I wanted something that would sway with the wind, that would bend but not break. Something that I could watch bloom despite it all…He said he would do it when he wasn’t so afraid of letting something he planted grow again.  

It broke my heart, the little of it that was left still holding itself together.  

We cried together in bed for a while after that, though I think we had stopped crying for you. It was starting to feel like we were crying only for ourselves, for the versions of us that had existed before this grief you hollowed out of us. For who we had been before loss turned us into something else. And maybe that was the most unbearable part of it all — not just losing you, but losing ourselves in the process.  

Since then, I only cry alone in my own selfishness. I do not let him see it. I keep my grief contained with my fists tightly held, which I refuse to unclench. 

But I know he cries too. I hear it sometimes, even through the shut door of the bathroom, even through the thick silence we pretend is nothing. The muffled gasps, the sharp intakes of breath. The way he presses a towel to his mouth to keep it all inside. As if sound alone is what makes it real. It seems acknowledging you would break him entirely.  

I feel sick looking at him.  

Not because I do not love him, but because I do, I love him. I love him so much that it is unbearable to witness his suffering and be powerless against it. Because I know what it feels like to sit with grief alone, to let it consume you piece by piece in the dark, and I can’t stand the thought of him feeling that same emptiness.  

I just want to touch all his loneliness and suck it out of his body, just for one night, at least. I want to hold it inside me, let it settle in my lungs, let him breathe freely for a little while. I want to fill myself with all of his sorrow, let it flood through me, and then press my mouth to his and give it all back. Let him drink it from me and know who he is by seeing it reflected in my eyes.  

I love him.  

And I think I love him enough to try and hold both of us together through the pain.  

I’ve never loved anyone like this, and I never thought there would be anything that could eclipse it. We weren’t ready to love someone more than we loved each other. But we did. We loved you more. That love, when it is that enormous, does not simply disappear. It does not simply dissolve into nothingness like you seemingly did. It lingers with nowhere to go. He made me love myself once. And maybe all of it together — the way he loved me, the way I loved him — caused this much love for you to spark in such a short time. We only just got to know you.

I don’t love myself anymore.  

To be loved is to be known, I know that. But I also know now that love is not always gentle. Love, even in its purest form, can wound. 

At night, I often dream of such a time where I got to love you, where I held you properly and you knew me in return. And then I wake, disgusted by the immensity of my own yearning, by the vast, hollow ache that stretches inside me. It makes me sick, this hunger. So I deny it. I tell myself I do not want it. Because to want would mean to recognise the impossibility of it.  

I think I’m afraid that if I admit I wanted you, I will have to admit that I won’t, and can never, have you.  

And I know — God, I know — that this hunger of mine is not love in its purest form. Not like the love you have shown me. This is something else. It’s possessive, I know. A need to take and take, to grasp at what is left until I am sure my fingertips have memorised every remaining trace of you. Until I have devoured what still lingered and made it part of me, hoarded it like a secret I refuse to let time erode. An act that, in the end, would mean forsaking your existence. 

To keep you only as something I consume, something I ache for, something that I refuse to let go of…

Would that mean I never really let you be real at all?

It was summer when we planned you.  

The whole city was empty, as if it had been invented just for us. The kind of stillness that only happens when the heat chases everyone indoors, leaving behind only the sound of bugs and the distant hum of traffic and us brave ones. Our footsteps echoed on the warm asphalt, his hand trembled slightly when I touched him — it was subtle, but I knew him too well — I felt it in the way his fingers tightened around mine for a second before loosening again.  

The sun was slowly going down, stretching out the day in that lazy, golden way it does in the thick of summer. It put on a real show that afternoon, casting him in gold all over. It made everything feel like it was plucked out of an old film where the colors are richer, the emotions sharper. I could feel Alex’s warmth from a mile’s distance, though the sweat prickling on the inside of his palm and onto mine gave him away regardless. He always ran warm, but that evening, it felt different. Like he was burning from the inside out.  

