#how did it take me 21 years to realize this ive been seeing brown as BRIGHT ORANGE??

[crowyotea]

don’t let anyone tell you video games aren’t educational. warframe made me realize i was bisexual and also partially colorblind

[incorrectgallaghergirlsquotes]

for the spotify wrapped thing: 21

also i wanted to say ive been following your series for 2 years now and i love your writing

You are so kind for saying that, thank you so much! I promise there will be updates soon. I'm working on making them perfect for you!

Song 21: Is It Over Now? by Taylor Swift (Two people requested this. There will be another one for this lol)

MACEY MCHENRY'S PRIVATE JET DEPARTS LONDON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

It was hard to say what was worse. Leaving your boyfriend in the dead of night or arriving back at your place to see the roses he'd gotten you still in their vase on your bedside table.

Macey decided it was the roses and threw her bag at them. The vase toppled to the floor taking the wilted petals of last weeks flowers down with it. A lot could happen in a week, Macey realized as she stared at the mix of roses and broken glass that now littered the floor.

She ignored the mess she'd made and simply crawled into bed, still in her clothes, and slept alone.

INSIDE LOOK AT MACEY MCHENRY'S INTIMATE COFFEE DATE AMID PRESTON WINTERS SPLIT

Honestly, Macey didn't know why she bothered with the sun hats and glasses when she went out. As if those were enough to make her not Macey McHenry. The sunglasses did at least help with all the camera flashes being sent her way. She pulled the visor in the car down immediately for added protection once she got in the car.

"Worth it?" Cammie asked from the drivers seat. She looked similar to Macey with the hat and glasses combo. Her visor was also already down.

"A girls gotta live her life," Macey said as they peeled away from the people and the cameras. "I haven't been able to get a coffee in peace since 2012."

"Cut to 300 takeout coffees later," Cammie teased, eyeing the cup in her friends hand.

Macey shrugged again. "This is my life. Think of it like a training exercise. You wanna see me? Get coffee with me?" she tapped the tinted glass of the window that separated them from the paparazzi. "They come too. I don't like it, but it is what it is."

Cammie shook her head, but a smile was still on her face. "I don't envy you," she glanced over at Macey before looking back at the road. "Have you talked to him?"

Macey scoffed. "No. Why should I?"

"I didn't say you should." Cammie tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as the idled at a red light. "But, you know, you did tell me last week you saw his face on our waiter when we had girls night."

"Yeah, after I had two margaritas the size of my head," Macey defended. "How is it my fault all men look the same?"

"He was a ginger."

"And Preston's hair is a light brown with reddish undertones."

Cammie raised her eyebrows and looked off to the side. Neither of them said anything for a moment. The next thing to break through the silence was both of their phones buzzing. Macey pulled hers out, letting Cammie drive. Sure enough, it was the group chat they were both in. Liz had sent a link to an article with a headline prominently displayed in the preview.

DETAILS EMERGE OF MACEY MCHENRY AND PRESTON WINTER'S SNOWY VACATION TURNED DARK JUST WEEKS BEFORE SPLIT

Macey groaned. "Seriously? Even in the title they acknowledge that was weeks ago. How is this news?"

Cammie shrugged one shoulder. "It'll get clicks. People are nosy." Macey grumbled to herself in response. "What," Cammie started hesitantly. "What happened out there? You never told us."

"Nothing," Macey said, arms crossed in her seat. "He had an accident while we were skiing. He stopped himself too soon and the momentum made him lurch and he got hurt," there was no masking the concern that bled into Macey's voice as she recounted the incident. "You know, red blood on white snow is kind of jarring. He was fine though. He only needed a few stitches."

There was a beat. Then, Cammie said, quietly, "That sounds scary."

Macey slunk down in her seat. "Yeah."

PRESTON WINTERS NEW GIRL? STORY BEHIND THE PICTURES OF THEIR LATE NIGHT RENDEZVOUS 

Bex: I'll kill him

Bex: Also since when is he into blondes?

Cammie: Well she's got the blue eyes

Bex: I'LL KILL HIM

Liz: Already scrubbing evidence of these texts existing in case it's necessary

Macey's phone kept buzzing, but she kept ignoring it in favor of staring at the man in front of her. Her friends were halfway around the world in another time zone. They had no idea what she was doing and had no means of stopping her. And it was better that way.

Preston was sitting in the lounge chair, his chin resting in his hand as he glared at the tabloid Macey had just deposited on the coffee table. She stood across from him waiting, daring him to respond.

"Macey-," he said at last.

"Did you think I didn't see you?" She cut him off. He turned his mouth back into his hand. Clearly he hadn't known where to take the conversation. Meanwhile, she had some ideas. "Did you really think I wouldn't? Even without all the flashing lights have you forgotten who I am? Have you forgotten who my friends are?"

"I didn't think you cared," he said, turning to face her. He dropped his hand, folding them both in his lap. "You left, remember? Called me a 'lying traitor', wasn't that right?"

"Seems like it stuck with you so I guess so," she said. "If the shoe fits."

"We were broken up," Preston defended. "It was over."

"Was it?" Macey asked, incredulously. "Was it over when you laid her out on your couch?" she gestured to the furniture piece in question, in the very room they were in. Preston didn't ask who, he didn't need to. Which was perhaps the most incriminating piece of it. "Was it over when I let him take me home? Unbutton my blouse? Take me to his room?"

Preston stood up then, turning away from her.

"Because if it was over, you don't get to be upset!" She said, voice raising. But Preston didn't walk away, just stopped with his back to her. She watched him exhale, the air and tension leaving his body.

"So you admit," he started. His tone was measured, trying to reign himself in no doubt. "You did it, too. You've seen other people."

Macey probably would have rolled her eyes, maybe he thought she did. But she took advantage of him not looking at her and bit her tongue instead, trying to hold back her frustration instead of hiding it. "Of course. The difference is," she continued, venom seeping into her words, "At least I had the decency to keep my nights out of sight!"

Preston scoffed and turned back. "Yeah, right. You've been out for coffee not half a million times."

"Coffee," Macey emphasized. "I kept my nights to myself. Sure, I can't stop rumors about them, but all the whispers and speculation about my hips and sighs was just that. They weren't pictures," she grabbed the tabloid off the table and shoved it in his face. "On the front page of every paper!"

"I don't need to see pictures of you with some guy to feel hurt!" Preston yelled, knocking the paper out of her hand. The pages fluttered around the room, ending up scattered all over the floor. 

"Oh, really?"

"I don't give a shit about some guys you see! That wasn't nearly as bad as the pictures and headlines of you leaving me!" He stared into her eyes, and she could see him willing himself to calm down. Or maybe his next thought took the steam out of him. "Do you know how many times I saw the picture of you in that blue dress, all alone, on that boat?"

"I'm sure," Macey said, because she was. It seemed the paparazzi had gotten one singular photo of her that day and it was everywhere. That one photo was dissected across every social media platform, every comments section, every headline.

MACEY MCHENRY SEEN LEAVING ISLAND VACATION WITH PRESTON WINTERS ALONE MERE HOURS AFTER ARRIVING

"Whose fault was that, though?" she questioned. Preston's shoulders sagged under the weight of her statement, but Macey didn't feel any sense of victory as she crossed her arms at him. "Has your new girl realized yet that she's a clone of me?"

Where someone else would defend themselves and their partner and throw out statements like, 'no she doesn't' or 'that was unintentional', Preston said nothing. Macey felt her anger flare up again. "Because it doesn't actually matter, really. The vast majority of her looks. At this point it's safe to surmise that if she'd got blue eyes, you'll date her. And, you know what, really Preston, how is that going? You've searched every models bed at this point. Did you find something greater?"

"No."

"Something better than me?" 

"No!" Preston closed the minimal space that was left between them, putting them practically nose to nose. His hands were gripping her arms, tightly at first and then quickly relaxed their hold. He was staring into her eyes and Macey made the grave mistake of glancing down at his lips. One of his hands traveled up to cup her face and bring it even closer to his. He ran his thumb across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. He brushed it over her bottom lip, drawing it into somewhat of a pout.

"I keep dreaming about you," he whispered. "It's not that I keep seeing you, but I know it's you. It's your voice and your lips whispering for me to 'come here'. To come to you. And I want to. Before you called me a lying traitor. And now, after."

Macey inhaled. She saw two options in front of herself. One was give in to the magnetic pull she felt every time they were together and continue this back and forth, song and dance they did. The other was admit something herself. She wasn't sure which one would do the most damage to her.

"Twenty stitches," she said, pulling back and looking in his eyes. "That's how many stitches you got after the accident. And I was with you the whole time. You had my undivided attention." Preston was looking at her longingly, imploringly, as she spoke. "And I keep thinking about jumping. Off of very tall... somethings," she watched his eyes search hers. "Just to see you come running. To see if you would."

"I would," he said. "I'd run to you, of course I would."

"But you don't!" Macey yelled, breaking away from his hold. "I keep hoping you'd be there! And you'd say everything I want you to, but you don't!"

"You don't give me a chance!"

"We've broken up countless times! Each of those was a chance! You don't take it! I do! I always come back!"

"Well, why don't you stop leaving!"

"Why don't you make me wanna stay?" Macey's question came out at the same volume they had been arguing at. But the silence that followed made it ring as if it had been much louder. The silence itself was loud. 

This was the part where they were supposed to just fall into one another, fall into Preston's bed, and give it another try for another few weeks. But he couldn't come up with anything to say in response to her. And he really looked like he wanted to say something. Macey wanted him to say anything.

But the silence stretched on.

"Was it over?" Macey asked, referencing the earlier part of their argument.

He looked at her. "Is it over now?"

[phlox238]

i wrote a pretty long rymin fic and half of it is min being anxious and getting advice from a lesbian at a gay bar,,, it sucks but here it is anyway

2.5k words this is the most ive ever written

"So," The girl began, gesturing wildly with her hands. "You think you're in love with your best friend, who you've known since you were born, and you're in a band and traveling across Canada and the USA with. What did you say your name is?" 

"Oh, fuck." Min-gi sighed, letting his head rest in his hands. "This is weird, isn't it? I barely know you."

"Nah, I just thought that, if we're going to have a slightly drunk chat in the back of a gay bar, then we should know each other's names. I'm Eryn, and you?" Eryn stuck out her hand, the many bracelets she wore on her wrist clanking together. 

Min chuckled a little, then took her hand and shook it. Her dark skin was warm, which was surprising, since this part of the bar was near freezing. "Min-gi. But you can call me Min." 

"Awesome. So, tell me about it, Min." Eryn tightened her ponytail, leaning forward on her arms. 

"Tell you what about it? There's so many things that I could say." He was so caught up in this gay crisis stuff that he hadn't even considered stopping for a moment to really think about it.

Eryn shrugged. "Whatever you want to say. Get stuff off your chest, just let it out, if you want to. There's like, nobody else back here. Doesn't really matter, right? I'm not judgy." 

"Okay...well, he has a girlfriend, first of all; has had many of them. So he's not into dudes." Min crossed his arms. 

"Hey, he could still be. Just because he dates women doesn't mean he's straight. Could still be into guys. Don't give up hope just yet, okay?" Eryn laced her fingers together, as if she was planning something. The dark lighting of the bar didn't help anything.

“Damn,” Min rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t know you could like both.”

Not without laughing at him first, Eryn started to explain. "Oh, wow, you really are new to this, huh?" She chuckled a little more, shaking her head. “That’s okay. There’s a lot of different ways to love people, you just gotta figure out what works for you. Oh, also; it isn’t just both. There’s the genderqueer people, too, don’t forget about them!” She smiled. 

Min didn’t quite know what genderqueer meant, but he figured he could find out later. He was asking too many questions already. "Damn...how do you know all of this? I only realized I was, er, gay, like six months ago."  Min marveled at her, the same way a nerd at school would marvel at the 'cool kids.' And honestly, she really looked like one, with her ponytail and undercut, her yellow, patched leather jacket, even the flashy jewelry she wore.

It made Min want to start dressing differently. Dressing cooler, like Ryan, like Eryn. Maybe he could.

Eryn grinned wider. "Oh, you know. It's just things you pick up along the way. I've known that I'm lesbian for a long time, since I was like 11. And I'm 21 now, so that's a long time. Lots of experience." She shuffled a little in her seat, taking another drink of beer. "Anyway. We're getting off track, aren't we? Keep talking, man." 

Min laughed, a real laugh. "Okay, okay. A year ago, we, er…" He reached desperately for an explanation for the train, but decided that, just maybe, he could tell her. Really, the worst that she could think of him is that he's a drug user. "Can I tell you something? It's going to sound absolutely insane, probably, but I just. Need to tell someone." 

She looked concerned, her dark brown eyes wide, but nodded anyway. "That's real ominous. But sure, go for it."

"Okay. So. Stick with me, here. A year ago, him and I got on a train, right? But then, there was another train door within the train. We just...went into the door. Well, the bastard threw my keys into it and then ran in, so how could I not follow?" Eryn was looking at him intently like she understood. Min could tell he was pretty drunk by now; he'd never be able to open up to someone this much sober. But that's okay. More than okay, really. 

"It gets even weirder from then on. Ryan- that's his name, by the way- and I woke up on a giant, infinie train in the middle of nowhere. Gotta be pretty unbelievable, though. You probably think I'm on drugs." Min sighed.

Eryn was silent for a moment, but it was obvious she was getting ready to explode. "Dude, no fucking way!" Yep, there it was. "I got on that train! When I was eleven. I was super conflicted on my sexuality, had a shit ton of internalized homophobia as a result of having homophobic family. I felt like a disgusting person. So I got on the train, and it actually helped me through it." She'd completely lit up when Min mentioned the train. Looked like she was going to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. 

For a moment, Min was speechless. Soon, though, he regained his voice. "You're kidding," was all he could muster.

"Nope." Eryn's grin nearly reached her ears. "Did you have someone to help you along, too? There was a white cat named Samantha for me. She was French, for some reason. But I miss her." 

"Oh! Yeah, Ryan and I had a floating, talking bell named Kez. Weird, right?. I miss her, too. Wonder how she's doing." Min thought for a second, completely and utterly relieved to have met someone else to share an experience with. Then something clicked. "Hold on...I might have met this cat you speak of. Yellow eyes? Uh, blonde...hair?" 

"Blonde hair? Well, she didn't have that. But yeah, yellow eyes, French accent." Eryn nodded. They were silent for a moment. 

Min chuckled, suddenly getting the urge to continue on with their story. Telling someone about the train would feel wonderful. "We had a lot of...issues...regarding our friendship, at the time. That's why the train picked us up in the first place." He fiddled with the hem of his shirt. "The train did help us. But we had a lot of weirdly intimate moments on it, and that's where my sexuality crisis started. Like, there was a car where we had to perform a song with each other to get out of it, and of course I got stage fright right before it. I left him alone on stage. Again." Min paused, the guilt almost making him feel like he was living through that moment again. 

Eryn nudged him. "And? That doesn't sound intimate. What happened next?" 

"I hid in the bathroom. So he came in, and at first he was angry, but I was having a full on anxiety attack. We sat in the bathtub, hip to hip, knee to knee. It was weird, but nice. He helped me calm down. And like...in our last year of Highschool, I gave him a shirt with our band name on it. In that bath tub, he had it with him. He kept it. Said he'd never done a show without it." Min laughed, but there wasn't much humor about it. "Man, I wanted to kiss him so bad right then and there. But I didn't." 

Eryn had a soft look in her eyes. "I dunno about you, but that sounds pretty damn gay to me. Maybe he's just dating other people to distract himself from his crush on you, who knows! All I'm trying to say is, don't give up on this, Min. You two have something going on, I don't know what, but it could blossom into a relationship." She patted him on the shoulder, then took another drink of her beer. 

Min did the same. "What if he's not gay?" His voice was small. "Worse, what if he's homophobic? I don't know...fuck, it's terrifying. I could lose him because I'm gay." 

"Well," Eryn paused for a moment, "you could try and subtly bring it into conversation. Maybe, like, bring up a celebrity who's gay. See his reaction." She gestured with her hands a lot, Min noticed. 

Min nodded. It seemed simple in theory, but he knew he'd manage to fuck it up somehow. The logical part of his brain knew Ryan wouldn't leave him for being gay, but at the same time, there was this voice in the back of his head. Irrational thoughts, irrational fears; that's all it spoke of. 

"Thank you. Really. It's been nice to talk about this, especially with someone who's been on the train. That thing is...a freak of nature. Maybe not even nature, I don't know. I'll try that with him, too." Min said finally, after some silence. Eryn laughed. 

"Yeah, it absolutely is." She smiled widely. Eryn glanced around, her eyes finally landing on the only visible clock in this part of the bar. Her eyes widened. "Shit, I should really get going! Sorry. I told my girlfriend I'd be back around now." She, out of nowhere, gave Min a hug. It'd been a while since he'd hugged anyone, he realized, and it felt nice. Although, very unexpected. 

Min hugged her back, sort of awkwardly. They separated soon after.

"That's okay. Again...thank you, so much. I should get young too." By now, it was almost 11 pm, and he figured he should leave as well. Ryan should be back at their apartment soon enough. 

Min was about to turn and leave, but Eryn stopped him.

"Hey! How about we exchange phone numbers? This was a good chat, eh? I'd like to stay in contact." Eryn searched her pockets for a pen and some paper, but only found a marker. "Can I, like, write it on your arm and you can do the same?"

Min knew Ryan would tease him over it, but oh, well, he made a new friend. "Yeah, that's fine." He laughed, offering her his arm. She quickly scribbled her number on it, and honestly, it was barely legible. But he could read it, somewhat. 

He then wrote his number on her arm, they exchanged goodbyes, and were on their way. Min dreaded returning to Ryan, who would definitely start to go on and on about his girlfriend, and just prove to make Min feel worse about his stupid crush.

But maybe, just maybe, Eryn was right. Maybe things would finally go his way for once. 

•••

Min's walk home was quiet (as quiet as New York can be at night) and cold, it being the middle of November. Snow was just beginning to fall. Being outside Eryn's words stuck in his head like glue. Talk to him. As if he could do that. The idea of even just mentioning anything close to being gay made anxiety rise in his throat like bile. 

He couldn't. Probably.

Before he could think much more on it, he was home. Home. Back to the decent one bedroom apartment they'd scraped up all of the money in their pockets to buy. Back to the scent of cigarette smoke in the air, back to the strange stains on the carpet in the hallway. Most importantly, back to Ryan. No matter how much resentment Min-gi might hold to him for having a girlfriend, Ryan usually made things better. 

He walked up the stairs and down the hall to apartment number 202, ironically. Unlocked and opened the door to find it dark inside save for a single lamp. Min walked in, curious, just to find Ryan curled up in the fetal position on the sofa. That really made him anxious.

"Hey...Ryan? You good, man?" Min sat on the empty portion of the sofa, near his head. 

Ryan stirred, rolling over onto his back. His head was resting a bit on Min's thigh, and it felt kind of nice. 

"I dunno…" He mumbled. "She broke up with me." 

"What?" Min looked down at Ryan, surprised. "Lisa? You're kidding." 

"Nope, not kidding." Ryan laced his fingers together over his stomach. "The thing is...I'm like, kind of relieved that she did it? How fucked up is that?"  

Min tilted his head in confusion. He really wanted to run his hand through Ryan's hair, but that was a really inappropriate thought for the moment. 

"She, uh...said some things. When she broke up with me." He sighed. "Called me a fag." Ryan laughed, like he found it funny. Min didn't. 

"Dude, what? Why?" Min's voice was a little shaky, for no other reason than that they were talking about gay people. 

Ryan sighed. "Take a good look at us, Min." He brought his forearm up to cover his eyes. "We're two dudes, living in a one bedroom apartment together. We do everything together. Of course she's gonna think there's something going on." 

Min felt like he was going to fucking disintegrate. "U-Uh...and that's a bad thing?"

"I mean...no. It just kind of clicked that...maybe she's right. Maybe I am gay." Ryan sat up, his back facing towards Min. He didn't look back. " I always assumed that I'd be straight, but this...it makes sense. None of my relationships have ever worked out. With women." 

Min reached out and gently touched his shoulder. "Ryan...it's okay." 

Ryan looked back, now, and his eyes were watery. Min frowned.

“How could it be okay?” His voice cracked as he spoke. “It’s just another reason for people to hate me. For my parents to hate me. Hell, maybe even you.” By the time that he finished talking, his voice was almost inaudible. 

"No!" Min almost shouted, jolting forward. "No. Ryan, I could never hate you." Fuck, how was he supposed to tell Ryan he's gay now? Part of him wanted to shout it out impulsively, but the other part, it just wanted to keep hiding. Because what if something goes wrong? What if Ryan's in love with someone else? All what ifs. He really needed to stop. 

Min inhaled deeply. Here goes. "This is gonna sound really coincidental, but...I'm gay too." 

Quickly, Ryan turned around to face Min. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. 

"What? No fucking way. You're kidding." Ryan was leaning forward, using his fists to prop him up. 

Min shook his head. "No...I'm not. I was gonna tell you soon anyway, but now seemed like a good time." He scratched his head awkwardly.

Then, Ryan launched at him, hugging him. Arms wrapped around his neck, knees touching Min's thighs, the whole package. Min was sure he'd die with how flushed his face was; but thankfully, he didn't. 

After what felt like a while, Ryan finally spoke. 

"I love you." He mumbled into Min's shoulder. 

Min paused. "In a gay way, or…?" 

Ryan laughed. "Yeah, you idiot." He shook his head in amusement. 

"Good. That's...great." He hugged Ryan tighter, finally letting himself run his fingers through his hair. It was soft, just like he expected. "I love you too." 

[let-it-raines]

Catch Me If You Can (30/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: I am not a fan of the fact that there are only 10 chapters left. Like, not at all. Where did all of this time go? How are we at this point in the story? I feel like I was just writing it!

Anyway, it seems fitting that this chapter posts in a week where a lot of us have gone home to see family because Killian is going home with Emma to meet Ruth😘 Thanks to you all for being you and thanks to @resident-of-storybrooke​ for reading these words for me and checking my facts!

Found on AO3: beginning | current

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-/-

“Did you know that it’s Friday the thirteenth and a full moon?”

“Thank you, Alec Trebek.”

“No, seriously. That’s what it says on my phone.”

“Love, I know the date.”

“But did you know about the moon thing?”

“I did,” Killian sighs, picking his suitcase up off of the security belt and placing it on the ground while Emma grabs her sneakers. “I read about it the other day, and I am prepared for all of the haunted werewolves to come out to play.”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs before she plops herself down on a bench to tie her shoes.

It’s a little past four thirty in the morning, and JFK is nearly empty of anyone who isn’t traveling in some kind of suit. He and Emma are surrounded by people in black blazers and tailored trousers only traveling with a sleek black suitcase and their briefcase. He and Emma, meanwhile, are both in joggers with t-shirts on (Emma has on his Vandy sweatshirt over hers) and their hair tucked underneath baseball caps.

Emma got in from Detroit late last night, only taking five minutes to kiss him hello and take a quick shower before collapsing on his bed on top of the covers. The only flight they could get so last minute that wasn’t an exuberant amount of money is at the ungodly hour of six in the morning, so Killian insisted that she just stay at his place last night so that they could leave from the same place and save time. Considering they woke up ten minutes before their Uber arrived and could barely brush their teeth before they left, that didn’t exactly work in the whole saving time department.

It doesn’t help that Emma has pretty much been deadweight this entire morning until she started to wake up right before they went through security.

He, on the other hand, is wide awake. Nervous jitters run through his body, his stomach twisting in knots, and for someone who doesn’t get nervous for many things other than baseball, Killian is pretty much a wreck when it comes to meeting Emma’s family. Ruth is the last one, the final piece of the puzzle, and as intimidating as David was to meet, his mother might outrank her.

Killian both wants to spend the entire weekend sucking up to her and thanking her for taking Emma in and giving her the love she’s never had but has always deserved, but that could prove to be a bit much.

Then again, if Ruth hadn’t taken Emma in thirteen years ago, Emma would have never met David. If Emma hadn’t met David, David would have never taken her to the baseball game that truly allowed Emma to fall in love with sports. And if Emma hadn’t done that, he doubts she’d have ever gotten into broadcasting and found her passion there that makes her so damn happy.

The two of them also would never have met, and that thought sends a shiver down his spine.

It’s funny how such little things can change absolutely everything.

Everything.

So, yeah, Killian is most definitely a little nervous to meet Ruth.

“You want to go find some coffee, Swan?” Killian asks Emma as he props his foot up to tie his own sneaker. “I think the two of us are in some desperate need of caffeine.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll be able to find a coffee shop in an airport. There are never any coffee places here.”

“I don’t appreciate all of this sarcasm so early this morning.”

She pokes his stomach. “You’re the one who woke me up.”

“We’re going home to meet your family.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“You should.”

“Well,” Emma huffs, standing up and pulling up her pants so that he sees a flash of tanned skin on her stomach, “you should. Onto coffee we go.”

They both grab onto their bags and start walking down the terminal, passing gate after gate and store after store, but everything is black with the lights turned off and bars pulled over the stores. Nothing is open, not even the convenience stores, and the moment Emma realizes this, she stops walking and buries her face in his shoulder.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“There are vending machines,” he soothes. “I think they have coffee.”

“But it’s gross coffee,” she wines before wrapping her arms around his stomach. At first, Killian thinks that she’s being affectionate, but then he realizes that she’s using him so that she doesn’t have to stand on her own. He’s not sure he minds either way. “I need real coffee, and I need it in an IV.”

“Okay, Lorelai Gilmore.”

Emma laughs into his shoulder, the vibrations working through his shoulder. “You’re learning. I’m so proud, babe.”

“I might have watched an episode or two.”

Emma’s head pops up then, the bill of her cap hitting him in the chin. “When?”

“While you were gone. It was on Netflix, and it just kind of happened.”

“Good choice, twenty-nine. Good choice.” Emma’s lips brush against the corner of his jaw, and he tugs her a little closer as his hand runs up and down her back while she presses up on her toes to make contact with his lips. “I need a diet coke or something, and then when the stores open, I’m buying the biggest damn cup of coffee in this entire airport.”

“Whatever your heart desires.”

