#i am recovering. today was mostly okay. i think by the weekend i will be human again

[supercantaloupe]

technically the contract for my new internship (signed & submitted, but i haven't actually started yet or turned in my payment info or anything) states that i'm supposed to start on monday. so strictly speaking i haven't lost hours on the job due to being sick this week, i guess. but in communication it was agreed that i would start this past monday for a lighter possibly part-time week of mostly onboarding and getting-to-know-the-office type work. which obviously i've missed due to hacking my lungs out in my house for the past eight days...it's not the end of the world for me to start next week, my boss is totally fine with it and wants me to be okay before starting, and it's not like i will have missed anything terribly important like a performance or something. and missing one week's worth of a paycheck is not going to ruin me financially, thankfully. but still, y'know, disappointed to have lost a week of productivity, especially in such a lucrative (job experience wise not necessarily money wise. but the money isn't terrible either.) internship i'm super lucky to have gotten in the first place. very much looking forward to finally starting on monday and putting this shit behind me

[goldeneyedgirl]

Ficmas Day 6: Divorced Jalice

Dog Update: Clementine is tick-free and has resumed being extremely dramatic <3

Hello lovelies. I had a change of heart today and thought I'd offer the people what they want: Divorced Jalice. We've got a few mixed scenes from throughout as I try and piece this together as an actual fic (most likely a series of shorter fics than a singular large one, but the process is ongoing.)

I hope you enjoy it (and yes, part 2 of the STL AU is coming ASAP ;))

(and because I made two banners and picked the silly one, here's the serious one as well.)

--

Thanksgiving comes like clockwork, and Jasper somehow manages to dodge most of the planning - he sends a message to the group chat that he’s bringing a fruit pie and rolls from a bakery close to his apartment, and Esme is happy. He knows there will be hell to pay when Rosalie gets a hold of him, but he’ll cheerfully pay that price.

Winter appears out of nowhere, and the temperature crashes. It’s a particularly cold start to winter, which he appreciates - there’s something about the holidays being snowy that makes them better. All his best holidays had snow.

He doesn’t see Alice as often; she doesn’t walk over to meet him at the park cafe as often, isn’t enthusiastic about any of the outdoor fairs and activities. Jasper’s mostly confused by her lackluster responses, because she used to love ice skating and tubing and holiday markets - she’d drag him out every weekend from November through to January.

Instead, they text. A few times they meet for food, but always indoors and Alice always catches an Uber, even from a couple of blocks over. But he doesn’t ask. She looks frailer in the cold weather, even underneath layer upon layer of clothing. He starts offering to bring lunch over because it’s so cold, and a couple of times she actually takes him up on that.

He asks her about her Thanksgiving plans and she just says that she doesn’t really celebrate it anymore.

“That was always a Cullen thing; my family was more about Black Friday shopping,” she says, nibbling at the noodles he brought her. “I’m more of a Christmas girl.”

That does put a dent in his plans, so he procrastinates until the week of to ask her to the Cullen’s for lunch. They wouldn’t mind, they’d be happy to see her.

‘Thank you for thinking of me, but no - I’m recovering from a cold and am very bad company right now. Say hi for me.’

Simple, to the point, but polite. Jasper’s more disappointed than he thought he’d be, because he never really expected her to accept.

The look of disappointment on Esme’s face when he walks in alone with his pie and rolls makes him feel both protective of Alice and very exposed.

Esme waits nearly ten minutes after he walks in to ask - “Alice had other plans?”

There are eight settings around the table, just like old times.

And there’s a thought that’s been nagging at him for weeks as he followed the group chat plans for the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year season. That for all his family's requests for her presence, to speak with Alice and spend time with her again, none of them seem to be reaching out even though she'd shared her contact details with them.

“I didn’t know you’d invited her?” It’s a passive aggressive response, and childish as fuck, but he doesn’t care.

“Oh, no, I just thought… I didn’t want to be pushy. I didn’t feel it was my place to reach out to her,” Esme said. Well, now he feels like an asshole.

“She’s recovering from a cold, I don’t think she’s doing anything today but resting.” It’s a flimsy peace offering but all Esme needs - the illusion that Alice can’t be here, rather than Alice didn’t want to be with them, is a distinct difference.

“Make sure you invite her for Christmas Day, okay?” Esme brandishes a mixing spoon at him before resuming cooking.

//

She’s supposed to meet Jasper at the park, and they’re going to a movie.

Alice’s surprised to find him playing basketball with Emmett - she’s not sure that she’s seen him do that since they started college - but she waves them on and takes a seat. She’s got a new client, and needs to get preliminary sketches done.

But she cannot help watching the game - both Emmett and Jasper were always athletic, but Jasper was entirely disinterested in team sports through high school and college. There’s also a sense of camaraderie and fun that she thought was long gone from Jasper. He’s happy and he’s playful and it’s wonderful to see. She always missed that part of him.

Jasper is laughing at something Emmett says, as he peels off his shirt and she’s glad she’s got her sunglasses on because she’s turning red. He’s gained muscle since she last saw him shirtless, and it’s a very good look for him.

So are the tattoos that wrap around his torso and down one arm. He’d always talked about getting one before, but then he’d joined the corporate world and dismissed the idea. She wishes she’d bullied him into it now, because it suits him way too much, and her mind is wandering back to before the divorce, before her heart trouble, before when they were happy, and mentally envisaging him with tattoos, and ugh, she’s in so much trouble now.

(Shit. What a time for her sex drive to return. It hadn’t been an option or an interest for so long, and now she’s here, picturing her ex husband hovering over her with that grin that always meant she was going to have a really good time, her fingers tracing the lines of ink on his torso as he gives her his very best and shit, shit, shit. They’ve had this talk. She’s doesn’t want to go back to that place. She can’t. The only thing that she’s ready and willing to give is her friendship. And no matter how good he looks, and how good she knows he is, it won’t change her mind.

Except…)

She’s already talked to her therapist extensively about Jasper. He wasn’t even the reason that she went to therapy - her doctor strongly recommended it because of absolutely everything that happened to her. She was supposed to be in therapy the entire time, for all the surgeries, as well as the support groups, but it had seemed stupid and pointless when she was on her own with no one else around to see the tears and the tantrums. She hadn’t wanted to spend the precious free time she had outside of the hospital talking about being in the hospital.

She’d put it off for six years. Now she’s forced to play catch up. And her therapist is… nice? If that’s the right word. The woman is no-nonsense, and her questions are always brutal - why resume a friendship with Jasper? Why immediately accept his apology that day they met up? Why fall back into old patterns? What does she want to change and what does she need to change? Does she think that’s a realistic expectation? What changes has she already made?

The doctor would give her that withering, exasperated look if she knew how Alice was staring at her ex-husband right now.

(The problem is that she’s spent so much time in hospitals and in surgery over the last few years that she knows a lot more about anatomy, and has an appreciation for how bodies fit together. Watching the shift and pull of Jasper’s muscles as he steals the ball from Emmett is not in any way helping her make good decisions, but it’s doing wonders for her imagination…)

“Ready to go?”

She looks up to find Jasper standing beside her in a clean shirt, and she fumbles trying to put her sketchbook and pencil back in her bag. “Sorry, daydreaming,” she murmurs, but Jasper stares at her for a moment before offering her his water bottle.

“You’re red, too long in the sun,” he says, frowning. “Don’t let me keep you waiting next time, okay?”

She nods, taking a sip out of the bottle, but Emmett’s behind him, giving her a narrow look and shit, if Emmett - who has always had an uncanny ability to pinpoint anything anyone wanted to keep a secret - figured out that she was having thoughts about Jasper, it would absolutely get back to Rose.

And Alice hadn’t really spoken to Rosalie yet. Or Bella. There had been a few dinners she’d been invited to - she’d attended less than half, but mostly because she didn’t have the energy to leave her apartment - and the conversation was polite and friendly. Rosalie would ask a few leading questions, but someone - either Jasper or Esme - usually neutralized the conversation.

She doesn’t have the energy to talk to Rose or Bella yet because she’s knows how it’s going to go - uncomfortable, mostly. She’s never had to establish boundaries with the expanded Cullen clan - Bella did, with varying success - and she’s not sure how to do it, beyond avoiding the conversation.

“I’m good,” she said, hoping she sounded better and she wasn’t as red. “I don’t mind waiting for you to finish your game.”

Fucking tattoos. Ugh.

—

Alice was exceptionally clear with her boundaries and expectations this time around - friends. Nothing else. He’d asked, and she’d said no.

And it wasn’t unexpected. It hasn’t been that long since they started spending time together. There’s clearly a lot that’s happened to Alice since she left, and she’s not ready to discuss that with him. They stick to a lot of safe subjects, things that don’t make her respond with an edge in her voice, or with simple conversation-ending responses.

(He’s got Rosalie in the background, half-demanding an explanation that he cannot give because he doesn’t know anything. She’s thinner and quieter, and he doesn’t really understand how she fills her days. There have been a couple of times that she’s alluded to being sick, but from what he remembers of her family history - depression and asthma mostly - there’s nothing that he can confidently say would cause this version of her. Then there’s Esme, desperately wanting to welcome Alice back into the fold, to the bi-weekly family dinners and the holiday lake trips and group vacations. Bella asks after her awkwardly but kindly, and it’s Edward who pointedly mentions that Bella would love to get coffee with Alice, but he doesn’t understand why Bella doesn’t just ask Alice.)

Peter says that he just needs to let Alice have her boundaries and her autonomy. Respect this version of her and don’t try to recreate the wife - or the dynamic - that he had in his twenties. And sure, that seems reasonable and kind of obvious.

Except she’s still the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. She’s still Alice, and he’s loved Alice since he was twelve years old. He wants it to be easy between them again, where she won’t tense up if he touches her, where he can hold her hand and hold her, and it’s something they both want.

He talked it over with Peter a few weeks ago. And Peter was definitely laughing at him.

“So you want tips on how to seduce your ex-wife?” Peter asked with a grin.

“That’s not what I’m asking.” He’d been annoyed at the time because it wasn’t… except it was.

“When was your last relationship?” Peter asked directly and it’s easy for him - whilst Charlotte dumped him for dealing and the blossoming addiction, she’d been willing to make things work when Peter started rehab and recovery, and was determined to make a change. She’d been there from the beginning, every single step. Peter never had to worry about balancing brand new relationships with being in recovery. But Peter had also never cheated on Charlotte or been such a dick to her as Jasper had been to Alice. There was a lot less baggage for them.

“Long term or…?” Jasper took a swig of his soda.

“Any.”

“Maria. Had a couple of dates after rehab but they weren’t…” He was bored and lonely, and it had been a mutual one-night thing. “That’s it.” There haven’t been any dinner or movie dates, anyone he had the motivation to build something with. He’s a hell of a lot more loyal to Alice now that they’re divorced than he was when they were married.

“Huh.” Peter looks surprised at that but shrugs. “That’ll score you some points.”

“You two are idiots.” Charlotte appears from the kitchen, her mangy old cat in her arms. “The only date you’re going to get Jasper is one with a restraining order.”

“I told him to respect her boundaries!” Peter looks insulted.

“The bar is in hell,” Charlotte drops into a chair. “Jasper, I’m going to say this as the partner of an addict who gave him a second chance: she owes you nothing. The best thing you can do is be the perfect respectful friend she’s asked you to be. No flirting, no jokes about 'dating', and absolutely no thinking that sex with you will convince her. Your dick is not magic.”

“Char,” Peter has a hand over his eyes and Jasper’s taking a long drink of soda to avoid having to say anything.

“I’m not finished. Don’t make work for her - emotional or physical. You said she quit drinking coffee-“

“How long were you eavesdropping!?”

“-the last hour, hush. Don’t bring her a coffee. Bring her whatever you saw her drinking. The emotional labor of declining the coffee and the physical labor of consuming or disposing of the coffee is just work for her. Pay attention to her, and the little things. You want her to be more transparent about what she’s been through? Own your shit. Be transparent. It’s about give and take.”

“Wait, Char, you’d know what the scar is.” Peter lunged forward, placing his hands on both of Charlotte’s knees, the cat fleeing at the sudden movement. “Jasper cannot figure out what the scar is, right down the middle of her chest.”

“She covers it up a lot, with clothing,” Jasper admitted.

“Have you asked her?” Charlotte asked flatly.

“No?”

“That feels like a great first step. ‘How did you get that scar?’ If she’s comfortable with you knowing, she’ll tell you. If she’s not, she won’t.”

“Char,” Peter whines, drawing out the last syllable of her name.

“Don’t whine. If Jasper wants a healthy relationship with Alice, he will communicate with her like an adult. Besides, a scar in that position could be a lot of different things - skin cancer, organ transplant, injury… There’s a lot of different reasons, and without seeing it, it’s just a wild stab in the dark.”

[tentacledtherapist]

Dearest Lisa,

I have missed writing to you, but I have had what feels like the longest month of my life. It truly feels like my body is decaying away sometimes, and never do I get a break.

Only now, just before dawn, do I write to you, sitting under the low hanging aurora borealis that skirts farther south than normal today, deep in the wilderness on the other side of the country, as the fog clears over the lake. My only moment of peace, after I have been running and running and running, and I slow to a stop here and think of you. And I know it is time to write.

Things have been busy! Normally after a weekend where I am very active I need nearly a week to rest (as I mentioned my body is truly falling apart!) But I haven't had a single moments rest this month so the feeling like I am running is true to form. I've had business every single weekend and other business and doctors nonsense during the week. I'm preparing for a mild surgery next week (hence all my appointments) and since I won't be able to do anything while recovering I obviously had to make up for it in the month running up to it. Hopefully all goes well? If only I truly could just be stitched together and be done with it. Probably easier to deal with it that way, hobble along with a new leg or hand or whatever immediately rather then this fabled "bed rest" that's all the rage these days~! I did get some x-rays in preparation if you'd like to see them. Not exactly a face reveal but they're fun to look at that's for sure. (Is it weird I think my spine looks pretty? It's an experience to see your own Vertebrae.)

I really hope you're doing well. How has your project been going? I cannot wait for you to post the final result. Anything particularly interesting happen while I was away? I thought of you often even amidst the chaos!