I stopped near an old swing I always saw in the path we walked but never dared to touch before. One of those rusted ones that creaked under the weight of me and of time. I laughed and let my dress slide a little, not for him, not for anyone, but because it felt good to let the air hit my skin, to pretend the world didn’t matter. As if time could stand still. And maybe it did, but only for a moment. It was just me and him, us, and that included you — the thought of you, the unspoken idea of you that had been forming between us long before we had the courage to say it out loud.  

When you finally came around, the time to tell your still out-of-the-loop soon-to-be daddy also did. I wasn’t the most inspired, but you were too much to keep hidden any longer. 

I told him on a drive back home — I don’t even remember where from. Maybe we had just been aimlessly driving, filling the silence with half-finished conversations and songs hummed under our breaths.  

He threw his half-smoked cigarette out the window and didn’t say a word until he saw us safely parked in the mostly vacant parking lot of a nearby restaurant, the closest spot where he could pull over.  

“Did I hear you right?”

I nodded, staring at the dashboard, my heart hammering so loudly I swore he could hear it.  

He exhaled sharply, dragged a hand through his hair, then turned to look at me like he was memorising my face in real-time.  

“Say it again.” he murmured, like he needed to be sure he hadn’t imagined it.  

So I did. And the second time, it felt more real.  

His face changed. I wish I had a better way to describe it, but that’s the only way I know how to say it — it changed. His whole body, too. Something inside him had just shifted, reorganised itself to make space for something bigger than either of us. It was like his organs rearranged themselves to make room for you spiritually, whereas I was deemed the one to take care of the physicality. 

His hands, always so steady, shook as they reached for me. He held my face so delicately it made me feel like I was the sole thing worthy of such a touch. He looked at me like had just given him the entire universe.  

“Are you scared?” I asked.  

“Terrified.” he admitted, his lips twitching like he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry. And then he did laugh, it just broke him open at the edges and spilled over with something too big to contain. “But God, I’ve never wanted anything more.”

You made him the happiest I’ve ever seen him.  

Nowadays, when I drive to nowhere, or when I smoke by the window alone on silent evenings, I still see you, and I still see him, smiling as he was, like a movie running endlessly. A loop of something untouchable, something I’ve since lost. 

Sometimes, when the radio plays a song we used to hum absentmindedly in the kitchen, I catch myself looking at the passenger seat, half-expecting to find him there, fingers tapping against his knee, lost in thought, or nervously checking on you in the backseat. I can almost see it, the way he would have glanced back every few seconds, pretending he wasn’t checking as often as he was, pretending he wasn’t entirely consumed by the sight of you. I can even hear him…Alright back there, love? That soft, careful voice of his he would have reserved just for you. 

The phantom weight of your presence is so vivid in my imagination that, for a second, I forget the truth. I’m alone. He’s never here. Just the ghost of him, of you, of a life that almost was. And then the song ends, and the silence that follows is deafening.

It’s summer again now.  

And I miss you…but I miss him too.  

I feel him in the warm light that covers the city, in the empty streets where there’s no one left, in the sunsets that always look like I might see you again if I hold onto that hope. I miss when the world was brighter, when mine and Alex’s affairs were less convoluted, when love was something simple and reckless and ours.  

I see the sudden speeding up of cars below, the slowing down of people as the world gives way to heightened sensations, to feeling everything I have not been letting inside. And then, inevitably, the process of becoming desensitised to it all over again. I miss him, but I do not need any part of him in sharing this sacred moment. I do not deserve to, not when I am with you.  

Even sitting with just who I have become feels unbearable. 

So, I smoke, and I numb myself to my surroundings, looking for a recluse from being myself. The person I am sickens me. I flick the ash onto the windowsill, watch the embers fade, and tell myself I’ll quit tomorrow. But I won’t. Because there are too many things I should have quit by now. This longing, this version of myself that I don’t even recognise anymore…

This grief is part of it too, isn’t it?

It is Friday, late at night in autumn.  