-/-

The flight is only an hour and a half, Emma sleeps the entire time despite them getting her the biggest damn cup of coffee in the airport right before they boarded, and Killian spends his time answering emails before closing out the app so that he won’t see anything else work-related for this entire weekend. It’s a conscious decision, one he’s happy to make, and it’s almost refreshing to know that he doesn’t have anything to worry about for at least a few days.

Well, anything to worry about except for Ruth Nolan and making sure that he can impress her.

-/-

The taxi they get from the airport takes them directly to Ruth’s house, so Emma doesn’t get much time to show him around, only pointing out a few landmarks. They pass the minor league baseball stadium here, the Portland Sea Dogs, and Emma tells him that she’s never actually been despite having such easy access. She was too caught up in everything having to do with New York and getting there that she never really thought about it. He teases her and tells her they’ll have to go to a game, but Emma turns him down by saying that she needs a break from baseball.

He does too.

So that’ll probably be knocked off the itinerary that Killian is sure Mary Margaret has made. Luckily, though, she and David won’t be here until early evening since they both had to be at work and school for half a day, so they’re pretty much free to do whatever they want with Ruth today.

He’s still slightly reeling from his injury and their fight and everything that came from that. He’s not angry or upset, but this is all still such an adjustment. He should be playing. He shouldn’t be here, but it’s his own damn fault that he is. He screwed up on so many levels, and owning up to it all has been a tough pill to swallow.

Hurting the people he loved nearly killed him, and he doesn’t want anyone to hurt because of him ever again.

In the blink of a bleary eye, they’re pulling up to a quaint two-story Victorian home with brown and white details and bright green bushes lining the brick-paved walkway to the front door. It’s a home, undoubtedly, one much the same as all of the ones in the city and yet entirely different in that he can see vibrant green grass and flushed trees that spread out all over the neighborhood. It reminds him of growing up in Ohio, even if they were not the ones to have the spaciously fenced-in backyard, and a little fluttering of his heart takes place as Killian takes it all in.

He’s always kind of wanted a place like this – away from everything.

“So, this is the place?”

“This is the place.”

“It’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’ve always thought so.” Emma hikes her bag up a little higher on her shoulder and turns to look at him, trepidation written across her face. “We can still turn around if you want to. There are hotels around here.”

“We’re going inside, love.” He leans down and quickly brushes his lips over hers. She tastes strongly of coffee just from the little taste that he got. He’d like to kiss her more, to have the privacy of the hotel so he can show her just how much he’s missed her the past few days of her being gone, but they’re not doing that. “Besides, I believe I just saw Ruth peeking her head through the window looking at us, so it’s too late to turn around now.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs, “I guess it is.”

Emma steps forward and begins moving up the path, Killian following right behind her, and Emma barely gets a chance to knock on the door before it’s swinging open and Ruth is lunging forward to practically smother Emma with a hug.

Damn. Ruth Nolan is a force of nature.

Then again, she was already for being a single mom most of her life and still taking in foster children, especially one as stubborn as Emma. He can’t even begin to imagine.

He fully intends on finding out this weekend. There are a million questions running around in his mind.

“Oh,” Ruth coos, shaking Emma in her embrace. A dog escapes the front door and comes to sniff at Killian’s feet. This must be Wilby. “I have missed you so much. I think I’m going to have to move to New York so I can see you more often. Do you have room in that apartment of yours?”

“Only if the couch is comfortable for you.”

“I think it may kill my back.”

“No, it’ll definitely kill your back. I have no doubt. It kills my back. Killian’s couch is super comfortable, though.”

“Well, I hardly know the man. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to sleep over in his apartment.”

“Who cares about proper, love?” Killian teases. “I would be remiss to not let a beautiful woman sleep over at my apartment.”

The words slip out of his mouth before he’s able to stop them, and he immediately regrets them. Ruth may not be Emma’s mom, the title something that Emma still struggles with no matter how much she loves Ruth, but she’s very much a mother figure. Yet here he is spewing words that pretty much scream in her face that he doesn’t care about proper and has been fucking Emma for months now. What a smooth start.

The pit in his stomach becomes a heavy, solid weight, one that’s going to have him breaking the wood of the wraparound front porch.

Shit.

But then Ruth is leaning her head back in laughter, her eyes shining brightly as her hair falls off of her shoulders, and that weight lessens a little bit.

“I’m not much of one for proper either,” Ruth says with laughter still on her lips. She releases Emma and steps toward him, wrapping him in a hug as well, even if this one isn’t quite as smothering. It likely helps that he’s larger than Emma. “Hello, sweetie. SoSo, you’re the infamous Killian Jones I’ve been hearing about?”

“From Emma?”

“No, my grandson. He loves you. I think he was probably more devastated about your arm than Emma was.”

“How did you know I was devastated?”

Ruth pulls back from him to look at Emma. “Intuition told me that you’d be upset over the fact that your boyfriend is injured. Mary Margaret gave me all of the other details.”

Emma’s eyes roll. “Of course she did.”

“You know she can’t keep a secret.”

Killian looks over to Emma to see what she’s got to say, thinking that this first meeting is going rather smoothly, but then Ruth’s eyes are snapping back to him and looking him up and down in a way that has him feeling rather naked under her scrutiny.

Obviously, it was wishful thinking for him to assume he was quite out of the woods.

“You’re much more handsome in person than on TV.”

“Thanks,” Killian laughs awkwardly as he reaches up to scratch behind his ear. “I, uh, appreciate that.”

Emma looks over to him with raised brows that are pinched together, probably wondering when he turned into a stumbling fool instead of someone who can charm anyone, and all he can do is shrug is shoulders at her. She shrugs back before squatting down on the porch to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet, Ruth?” Emma asks, obviously trying to save him. “We’ve had coffee but not food, and we’d love to take you out to breakfast.”

Ruth waves her away. “Nonsense. I’ll cook breakfast for all of us.”

“You really don’t have to do that, Mrs. Nolan.”

She smiles at him. “It’s Ruth, and yes I do. I hear you’re quite the baker, so you can help.”

“Well, who told you that?”

“Mary Margaret. She’s where I get all of my information, don’t you know? Emma and David don’t give me nearly enough.”

“You know, Ruth,” Killian smiles, “I have heard a little bit about the two of them not sharing a lot of information. You practically have to drag it out of them. I would never do such a thing as keeping secrets.”

Emma scoffs but there’s that loving, playful smile. “Too soon, twenty-nine. Too soon.”

Ruth guides them inside and sends Emma off to take their bags to her old room. Killian raises his brow in question to make sure it’s okay for them to share a room, and Emma simply rolls her eyes before taking both of their bags up the stairs while Ruth ushers him into the living room.

It’s just as homey as the outside. Everything is covered in warm colors from the deep brown of the leather couch to the inviting green of the wall. Two windows sit on either side of the stone fireplace where the television is mounted, and that’s when Killian spots the myriad of picture frames on the mantel, as well as on the bookshelf in the corner of the room.

This is exactly what he’s been so excited about.

(Besides getting to spend a weekend away with Emma where she spent the last of her teenager years.)

There are a few photos of David as a child, ones of him alone and then ones of him with both of his parents. Most of them, however, everyone is a tad bit older. Killian knows that it’s so Emma can be included in all of the photos, and his heart swells a bit at the thought of Ruth being that thoughtful so that Emma doesn’t have to feel left out in any way.

A picture of David, Mary Margaret, and Emma sits in the middle of the mantle. David and Mary Margaret look much the same, if not younger than they look now, but with different hairstyles. Killian makes a mental note to tease David about his shoulder-length hair. Emma, though, is definitely a teenager here. Her face is rounder, far less angled, and he can see the tepidness of her smile as she leans into David in the picture.

“Are you looking at how cute I am?” Emma questions as she walks into the room.

Killian turns to look at her and at the shy smile on her face now, and he opens up his arm to let her walk into him so that her arm can wrap around his back while her head rests on his shoulder.

“How old are you here, love?”

“Um, that’s a question I don’t know the answer to.”

“Sixteen,” Ruth supplies, and Killian doesn’t miss the way she’s smiling at the two of them standing there. “That’s from Thanksgiving. Emma still wasn’t too sure about us.”

“I’m still not.”

Killian squeezes her hip. “Liar.”

“Nope, I’m serious. You’ve only just met Ruth, so I don’t think you can judge her character yet.”

“Oh no, darling, I can. She’s promised to tell me stories about you while we cook breakfast, and that’s good enough for me to love her forever.”

Emma groans and dips her head down. “Just let me sulk, and I’ll come to the kitchen when breakfast is ready.”

“Just like when you were a teenager,” Ruth teases.

The morning is mostly spent in the kitchen where they eat waffles and bacon, which is definitely not on his diet but he’s not playing right now anyways, and he gets to listen to Ruth tease Emma all about what she was like as a teenager. Emma’s cheeks are painted red, the embarrassment very clearly there, but she takes it like a champ and smiles and laughs along even when Ruth tells a story about Emma nearly breaking her arm while trying to sneak back into the house after meeting a guy who she wasn’t supposed to be meeting.

“Not my finest moment,” Emma admits as she bites into a piece of bacon. “And definitely not my finest boyfriend.”

The stories continue, and as the day passes on, Killian’s stomach hurts from all of the laughter. Everything about his time here just seems so…perfect. And he knows that there is no such thing as perfect, but the crisp breeze of the air with the sunshine filtering through the leaves of the trees tells him otherwise as the two of them help Ruth with some of her yardwork. Of course, he hasn’t done yardwork in over a decade, so he’s a little rusty. Ruth and Emma make sure to point that out to him every time he cuts a shrub in the wrong way or manages to screw up turning on the lawnmower.

It was complicated, okay?

And Killian definitely wasn’t aware that this is how they’d be spending the first part of their afternoon. It was not at all mentioned in Emma’s pitch of asking him to come here.

Not that he would have ever said no to helping. It’s good to feel useful when he’s been feeling a little useless lately no matter how well he thinks that he’s handling his injury layoff.

It’s decidedly different than the first time around. It likely helps that the injury isn’t as serious and that Killian knows that the end of it is in sight, even if there’s still bits of uncertainty that no one can answer and predict for him. Yet, it also has everything to do with the fact that the people closest to him know exactly what’s going on instead of him letting it all fester inside of him. Honesty is the better policy this time, even if his hand was the slightest bit forced.

Watching Emma easily guide him through Old Port with a beatific smile on her face may help as well.

No, it definitely helps.

She’s such a force of light in his life, even if she doesn’t like admitting that sometimes, but the fact almost seems reinforced after having been apart from her and facing the thoughts of what his life may be like without her in it outside of being someone who he works with.

Frankly, it would be kind of dim. She’s integrated herself so easily into every aspect of his daily routine, and while at first, he thought it really only had to do with her clothes in his closet and her shampoo bottles littering his shower, it’s more in the way that he’ll be sitting with Elsa and look over to see her texting Emma or the way that whenever he wakes up in the morning and she’s not in bed with him, his first thought is to check his phone for a text from her. It’s ridiculous and yet also…not.

She annoys him more than anything or anyone in the world, but he also loves her more than anything. It’s easy in a way that it’s never been before, and Killian wonders if this feeling of fluttering deep in his belly is what he was missing in the past.

They grab a late lunch at a quaint little seafood place, one he can tell is family-owned simply from the atmosphere, and instead of sitting inside, they settle down at one of the umbrella-covered tables outside so that they can have a view of the ocean with the salt-water breeze wafting over them.

He’s missed the water.

Of course, he’s been around it living in Manhattan and traveling to several places around the country that are surrounded by water. Hell, he’s even been back in it in the three years since the accident with Liam. But it’s been a long damn time since he’s sat and simply enjoyed getting to spend time near the water.

During the off-season, he and Emma are going somewhere that’s surrounded by water for at least a week, and they’re not going to let any outside distractions get to them. It’s making plans for the future, and that’s all that he wants right now.

(Some would call it baseball mating season, and while he doesn’t plan on them reproducing anytime soon, they can sure as hell practice.)

They get a call that David and Mary Margaret are nearly there when Emma is showing him some of the lighthouses while using a ridiculous voice that she calls her “tour guide” voice, so they quickly gather their things and start walking back to Ruth’s car since she absolutely cannot wait to see the rest of her family and refuses to have them be at her house before she can get back to her house.

David and Mary Margaret get there first because they are apparently the fastest drivers on the planet today.

And Leo practically tackles Ruth in all of his ten-year-old glory when he sees her.

That’s how Addy and Lucy are with Elsa’s parents too, and Killian imagines that being a grandparent is a hell of a lot of fun since you aren’t in charge of molding a little person into a functioning human being. You just have to give them candy and all of the things their parents don’t want them to have.

Or, at least, that’s what he thinks Ruth does.

(That’s what he does as an uncle and wishes his mom could have done as a grandmother.)

They all eat takeout dinner together from an Italian place that Emma and David swear by, and while it’s certainly not the best thing he’s ever had to eat, it’s pretty damn good. Then again, he’s had so much to eat today that his stomach very well may explode soon. He’ll have to get up and go for a jog in the morning.

But right now, it’s a little past ten at night, he’s been up for over eighteen hours, and all he really wants is to sleep. His body is dragging enough that he imagines he’ll have no trouble falling into a slumber as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He’s wrong.

Because then he sees Emma’s teenage bedroom and sees just how empty it is. It’s absolutely nothing like her apartment in New York full of throw pillows and blankets and every artificial plant known to man with a colorful paintings above her headboard. Everything here is rather…beige.

Emma walks out of the bathroom where she’s been getting ready for bed, and he watches as she rubs lotion up and down her hands and her forearms. “Why that glum look on your face? Are you still trying to figure out better ways to argue with David over soccer? Because that dinner conversation is long over. I thought Leo was going to climb on top of the table and start beating on his chest or something equally ridiculous.”

“Hm, no,” Killian chuckles, opening his knees so that Emma can step into them and his hands can find their spots on her waist, warm flesh against his fingertips.

“Then what?”

He blinks up at her, not entirely sure if now is the right time to ask, but then he sees the glint of his mom’s ring falling against Emma’s chest and is reassured in who he is to Emma. “I can’t help but notice that your room here is not quite as colorful as your room at home.”

Emma sighs, and he squeezes her hip in response so that she looks down at him and smile. “It’s kind of a stupid reason. You don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’d love to know more of your beginnings, Swan.”

“Haven’t you heard enough about them today?”

“There is never enough information, love.”

She smiles and reaches to push his hair back off of his head, her hands a magic touch as they move through the strands there. “I’m not a sentimental person. Or, I wasn’t.” Her right hand leaves his hair to find the chain around her neck. Killian’s heart stutters at that movement. “And I never trusted that I was going to stay in one place for very long, so if I had the chance to decorate my room, I didn’t. I kept everything I owned in a little box that was always ready to go.”

His heart may actually break for Emma in this moment, the sad reality of what she’s telling him something that’s hard for him to take in. He can’t imagine what it must be like for her to have lived that way.

“I think this place worked out for you, though.”

“Yeah, it did.” She smiles again, but Killian can see the twinge of sadness in the corners of her lips. “You sure you still want to know about these beginnings of mine when they’re a little bit sad?”

“Like I’ve said before, love, we make quite the team, sad backstories and all. I do, however, think that you need a little something on these walls of yours.”

“I think all of the home décor stores may be closed.”

Killian winks. “Well, I think I’ll just have to get a little creative then.”

His hand slides around her back to squeeze her ass before he’s pushing Emma back from him and getting up from the bed to walk out the door. Everything is darkened with the lights turned off, and since he doesn’t want to wake up everyone else in the house, he uses the flashlight on his phone and quietly walks down the stairs to find his way to the kitchen where he knows there were sheets of paper in the printer as well as a few pens in a cup right behind it. Emma is on his heels, questioning what the hell it is he’s doing, but he doesn’t tell her until he’s grabbing the paper and a thick blue marker.

“What are you doing?” Emma hisses.

“I’m making you some artwork for your wall.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s endearing.”

“You say that about every weird thing that you do.”

“Because the weird things are endearing,” he corrects, looking back at her and smiling. “What kind of drawing do you want? I’m pretty talented, if I do say so myself, but it’s been awhile since I’ve drawn anything.”

“Just…do whatever you want. I’m going to fix myself a hot chocolate. Do you want one?”

“Does Ruth have any tea?”

“I’m going to make you the hot chocolate. It’s better than tea.”

Killian rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest as he starts sketching out what he can remember of the view of the lighthouse today. It’s rough, definitely not his best work, but considering his original plan was simply going to be writing her name out, it’ll have to do for quick work.

Strange things happen when he’s far past tired.

“Milady,” Killian sighs, picking up the paper as well as a bit of tape before walking the few steps toward Emma as she sits on a barstool at the island with two cups of hot chocolate, her mug piled up with whipped cream and sprinkles of cinnamon, “I present to you your artwork for your wall.”

Emma’s eyes glance over it before glancing up at him with a slight smile on her face. “You’ve got to sign it.”

He taps the corner of the paper where he’s scribbled in his number. “Already done.”

“Ah,” Emma laughs, “how could I have missed that?”

“You were distracted by the beauty of the picture.”

“Exactly.” Emma presses up over the countertop and leans forward to quickly brush her lips over Killian’s, and while a part of him wants to deepen it, he doesn’t want to get carried awhile while here. “Thank you. That is very sweet of you to do.”

“Endearing, right?”

“Sure.” She shakes her head and slides his mug over to him so that he can have some of his hot chocolate. “I hope today hasn’t scarred you for life, especially since you still have to survive tomorrow.”

“It’s been fun, Swan. I’ve been…I think it’s gotten me majorly out of my own head. I needed that. And I liked getting to see you be so happy. My only complaint is that I’m under strict instructions not to make your bed squeak. I don’t like that rule.”

Emma reaches over to slap his shoulder, but he moves it out of the way quick enough that she doesn’t get it. It also causes a slight twinge in his shoulder that reminds him that he needs an ice pack for tonight. He hasn’t gotten to put ice on it all day. So, he turns toward the fridge and opens up the freezer, grabbing one of Ruth’s ice packs, and placing it on top of his shoulder before turning back to Emma whose fingers are tracing over the drawing.

Emotion lodges in his throat again, something that’s been happening quite a lot tonight, and it’s what propels him forward to step behind Emma’s back and wrap his arms around her stomach before resting his chin on top of her head.

“I’m not going anywhere, Emma,” he promises, meaning every word. “Not unless you tell me to go. So, you can plan on hanging paintings and making plans and keeping little trinkets in more places than a box. I love you more than I know how to tell you. That’s not going to change.”

Emma audibly sighs, something that he feels under the palms of his hands, before leaning back into Killian and simply staying in that spot so that he can breathe her in.

“I love you,” she breathes out as her head tilts up so that her lips can move across the underside of his jaw. “Let’s take the hot chocolate upstairs and go to bed.”

“And your picture?”

“Yeah, that too.”

-/-

Killian’s arm tingles, the feeling nearly gone, when he wakes up in the morning and finds Emma’s body pressed around it. This isn’t how they fell asleep, not even close, and he’ll probably never have use of his arm again. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, and he flexes his fingers a bit before nuzzling his nose into the back of Emma’s head in an attempt to get to go back to sleep.

They were up until maybe two in the morning talking, sleep never really coming to either of them no matter how much they both wanted it, and judging from the dim light coming through the blinds on the window, it’s still early yet.

He desperately needs coffee. He’s probably not going to be able to go back to sleep, and he desperately needs coffee.

Slowly, Killian begins to extract his arm from Emma’s grip, stopping when she flinches, and after several careful minutes, he’s able to quietly get off the bed and step out of the room, leaving her door cracked so as not to make any kind of noise. He walks down the hallway and uses the guest bathroom before walking down the stairs and wandering to the kitchen in search of coffee.

To his surprise, David is already there sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a cup of coffee sitting next to him, the smell wafting toward Killian.

“Hey,” Killian greets. David nearly jumps out of his chair and knocks everything over, and Killian can’t help but laugh at the shock on his face. “Did you really not hear me coming down the stairs?”

“I, uh, I – ” David is stuttering, obviously at a loss for words, and Killian can’t quite figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t think Dave is usually this flustered in the mornings. “I wasn’t expecting you or Emma to be up this early.”

Killian shakes out his arm, still trying to wake it up. “Believe me. I wish I wasn’t up. Do you always work this early in the morning on a Saturday?”

“No, I don’t, but my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with emails this morning, so I came downstairs to see so it wouldn’t wake Mary Margaret up.”

“Ah, I turned off my emails this weekend for that exact reason.”

“You probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“What’s that, mate?” David coughs in response, and Killian steps forward to the table and sits down across from David, confusion running through him as his stomach twists and turns. “Seriously. What?”

David can’t look at him, not really, and that doesn’t help calm any of Killian’s nerves as he tries to figure out what in the world is going on with him this morning.

“I didn’t know this was happening, I swear. I’d have stopped it if I got one whiff of it, but there’s been an article.”

“An article?”

David turns his computer around, and Killian reads a headline that he’s always expected to see and yet has always hoped to avoid.

The Truth Behind Killian Jones: A Story Told by His Father.

“Fucking hell,” he murmurs, his eyes taking in the picture of his father that’s plastered on the screen. Killian hasn’t seen him in years, actual years, and yet he looks exactly the same. “What kind of shit is this?”

“It gets worse.”

“How could it possibly get worse?”

“Look at the journalist.”

Killian’s eyes glance toward the screen again, his gaze finding more words he didn’t want to see.

Walsh Osborne.

As in Emma’s ex, Walsh Osborne who she still works with at ESPN. Though, this article is decidedly not on ESPN’s website.

Holy fucking shit.

Killian’s got to go back to bed. This isn’t real. This is all some kind of messed up nightmare that he’s experiencing, and soon, he’ll wake up and none of it will be real. And yet Killian keeps scrolling through the article, skipping the words to instead look at pictures of himself that Killian hasn’t seen in years. His father shouldn’t have these pictures. Liam should have all of them. And yet, somehow, he doesn’t.

Childhood pictures are nothing, though, at least for right now, when at the bottom of the article are pictures of Killian and Emma standing in the airport yesterday with Emma’s arms wrapped around his waist as well as a picture of them kissing in his car from who knows when. Then there’s one that he knows is from the hallways of Yankee stadium in what was supposed to be a private room.

“Everyone knows about you and Emma,” David tells him. 

This is too much. It’s all too much, and he doesn’t know how to handle the reappearance of his father and the very public reveal of his private relationship.

Fuck.

[vanchlo]

The Assistant / Chapter Thirty, “Close Calls”

All chapters can be found here! 

Inspiration tag for the story! 

I recently completed a character survey from Becky’s POV that you should check out! 

Warning! This story contains mentions of: cancer, vomiting, chemotherapy process, and brief mentions of blood.

                                       Sneaky peeeeeeeek!

I want to tell him, but I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to put into words that I’m breaking more and more every day. The paradox of being happy and sad that I’m here with my dad for his next round of chemotherapy. And I sure as hell don’t know how to put into words to Harry that his one in a million hugs could fix everything, if only for a little bit.

But I can’t, and I don’t try to put the feelings into words. I sit there and cry inside of my car until I can’t anymore. And until I find enough strength to sit up and leave, knowing that I won’t call him back.

Snowflakes flutter in front of my eyes, painting the world white. Cars zoom past on the streets down below, the size of my fingernail. Yeah, it sure looks like the first of February out there, the thought sounds inside of me. The festivities of Christmas are long over as a new year has begun. Thinking of what comes next leads to a disorganized mess behind my eyes. I try to rid my thoughts of it with a hard blink, but instead it brings something else forth. 

February 1st. 

It’s Harry’s birthday today. 

He’s 29. Shit. 

Flipping my phone over in my lap, my thumbs get working fast. But once that empty conversation is in front of my eyes, I stall. Before I chicken out, words appear on the screen quickly. 

I read them over and wonder how they sound. Or, more like, how they would sound to him. Do they sound too personal? Do they not sound personal enough? Or am I worrying too much and it’ll just blend into all of the other birthday texts he’s sure to receive? 

“I think if you stare at that thing any harder your eyes are gonna pop out of your skull, Ree.”

I raise my head to find the voice who said that. My dad. He smiles tiredly at me a few steps away. I laugh, realizing he’s right. 

“What’s got your attention so peaked anyways?” he asks. His eyes framed with exhaustion stay for only a second. They return to the Arsenal football match playing on the telly. 

“Um, just trying to write a text to somebody. But I don’t know if it’s good enough.”

“Don’t think about it so much, sweetie. I mean it, you’re probably thinking too hard about it,” he comments, scratching at the blue wool hat covering his head.

Sometimes I still expect to see the IV tubing dangling from his skinny arm. Like all of the other times at the beginning. Patches of faded red cover the insides of his arms from them now. You wouldn’t notice their small marks, but I know they’re there. The seconds of relief from their absence is whisked away when he tugs at his shirt. The moving of the material reveals the tubing leading to the port in his chest. The one I forget has been there for months when his shirt covers it. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” I tell him, and go ahead and hit Send. 

Hi. I’ve been thinking of you. I hope you’re doing alright. Just remembered it was your birthday. Wow 29, huh? Damn you really are getting old, you geezer. You better hurry and claim your senior discount now. No, but really I hope you’re having a good day, Harry. Enjoy your day. Have some drinks and do something for yourself, something you enjoy. I hope 29 is a fantastic year for you. Hopefully you’re not as run down yet as Chandler is. 

I tap Send again, watching the clip from F.R.I.E.N.D.S go with the text marked by a heart. A smile pulls up my cheeks, thinking of the scene. 

The three guys are sitting on the sofa in Central Perk and Chandler talks about not being 21 anymore. He’s 29 now and just wants to relax and go to bed at his bedtime, according to him.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” my dad comments, bringing my eyes back to him. A small smile pinches his sallow cheeks. I nod, thinking of those words, but in a different way. If only that could be said about everything.

Setting my phone down, I try to watch the match with him. I’m glad it’s taking his mind off of the poison coursing through his veins. But I’m distracted by the anxious excitement of waiting to hear a ding from my phone. 

Point after point is scored and it doesn’t come. And I try not to be disappointed, but I think I’m getting rather good at being disappointed lately.

+

The last words of a Katy Perry song trickle from the speakers as I put the car in park. A soft glow pours out the living room window, waiting for me. 