Take care,

Your Creature

adam!

oh, creech, i missed you! i was worried. i hoped you were okay but i didn’t know what you were going through and i didn’t want to add to any potential stress so i figured i would just wait until you were able to talk again. i thought about you a lot, hoping you were well. i’m glad you are (at least relatively)

i get the struggle when it feels like your body is falling apart. just last year i spent every weekend in a different doctor’s office trying to figure out why my joints were suddenly shutting down. lots of poking and prodding and x-rays and MRIs and blood tests, i felt like a pincushion. (as it turns out, my white blood cells are hyperactive, and have been attacking the healthy tissue in my joints! i also have 1/3 of a thyroid cause of that!) i’m sorry you have to go through this all now. it’s exhausting and disheartening and monetarily draining to be constantly in and out of doctors offices. i’m glad you’ll be getting some rest at least post surgery. I hope it all goes well for you, i know how stressful surgery is

i would like to see x-rays, if you’d like to share them! i don’t think it’s particularly odd to think your own spine is pretty, it is a very cool series of bones. i wish my doctors had sent me copies of my MRIs and x-rays to hang onto, but all i have are memories…

my project has unfortunately been put on hold. i have all the pieces together but i have very little time to actually work on it. i’m in the final stages of my thesis as it stands right now, so i have only a few weeks to get it to its final draft of this stage! stressful stuff. in between working on my paper, i’ve also been spending time at the encampments on my campus. mine has been mostly peaceful because the mayor of my city has been very outspoken in calling off the police that my chancellor keeps calling in, but it is scary. i’ve had a gun pointed at me in a school environment multiple times, but it doesn’t get less intimidating. regardless, i refuse to stand by while israel commits genocide “in my name” just because i’m jewish or whatever (even though that’s very clearly not their motivation nor is it any of the other things they’re spouting.)

i didn’t get lucky enough to see the aurora, unfortunately. it supposedly was visible as far south as where i live, but i wasn’t able to see it through light pollution and cloud cover. i have photos from some friends farther north, but i didn’t get to see it myself

it must have been beautiful

- Your Lisa

[qwanderer]

Not much writing getting done this week, there is so much else going on! I'm feeling better today, shark week is proceeding as expected, but it's also Thursday, which is grocery day, and the day to return trash cans to their spot by the house, and then there has also been the weather.

Last night I shoveled the sidewalk (later than I might have wished because shark week troubles) and took out the trash, and today I fell down while struggling to get my trash can back up the currently ice encrusted slope of the front lawn (it was definitely one of my "oh yeah I fully expect to fall down doing this, I am going to do it in such a way that falling won't damage me too much" semi-intentional falls, but I hurt my boob a little bit)(it doesn't hurt anymore it was mostly just grumpy because shark week I think) and tomorrow it's supposed to snow more.

I'm going to see if I can get the bus to work in the morning but I am fully intending to cadge a ride home with one of the guys even though it breaks my "bus twice a week" rule. But if I have to walk one leg of the commute that's fine too. Work hasn't been super physically demanding and I feel fully recovered from the stuff I had going on on Tuesday.

The snow on Tuesday had literally no impact on my decision to call out. I was lying in bed like "mmmmm okay no I should not be handling delicate equipment today and also every fiber of my being is telling me to remain horizontal" and so I texted my manager, and then a bit later I got up to use the bathroom and saw the snow and was like "oh yeah there's that too... Shouldn't be out in that when I'm this wobbly either"

Anyway I need to find some time to write this weekend! I require writing time. I guess I will see how tomorrow goes, but I would really like to do some editing tomorrow night if at all possible.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Nurturing Instinct

So I’ve finally convinced myself to stop Doing Shit and just have the relaxing weekend I promised myself. Because, seriously, I promised that THIS weekend would be a nice relaxing weekend to let my body recover from the insane pain flares of the week.

But I needed groceries so that involved unpacking them when they got delivered and cleaning out the fridge. And I wanted to do some gardening and Did Myself An Ow. And then more gardening today, with an emergency repotting and a fair bit of reorganisation. And then I realised that the doormat I keep inside so I’m not tracking crap onto the carpet (crap as the carpets already are) probably needed to be shaken and beaten out onto the balcony because dust. And then since I was putting the gardening stuff away I figured I’d do a quick tidy of the dining table. And then I had to break down the boxes my stuff came in and take them out to the recycling, and took out the few other bits of recycling that had accumulated while I was at it, and also used that ‘being outside’ for a trip to the corner shop because I forgot to order cooking oil. And then I finally went to make myself a cup of coffee and needed to refill the sugar tin and had a bit of a spill so I had to wipe down the counter a bit, and then I noticed some other spots on the counter behind the stove top that needed a bit more attention. And since some of the sugar I spilled and wiped up ended up on the floor, I needed to break out the vacuum cleaner because we had a cockroach problem the other year and I don’t want to be the cause of a repeat of that mess...

I did stop myself before vacuuming the entire house. That’ll probably be tomorrow, on top of laundry. I swear, so much for relaxing weekends. Still, I know myself well enough to know that if I feel like cleaning, I should do so, because otherwise I can executive dysfunction myself right into a mess too large to fix easily.

Anyway, thing I noticed when I went out to the shops. You know how some of us get with stray animals, cooing endearments and offering affection and being upset and worried when they look injured or mistreated?

Well, apparently I’m like that with plants now. Any plants. All plants.

I pass a local cemetery when I go to the corner shop. It’s largely fenced off with wooden fencing along that particular road. Ivy grows across both sides of it, and the ivy shares the inside space with a truly prodigious amount of blackberry bramble. Like, the entire cemetery is ringed with blackberry bushes and every late summer / early autumn, I’ll go out there with a plastic bag and do some harvesting at least once, and I’ll be plucking a handful of berries to eat on my way to work or back home every work day. (I plan to make blackberry jam this year. Strawberry too, if my strawberries produce fruit the way I hope they will.)

Anyway, the ivy. I noted that it’s drying up fairly badly in sections, and gone all brown and crunchy. I never paid that much mind before and now I’m standing there going, “You poor thing! Don’t worry; it looks like it’s going to rain soon...” I notice the snapdragons that grow under somebody’s hedge and can’t help thinking that they’re probably really deprived of light down there and wonder if anyone would mind if I just ... brought a pot and gave it a good home. I am appalled that no one seems to be taking care of the potted begonias the management association puts by the front door to the block of flats and might go down there with plant food and a watering can at this rate.

As for the blackberry bushes? Mostly today it was, “Hello, bees!”

Look, clearly nurturing my plants has done me some good. This is the best I’m going to get, since I’m not really allowed pets in here. Though I imagine that things like maybe goldfish would be okay, and that might actually be an idea. My gardening has been keeping me sane and some fish would probably add to that. I mean, I’d prefer rats, but even with the recent push for them to be recognised as the great pets they are, people still look askance at them (which is stupid, since this is the country that started breeding pet fancy rats in the first fucking place, so why the hell they need to be reminded that rats are not plague factories is beyond me). Fish are easier. Also way less expensive, particularly since there isn’t a lot a vet can do with a sick neon tetra or whatever.

Summary: I can’t really have pets (I’m not going to give a pet a home unless I am absolutely sure that they and I can live to a decent standard, which includes food, sanitation, enrichment, and pet insurance since there’s no NHS for pets - though fish are an option and small rodents might be on the table), I’m not having kids (same reasons, partly with the addition of asexuality but fostering or adoption might be on the table if I was healthy enough physically and financially to ensure a child a good life), and I want something to nurture. If those things are green and leafy, that’s fine. They may not provide the usual compensations, but they’re pretty and they feed me. I will not be like the kid in The Giving Tree; my plants feed me, and I will give them everything they need to thrive in return. Sometimes that means more than water and plant food and sunshine. Sometimes that means apologies for overwatering or encouragement of the “don’t worry; you’ll feel better soon” variety when something is wilting due to overly cramped roots.

As for my reactions to plants I see outside? Well, fuck it; if I can give all the encouraging words in the world to my oregano when I’m repotting it, I can spare a few for the ivy around the cemetery or the snapdragons down the block. Words cost little, but mean a lot.

[backtothestart02]

The One - 1/? | westallen fanfiction

A/N: Taking a tiny break from JBF to write this first chap. I just loved the prompt for it so much! I hope you enjoy what I’ve written so far. :)

...

Synopsis: AU - They met two days before her wedding, but it was more than enough time for him to interrupt the ceremony and yell "I object!"

...

Chapter 1 -

In their bedroom in a loft in a sky riser on the east side of town, Iris West – soon to be West-Thawne – thumbed through her summer dresses, debating which one to wear to their welcome party that afternoon.

Eddie, her husband to be, came up behind her and snaked his arms around her waist before kissing her bare shoulder, nothing on her but a lacy pair of bra and panties.

“I love this idea, you know.”

She frowned, still debating between a yellow dress with subtle butterfly pattern and a flowy pink dress that she’d worn the night he’d proposed.

“What idea?”

“Having a weekend wedding.” His chin propped on her shoulder as his fingers drummed over her torso.

“Oh, right. Me too.”

He lifted his chin and tilted his head at her, analyzing her expression curiously.

“You okay, Iris?”

“Hmm?” She turned to look at him, then pulled free of his loose grasp. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’m just…torn between dresses, that’s all.”

“Ah.” He took a step back. “Well, if you wear the yellow one, you could wear these.”

She turned to see him opening a black box displaying a pair of drop crystal butterfly earrings. She gasped and placed her fingertips on the box.

“Oh, Eddie, they’re beautiful.”

He grinned, pulling them free of the velvet and handing them to her. She immediately started putting them on.

“You can wear the pink one to the rehearsal dinner.”

She scrunched up her nose and grinned.

“You know, I think I will.”

“It’ll be symbolic,” he commented, stepping back so she could get dressed. She looked at him over her shoulder as she struggled to zip up the back of her dress. He rejoined her and zipped it up carefully.

“Thank you.”

“The night I proposed?”

Butterflies fluttered inside her.

“You remembered,” she gushed, her hand flying to land over her heart.

“How could I forget?” He grinned. “You looked absolutely stunning.”

She turned around and spun once in a circle, letting the yellow skirt fly up a bit and then popping her foot a few inches off the ground.

“You look stunning in that too,” he admitted, then pulled her to him and planted a kiss on her lips. “Flirty too, fun, exciting.”

She pushed him away with a gentle shove and rolled her eyes.

“Alright, Mister, enough of that. We’ll have plenty of that on our wedding night.”

“I have to wait till then?” He pouted.

“It’s two days!” She blanched. “You can wait two days.”

He sighed. “I guess.”

“You can,” she said and slipped into a pair of white heels before moving to exit their bedroom.

“Where are you going?” he asked, following her figure with his eyes, the soft sway of her hips mesmerizing him.

“I have to talk to Linda about the guest list. Not everyone showing up for the wedding is showing up for the weekend, you know.”

“Right, Linda.”

“And what do you have against my best friend?” She raised her eyebrows.

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just…”

She waited.

“Well, she’s never really liked me. Are you sure we shouldn’t have got, I don’t know…a real professional to plan our wedding?”

Iris took serious offense to that.

“Linda is a real professional. She’s had her company up and running for over a year now.”

“No, I know, I know.”

“And she’s dating my brother, so she’s practically family.”

“Right, I’m just saying-”

“She wouldn’t sabotage our wedding either. It’s my wedding too, you know. She wouldn’t sabotage her best friend’s wedding.”

“Even when she doesn’t approve of the groom?” He held his breath.

She sighed testily. “You assume too much. Linda likes you just fine.”

“You want to make a bet on that?” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?” She raised one eyebrow.

“Nothing, nothing. You’re probably right. I am analyzing too much. Go have fun.”

She offered him her cheek when he leaned in to kiss her again.

“I am right,” she said. “Now go, get dressed. The party is in just a few hours.”

He looked down at his ensemble.

“I thought I was dressed.”

She pursed her lips to hold in the laughter bubbling up just behind her lips.

“I have to put my make-up on and then I’ll head out.” She paused before glancing at him once and then across the room. “Your shirt and pants are on the bed. Wear your cream shoes.”

He looked over at the bed, then back at her – except she’d gone by then, her heels click-clacking on the bathroom floor. He sighed and looked down at himself again before crossing the room to inspect the outfit she’d chosen for him. He tilted his head to the side.

“I guess it is better. Hmm.”

He started to undress and redress himself. By the time he was finished, he could hear his fiancée exiting the bathroom and heading down the stairs. She probably had her hand on the door now and was seconds away from exiting the loft.

The sound of the door closing seconds later told him he’d been right on the money. He walked over the full-length mirror beside their bed and turned to the side so he could see every angle of his body in the new get-up he was wearing.

The sound of the door opening again caught his attention.

“Iris?” he called out.

“Forgot my phone,” she said, snatching it up and heading back out into the hall. “See you at my dad’s in a few.”

Right. Her dad’s. Another person that he felt hadn’t totally warmed up to him.

This would be one hell of a wedding.

…

Half a country away in a low-rent one-bedroom apartment, Cisco Ramon analyzed his own outfit in the full-length mirror just outside his bedroom. He analyzed his hair mostly, making sure each wave was perfect and brushed his shoulders just so. Unbeknownst to him, his best friend had just exited the bathroom and was approaching him from behind.

“You ready to go?”

Cisco scowled into the mirror when he saw the reflection of his best friend. Then he turned toward him, scowl still in place.

“Plaid? Again? Do you ever wear anything else?”

Barry scoffed, taking offense to that.

“Look who’s talking, Mr. let’s-wear-screen-tees-to-work-every-day.”

Cisco looked affronted by that, but he quickly recovered.

“As you’ll notice, I am not wearing a screen tee today.”

“No, you’re wearing a suit. To the airport.” He deadpanned. Then he stepped back to grab a snack from the fridge. “Don’t you think you should save that for the wedding?”

Cisco’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t think of a response to that, so instead he said,

“Again. Plaid!”

“I’m not wearing it to the wedding, Cisco. I have a suit too. This is just for the airport and the airplane.”

“Long sleeves though?” He scrunched up his nose.

“It’s cold on airplanes. I’m just being prepared.”

Cisco sat down on his couch, letting himself sink into it.

“I guess.”

“I’d really do without the blazer, man,” Barry said around a bite of apple.

“It’s not a blazer. It’s a suit jacket.”

“Even worse.”

Cisco scoffed.

“Don’t you want to be comfortable on the plane? It’s a two-hour flight!”

Cisco hated to admit it, but his less than fashion-savvy friend was making a point.

“I suppose I could opt for a long-sleeved screen tee…”

Barry winked and pointed at him.

“That’s the Cisco I know and love.”

“Though Cynthia never approved of those…” he muttered, looking away and locking eyes with a picture of him and his now ex displayed prettily on the end table. He sighed.

“No,” Barry said. “No, no, no, no, no.”

Cisco turned his head to look at him and pouted.

“No?”

Barry grabbed the picture frame and turned it face down on the table.

“Hey, what did you do that for?” Cisco reached for it and Barry held it away.

“If you turn it up again, I’ll throw it in the trash.”

Cisco gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

Cisco sank back down.

“Fine.”

Barry set it down again, still facedown though.

“You know, I don’t know how you can be so…dismissive of the whole thing.”

“What are you talking about?” Barry asked, returning to his apple.

“I mean, you just got out of a relationship too. Aren’t you…mourning the loss?”

Barry snorted. “No.”

“Not at all? You were together for like five months. You had to have formed a bond of some sort. Don’t you miss it? Her?”

Barry shook his head.

“Nope.”

“Unbelievable.” Cisco shook his head.

Barry had to suppress a laugh.