Outside it is raining as if someone is trying to wash the city of its sins. It beats down on our windows so harshly that I can’t drown it out no matter how hard I try. The sound is relentless. The wind howls between the buildings, rattling street signs and bending trees, and for a brief second, I think the whole world is grieving with me. The lamplight outside flickers against the puddles, casting reflections that shimmer and distort — nothing stays still, nothing holds its shape. I stare at them for too long, hoping that they will.  

It wasn’t too late in the pregnancy when it happened. We barely got to enjoy you before you got taken away from us. That, I’ll never forgive myself for. I keep thinking if I had done something differently — if I had been more careful, if I had paid more attention, if I had just…known — maybe things wouldn’t have turned out like this. Maybe you would still be here, a weight in my arms instead of a distant feeling.  

He didn’t take it well, and that made me take it worse than if he did, I think. He shut down, locked himself away in the quiet, unreachable space inside him, and I was left outside, pounding on his door. There was no nursery to go and mourn in. We hadn’t even got around to that yet. There was no crib waiting for a future occupant, no tiny clothes tucked into drawers, no soft lullabies humming through the walls. There was not a body to go and cry over except each other’s… nothing left but him and I and the memory of you, and you were both slipping from me.  

I am left with empty hands — that’s the story of my life. The feeling of absence clings to me. I feel envious of everyone around me. I feel envious of the ones who got to have a headstone, a place to go, a physical marker that proves their loss was real. I wish you would have at least given me that. You gave me nothing, and yet, somehow, you took everything.  

I think about love and not-love. About how love is supposed to hold, to comfort, to shelter. Alex won’t look at me anymore. I lost my dignity so miserably, and I don’t know how he can pretend that we are always ‘fine’. When everything else isn’t, I just want him to be kind to me again — Please be kind to me. Nobody is to blame, least of all me — I wish he would understand that.  

He’s sitting in a corner now, among stacks of books and cigarette smoke, a bottle of whiskey on the floor beside him. The room smells of old paper and burnt tobacco, of rain-soaked fabric and something faintly metallic — that’s probably from the storm. The lamp beside him flickers, the glow catching in the glass of the framed photo we never took down. I don’t look at it. I can’t.  

I’ve been staring at the ceiling for a while, going through nearly everything I’ve ever said to him in hopes of finding where I wronged him so badly. I replay every conversation, every glance, every touch that might have led us here. Maybe if I can pinpoint the exact moment it all started slipping, I can drag us back to the surface.  

“Want some?”

His voice cuts through the silence. He offers his hand to me, holding the cigarette in such a manner that it almost urges me to put my lips on it. I would do it only to feel his fingertips on my bottom lip. His fingers are stained with nicotine, his nails uneven. He’s been biting them again. His eyes fixate on me, ever so slightly curved at the corners, telling me that this offer is all but a test, and that he doesn’t actually want me to take it. His face betrays his intent — he wants no part in me ruining myself.  

For that, I am grateful.  

“Everything okay?” I ask from my spot, refusing to play along.  

“Yeah, why?”

I look at him, and he understands the anger I’m feeling. I don’t know if he’s being thick on purpose to get a rise out of me or if he truly is so out of touch with reality — more than I ever thought he was.  

“Everything’s fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”  

He says it like a fact. It’s his script he’s rehearsed so well he almost believes it. The hand holding the cigarette now hangs by his side rather than near his mouth. It’s still burning, consuming its own life with each passing moment. The ash at the tip grows longer, dangerously close to falling onto the carpet. A part of me wants it to catch on fire and burn everything down, starting with me and him, just so we don’t have to figure out the solution to this game we’re forced to take part in, given no instructions and no way to cheat our way through it.  

“Okay.”

I don’t think I can hold my breath anymore. I’d have to do it until everything around me fell apart, which the majority already has, but I can’t let this happen. I won’t become immune to his sweet sound of ignorance.  

“I’m standing around like an idiot waiting for you.”

I almost yell it at him, but I think it ends up coming out softer than I would have liked. He doesn’t flinch.  

“Waiting for what?”

“Waiting for you.”

“Waiting for…what? What do you want me to do?”

“I’m waiting for you to get rid of me, Al-” I shake my head before he can interrupt. “No, no, don’t you look at me like that. I don’t want your pity. God knows what I’ll do, so please, do not…do not look at me like that.”  