6:13 pm, the digital clock reads. 

I let my head fall back to the head rest. The events of today and their emotions flood my thoughts. As well as the things I still need to do tonight. Bring in the groceries. Put them away. Make dinner, even though he’ll eat 5 bites that he’ll throw up. Sweep and mop the kitchen. Disinfect surfaces. Find time to vacuum when he isn’t sleeping. Change his bedsheets. Do la-

Brrrrrrrrrrring!

Brrrrrrrrrrring!

The incessant words forming inside of my head cease. Looking over to the passenger seat, my phone buzzes face down. I pick up and answer it without looking. 

“Hello?”

“Hi, Becks,” a refreshing voice answers. It almost removes the heavy words inside of me, but not quite. 

“Hi, Harry. How was your birthday?” I answer, peering down at my lap. 

“It was pretty fantastic, thank you. ‘m sorry I didn’ get t’ yer text yestaday. Tha’s why ‘m callin’, an’ ‘cause I got yer gift. I love it, it was so nice o’ you! I don’ have this Fleetwood record yet, so thank ya very much. ‘s in incredible condition, too! Hope ya didn’ have t’ pay too much. I know how pricey original records can be,” his syrupy voice utters with extra sugar today. It fills me with comfort, but he also picked the worst time to call. Although, maybe it would help to get out of my head for a few minutes. If I can.

“Yeah, you’re welcome. I’m glad you liked it. I uh, wasn’t sure if you had it or not,” I reply slowly, unsure of what to say. I find it hard trying to pick out words from my head as so many others are whirring around. Playing with the zipper on my coat, I wait for his reply. 

“I can’ wait t’ listen t’ it. There’s not a scratch on it, ‘s unbelievable. I got sum drinks with sum mates last night afta work, so tha’s why I forgot t’ text back. Had lots o’ fun tho’, an’ ate sum good food,” he narrates for me in an animated voice.

I nod at his words, wishing that would suffice. But I have to talk, even though yesterday I would’ve jumped at the chance to hear his voice. Well, I still would today. Just minus the jumping part. 

“Good,” is all I say, amidst the lump building in my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to breathe. But it doesn’t help, it never does. “I’m glad you had a good time,” I somehow manage. Cursing myself, I know he heard my voice crack at the end. Because so did I.

“Becks-.”

“I’m glad you had a good birthday with friends. It did sound fun. Um I’m sorry, but can I call you back? I was just going to run into a shop quick,” I cut him off, the lie knitting together fast. 

“Ya sure, an’ thanks. ‘ll talk t’ ya later, Becks. Drive safe,” he replies, something amiss in his voice. But I can’t listen any further than that, or else the guilt will make the tears come sooner. 

“Thanks, Harry. I will, and happy birthday,” I finish, not giving him a chance to reply before I hang up. 

Because the tears already arrived at my last word. And he sounded so happy, and I couldn’t ruin it. Over the course of the few texts we’ve sent back and forth in the last month, it was the happiest he’s sounded. And I didn’t want to share my dark cloud, and reveal that I’m in the lowest of my lows. Another side of me selfishly wanted him to notice, almost begged him to. And that part is disappointed that he didn’t, but the other part knows that I can’t expect that. Or at least it tries to. 

It’s going to take everything inside of me. To lift my head from the steering wheel and walk back into that house. And to do yesterday and the day before, all over again. Dole out the meds and write them down. Clean up the vomit. Cook the meals. Clean and clean. Endure watching the pain and suffering I can’t do a damned thing about. And on top of it all, try to deal with my own pain and suffering. Not to forget, the schoolwork. 

I want to tell him, but I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to put into words that I’m breaking more and more every day. Or the paradox of being happy and sad that I’m here with my dad for his next round of chemotherapy. And I sure as hell don’t know how to put into words to Harry that his one in a million hugs could fix everything, if only for a little bit. 

But I can’t, and I don’t try to put the feelings into words. I sit there and cry inside of my car until I can’t anymore. And until I find enough strength to sit up and leave, knowing that I won’t call him back. 

+

“Hey, Becky. Could you do me a favor, love?” 

The pictures of puppies I was looking at suddenly feels illegal. Closing my laptop, I look up and find Sophie standing in front of me. I still think for a split second that she’s the mom from The Princess Diaries when I look at her, even after a year of working here. 

“Y-yeah yeah. What do you need, Sophie?” I ask, trying to sit up straight, for once.

“Could you run this down to the post room for me, please? I need it sent out today, and I have a video conference in a minute. I’d wait on it, but I know they pickup the post in about 20. I won’t make it since my video conference is an hour long,” she says, her lips lined in scarlet grimacing. She tugs at the end of her corkscrew brown curls, a nervous habit of hers. “I hate to be one of those bosses that makes you do stupid stuff, but-.”

“Don’t mention it, Soph. A little walk would be nice, anyways,” I insist, taking the large white envelope from her. She thanks me with a smile and a handful of ‘thank yous’ before leaving. 

Standing up, I feel my joints wake back up with a few cracks. I smooth down my maroon blouse over my black dress pants. A shiver tickles my spine, and I decide to slide on my zip up black Columbia. The last thing I do before leaving is to grab my steel water bottle to fill up. 

“Be right back,” I let the girls know at the front desk. They nod with a smile before resuming their hushed conversation. 

My pointed flats hardly make a noise on the tiled floor. It’s hard to look for a noise with the wind whipping around the snow outside. Just looking out the windows lining the hallway makes me feel cold, colder than it should be in March. And regret choosing these shoes this morning. I reach a corner and take a left, thinking back to when I first started and always got lost. I pass a handful of people on my way, familiar and not, and we exchange smiles or nods. I pass the doors for Human Resources, and wave at a friend. A gruff bailiff passes without either, but he was a little too scary looking to make eye contact with anyways. 

I reach another corner, knowing the post room is only two turns away now. I take a right, but a few steps in, I hear voices. And laughing. My feet stop at the sound, and I turn around. The large doors to Courtroom 5 are down the hallway behind me. A clump of people stand across them talking, leaning against the wall under a clock. One of the laughs stands out to me from the others, like a musician can recognize a note. I can only see the backs of heads of those facing away from me. They shield the others from my view. My head goes from side to side with dismissal as I turn back around. But I don’t get very far, because I hear something they say. 

A name. 

It’s like it takes control of my limbs, and again I’m spinning around. I make it just in time to watch a figure break away from the group. Smiling and shaking hands, a laugh tickling their lips. And walk over to the drinking fountain. It’s Rose, one of the lawyers from Harry’s firm. Hmm, I think silently before walking away for real this time. 

I soon find another water fountain and I decide to fill up. Luckily almost all of the ones I come across here have the nifty water bottle attachment. It was always a pain any place I’d go trying to fill it up directly from the spout. With the thick envelope under my arm, I screw the cap back on. Slipping my finger through the little handle at the top, I take off. But once again, I don’t get very far. Because this time I almost run into somebody. 

“Sorry,” I automatically say before even taking a look at the person. But I don’t need to look when their voice tells me what I’m looking for. 

“‘s alr- Wait, ‘s that you, Becks? Well hi, love,” Harry coos, his words catching. 

“What, I don’t get an ‘it’s alright’ just because I’m not a stranger?” I joke, looking into his brilliant green eyes. 

The skin around his eyes crinkles as amusement paints his face. Nodding, his growing curls dance a little on his head. “Yeah, I guess ‘s alright ya almost plowed me ova,” he jokes, his straight white teeth showing behind his happy lips. 

Scratching at the back of his neck, his navy blazer pulls to the side. I see more of the cream button down underneath decorated with small navy polka dots. 

“Hey, I could say the same thing about you,” I argue, trying to calm the happiness budding on my lips. But my control doesn’t last very long. 

Harry replies with a breathy laugh, dropping his hand. “Oh hush, you. Now, what’re ya doin’ here, love? I hope yer not here fer a hearing,” he asks, swinging the leather messenger bag to his side. Probably heavy from his files and laptop, from the look of its bulging seams. 

“I uh, work here,” I tell him slowly, my words escaping me. My fingers wrap around and lift the sleek card resting on my chest. 

His moss green eyes fall to the lanyard hanging around my neck holding the access card bearing my face and name. I receive my answer when his expressive eyebrows shoot to the sky in surprise. “Here? Really, doin’ wha’?” he questions.

“Um, I do some clerk stuff back in admin,” I reply, watching his expression relax into a content smile. 

“Tha’s great, Becks. That’ll look really good on yer resume when ya graduate. Good fer you, ‘m proud o’ you, darlin’,” he comments, patting my arm. I hardly know what to say with everything jumping around in my head all of a sudden. The arm pat. The beaming pride coating his features. The part where he said he’s proud of me, for the second time now. Okay, chill out, Becky. You can’t lose it, not yet. “An’ ya like it here? Are ya learnin’ more ‘bout law?”

“Yeah, I really like it. I work with a small group of people, and we get along really well. I mean there’s always that one coworker you don’t like, but what can you do?” I try to laugh, but I’m afraid it sounds fake. It’s okay though, because his laugh covers the doubt I hear in mine. And the nerves. “And I am learning, too. My boss is really great and I think she uses me being in law school to her advantage. It’s a match made in heaven, I guess.”

“Good, ‘m glad t’ hear that. ‘m happy t’ hear well, that yer happy,” Harry tells me with a smile framing his words. But when I look at it a second too long, I see the sadness in it. Suddenly, I regret my words, and how they sounded like he wasn’t a good boss. Or that I didn’t like it at his firm. But he doesn’t let me get too far into my thoughts, luckily. “How’s yer dad doin’? I haven’t heard from ya lately, but I undastand yer prolly real busy.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” I apologize, looking away with warming cheeks. But his automatic ‘’s okay’ and squeeze to my arm makes me look back at him. “Things have been pretty crazy with classes and being there for my dad. He started chemo again the beginning of last month, since they didn’t get all of the tumor, like they hoped they would. But I guess most people still do it to ensure it’s gone, or something like that. I can’t remember.”

“Stop, ‘s okay,” he says firmly, his eyebrows raising a tick. “How’s he handlin’ tha chemo? ‘ve heard that stuff���s pretty shitty.”

“Yeah, it is. It makes him really sick. It’s hard because sometimes he has to wait to do an infusion of it, because some levels of his are too low. Or they want him to be at a certain weight, even though the chemo makes him lose weight,” I explain, the words coming out effortlessly. “It’s hard to see him like this, and to still be a student and an employee during all of it. But my professors and boss have been really understanding and lenient.”

I bite back the tears, hoping they won’t fall without my permission. But one breaks loose from the gate as I stare at the floor. My flats are separated from his brown leather chelsea boots. Then after a blink they no longer are. I don’t make the decision to look up, but it’s made for me when I feel his thumb wiping the tear away. Peering into his gleaming green eyes always seems to make time stop. A warm smile places dimples in his cheeks, and does something to me. Like it always does. 

“‘s okay. I can’t imagine how hard ‘s been fer ya, Becks. Why didn’ ya ring me? I woulda listened,” Harry asks me, his hand regretfully belonging to himself again. But there isn’t annoyance or anger in his voice. There’s emotions from the other side of the spectrum heard there. Like regret and sadness, and others I can’t fathom right this second. 

“I wanted to, but I didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. Plus, I hate to be a Debbie Downer,” I confess, admiring the length of his dark eyelashes when they tickle his skin. 

“Yer notta Debbie Downa, Becks, whateva tha bloody hell that ‘s,” he insists. A hint of his giggle meets my ears when I look at him weird due to that revelation. “Ya can call me anytime, ‘kay? Whether ‘s happy or sad, ‘d wanna hear ‘bout it.”

I nod at his words, savoring the sound of his voice. And what it said. His minty breath strokes my cheek as he’s close enough to touch. The words get lost in my throat as his familiar smell wafts over me, catching me off guard. “Thank you,” I mumble thoughtfully, seeing his head move in answer. 

“What’re ya takin’ this semesta fer yer LLB tha’s so tough? I mean, I know all tha courses can be, but ‘m curious. Ya must be onto tha heavier courses by now, ‘s that right?” 

“Well, I’m still catching up to where I should be as a kind of sophomore. Because they changed the degree around since I’ve been gone, so that’s kinda why I took Crim later than usual. But right now I’m taking Banking Law, Family Law, and Environmental Law,” I answer, watching my words register with him. He nods at certain parts, his brow knitted together as he pays attention to me, like there’s nobody else in the entire room. 

“Ugh, those don’ sound any fun. I rememba takin’ those, or what were tha equivalent t’ ‘em when I was in uni. They’re tha ratha borin’ ones, an’ Family’s sad, too,” he comments, a look of disgust playing with his features. It’s amusing, but I get away with not letting it show on my face. Reaching to scratch his chin, I notice the stubble there. And the pops of color on his fingernails. Both fitting, I must say.

“Yeah they’re super boring. I’m surprised you even remember them, seeing as you’re 29 and everything,” I joke, earning a well deserved eye roll from him. But he can’t get rid of the grin showing on his raspberry lips. “Hey, I like your nails. It looks like you did a pretty good job, better than I could even,” I laugh and it grows harder when he holds them out for me to see. A wine red and turquoise blue decorate his fingers. But what gets me is that he puckers his lips, modeling like Zoolander. 

“Thanks,” Harry titters, looking down at them. “Me little niece picked out tha colors an’ helped me paint ‘em tha otha night. But I think they’re growin’ on me. Already chippin’ tho they are, whatta shame.”

You let your niece paint your nails? 

Wait, you’re an uncle? 

Okay, the thought of you with tiny children is not helping things. 

“You sound like a fun uncle.”

“Ya, I hope so. Harper says I am anyways, which ‘s quite tha compliment. Also, stop callin’ me old. 29 isn’t old,” Harry whines, sticking his bottom lip out at me. 

“Oh stop it, you baby,” I giggle, and soon his joins mine. For a couple of seconds, we’re just looking at each other laughing and things couldn’t be better. But I’ve learned that good things can never last, and soon enough we’re interrupted by a voice. 

“Harry, are you coming?” Rose says from across the hallway, a ‘hello’ to me following. The sweet sound coming from his lips soon fades as he looks over to her and nods. Pushing his sleeve back to look at his watch, he clucks his tongue. 

“‘m afraid I can’ talk any longa, Becks. ‘m sorry. Rose an’ I are workin’ togetha onna case. It starts in half an hour, an’ we gotta go ova sum things befo’ it all starts,” he explains regretfully. I nod, acknowledging his words. And try as I might, I can’t get rid of the disappointment growing heavy in my gut. 

“Yeah o-of course, don’t let me keep you. Good luck, Harry, knock ‘em dead,” I wish him with a small, but sad, smile. 

A hint of one inches up his cheeks before he says, “Yer not keepin’ me, I dunno why ya always say that. I enjoy talkin’ t’ ya. ‘s nice t’ catch up again,” Harry tells me. As if in slow motion, I watch him take another step closer to me with outstretched arms. I follow suit and soon find myself in one of his hugs. “Ya ring me if ya need anythin’, ya hear me? Even just t’ talk. Maybe we could get coffee or tacos sumtime.”

The moment in his arms doesn’t last long enough, although I’m sure any amount of time wouldn’t be enough for me. Soon, I’m leaving the safety of his arms and again, I’m alone. “Of course. Thanks, Harry.”

“Welcome. Tell yer dad an’ Robbie ‘m thinkin’ of ‘em,” Harry rasps, and I just nod. “An’ take care, Becks. Good luck in yer courses, I know ya’ll do well.”

Happiness seeps through the sudden sadness with his kindness, and I muster a smile. And another thank you. 

“Have a good day, love,” is the last thing he says, before he turns to walk towards Rose who waits for him. 

“You too,” I mumble, watching him walk away. 

Bittersweetness lines my thoughts, wondering if the sadness is worth getting to see him. And that hug. God, that fucking hug. They do fix everything that’s wrong, if only for a couple of seconds. It makes me wonder how much happier I’d be if I could have one of those every day, as a respite from the chaos of life. But that would only be in the case of if I was his-. 

Yeah, I’m not going there again, I tell myself. And with that, I finally continue my journey to the post room, unsure of how I’ll be able to top that. 

For the rest of day. 

Week. 

Maybe even, month. 

+

The butter melts on my tongue and next the pillowy bread does too. I close my eyes and smile at the taste. Like home. Opening them again, my eyes flit over the half dozen crock pots and several other plates. Frowning, I can’t stop thinking about the meatballs, the macaroni and cheese, the sugar cookie fruit pizza, and the homemade bread. 

But with a longing sigh, I walk away and leave the break room. Excited coworkers of mine pass me on the way to the food. My desk eyes me from across the room, but I ignore it. Soon, I find myself in the hallway. Twenty minutes left of my break after scarfing down the monthly potluck meal. It only gets better each month, and makes me wish it was weekly. The last bite of airy bread passes my lips. I wipe my hands on the napkin and toss it in a bin. The new storm delivers snow outside of the hallway-long windows. Although they’re frosted from the chill, I can still just make out the falling flakes. 

My thoughts of snow are whisked away by the shuffling of feet. And hurried voices. It takes me a moment to figure out where I’ve gone off too. Soon, I realize I’m back by Courtroom 5. And that the people are bustling inside the doors to sit in the gallery. And watch. The sleeve of my zip up glides over my watch, revealing the time to be one o’clock. Quickly, thoughts come together like puzzle pieces in my head. 

My break is over at 1:30. 

It’s Friday, so it’s not like I really have anything important to do when I get back. 

Sophie has been bothering me for ages to go and learn from the teachers I have just down the hall. 

So she won’t mind. 

And the only teacher that I can think I want to learn from is in there right now. 

About to argue a case that appears to be available to the public. 

I don’t remember telling my feet to move, but suddenly I’m behind an older man. And the scene in front of me changes drastically. It fills me with nervous excitement at the sight of the judicial panel, the jury box, and the witness stand. But I don’t have time to gawk, because the chatter around me is quieting down. I quickly find a seat towards the back of the seating in the gallery. 

Silence follows the clanging of the doors shutting. Within a few seconds, everybody rises when the judge enters. But the rest of the room - the jury made up of all kinds of faces, the bailiff, court reporter etc. - melt away when I see that head of curly hair. I’d know it was him if we were in a crowd of people, but any doubt I had from afar is washed away when he speaks. 

Harry and Rose take turns delivering their opening statement. They’re defending their client, the plaintiff, who from the sounds of it, was harassed by the defendant. It kills me to watch the opening statements unfold, even if all I can see is the back of the girl’s head. The hush over the courtroom is chilling, and goosebumps grow on my arms at the sound of Harry’s tone. His professional voice that I’ve yet to really hear before. Because although I worked for him, I was only his assistant. I never got to tag along to trials, or hear much about them. Yes, I did some of the dirty work for them, but I only saw the outside. I heard about how good or bad it was going, and then was dealt with the good news or bad news of the verdict. No more than that. 

It’s awe inspiring to witness him arguing the case firsthand. The way he uses his hands to speak, or the times when his voice does all the speaking he needs to. His eloquent choice of words drills the emotion home, and is accented by the expression on his face. It’s often neutral, but at times, I watch him struggle to hide the effects of the words playing on his face. I find myself having a hard time doing the same when he returns to sit next to the plaintiff, patting her on the back during difficult moments. Unbeknownst to me, the defending lawyer may have been practicing for two years or twenty. But their skill wanes next to Harry’s, even though he’s been practicing for less than ten years. I can’t stand to watch the discrepancies and weaknesses in his arguments. Luckily, my break is over and I don’t care to waste my time watching Mr. Bow Tie over here. 

I quietly leave a few minutes into his opening statement, hoping one day I can evoke as much emotion as Harry with my words. And hide from my face all of the ones that I’m feeling inside. Walking back to my department, a smile curls the edges of my lips. But then it falls, because I realize the mistake I made. 

I just fell a little bit harder. Again. 

+

“I’m gonna bring the dishes down,” I mumble, watching him nod at me. 

The wooden steps creak with my weight as I juggle the tray of barely touched food. A bowl of chicken noodle soup. A piece of toast. And apple slices with peanut butter. 

Options, options, options. 

The plastic tray hits the counter with a hard slap, and an accentuated huff. I bend down and grab tupperware from the drawers. As I pour the soup into a container, the slam of a door upstairs makes me jump. My thoughts fly to the soup spilled all over the counter, but they stop when I hear another noise. Besides the tv in the living room, it’s the only other one I hear. It pulls my feet out of the kitchen and through the living room until I’m at the stairs. I take the steps two at a time until I’m at the top. The terrible sound carries down the hallway, leading me to the bathroom door. 

I nervously rap my knuckles against the door. 

“I’m fine,” my dad says from the other side, coughing. 

“Dad, they said if it gets bad-.”

“It’s not bad yet,” he interrupts. There’s a pause when he blows his nose. “Please, Ree, I just want to be home. I hate having to go there.”

“I know, dad,” I reply, sighing when I hear him start to vomit again. 

Walking away, I give him privacy. And my ears a break from one of my newest least favorite sounds. My fingers drift to my back pocket, sure of their actions before I am. Exhaling, I take a seat on one of the stairs.  

It rings and it rings. 

“Come on, pick up,” I mutter, bouncing my leg. 

Kneading my temple, I listen to it continue to ring. And ring. Finally, it stops. But I’m not greeted by the sound I want to hear. Instead I hear their voicemail, making me groan. I listen to the old recording I’ve heard time and time again, but this time I just want it to go away. So I can hear the instructions, and that final beep.

“Hey, it’s me. J-just call me back when you get this, please,” I say quickly, the words running from my lips. Alongside the tears. 

Dropping my phone onto my lap face down, my head falls in my hands. Noises surround me. Those of everyday life bustling around me. The sound of the laundry machine whirring downstairs. The hum of the tv. And the ones I try to ignore coming from the door behind me. The sound of the crying. And the vomiting. 

I can’t keep my hands still. They go to rake through my hair. To cover my face. To play with my fingers. To make fists. I even try to sit on them, and it doesn’t help. And I can’t stop bouncing my legs, as my nerves jitter from the thoughts.

 The worries.

The uncertainty. 

It feels like an hour before I hear my twinkling ringtone. But when I see the time on my phone, it’s only been eleven minutes. I barely take the time to look at who’s calling before I answer it. 

Clearing my throat, I say a shaky ‘hello.’

“Hey, I got yer message. ‘m sorry I didn’ answer, I was inna late meetin’, but I can talk now. ‘s everythin’ okay, Becks? Ya don’ sound so good, love,” he inquires. His caramely voice is the first comfort I’ve felt all day. My respite from this mayhem. 

“No, I’’ll um, let you go. I don’t want to interrupt your meeting. I can call later,” I insist, guilt weaving its way into my words. 

“No, yer okay, Becks. I stepped out. It wasn’t anythin’ important, anyways. I can have Myles tell me later. Now, wha’s goin’ on?” he tells me, but it doesn’t revoke all of the guilt consuming me. I grimace at the pain from my chapped lips when they smash together, salty tears flowing over their cracks. “Becks, talk t’ me, please. Yer not a botha, not ever. Please tell me wha’s wrong.”

“Harry,” I begin, not capable of any other words. Because that one has been constant in my head for the last twenty minutes. Ever since it started. It’s the one I’ve been holding in, and not been able to say, until now. 

“‘m here, Becks,” he says. Never did I think three words could be so comforting. And at the same time, hurt so much. Because they’re true, and then they’re not. I want them to be true so badly I feel it in my veins. 

“M-my dad . . . he won’t stop throwing up and I don’t know what to do. He had chemo yesterday, b-but it went fine. And then we had dinner tonight, and he hardly had three bites, before he got sick. It’s been like that all day,” I confess, leaning against the staircase railing. Letting it hold me there, because nobody else can. Because I can’t do it for myself anymore. “This happens sometimes with the chemo, b-but . . . . . it was getting better recently. I think I should bring him in like they said, but that means staying the night in the hospital. Again. I’m just so tired, Harry, I want all of this to be over already. I want him to be okay, and I want to feel what it’s like to be okay again.” I can’t get out another word, because the tears consume them. And the anxiety. And the exhaustion. My head falls to my knees and the hand cupping my mouth slides away. 

“I think ya should bring ‘im in, Becks. ‘Specially if they said so. Don’ want ‘im t’ get dehydrated, that certainly won’ help things,” Harry murmurs, his voice quiet and controlled. “I know ya don’ wanna be there ‘gain, ‘specially twice in tha last two days. But he needs their help . . ‘s there anybody who can come an’ be with you? Maybe that aunt o’ yers who was at tha hospital that night? Robbie, or Skye? But I s’pose they’re 3 hours away in London . . . ,” Harry sighs, his words trailing off into the air. For some reason I nod, glad to hear that my reasoning for not wanting to ask them to come is valid. 

“Yeah, it’s just me here. That’s how it’s been. Robbie and I switch off . . . But my dad doesn’t want me to bring him in, he hates going there. Being poked by them and everything. But he hasn’t been able to keep anything down all day,” I cry, the tears soaking the knees of my ripped jeans. 

“Ya hafta bring ‘im in, Becks. What if ‘s sumthin’ else, like tha stomach flu or sumthin’ worse? He needs t’ be able t’ eat an’ drink in order t’ get betta,” he urges, and finally I decide to listen. 

Nodding at his words and the truth they hold, my lips part, “I know, you’re right. I-I’ll bring him in. T-thanks, Harry, for answering your phone.”

Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I sit up slowly. “Course, Becks. ‘m sorry I was a li’l busy when ya first rang . . . Um drive safe, ‘kay? Maybe bring yer laptop t’ do schoolwork or even jus’ t’ watch Netflix. Sumthin’ t’ distract yerself - a book, or headphones fer music.” His suggestions meet my ears, but they go through one and out the other. They’re not the kind of distraction I want, I think selfishly, but the kind I want, I can’t have. Because it’s you. 

“Yeah, I’ll bring something. Thanks, Harry. Have a good night,” I say in almost a whisper, exhaustion stealing my words. 

“Yer welcome, Becks. Lemme know what happens, ‘kay?”

I mutter an ‘mmmmhmm’ before hanging up, and trudging up the stairs. Listening for the sound again is hard, because I don’t know what I want to hear. Part of me doesn’t want to hear the vomiting, but the other part oddly does. Because if it stopped then he’ll try to convince me that we don’t have to go in. But I hope it hasn’t, because there’s something at the back of my head telling me we have to. Making me think we need to, because something’s wrong. And I know that if he’s stopped, he’ll tell me that there’s no reason to go in. 