“It was a mutual break up, Cisco. Patty and I just…weren’t meant to be.”

“I don’t believe that.”

This time Barry did laugh.

“Believe it.”

“But you two had so much in common! And you really liked her. I remember how excited you were for your first date.”

Barry shrugged.

“I’m not saying the relationship wasn’t good. It just ran its course. Patty thought so too. It was getting monotonous. We both wanted more, and not from each other. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Cisco frowned again, his eyebrows fusing together. Barry patted his shoulder.

“You’ll understand one day.”

“I won’t.” He sighed, pushing himself further back into the couch. “Cynthia was the one.”

“Maybe she was just the first one.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve been with girls before.”

“But have you ever really been in love? Think about it.”

“Well, I… No, I guess not.”

“Sometimes the first one isn’t the one, if that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t.”

Barry chuckled.

“Alright, then. Maybe the two of you will meet up in a few years, and she’ll decide she was an idiot for dumping you and ask for another chance.”

“A few years? I’m supposed to just wait around hoping this happens?”

“Hell, no. Go out, have some fun. Hook up with a bridesmaid at this wedding we’re going to. Forget about her.”

“Barry.”

“I mean it. Distract yourself until you’ve got her out of your system. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. You can only fight for someone for so long until you don’t have any energy left in you for anyone. Even the person who might actually be the one.”

Cisco thought about that.

“When did you get so philosophical?”

Barry grinned.

“It’s a gift.”

Cisco pushed himself up and off the couch, then headed toward his bedroom.

“Alright, just give me a few minutes to get out of this suit and then we can go.”

“That’s the spirit!” Barry cheered. “It’ll give me enough time to finish this apple.” He took another chomp.

“You’re not wearing plaid to the wedding though, right?” Cisco called out.

Barry stopped halfway to his apple and frowned.

“I don’t…think so.”

“Barry!” he warned.

“I’ll go check!”

And off Barry went to where he’d left his suitcase, making sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had something for the wedding his best friend would approve of.

…

Linda had deserted her. To be fair, they had spent the last several hours ago. But something had come up at the hotel, something about some guests not being able to be accommodated there, even though they’d triple-checked the guest list and had about four hotels booked for all of their guests. Linda had been on the move, determined to not let a single box go unchecked for her best friend’s big day.

Iris understood naturally, but now she felt somewhere between bored and overwhelmed at the slew of people coming into her dad’s backyard. Luckily the yard was huge, and it was decorated to the hilt, also including drinks, appetizers and some outdoor games that didn’t require too much effort in case people dressed up.

She had dressed up after all. And Eddie, who had still not made his way past the parted bushes serving as a gate, was going to be dressed up as well. If he wore what she set out of course, which she was fairly certain he would.

If he wasn’t stubborn about it, of course. What she had set out actually matched her ensemble without being too matchy-matchy. And she was wearing his earrings. That had to count for something.

She smiled brilliantly as another slew of people came into the backyard. She greeted them as kindly as she could, almost missing the tall, handsome stranger that trailed in behind them, nearly taking her off-guard.

He waited politely for her to finish greeting the people in front of him before he eagerly took one large step so he was directly in front of her and then held his hand out to her.

“May I?”

Her brows furrowed, confused as to what he meant, but held her hand out to him anyway.

“You may.”

Smiling slyly, he took her hand lightly in his grasp and lifted it to his lips, where he kissed the back gently before returning it to her.

Iris felt butterflies rapidly beat inside her chest and told herself to calm down. Certainly this hadn’t been the first man to act this way around her, but it had been the first one in a while who was looking at her like…well, like he wanted to devour her, to put it plainly.

She cleared her throat.

“Who are you, exactly? I don’t recognize you. Are you on the list?”

She reached for the list left on one of the tables by Linda, but he stood in her way, and she eyed him suspiciously.

“You won’t even let me look?”

He chuckled lightly, and Iris felt shivers ripping down her spine.

“No, uh, it’s not that. It’s just…I’m not on that list.”

She blinked. “You’re not?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

She swayed closer to him, completely oblivious to how flirtatious she was suddenly being.

“So what are you? A party crasher?”

He scrunched up his nose.

“Not that either. I’m a plus one.”

“Oh.” She tilted her head to the side. “Whose plus one?”

She felt a strange sense of jealousy for whatever girl had brought this tall, handsome stranger to her wedding, and where in the world they had found him.

“Cisco Ramon’s.”

That stopped her straight in her tracks.

“Cisco? As in my high school best friend, Cisco?”

“One and the same.”

The voice was different this time, and while Barry didn’t take his eyes off Iris, she took her eyes off him to see her best friend from long ago entering the backyard and approaching them.

“Hey, Iris.” He moved in for a hug, and she warmly embraced him. “I was parking the rental car.”

“Oh, no trouble.” She took a step back and analyzed them both. “You two aren’t… You’re not like…together, are you?”

Both men spoke at once. “No!”

She laughed, her hand flying to cover her mouth.

“We are just friends,” Cisco clarified, squeezing Barry’s shoulder. “This is Barry, Barry Allen. I recently uh…me and my girlfriend, we…”

“They broke up,” Barry slid in.

“Barry and his girlfriend broke up too,” Cisco was quick to add, which earned a scowl from Barry.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Iris said sympathetically.

“But not because we’re gay,” Cisco said.

“Definitely not,” Barry added. “We are the least gay men you will ever meet.”

“So straight,” Cisco confirmed.

Iris couldn’t help but laugh again.

“Well.” She cleared her throat. “My two handsome straight men.”

“Yes,” Cisco said.

Barry smiled brilliantly.

“The drinks are over there.” Iris pointed across the yard. “The games are there, and some appetizers are there, there, and there.”

“Ooo, goody,” Cisco cheered, rubbing his hands together.

“I’ll be here if you need me,” she said as they started to walk off. Barry though, was reluctant to do so.

“You sure you don’t need company?”

Cisco tugged on his shirt sleeve roughly.

“I need company. You’re my plus one, remember?”

“Right.” Sending a devilish smile Iris’ way, Barry went with his best friend towards the punch bowl.

“I’ll see you both later,” Iris called, and right as she did, her husband to be finally entered the backyard. “Eddie!” she called, kissing him on the cheek, then muttering under her breath. “What took you so long?” She looked him up and down. “And why are you not wearing what I set out?” She frowned.

“I changed my mind halfway through dressing.” He looked down at himself. “It’s not too bad, is it?”

Iris swallowed whatever angry, irritated words were fighting to come to the surface.

“No, not too. Come, stand with me. We should be together as a unit when people come in.”

“Right, definitely. But uh, I think I’m going to grab some punch first.”

“Eddie, wai-”

But he had left her, and she had to quickly put her fuming to bed as she saw the next slew of people arriving.

“Welcome!” She glowed brightly. “Thank you for coming. How are you…”

[whentherewerebicycles]

good morning from my sleepy girl! didn’t set an alarm clock and slept till 9 again, which was v nice but alas is something I shouldn’t get in the habit of doing if I want to skate/run/walk in the mornings before it’s too hot.

hmm okay going to think aloud for a bit. I can’t believe it’s almost July... really feel like I spent June in a fugue state lol. I think I will give myself permission to have another day of sloth today if I want it—I kinda needed this past week to recover from the acute stress of last week + the compounded stress of writing feverishly for five and a half weeks. this coming week is my last week of student meetings but then I will need to think about establishing some kind of daily routine for the rest of the summer so I’m not just lounging in bed all day.

I think I need to just commit to giving this summer wholly over to writing. that will just be the ‘project’ I am working on or the thing I spend most of my time doing/thinking about. depending on what my next job is this might be my last ‘virtually no obligations’ summer, so maybe it’s okay to not stress much about professional development. in fact it might be good to take this summer to really solidify routines, methods, etc around writing so I can carry those things with me into periods of my life where I don’t have as much unstructured free time.

jotting down some ideas:

I probably need to break myself of the habit of drinking coffee in bed because that’s what leads to me not getting out of bed till 11 or 12 lol

I’d like to read 2-3 poems or 10 pages of beautiful fiction in the morning, and keep a daily journal where I write down images, phrases, etc I find striking

I’d like to make a big list of skills I want to develop further. for example: opening and closing scenes; using imagery that implicitly connects with & deepens the core themes of a work; making smarter choices about time jumps; studying good examples of subtle worldbuilding (etc etc)

I just need to read more lol. for some reason I mostly stopped reading novels after the phd and I think it’s partly because a novel can feel like such a COMMITMENT and for whatever reason I’ve become weirdly loath to just pick up books and start reading them without some guarantee that I’ll like them. but this is silly because 1) I like most of the books I read and 2) if I don’t like something I can always put it down and move on. maybe I need to set an easy reading goal for myself—like one novel a week or something, where it’ll hardly take any time if I read a little every day or do a day or two of binge reading. I think making a stack of novels in advance so that I have a more limited array to choose from will also help... sometimes I get overwhelmed by choice.

maybe reading with a purpose will help me feel more motivated to read. maybe in addition to keeping the little journal of words & images, I can keep a bigger journal where I note down craft things I like in the books I’m reading. also I used to keep journals in college where I wrote out beautiful passages by hand just as a nice meditative/reflective activity and I bet I could try that again—maybe first half of the journal is for craft notes and second half is for beautiful passages.

no set goals or word count requirements for daily writing. just add a little to the draft every day. focus on keeping it fun and low pressure. I’ve given myself a deadline of aug 15 for my current project, as six to seven weeks seems to be a good amount of time for me. at that point I can decide if I want to keep working on it & use it for the hbb fest or finish and post it before.

I’d like to save writing in bed for weekends. during the week I want to get up, put the dogs away, and sit up at my desk or on the couch working.

[keshetchai]

personal posting / alcoholic parent mention / medical 

first mentioning that im furious at my primary care for not referring me for a covid vaccine because she can’t...prove i have asthma, because ??? “just because i prescribed an inhaler doesn’t mean you have asthma.” like, ...okay, whatever. thanks.

unfortunately, i do not feel excited for pesach. I actually love pesach. but I love it in person, face to face, at a table of people. i can’t have that. that’s probably for the best because as much as I love pesach, I don’t love a holiday with four cups of wine as a central ritual when my low-contact/estranged father has been an alcoholic for 10+ years now and his poison of choice is red wine. he’s hit the stage where he is dying slowly, but that could last years or months. I don’t know. 

late december he was formally diagnosed with covid-19, when we thought he’d already caught it early on. then after recovering he had a stomach surgery scheduled for a separate issue, and basically the hospital had to stop operating because he was bleeding too heavily as a result of his enlarged liver. they stopped with only a small percent of surgery done, and stabilized him a bit, and then he got transported back to the US. because he basically hit his healthcare limit from private insurance in another country. now he’s on VA stuff. i think they recently discharged him, or will discharge him in san diego. 

his kidneys and liver are failing, in addition to major intestinal issues, his gallbladder needing removing, etc. i mean, he will absolutely die of liver failure if he drinks any more. but relapse is almost an inevitability after forced sobriety while hospitalized. 

his siblings - my aunts and uncle - all finally realize truly how bad it is. my aunt karen is close enough we were able to talk (masked, in person) about why I am extremely low contact with my dad, why I was frustrated my aunts and uncle kept asking me if I’d heard from my dad...etc. because like, I don’t. we talk on birthdays, father’s day, maybe new years, maybe once about my brother. 

i showed her my texts history where it was literally just 

2020 - my birthday, his birthday, question about my brother. 

before that was 2019, i think an exchange about getting me off of his cell phone plan formally. 

i gave her all the sordid details, about his drinking when he had custody visitation with me and my brother, about telling my high school teachers he was not my custodial parent/an alcoholic/unreliable, how there were a serious of fracture points in our relationship that broke it bit by bit until finally in college he spent father’s day weekend trying to convince me to volunteer to kick myself out of his apartment where i’d been sleeping on an air mattress and working as a temp because his second wife decided to rant to him how much she hated me and wanted me gone. how i sent him an email calculating his alcohol expenses weekly and told him he owed me money. a million other little things... and she listened and understood and sympathized and was mad on my behalf. 

but i sent an email informing her siblings also of some of this stuff, about my feeling that my dad needs rehab and that we can’t force him to go, and neither of them responded. and i know it got sent, because karen replied to my email too. 

the other two have been silent. what hurts is that of course, my other aunt A did text me the other day, asking if i could join a family zoom meeting saturday night, with my dad, to check in on him. no response to anything I said about how I feel about my parent who is an addict and slowly dying, lmao. just join a zoom meeting. I had to pry to ask if it was like, going to be an ~intervention~ or something. 

i was so relieved to be able to say “sorry, not this weekend. those are the first two nights of passover, I won’t be available.” i told her i could be there some other evening, but not to hold up everything on my account, even if my dad did ask if i would attend. i pity him, i do. but i can’t help but resent everything done, and what i learned when karen told me he inherited about $40,000 in early 2018? I think? and he’s spent it all. he was working and he still spent it. i know when my mom sued for back owed child support, he settled. I don’t think he paid up in full - which that inheritance might’ve done. 

when my grandmother had lost an eye due to cancer, she also funded his trip to the ukraine to meet some woman. she needed that money to get a glass eye. but delayed it for her son. he ran out of money on this pointless trip and his siblings bailed him out. they’ve been paying for his plane tickets. he continued to ask his dying mother for money, until karen intervened a little, and even then... 

he ran through forty thousand dollars after my grandma died. and didn’t think about anyone but himself with that money. my aunt basically - i mean in nicer words - explained i won’t inherit anything most likely, he probably doesn’t have assets anymore, and i was like, well, yeah. 

...this sounds cold and awful but i have assumed for awhile my dad will die young and also that his siblings will have to pay for the funeral. even if i felt obligated to do something as his first born child -- I don’t have the money for funeral expenses, mostly because of him! 

anyways i’m disappointed my family didn’t acknowledge anything i said, i’m sad pesach is going to be isolated again, i’ve been stressed about dealing with expectations about how i should feel about my dad dying, with digging up old resentment and hurt and having to think about him more than i ever normally do... 

i finally submitted an intake form for the local jewish fam services therapy offerings and they were like “we don’t have openings now, we may in spring” today and i emailed back like “i’m fine waiting, it’s already spring....” time isn’t real anyways!

maybe i should look for other therapists right now but i wanted to go with jfs first lol. just. sigh. 

[starcountesseevee]

A Rocket Coincidence (Part 26)

Part 25 / Part 27

     Kali was pacing excitedly around the kitchen, it was Monday and Cliff was finally back in town after what felt like forever. While he had “work stuff” -his words- during the day they had already made plans for the evening and Kali couldn't wait. Mara had insisted that Kali take today off but she found herself actually kind of wishing she was working just so that the time would go faster. The sound of Mara’s bedroom opening alerted Kali and she looked over with a grin as Mara came into the kitchen. 

     “Good morning!”  

     "I thought I smelled bacon." Mara plopped down. “You’re certainly in a good mood. And up early.” 