I hold my head high, face up, storing tears in the back of my eyes.  

He looks at me with his own eyes that once made me believe I would matter. The ones that used to look at me like I was the only thing in the world worth seeing. They’ve dulled. Still beautiful — still him — but something has shifted beneath the surface and I am terrified it is irretrievable.  

The rain keeps falling. The cigarette smolders in his hand. The physical distance between us that has become too long for comfort is now shorter, but I am still waiting for him, far from an answer.  

We kiss, the taste of whiskey and fatigue lingering between us, while his cold hands ghost over my warm skin. I’ve been setting myself on fire for this heat in his absence, hoping the flames will keep me warm, hoping fire will heal my soul. When we break apart, the flame has burnt out.  

“If you want to light your cigarette, use the fire in my heart.” I tell him.  

He smiles, and it makes me proud. It makes me feel like I still have something left to give. But there’s a thought at the back of my mind — a quiet, creeping fear I can’t shake…

What if it burns out before he gets here, deep inside me?  

It’s November 2nd. 

You don’t have to know this, but today he made me feel alive.  

The room was cold. An inescapable kind of cold that settles in these buildings that are too old to hold warmth properly. The radiator rattled in protest, working though barely giving off any heat. I pulled the blanket tighter around me, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the kind of cold wool could fight off, or that could be solved by adding another layer. This kind came from the inside out. 

I held a stuffed animal to my chest. It wasn’t meant for you, it was my own — mine only. Small and soft, something to press into the empty spaces where nothing else fit. It was old, one ear slightly torn, stuffing uneven from years of being clutched too tightly. I had it when I was a child, had it through every heartbreak, every sleepless night, and now it was here with me, in a bed that had never felt bigger.  

At some point, I let it slip from my grasp. Let my fingers move lower, sliding beneath the waistband of my pyjama pants. I could pretend I felt ashamed, that I felt dirty doing it. But I didn’t.  

The focus was not to evoke layers of hidden emotion. It wasn’t about longing or sadness or grief. It wasn’t about loss, either. It wasn’t even about wanting him. I’m not going to act like it was anything other than what it was — movement and sensation. A way to fill the time and carve out a moment where I wasn’t haunted by everything I had lost. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to feel. I just wanted to slip away for a little while, to exist in a space that was mine and mine alone, away from the eternal tragedy that we play in without ever understanding it and away from those nocturnal and demented thoughts that torment me. 

I wished to taste the sweet glory of release again. 

What you think is more important than what is real. It might not be the healthiest thought, or the fairest, but in moments like this, it brings me peace.  

“People always think we look for love at our lowest to distract us. I am convinced we do it because we want someone to look us in the eye, to look our ugly in the eye and still choose us.”

That was what I wanted.  

Not to forget. Not to cover up the truths we lived in. I didn’t want to ignore that I was still here, still surviving, even without you. I wanted him to see me as I was — this mess, this wreckage, this person who didn’t know how to hold onto anything anymore. I wanted him to see himself. I wanted him to see me and still believe I was something worth loving.  

I wanted him to tell me that he loved me, even after how I had failed you both.  

I didn’t stop touching myself when I noticed him standing in the doorway. I didn’t pull away or adjust my clothing or pretend like I wasn’t doing exactly what I was doing. I didn’t even flinch. 

He was watching, not in judgment or disgust. 

And so I continued as he stepped closer. So close now that there was no more debating what was happening, that I was fingering myself and crying. I didn’t even stop when he was near enough that I could feel his breath, see the way his hands flexed at his sides, like he wanted to reach out but wasn’t sure if he should. Not when he knelt beside the bed, either, when he kissed my thigh, lifting the blanket slowly with just the lightest touch of his fingers. I had my knees up in the air, bent at the caps, arching my back a bit as Alex climbed next to me. 