My gray striped socks stop on the hardwood floor in front of the door. I knock before I can convince myself to wait. “Dad?” 

No answer. 

“Dad, I’m bringing you to the hospital. Something’s not right, I just know it. You need to be looked at, and they can help,” I plead from the other side of the slab of wood. A sigh meets my ears and the shuffling of a body. 

“Okay,” he relents. I push the door open and am met with his tear-stained face. 

Trying to ignore the smell I’m by now used to, I wet a washcloth at the sink. Returning to his side, I bend down and wipe his face with it. And then his mouth. Tossing it in the laundry bin, I wash my hands. Watching him as I do so, his frail figure is slumped against the closed toilet. Embarrassment blanketing him like a sheet. 

“It’ll be okay,” I try to tell him. But as I watch his barely there nod, I’m not sure if I believe it either. “Let’s get you downstairs to the car,” I say, drying my hands. 

It takes us awhile, to stand up together. To get down the stairs, one step at a time. To slip on his coat. To grab my things. And to drive to the hospital as he threw up into a bucket beside me. But we got there, and the worst part still awaits us. 

It pains me to leave his side, but I can’t handle watching them stick him with needles. Or the blood. Not after everything that’s happened in the last 7 months. Combing my hair out of my eyes, I begin my walk down the hallway. Yet another one. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey,” I respond to the voice I could pick out of a crowd. I try to prepare my words, but I’m not sure what to say. I’m so tired. “I’m at the hospital with dad. Everything is okay. But he hasn’t been able to keep anything down all day, he’s been throwing up off and on. And after dinner, it got worse. They’re taking some blood now to run it for labs. I’ll let you know what I hear.”

“Shitttt,” Robbie replies, holding out the last syllable. Just like our dad. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Ree. I’m surprised he let you take him in, but thanks for doing that. Yeah, I guess all you can do is wait until they have the tests back. Hopefully you two can go home soon,” he says quietly in a tone the polar opposite of the one he answered with. 

I echo his words with a ‘me too’ before there’s nothing else to be said. And I let him go. I call Skye too to tell her, and because I can’t go back yet. I just need some time. She talks my ear off, but I’m grateful for it. She tells me about work, her newest boyfriend, the weather, and a show we’re watching together. 

After I finally get away from her jabber mouth, almost half an hour has passed. I find my way back to his room in the Emergency wing. As I walk in, he shoots a tired smile at me. One I can barely make out amongst the dark room. 

“Early bedtime?” I ask, sitting down on the edge of his bed. He nods, barely able to keep his eyes open. 

“Yeah. They did all their tests, and said it would take a little while, so fluids, anti-nausea meds, and naptime it is.”

“Good,” I respond, wrapping my fingers around his. Squeezing them, his dusty lips offer a laugh. Or the closest thing to one. He tries to squeeze back, but I barely feel it. It’s nothing compared to when he’d nearly break my fingers giving my hand a squeeze. Somehow his hands look older than the rest of him as I look. His skin wrinkles among his bulging veins, liver spots, and freckles. 

“You should too, baby girl,” he replies, surprising me. My eyes return to his face where he’s opened his eyes to look at me. “You look exhausted too. Get some sleep, I know it’s been a lot taking care of me for this long.”

“Dad,” I begin, an argument forming in my voice. But I don’t get any further than that.

“You know it’s true, and you’ve been doing a fantastic job. Don’t let yourself think any different,” he insists, the area above his eyes raising. But it doesn’t have the same effect with his dark eyebrows absent from his expression. A whimper escapes my lips as tears obscure my vision. Lifting our joined hands, he brushes the back of his hand over my cheek. “Come here, my baby.”

It confuses me when his clean scent doesn’t surround me. But it’s there in a hint when I bury my face into his neck. His right arm pulls me against him, and I cry into him. It’s one of the only times I can remember doing this since this all started. I want to stay strong in front of him, but sometimes it’s too hard. I feel a warmth on my forehead, and my lips break into a smile at his trademark forehead kiss. “Get some sleep, sweetie. They’ll wake us with the results if they need to,” he tells me. I nod into him, feeling him scooch over for me to lay more comfortably beside him. 

+

My words are taken away with a whooshing sound just as a ding meets my ears. A bubble appears at the top of my phone screen. With widening eyes, I hold down the bottom button for volume on the side of my phone. Peeking across the room, I exhale watching his chest lift and fall with every breath, his snoring greeting the air. My attention returns to the dings coming from my phone. I read the first one. 

Me - a few minutes ago

Tests came back positive for some type of bacterial infection in his digestive tract. Starting antibiotics now. Keeping him overnight and until further notice for observation because infections can be scary with weak immune systems like his.  

Harry

thx for the update. glad 2 hear it isnt anything 2 serious. its a good thing u brought him in when u did becks. thinking of u and him. 

Me

Thanks so much, Harry. I’m glad I did too. Looks like I’m sleeping on the couch again, yay!

Harry

get some zzzz’s love. might be a long nite. dont forget 2 eat. 

Me

Goodnight 

+

My eyes don’t want to believe the clock when the growling of my stomach wakes me. Shuffling into the hallway rubbing my eyes, I swear under my breath. 

“No fucking way it’s only 11 o’clock. Why can’t it be 8 am or something?” I groan, trudging down the quiet halls of the oncology wing. But I’m glad for the quiet compared to the craziness of the E.R. earlier. 

Dropping my hand, I’m welcomed once again by the stinging fluorescent lights. And the packaged foods waiting for me behind the glass. Pulling my wallet from my back pocket, I scan the many choices. Hmmm, salted nut roll for once, hostess cakes, sour patch kids, hard pretzels, jelly beans, or Cheez-Its? I wonder to myself, blinking the sleep from my eyes. 

Another ding meets my ears. But when I lift my phone to my face, there isn’t a new text popping up on my screen. There are some, but they’re from an hour ago or longer. Weird, I think, staring at the screen and reading the words. 

There’s a cough as somebody clears their throat. “We’ve gotta stop meetin’ like dis,” they almost laugh, making me turn my head without a choice. 

[justkending]

Used to Be Overlooked. Chapter 21.

Summary: Steve Rogers was walking down the streets of Brooklyn after finishing a mission. The goal was just to take some time to clear his mind along the city streets, but when he runs into a gorgeous young lady that looks extremely familiar… How can he go about moving on? Who is she? What does he know her from? Was that memory even from this decade?

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader (Rosalyn Ember/ Y/N ?)

Word Count: 3100+

A/N:I haven’t proof read this one all the way through, so I apologize in advance for errors! I will do it later today to double check! Enjoy and feedback is welcome!!!

Series Masterlist

Chapter 21:

You felt an ache throughout your whole body as you slowly started to wake. You felt weak. Drained. So weak that opening your eyes was the equivalent to lifting 3 tons of cement. You tried moving, but your muscles weren’t obeying. All that happened was a small twitch of your arm.

The small movement did more than you thought it would. It gave you a feeling of a strap across your middle that went from one arm over your torso to your other arm, effectively keeping you in one place.

As you struggled to move more, you heard a large metal door creak open. You stopped fighting realizing that looking unconscious may help you more right now.

“She’s secure?” the voice you knew well asked.

“Yes sir. We have her hooked up to monitor her heart rate, blood pressure, and also to start the transfusion when ready,” the dweeby voice of the assistant you grew to hate said. Now sounding older and more frail.

“Perfect. Wait until she’s awake. I want her to be able to talk to her before she passes out again,” the deep voice said proudly and getting closer to you. “Oh Miss. Y/N Erskine. I finally have you now, don’t I?” You felt a hand come up and gently caress a knuckle down your cheek. You would have cringed at the motion had you had the energy or ability to. “You look as if you haven’t even aged. Impressive,” he chuckled. “Still as stunning as ever, but that’s no surprise.”

“Um, Dr. Bates? Security was trying to get ahold of you for-”

“What now?” he huffed walking away and stomping loudly.

The doors opened again, and you heard the single set of footsteps leave. You waited a second to hear for any further noise. When you heard equipment moving you figured it was the little sidekick of Bates. 

Edgar. He was always so obedient to Bates. He was annoying as hell and didn’t have a mind for himself, but deep down, you always felt for him. No matter how cruel he was to you all those years ago. He was very much a follower and was always lost in following a path of his own. You knew if you talked to him, and tried to convince him of doing good you could probably push him in the right direction, but whenever you did, he would always find some way to shut you up.

After a lot of energy focused on moving your head, you were able to roll it to face the other side of the room. That movement lead to you getting a little more power as you woke your muscles up. You slowly began opening your eyes and blinking gradually.

Again, your energy started becoming more and more powerful. You opened your mouth and were able to talk in a hushed whisper to start.

“I see he’s still got you whipped,” your voice was hoarse and quite, but he still heard, quickly turning to you.

He was shy. Didn’t say much to you. He turned giving you a look before looking down at the gadget he was playing with ignoring you.

“Not much of a talker still too. Wow. It’s as if nothing has changed.” Again he ignored you. You cleared your voice as best as you could and continued to talk. “Bate’s is still obsessed with me. Still can’t seem to understand science. Then you still don’t have a mind of your own. Still following him around like a lost puppy waiting for instruction, Edgar?”

He turned back giving you a glare and moving to the IV that was in your arm. You looked up seeing it was attached to some blue liquid, but couldn’t place what it was.

“Why are you doing this Edgar? How are you still even alive?” you asked looking back at him.

You just now got to processing him. He was old and hunched over from age. His sandy blond hair was no longer that, and was a deep grey now. Wrinkles were prominent on his face showing just how long he had been alive. Probably late 70’s. I mean he was just a kid when you first met him. Almost 60 years had passed.

“Boss helped me. I’m functioning better than I should be,” he answered never looking at you, but instead, fidgeting with the dose of the blue serum.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been doing this all these years,” you sighed rolling your eyes. He didn’t answer. “Of course you have. Why would I think differently?”

You turned taking in the room around you.

It was a high tech lab. Tables of computers, chemicals, utensils, and so much more. You looked down seeing you were strapped to a table with three big giant black leather straps; while the table sat up at an angle to where you were close to standing if you weren’t off the ground.

“You could have got out of this Edgar. Had a family. Kids. Lived your life, not-”

“Awake I see?” that damn voice said again walking in with a satisfied stride. “Are you tormenting Edgar still? It truly is like old times, isn't it?” He said with a smug smirk as he walked up to you.

“Garrison Bates.” The bane of your existence. The tall dark brown peppered gray hair, brown eyed, clean shaved face, of the man you once loved, and now despise. “What a tragedy to see you again,” you said with a fake smile before letting it fall and rolling your eyes.

“Easy there Y/N. You keep that up and I’ll think you’re flirting with me,” he said lifting your chin with his index finger like earlier.

“Touch me and you won’t have fingers to work with,” you seethed.

“Oh my, I see that fire in you hasn’t dimmed after all these years. Got to say, I admire it,” he said placing his hand behind his back and walking over to the computer Edgar was at earlier. “Your vital signs all look good and ready to go.”

“Go for what-”

“Edgar, you can start the serum,” he said ignoring you and nodding to his assistant. Edgar nodded back and added another IV to your other arm.

“What are you doing?” you said trying to wiggle, but the straps weren’t helping with your low energy thing.

“Adding a little something to help slow the healing process. Can’t have you healing up as I extract blood. We do that and you’ll be fighting us. Got to keep you slow,” Garrison explained crossing his legs as he wheeled a chair over to you. “Now let’s talk about how exquisite you look. You’ve only gotten better with the times, Y/N. Aged like very fine wine,” he said looking you up and down. You looked down realizing that you were in your sports bra and leggings. Your tank top and hoodie were gone leaving you more exposed than you liked.

You scoffed looking back at Garrison who was biting his lip at you.

“Can’t say the same for you Garrison. What? It’s been 60 years give or take… Doesn’t look like you’ve been aging as well as me, and wasn’t that the whole purpose?” you sassed.

He jumped from his chair and stood inches from you. Anger painting his face.

“Maybe if you would just give me the formula, I wouldn’t be like this. Instead, you keep it for yourself like the selfish brat you are,” he gritted through his teeth.

“There’s a reason I don’t give out the formula. So slimy, power hungry, self-centered, egotistical FAT HEADS like you, don’t get their hands on it,” you said each word like the diss it was. This man was a horrible excuse for a human, and only wanted the information out of you for the pieces of immortality it served.

His expression hardened, before turning softer.

“You always knew how to rile me up didn’t you Y/N/N… Well, I won’t give you the satisfaction,” he breathed turning around. “Edgar, how’s it going?”

“Almost done…” he paused. You looked down seeing him flip a switch and the new liquid start to flow into the IV. “There. All set sir.”

“Great. Now Y/N, you are going to be feeling a tad bit woozy in the next few seconds, but don’t worry I’ll make this as fast as possible. Kinda need to get a move on things.”

“What are you-” then it hit you. The cold fluid started moving through your veins. You took a deep breath in at the sting it left.

“Yeah, it doesn't feel too great. We’ll let that run for a second before extracting some blood. Just need to see how your cells react to it,” he explained walking circles around the table you were propped on. You tried to follow his movement with your eyes, but your head fell back in exhaustion. You were weak again. “We have quite the plans for you. I have it all mapped out too. Only downside is-”

“The Avengers,” you answered quietly.

“Good job, dollface.” You grimaced at the nickname. “The only time I could really pounce on you was at the Avengers compound. Trust me, I wanted to do it another time, but when duty calls, you pick up the phone,” he shrugged. “Anyway, because of that little ‘issue’ we are going to have to relocate every once in a while. Can’t have them getting close now can we?”

He brushed some hair out of your face, and you closed your eyes in disgust at the contact.

“Speaking of getting close. It looks like you and Captain America have been growing pretty fond of each other.” He paused for a reaction but you didn’t give one. “Awe, now don’t go all timid on me now. I mean the way he looked at you in that dress, and the way you looked at him in his little suite. It was cute. Can’t say I wasn’t jealous though. You looked at him in a way you never looked at me,” he shrugged. He had been there, and you were too oblivious to notice. This is why you were nervous to let your guard down in the first place. Look where it led you. “But the dress… That’s what threw me over the edge. You were-”

“Shut. Up,” you mumbled.

“Hush now. I’m trying to compliment you.”

“Don’t. I don’t want your compliments.”

“Fine. Have it your way hardhead,” he said throwing his hands up in fake surrender. “Edgar, how long?”

“14 minutes sir.”

“Perfect. I’ll be right back. You take care of her now Edgar. Can’t have my little experiment getting away. Again.” He walked over you cupping your now dangling head in his hand. “Come now Y/N. Did you ever thing you would be able to hide that easily?”

Your eyes were heavy but your were able to send him a glare still. He smirked before dropping your head not so gently and turned out the door with a new stride.

Next thing you knew, everything faded into black.

___

“Update Nat,” Steve said coming toward the front of the plane where Clint and her were flying.

“Nothing new yet. Security sent the camera shots with the car that we think may have been theirs and we are tracking from there. We should have a location in about 3-4 minutes,” Nat explained as she continued to click away on the tablet on the side.

“Did they really think they could get that far? What if this is all to easy?” Sam asked as he strapped his suit on.

“I don’t know, but any lead is still a lead. I would rather show up to an empty spot than not go at all and risk missing her,” Steve said hanging his head as he placed his hands on his belt. Something he did when concentrated on a mission.

Wanda walked over placing a calming hand on his shoulder.

“Steve. We’ll find her. They may think they have the jump on us, but we got Stark’s technology. We have the upper hand,” she smiled up at him.

He turned his head and gave her a soft smile.

“Thanks Wanda,” he said patting her hand. “I’m just scared on why they took her,” he paused thinking it over and then looking to Tony. “You don’t think they know-”

“I have a good feeling that if they took her from our home, they know,” Tony said bluntly. “Hate to tell ya Cap, but I don’t really have another explanation.”

He nodded knowing he was right, but not really wanting to hear it.

“Cap, I got something!” Nat shouted making Steve run back to the front.

___

“How’s it looking Edgar?” you hear Garrison’s voice say from the side, but it almost felt like a dream.

It was like the first time you were knocked out. You had no energy to show you were awake. Everything was heavy and your body wasn’t listening to any commands you were giving it.

“Good. I ended the serum and drew some blood for the sampling. I tested to see if the chemicals from the serum would effect modifying her blood for dissecting the formula and it looks like it did the job we were hoping for. I think we finally got it,” Edgar answered.

“We got it?”

“Yes sir. I believe we did.”

“Finally,” Garrison said in an evil tone. “Go ahead and start the blood extraction. I want a few pints before we start the transfusion to be safe.”

“Yes sir.”

“And Edgar? Good job. You finally did something right,” You heard footsteps coming to you and instead of stopping and silence, you felt a rough hand grab your cheeks and push your head up. “Wakey, wakey, dollface. It’s time for the games to begin.”

You tried blinking your eyes open and a groan made a way through your lips.

“That’s it. Welcome back bug,” he said once you opened them wide enough to see his evil grin. “I wanted you to be awake for the next part. You know, to catch up and all.”

“Screw. You,” you said almost winded by the energy it took.

“I’m sure you would love that,” he grinned again before throwing your head to the side.

You felt a pinch, and then saw a red line of where your blood was being drawn into blood bags.

“What happened to us Y/N? I mean, I thought we had it good. Then one day you spill your little secret to me, and then the next you’re three states over and moving every time I catch up to you,” he said unbuttoning his suit jacket, and throwing it over the chair that was next to you.

“Well,” you sighed. “It would help if after I had told you, you didn’t try dissecting me like a 6th grade science experiment for your own entertainment.”

“Entertainment? That’s what you thought I saw it as?” You shot him a tired glare which just made him tisk at you. “Darling, I loved you. We dated for what? 1958’-1960’? 2 whole years. Now back in those days, we might as well have been married and popping out little ones,” he said un-cuffing his wrist cuffs and rolling his sleeves to his elbows. “Then when you came to me telling me you had a little secret… Oh, I was scared. I thought we were pregnant out of wedlock, or you were cheating or something. Little did I know,” he brushed your hair out of your face. “You had a gift to give instead. The gift of near immortality.”

“It’s not a gift Garrison. It’s a curse,” you said staring deep into his eyes hoping he would catch on.

“I wouldn’t know. You never helped me understand,” he shrugged pushing away.

“I tried showing you! You just saw the parts you wanted!” you shouted best you could. It came out more hoarse and broken than you hoped, but the feelings of anger and disappointment were still prominent. “This isn’t a life you want Garrison. It’s not living at all-”

“YOU DON’T TELL ME WHAT I WANT!” he shouted when he turned back to you.

You shrunk back in your spot. Face still stern, but not expecting that intense of a reaction. You looked over at Edgar who had retreated into himself, and did his best to make himself near to invisible in the corner. There was a long pause before Garrison continued. He ran a hand through his brown hair, and slightly messed it up with the gel that was holding it. You could finally see the age now. He was probably 10-20 years older than you in body years, and he looked to be in his 40’s. Which was still impressive considering he was actually nearing 80′s and 90′s.

“I loved you. I wanted a life with you. I wanted to grow with you. The only way to do that was to become like you,” he whispered.

Your eyes widened. That was the reason? That was why he tortured you, and treated you the way he did? That wasn’t love. That-That was- Hell, who knows?

“Why did you do the things you did then?” you whispered back. “You tore me apart.”

“You wouldn’t listen,” he answered standing straighter. “You wanted me to fix you, when I didn’t see something to fix.”

“Garrison-”

“Edgar. Are you almost ready?” he said composing himself, and not letting you see him vulnerable anymore.

“Y-Yes sir. We, uh, we can begin the transfusion,” Edgar stuttered.

“Good. Hook me up,” he walked over to the chair sat next to you, and rolled his sleeves up more so Edgar could insert the needle.

“This isn’t the answer. There is something bigger here, and you know it.” you said looking down at him, but he didn’t budge. He continued to look forward as Edgar worked around him. “I’m sorry you see it this way,” you said softly before throwing your head softly back on the cold metal table. You closed your eyes as you felt exhaustion start to overtake you again.

__

“Okay Cap. This is the place the license plate led us,” Clint said landing the quin-jet a good distance away. “The likelihood of them being able to move before we got here is low.”

“What about the likelihood of this being the place?” Steve asked looking out into the forested area.

“There was only one other pairs of cars that left the compound around the time Y/N was taken, and we already tracked seeing that those were harmless. Just agents going into the field and visitors going back home,” Nat answered.

“Ok. So this is it?” Steve said as the back opened.

“99% sure. The only thing now is where in that building,” Clint said as they all lined up.

“And that’s where I come in,” Tony said as the helmet of his suit shut. “I’m going to do a perimeter check and scan of the building with Friday. I’ll have a room for you in 2 minutes tops.”

Next thing, Tony was off in the skies.

“Ok team, we need to do this quickly and efficiently. We don’t know why they took Y/N, and we don’t know what they’ve done to her. We need to secure her first before we take care of the individuals responsible for this.” Steve instructed putting his helmet on. “If you find her before anyone else does, bring her right back here. Bruce you stay here unless code green is needed, and when Y/N is brought back, do a check on her alongside the nurses. She’ll want a familiar face.”

“Got it,” Bruce nodded placing his arms over his chest.

“Romanoff and Barton, you two stay together. Get to a security room to give us eyes on the inside. Vision, Sam, and Stark will work the sky and keep a birds eye view of everything around, and take out anyone who poses a threat, looks like they are going to give us away, or tries to get away.” 

Sam and Vision nodded their heads and started to make their way through the forest before taking off with Stark. Steve turned back to the last two avengers. 

“Wanda, Bucky, you’re with me. Let’s go get her,” he nodded, getting the same look from them. They turned leaving the jet and started racing to find the bunker where you were being held in.

Chapter 22

Used to be Overlooked Tag:

@xa-dia  @losersunitetonight  @fashionlive15 @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan@steverogersxreader@laneygthememequeen @lauravic @shreddedparchment@iheartsebastianstan@almostelegantfire @manymaria111 @carol-damn-vers @angelkurenai@squirrelgirl67@stevieboyharrington@deaniebeanieandsammywammy @demon-doggo @badassbeckettswan@blueenemy24

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If I tagged you and you aren’t normally on my tag list, I thought you would enjoy the story. Fair warning, it is a slow burn so we will get to the bottom of the issue later, but the burn is what makes it soooooo sweet. I’m really excited for this series, and would love your feedback:) Thank you!

If you want removed let me know.

[morphogenetic]

okay so its been a few days but i keep Thinking About Shit about pride stuff so here we go. im going to politely request that you dont read this unless you can like it/acknowledge that you read it somehow (unless you’re on mobile and this readmore doesnt work in which case: im sorry) and also d/o/nt rb but if you’re some variety of not-straight and/or not-cis replying to this is totally fine 

also this is long as fuck sorry

im in this very weird place where, although i am not in any way cis or het, i don’t feel like i truly belong at pride. like. obviously i’m trans, i’ve been out and living as trans and nonbinary for literally a third of my fuckin life. it matters to me very much that i’m trans, i have to basically come out over and over for the rest of my life because everyone is going to read me as a dude when they meet me for the first time and that is equally as wrong as when everyone was reading me as a girl before t. or if people look at my id and see the ‘f’ even though i can’t even change it to anything else and don’t even want to bc i have no desire whatsoever to tell the fucking government ‘HEY IM NONBINARY’

like being trans and nb is going to affect the rest of my life literally forever. but i’ve been out so long and since i was so relatively young that i just don’t think about it any more. i have absolutely no desire to even be cis, not like i can be bc that would mean i wasn’t nonbinary and the idea of being a binary gender is so fucking weird to me lmao. but it’s like. it’s obviously not a bad thing to be trans and i specifically am very content with it. being nonbinary and knowing that for sure and being super comfortable in that identity is great! but i also don’t feel like i have any reason to celebrate it because i just am. like it’s the same reason i feel very weird about celebrating birthdays and stuff. i mean my birthday isn’t soon in the slightest lmao but like. yeah cool i’m this age now! neat! i’m fine with telling people im this age and i have no negative feelings about being this age! but i just AM that age now why do i need to celebrate being a year older? it’s like that kinda

theres always the issue of the aroace-spec thing too like. yeah boys (and transmasc/masc-or-androgynous-leaning nb people, not girls lol) are attractive sometimes so i am, technically, gay, but my interest in having a relationship is so fucking low. ive had two crushes in my entire goddamn life! in 21 years! and both of those were on friends bc im also super demi! and otherwise the mere idea of a relationship is like. why the fuck would i want that?? why would anyone else even genuinely want that from me, a fucking average-as-hell-looking, balding-at-fucking-21 person who has literally no fucking ability to even function reasonably as a human being?  

like. even putting aside all the fucking issues that i have with actually having and maintaining close relationships - not even in a dating kind of relationship, i mean literally just trusting people in general let alone as friends  - thanks to the shit that three different former friends of mine pulled. even putting that aside i really don’t think i would ever really want a relationship even if i somehow managed to be even a little bit attractive to someone lol. im just too much of an inherent introvert for that. 

and obviously you can be gay/bi/queer/pan/(insert other not-straight romantic/sexuality orientation im sure im forgetting) and not be in a relationship lol. it’s just. there’s so much fucking pressure ESPECIALLY in the mlm communities that i would theoretically be most in-tune with to be extremely sexual. and obviously that’s not inherently a bad thing at all!! it just doesn’t work for me in the slightest because i have basically no drive for that at all and the only time i ever did was when my body was adjusting to being on t initially. now that i’ve been on it for long enough shit has settled back to where it was for most of my life and yep, still basically no interest in that.

and like. im not gonna pretend that i have it the hardest out of literally any lgbtq person. im incredibly white (some ashkenazi sprinkled in there but like. nobody would ever be able to tell that without me saying it since it’s only a fourth and i have no association at all with any religion let alone being jewish) and able-bodied (to the best of my knowledge lmao) and definitely in a rare space of having extremely well-educated liberal parents who, while not being like millionaires or anything, are able to financially support me and didn’t ever reject me. 

and because of all this im like. i dont belong at pride! it’s not for me! yes im trans but any random person is gonna think im a white cishet dude without me correcting them on pronouns. yeah im white but thats the only part of that that’s true but i still shouldn’t be taking up space that i honestly really do not need. i am happy the community exists and i WANT it to continue to exist and i dont think im gonna make any new cishet friends for the rest of my life but i just dont feel like im ever really going to be a true part of it

i really have no idea how to fully put my feelings about this into words. it’s just like. i am not afraid to be who i am but i dont feel proud of it in the way that i’m proud of like. my accomplishments. like when i graduate im gonna be proud of that! but i can’t be proud of who i am as a person in the same way, regardless of what im actually proud of myself for. i’m not proud of being 21 or having brown eyes or having my height. im not upset about them either but they’re just facts to me! in the same way that me being trans is just a fact about me

and pride is just. that. it’s just being proud of and celebrating your own existence. and im happy for people who can feel pride in existing (for all sorts of minority-related things not just lgbtq+ stuff) and i want people to continue to feel that way because when the world tells people they can’t be proud of who they are that’s shitty! but that’s not me and i don’t think it ever will be me. i realized i was aroace and accepted it in the span of a few days. i found out nonbinary people existed and immediately realized ‘oh that’s me’ within a week without feeling any self-hatred over it. realizing that i was mildly gay and not 100% aroace like i thought took me literally hours to realize and then accept. and i dont know how to express this irl without it seeming like i don’t want pride to exist because I VERY MUCH DO. i just. i never had the struggle in accepting those parts of me to the same extent that so many other people do and it feels wrong for me to be in a space for celebrating making it past that internal struggle when i never had it

[wongpuppy]

FATED, huang xuxi

↳ Rating lots of fluff + slight crack

↳ Pairing player!Xuxi x Y/N

↳ Word count 5k [ one-shot / soulmate!au ]

↳ Summary the red thread of fate was real after all, managing to make something out of nothing

Red Thread of Fate: ancient Chinese mythology about the lunar matchmaking god Yuè Lâo tying a red thread around the ankles of destined lovers at the age of 21; regardless of place, time, or circumstances.