     “Why wouldn’t I be?” Kali beamed. “Although, that’s the last of the bacon so I'll probably run out to the store today, need anything else while I'm out?" 

     "Yeah I think we're low on patience, too. Think you can pick some of that up?" Mara teased as she made up a plate for herself. 

     "Oh hush. I'm plenty patient."

     "Says the girl who's been counting the days...nay hours until today." 

     "Okay so I've just been a little excited to see my boyfriend, is that a crime?"

     "Ahh to be young and in love…" Mara batted her eyelashes at Kali and threw her hand across her forehead dramatically. 

     "I...don't know about all that." Kali mumbled as she felt her cheeks flush.

     "Sure you don’t.” Mara rolled her eyes as she passed Kali to head back to her bedroom. “But everyone else does. And by everyone else I mean me. I'll be at the studio if you need me!" She called back, cutting off any further argument Kali could have had. Love, Kali thought to herself with a scoff. Mara didn’t know what she was talking about. 

     Kali checked the time again as she headed down Skiploom Street. It wasn’t even noon yet and a trip to the store wasn’t going to waste the hours she had until this evening so she decided to take a longer walk and scan some Pokestops to maybe get her mind off the time. It had also been a while since she’d been able to stock up on some supplies and she would need the coins to do that anyway. Most Pokestops in the city only gave five to ten coins a day so getting a decent amount to spend was a job but there was one just around the next corner that Kali was pretty sure gave twenty. 

     “Hey,” Zeke nudged his co-trainee, Bradley, as he saw a red-headed girl with a pokeball dangling from her belt turn the corner. “Looks like she might be a trainer, guess we’ll get to show off to the boss after all.” He thought he had said it low enough but Cliff overheard from where he was leaning and rolled his eyes. They weren’t here to show off, they were here to do a job, he thought as he scanned through his emails from the weekend. Their training was over and this was supposed to be their first time out on their own, Cliff was just there to make sure their training paid off but so far he wasn’t impressed. 

     “Yeah she’s cute too, maybe I’ll get her to bet on more than just leaving when I win.” Both boys chuckled. Cliff frowned at that, he didn’t support that kind of talk. Another tick in the unimpressed box, he thought as he paid a little more attention to what was going on to make sure they didn’t start harassing whoever it was.

     “What do we have here?” Zeke stepped forward taking the lead. Kali sighed as she spotted the two. Of course she would run into a Grunt here she thought as she questioned whether or not she felt like battling or turning around.

      “Looks like a little troublemaker.” Bradley chimed in, mimicking Zeke by crossing his arms as well. Kali raised a brow and glanced between them. She had been considering backing down but “troublemaker”? What were they, five? 

     “Really? That’s the best you’ve got? Did you forget to pick up your brains this morning with your uniform?” Kali quipped and Cliff’s head shot up, he knew that voice.

     “Hey, watch what you say, you’re messing with Team Rocket you know!” A sudden firm hand on his shoulder caused Zeke to turn around. Kali couldn’t hide the look of surprise on her face as Cliff pushed his way between the two grunts with a smirk.

     “So these two idiots are yours?” 

     “They’re a work in progress.” They began to protest but one look from Cliff had them retreat a few steps and he turned back to Kali. “This is a nice surprise.” He said low enough for only her to hear. As much as he might have wanted to pull her in for a kiss right there he didn’t want to presume that she wanted their relationship status publicized, especially not in front of others from Team Rocket. And he was on the job. But mostly the first reason.

     “It is.” She smiled coyly at him. “So that means you’re going to let me go scan that pokestop, right?” Cliff opened his mouth to answer but immediately shut it. There was no way he could just let her waltz right by with Zeke and Bradley watching. Not only would he look weak but they would probably go back to base and tell people he broke the rules. Kali must have read his silence correctly; when he glanced back at her she was eyeing him with a look that said are you really thinking about doing this? Okay so maybe challenging his girlfriend wasn’t the best idea but on the other hand maybe it was about time they had a battle.  

     “I think you know how this works, the only way you’re getting by is battling first.” 

     “Seems like a silly rule, but okay. Which one of those kids do you want me to trounce?”

     “Neither, I think it’s about time we faced off don’t you?” 

     “Oh?” Kali held his gaze for a long moment. “Alright, if you’re so ready to get your butt kicked so be it.” 

     “I don’t think that’s how this is gonna go. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll even go easy on ya.”

     “You can, but I won’t.” Kali could practically taste the tension hanging in the air between them. Cliff had a bit of an advantage as he had seen her battle before but she was pretty confident she could win regardless. And now that she had said it there was no backing down.

     Cliff could hear the two idiots, as Kali so eloquently put it, behind him snickering something along the lines of “she’s gonna get her butt whooped” and had an idea that would probably shut them up. “How about we up the stakes then? If I win you have to go on a date with me.” He kept his expression neutral as he heard the two guys gasp behind them. 

     Kali bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, he was trying to show off in front of those kids wasn’t he? “And what if I already have a boyfriend?” She decided to play along. 

     “I’m sure he won’t mind.”  

     “I dunno, he’s a pretty big guy. Tough. I don’t think he’d like his girl making such deals with another man.” Kali stood her ground as Cliff took a few steps closer and crossed his arms over his chest. 

     “Maybe he is, dollface, but so am I.” He winked.

     “Tell you what if you win, and that’s a pretty big if, I’ll think about it. But….” She glanced behind him to the QR code a little further down the street and decided on a term of her own. “If I win you have to abandon this pokestop and can’t block it off ever again.” She looked back at him challengingly. 

     “What?” Cliff frowned, fighting the urge to turn around and yell at the peanut gallery behind them, and lowered his voice before continuing. “That’s not something I can promise, doll.” 

     “Then don’t lose.” Kali smirked and reached for a pokeball before proclaiming loudly to get this match started, ending any further arguments on the matter. "Standard match I presume? Last one standing out of three?" She questioned as she racked her brain for any time Cliff had mentioned pokemon so she could pick a starter. If she remembered correctly he had mentioned Tyranitar and maybe Onyx and Torterra as well, all of which were rock types. Maybe there was something there. 

     “Right.” This had suddenly gone from playful banter to something a little more serious. He was a Leader with Team Rocket, there was no way he could just promise to not do his job. Didn’t she understand that? Not that he was going to lose.

     “Ready when you are.” Both of them tossed pokeballs forward at the same time. Kali had chosen Clover, her Leafeon, gambling on her rock type theory. Her choice paid off as an Omanyte appeared across from her. Perfect. “Razor Leaf!” She tried getting the upper hand with a first move but Cliff was just as quick to have his Omanyte attack, but Mud Shot wasn’t going to do much against her grass type. 

     “Dodge!” Cliff was cursing inwardly as Kali’s Leafeon hopped swiftly around his slower Omanyte getting in far more hits than he would have liked. Within moments it was apparent that his Omanyte was outmatched and he swore under his breath as he was forced to return it. The two Grunts snickered. 

     Kali grinned as Clover returned to stand anxiously in front of her for Cliff’s second choice. By the look on his face he was not as amused as she was. “Alright, what’s next?” She murmured to her Leafeon as he tossed forward another ball. It was clearly something large, Kali thought as the pokemon began to take shape in front of her before becoming recognizable as an Electivire. Alright, so maybe her theory was wrong but an electric type wasn’t a huge obstacle and her Leafeon hadn’t taken much damage from the Omanyte anyway. At Cliff's command the large yellow pokemon charged forward, electric energy cracking between the two antennas on the top of its head. "Clover, dodge!" Her Leafeon jumped aside but not quickly enough and a jolt of electricity hit its hindquarters causing it to stumble. It quickly recovered as Kali called for it to use Razor Leaf again. The larger pokemon took the hits as it shot a few more bolts of electricity at Clover who managed to dodge most of them. 

     "Use Thunder Punch!" Cliff called with a grin, he might have had a rough start but the match was turning back around in his favor. The Electivire charged at Kali's Leafeon again, this time gripping its tail to get more of a charge on its attack. 

     "Hold and use Energy Ball!" Pulling this move off meant that Clover would most likely take the full force of the Electivire's attack but it should also be enough to knock out the opponent as well. The leaf shaped sprout on its head began to glow white as a green ball of energy started forming in front of its open mouth. “Now!” Kali called as soon as the Electivire got close enough and the ball of energy shot forward into the other pokemon’s chest but just like Kali had predicted it was able to hit Clover too, both pokemon skid backwards and were spent. As she returned Clover she made a mental note to make sure it got extra treats later. 

     “Dammit!” Cliff swore under his breath as he was forced to return his second pokemon. He had hoped to get Electivire’s charged attack in before it got hit but it was too slow. The smug look on Kali’s face was only fueling the well of anger rising in his chest, he couldn’t lose in front of two trainees! He had an example to set!

     “I thought he was supposed to be tough.” Zeke whispered to Bradley but not quietly enough and his eyes went wide as Cliff rounded on him. 

     “One more word out of you two and it’s desk duty for a month!” 

     Two down, one to go. Kali took out her second pokeball as Cliff reached for his third. She wasn’t about to let up and chose her Vaporeon, Lyra, who was arguably her strongest Eeveelution. She was very much relieved when she saw Cliff’s selection, a Tyranitar. They had plenty of training against this particular pokemon after training with Cole so Kali knew she wouldn’t have to give Lyra much direction as they had a tried and true strategy. 

     “Water gun!” Lyra jumped into action sending small but quick jets of water at the Tyranitar that was advancing. Its stubby arms swatted away at some of the jets as it went in for an attack and Lyra just managed to jump out of the way of its teeth, although Kali had to admit Cliff’s was much faster than the one Cole had. 

     “Use Iron Tail!” The large green creature swung around deftly as its tail began to glow white and before Lyra could jump out of the way its tail crashed into her Vaporeon’s side. Cliff wasted no time in having his Tyranitar attack again as the Vaporeon got back on its feet. 

     “Dodge!” Lyra obeyed and before Kali could call for another attack she was already shooting more jets of water at the Tyranitar, she seemed angry that it had gotten a hit in on her and was retaliating in full force. “Yes, go girl!” 

     That Vaporeon was too damn fast. Changing strategies Cliff shouted for his pokemon to use Stone Edge, hopefully this would give him the upper hand again. Turning to face its opponent the Tyranitar slammed its hands onto the street and a wave of rock pillars shot towards Lyra causing her to stumble as she scurried to avoid them. “Quick, Iron Tail while its recovering!” But Lyra wasn’t falling for that again and shot a quick jet of water at the Tyranitar’s face to distract it before moving swiftly behind it. 

      “Hydro Pump!” Kali practically yelled with excitement. Before Cliff’s pokemon could react Lyra opened her mouth and a large, forceful jet of water slammed into the Tyranitar’s back causing it to crash forward into the ground. 

     “Get up, dammit!” To the creature’s credit it did try to but wound up slumping back down onto the pavement defeated.

     “Yes!” Kali cheered as she recalled her Vaporeon. “Told you I’d win.” 

     “What the hell?!" Her elation was short lived as Cliff stormed towards her with a scowl. 

     "What the hell, what?" She glared back at him, why was he so angry about this? This was certainly new, was he really that big of a sore loser? 

     "There's no way you should have been able to beat me with just a couple of Eeveelutions!" 

     "Excuse me?! Just what is that supposed to mean?" A hot spark of anger flared in her chest as her hands clenched into fists at her side. 

     "It means I shouldn't have lost to a...to a pipsqueak like you! You’re not even on a Team!" 

     “Pipsqueak!? Did you forget who you’re talking to?” Kali glared up at him, she wasn’t going to show it but the not being on a Team comment stung more than the name calling. She was clearly just as good as anyone else regardless of not being on a Team and he knew it. 

     Cliff took a deep breath as he met her furious gaze. “No…” He relented a little and lowered his voice before continuing. “But really, you had to beat me in front of my trainees?” 

     “I told you I wasn’t going to go easy! I’m not going to lose just so you can show off!” Stars, she was angry. “You know what, forget this.” Kali spun on her heels and stalked off towards the corner. 

     “Kali, wait!” Cliff jogged after her, catching up right before she reached it. “Babe look I-” 

     “Save it.” One look told Cliff he should probably back off for now. 

     “Alright, we’ll talk later then.” He replied weakly as she walked off. It was probably better to wait until they both had a chance to cool off anyway.

Part 25 / Part 27

A huge shout out to @rubystartrail for always being willing to chat through writer’s block! And to @nenalata for being an avid reader!

[takadasaiko]

For the h/c meme: Logan/Veronica h and s please and thank you

FFN II AO3

Summary: When one of Veronica's cases follows her home, it's Logan's life that's put in danger.

Requested Prompt: H+S Stabbed + Someone catches them as they stumble

Worth the Pain

He was running late. The test flights had gone a little longer than usual that day and he'd gotten on the road just in time to find the rest of the traffic heading northbound on the PCH. His commute back to Neptune - usually just over an hour - turned into a two hour affair, and he was starting to count even that as lucky with the way they had come to a complete standstill at one point. He had sent Veronica an update via text and she'd said they would just meet him at Mama Leone's.

Right. Dinner with Keith. Of course that would be tonight.

It was everything Logan could do to get home, get changed - as little as Veronica would complain about him showing up in uniform, Navy whites and pasta did not mix - and get over to the restaurant before the texts started rolling in.

Veronica and Keith were deep in discussion when Logan arrived, dodging a couple of kids that darted back around like they were looking to score points if they took his feet out from under him. He stayed upright though, and sidestepped towards the table in the back corner where the father-daughter PI duo were tucked away. Veronica glanced up. "Hey there, flyboy. I was starting to think you weren't gonna make it."

"Sorry. Long day." He leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. Less than he wanted, but he could already feel another set of eyes focused on him with a comment loaded if not fired yet. He flashed their owner a quick smile. "Hey, Keith."

"Logan," Keith greeted. "What had you so tied up today?"

"You heard about the issues the Hornets have had with OBOGS going out?" Logan asked as he slipped into the open seat next to Veronica, across from her father. "We've been trying to pinpoint what's causing it."

"Oh sure, we were just chatting about OBOGS, weren't we, Dad? Daily conversation," Veronica quipped with that very specific smile he had quickly learned meant he was using Navy lingo no one else in the conversation knew.

"On-Board Oxygen Generation System. It pumps oxygen in through our masks so we can breathe. Thanks," he offered to the waitress as she set a basket of breadsticks down.

"What happens when it goes out?" Keith asked curiously.

Logan took a sip from the glass of wine that had been waiting for him. "Best case, you get switched over to the backup and can get on the ground pretty fast. You've got maybe ten minutes before the backup runs out."

Keith's expressions remained carefully neutral and Logan risked a glance over at Veronica who was gaping a little. She recovered quickly. "You know, I never want to hear you complain about how dangerous my job is again."

Logan chuckled. "C'mon. It's not that bad at this stage. It's controlled, every precaution taken. The engineers are trying to fix the multi-million dollar aircraft, not have us crash it."