The mattress shifted under his weight taking its occupancy as he moved up the bed. He kissed me on the lips, softly, his taste warm and familiar. He covered my mouth with his palm, quieting my sighs, and replaced my fingers with his own between my thighs. I hadn’t felt his touch in so long, I had almost forgotten what it was like. He spread me apart, and though I was still empty — he kept his fingers only on the outskirts of me — I came close to feeling whole again.  

He unbuttoned his jeans, hastily, fumbling. Then he stopped. Rolled over onto his back beside me, one arm draped across his face as if shielding himself from something too bright and painful in the darkness. I turned toward him, reaching down before he could take himself out in his own eagerness, guiding his hand away so that I could be the one to touch him instead, to play with him just as he played with my softest parts. I put my hand down his jeans and talked to him in the way only I could. 

There was a streetlamp just outside the window, its light cutting through the slats of the blinds, casting striped shadows across his form. His eyes were darker in this lighting, his lashes flickering as he watched me, his mouth parting slightly every time I moved my hand. I could hear the distant hum of the occasional car speeding down the street, tires splashing through puddles. 

The world outside was still moving. Indifferent and unchanged.  

But inside this room, time had slowed.  

He took his rightful place above me, pushing me so hard in the process that I nearly rolled off the bed. He was there to catch me.  

He almost said something to me. He looked straight at me, his lips parted, his breath caught in his throat, and for a moment, I thought he might speak. His top lip quivered. He changed his mind and started undressing me. Whatever words he had, he swallowed them down, chose instead to press his mouth to my shoulder, my neck, my jaw. Maybe he knew that words wouldn’t rewrite the past, wouldn’t undo what had already been done and they would change nothing when he had his body there, speaking to me so tenderly. 

The stress that kept us awake all day and all night was dissipating. Maybe it helped to know that we’re all, both of us, we’re all feeling it. That it’s okay to be afraid and we don’t have to be strong.  

We don’t have to serve as role models. 

We didn’t lay down expectations or reshape our mindsets to redefine what was acceptable, didn’t brace for impact in this big approach. We just let it happen, let ourselves fall into each other like we always had.  

I slid across the sheets, curling up into myself, and Alex followed. He took me from behind, his forehead resting against my spine, his hand smoothing over the small of my back and lower onto my bare body, tracing over the dimples his fingers had pressed and carved into my skin so many times before.  

We had sex with one another for the very first time — not as the people we used to be, but as the people we had become in the aftermath of everything, these new versions of ourselves we had yet to discover. 

It was so overwhelming.  

Not just for me, but for him, too.  

I felt the moment it hit him, the exact second everything he had built inside of himself collapsed. He grabbed onto the blanket and pulled it over us like a shield, muffling the sounds that broke free from his throat. He started crying. And when he did, I felt something shatter in my chest. I knew then that he might leave again. That he would get up in the morning, sit on the edge of the bed, run a hand through his hair, and tell me that maybe, in another life, in another city, in another room, things could have been different and we would have had a different fate. 

But we didn’t have another life, we would never have another chance, just this one, and we got it wrong, but that didn’t mean we had to quit trying to make it right. Or, at the very least, make it bearable in its current state.  

He’s the only one who matches my sweetness, who feels emotions so deeply they tear him apart from the inside out. I sank my teeth into his skin, and he listened when I whispered in his ear.  

“Please bite me in return.”

I spoke to him in code, but not only. I wanted him to bruise me. I wanted him to say: Let’s sabotage each other, let’s pretend we don’t know each other, and then let’s kiss.

“I missed your pretty mouth so much.” he told me.  

He moved himself inside of me, and through that shifted the very foundation of who I was. It felt as though our hearts had fucked our brains, untangling every thought, until we were nothing but raw feeling, instinct, and need. There was no logic left between us, no fear, no past or future — only this. The warmth of his breath against my neck, the weight of him pressing into me, the unspoken language of skin on skin, heart to heart.  

It was the most genuine and honest act that had ever taken place between us. The last barricades we’d built to keep ourselves from feeling too much had dissolved in the heat of our bodies. We surrendered — not just to each other but to everything we had been running from. And I think that’s when you know it’s real. When reason drowns in the flood of unfiltered emotion, when desire stops being something you perform and becomes something that simply overtakes you, consumes you, makes you its own.  