The DJ played hectic, bass heavy EDM tracks that contrasted drastically to the semi formal themed party. You down the red of the alcoholic contents in the red solo cup with a wide smile, turning to your best friend Ella.

“Thank you for forcing me to come! I’m having the time of my life!”

Stress has been your closest best friend lately, with all the exams and projects being thrown at you. So when Ella asked you to go out with her, you were definitely more than hesitant at first.

You throw your hands in the air and Ella smirks at you. “I told you you’d have a blast.”

The sea breeze flows through your hair when you close your eyes and throw your head back, appreciating the open decked yacht and everything this extravagant party had to offer. You were on some random yacht off the coast, still close enough to be able to see the city. The moon was completely full tonight, high and dominating the entire sky.

Your tipsy mind free from troubles and bad thoughts. You felt reborn the moment the time went past midnight.

The DJ announces that it was midnight and the crowd cheers heavily and you join, not really knowing why exactly the mass of people were going crazy.

“You never did tell me what club this is or event this was, you know.” You take another cup of beer from the bar and chug the whole thing down in one go.

Ella’s eyes widen at your question and she laughs nervously, sipping on the cup in her hands. “Funny story, Y/N.”

You motion for her to go along whilst nodding and dancing to the song the DJ played, not really focused on what she was saying.

“This isn’t a club or event.” She sighs and avoids your gaze. Eun says the next sentence quick and all in one breath, knowing exactly how you’re gonna take it. “Its Xuxi’s yacht, and he’s now officially 21!”

Your best friends throws her hands in the air as if to cheers, but you felt every ounce of alcohol fade once she mentions the younger boys name. Whether it was the tequila shots or just how much you hated him, your hearts been racing ever since Xuxi was brought into the conversation.

You knew you could never date a guy younger than you, even if it was just a few months younger like him.

“Are you fucking with me?” Your arms are immediately crossed against your chest as you stare at Ella with a narrow gaze.

Needless to say, Xuxi and your relationship was pretty worse for wear. You loathed him, his intensely cocky personality and ‘i’m richer and better than you’ attitude was a complete turn off. Everything about Huang Xuxi was a complete turn off.

“He invited us.” She shrugged. “You were having so much fun before I mentioned it was his party.”

Invited us? Give me a break. As far as you could tell, Xuxi hated you almost just as much as you hated him. He sneered at you whenever he saw you and even gave you the nickname Top Bitch. Which, to be honest, didn’t really sound all that bad to you.

“Exactly.” You sigh and feel a headache come out of nowhere, leaving you clutching your right temple. “I’m allergic to even the slightest mention of him, I just got a headache. I’ll be back, don’t think you’re in the green.”

You move past the crowd to get towards the bathroom, or anywhere that was at least somewhat quiet. Going inside the large living room, you walk towards a bathroom but when you knock and only hear explicit noises on the other side; you cringe and leave. So you go towards the main bedroom instead, walking in when no one answers your knock.

The empty and quiet room let you release a sigh in happiness, massaging your temples. Contemplating laying down on the large and inviting white bed, you go to the bathroom instead; only feeling your temples throb even more.

You wince as you walk towards and pull open the door to the bathroom only to jump back and shriek at the sight.

None other than Huang Xuxi was leaning against the sleek marble sink, clutching his forehead until he jumped at the sound of the door opening and a girly squeal. You watch him groan and wince before turning to you.

But, amazingly once you connect eyes, the throbbing pain is gone and all you feel is relief. Your shoulders relax, your head feels light, its like a wave of serenity flows all through your body. You couldn’t help but feel so at ease, its like you forgot who you were currently gawking at.

“Y/N?” Xuxi looks at you with dazed, confused eyes before looking you up and down, iris’ doubling size at the sight of your feet. “Oh my god.”

You quickly look down and you instantly get why, mouth falling open.

Your black minidress and strappy black heels allowed for a thin, glowing red thread to wrap and tie itself around your ankle. But it didn’t stop there, you watched in horror as it continued onto the bathrooms tilled floors and under Xuxi’s pants, presumably to tie around his ankle.

You swallow thickly. The string felt like nothing but Xuxi and you could definitely see it, the vibrant red surrounded by a bright white light.

“What the hell is going on? Did you do this? Is this some sort of joke?” You stare at the last visible end of the thread before it disappears under the tall, irritating boys pants. He sighs, still staring at your ankle and the ribbon with a disbelieving look.

“No, princess, its a stupid fairytale my dad used to tell me. Guess its fucking real, huh.” Xuxi squeezes his eyes shut and you’re stood there in the doorway between the bedroom and bathroom still in shook. “Red thread of fate, a Chinese myth about a string that ties around two fated lovers ankles. We’re... We’re soulmates.”

The two of you stare at each other with disbelief written all over your faces, before you burst into laughter. “Thats a joke right? You’re definitely messing with me.”

When Xuxi continues to stare at you with his wide brown eyes, your laughter soon fades when you realize his facial expression wasn’t changing at all. Your face falls and you quickly reach down to your ankle, trying to pull at the string. Your hand just goes through it, as if it was just a hologram.

Your jaw drops. “H-How?”

“I don’t know.” Xuxi replies, eyes watching your hand go through the thread, yet the thread followed your foot wherever it went. “This... This is so fucked up.”

You grumble and give up, sitting on the floor and careful not to flash that guy-your soulmate your undies. Crossing your arms across your chest, the both of your eyes set on the thread connecting the two of you. You swallow thickly when a thought comes to your mind.

“Why aren’t you calling me Top Bitch?”

Thats when you fully take notice that this whole hour consisted of a very different Xuxi, one that hasn’t called you any names or threw a comment at you. He hasn’t cursed at you, hasn’t given you any looks, this was definitely unusual for Xuxi. This Xuxi was full of big, brown eyes that seemed to be permanently dazed. His words were softer, almost as if Xuxi’s voice got gentler the second he turned 21.

Xuxi’s eyes whip to yours and they’re obviously wide. “Holy shit. I haven’t called you that.” He swallows thickly and quickly looks away from your gaze with pink on his cheeks. “I don’t feel like I want to anymore.”

For the first time in the whole three years you’ve known Xuxi, your heart flutters for a second. But that one second is so profound it leaves you clutching your chest and shaking your head slowly.

“What is going on with me?”

“You’re falling for me, Y/N.” Xuxi lightly smirks for the first time since the two of you locked eyes, which is very surprising. He sighs a second later and taps the sink. 

“Shut the fuck up.” You sneer at him and scrunch your face. “This is all my drunk mind and everything will wear off in an hour or two.”

Xuxi sits on the floor leaning against the sinks drawers. “Enjoying my party?” He’s sitting across from you and the end of his feet reach your knees where the ends of yours reach the middle of his calf. You take a quick inhale and look away.

“I guess. Then this crazy migraine came out of nowhere and now I’m here.”

“Same here. But its completely gone now.”

That definitely meant your headaches were connected. There was no way the both of you could get a headache at the same time then have it leave at the same time. 

The red thread. 

Your eyes narrow and you go to nudge his calf, but once your foot touches his leg, it was like adrenaline flew through your bodies, goosebumps instantly rising. And when you looked at the thread, it started to slowly loose its vibrancy. Your eyes widened.

“Xuxi, look, if we’re touching the string gets dimmer and fades really slowly. If I pull away it stops.” You show him and nod to yourself with a small grin. “So it should fade away the more we’re touching.”

When you look up at Xuxi, he looks as if he was daydreaming but looking directly at you. His lips were in a small side smile and eyes low. The way he managed to look at you pretty intimately made your cheeks pink. “I think that’s the first time you’ve said my name.”

“Thats definitely not true.” You scoff and can’t help but laugh under your breath. Xuxi’s grin widens just a little at the sight.

“Lets just say it was then.”

Your grin is unbearably wide and you couldn’t believe it, never once thinking Xuxi of all people would be making you blush. But then you remember that it was Xuxi and you clear your throat and rolled your eyes. “Please, Xuxi, how many other girls have you used that on?”

“If I’m being completely honest, a lot.” Xuxi twists the rings on his fingers and you scoff loudly. When you sit up to leave, he leans forward and lightly grasps the back of your calf and you let out an audible gasp.

It was crazy, it felt like butterflies that took a lot of steroids.

“But up until an hour ago, I’ve only been thinking about one girl and its only been you.” You’re standing up and you swallow thickly at the honesty in his voice and big, brown eyes. “Which is fucking insane because we’re supposed to hate each other... right?”

You run your hands through your hair and sigh. “Its this red string thing. But the feelings aren’t real, it’ll all fade, look.”

You point to your ankles and the slightly faded string but Xuxi keeps his eyes on you, swallowing thickly at your sentence.

“Don’t you... don’t you feel like this is something more?”

Your eyes snap back up to Xuxi’s and your throat goes dry. He immediately gets up and motions between the two of you. “I don’t know about you but I’ve never felt anything like this before and I’ve been in love, so, this is different.”

You narrow your eyes at him. Xuxi? In love? That was an idea you never would’ve connected. Yet, you couldn’t help but agree. Even if you’ve never really been in love, you’ve felt it and knowing exactly how much you hated Xuxi, whatever was still keeping you in the bathroom with him was powerful.

“Why us?” You sigh and squeeze your eyes shut. “I’m soulmates with a guy who sleeps with a different girl every night!”

“Hey.” Xuxi frowns and takes a few steps towards you. “Thats not true. You know I won’t do that to you, I’m not that type of guy in relationsh-“

This Xuxi was definitely one that you aren’t used to, seeing him in a completely different light. It was as if he really did care.

“I don’t know that you wouldn’t do that to me!” You point a finger to his chest and ignore the sparks that go off from the smallest contact. “And don’t talk about us in a relationship, take a few steps back.”

He rolls his eyes and holds his hands up, moving back and away from you. And even though you know you asked him to move back, you couldn’t help but feel a loss of comfort the more steps Xuxi took. You groan at the feeling.

“I need air.” You mutter, taking one last fleeting look across Xuxi and his big, wide eyes before walking out of the bathroom and bedroom, and out towards the empty front deck. The entire walk your eyes were focused on the red string around your ankle.

No one else seemed to notice the string, as it followed your ankle through the mass of people. When you got to the deck, you take a deep breath and sigh. The three years of unfortunate encounters with Xuxi and you could be compared to a cat and dog type of relationship. The two of you went at it back and forth, ever since you first met.

Three years ago

You and your friends were at some random dorm hall on campus, playing pool and chilling in the community game room. It was around 9:36pm on a Sunday so campus was almost empty, save for the guys playing pool casually next to you.

Not gonna lie, you noticed them the minute you walked in the room, talking to your roommate Ella. Especially the taller, blonde one. He was probably the most beautiful guy you’ve ever seen, with full lips and broad shoulders, he was definitely gonna be stuck in your head for a few days.

But when he caught you staring, he gave you a cocky smirk that had you rolling your eyes. If theres one thing you hated, it was a conceited guy who played girls with that exact smirk.

You’ve had too much experience and you were sure this wouldn’t add to it. In the corner of your eye you watch him and a couple of his friends walk over and you groan, nudging Ella. “They’re coming over.”

“Sheesh, blondies a looker. I caught you rolling your eyes when you saw him.” She sneaks a look at him and turns back to you with a satisfied grin.

“Not my type.” You cross your arms across your chest and boldly turn to watch him and his friends get closer. “He’s way to cocky for me, I feel it.”

“I like them confident.” Ella eyes you. “Can I go for him?”

“Go for it.” You shrug at her and turn back when the guy in question and his friends are in front of you and your friends.

“I don’t think we’ve seen any of you before.” The blonde guy keeps his gaze and smirk locked securely on you. “Do you live in the hall?”

“We live in Beacon across campus.” Even if Ella’s the one that spoke up and answered, Xuxi takes his time looking away from you to her. You scoff.

“Interesting.” He turns back to you with a cheeky grin. “I’m Xuxi.”

“My names Ella.” She holds out her hand towards him and he looks away from you with a little wink. You shake your head and turn to his friends instead. They seemed a lot calmer than Xuxi, the two boys now turned to you with warm grins.

“Hey, I’m Y/N.” You nod your head at them and they nod back. The one with light brown hair and a pretty smile answers first.

“My names Kun, I’m Xuxi’s roommate.”

“Sicheng, nice to meet you.” The boy with flawless features and light blonde hair replies.

“Nice to meet you guys too, both of you freshman?”

“No, Sicheng and I are sophomores. This is your first semester here?” Kun replies and you nod grinning at him.

“And you aren’t caught up by the force that is Huang Xuxi, impressive.” Sicheng smirks and you laugh a little, shrugging.

“Theres a lot more to a pretty face.” You look back over to Xuxi and where he stood with your friends a couple feet away. You turn back to them with a grin. “So what’re you guys’ majors?”

“Xuxi and I are both business majors.” Kun replies with a shrug. “I’m not really into it, more into editing and videography, which I do on the side.” 

“I’m a theatre major.” Theres a faint pink hue that spreads across Sicheng’s face until he shrugs it off. “My parents wouldn’t let me go to acting school so this is the closest thing to that.” 

You laugh loudly and shake your head at the two of them, already knowing you’re going to like them. “That’s really cool. I’m a bio major, but I might switch because it’s already getting hard and I don’t like that.” 

Kun visibly cringes while Sicheng shrugs. The lighter blonde boy smirks at you, nudging Kun. “He failed intro to bio twice in his freshman year, it was pretty sad.” 

You laugh again and when your eyes fleet across the room for a second, you catch Xuxi’s eyes. He turns back to you with another smirk.

“I don’t think I got your name.” Xuxi excuses himself from the girls before walking over to you without another word.

“It’s Y/N.” You give him an unimpressed look when he looks you up and down. He grins wolfishly.

“Thats a lovely name and, do I hear an accent?”

“Get her whole life story then her snapchat, bro, always works.” Kun scoffs and you grin at him. You pull out your phone towards Kun and Sicheng, away from Xuxi.

“Speaking of, can I get the both of yours?”

Both their eyes widen slightly before nodding and pulling out their phones and exchanging codes. Behind you, you can hear Ella and the girls hounding Xuxi for his snapchat and you release a sigh of relief.

Until Kun turns to the girls and asks for their usernames. Whilst Kun and Sicheng were getting the girls’ codes, it left you and yours truly free.

“So, Y/N,” Xuxi takes a few steps towards you, “my snapchats h-u-a-x-u-x-i.”

You raise a brow. “I don’t remember asking for it, do you?”

He looks confused for a second before his smirk grows. “You’re feisty, huh. Don’t worry, babe, I love a challenge.”

You scrunch your face in disgust, wondering how such pretty looks can be obscured by such a narrow personality. But before you could say anything, Ella’s voice calls Xuxi’s name and you sigh in relief.

“I’ll catch you in a bit, Y/N.” He winks at you while walking backwards and towards Ella. You wave with a fake smile before turning away with a roll of your eyes. You turn to Kun and Sicheng instead, enjoying their company much more than Xuxi’s.

Later that night you get a notification on your phone and its a request from none other than ‘huaxuxi’ himself. You nibble on your bottom lip for a few minutes before accepting it. And you already felt like you would regret this.

Xuxi: Kun spilled and told me your username :)

Y/N: tell kun i dont like him anymore

Xuxi: Does that mean you like me more?

Y/N: that would require me to like you in the first place :)

It only takes Xuxi a week before he realizes that you actually didn’t like him and decided that you thought of yourself too highly. From then came Top Bitch and the countless sneers and scoffs. 

And thats just how it was for the both of you, never any different.

You’re sitting in the cafeteria with the girls when some of the NCT boys walk by, making you roll your eyes and sink in your seat lower catching a glimpse of who was there. But instead of walking up to your table, Xuxi just walks by and doesn’t even say hi making you furrow your brows. 

“Did Xuxi just ignore me?” You mutter to Ella once he’s a good distance away. You keep looking at him sneakily behind her shoulder and when he catches your gaze, instead of smirk or wink, Xuxi glares at you. “Holy shit he just glared at me.” 

“Maybe he gave up, isn’t that what you wanted?” Ella replies, shrugging at you. 

“Yeah.” You say quietly, swallowing thickly when your throat goes a little dry. “Yeah, it is.”

⇝⇝⇝

It isn’t until that moment that you realized you completely ditched Ella. You groan and quickly pull out your phone from the back of your tight, strapless dress. Texting her where you were, you at least knew she would still be on the boat.

You put away your phone and sigh, leaning against the yacht railing and watching the moonlight play against the water, the full moon still bright and powerful. The cities colorful and lit skyline looks almost animated and magical.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

You turn your head to the sound of your best friends voice, Ella walking towards you with narrowed eyes. You sigh and shake your head.

“You wouldn’t believe what I went through.”

Ella raises a brow at you once she’s beside you. “Oh? Do tell.”

You nibble on your bottom lip and realize you didn’t even know where to begin. How do you tell someone that a magical, mythical Chinese fable about soulmates happened to you?

“Remember three years ago when we met Xuxi?”

Ella’s eyes get a bit widened, noticing the way you say his name without cringing. She nods and motions for you to go on.

“Why didn’t you ever go for him?”

“Oh, honey,” she sighs and rolls her eyes, “I tried. He was just too... preoccupied, I guess.”

“Preoccupied?” You furrow your brows and turn back to the view.

“Y/N, he was like hooked on you the minute he saw you. Theres no way you didn’t notice.”

You sigh loudly and face her with a stressed look.

“Do you see anything tied around my ankle?”

Ella gives you a funny look before looking down and confusedly on your ankle. “No? It’s too dark, here let me put flash on.”

You look down at the still half vibrant red thread that stood out in the darkness with a sigh. “Never mind, it’s okay.”

“Are you okay, Y/N?” Your best friend gives you a worried look, never seeing you like this before.

Your chin wobbles and you close your eyes. “Xuxi and I, we’re soulmates.”

Ella stares at you, waiting for you to shout ‘JK’ or to laugh it off. But your straight face doesn’t falter, making your best friends eyes widen.

“How do you know? Xuxi? Soulmates?”

Your eyes pull open and you sigh at her. “Its hard to explain but yeah it’s true.”

“Is it true to you though?”

You look at Ella’s face and hesitates before nodding a little. Now that you were apart from Xuxi, your mind was clear but there was an obvious divide. When you were with him there was electricity in the air, sparks flying from the slightest look. It felt like something else completely being around him, it felt nice. Inviting.

“Yeah, Ella, I do.”

⇝⇝⇝

Xuxi collapses on his bed with a loud sigh, already feeling his headache coming back. He knew you were walking further and further, spending three minutes earlier just watching the red thread twist and turn.

Theres no time for him to be alone with his thoughts as his best friend Sicheng walks in a few seconds later. “Xuxi, bro, why are you still in here? The parties outside!”

Xuxi sits up on his bed and rubs his hands over his face. “Have your parents told you about that myth about the red thread of fate? About the soulmates?”

Sicheng furrows his brows and gets up from his place where he was leaning against a desk table. His confused face was obvious, Xuxi never being the one to talk anything about love, feelings, or soulmates. “Yeah, why?”

“Its true, bro.” Xuxi sighs and avoids Sicheng’s eyes, focusing on the floor. “Y/N and I...”

Sicheng’s eyes snap down to the exact placement of the thread and he comes closer. “I don’t see anything, Xux.”

“Obviously.” The taller boy motions for the vibrant red string. “But Y/N and I definitely do.”

“No fucking way.” The other Chinese guy shakes his head staring at Xuxi’s ankle. Until a smirk blooms on his face. “Y/N, though? I’m not surprised.”

“Right?!” Xuxi groans and stops, realizing Sicheng said the complete opposite of what he thought the guy would say. “Wait, what do you mean? We hated each other.”

“In the whole three years we’ve known each other, Y/N’s the only girl thats been consistently in your life that isn’t family.” Sicheng shrugs and continues to smirk at the boy sitting on the bed. “Which is insane because, you know, it’s you. And I am now 30 dollars richer thanks to you and Mr. Kun.”

Xuxi completely skips over the second sentence once Sicheng finishes talking, turning to the boy with wide eyes and an incredulous look. “The both of you bet on Y/N and me?!”

“To date, yeah, but this whole fate thing is basically the same thing, right?” Sicheng laughs loudly and winks at Xuxi. “I’m joking, man. But, knowing Y/N, she isn’t too happy with this?”

“That’s an understatement. She’s outside getting air.” Xuxi lays back down with a groan. “When it went past midnight, its like my feelings towards Y/N flipped. I feel so different towards her, like, I don’t mind this whole... situation, you know? The whole soulmates thing?”

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” Sicheng claps loudly, instantly pulling him out of his reverie and forces Xuxi on his feet. “Go and tell her that!”

“Are you sure?” Xuxi gives him a small look, not really knowing what to do in this position at all. He was used to girls but you were something completely different, not like any girl he’s ever dealt with. The last thing Xuxi wanted to do was piss you off, knowing how heated you would get. 

“One hundred percent.” The shorter boy shrugs with a smirk. “When am I ever wrong, Xux? Now, go!”

Xuxi hurriedly runs out of the bedroom without a second thought, racing to find you. It was clear as day in his mind now, Xuxi realized that all these years of detesting you was nothing but a hoax, because if you were ever somehow out of his life; Xuxi wouldn’t know what to do. 

He doesn’t stop to wink or talk to girls, only thanking and waving at the people who told him happy birthday. Xuxi was a man on a mission, racing through his yacht to get you.

“Y/N.” He gets to the front deck and slows his steps when you aren’t alone. Your best friend, Ella, he recognized, stood beside you with dear in headlights eyes. “Oh, shit, sorry, I thought you were alone.”

“Oh! Its okay, I was just asking about rides back home.” Ella laughs nervously, nudging you low key. “I’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

You nod and watch your best friend leave, not without throwing you a thumbs up and wink before she was gone. When its just you and Xuxi, the electricity is back and the headache is gone.

“Your headache stopped too?” You ask him and he nods at first before he realizes what you asked and Xuxi’s eyes widened.

“How did you know my head hurt?”

You shrug and the corner of your lips pull up. “Soulmate thing.”

Xuxi’s eyes focus on your smile for a second longer then bubbling laughter flows out of him. He takes some steps closer to you, reaching forward to hold your hand. Theres the feeling of pop rocks the second your hands touch and its addictive.

“The feelings aren’t fake or gonna fade in a day or two.” Xuxi clears his throat and blushes a little, the tops of his ears turning red. “They’ve always been there. This whole string thing just made me realize it.” 

The moonlight, colorful city lights, and fairy lights decked throughout the yacht made this moment so magical, for the first time that night, you fully believed in the old Chinese wise tale. 

“You piss me off a lot but I don’t know what I’d do without it.” You say with a shrug, smirking not long after. Xuxi chuckles and bites down on his lip, looking down at you.

“Are you willing to give it a shot, Y/N?”

You sigh and playfully roll your eyes, standing closer to him. “I guess I will, Xuxi.”

The red thread between the two of you dissolves almost all together the longer the two of you keep smiling at each other. Seconds later, fireworks go off in the backdrop and scares you, making you shriek and jump. Xuxi laughs loudly and holds you against his chest, watching the colorful lights in the sky.

“I forgot the fireworks went off at 2am.”

“Why 2 in the morning?” You laugh loudly, unable to stop yourself from clutching onto his chest to get closer. The warmth Xuxi gave off was so inviting.

“So people don’t forget it’s my birthday.” Xuxi smirks to himself, obviously proud of himself. You roll your eyes but laugh none the less.

“You’re unbelievable, Xuxi.”

[666shiki]

85 Questions tag

i was tagged by @saphore love you babe MWAH

rules: answer these 85 statements about yourself, then tag 20 people

last:

1. drink: SPRITE BABEYY

2. phone call: my brother........ the call lasted for literally 17 seconds lmao

3. text message: man i get you............

4. song you listened to: NCT 2018 - Black on Black

5. time you cried: yesterday..... bc i was really soft for seungkwan.. LISTEn i saw a really cute gif of him i cant help it

ever:

6. dated someone twice: nah

7. kissed someone and regretted it: yea : D

8. been cheated on: noo

9. lost someone special: yep

10. been depressed: hasn’t everyone? (lmao caroline this is so accurate im just gonna leave it)

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: noo i usually feel like throwing up the next day

favorite colours:

12. neon red/blue/yellow

13. lilac

14. mustard yellow

in the last year have you:

15. made new friends: yea !