"Have you been able to replicate the problem?" Keith asked.

"Not yet. It's been smooth flying every time." He reached for a bread stick. Time for a change of subject. "So, why am I calling your job dangerous today?"

"Today, any day," Veronica answered flippantly.

Logan arched a disbelieving eyebrow in response. "Huh-huh."

The conversation shifted again and he let it as they settled into easier topics of baseball, cameras, a particularly absurd stunt Vinnie Van Lowe pulled, weekend plans, and the newest non-chewable chew toy that Pony had gotten into.

"He ate Logan's fancy loafers," Veronica chuckled, still far more amused by it than Logan was. "The ones that cost almost as much as our rent."

"I swear that dog is learning to open doors. There's a reason I like to hang my uniforms up on the highest bars in the closet."

"I think your cap's safe on the shelf."

"I wouldn't put money on it."

"How fast would he become my dog instead of our dog to your captain if Pony got a hold of it?"

Logan flashed her a grin. "So fast."

"Excuse me," Keith mumbled and Logan saw him pulling his buzzing cell phone to his ear as he stood, leaning heavily on the cane he had had to use since the wreck. He mentally cringed at the word. Wreck didn't do it justice. Drive-by with a vehicle was closer, and who was ultimately responsible for it was actually something Logan would be willing to put money on, unlike the safety of his uniform from the chew-happy puppy. He just hoped that Neptune remembered all the shit Lamb had done by the time the election rolled around.

"So does it take the sheriff nearly twelve hours to follow up on every B&E or are we just special?" Keith groused into the phone, reclaiming Logan's attention. Think of the devil and apparently he calls.

"B&E?" he echoed. "Did your dad's place get broken into?"

"The office."

Logan blinked hard a couple of times. "Your office?"

"Yep." Veronica took a long sip from her wine glass and he waited as patiently as he could. Finally she set it down, the glass clinking against the hard table. He saw the subtle shift when she realized he wasn't going to just let her drop it. "We got in this morning and the place was ransacked. Door was broken in, Mac's monitors were trashed, and the filing cabinets had been forced open."

"You think it was someone you're after?" Logan asked, working hard to keep his tone neutral.

"Probably."

"Any idea which case?"

She shot him a look and he knew he'd already pushed it into dangerous territory. It was a delicate balance with their work. While Logan was on shore duty there weren't nearly as many secrets, but overseas he had to stay tight lipped about where they were and what they were doing. On Veronica's end, confidentiality was a must in her day-to-day work life. He understood that and worked hard not to push. Sometimes she'd vent in a vague sort of way without names or details, but mostly they erred on a respect for the confidentiality of each other's work.

Granted, his work only had people attacking him when he was deployed.

"I'm not asking for names," he said after several long, tense moments. "Just…. do you have any suspects?"

"I do."

"And?"

"Well it's not like we can arrest him ourselves," Veronica huffed and Logan reached across the table for the wine bottle to refill her nearly empty glass. She motioned for him to keep pouring and sighed. "We had a woman come in a couple of days ago. Abuse case." He knew he made a face, but if hers was anything to go by it wasn't nearly as toned down as he'd hoped. "She wanted to file a restraining order, we started gathering some evidence to back it up, hopefully get him arrested… I guess he spotted us."

Us meaning her. Her father didn't do a lot of tailing these days.

"Does he know who you are?"

"Obviously he knew where to find us."

"I mean, on sight."

"I don't know. I can usually tell when someone catches me tailing them, but he didn't show any of the usual signs. It's gotta be him though. Dad's been trying to get in touch with the sheriff's department over it all day."

"Useless assholes," Logan breathed, risking a glance at how Keith was pacing as best as he could on the phone with Lamb's office.

"Yeah."

His gaze swiveled back to her and he reached forward, his touch hesitant against her hand, but a sense of relief flooded through him as she turned it over, taking his. He ran his thumb up and down the inside of her wrist in a soothing motion. This was the best opening he had. "Hey, I know you hate it when I -"

"Oh, you know I do."

He stopped, smirked, and waited until her lips twitched into a small smile before he continued. "I know a guy that can install top-line security. I know you guys have cameras, but they're outdated, don't give a clear image. Brian can get new ones hooked up with an alarm system and -"

"We don't have it in the budget."

"Then let me do it."

Her lips quirked up devilishly. "Oh, you're going to hook it up?"

And it was his turn to shoot her a withering look. "Let me pay for it."

"Logan…."

"Please?" He held her gaze, stuck in a battle of wills with one of the most stubborn human beings he'd ever met.

"When's that election again?" Keith groused as he limped his way back towards his seat, unintentionally interrupting the stare-off. He seemed to notice that he had as he slid back into his seat. "What's wrong?"

Fine. She could be stubborn, so could he. "Office or our place, your call," Logan directed at Veronica and saw her stiffen a little at that.

"We don't need a security system at our place."

"What about the drunk Spring Breaker that just about broke down our door last year because he thought it was the place he'd rented?"

"That was one time."

"You're right. I think your office would benefit more from it, but hey, I don't get to make calls on that because I don't work there. I do live at our apartment, so….."

"You're an asshole."

There was less spite in her tone than the words themselves might have indicated and Logan smirked. He turned his attention to Keith as the waitress delivered their food. "Veronica mentioned you guys had a break in. I know a guy that does topnotch security for very reasonable rates."

"Very reasonable when you pay for it," she grumbled and he ignored her.

"It's not like the sheriff's department would respond even if an alarm were to go off at our office," Keith answered with a shrug, digging into his risotto.

"See?" Veronica pressed and Logan kept his focus on her father.

"Still, that alarm'll scare most thugs off from ransacking the place."

"Logan, while I appreciate -"

"Can we just focus on dinner?"

The snap caught him more off guard than he would have liked and Logan glanced over at the woman he loved. She was stressed. From the day, from the case, and from the conversation that they were in right then. Okay. He couldn't fix the first two, but the third he could handle.

"Yeah. Sure." He managed what he thought was a pretty convincing smile. "So, Riles tells me he thinks he can snag some Padres tickets next weekend. Anybody in?"

And that was that. The Mars clan was a stubborn one, and despite Veronica's affections, he was still somewhat on the outside of it. Any offer to contribute was still seen as charity, even if he just wanted to see the people he cared about safe.

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

Logan resisted the urge to ask about the case or push his opinion on Mars Investigations' dated security for the rest of dinner. Veronica did her best to pretend everything was normal, but Keith remained distant and irritable the entire meal. He paid for them and Logan bit his tongue, thanking him instead and said he'd give Riley the green light on the tickets.

He felt the long day and the evening weighing on him as they returned home, cleaned up the newest mess Pony had left of what looked like had been one of Veronica's scarves, and took him out. He wasn't the only one, though, and he circled around Veronica as she stripped her shirt over her head to start getting ready for bed. His touch was gentle and he pressed a kiss to the side of her head. She sighed, but leaned back and he took the invitation to let his kisses start to travel down to the crook of her neck, the apology for making her day even harder in each one. Finally she turned, draping her arms over his shoulders and her fingers teased at his hair. Those clear blue eyes pulled him in and her smile didn't look nearly as forced as it had been all evening. "Hey."

"Hey yourself," he answered softly and she tilted back, letting her hands slide across his shoulders and down his chest until her fingers wrapped in the fabric of his shirt. As she fell back against the bed, she pulled him with her. He leaned in to kiss her and she wrapped her legs around his middle. Logan braced himself with a hand on either side of her shoulders and he could feel her fingers pulling at his shirt, working at the buttons in a way that made him think they weren't going to last long. He smiled into the kiss and deepened it.

A loud pounding at the door startled them both out of their moment. Veronica released him reluctantly and started for her discarded shirt.

"I got it," Logan offered and received a pointed look for it. He held his hands up in mock surrender. "Out of the two of us, which one is still dressed?" He started down the hall before she could argue the logic.

"If it's that idiot from next door tell him he's never allowed to borrow our vacuum again after last time!" Veronica shouted after him and Logan felt his lips quirk up at that.

He reached the end of the hall to get his first look at the figure outside. He was hidden under a baggy windbreaker and a baseball cap, but it could be a guy that lived several units down. Martin? Marty maybe? Something. He'd caught a couple waves with him one early Saturday morning several weeks back. This guy was definitely tall enough.

Logan pried the door open a crack. "Hey, man—"

The figure finally looked up, giving Logan the first clear view of his face. Definitely not Marty. "Where is she?"

"I think you have the wrong apartment," Logan tried, watching the other man carefully. He was twitchy and aggravated like he was hyped up on something. Logan had been in a lot of fights over the years, but these days he liked to think that he knew the ones to avoid. Strangers showing up tripped out on something? Not a gamble he was interested in taking on his own porch.

"That bitch Mars! She thinks she can wreck my marriage?" he howled and tried to push past Logan into the apartment.

Logan shoved back, ready to slam the door in his face, but the would-be intruder didn't stumble as far as he'd hoped and swiped back at him. It felt like a punch to the gut and he loosed a frustrated breath. Okay. Apparently there was no avoiding it.

The intruder stepped back and Logan blinked hard as his eyes focused on the knife in his hand and he risked a glance down to his white dress shirt that was quickly turning red just below his ribs. Shit.

"Logan, move!" Veronica shouted and he turned to find her standing behind him, his Colt .45 in her surprisingly steady hands, and a determined look aimed directly at their assailant. He stumbled back to give her a chance to level the weapon for a clear shot if she needed it. Time to find out if that weapons training she had taken had taught her anything. "Cops are on their way. Don't—"

He moved and the shot went off, sending the man crumbling onto their front porch. Logan stared at him for half a beat, adrenaline still pumping hard, and turned back to see Veronica frozen in place. "Hey," he said softly. "You're okay. We're okay."

"He's the one that broke into our office. He was harassing his ex wife. How did he…?" She trailed off, her gaze fixing on him and she paled. "Logan?"

He glanced down and grimaced. Right. Amazing how singularly focused the brain could be in these situations. All at once he felt the adrenaline dissipate and everything pulsed dangerously. Veronica's arms were around him and she was doing her best to ease the inevitable drop to the floor so he could lean against the side of the couch. She stayed down there with him, fingers pulling his shirt away from the injury and he didn't like the barely contained panic etched onto her face. "Veronica," he breathed, her name coming out quieter than he'd intended.

"They're sending an ambulance too," she managed, her own voice trembling. "Okay. Just…" The pain spiked as she put pressure on the bleeding wound and the room pulsed again. "This was my case and he…" She squeezed her eyes closed and he saw tears escape. "I'm so sorry, Logan. I'm so sorry. You're going to be okay. I'm going to make sure you're okay."

He wasn't going to be conscious for long and she was spiraling. The last thing he wanted was for her to blame herself. He reached up clumsily, looking for her hand. "Hey. Not your fault."

She looked up at him and he could see the angry tears in her eyes, but he felt her free hand tighten around his. "You're going to be okay."

"I know."

"Logan?"

He swallowed hard, trying to force the response out, but he felt himself slipping under, Veronica's face fading slowly to black.

----------

He had clips of memories, fractured and scattered. Voices that he didn't recognize. Someone pushing something down over his nose and mouth, but air flowing easier once he stopped fighting it. Veronica's face. Those eyes. They were like an anchor against the riptide trying to drag him away from her.

Come back to me.

Always.

Logan came back to consciousness in what felt like disjointed steps, much like losing it. He wasn't even sure how many times he came back around or if every time that sterile smell filled his nose, the too-bright lights made him wince and want to go back to sleep, or the chill that couldn't be helped even by the thin blanket draped over his legs just felt like the first time. He finally pried his eyes open to find Veronica asleep in the chair next to his bed, bent at an awkward angle with her head resting on the thin mattress. Logan found his lips curling up ever so slightly as he flexed his fingers to find her hand holding onto his.

She stirred at the movement, mumbling sleepily and he squeezed her fingers in his. Veronica popped up with that, none of the stiffness she might have felt at the awkward sleeping arrangement showing as she flashed him a relieved smile. "Hey. You're awake."

His lips parted to answer, dry and cracking from the ventilator they must have had him on, and he found his throat equally rebellious. He had to clear his throat to force any sound out, and decided on important rather than direct response. "Love you," he rasped.

Her smile only broadened at that and she pulled his hand up to her lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. "How are you feeling?"

"'kay." Logan could feel himself fading already and he wasn't ready for that. He shifted a little and while the movement brought some pain - distant and certainly a survivable amount - it brought a little more focus with it too. He let his gaze drift over her from her rumpled t-shirt to the bags under her eyes and the messy ponytail she had her hair pulled back in. He swallowed hard to try his luck at coherent words again. "You been home?"

"Once. Caught a quick shower, made sure Pony knew we didn't abandon him. Mac took him to her place last night. Fair warning: we may never see our dog again."

He snorted a soft laugh and caught her gaze. Thankfully she seemed to understand the question even if he couldn't quite get it out. "Sneider - the guy that stabbed you - died. Lamb's had a field day with that."

Okay, that warranted a real attempt at speech. "He trying to get you on murder?"

"It's like you've dealt with a Lamb or something."

The sound he made this time was decidedly less amused than his response to her last joke. Between the two brothers they had managed to wrongfully accuse him of murder three times. Hard to forget.

"I guess you don't remember waking up when I was down at the station, huh?" He shook his head. "Dad said they gave him hell when he tried to get in to sit with you. Kept saying that he wasn't family so he couldn't come in. Apparently he got them told."

Logan frowned a little, drawing a blank where he knew he shouldn't. Maybe they had pushed another dose of painkillers or something. "Told what?"

"That you're family."

"Must have been a riot," he huffed.

Veronica looked confused for a moment. Then something seemed to click and he watched a lopsided smile tug into place. "You know, my dad has tells. They're tiny, easy to miss, but I know every one at this point, even when he's just telling the story." She reached forward, her touch gentle but firm as she made sure he was looking at her. "He meant it. Not sure when you won him over, but I think you finally did."

"Guess ya gotta keep me, huh?"

"Planning on it," Veronica said, her voice wavering just a little. "Just don't you leave me."

"Not going anywhere. 'Cept maybe to sleep," he mumbled, feeling his eyelids drooping.

"I'll be right here when you wake up."

She started to sit back in the chair and he made a small, irritable sound at that and reached up clumsily to catch her wrist. "You're tiny. You'll fit."

"On the bed?" He nodded. "Logan, I don't want to hurt you…."

"You won't."

She sniffed and he cracked an eye he hadn't realized had slid closed back open to find her staring back at him through frustrated tears. "This is my —"

"No," he cut her off. "You saved my life, just like you alway do." Logan tugged as hard as he could manage, which wasn't saying much at the moment. Her laugh was soft as she finally crawled onto the bed, able to fit when she laid on her side and an arm wrapped around his rather than draped over his middle. He settled back against his pillows with a satisfied smile. "See? Pint sized."

"Sure you're okay?"