We kissed sloppily and fucked lazily, moving slowly. We had all the time in the world. We weren’t just trying to claw our way back to something that had once been whole anymore. His hands, rough and familiar, mapped me out, relearning the territory he’d been forced to forget. Our moans tore through the air, shamelessly, mingling with the occasional quiet sobs we were too far gone to suppress.  

At one point, he pulled back just enough to look at me. His lips were swollen, his eyes dark with something that was more than just lust. “You still feel like home.” he murmured, almost like he didn’t want me to hear it.

I swallowed hard, threading my fingers through his hair, tugging lightly. “Then don’t leave.”

His breath hitched slightly. “I never wanted to.”

He kissed me again, harder this time, to swallow the space between us and make up for every second we had spent apart, every moment wasted on silence and avoidance. 

I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, deeper, until we were no longer just touching but fully entwined. Tears clung to our cheeks, and I wasn’t sure anymore if we were crying from everything else or just from the overwhelming relief of this moment, of still having this, of still knowing each other in this way. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, and I ran my fingers through his hair, nails scratching lightly against his scalp.

“You’re shaking.” I whispered.

He let out a short, breathy laugh against my skin. “So are you.”

I wanted to hold him there, to keep him stuck to me forever in this way, to stop time from moving forward, because for the first time in so long, we weren’t ghosts in our own lives.  

For the first time in so long, we were real.

I didn’t understand him for a while. But now I know that to love in silence does not become reprimanding. The way I feel about him is beyond words and I understand his need for silence. In a manner of speaking, semantics will just never be enough. Not for this. Not for us. Not for the things we have lost. There comes a point when words just won’t do for human beings, for our inherent yearning and need, what only a crescendo can. A pinnacle. A peak. A release so raw that you have to beg the ones above. 

The ones that tell me nothing, the ones that tell me everything…

Oh, why won’t you give me the words?

It’s been a year.  

I didn’t want to be here for another winter. It was too much you and none at all.  

I suggested to Alex that we run off to the countryside. It seemed like a good idea to get out of this place, to slip away before the first snowfall could remind me of what we lost. There were no bags packed, no plans made — we set off with just one extra set of clothes stuffed into the backseat and no set destination in mind, only the silent, mutual agreement that we would let the road decide where we belonged.  

Alex drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting between us, fingers occasionally grazing my thigh, making sure I was still there and letting me know that he was too. He put on the soundtrack of some Wes Anderson film and let it play, its whimsical, melancholic strings filling the car in place of words we weren’t ready to say. I let myself sink into the passenger seat in the quiet, lulled by the soft hum of Ennio Morricone drifting from the speakers, by the low vibration of the wheels rattling beneath me, carrying us somewhere — anywhere.  

I must have fallen asleep.  

When I wake, the sky outside is thick with gold, clouds gathered around the sun like whites cradling a yolk. Eggy. It strikes me as unusual. It’s an odd thing to see in winter, when the evenings are usually a wash of pale pinks and deep blues, cold and distant. There hasn’t been snow this year either, and I wonder if the world feels as upside down as I do.  

The music is gone, I realise. In place of it I hear Alex humming softly, a sound so familiar and low that it feels like a memory playing on repeat. When I turn to look at him, I notice it instantly — the skin beneath his eyes is raw and there are dried tracks of old tears have settled into his cheeks. He’s cried in his time spent alone behind the wheel. 

He notices me staring and wipes at his face, exhaling like he’s annoyed at himself. “I’m not sad.” he says. He really needs me to believe it.  

I don’t say anything. I just watch him.  

“I cried because…” He pauses, choosing his words carefully, measuring their weight before handing them to me. “Because I have the privilege of watching someone I love very much, even in sleep, and knowing I’ll get to talk to them again.”  

There are a million things I could say, but none of them would be enough, none of them would fit into the space that his words have carved between us. And before I can try, before I can even begin to think of how to hold all of this, the immensity of what he’s just said, his hand is on my cheek, warm and steady. The tactile sensation of it all overtakes me. 