16. fallen out of love: yea:D

17. laughed until you cried: also yea

18. found out someone was talking about you: what.. no? what does this even mean SJODFOKSD

19. met someone who changed you: YESSSS GODD and im thankful for every single one of them

20. found out who your friends are: yeah

21. kissed someone on your facebook tumblr friends list: nope

general:

22. how many of your facebook tumblr friends do you know irl: 2

23. do you have any pets: a tortoise and two dogs !!

24. do you want to change your name: no i actually really love my name

25. What did you do for your last birthday? nothing.. went to school? dskksf i dont really care about my birthday

26. what time did you wake up today: around 10am

27. what were you doing at midnight last night: idk probably was crying at the cute seungkwan gifs

28. what is something you can’t wait for: UHH.. nothing? i never rly wait for anything since nothing happens anyway

29. what are you listening to right now: Seventeen - Oh My!

30. when was the last time you saw your mom: like 2 minutes ago she gave me french fries :]

31. have you ever talked to a person named tom: noo i dont think so

32. something that gets on your nerves: EVERYTHING LMFAOOOO im constantly mad about everything even tho i dont always realize it but most of all myself

33. most visited website: youtube and tumblr

34. hair colour: black? that kinda looks like dark brown in the sunlight

35. long or short hair: uhh.. short? medium? im like debating whether i should cut my hair or let it grow sdfkjsdf

36. do you have a crush on someone: i mean aside from idols uhh..... hmm idk kinda? kinda not.. im trying not to let my feelings grow for them ssjhsjhdhsdh

37. what do you like about yourself: my eyes and my eyebrows >:) my friend said that she likes my eye shape? and i fking died love YOU

38. want any piercings: YESSSS god PLEASE but the problem is i would forget to take care of them

39. blood type: idk dude

40. nicknames: raada and raadamus occasionally huora

41. relationship status: been living that single life for 16 years

42. zodiac: scorpio

43. pronouns: she/her

44. fave tv shows: riverdale atm i guess.. i rly love ahs and oitnb too

45. tattoos: no even tho i REEALLY want one:( or two.. or five

46. right handed or left handed: right

47. ever had surgery: nope

48. piercings: none

49. sport: that’s a silly word :) (caroline.. MOOD)

50. vacation: i want to travel to northern finland and japan ! and recently i just really want to go see caroline even tho thats unrealistic but a bitch can dream

51. trainers: the fuck are those

more general:

52. eating: FRENCH FRIES BABEYYYYY

53. drinking: SPRITE BABEYY

54. i’m about to watch: idk bitch probably gonna see if my fav youtubers have uploaded anything

55. waiting for: DEATH

56. want: ohh dude sooooooo many things.......

57. get married: unrealistic!

58. career: i want to do art idk what kind but id love to be a character designer for games or something. GAME ART! thats what id love to do but again .. unrealistic

which is better:

59. hugs or kisses: depends on who the person is

60. lips or eyes: both

61. shorter or taller: either

62. older or younger: older

63. nice arms or stomach: idk either??

64. hookup or relationship: relationship

65. troublemaker or hesitant: hesitant

have you ever:

66. kissed a stranger: no

67. drank hard liquor: noo ive drank normal liquor tho

68. lost glasses: i dont have any sdfsdf

69. turned someone down: kinda?

70. sex on first date: no

71. broken someone’s heart: i hope i havent

72. had your heart broken: idk.. kinda

73. been arrested: no

74. cried when someone died: yes

75. fallen for a friend: no? no

do you believe in:

76. yourself: man... on good days. yes

77. miracles: yes

78. love at first sight: yes

79. santa claus: he died years ago

80. kiss on first date: yeah

81. angels: yes !

other:

82. best friend’s name: Jemina and Julia..... and another Julia

83. eye colour: green babeyyyyyy

84. fave movie: it used to be As Above So Below but tbh i havent seen it in years so idk

85. fave actor: Choi Minho best actor of all time

i’m gonna just tag @jenofiles and @lukkilucas

[so-honey-sing]

all of them

i love you dearly my darling but you are such a buttmunch ❤

1. describe your idea of a perfect date - honestly i dont care as long as the person is the right one, but i would like a rom com style date like a picnic or something else cutesy

2. whats your “type” - women lol i dont have a type, i like all people

3. do you want kids? - i dont know i fluctuate on it all the time

4. if you do, will you adopt or use some other form of child birth? - adoption. i dont wanna give birth

5. describe the cutest date you’ve ever been on - it wasnt a date but i wanted it to be one. we got the train to downtown chicago in the morning and got the cheap tickets to see waitress, then spent the whole day being touristy and cute and spending time together, got lunch with her dad and she showed me some really cool stuff. then dinner and she took me to my first musical and it was awesome. we also went to the nutella cafe and she was being super cute and kept stealing my coffee bc she didnt buy one.

6. describe your experience having sex for the first time (were you nervous? or was it easy peasy?) - sex for the first time sucked. it was with a guy i went to school with. i wasn’t nervous and it wasnt fun

7. are you a morning time gay or night time gay? - morning time gay. am i annoying when im walking around our apartment at six in the morning cleaning?

8. opinion on nap dates? - amazing

9. opinion on brown eyes? - beautiful. incredibly beautiful

10. dog gay or cat gay? - cat gay even though we have a dog

11. would you ever date someone who owned rodents or reptiles? - maybe

12. whats a turn off you look for before you start officially dating someone - if they are racist and/or transphobic honestly. 

13. what is a misconception you had about lgb people before you realized you were one? - i used to think it was bad to be gay when i was a kid bc that was the feeling as i was growing up in small town england

14. what is a piece of advice you would give to your younger self - allow yourself to be happy. and dont take shit from anyone

15. (if attracted to more than one gender) do you have different “types” for different genders? - nope. i dont have a type at all for anything

16. who is an ex you regret? - all of my male exes lmao

17. night club gay or cafe gay? - cafe gay

18. who is one person you would “go straight” for - does not apply. im bi and will always be bi so i can date anyone

19. video game gay, book gay, or movie gay? - book gay or movie gay

20. favourite gay ship (canon or not) - supercorp, zimbits, nomanita, a lot of ships tbh

21. favourite gay youtuber - troye sivan 

22. have you ever unknowingly asked out a straight person? - no ive dated straight people though

23. have you ever been in love? - possibly. idk. i dont understand love

24. have you ever been heartbroken? - yes

25. how do you determine if you want to be them or be with someone - i dont, i dont know but usually ill have anxiety around them if i want to be with them

26. favourite lgb musician/band - troye sivan, years and years, hayley kiyoko, muna, frank ocean

27. what is a piece of advice you have for young / baby gays - its okay to not know, its okay to try a label and see if it fits, and its okay to be closeted if it means you will be safe

28. are you out? if so how did you come out - i am out. i came out publicly at a GSA event at my high school bc i wanted to talk about my experience openly. I came out to my parents at easter a week later

29. what is the most uncomfortable / strange coming out experience you have - i dont know, maybe when i tell straight men who wanna date me that im bi and they ask me if that means id be down for a threesome or to sleep with a girl in front of them

30. what is a piece of advice for people who may not be in a safe place to express their sexuality - your safety is most important, but if you can find a place where you can be open and honest, such as online, or a small support group go for it. 

[feycreature]

All Of Them (multiples of 3 work tho dhdhgfj)

@furrybarista asked for a few as well but here we are

1. Would you have sex with the last person you text messaged?

last person i dmed? yeah

2. You talked to an ex today, correct?

every day

3. Have you taken someones virginity?

nope

4. Is trust a big issue for you?

not really

5. Did you hang out with the person you like recently?

ive hung out with One person recently

6. What are you excited for?

dnd in about 2 hours!

7. What happened tonight?

well tonight im playing dnd, last night i finished watching dread?

8. Do you think it’s disgusting when girls get really wasted?

i think its uncomfortable to be around anyone whos really wasted, idk about disgusting

9. Is confidence cute?

yes

10. What is the last beverage you had?

i currently have a strawberry smoothie from pulp

11. How many people of the opposite sex do you fully trust?

thats a difficult question to answer when i and almost all of my friends are trans and thats confusingly worded in this context

12. Do you own a pair of skinny jeans?

yes

13. What are you gonna do Saturday night?

either play video games or dnd, probably

14. What are you going to spend money on next?

probably starbucks

15. Are you going out with the last person you kissed?

nope

16. Do you think you’ll change in the next 3 months?

absolutely

17. Who do you feel most comfortable talking to about anything?

probably dante or luca

18. The last time you felt broken?

i prefer not to think about that because its very often

19. Have you had sex today?

no

20. Are you starting to realize anything?

not that i can think of rn

21. Are you in a good mood?

yeah!

22. Would you ever want to swim with sharks?

yes!

23. Are your eyes the same color as your dad’s?

probably? idk i try to avoid eye contact with him

24. What do you want right this second?

to kiss my boyfriend

25. What would you say if the person you love/like kissed another girl/boy?

well, given that i know You, dante, you wouldnt just go and kiss someone else without talking to me about it, and assuming a conversation about that happened, i would be supportive of that endeavor

26. Is your current hair color your natural hair color?

sort of? its still brown on the sides but i dyed it red a couple months ago so its pink on top

27. Would you be able to date someone who doesn’t make you laugh?

probably not

28. What was the last thing that made you laugh?

I HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE I WANNA HUG AND NEVER LET GO SO IM JUST GONNA MAKE A KATAMARI OF LOVE

29. Do you really, truly miss someone right now?

ALL MY FRIENDS

30. Does everyone deserve a second chance?

depends what they did and how they feel about it

31. Honestly, do you hate the last boy you were talking to?

THE LAST BOY I WAS TALKING TO WAS U DANTE

32. Does the person you have feelings for right now, know you do?

I SURE HOPE U DO

33. Are you one of those people who never drinks soda?

i Rarely drink soda

34. Listening to?

in one ear by cage the elephant

35. Do you ever write in pencil anymore?

yep!

36. Do you know where the last person you kissed is?

not specifically

37. Do you believe in love at first sight?

nope

38. Who did you last call?

my mom probably

39. Who was the last person you danced with?

uhhh i think booker in 8th grade. i dont dance

40. Why did you kiss the last person you kissed?

because we were dating and we wanted to

41. When was the last time you ate a cupcake?

last night

42. Did you hug/kiss one of your parents today?

nope

43. Ever embarrass yourself in front of a crush?

i embarrass myself in front of everyone, all the time

44. Do you tan in the nude?

i have a goddamn farmer’s tan

45. If you could, would you take back your last kiss?

nope!

46. Did you talk to someone until you fell asleep last night?

yeah

47. Who was the last person to call you?

also my mom, probably

48. Do you sing in the shower?

yes

49. Do you dance in the car?

yeah,

50. Ever used a bow and arrow?

i have an archery range in my basement

51. Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer?

school photos last year

52. Do you think musicals are cheesy?

YES AND I LOVE THEM

53. Is Christmas stressful?

yes but purely bc of family interaction

54. Ever eat a pierogi?

all the time??

55. Favorite type of fruit pie?

apple

56. Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?

uhh i wanted to be an astronaut for a while

57. Do you believe in ghosts?

yeah

58. Ever have a Deja-vu feeling?

who doesnt

59. Take a vitamin daily?

nope

60. Wear slippers?

nah

61. Wear a bath robe?

i own one, dont wear it often

62. What do you wear to bed?

t shirt and pjam pants

63. First concert?

owl city

64. Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart?

walmart i guess?

65. Nike or Adidas?

i own a pair of adidas shoes thats abt it66. Cheetos Or Fritos?

fritos

67. Peanuts or Sunflower seeds?

sunflower seeds

68. Favorite Taylor Swift song?

no.

69. Ever take dance lessons?

nope

70. Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing?

i forget the exact words but the cool nerd stuff u do,

71. Can you curl your tongue?

yes

72. Ever won a spelling bee?

never been in one

73. Have you ever cried because you were so happy?

all the time

74. What is your favorite book?

lame but the great gatsby

75. Do you study better with or without music?

i dont study well, period

76. Regularly burn incense?

hate it

77. Ever been in love?

i am right now!

78. Who would you like to see in concert?

other than the artists ive already seen in concert: icon for hire, walk the moon, bastille, cage the elephant, and steam powered giraffe

79. What was the last concert you saw?

fall out boy! the mania tour! apparently cleveland was the start of the tour so i was in the first group of people to ever hear expensive mistakes!

80. Hot tea or cold tea?

iced

81. Tea or coffee?

tea

82. Favorite type of cookie?

uhhh the really good sugar cookies i learned to make off tumblr

83. Can you swim well?

id like to think so

84. Can you hold your breath without holding your nose?

didnt know there were people who cant

85. Are you patient?

on a good day

86. DJ or band, at a wedding?

dj

87. Ever won a contest?

yeah

88. Ever have plastic surgery?

nope

89. Which are better black or green olives?

depends in what

90. Opinions on sex before marriage?

go for it

91. Best room for a fireplace?

living room

92. Do you want to get married

probably 

[thethingssafhaslearnedsofar]

Act 1, I Can't be Your Hero, Baby.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

When I was a senior in college, I wrote an anonymous essay for The Daily Beast about what they wanted to call my dirty little secret, that I was undocumented. This was in 2011, before DACA, and I was one of the first undocumented students to graduate Harvard. The essay got me some attention, and agents wrote me asking if I wanted to write a memoir.

I was angry. A memoir? I was 21. I wasn't fucking Barbra Streisand. I had been writing professionally since I was 15 but only about music. I wanted to be the guy in High Fidelity. And I didn't want my first book to be a rueful tale about being a sickly Victorian orphan with tuberculosis who didn't have a social security number, which is what the agents all wanted.

The guy who eventually ended up becoming my agent respected that, did not find an interchangeable immigrant to publish a sad book, read everything I would write over the next seven years, and we kept in touch. I was the first person who wrote him on the morning of November 9th, 2016.

That morning, I received a bunch of emails from people who are really freaked out about Trump winning. And the emails, essentially, were offers to hide me in their second houses in Vermont or stay in their basements. Shit, I told my partner, they're trying to Anne Frank me.

By this point, I had read lots of books about migrants. I hated a good number of these books. I couldn't see my family in them, because I saw my parents as more than laborers, as more than sufferers or dreamers. I thought I could write something better, and I thought I was the best person to do it. I was just crazy enough. Because if you're going to write about undocumented immigrants in America, tell the story, the full story, you have to be a little bit crazy. And you certainly can't be enamored by America, not still. That disqualifies you.

I did not want to write anything inspirational. I wanted to write for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration-- the talking heads, the Dreamers in graduation caps and gowns-- and read about the people underground, not heroes, randoms, people. I wanted to write about my parents, and that's the story I'm going to tell here, the story of my parents.

If you ask my mother where she's from, she's 100% going to say, she's from the kingdom of god, because she does not like to say that she's from Ecuador, Ecuador being one of the few South American countries that has not especially outdone itself on the international stage. Magical realism basically skipped over it. And our military dictatorship never reached the mythical status of a Pinochet or a Videla. Plus, there are no world famous Ecuadorians to speak of other than the fool who housed Julian Assange at the embassy in London and Christina Aguilera's father, who she said was a domestic abuser.

If you ask my father where he's from, he will definitely say Ecuador, because he is sentimental about the country for reasons he's working out in therapy.

But if you push them, I mean really push them, they're both going to say they're from New York. If you ask them if they feel American, because you're a little narc who wants to prove your blood runs red, white, and blue, they're going to say no, we feel like New Yorkers. They've lived in New York since they left Ecuador in 1991.

I don't know much about my parents' decision to choose New York, or even the United States, as a destination. It's not that I haven't asked them why they came to the United States. It's that the answer isn't as morally satisfying as most people's answers are-- a decapitated family member, famine. And I never pressed them for more details because I don't want to apply pressure on a bruise.

The story, as far as I know it, goes something like this. My parents had just gotten married, and their small auto body business was not doing well. The idea of coming to America to work for a year to make just enough money to pay off their debts came up, and it seemed like a good idea. They left me with my dad's family when I was a year and a half old. That's about as much as I know.

My parents didn't come back after a year. They were barely making ends meet. When I was four years old, going to school in Ecuador, teachers began to comment on how gifted I was. My parents knew Ecuador was not the place for a gifted girl. The gender politics were too fucked up. And they wanted me to have all the educational opportunities they hadn't had. So that's when they brought me to New York. I was just shy of five when I stepped off the plane.

White Americans love academically achieving minorities. And I learned quickly that the most alluring thing about me was that I was young and brown and a good student, the holy trinity. I went to a Catholic elementary school on a scholarship, and we lived in Queens. My mother stayed home, and my father drove a cab. This was back when East New York was still gang country, and he had to fold his body into a little origami swan and hide under his steering wheel during crossfires in the middle of the day.

Then came September 11th, 2001. Here's how I remember the day my father started dying, not long after the twin towers fell. My father comes home from work, and I greet him in the doorway to give him a kiss hello. He walks slowly and comes toward my body at a strange angle a child could only interpret as a terrible fall. He collapses onto me to cry into my neck. I'm little, 12 or 13, but he does, he falls.

The letter says in English something about the DMV suspending driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. It was part of an attempt to strengthen security measures after 9/11. My father had just lost his job as a taxi driver. He had also lost his state ID. Over the next 20 years, he'd lose many more things, but let's put a little blue thumb tack on this memory map, the first place in Hell we visited.

September 11th changed the immigration landscaper forever. ICE was the creation of 9/11 paranoia. It changed my father, too. It was hard to see him fall, because he was the most powerful person I knew. He was a difficult man, and I was a difficult child. I was polite and craved approval from authority figures, but I was also dark and precocious. Not precocious in the, we live in Tribeca, and my kid is a born artist, kind of way. More like, my immigrant third grader is reading Hemingway but is secretly drinking Listerine and toothpaste until she throws up because she wants it to kill her, kind of way.

Only years later would I realized how real my suicidal impulses were. That was too damn young, I'd think, lying down in the dark at my doctor's office with an IV of ketamine hooked up to my arm, hoping to extinguish the suicidality that began when I was five and lay crayons around the perimeter of my bed so I'd know in the morning if I'd been secretly raped at night. I'd know because the crayons would be broken.

My father read parenting books that explained how to raise troubled children. But those children were never straight-A students who were soft-spoken and loved teachers. It confused him, and the dissonance made him angry at me. He saw me as different from other children in a way that troubled him, and he fumbled in the dark to help me with what he couldn't name.

When I was off from school for any kind of break, my father would plan out my day in half hour increments, scheduling everything from bath time, to TV shows, to coloring time, to math drills, to time to play with dolls, and even bathroom breaks. He called it my schedule, and he hand wrote it on graph paper in different colored inks and taped it to my desk. When I became overwhelmed with panic, crying hysterically, he would send me to take a cold shower or take me out on a jog around the neighborhood.

He'd set aside a magazine or a newspaper articles for me to translate. He could not review the fidelity of the translation, but he judged my penmanship. I didn't know what would have happened to me if I had not been kept away from my own thoughts for so many years. My father kept me alive.

After my father lost his job as a taxi driver, he found a job as a delivery man at a restaurant down in the Financial District. In the mornings, he would deliver breakfast to offices-- a raisin bagel with cream cheese and a coffee with hazelnut creamer, orange juice and a banana, a granola bar and chocolate milk. There was no delivery minimum, so my father delivered it all. Because the deliveries were so small, sometimes he didn't get a tip. Sometimes he was told to keep the change, a quarter. Sometimes he was tipped in pennies. He had to say, thank you, sir, thank you, ma'am.

Sometimes he was given a $20 tip for a $5.00 breakfast. He always told us about those tips. They were usually from Puerto Rican receptionists who talked to him in Spanish and asked to see photos of me. When he came home was one of those tips, it was like having my dad back from the dead. He would dance to no music, and he'd make jokes, and he'd come out of his shower looking like a teenager.

My father didn't use a bike. He made all his deliveries on foot. He speed walked while carrying bags of food to offices on Wall Street. The plastic handles of the bags would twist and cut into his fingers, and he developed large calluses on both his hands. His polyester pants rubbed up against his calves so much that he lost all the hair on his legs.

He went through many pairs of inexpensive black rubber shoes. My mother massaged his feet at night. My dad's feet are small and fat, like mine, so you can't tell when they're swollen. After a few years, my dad's feet would hurt so much that he walked like he was on hot coals, sometimes leaning on me to move from the couch to the bed. Aye, yai, yai, yai, yai, he'd say, as he limped, like a mariachi.

When I was 15, the owner of the restaurant where my father worked hired a new manager to oversee the delivery men, who were all immigrants. The guy was Puerto Rican, an American citizen, and became immediately abusive, threatening to call ICE on them, yelling at them, getting up in their faces. My father fell into a bit of a depression.

I had just watched All the President's Men. I put on my best posh accent, dialed *69 to block my number, and called the restaurant. I asked to speak to the owner. I said I was a beat reporter for a big city newspaper and had just received a tip from a customer about overhearing racist abuse in the kitchen. And did he have a comment? The owner said he'd handle it and asked me not to write the story. I don't know, man, I said, it's a pretty good story. In the end, the manager was fired, and the cloud over my father lifted.

My father was furious when I told him what I did. But not for a minute in the 15 years since have I felt that what I did was unethical. Nor have I felt guilty for having a man fired. I'd do it again, but my accent would be better.

I went to a small public high school in Times Square, where around 80% of the student body was at or below the poverty line. We were mostly all black or Latinx. I was a high achiever. I wanted to go to the University of Chicago because I found the unofficial motto, where fun goes to die, appealing. But there is no beating Harvard. That name. I needed the name to keep my parents safe.

Harvard, at the time, did not know how to deal with undocumented students. When I was there, a very successful Wall Street man who knew me from an educational NGO we both belonged to-- he as a supporter, me as a supported-- learned I was undocumented and could not legally hold a work-study job. So every semester, he wrote me a modest check. In the notes section, and he cheekily wrote, beer money.

I wrote him regular emails about my life at Harvard and my budding success as a published writer. He was always appropriate and boundaried. I had read obsessively about artists since I was a kid and considered myself an artist since I was a kid, so I didn't feel weird about older, wealthy, white people giving me money in exchange for grades or writing. It was patronage. They were Gertrude Stein, and I was a young Hemingway. I was van Gogh, crazy and broken. I truly did not have any racial anxieties about this, thank god. That kind of thing could really fuck a kid up.

Different therapists throughout the years have tried to get me to confess to cultural shock about arriving to Harvard as a poor, undocumented freshman. But the truth is there was none. I've always had a really wonderful sense of self-esteem thanks to my mother, who is a tiny bit of a narcissist and has delusions of royalty, and because of my mental illness, which comes with delusions of grandeur of its own. So I kind of felt like it was my birthright. That probably makes a lot of people very mad.

As I began to receive my diagnoses and misdiagnoses throughout my 20s-- depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, complex trauma-- I didn't feel anything other than affinity with writers I loved, people like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell. It made sense to me that I had my own demons. Of course I did.

I've always been super casual when people ask me about my parents having left me in Ecuador. That's a bravado I'd like to keep on the official record. But sometimes I think about it. I haven't talked with my parents about their having left me in Ecuador when I was a year and a half old. Sometimes I do adorable things, like take pictures of myself chugging vodka bottles or pretending to down the contents of a pill bottle, and send them to my mother with the caption, because you abandoned me.

When I am away from my partner and dog for a few days for work, and it's hard, I wonder how my parents were able to do it for three years. I don't blame either of them for it. I never have. What I'm describing to you is dirt extracted from a very tight pore. I don't feel anything about being left on the day to day, but I am told by mental health experts that it has affected me.

And I fought that conclusion. I denied it. I wanted to be a genius. I wanted my mental illnesses to be purely biological. I wanted to have been born wild and crazy and weird and brilliant, writing math equations in chalk on a window. Instead, therapist after therapist told me I had attachment issues and that my mental illnesses were related to my childhood. I left those therapists, ghosted them.

But it's not just those early years without my parents that branded me. It's the life I've lead in America as a migrant. As an undocumented person, I felt like a hologram. Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I didn't allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself to anything I'd have to let go of. Being deportable means you have to be ready to go at any moment. I've never loved a material object. When my parents took me home after my Harvard graduation, we took the Chinatown bus, and we each took one suitcase of my things. If it didn't fit, we threw it out. We threw out everything that wasn't clothes.

After I graduated from Harvard, I went to Yale to do a PhD. I never wanted to PhD. But DACA didn't exist then, and I couldn't legally get a job anywhere. And I had to buy time for something to happen-- for the DREAM Act to pass, which my dad had assured me would happened since I was in middle school. And I needed the health insurance.

It's allowed me to write, and my parents will be proud when I get that doctorate. I have fetched the American dream and laid it at my parents' feet. But the twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is that, at some point, your parents become your children. And your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has long wanted them dead.

A few years ago, my father experienced heart failure. This was the moment I had been preparing for my entire life. Everything that had happened to me since I took that New York-bound flight 24 years ago had been preparing me for this moment. Learning English, getting bangs, gaining weight, losing weight, getting the sick puppy from the pet shop-- all of that happened to prepare me to this point. My parents were sick, undocumented, uninsured, and aging out of work in a fucking racist country.

Until the pandemic hit, my father was a salad maker, feeding Manhattan's executive class. He had worked for 14 years at the same restaurant, then left. He was invited to a promising new job, lured there by an acquaintance who assured him of better hours, better treatment, a better environment. My dad is very gullible.

He spent a week at this new restaurant, where, for spare change, they had him work all day. And then at the end of the day, he was given just two and a half hours to clean an industrial kitchen-- an industrial fryer, a refrigerator, a stove, an oven, and a sink-- wash the dishes in the dishwasher, take out the trash, sweep and mop the floors, and clean the garbage chute. His body was wrecked at the end of each day. I'm too old to for this, he said. So he quit. His old job wouldn't take him back.

Desperate, he began each morning by showing up at a Latinx job agency, which would send him out to audition at a different restaurant day after day, week after week, to no avail. My dad started texting me blurry cell phone pictures from the job agency. He took the photos when he was sitting in the waiting room of the agency, waiting for his name to be called.