He made a small sound of acknowledgement. Loving Veronica Mars would always be dangerous - sometimes for her, sometimes for him, and sometimes for them both. That had become clear a long time ago, but if it meant being close to her, if it meant spending the rest of his life with her, he had learned that any amount of pain was survivable because they came back to each other in the end. Always.

[nyxicnymph]

Horizon and Edge

#2: Cause-and-effect

Later, I’m in the gym. I joined the rifle team, but I’m the only one who showed up today. I’m just clicking away. Shooting all-standing. Killer on the feet.

I reach for a pellet and grab the last one in the pellet box.

“Last one,” I mutter to no one in particular. I’m not concerned. I’ve been shooting fairly well. A lot of nines, several tens, and only two eights. This shot will be great.

I bring the rifle up, breathe in, breathe out. I sight in, then check my Natural Point of Aim. Open my eyes. I’m on target. Pull the trigger....

**********************************************

Erik:

I walk down the gym hallway, looking for my sister. I hear a THWAP! Click-click come from the open gym doors. I peek in, and see Hailey standing sideways, wearing a thick outfit.

She’ll know where Kay is.

“Hey!” I shout, trying to get her attention.

There’s another loud THWAP! And she sets something down hard. She turns her head slightly sideways, and I see what she was holding: a lightweight air rifle.

She puts the rifle down in a rack, and sticks a length of orange weed string inside the chamber, and takes off her jacket. She brings a long black box close to an orange line on the floor, and then puts her rifle inside it. Only then does she turn around. She smiles very brightly at me.

Warning bells go off inside my head. What did I do?

“Can I help you?” she says through her teeth.

“Uh, uhm,” I stammer. I’d almost forgotten why I was here. I get my thoughts together and continue, “Have you seen my sister? She’s your best friend, so I figured....” I trail off.

She raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t know Beth had a brother.” She’s dropped the smile.

Ouch. That’s way below the belt. I wince and reply, “Actually, I’m Kaylee’s brother, Erik.”

**********************************************

Hailey:

I knew it. “Oh,” I say. “She’s with Beth.”

“Which is... Where?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t know,” I say, turning around, my braid whipping around behind me.

“’Kay, thanks!” He says waving. “I’m going to go now....”

I turn back towards him. “And WHERE do you think you’re going?”

“Um... home? I think...?”

I smile grimly. “Oh, no. No, you aren’t. I don’t think so.” I grab him by the ear and drag him over to where my coach is standing. “You are going to explain to my coach why my last shot is off!” I tell him.

He now stands in front of my coach, and, wincing in pain, explains.

While he’s doing that, I ignore him, and continue packing up my gear. I have to get home....

**********************************************

Erik:

I head on home. I called Kaylee on the phone, and I’ll see her when I get home.

My ear throbs, and I rub it. Hailey can grip harder than anyone else I’ve ever met. Ow.

I sigh. Am I just doomed to be hated by her forever? This runs through my head again. I really got on her bad side today. Way to ruin a first impression, Erik. On either side.

I reach the front door. Before I enter, I take a deep breath in, then blow it out. This is going to be difficult. Probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

I enter my house. Kaylee somehow beat me here. She must have been shopping at the dollar store around the corner. Mom is just visible in the kitchen, and Dad is sitting in his easy chair, scrolling down his phone. Kaylee is just sitting on a footrest, reading a magazine.

Mom asks me how school went, and I answer with a generic, “Okay.” I don’t lie (most of the time, and only for very good reasons), but I’m not particularly interested in telling her that the new girl at school dragged me halfway across the gym. Mostly because I was a dum-dum.

I set my bag down. Then I nervously begin to speak. “Mom, Dad, Kaylee... I have something to tell you.”

“You have a crush?” Mom.

“You have a girlfriend?” Dad.

“You have a date this weekend?” Kaylee.

Why did they all just jump to what is essentially the same conclusion? “No.” I breathe in, then out. Then I jump in. “I’m Edge.”

There. It’s out. They might be in danger, but they need to know. Besides, I can easily protect them! Plus, it’s easier for me to save the city-slash-state-slash-country-slash-world if they know. Less lying involved.

“That’s nice, dear.” Mom.

“Oh, I already knew.” Dad.

Kaylee just releases a pterodactyl-like screech.

“Kaylee? Are you okay?” I ask.

She twitches. “I... I...” She regains her composure. Temporarily. What’s her problem? “I THOUGHT YOU WERE CUTE!!!!!” She yells at me.

Oh.

“That’s not my fault!” I yell right back, while recovering from my semi-defensive pose. “Sheesh.”

“You two settle down!” Mom chides, stirring the mashed potatoes. “Erik, finish your schoolwork. Kaylee, clean your room.”

Sometimes I wonder if Mom has superpowers, too.

**********************************************

I stand on my rooftop. Mom and Dad have been informed of where I’m going (nowhere in particular; it’s a patrol), and when I’ll try to get back (11:30 by the latest).

As for why I’m standing; I don’t particularly like flying. It’s really unnerving. No, thank you.

As I begin to cross the City, I hear voices. I run a mental filter, trying to distinguish who has bad intents or not, but sometimes random thoughts still pop in.

Children laughing, the TV screen, running water, the street (Viewed from the front passenger’s seat), sizzling meat. Then something really stands out.

I probably shouldn’t have yelled. It’s a girl. She’s just thinking to herself. Why does this concern me? She continues: But maybe now he’ll pay attention. Ugh! I can’t sleep, I feel so bad.

Okay, pretty sure I know who this is.

“I need some fresh air.”

So, she’ll be coming up, huh? I wonder which roof she’ll be on. This is the business district, so there are a lot of flat roofs. Some people live above their shops, too. I’m guessing her family is one of those.

I see a figure across the street come up and sit down on the edge of the building.

I wonder what exactly she’s up to? I should go check. With that thought, I head that way.

“But when would I apologize?” She asks herself. Yep. It’s Hailey.

I crouch down behind her. “You could start now,” I whisper.

She totally freaks. Oops. She also nearly falls off the building. Double oops.

I catch her by the wrist. “Gotcha!”

She bangs into the building, lets out an “oof!” then looks up at me. “Let go of me, flea-brain!”

Um, is that supposed to be an insult?

“You sure about that?” I tease.

She looks down, then back up. “Please, pull me up.” In the back of my mind, I hear her think, Don’t antagonize the person who’s trying to help you!

I pull her up and set her safely on the building.

She says, “Thanks.” She’s standing with her back to me, but I’m pretty sure she’s as red as a tomato.

“No prob,” I remark. “It’s kind of my job.”

“Ha-ha.” She’s not really laughing. It’s a “That’s super cheesy” kind of laugh.

“Look, I’m sorry I was so mean to you,” she says. That’s mildly out of the blue.

“Are you now?” I wonder. She ignores me.

“I guess I’m still adjusting to the City, and then you scared me!”

“So, you’re new, then?” I ask.

She turns around and laughs. “New indeed! I’ve only been here for two weeks!”

I sit on the precipice of the building. “Two weeks?” I remark. “Well, you seem to have found good friends.” I’m just trying to not make her angry again. She’s actually pretty cool when she’s not yelling.

“Yeah, four of them!” She states, then lists them: “Kaylee, Beth, Grumpy... er... Cole, and Rick!”

“Four?” I ask. I guess Kaylee must have introduced her to my friends, Rick and Cole, but what about....

“Well, one of them has a... Well, she has brother named Erik, but I’m not sure I like him.”

Me....

It’s a good thing she’s turned away, or she would have seen my face, and probably realized that I’m totally Erik. I want to be her friend, too!

When she’s not yelling.

I compose myself. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I begin, “why?”

She stares out over the City. “He just didn’t make a good impression.”

All right, that’s fair. I stand up. “Look,” I say, “I should be going. Stay safe.”

“Okay.”

Before I leave, I turn back. “Um, good night,” I tell her.

“Same to you,” she replies.

I leave, feeling very mixed up on the inside.

[lemonadebloodsworld]

Tw: ED (??), sh, depression, suicidal thoughts, abuse (??)

So yeah,

It feels weird to come back here even if it's a more recent account. The first time I made a tumblr account was when I was 13 and back then I was already really depressed because of trauma, my relationship with my parents and the fact that they were always saying that I faked being depressed and was just being dramatic and other shitty stuff.

Back then they thought I was a gay girl too but yeah I'm a bi trans boy and it makes everything so damn harder because everytime I try to talk about my mental health my mom just says that it's JUST because I'm trans and I should just be patient and wait to be 18 to start a transition while yes, dysphoria and the fact that my family isn't really supportive make me sad but my mental health has been getting so damn bad.

I've never really been a happy child, my parents divorced when I was 3-4, my mom found my stepdad who has always been an asshole to me and my little brother because we are not his "real" kids and would always yell at us and hit my brother and my mom has always been depressive and mentally ill (Ed, depression and trauma) so she is scared of him ig, anyways, she just never said anything about it, even when she noticed that we were really scared of him.

My bio father was supposed to take us at his place every weekend but after a year he stopped coming and dissappeared for 9 years. At the same time I started to get bullied at school by older kids and some kids in my class and I didn't have any friends because it was a shame for them to be friend with me.

At 11, I have been sexually assaulted by an older kid (he was 15 or something) leaving me with trauma.

At 12 I changed school and found friends, I was so unused to it and ashamed of my past that I spent my time lying to them so they'll like me and think I'm cool, I also started to smoke and drink in secret because I felt so much pain and the intrusive thoughts started to get loud.

At 13 my bio dad came back in my life because he owed a lot of money to my mom and wanted to use us to make my mom feel bad about it. I started self-harming lightly and depression started to settle in but I wasn't really understanding what was going on because the "hypomanic" phases and intrusive thoughts were getting more present causing me to lose the only friends I had and yeah I just didn't understand what the hell was going on. I tried to talk about my mental health to my parents but they told me that I was being dramatic and it's a normal thing to feel bad because I was an adolescent and questioning my identity (I came out as a lesbian back at this time) and decided to just punish me and take my phone away because I was spending too much time alone in my room and didn't do the chores.

At 14 I started to have a lot of anxiety and panic attacks while being in depressive episodes, I started an ed (feeling shameful for eating even a little amount of anything and purging, I don't want to give it any name because I have been diagnosed and yeah), I also began to self-harm more and deeper (still not bad, I don't want to lie for that type of stuff xd), I broke down one day and told everything to my parents (sh, depressive tendencies, smoke, suicidal thoughts etc) and once again they were like "yeah nah it can't be that bad, you just lie to have attention and have an excuse to stay in your room and just being stupid" but my mom saw my arms and thights and then was okay for me to go see a psychologist. So for a year I had the opportunity to talk with a professional who was really amazing, she prescribed me light sleep pills because of my insomnia while in depressive episodes and "hypomanic" (don't have a diagnosis but I have all the symptoms but then again I don't want to self diagnose because it could be wrong and be something else) ones but my mom always refused to give them to me. At the end of the year she wanted an appointment with my mom to talk about my mental health and the importance for me to go see a therapist to be diagnosed (bipolar disorder 2 (she was still questioning it) , anxiety disorder and depression or whatever, she just wanted me to have the help I needed) but then again my mom said no because I was surely just faking it all and I just had to make efforts to be happy. I was so tired of everything and just wanted to feel better so I started to steal my mom depression medication (mostly Xanax and calming pills).

At 15 I met my first serious girlfriend, I fell in love so hard with her and for the first month she really helped me to stop sh, pills, drinking and everything was great until she started to verbally abuse me using my dysphoria and fragile subjects I told her about (she would say that I'm annoying and selfish for always feeling bad and that u was too sensitive and not a real boy if I cried) once I wasn't agreeing with her, slap and hit me if I said something she wasn't okay with or when I would have anxiety attacks or talk to her about my suicidal thoughts while in depressive episodes and yeah she used me like if I was a dog, if she wanted something or think in some way I would have to give her or do whatever she wanted or I would get threatened, insulted or ignored for a long time or other icky stuff. After 6 months of making me feel guilty for not letting her touch me in a sexual way she one day decided to start taking advantage of me while I wasn't in the appropriate head space or without my consent and then making fun of my body and making comments about the way I look. She in fact, made me really anxious and feel bad and it made me start to binge eat, at the end of the year my weight was 78 kg, before our relationship I was 59 kg, people noticed it but just told me to stop eating and go on a diet.

At 17 (this year) I finally broke up even if she asked me to do it because she didn't want to be seen as the mean one for letting me while I was clearly depressed. It was hard but I could finally meet new people or get back with people she didn't wanted me to talk to (especially my amazing actual partner and my bestfriend) who helped me a lot realizing all the shit she did to me and they have been amazing at making me feel loved and cared for and to be honest I don't think I would be there if they weren't in my life right now.

Now my mental health is just fucked. Like I said when I broke up with my abusive ex I had gained almost 20 kg and it reminded me all the bully I've been through as a kid (they most of the time used the fact I was overweight to bully me) so I started to starve myself or purge if I felt like I ate too much (I started to count calories) I was at 78 kg at the start and in 2 weeks I was at 65kg, it was during quarantine so i didn't have any friend or people noticing what I was doing or see me fainting. I started to drink almost everyday and smoke a lot.

In June I got in a relationship with my actual partner and to be honest it's the only good point I can find this year. They (genderfluid) are an angel and I just don't know what I would do without them, they help me a lot even if they are struggling with mental illness themself and anyone has ever cared for me and made me feel so loved before. Today it's been 4 months officially and it makes me feel happy and I just want it to never stop. My mental health is at its worst, I've been having a lot of intrusive thoughts, i have a self destructive comportement, in September I started to sh again (a lot deeper) after 2 years clean, I often call them in the middle of the night (well in the middle of the day for them cause I'm in Belgium and they are in Texas) because of really bad dreams and suicidal thoughts, I am bullied and made fun of by the people in my class for being trans and having a different style (alt-grunge), I barely eat or purge if I try to have a meal, I have these "hypomanic" phases that make me getting really angry at nothing and do a lot of stupid shit because I feel invincible and better than anyone, almost godly and yet they never made me feel like I was a burden or like I should just stfu or like I was being dramatic and they are actually the first person believing me and not saying I fake everything.

I am struggling and it becomes so damn hard to live but I will do my best not to give up and just keep on fighting for them and maybe try to recover and seek for help when I turn 18. I already try to make little steps and stop self harming, drinking too much energy drink XDD so yeah let's just try and be positive I guess.