“I was here first.” he declares. 

And you…you are the ubiquitous pest.  

Love can’t be created or destroyed — we’ve established that already. It lingers, even when it’s unwanted, even when it curdles into something unbearable. It stays until it evokes fear and it tears you apart, until you’re left with nothing but the pieces of what it used to be.  

You want me to love you still, but I can’t. I’ll soon catch the rot of you deep inside me that I’ve been too scared to face. Someone has to leave, and I won’t let that be us. I will love you forever, but I can’t. I can’t. I can’t — I won’t — I’m afraid I’ll catch your disease. 

A few months. That’s all it was.  

And yet — sometimes, just sometimes — I wish it would hurt for you too. At least a little. Just enough to make it fair. Just enough so I wouldn’t have to carry all of this alone. But now, it’s all I can do to push you away, to shove you off so I can live knowing that, for once, I saved someone. Even if it couldn’t be you.  

I saved me.  

I saved him.  

I saved us.  

I look out to the sun waving at us as it veils itself behind the clouds, casting long shadows over the quiet stretch of road ahead. I watch it disappear, a slow, deliberate exit, and I think—  

How lucky we are to have known someone that makes saying goodbye so hard.

a/n: Inspired by this request. This is definitely influenced by a lot of what I’ve been reading and seeing recently. I reference ‘God’ and concepts related to that quite a bit, I’ve noticed, it’s something that’s present here as well, and though I’m not at all religious I find it to be an interesting subject when it comes up in fictional situations. I mentioned the other day that I wrote a sentence I really liked, it’s the one at the end of the paragraph about the willow tree. I don’t have much else to add here :)

[m4g0hun]

lost child

[o-sunny-day]

oh….. the THINGS i would give for a @forgettable-au movie……..

gang- okay…

The vision of Papyrus and Gaster at Wingdings’ funeral…. was so vivid in my head. And now its going to be there forever. and i have 0 complaints.

Dunno if any of you have played Omori, but SPOILERS!

the context to this is kinda like the Blackspace segment. Papyrus is in his head sorting out the shit he needs to sort out through metaphors n such. But Gaster is also there because he can do that because theyre the same person (IT MAKES SENSE)

I imagine that whole thing happens right after Papyrus regains all his wingdings memories like he gets knocked out or something- IM MAKING A LOT OF ASSUMPTIONS HERE LIKE HE MIGHT NOT EVEN REMEMBER, EVER!!! I REALLY HOPE HE DOES!!! BUT!!!

Just let me have my silly fanfics…

After a lot of fighting and agony over the question of WHO IS PAPYRUS? ESPECIALLY AFTER HE’S LEARNED TOO MUCH?

it ends with a somber scene of putting Wingdings to rest, letting his 2 halves live their own lives.

Papyrus asks “Why did you do this?” as in… Why did you bring me here? and why did you do what you did? throwing yourself into the void?

Gaster has the same answer for both of those questions

Thats my theory, I think a lot of Gaster/Wingdings’ ambition, in game and in comic, is just curiosity

TIME FOR SOME FUN LITTLE EASTER EGGS!!!

In the first frame, theres a raindrop in front of Papyrus’ eye socket, meant to allude to Wingdings’ eye lights.

Also the field is filled with Echo and Golden flowers. Echo represents Wingdings, and Golden represents Papyrus. Gaster is just Gaster, don’t worry about him

I also had fun making the save point star look sorta like a cross from the distance…cause yknow…heaven….TEEHEE

I got emotional putting “dearest brother” on the grave cause I couldnt put any more stuff like “closest friend” or “dear son”….Sans was kinda all he had…

and lastly heres some bonus behind the scenes stuff because I have enough room for it

some sketches, and a speedpaint with the best instrumental song ever made from the best liveaction movie ever made that has absolutely nothing to do with the forgettable au (Little Miss Sunshine - “THE WINNER IS”)

Highly recommend, 100/10, makes me UGLY SOB, think the undertale gang would like it (especially Papyrus and Undyne)

[piratefishmama]

Steve only refusing to play DnD because he tried once with some other DM and they were so overwhelmed by his solid intuition, his knack for spotting set ups and teeny details that other members of the Party were missing, that they have a go at him for ruining all the planning they did cause he ruins it by spotting it all before the party can run head first into shit Street.