The first picture is of a man, maybe in his late 70s, wearing a green button down, khaki pants, and aviator sunglasses. His lips are downcast. My dad said he was applying to be a dishwasher. The second picture is of a man, maybe in his late 40s, who was wearing a black baseball cap, a gray sweater, and maroon pants. My dad said he'd had a stroke. His right arm was paralyzed, and he had a limp and his right leg. He was also applying to be a dishwasher.

It's hard to see men like that not get jobs, my dad texted. I hope they have children who can take care of them, I respond. What I mean to say is, I hope they have a child like me. I hope everyone has a child like me. I tell god, this is going to kill me anyway, so just take me. Patent and mass produce and distribute me to undocumented immigrants at Walmarts. I am a professional undocumented immigrant's daughter.

I saved the photos on my phone as a reminder to myself of why I need to be successful, so successful, statistical anomaly successful. Then I deleted them because they harmed my mental health. I wish I still had them.

My parents live in New York City, and after the pandemic hit in March, they lost their jobs. They're both in Queens, the center of the center of the epidemic. I've prohibited my father from doing dangerous gig work, like deliveries. And I've begun to financially support them both. My mom is immunocompromised. She has an extremely low white blood cell count.

I have really lovely dreams, crazy fucking cotton candy fantasy dreams, dreams that make my whole body feel warm, where I cut up my chest, no anesthesia, take out my lungs, and implant them into her chest with the tree stitch. And if I'm lucky, in the seconds I have before I die, I would be able to see her heart. We wouldn't even need a ventilator.

There is a Harvard scholar named Roberto Gonzalez who has conducted longitudinal studies on the effects of undocumented life on young people. He found his subjects suffered chronic headaches, toothaches, ulcers, sleep problems, and eating issues, which is funny to find in research because I get these migraines, an 8 or 9 on the 10 point scale. I have a CAT scan, an MRI. I go to the neurologist. The readings are all inconclusive. I'm told it's a migraine with an unknown cause. Have you tried yoga, they say.

The headaches get worse when I write about my parents. From migrants shot in the head by Border Patrol, to migrant children being forcibly injected with drugs in detention centers, US government's crimes against immigrants are beyond the pale. And the whole world knows. But when I was growing up and throughout the Obama administration, similar crimes were happening, if on a different scale, and I'm not sure the same people cared.

I felt crazy for thinking we were under attack, watching my neighbors disappear and then going to school, and watching the nightly news, and watching award shows and seeing no mention. I felt crazy watching the white supremacist state slowly kill my father. I would frantically tell everyone that there was no such thing as the American dream. But then some all-star immigrants around me, who had done things the right way, preached a different story, and Americans ate that up. It all made me feel crazy. I also am crazy. Pero why?

Researchers have shown that the flooding of stress hormones resulting from a traumatic separation from your parents at a young age kills off so many dendrites and neurons in the brain that it results in permanent psychological and physical changes. One psychiatrist I went to told me that my brain looks like a tree without branches. So I just think about all the children who have been separated from their parents, and there's a lot of us, past and present, and some under more traumatic circumstances than others, like those who are in internment camps right now.

And I just imagine us as an army of mutants. What will happen to us? Who will we become? Who will take care of us? We've all been touched by this monster, and our brains are forever changed, all of us trees without branches.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio reading an essay adapted from her brand new memoir, The Undocumented Americans. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/700/transcript

[mbergen]

In the beginning of all this, I mentioned Tammy had 2 other nurse friends in New York City.  This is one of them. Carrie Ann. She has a Very Special Story to tell. Tammy and Carrie met at Kindred Hospital in Peoria, and then they both worked for awhile at IVCH in Peru Illinois. Carrie is a Travel Nurse and her specialty is OB, Labor and Delivery. Carrie’s Day 1 of 21 started on March 28 2020. She is staying at the New Yorker in Manhattan and working at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. This is so heart wrenching to read her posts. But she is telling how it is. These are story’s that should be told. Their are some doubters out their that just don’t realize what is truly going on in this world with this virus. The people in the New York City are fighting for survival. We need to know what these nurses and doctors and all personal are going through to help these people daily, …..and you might wonder…. why do they do it?…..It’s because they feel the need to help. They are answering the call that they are trained for….It’s their LOVE OF LIFE AND PEOPLE. So in this blog I will copy the words directly from Carries FB site…..These will all be her words……Preserved for us all….

So Lets Follow her for her 21 days fighting Covid-19 in New York City

CarrieAnn is at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. March 27 at 9:57 AM · Chicago, IL ·

I’ve said it before .. being a nurse isn’t what I do, it’s who I am. It’s not always a choice, it’s a calling, sometimes you don’t even understand it yourself. So in the words of my little brother, Im going to “bring my ass home”, but for now, let’s do this New York

Jacobi Medical Center

CarrieAnn March 28 at 6:39 PM ·

Day 1. Jacobi Medical Center. I’m overwhelmed and proud to be part of this group of nurses. Ps didn’t post this morning.

CarrieAnn March 28 at 6:52 PM ·

So I’ve decided I’m going to do something I don’t normally do, and I’m going to post about my days while I’m here..as much as I can by the time I make it to the end of the day. And it’s not going to be your average sugar coated filtered Facebook bs, I’m going to be raw and honest about what is happening here. Unfriend me now if you don’t want to know. Day 1 started with some uncertainty because it’s the first day. No one really knows what they’re doing. A bus shuttles us from the hotel to the hospitals we are assigned to. There was a group of us on our first day so we had a day of hospital orientation before heading to the floors tomorrow. While waiting at the elevators to go up to education the nurse escorting us answered her phone and started crying, asking the person to repeat what they’d just said.. then cried out, and sobbed. She walked away then came back and told us one of their educators just died from corona. On the bus back to the hotel at the end of Day 1 and I receive a text from a newer nurse, I think she’s been a nurse 4 years, she’s young, a lovely girl, and she was assigned to Elmhurst. She just got on her bus, and this is what her Day 1 will look like. PLEASE PRAY.

Mar 29 at 8:59AM

Day 2 in NYC. I am still at Jacobi Center and I’m in Labor & Delivery where we still have plenty of supplies.

The text from my friend about her first night at a different hospital.

“ER -one nurse taking care of FIVE intubated “sedated” possible positive covid patients. five to one, he was just running around trying to keep a BP going. they are out of ALL supplies… they’re out of pumps!? they had fentanyl/levo/propofol gtts with no pumps. they were titrating by the roller clamp. maxed out on vent settings, with sats in 70-80s and they were happy with that sat. patients coding every couple minutes. it’s a 50 bed ER, and they have over 200 patients in there right now. patients just stacked on top of each other and having to move stretchers around to just reach a patient in the back row. they made a tent morgue outside of the ER and it’s full already.”

Feeling thankful beyond words for my assignment today, and praying this nurse has peace in her heart and mind this morning when she lays down to sleep. Even just for a few hours. ♥️

March 29 at 9:08PM

Today I got my assignment, and thanked God above my whole walk to the labor and delivery unit. That group of nurses were so appreciative -so thankful that we’re here to help- I’ve never felt so appreciated walking onto a shift. They took me in as one of their own made me feel welcome and did not miss an opportunity to thank me, all day long.

The TV in the break room runs between ABC NBC CNN and Fox news all day long, trying to keep up with the latest with Covid while managing our patients.

Employees at the hospital were picketing outside the emergency room and I’m not even really sure why… The biggest complaint I hear is about having to use the N95 masks for a week before we can get a new one. They gave out small brown paper bags, like a lunch bag, to store it in.

The labor and delivery unit is dated, and not well laid out. The cabinets are falling off hinges with long mismatched screws holding them on, and there is paint chipping off most of the corners of walls, and along the ceilings. But it doesn’t change the overall feeling of optimism on this unit, and in the midst of everything going on all around us, we had a delivery of a healthy baby girl today.

Every nurse that got on the bus wore her day on her face, some spoke it in words, some look defeated. One cried. We talked about our day.. the good, and the bad, then finished the bus ride back with our acapella rendition of Joe Diffys John Deere Green. RIP Joe

March 30 at 7:02PM

Day3. Today I learned why Mondays get a bad rap. New York hospitals did that. It doesn’t matter how experienced or strong of a nurse you think you are, you’re not ready for this. I got there, took my assignment in triage, and the door didn’t stop revolving. Within the first hour all the triage beds were full and there was a line waiting. Some were belligerent and cussing demanding to be seen, some were tearful, all were scared. Everyone’s wearing masks and complaining of how hot they are. Management is visible, on the floor working, asking what you need, how they can help.

These women are coming in alone, leaving their husbands, sisters, moms- whoever brought them- in the waiting room as they are assessed and treated. If they stay they can have one support person, no trading off- ONE person, per patient, per stay…. WHEN THEY ARE HAVING A BABY. Or when they’re not. Some of these girls are miscarrying, or having a threatened miscarriage, and they have to pick the one person that can sit next to them, hug them, tell them it’s going to be okay. One person. Because of this virus. Oh, and when they do deliver, dad gets one hour to bond then they have to leave .. til mom goes home.

Covid in pregnant women is a hard thing to look at. She’s struggling to breath and her 02 sats are in the 70-80s. Do you know how much oxygen that means her baby is getting? She went to ICU. I didn’t have time to check and see how she was doing after she left our floor.

I also didn’t have time to eat, drink, or pee. I can feel my heartbeat in my feet after sitting down for 10 minutes on this bus, and don’t even feel sorry for myself because I had more help than the night shift I just left.

March 31 at 9:27PM

I wasn’t going to post words tonight, but just a picture. If you haven’t seen it, this isn’t some professional National Geographic wait for the perfect poignant shot picture. It’s a snapshot, taken with a phone, by a nurse, here, in New York City.

But then…

Ive always been a believer of “to each their own”. I’ve never had a hard time respecting someone’s opinion or beliefs without agreeing with them myself. And then today I find myself typing out the words “you’re a fucking idiot” in response to a strangers comment on a friends post. A stranger. Going on and on about how this virus is a hoax. Well-?! .. is he..? an IDIOT?? Are people that fn STUPID? I just hope..these individuals don’t end up with the virus themselves and need the medical attention and treatment from one of these doctors or nurses that read that shit. Because I think, for the first time in my life I would walk on by.

April 5 at 7:05 PM

Day 5 was mixed. I am sore and I am tired. My back hurts from being on my feet for 15 hours a day, and there are open spots on the back of both my ears from wearing a surgical mask over the N95, to try to make it last longer. You end every day with a headache from the tightness and pressure of the N95 on your face all day. We have two rooms just dedicated to corona virus rule outs on Labor and Delivery, and we are going to ICU to do fetal monitoring for positive moms. We constantly weave in and out of ambulances on the way to and from the hotel. I’m not complaining.

I was present and praising God at the beginning of 2 new lives today. The OB charge nurse called the 4 of us crisis nurses together n she stood up and told us that when she saw on the news that nurses were coming from all over the country to help in NY, she was emotional and touched. When she heard her hospital was getting 200 nurses, she was excited. But when we walked onto her unit to work, she couldn’t believe it. She thanked us with a sincerity that was raw and I will never forget.

Across town my friend Sid had a different day. When she text me I put my phone down and cried. You don’t even have to be there to feel the terror of that shift. Its not plateaued, and it’s not slowing down. Again, she is not at the same hospital I am.

****five codes… they all die. staff is so so rude and unhelpful. it’s such a toxic environment. my patient was one of them at 0630. my vent stopped working because it’s a damn portable and he’s been on it for three days. they refused to get him another one and said that they had to save them for other patients… I bagged him for a good 30-45 minutes without a peep valve and of course he started to decompensate. it was me and a resident and nobody would help, he coded and died. the bus has left me. I have to wait for a van to come get me. we are reusing code carts over and over, we have no oxygen on the unit, the low oxygen alarms are going off, we are out of sedation, we’re using pediatric pulse ox’s… i’m doing things that are just going against my morals and it’s so hard to see how these patients are going down. I do not think covid is killing these people, it’s the lack of staff, education, equipment and resources…. *****

And so now there’s that.

Oh, and my other friend here, that I came with, she was in the ER today, positive.

CarrieAnn April 3 at 8:07 PM ·

On day 7, the Midwest is looking really good. After a week here, working nonstop, you’re a different person. I miss home, miss my kids and I miss my husband, Joshua, who tried everything from arguing to pleading with me not to go-because he was worried about my health-but has been indescribably supportive, and encouraging me every day. I love you. Im irritable and emotional. Tears fell out of my eyes and right down onto my patients bed yesterday as I’m leaning over her doing all the things when we lost fetal heart tones. That’s not how I nurse, and has nevvver happened. I just couldn’t help it. The feeling of impending doom is heavy. There are numerous morgue trailers, morgue tents, and mobile morgue trucks all over the city. Ambulances constantly speeding by, lights on, horns blaring. Don’t miss the view from my patients labor room below. The hospitals here have now started ethical triage. That’s when families are simply told there are no ventilators to save your family member. Do they need a ventilator to survive? Yes? Then roll them over there to die. People over 65 have been denied ventilators to give it to a younger person who has a better chance. WHAT-? Many healthcare workers here are writing their last will and testament. New York has now initiated orders that first responders cannot transport people to hospitals if they cannot be revived on the field. They just don’t…even…take…them.  Can you imagine, in our country, calling 911 because your wife can’t breath and they won’t even put her into the ambulance? Thousands of nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors have come to New York, and are risking their lives to help. NO ONE knows how they will respond to the virus..you may be okay, you may die. All you have to do is stay home. Or you could be standing in the emergency room hearing “I’m sorry but we don’t have a ventilator for your wife/son/daughter.” No bullshit. How bout the NYFD though, greeting nurses for our shift 🙌🏼❤️

.

CarrieAnn April 5 at 10:07 AM ·

Yesterday was day 8, and it was the closest representation of a “normal” day in labor and delivery. I had a 1:1 mag patient that I was able to give the appropriate amount of attention to, and I didn’t feel like running off the floor once. I’ve gotten a lot of support and kindness from the staff nurses here, and that makes a huge difference. There are 2 covid+ moms on the unit- these women are SICK- and we sectioned a mom that was in ICU because her oxygen was in the 80’s, and although she resisted having a c/s all day, insisting God would get her through it, her body couldn’t win out over the strain the virus was putting on it. Her baby was born alive and went to NICU.. but this unit continues to focus on life and beginnings. It’s upbeat- a small little bubble of happiness compared to the rest of this city. I also received a package from the best best friend, Lynn, with more “stuff” I couldn’t live without! Shaina, you’re a special kind of person, and I’ll never forget the N95s you had for yourself, but sent to me instead. ♥️ So I’ll use this opportunity to share some pics I’ve taken since I’ve been here..none too exciting, no touristy or cool things that one would want to see on their first trip to New York, but New York nonetheless.

Madison Square Garden

New Yorker, Carries Hotel

CarrieAnn April 5 at 3:02 PM ·

Live♥️ NYFD here showing love to the health care workers!

CarrieAnn Munson April 6 at 9:38 AM ·

Day 9….Yesterday was my 9th day in a row working in New York City. The NYFD came to Jacobi and showed the nurses and docs some love, and that was cool. L&D was slow so I was floated to PEDS, which isn’t pediatrics at all anymore. It’s now an adult med-surg with double occupancy rooms. Practically every patient is covid positive or covid rule-out. The stream of admissions literally doesn’t stop and I heard the charge nurse say I’m at maximum capacity now so what do I do- put 3 in a room? The mood is still upbeat. This charge nurse was joking and laughing, trying to keep his nurses light and moral high. One of the nurses in my group got onto the bus tearful, saying she lost one of the patients she’s taken care of since we arrived here. A 38 year old man, who left his wife and 10 year old son, and died alone because of quarantine. The things etched in our minds eye and memories are hard to explain in words, you just can’t understand it without seeing it. The people who are really sick go from bad to worse quickly, and recovery, if at all, is very slow. The few people that do get extubated, are still 100% dependent on BiPAP. For those who are intubated, more than half are on very strong medications to keep their blood pressure up. And still many of them are dying anyway, despite our best efforts. The most tragic part, is that they are alone. Staff uses their iPhones regularly so that families can use FaceTime to see their person one last time, and say goodbye. There are videos people are taking suggesting that the situation in New York is not as bad as the media projects. I don’t have the time to watch all the news right now, and I can agree that the streets, even around the hospitals, are not crowded. However, that is NOT an accurate depiction of where actual patient care is being provided. At least in Queens, and the Bronx.. even Manhattan, every department that cares for the critically ill is stretched way beyond normal capacity. I have been working with nurses and physicians, anesthesiologists, general surgeons, gynecologists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and nurse anesthetists, all of whom have been stepping in to do their best to function as intensive care and/or emergency medical providers. In the emergency room, there literally is no more room for additional stretchers, and those less ill are sitting in chairs, for hours and hours. This pandemic is real. The severity, which luckily doesn’t seem to impact the majority, is devastating for the minority. Please- distance yourself from others. Act like you have it, and everyone who doesn’t live with you has it too. You may get Covid, you may not. You may get really sick, you may not. But you could be the reason someone else does, without ever knowing.. and some of them are DYING. Dying with no family member there in their final moments…and that would be much worse than missing out on time with your friends, or not eating in your favorite restaurant.

CarrieAnn  April 7 at 8:24 PM ·

Day 10….Yesterday was day 10. My friend was woken by a call on her room phone from the NYPD, saying there was a complaint against her and she needed to come to the police station for questioning. The officer told her he didn’t want to embarrass her so he would give her time to shower, and she could wear her street clothes (not scrubs) down to the lobby where he would meet her in 40 minutes, walk her out and cuff her before putting her into his car. She called home to fill them in and was told to call the police station back and ask questions. She learned that no officer had called her, no complaint had been filed against her, and no officer was coming to pick her up to take her to the police station for questioning. She notified our company who quickly made arrangements to move her, and make her non-registered. They are also making frequent checks on her. So not only are we fighting the virus, lack of sleep and hot meals, long hours on our feet, homesickness, death in our faces…. now we have to worry about abduction, or worse. W. T. F. Today was my 11th day working in New York. It was a good day. I was just a labor nurse, it was a nice pace, with wonderful fellow nurses, and a good delivery. God is present, and He is good. I am tired, and homesick, He knew I needed a day like this.

CarrieAnn April 9 at 6:04 AM ·

I have NO WORDS for the overwhelming feeling of gratitude and appreciation to each and every one of you- and I know who you are- that took the time out of your day -and money out of your wallet- to send me something here in New York to make my time easier. I’ll never forget it. ♥️♥️♥️

CarrieAnn  April 9 at 7:03 PM ·

Day 13….Today was my 13th day here. Today we also had military nurses arrive at the hospital and assigned to the floor. It is an actual deployment for them. Today I started my shift counting the codes paged overhead, and just realized I stopped counting at 11, hours ago. Today we started swabbing all patients admitted to labor, regardless if they show symptoms or not. Have any of you had this done?..or seen it done?… if you haven’t yet, go ahead and search a video. The swab goes up your nostril all the way back, to your throat. Thrrroaat. Their eyes water and they try to stall, some women push the providers hands away over and over..and then they swab the other side. I miss home, and it feels so much longer than 2 weeks. But I have so much love and support from home..thanks again to all of you that sent me care packages, you can’t know how much of a difference it makes. And this unit continues to make each of us one of their own, embracing us more every day, with endless thank you’s. I still feel healthy, with no signs of illness, so I won’t be whining or complaining.

This is Carrie’s first 13 days.  It is so hard to comprehend as we just sit here every day waiting for the days to pass.  We see it on the news, but the reality does really have the full impact unless you know someone who is fighting the fight……Part 2 will follow her to DAY 21

Part 1….Carrie in New York….Tammy’s Friend….Coronavirus In the beginning of all this, I mentioned Tammy had 2 other nurse friends in New York City.

[chickenfetus]

all moongan

thank you for asking falen tbh i love u sm and i love doing these 

omg is this ask for this ask meme i literally almost posted this along with the wrong ask fml

1: when you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?

more cereal than mik because.. i dont eat cereal with milk……… i love the crunch

2: do you like the feeling of cold air on your cheeks on a wintery day?

as someone who lives in a tropical country is that what its called idk we dont have seasons and it never gets lower than 25 degrees so yes that would be ideal

3: what random objects do you use to bookmark your books?

hrmmmmm… i just remember the page number?? or try to lmao if i dont remember i just skim through the pages and try to recognise where i left off

4: how do you take your coffee/tea?

with at least 2 packets of sugar tbh…. i dont drink coffee

5: are you self-conscious of your smile?

omg story time i went 2 get my braces removed and the dentist wanted to take pics so he was like “smile with your teeth!” and i was like ok! but then he kept saying i wasnt doing it right lmao… guess whos never smiled b4… (me) so he told me 2 practice my smile lol i didnt answer the qn but ya,,, i am probably

6: do you keep plants?

i used 2 be very against plants… now theyre okay i guess i dont rly keep any

7: do you name your plants?

refer 2 6

8: what artistic medium do you use to express your feelings?

art??? i havent drawn in awhile

9: do you like singing/humming to yourself?

no LOL

10: do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?

on my side!!!! i cant sleep on my back bc i gotta hug smth.. and my stomach is out of the qn

11: what’s an inner joke you have with your friends?

🅱️… and .. same brainwaves…. poor mans ____…. this is all from the shady hq im so sorry my other pals

12: what’s your favorite planet?

the moon for no real reason

13: what’s something that made you smile today?

hMMm, watching astro and mx perform??? and just being shady with bell lmao

14: if you were to live with your best friend in an old flat in a big city, what would it look like?

this… question,,,..so im thinking of a bright place with white walls and translucent curtains so the light call fill the (living) room perfectly and everythings really ??? sunny and shit idk its warm… the floor’s made of (fake?) wood and theres a small kitchen bc i cant cook and idk if my friend would be able to lol.. theres 2 bed rooms both are painfully small but it works.. theres one other room with a closet for clothes… the bathroom is just a shower, sink and toilet… theres no washing machine rip and ?? thats about it poor mens life

i watchd the like we used mv again and i realized ...... that is literally where i got this imagery from thanks the rose i love a relatable band

15: go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is!

heres a fact (?) from me first: it rains diamonds on one planet ?? mecury maybe?? mars??? whomst.. this isnt even a fact its ,me trying to recall shit

ok real fact: There are thousands of other planets out there. sorry lads this website doesnt wanna have fun

16: what’s your favorite pasta dish?

is spaghetti bolognese a pasta dish

17: what color do you really want to dye your hair?

im chill with my current hair colour??? bc its brown sometimes idk shitty hair

18: tell us about something dumb/funny you did that has since gone down in history between you and your friends and is always brought up.

i asked my irl friends (group name: panic support group) and this is what they said

K: everything

E: when u were one hour late (i dont remember this happening but i do know im always late but never for an hour past me wyd)

19: do you keep a journal? what do you write/draw/ in it?

goDD i dont but i sure want to

20: what’s your favorite eye color?

this is strange but every eye colour is my favourite although ppl with two or more colours in their eyes are so cool

21: talk about your favorite bag, the one that’s been to hell and back with you and that you love to pieces.

its just my school bag lmao i got it 4 years ago and i take it everywhere even if the event is “small” and they ask us to bring “smaller bags” ill bring my big ass school bag anyway it looks like this (i dont have to but linking stuff is so fun)

22: are you a morning person?

technically.???its the holidays but i still manage to get up before 10 (most of the time) and … even if i have like 5 hours of sleep i manage to feel awake really easily????

23: what’s your favorite thing to do on lazy days where you have 0 obligations?

tf i just use my phone lmao this is what ive been doing for like a month now… i could watch every vlive i havent watched yet, i could make video compilations i could practice my art but… even though im out of school im still procrastinating.. legends only

24: is there someone out there you would trust with every single one of your secrets?

mmmm falens the closest to that

25: what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever broken into?

my classroom

26: what are the shoes you’ve had for forever and wear with every single outfit?

white converse??  i have 2 get new ones every like 2 years since theyre also my school shoes and break easily….. other than those i have my blueblack converse too (i dont wear them as much so theyre still in one piece)

27: what’s your favorite bubblegum flavor?

i dont eat bubblegum bc im always afraid ill swallow it and die and im p sure its illegal here

28: sunrise or sunset?

sunset but i dont look outside enough for either

29: what’s something really cute that one of your friends does and is totally endearing?

hm……… with jen its when she sends me asks on anon despite it being super obvious like im not a Fan when my friends send me asks on anon bc sometimes i cant tell and i get a sense of false hope but w/ jen its okay but i know its her

with bell its when they reply to my keyboard smashes with their own keyboard smashes lmao and when they just??//?? say smth cute abt their faves (lately its been sanha thank u sh)

30: think of it: have you ever been truly scared?

ya lmao when i have 2 sleep alone and its completely dark i have half a mind 2 believe some random supernatural being is out for me

31: what is your opinion of socks? do you like wearing weird socks? do you sleep with socks? do you confine yourself to white sock hell? really, just talk about socks.

hmM. socks are great i always wear them bc i wear shoes almost every time i go outside… i dont have any weird socks bc im Boring but i have 3 pkmn songs and 1 gudetama socks/.. bUT I DID buy my friend those socks with individual toe pockets… it was so funny when my other friend saw it she choked on her drink and almost spat it out. we laughed so hard we hit our heads against each other i love friendship.. i have 2 wear white socks for sch bc… aesthetic? god if i know lmao….. i only ever wear ankle socks bc….. socks any higher than that? cancelled.