Sorry its actually so damn long hhh I don't even know if i will post It one day or keep it as a draft eheh I hate venting

[antiadvil]

Electrify My Heart

summary: Dan Howell picks his college major almost at random. Even after a gap year, he doesn’t know what he wants to do, so he supposes he might as well pick whatever will make him the most employable and impress the largest number of his relatives. Within his first semester, he knows he made a mistake and switches out. Except Dan’s major isn’t law. It’s computer science, and Phil is his TA.

rating: PG13

wc: 13k

notes: for all the notes go read the ao3 version but tldr ty @itsmyusualphannie​ for being beta and ty to lots of other ppl and imposter syndrome real

read on ao3 or under the cut

College was hard, Dan decided, and his classes hadn’t even started yet. All he had wanted was coffee, and god, why did everything have to be so hard? He was waiting in line at a coffee shop on campus with some cutesy name- “The Daily Grind”- and a ridiculously long line. Really, it should not be taking this long to get one iced coffee. He was just beginning to wonder if he should give up and go somewhere else when someone slammed into him from behind. Dan stumbled and fell.

“Oh my god. I am so sorry.”

Thank god Dan hadn’t gotten his coffee yet. “You’re fine,” he said automatically, standing up.

“Seriously, I’m sorry. Are you alright?” A face with shaggy black hair and blue eyes peered intently at him.

“Yup,” Dan said, “Pretty sure.”

“Let me at least buy your coffee for nearly killing you.”

Dan froze. “Uhhhhh…”

The boy laughed. “Calm down, I’m not asking you out. I just mean coffee. Don’t worry.”

“Oh,” Dan said, relieved. “Uh, yeah, that’d be great. Coffee, I mean.”

“Great,” he said. “I’m Phil, by the way.”

“Dan.”

It turned out that Phil was a grad student in computer science, the same subject Dan was majoring in. Dan’s eyes glazed over when Phil started talking about what exactly his specialization was (something about human-computer interaction and other words Dan didn’t understand), but Phil steered the conversation away from that pretty quickly once he noticed Dan’s reaction.

“So you’re a freshman? How’s the college life treating you so far?”

Dan shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. It’s kind of nice not having my parents around, but also, I’m really bad at doing adult things.”

Phil smiled. “It’s okay, I didn’t really know how to cook until I got an apartment my junior year. As long as you know the basics-”

“No,” Dan interrupted. “Like, I’m really bad at doing adult things. I set my ramen on fire because I didn’t know you needed to put water in.”

Phil was clearly struggling to remain composed. “Recently?” he inquired politely.

“Yes,” Dan said.

Phil laughed, and the way he laughed made Dan feel like there was a slowly growing bubble inside of him. “I’m sorry,” Phil said, “But look on the bright side. That’s actually hilarious,” and Dan had to admit it was.

When they parted two hours later, after all the ice in his coffee had melted, Dan had added Phil on every social media platform known to man and had Phil’s number saved in his phone with instructions to text if he had any issues.

Dan wanted to, he really did. He had never wanted to text anyone so badly. He gathered the courage to send a “Hi! It’s Dan!” text, then quickly threw his phone across the room, only to pick it back up immediately when it buzzed with Phil’s response.

It was just a smiley face. Why was Dan so excited about a fucking smiley face? A fucking smiley face that Phil probably only sent because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Dan spent the rest of his weekend in his dorm, leaving only to attend exactly one welcome event and spend a truly disturbing amount of time (and money) at The Daily Grind, hoping he’d run into Phil again. Why Dan didn’t just text him, he couldn’t explain. He hadn’t sent anything since the introduction text and Phil’s smiley face reply.

If the universe wanted him and Phil to be friends, the universe would have to work a bit harder.

***

Classes started the next Monday. After the disaster that was the one welcome event he attended, he had spoken to exactly zero people, unless you counted the barista at The Daily Grind. He was almost relieved when classes started just because he’d be around other people again, and if that didn’t say something about how isolated he was, he didn’t know what did.

His relief quickly vanished when his alarm went off at seven am for his eight am calculus discussion section. He dragged himself across campus to his classroom, where he promptly fell asleep when given a worksheet. No one in his group woke him up, and when the TA came around to collect their worksheets, Dan sheepishly turned in a piece of paper with his name on it and a few scribbled numbers he must have written before he passed out.

Dan looked longingly at the time on his phone. He really didn’t have time to take a nap before his next lecture, but oh, he desperately wanted to. He considered skipping, but he knew he should at least attend the first lecture to get an idea of what the attendance policy was like.

He found somewhere on the main quad to sit for a bit, but he must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, a bell was faintly buzzing in a nearby building, his CS 115 lecture was starting right now, and he still wasn’t sure exactly where it was.

He ended up being around ten minutes late, and as he paused outside the wooden double doors to catch his breath, he again considered just not going. He checked the time again and groaned. He really did feel bad walking in so late, but it was either that or not at all. He straightened up, wiped his hands on his shorts, and opened the door as quietly as possible.

His eyes worked over the seats, searching for an empty spot. There was an entire empty row in the front, but there was no way in hell Dan was sitting there. He spotted a seat in the middle of the back row, and briefly debated turning around and leaving so he wouldn’t have to ask the people at the ends of the row to move.

After looking around again, he braced himself and walked up to the end of the row.

“Excuse me?” Dan whispered.

The girl sitting at the end of the row rolled her eyes and tossed her blue hair over her shoulder, closing her laptop and standing up so Dan could pass.

“Thanks,” Dan whispered, moving past her, which required them to be far closer than Dan was entirely comfortable with.

The rest of the row was mostly a blur of groans and snickers, but everyone at least moved their laptops back so Dan could step over their knees.

Finally, Dan sat down in his seat, his ears burning, and pulled out his laptop.

The professor paused. “And if everyone could make an effort to be on time next time,” she said with a mildness that terrified Dan, “That would be appreciated. Thank you.”

Dan shrunk into his seat. An auspicious beginning to his college career. Hopefully, his lab later in the day would be better than his lecture.

It was not. After standing in line for at least twenty minutes and eating a rushed lunch and attending a two-hour-long lecture for his film class, which was interesting but incredibly long, he showed up to his lab.

He was on time, at least. He even managed to find an empty table. But then the empty table started filling up, and his tablemates all wanted to talk to him, and it was almost a relief when the TA walked in to start class. His relief vanished when he and the TA made eye contact.

It was Phil.

Phil’s eyes widened slightly, but he recovered quickly. He pulled out his laptop and adjusted his glasses. “Welcome to your first lab section,” he said. “I’m Phil Lester, your TA. I’m here to help you work through your lab problems, homework problems, and Machine Project, but they’re ultimately graded by the online autograder, which I have no control over, so bring up any issues about grading to Professor Ross. Any questions?”

Someone’s chair squeaked.

“Okay then,” Phil said. “Today’s lab is to download, configure, and familiarize yourself with IntelliJ. I’m sure that sounds easy, but even experienced programmers have issues getting used to IntelliJ, which is why we’ve devoted a lab period to it. Your instructions are online. Let me or the CAs know if you need help with anything.”

The lab passed with mind numbing boredom, but by the end, with the help of his tablemates and a bored-looking Course Assistant, Dan had IntelliJ up and running.

As he stood to leave, his stomach growled. He really should have picked a lab that was earlier in the day, but whatever. Even if Dan was able to figure out how to use his student portal, it was probably too late to transfer lab sections. He glanced at Phil, but he seemed absorbed in helping another student, so Dan just put his laptop in his backpack and trudged away.

He stepped outside the Computer Science Center and took a deep breath, aiming himself towards his dorm and a thirty-minute walk home, but he was interrupted.

“Hey! Hey, Dan,” Phil said, running after him. “How’d I do?”

Dan looked up. “Phil?”

“Yup,” Phil said. “It’s so funny that you ended up in my class. It must be fate.”

Dan wrinkled his nose. “I don’t believe in fate.”

“Well, you’re no fun,” Phil observed.

“There’s a thing called coincidence.”

“I’m just trying to think of a smooth way to ask you to coffee again, Dan. Work with me here.”

“Is that allowed?” Dan asked.

“Being friends with people in your lab section? It’s not exactly encouraged, but I don’t grade you or anything, so as long as I don’t display blatant favoritism it should be fine.”

So he really did just mean coffee. Again. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You won’t. Besides, if I did get in trouble, which I won’t, it would be my fault, not yours.”

Dan shrugged.

“Anyway, if you’re not comfortable with it, that’s fine. But I really liked you and thought it would be nice to spend time together sometime. You know, if that’s cool. I know you probably have a ton of work right now, but if you get a chance.”

Phil was nervous, Dan realized. “I think I’d like that,” he said slowly.

Phil smiled. “Text me,” he said, reaching out to touch Dan’s hand briefly. “Anyway, which way are we headed?”

“My dorm’s kind of far.” It was the farthest dorm from the main quad, actually, since Dan had put off registering for housing until a week before the deadline.

“My apartment’s definitely farther. Want a ride?”

“Where are you parked?”

Phil jerked his head to the left. “Like ten minutes that way?”

Dan hesitated. Yes, he did want a ride from Phil. But Phil’s car was parked on the opposite side of campus from his dorm, and it would probably take just as long to walk to Phil’s car and get a ride to his dorm as it would to just walk there.

“Sure,” he said before he could regret it.

“Cool,” Phil said, starting to walk. “So, how are you liking CS so far?”

“It’s fine,” Dan said cautiously, following him.

“No, really,” Phil said. “I do course development for CS 115. I want to know if I made it better or worse.” He flicked his hair out of his face. “I also want to know how things are going for you, of course,” Phil added hastily.

“The homework’s been kind of hard,” Dan said hesitantly.

Phil nodded. “Did you take APCS in high school?”

Dan shook his head.

“No prior coding experience?” Phil continued.

Dan nodded.

Phil nodded. “Yeah, that would do it. Coding has a really harsh learning curve, and Java, in particular, is really unpleasant to beginners. If it were up to me, the class would be taught in Python or something, but we already have so much infrastructure for Java, and a lot of people in the CS department don’t like Python, so it’s probably not happening.”

“Oh.”

Phil shrugged. “Sorry, you’re probably not that interested in how I think your class should be taught. I kind of do that sometimes, talk about things I think are really interesting but no one else does.”

“It’s fine,” Dan said, and weirdly, it was. When Phil talked about things, he had this way of drawing people in- Dan could listen to him for ages. “The way you talk about it makes interesting.”

It was hard to tell in the slanted light of the setting sun, but Phil might have blushed. “Thanks,” he said, “But you really don’t want to get me started on my thesis topic. It’s embarrassing how much I talk about it.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Dan reasoned.

“My ex-boyfriend cited it as one of the reasons he decided to break up with me,” Phil said.

Dan winced. “I’m sorry.”

Phil laughed, but it wasn’t the laugh he normally laughed. This laugh was harsh and brittle. “It’s not your fault.”

Dan didn’t have a lot of bad breakup stories, but he thought he’d try. “I dumped my ex-boyfriend because I found him on Tinder under a fake name.”

“How’d you know it was him then?” Phil asked.

“Oh, he used his real photos. Just the name was fake.”

“Yikes.”

“You could say that again,” Dan said. “Anyway, I lived. It wasn’t that great of a relationship anyway.”

They had reached Phil’s car. Phil fished in his pocket for his keys. Dan awkwardly stood by the side of his car, debating whether to sit in the front or the back seat, before deciding he was not a twelve-year-old being given a ride by his friend’s dad, and ducking into the front passenger’s seat.

“Which dorm?” Phil asked, starting the car.

“Walton,” Dan said.

“Nice,” Phil said. “I didn’t go here for my undergrad, but I hear that’s one of the better ones.”

Dan shrugged. “It’s okay. I got a single, which is nice, but it’s kind of far from all my classes.”

Phil nodded.

“Do you know how to get there?” Dan asked.

“Not really,” Phil confessed.

“Me neither,” Dan said.

“Can you navigate?” Phil asked. “If I tried to Google Maps and drive at the same time I would one hundred percent kill us both. I have no coordination.”

“Encouraging,” Dan said, pulling out his phone and typing his address in.

Phil laughed. “It’s okay. I’m not the world’s best driver, but I’m not the worst, either. Probably.”

“If you say so,” Dan said. “Okay, take a left here.”

Phil turned.

“Okay, then go straight for a while-”

“That’s what my mom said when I came out as bisexual.”

Dan sputtered. “What?”

Phil clarified. “Well, she said she hoped that wouldn’t stop me from settling down with a nice girl someday. But later it turned out I was gay, so joke’s on her.”

“Oh,” Dan said. He hadn’t known Phil was gay, and that knowledge sent a knot to Dan’s stomach that he decided to ignore. He was not attracted to Phil, he reminded himself firmly. “I haven’t told my parents I’m… whatever, yet.”

Phil nodded. “That’s fine. Coming from high school, I assumed that most people were out to their parents, but it turns out that lots of people aren’t out to their parents. I actually feel like most people aren’t. I don’t know, maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I just wanted to let you know. Plenty of people have gay lives at college and their parents don’t have any idea.” He paused for a moment. “Sorry. That was probably weird.”

It was, a little bit, but Dan didn’t say so. “Thanks,” he said. “Um, right here. I mean, turn right. Sorry.”

“Got it,” Phil said, turning. He abruptly braked for someone crossing the street. “God, I hate driving on campus.”

The person crossing the street turned around and glared. “I think the feeling is mutual,” said Dan.

Phil started driving again, more carefully this time. “At least it’s not winter. Driving in the winter here ranks as one of the worst experiences of my life.”

“Is it that bad?” Dan asked.

Phil laughed. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Dan blushed. “No.”

“I bet you didn’t even bring a coat.”

“Was I supposed to? Can’t that wait until Thanksgiving?”

Phil glanced at Dan, incredulous. “You didn’t bring a winter coat?”

Dan shrugged. “Is that bad?”

“Dear god. You’re going to die. When it gets cold, remind me to lend you a coat. I have extra.”

Dan’s face was still hot. “You don’t need to-”

“I want to.”

Dan felt like his face was on fire. “That would be nice. If you don’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it,” Phil said.

Dan shrugged. He was glad that Phil was focusing on the road and couldn’t see his face, which was probably getting redder by the minute.

“Some people do that,” Dan said.

Phil glanced at Dan and smiled. “I don’t. Whenever I offer you something, I mean it, okay?”

“Okay,” Dan said, staring at his feet.

Phil laughed. “You sound like I’m yelling at you. I’m offering you help, Dan. If you don’t need it or you don’t feel comfortable getting it from me, that’s fine, but don’t say no just to avoid being a burden. You’re not.”

“Sorry,” Dan said.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Phil said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Sor-” Dan started, then stopped. “Thanks,” he said.

“That’s better,” Phil said.

Dan laughed. “Are you sure you’re not majoring in early childhood education? You sound like my kindergarten teacher.”

“Pretty sure,” Phil said, “But I was actually looking into being a professor for a while.”

“Wait, really?”

Phil laughed dryly. “Yeah. That dream lasted about three months into my Master’s. There is no way I could survive a Ph.D. program.”

“Oh,” said Dan. “Sorry.”

Phil glanced over at Dan. “You’re doing it again.”

“I am sorry, though. That sucks.”

Phil shrugged. “It really isn’t that bad. You can get some pretty sweet jobs with a Master’s degree in computer science. Just not generally jobs being a computer science professor.” Phil pulled up outside Dan’s dorm. “Anyway. This is you, right?”