A really bad DM basically. So now in his infinite bitchiness, he just calls it nerd shit as petty revenge when he actually really enjoyed keeping his party safe.

And Eddie eventually through trial and error through attempting Steve's hobbies with him, bringing him back around cause hes so fucking psyched to challenge Steve's wisdom stats like BRING IT BIG BOY he's foaming at the mouf.

[magicalmayhemz]

i fuckin love when kangel is drawn like this!!!! the gender is real

[ofteacupsandclocks]

“I’m not fortune’s fool, I’m yours” is a modified quote from the most famous fucking love story in the world.

So for context: “I am fortune’s fool” is a quote from Romeo and Juliet. Romeo says that after he kills Tybalt essentially saying he has bad luck.

So what does the quote mean in Hannibal:

On the surface level the entire quote applies to the fact that Will’s bad luck and misfortune is caused by Hannibal’s meddling. Also I think Will says the quote not only about the current situation but also their shared past. Most of the negative events in Will’s life were triggered by Hannibal (encephalitis, going to prison, Abigail dying, etc).

But here’s something interesting if we separate the quote into its two parts:

“I’m not fortune’s fool” is easy and straightforward. It sounds like Will assuming control over his life. Over his actions. Taking over control over his luck.

Then I also wanna focus on the wording “I’m yours” in the second part of the quote. Even with the context of the full quote, but even more so without, it very much sounds like a declaration of love, of belonging, and of ownership. Will is Hannibal’s. His life is Hannibal’s.

So with that in mind putting the quote together again we get: “I’m not fortune’s fool” “I’m yours” and to me this essentially sounds like Will is saying: I am making my own choices now, and I chose to come to you. It isn’t my luck, it is my choice to be here, to be yours.

[starrieshq]

4 horny teenagers on a quest...what could possibly go wrong

[ahappyphjl]

favorite dan and/or phil outfit // dpgdaily's dnpaw - day 3/7

[daily-rikukingdomhearts]

They mean everything to me

[roszabell]

lietprucan and their smile “types”

[okaybutmakeitgayer]

I missed the OUAW plushies but if a Pyke one/SDR group is ever released I will drop everything for that plush space elf

[currenthyperf1xat1ons]

i always forget that “this too shall pass” is a thing that people legitimately say to each other and they are not referencing malevolent when they say that

this post is sponsored by my great uncle saying it while on a family phone call and me having a visible reaction

[enderwoah]

design of the best girl, the only, the diva of the server, veruca salt but in minecraft, darling angel princess who's father is going to spoil her ROTTEN

(also q!maxo was included because pepito and empanada both have five parents (comprised of the new players and the parents of dead eggs) while sunny only has four. it makes me think that max would have been her fifth parent if he wasn't...y'know. she even has sunglasses, just like him. so why not!)

[frogmoisturethief]

ughhhhhhhhh I’m gonna fail my lab practical tomorrow

[itsyagurlchip]

*gasssssssp!!!*

swansea is a hypocrite.

sure, all of the things that he said during his final moments to jimmy were true, but he specifically jabs what he did to anya at him during that moment.

she told him. she told him and swansea didn't do anything about it. he even continues to belittle her (despite her keeping curly alive for 4 months if not more-) and is dismissive towards her.

so not only was he trying to "teach a youngster a lesson" before he died, he was making someone else feel guilty about something he could've prevented, or at the very least reported.

that counts 3 people in the room who need to take responsibility, curly, jimmy, and swansea. if we evaluate daisuke and anya as well (IN A CRITICAL WAY), they may be in the same situation.

(^^when anya says "you haven't even seen my worst moments" or smt like that, and when daisuke admits he's only here bc of his mom)

(do know that I only watched the gameplay last night so if any of my recalls make no sense/do not match up I apologise)