32: tell us a story of something that happened to you after 3AM when you were with friends.

listen ive never stayed up later than like 1am ok maybe 2am??? but i was working on like a project that was due the next day for school with my groupmates (friends) so does that count lmao

33: what’s your fave pastry?

bread………. sugar donuts…….. i am Aware that thats not how u spell it but wtv

34: tell us about the stuffed animal you kept as a kid. what is it called? what does it look like? do you still keep it?

why does this ask so many qns in 1 qn……. i had a cat?? it had pink stripes and it didnt have a name bc i dont name my stuff… even my pokemon.. and yeah i still have it except its in a big dusty bag where all my other toys are kept

35: do you like stationary and pretty pens and so on? do you use them often?

i kinda have to use stationary for school so ya.. p often is correct… pretty pens??? i dont rly see the point whoopS!!! in exams u can only use black or blue so

36: which band’s sound would fit your mood right now?

im listening 2 day6 so like day6

37: do you like keeping your room messy or clean?

my room isnt even my room i just go there to sleep .. the place im always at is like a study area except its open?? so everyone can see me lol and . its not messy?? if u look at it from far but the shit on the desk and shelves are so fucking messy god i need to pack those

38: tell us about your pet peeves!

aLRIGHT LADS welcome 2 megans ted talk

(skip this if ur not fond of drama)

so something (refer to the song he said suits myday) happened with jae recently and ive seen fans trying to defend him by @ing him and saying that they love him which is fine - great even! but what i dont approve is how everyone’s basically forgotten about the whole matter because they had concerts so instead of @-ing him and asking him to explain himself, they tell him what a great concert it was which is also great bc their concerts are honestly amazing. basically my pet peeve is when ppl dismiss the problematic action of some people just bc they like them.

another thing is that there were some fans who started guilting others for wanting to drop day6 completely because of what jae did and in my opinion i think it is totally cool to want to drop a group if they did smth bad like??? its ur life???? u can choose who you want to like. what is not cool is pulling out all the good things the person has ever done in their entire life and try to remind others about the positive sides of the person. yes. they’re an encouraging person, etc. but that does not cancel out the bad things they’ve done until they explain/apologise. what is infuriating is just the manner some people took it?? they literally went ahead and tweeted shit like “would your parents drop you if you did smth wrong?” and “you’re seriously gonna drop someone whos been nothing been nice because of one incident?” yes. people will and you dont have any fucking right to stop them? so dont go pulling out receipts.

another thing. its also okay to want to stan the whole group even if someone has done smth problematic. like? to me youre cool if youre able to see and acknowledge the bad shit someone has done and still stand by their side while educating them at the same time its nice to have faith in your idols. however, i wont say much when your idols dont respond and/or respond in a way that shows absolutely no remorse. its cool if you want to support them too, despite that.

tldr; dont fucking excuse someone’s behaviour/action just because youre so far up their fucking ass. dont pull out shit from before either, be it good or bad. and lastly, its okay to want to drop/continue supporting them, its your life.

i just wanted to talk about this tbh,, it was nice to see a few mydays trying to urge jae to explain the whole situation but seeing as he still hasnt and couldve it really irks me :-/

okay update its been a day and i havent really thought about this but im kinda conflicted now bc jae still hasnt talked about the song and im probably just making a big deal out of smth that will never happen again but it really doesnt sit right with me knowing that jae recommended that song to his fans and said it suited mydays?? bc looking at the lyrics... i SURE hope not... idk i have neither forgiven or forgotten but he’s okay now.? i cant stay mad at someone for that long anyway ill never forgive him 4 it though lmao petty ppl only

another thing... jae’s still an amazing person to me with all the encouraging words he says to mydays but this one incident is just soOOOOO hrm and i did go off tangent with the question as usual lol

39: what color do you wear the most?

i wear a lot of colours tbh??? but bc its rly hot out ive just been wearing the same shirt every time i leave the house and its black so

40: think of a piece of jewelry you own: what’s it’s story? does it have any meaning to you?

i dont wear jewelry rip

41: what’s the last book you remember really, really loving?

challenger deep

42: do you have a favorite coffee shop? describe it!

hm,, ive only ever visited this coffee shop like more than once bc the girl i used 2 like showed it to me b4 like 2 years ago and it was nice i liked their mocha frappe and its cozy i guess??? sometimes i go there with friends to study/just eat but i havent gone in awhile.., its two stories and it has an open air sitting area too i prefer sitting inside bc the sun is a big no thanks.. the ceiling is kind of like?? going downward?? like the kind iin attics???? idk man it was nice

43: who was the last person you gazed at the stars with?

u cant see shit here sorry

44: when was the last time you remember feeling completely serene and at peace with everything?

cant relate

45: do you trust your instincts a lot?

yea?? sometimes i just gotta bc my brain wont shut the fuck up

46: tell us the worst pun you can think of.

suddenly all of the puns i know have left my mind thanks @ me

47: what food do you think should be banned from the universe?

vegetables

48: what was your biggest fear as a kid? is it the same today?

the dark and whats basically in it???? like ghosts zombies and shit u kno the scary shit

49: do you like buying CDs and records? what was the last one you bought?

i like buying albums?? theres a CD in those so it counts lmao i bought sunrise by day6

50: what’s an odd thing you collect?

boxes??? like containers????

51: think of a person. what song do you associate with them?

boxy and letting go by day6

52: what are your favorite memes of the year so far?

YOU KNOW I HAD TO DO IT TO THEM and oh worm

53: have you ever watched the rocky horror picture show? heathers? beetlejuice? pulp fiction? what do you think of them?

me: rocky.. ?????? from astro.. /?? no ive never heard of any of those and i saw the word horror so u wont hear abt those from me any time soon

54: who’s the last person you saw with a true look of sadness on their face?

i literally havent been outside for 2 days

55: what’s the most dramatic thing you’ve ever done to prove a point?

be petty aka yesterday i changed my twitter icon from jae 2 brian bc jae’s being a child rn so hes out

56: what are some things you find endearing in people?

when they ramble abt smth they like thanksk buds

57: go listen to bohemian rhapsody. how did it make you feel? did you dramatically reenact the lyrics?

is this the song from p!atd i have it in my playlist lmao oh i fucing hate this song i always skip it im not listening

58: who’s the wine mom and who’s the vodka aunt in your group of friends? why?

idk what either of those are but bell and boxy

59: what’s your favorite myth?

idk any

60: do you like poetry? what are some of your faves?

anything that eunwoo has ever written

61: what’s the stupidest gift you’ve ever given? the stupidest one you’ve ever received?

ive given eggs for karissa’s birthday b4 and i got a kermit its not stupid tho its just the closest thign i could think of

62: do you drink juice in the morning? which kind?

i drink water juice everyday every minute every hour

63: are you fussy about your books and music? do you keep them meticulously organized or kinda leave them be?

my books are all in shelves lads i just  heard the fucking keys rattle im not doing this shit im logging off night

ok day 3 and im back like i said previously my books are on shelves i tried rearranging them by series b4 but my housekeeper rearrnaged them randomly the next day so i gave up

i make playlists for songs that i like, really like (i still skip them sometimes rip) and songs that my friend recommends me i have a seperate playlist for the songs i like in japanese 2

64: what color is the sky where you are right now?

light blue?? like its actually p white bc its cloudy

65: is there anyone you haven’t seen in a long time who you’d love to hang out with?

m not rly

66: what would your ideal flower crown look like?

just. leaves maybe??

67: how do gloomy days where the sky is dark and the world is misty make you feel?

Horror Movie

68: what’s winter like where you live?

oh winter is fucking fantastic it never gets colder than 25 degrees celsius here and if it does rain it lasts for like 10 minutes

69: what are your favorite board games?

i used to rly like snake and ladders and monopoly :-o

70: have you ever used a ouija board?

im not ready for that kinda death

71: what’s your favorite kind of tea?

english breakfast or earl gray??? those r like the standard right

72: are you a person who needs to note everything down or else you’ll forget it?

ya but i never do bc i either forget to or am just 2 lazy

73: what are some of your worst habits?

being lazy + procrastinating :-D

74: describe a good friend of yours without using their name or gendered pronouns.

okie :-o ..

they’re great ok ive talked abt them like 10 times in the span of 2 months but whatever folks

they’re super nice, kind and just all of the positive adjectives out there in the dictionary ...... they’ve helped me multiple times and they’re always there 2 lend me a listening ear (or in our case, eye lmao) idk??? im just super comfortable around them always and im honestly so thankful we became mutuals (and subsequently friends) last year!!!! i cant say a lot bc ill just get v repetitive but overall they’re an awesome friend and im glad we still communicate daily via twitter and sometimes our skype sessions even if they’re kinda awkward bc i never know when 2 talk bc im scared ill speak and theyll say smth and itll turn into a MESS which actually happened lmao  

im looking forward to the day our skype sessions become super smooth and easy going!!!

75: tell us about your pets!

i have none but id die for boxys cats

76: is there anything you should be doing right now but aren’t?

well yeah always tbh but its not smth i have to do but more like want to do im just 2 lazy to get around doing it

77: pink or yellow lemonade?

?? i almost said lemons arent pink but i Remembered...... yellow lemonade

78: are you in the minion hateclub or fanclub?

i feel like this is an Attack? okay LISTEN so story time again.

on the flight back from japan i watched the alien covenant and i couldnt even get past the scene where the baby alien was gonna kill the poor guy who ended up being locked up with the infected dude as soon as i saw the blood and the alien emerge from the guy’s back i bolted lmao

so to calm myself down nd block that memory from my mind i went ahead and watched despicable me 3.. which HONESTLY im the worst critic ever but in my humble opinion.... the movie was good????????? idk i didnt watch minions the movie though i got lazy again whooopS!

anwyay i sidetracked but im neutral im not a fan but i wouldnt go out of my way to call minions annoying?? bc they really arent? i feel like its only seen that way bc of how people make posts abt how annoying minions are even tho.. they arent??

79: what’s one of the cutest things someone has ever done for you?

my memory hates me so every specific thing my friends have ever done for me has left my mind but .

the cutest thing? everything my friends do for me

80: what color are your bedroom walls? did you choose that color? if so, why?

theyre yellow and no i didnt theyve been there ever since i could remember

81: describe one of your friend’s eyes using the most abstract imagery you can think of.

lava cake

82: are/were you good in school?

yeah i was good in school for like the first three years and this year i just flopped so badly lmao and its my important year too oh well my exams r over and i still dont have a backup plan in mind

83: what’s some of your favorite album art?

all of dance gavin dance’s albums have awesome art

84: are you planning on getting tattoos? which ones?

back when i was really into 5sos i thought of getting a tally since that was their logo at that time but now no not really unless i decide to get lance’s face tattooed onto my forehead on impulse

85: do you read comics? what are your faves?

im keeping up with hq, bnha and tg manga!!!!

86: do you like concept albums? which ones?

idk what those r but sure

87: what are some movies you think everyone should watch at least once in their lives?

big hero 6

88: are there any artistic movements you particularly enjoy?

who wrote this whats up with these questions

i googled and.. not really?? they all look nice

89: are you close to your parents?

close enough to stand being in the same room as them but not close enough to want to initiate conversations

90: talk about your one of you favorite cities.

tokyo was really cool (literally) and if i ever go again id love to go with friends so we can explore more??

91: where do you plan on traveling this year?

japan was supposed to be the only plan for this year but my grandad passed away so i had to go to malaysia multiple times earlier this year ik this wasnt the qn but ive already went to the planned destination tm so

92: are you a person who drowns their pasta in cheese or a person who barely sprinkles a pinch?

BARELY SPRINKLES A PINCH im anti cheese

93: what’s the hairstyle you wear the most?

um. like?? i tie the sides of my hair that cover my face back??? bc i dont like hair in my face

94: who was the last person you know to have a birthday?

bell

95: what are your plans for this weekend?

hopefully something useful

96: do you install your computer updates really quickly or do you procrastinate on them a lot?

i also click remind me tomorrow lmao

97: myer briggs type, zodiac sign, and hogwarts house?

infp-t, capricorn, hufflepuff (same as falen nd jen yay)

98: when’s the last time you went hiking? did you enjoy it?

uh ive never been hiking and i dont plan on it sorry body

99: list some five (or id never shut up) songs that resonate to your soul whenever you hear them.

currently......

when you love someone - day6

like we used to - the rose

crazy sexy cool - astro

death of a strawberry - dance gavin dance

if it means a lot to you - a day to remember

idk if these actually “resonate to my soul” they just sound nice

100: if you were presented with two buttons, one that allows you to go 5 years into the past, the other 5 years into the future, which one would you press? why?

oh worm.. i wouldnt miind either???

i know i have 2 choose but like

if i go back into the past i could be less annoying?? but the past has actually helped me be the way i am today and i think im learning to be a better person?? im definitely way better than how i was previously 5 years ago and im just grateful i was able to learn from my mistakes???

so i wouldnt go back to the past.

if its in the future i can see how ill end up and if its not good i might end up being able to change myself so i dont get my “bad end”..???? maybe or i can just see what happens in the future and i can look forward to it

itll also give me a chnace to have the most fun while i can if its not too nice

so my decision is to go to the future

thank you so much for asking falen god this got so long lmao

[heyekiel]

Many Questions Tag

rules: answer these 85 statements

tagged by @th7thsense thank u i love u !!

THE LAST

1. drink: tea 2. phone call: mom 3. text message: it was sephora jfbjfbn 4. song you listened to: ludovico einaudi - questa notte (this dude awesome check him out if you like classical) 5. time you cried: yesterday night? 6. dated someone twice: when i was figuring things out 7. kissed someone and regretted it: yeah i kinda regret everything but also dont cause i know better where i am now 8. been cheated on: nope 9. lost someone special: yes 10. been depressed: yes 11. gotten drunk and thrown up: not sure if it was related but yeah

3 FAVORITE COLORS

12. black 13. white 14. deep deep red

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU

15. made new friends: yes, i made a few here on tumblr !! bless yall ily 16. fallen out of love: nah love as yall hear it is a forreign concept to me 17. laughed until you cried: yup (thanks sis) 18. found out someone was talking about you: yes? i dont know? 19. met someone who changed you: nope 20. found out who your friends are: dont have friends 21. kissed someone on your facebook list: no

GENERAL

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know in real life:  lol you rly think im gonna go count 23. do you have any pets: yep, i got 9 cats at the moments and farm animals (too much to count soz) 24. do you want to change your name: yes, it’s planned,, dont really know the legal proccess yet but,, its planned 25. what did you do for your last birthday: ate cake with m mom and sis and the twins i think? then went back to studying lmao 26. what time did you wake up: 6:30 27. what were you doing at midnight last night: crying lmao 28. name something you can’t wait for: death 29. when was the last time you saw your mom: when she dropped me off at the train station last night 31. what are you listening to right now: nothing im watching elijah and christine 32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: my cousin named thomas does that count? 33. something that is getting on your nerves: lol myself 34. most visited website: tumblr, yt and the uni webmail 35. hair colour: dyed black, natural brown 36. long or short hair: i have rly short hair like mark short? they used to be waist long lmao i cut everything at the same time 37. do you have a crush on someone: im ace/mostly aro 38. what do you like about yourself: my right hand nails hsbvsvjhfj (no but my eyes are rly pretty) 40. blood type: b- 41. nickname: my sis calls me ya (from mydead name) but @zhonqchenle calls me ez and thats it i have no friends lmao 42. relationship status: still ace/aro 43. zodiac: scorpio 44. pronouns: sigh genders,, but they/them (i dont mind he/his cause theres no neutral pronouns in french but,, the first im more comfortable with i guess) 45. favourite tv show: teen wolf is my shit ngl, sense 8 (still gotta see season 2), and bad guys (thats a drama guys check it out its a police dark serail killer one stuff shit i love it its so good) 46. tattoos: thats planned,, but im broke rn we’ll see later lmao 47. right or left handed: right handed 48. surgery: kidney stone removal (fucking drink guys that is NOT fun) and other stuff are planned for later 50. sport: i did artistic gymnastic for like 9 years, i danced for a while (i did modern, hip-hop, classical), i did natation i did a bit of aikido (im not sure thats how you write it thats a martial art),, but i dropped everything in the end (i do a bit of boxing tho) 51. vacation:  rn? lmao im in uni and we broke 52. pair of trainers:  addidas i think,, theyre from last year

MORE GENERAL

53. eating: nothing 54. drinking: also nothing 55. I’m about to: study lmao thats all i fucking do 56. waiting for: the sweet release of death 57. want: learn to compose (have the time time for it who am i kidding) 58. get married: nope (id marry a friend tho lmao) 59. career: dream job? producer. actual job? i don’t now, either psychiatrist, comportementalist, legist, sound engeneer (i cant speel this fucking word i give up) ?

WHICH IS BETTER

60. hugs or kisses: both (kisses dont mean romantic love to me id kiss a friend on the lips i dont,, care) 61. lips or eyes: both bitch 62. shorter or taller: it doesn’t matter to me idc 63. older or younger: also dont care 64. nice arms or nice stomach: what does nice mean lmao,, i dont really care 65. hook up or relationship: sigh 66. troublemaker or hesitant: both leaning over the first

I realized this was dating question kdfbjkdb LMAO so,, this is bout anyone im comfortable with jbkjbsjvsd /rly close friends and shit/

HAVE YOU EVER

67. kissed a stranger: dont think so 68. drank hard liquor: lmao yeah 69. lost glasses/contact lenses: yeah but i found them 70. turned someone down: yeah 71. sex on the first date: i knew the dude but yeah 72. broken someone’s heart: yeah i guess 73. had your heart broken: yeah 74. been arrested: i dont get out my bed kjsbvss 75. cried when someone died: yes 76. fallen for a friend: thought i did,, ended up ruining myself

DO YOU BELIEVE IN

77. yourself: no lmao,, my ability to get through shit by really impulsive decisions?? yes 78. miracles: depends what you mean by that,, i guess it case by case 79. love at first sight: yall gotta stop putting your whole life and heart and trust in someone you know thats how you get murdered fucking stop 80. santa claus: stop what if kids see this 81. kiss on the first date: dont care none of my buisness,, it becomes if one of my  friends gets hurts or i witness someone get hurt 82. angels: why not gotta believe in something (im the angel i am ;))

OTHER

84. eye colour: lOL theyre really weird but really pretty ive never seen it anywhere else ?? theyre bleue on the outside and turn grenn/grey-ish, then brown/gold ish in the middl its fucking wild istg. i didnt know what to put for the passport lmao (also pics dot take all of the colors?? thats a lil weird too idk rly) 85. favourite movie: imitation game,, enders game,, i forgot one i dont remember?? im tired

tagging: @jenolees @zhonqchenle @safetypillow

[totoroses]

i found this lesbian survey and decided to fill it out!

Femme or butch? is this what do i prefer or which i am? im a femme and i have no preference in dating, i’ve been wildly attracted to both and any in between

Do you have a “type”? If so, describe it. the only nearly completely common denominator though my exes are having brown eyes? i have dated only one person who did not have brown eyes. i always feel safer looking into brown eyes then blue. i woudl say i have often gone after the romantic artsy type with good music taste and some kind of signature style about them, ironically none of which drew me to my current girlfriend who i believe is probably defintiely the love of my life

Plaid button-ups or leather jackets? leather jackets! i will swoon over smartly dressed gals in button downs as well as a chill gal in some plaid unbuttoned flannel but the two together make me think of a lumberjack

Describe your style. i usually go for one of two styles- softly dressed forest wanderer, or slightly sassy soft grunge. both include my doc martens, but one is more natural colours and old fashioned dresses and the other is sassy tshirts and 90sish thrift store finds like denim and dark florals

Describe your aesthetic.pressed flowers between the pages of a book on forest spirits, rose milk tea, silver rainy downpours, curly baby hairs, white peaches, a cat sleeping in a library, custard pastries, a circle of mushrooms in moss, opals and furry moths

Favorite article of clothing? my one forever 21 dress ive had since like junior year that i can wear without a bra and it has like a cool cross back i just looooveee ittt, then also my embroidered minty 1930s style qipao sort of dress

Favorite pair of shoes? my doc martens and green chinese embroidered lace up slippers

Current haircut? currently blonde (ugh) and currently my hair falls just past my breasts, the goal is to grow it to my bellybutton!

Any haircut goals for the future? i really wanna get on the thick fluffy bangs bandwagon but i dont think i have the stamina to put up with growing them out again smh

Describe the best date you’ve been on. there was this one date i went on with one of my high school girlfriends where we went to a bookstore and hung out and then stuck googly eyes all over my city on random monuments and street signs, and we also ate thai food and listened to music and it was still one of the most lovely dates. BUT my girlfriend recently visited me in taiwan and we went in a glass bottom gondola ride up a mountain and drank from coconuts and wandered through old streets and had the most amazing tea food with a spectacular view and it was heaven

Describe the worst date you’ve been on. probably the one where i went on a picnic with my first girlfriend who then broke up with me that same day and even though our entire relationship was so awkward and not what is should have been it still hurt so bad

Single? Taken? taken!

If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife! where do i begin! my girlfriend is a slightly shorter than me girl named lynn who loved korean variety shows, drinking coca cola, listening to cheesy love songs, and playing tricks on people (especially me). she used to be a major tomboy in middle and high school and date all the girls and get slapped a lot, as well as mess with teachers and play pranks on them and steal things from their lunchboxes. more than half of her birthchart including sun, rising, and venus are scorpio, and she wants to start her own streetstyle online brand but has not yet found a catchy brand name!

If single, what are you looking for in a potential girlfriend/wife? :)

Describe your dream wedding my girlfriend says if we get married we need two, a traditional chinese wedding (she is from china) and a western one with a priest since i am catholic, and i couldnt agree more. my dream wedding includes just very close friends and family, extravagant lights and flowers and a reception party playlist chosen by me, catered by the teahouse we went to in taiwan. i know its so silly and superficial but i want the dreamiest dress that i design, wisteria everywhere, and most of all i just want lynn at the end of the alter looking stunning in whatever it is she decides to wear

Do you want kids? YES me and lynn talk about this a lot because we both love kids and both agree on at least 4, no more than 8. and we will share who carries the kids so not just one of us is having our uteruses worn out

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? guilin, china. but its a fantasy. guilin is real and beautiful but chinese laws make it so that even if we settle down there and build a house it cant truly belong to us, and in china you cant have a private business and it jsut sucks because the drema is to live in the quiet countryside with a simple life and beautiful scenery to explore together and with our children

Favorite lesbian movie? i love so many but im gonna go with the handmaiden!

Favorite lesbian novel/story? i havent read nearly enough, but  adore all things by malinda lo and julie anne peters! ash by malinda lo is probably my favourite. i have to still read sarah waters though, i hear she reigns supreme

Favorite lesbian song? don’t pull away by milosh ft jviews (the music video is gay at least, i also love hayley kiyoko)

Favorite lesbian musician? hayley kiyoko probably

What lesbian stereotypes do you fit into, if any? mmmm i dont like softball so that doesnt work...i read a lot of sappho though! and i have short nails? and love buffy? are these stereotypes?

Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal? ugh yes

If a woman wanted to woo you, what would a surefire way to accomplish that? write me a love letter or make me a mixtape about your feleings something cheesy

Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian? girls!!!!

Are you more of a cat person or a dog person? cat but i also love pups!

Turn ons? a musical wonderful voice i could listen to and listen to, easy and stimulating conversations, passion for something that lights up their eyes

Turn offs? rudeness in any shape or form, indecisiveness or feigning indecisiveness because you think i want to make the decisions, despicable movie and music taste, smell

Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you? mmmm in the past it has been pretty even. i have learned though that with women it really is a waiting game more than with guys so with my current girlfriend the tension was killing me so much i had to straight up ask her if something was going on and when she said yes she did like me too i was so relieved because she admitted to having not dated anyone since high school (5 years ago for her) and not asking anyone out while at college so if i had kept waiting for her who knows if we would have gotten together!

What is your dream career? i want to be a stay at home mom and author and perhaps an art teacher or preschool teacher on the side if the books dont pa the bills!

Talk about your interests or hobbies! writing and reading and drawing and singing and hiking and listening to music and watching korean dramas and making lists and studying languages

What is the most attractive quality a woman can have? passion, not necessarily in the sexual wya, but passion for something in general. like if she is an actress you see her on the stage and see how into it she is, and offstage she talks about it in a way that shows she is capable of truly loving something so much and seeing wonder in life. or a girl who seems quiet but then when she starts to show you the music she likes she closes her eyes and knows every lyric and has this expression of true passion and love for the music, i am captivated by women who are captivated by the purest elements of life from music to dance to nature

Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone? for women, i fall in infatuation quite easily. i was always more cautious with men of course and now i avoid them altogether. but love is something i’ve been becoming more conservative of somehow. i think because i was so hurt by someone before and gave and gave without receiving and im scared of that happening again. i have to be receiving love to give it, thats something i finally can control my impulses over and protect myself from.

Ever fallen for your best-friend? HA

Ever fallen for a straight girl? HAHA

The L-Word: yes or no? (love it or hate it?) heck to the no i couldnt make it past two episodes 

Favorite comfort food? macaroni and cheese

Coffee or tea? tea

Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above? none but i have tried vegetarian before

Do you have any pets? a chinchilla and a cat!

Early-riser or night-owl? night owl 

What is your sign? gemini sun, sag moon, sag rising

What is your Myers-Briggs type? INFP

Who was your first lesbian crush? my first serious lesbian crush was on a girl at my middle school who dressed to the nines every day in vintage dresses and sweaters and she flirted with practically everyone just joking around and always had a boyfriend but was just charming in every way. my whoel day would eb ruined if i couldn’t just see her or say hello once, and i thought i was just obsessed until i was like ‘wait what if she kissed me’ and BAM i knew it was a real life crush

At what age did you know you were a lesbian? im not really sure. i identified as bi/pan from freshman year to junior year i think, but then was realizing i definitely had a preference and didn’t want to be with guys in a relationship at all to be honest but even up until last summer i was really questioning if i was asexual, so its been a journey but i think i finally fully realized i am a happy happy lesbian after meeting lynn

At what age did you come out (if you have)? i was 14 when i first told my parents i was bi, 18 when i said im a lesbian 

Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)? just my girly friend

Talk about how your day went i worked this morning 7-11 after only sleeping 4 hours since i got hooked on ‘tipping the velvet’ the bbc miniseries, said goodbye to a friend, had school and did a presentation on how to make rosemilk bubble tea, i ate at a moomin cafe with my coworker, and now am working on homework and doing this survey and putting off my night cleaning duties eheh

Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future  i just want to have a family and to have my books published, thats all i really need. a loving wife, my sister still by my side as my partner in crime, so many children, so many stories finally told that people are reading. i really want to build a lovely house for my family like my grandparents did once upon a time, with secret rooms and unique hiding places, a house they can pass down as they grow up and it can have our lineage. i want to live by the mountains and trees and water, i want to be able to speak mandarin, cantonese, korean, japanese, icelandic, italian, arabic, and polish fluently