Dan started. “Yeah. It is. Uh, thanks.”

Phil smiled. “Yeah. No problem. Let me know if you need a ride anywhere again.”

“I will,” said Dan, who had no intention of becoming such a burden.

“Or if you ever need any help with anything CS-related or anything. You’re not bothering me, I swear. I love computer science and I love helping people.”

Dan couldn’t help but doubt that. “Thanks,” he said, still with no intention of becoming such a burden.

“Have a good night!” Phil called as Dan stepped out of the car.

“You too!” Dan said, shutting the door.

***

Dan’s first week of classes flew by in a blur. He had more homework than he’d ever had in his life, and he was handling it badly. Luckily, most of his professors seemed pretty understanding about it- his film professor gave him an extension on a reading quiz he completely forgot about, and none of his CS homework assignments were due until two weeks into class.

Before he knew it, the first Machine Project for CS 115 was released. He mostly ignored the initial release since the deadline wasn’t for two more weeks- he had plenty of other homework to do anyway. A truly astounding number of papers to write for his English and film classes, a crushing number of assignments for his physics and calculus classes, and the daily homework problems for CS 115 on top of all that.

He continued isolating himself. He wasn’t proud of it, but it seemed like everyone around him had condensed into social groups while he wasn’t paying attention, and now even when he tried, they wouldn’t let him in.

He didn’t mind too much. He wouldn’t pretend it was fun, eating meals in the dining hall on his own and sitting by himself in every lecture, but social interaction was too painful to be worth it. Besides, he wasn’t even sure if he had time to have friends. It wasn’t like he had an abundance of free time to kill.

Anyway, he had Phil. Dan was still a little bit scared of him- he was a grad student after all, and Dan was just a freshman- but they talked sometimes outside of class. Phil sent Dan memes about computers that he didn’t always understand. Dan replied with memes about video games they both played. They usually talked after Dan’s lab. Phil offered him a ride home again, but after Dan declined once, he didn’t offer again. They met up at the coffee shop once to study together, and even though Dan didn’t get much done that day, just being around Phil made him feel much better.

It was already the deadline day when Dan finally remembered his MP. He hadn’t meant to leave it this late, he really hadn’t, but everything was so overwhelming and there was so much going on and it couldn’t be that bad, could it?

He had woken up early. It was ten am. His deadline was eleven pm. That was plenty of time.

He pulled out his laptop, following the instructions on the course website, and surprisingly managed to download the MP starter code with no problems.

Actually completing it was a different story. He had read the instructions over a couple of times, but he still wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Still, hesitatingly, he started typing. There were some red squiggles underneath some of his lines of code, but he ignored them for now. He searched the crowded upper menu, selected the “Test Checkpoint 0” option from the dropdown menu, and clicked run.

A scarily large number of lines with red symbols next to them appeared. Trying not to panic, Dan did his best to decipher them. Each line started with the word “error,” which was probably very bad. It was mostly a mix of errors that read “; expected” and “illegal start of expression,” with one “reached end of file while parsing” error thrown in at the end.

Dan stared at his screen. What file, he wanted to know, and what the fuck was a parsing? He stared at the errors some more. He hit run again.

He got the same error messages. Again.

After some more staring, he decided to go to office hours. He packed up his laptop and checked his phone to see who was holding office hours right now. His heart started beating a bit faster when he saw that Phil was holding office hours for eight hours starting in fifteen minutes.

Well. It couldn’t hurt to see Phil. It gave him something to think about on the thirty-minute walk to the Computer Science Center, at least.

He really needed to figure out the bus system. This was way too much walking.

Office hours for CS 115 were held in the same room as labs. It was large, spacious, filled with enough tables and chairs that the forty or so students in his lab always had room left over, but today, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find a seat. He stood inside the door, scanning the room for a seat before giving up and aiming for a spot on the floor near a table and an outlet. He plugged his laptop in and raised his hand, waiting for help. Miraculously, a CA came to him within a few minutes. “What’s the issue?” he asked.

“Um, I don’t really know,” Dan said. “My code won’t compile and I’m getting this error?”

The CA bent over to look at Dan’s screen. “You probably have a missing parenthesis or curly brace somewhere,” the CA told him. He flicked shaggy blond hair out of his eyes.

“Where?” Dan asked.

The CA double-clicked on the error message, which brought his cursor to the start of one of Dan’s method names. “Somewhere above here, probably.”

“But where?” Dan asked.

The CA shrugged, already moving away. “I’m really sorry, there are a lot of people I need to help. You’ll have to look for it yourself.”

Dan scowled and stared at his code, looking for the line with the error. His eyes flickered between lines of code, scanning for matching parenthesis and curly braces. His eyes blurred. It looked fine. It really looked fine. Was there really something wrong? He hit the run button again.

The same error message appeared. Dan groaned in frustration. He went back to hunting for his mistake.

Half an hour later, Dan found his mistake. This time when he ran his code, the test suites started running too. Dan let out a breath he had been holding for much too long and let his shoulders sag, relief coursing through him. He didn’t even care that he failed every single test. The fact that his code ran at all was honestly a miracle. He stared at the new error messages, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. He had no idea what he was even looking for, but he stared at it resolutely, fighting back a yawn.

He was just about to give up when Phil materialized in front of him. “How’s it going?” Phil asked.

Dan looked up. “Oh, hey. I didn’t know you were doing office hours today,” he lied.

Phil smiled. “Surprise, I guess. How goes the coding?”

Dan explained the situation.

“So you’ve moved on from getting a compile error to getting a runtime error!” Phil said. “Now you can start debugging.”

“Lucky me,” Dan said.

Phil laughed. “Debugging isn’t fun, I’ll give you that. But when everything falls together? It’s the best feeling in the world.” He glanced around. “I should get to helping people.”

“What if I need help?” Dan complained.

“Raise your hand,” Phil said, trying and desperately failing to wink before sweeping off to help other students. “See you.”

Dan returned to his laptop, hiding a smile. His smile slowly faded as he worked. His code was not as easy to fix as he had hoped it would be when he first got it to compile.

He worked on it for about an hour, during which a chair opened up at a nearby table and he scrambled for a seat. He raised his hand.

It only took a few minutes for Phil to arrive. “So what’s the issue?” he asked, leaning over Dan’s shoulder.

“I’m not really sure,” he admitted. “There’s, um, a lot going on.”

Phil nodded. “So, where did you start?”

“Kind of everywhere,” Dan confessed.

“Okay, well, don’t do that,” Phil said. “How about you start with the first method?”

Dan scrolled up. “This one?”

“Sure. It doesn’t really matter.”

Dan had some code written there, all spaghetti lines splashed with lines of red like tomato sauce. He resolutely ignored the slight pangs of hunger in his stomach. “It’s failing the tests.”

“Well, you’re not done, are you?”

Dan felt slightly silly. “No,” he mumbled.

“Then how about you get it done?” Phil said. “Read the documentation a few times and ask me if you have any questions, but try to find answers in the documentation first.”

Dan scowled. Phil smiled. Why was his stupid face always so fucking happy?

He read the documentation, like Phil told him to. When he got confused, he read it again. It slowly started to make more sense.

He started typing again, working on a single method this time instead of jumping around. The first two went okay, but he got stuck on the third for an embarrassingly long time.

He looked around and raised his hand, but the TAs and CAs all looked busy, and none of them seemed to notice. He sighed and put it down.

He must have sighed really loudly, because the girl next to him shot him a look.

“Sorry,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s fine.”

He glared at his screen again, hoping that the error in his logic would suddenly jump into focus. It didn’t. He sighed again.

The girl next to him glared again.

Dan meant to apologize, but he accidentally said something else. “Can you help me?”

For one frightening moment, he thought she might snap him in half. But then she didn’t. “With what?” she asked.

“I don’t know why I’m failing this test case.” He turned his laptop towards her.

She hesitated for a second before looking. Her eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh, I got that error before.” She reached over to scroll on Dan’s laptop and pointed out a section of his code. “You see here? You’re not checking that the input is valid.”

Dan stared at it. “But-” Something clicked. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” He reached for his keyboard and added a few lines of code above the section she had pointed out. He ran the autograder and held his breath.

A hundred percent. Thank god. He allowed himself to look up from his laptop for the first time in an hour and realized the room was almost empty except for him, Phil, the girl sitting next to him, and a few other scattered students.

Dan spent a few more moments glancing at Phil, trying to gauge when he would be done so they could leave at the same time, but Phil didn’t look like he was going to leave anytime soon. Dan watched as Phil sat next to another- student? course assistant? TA? Dan couldn’t tell. Phil laughed and threw his arm around the other boy.

He knew Phil had an ex-boyfriend, Dan realized with a jolt, and it sounded recent, but he had no idea if Phil was currently seeing anyone. There was a lot he didn’t know about Phil. Ears burning, he buried his face back in his laptop, trying to look busy, even though he didn’t have anything left to do other than submit his work.

He snuck another glance at Phil. Phil didn’t have his arm around the other boy anymore, but they were hunched together over the same laptop, shoulders pressed together, exchanging glances and the occasional laugh as the other boy explained something, animated. A bolt of jealousy shot through Dan’s stomach. He tried to ignore it.

They were just quiet enough that Dan couldn’t make out the details of their conversation, but just loud enough to be distracting. His eyes were drawn back to them again and again.

Dan had always been a jealous person. He had learned to cope with it over the years, but nothing ever seemed to make it go away completely. It stemmed from a place of insecurity, he knew, because as nice as Phil might be, as nice as anyone might be to Dan, there was no way they would ever really like him. And if they did, they were just seconds away from realizing what a bad deal they got with Dan, how much better they could do.

Dan wrenched his gaze away from Phil again. He could submit his work when he got back to his dorm. He waited until Phil’s back was turned before slipping out the door.

***

The next Monday, when Dan slunk into the back of lecture and sat in the closest seat to the door he could find, he realized he recognized the head in front of him. He tapped her shoulder to say hello.

“What’s your name?” Dan asked. “I just realized I never got it this weekend. Sorry.”

She glanced at him, startled. “Helen.” Her blue hair rustled, and suddenly something clicked.

“Hey, wait. Did we meet on the first day of class?”

She stared at him. “Were you that guy who was late?”

Dan nodded. “Yes.”

Helen laughed. “God, I thought Professor Ross was going to kill you.”

Dan smiled, embarrassed. “I thought so too. I’m Dan, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you, Dan.” She smiled.

“Really?” Dan asked. “I’m going to be honest, most times we’ve met before I haven’t made a great impression.”

Helen froze. “You totally think I’m a bitch; I’m so sorry.”

“No, no,” Dan started, but Helen was already talking again.

“I’m so sorry, I was just super stressed that first day of class and when I saw you the other day I hadn’t finished my MP yet and I-”

Dan cut in. “Seriously, you’re fine.” He smiled. “And you helped me anyway, which is what really matters.”

Helen took a deep breath. “Cool.”

“Cool,” Dan said. “So, do you-”

Their professor started speaking, interrupting Dan. “Later,” Helen said, swivelling to focus completely on class.

Dan envied the totality of her focus, the way she was able to switch it on and off like it was nothing. The only thing he had ever been able to focus on with that kind of intensity was video games. He reluctantly turned back to the front of the room and tried to herd his thoughts into something resembling order.

He failed. No matter how much he tried to pay attention to the lecture, his thoughts kept drifting back to Phil. Phil, offering to buy some dumb freshman a coffee. Phil, offering him a ride home. Phil, teasing him when he asked for help and telling him to wait in line. Phil, helping him anyway.

Dan smiled. He couldn’t help it.

Oh god. He had a crush on Phil.

There was no way he could be expected to focus on class now. No way.

He tried anyway. He wrote some notes on a google doc. Something about inheritance and pets and dogs and cats and he wondered if Phil was a cat or a dog person and fuck. He was fucked.

He tried really hard to focus. He really did. But when class ended, he had about five lines of notes that probably wouldn’t even make sense to the professor if he showed them to her.

His mood brightened slightly when he noticed Helen waiting for him at the door of the auditorium.

“Hey!” he said, hurrying to meet her.

“Hey!” she said. “So, how was lecture?”

“It was lecture,” Dan said. “How do you expect me to say it went?”

Helen shrugged. “I took APCS last year, and we’re finally getting into stuff that I haven’t seen before. I actually really like it.”

“This is my first programming class,” Dan said.

“Oh, wow,” Helen said. “I would probably die.”

Dan was dying a little bit. “It’s pretty rough,” he admitted.

“Why are you taking it then? Is it a required class for you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “This is my major. Unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?” she asked.

Dan shrugged.

She let it drop. “It’s required for me too. I’m actually a double major, though; this and film studies.”

Dan stopped. “Wait, are you by any chance in my film class too?”

“FS 105?” she asked.

“Yes!” Dan smiled.

“One o’clock, Tuesdays and Thursdays, with Professor Min?”

Dan nodded again. “We should try to sit next to each other.”

“Sure!” she said. “Can I give you my number?”

“Yeah,” Dan said, digging through his bag and handing her his phone. She quickly put her number in and handed it back.

“See you around!” she said.

“See you!” Dan replied. He made the usual walk back towards his dorm, but he felt a bit lighter than normal this time.

***

After seeing Phil with the other boy in office hours, Dan tried to avoid Phil at his next lab. He managed to escape a tiny bit early while Phil was talking to another student. The next week, he wasn’t so lucky. When he tried to duck out, Phil was already waiting for him outside the classroom.

“I haven’t heard from you in a bit,” he said.

Dan shrugged. “I’ve been busy.” It wasn’t a lie. Most of his classes were completely kicking his ass at the moment, and he still hadn’t started the next MP, which was sure to be a completely new level in the history of ass-kickery.

“Classes are catching up to you?”

Dan nodded.

“You seemed stressed at office hours. I hope MP Zero went okay?”

Dan nodded. “I think I just left it a bit late.”

Phil huffed. “That’s a mood if I’ve ever heard one. I’m the world’s worst procrastinator.”

Dan felt that that title should probably belong to him.

“Anyway, I hope you’re doing okay,” Phil said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “The first semester of college can be really rough.”

Dan blinked. Was Phil… worried about him?

“Thanks,” Dan said, his voice coming out startlingly watery.

He hadn’t expected Phil to show… genuine concern for him. Maybe he wasn’t just some dumb freshman Phil had picked up out of pity. Phil seemed to… actually care about him.

Phil nodded. “Let me know if you ever want to talk,” he said softly.

Dan nodded, not trusting his voice.

“See you around,” Phil said, patting Dan’s shoulder and moving past him with a quick, almost embarrassed smile.

“Yeah,” Dan echoed to an empty room. “See you.”

***

Dan was determined not to leave the second MP to the last minute. He started it an entire week before it was due.

He downloaded the starter code and read a bit of the documentation, then decided he deserved a break. He picked up his phone and texted Phil.

i’m bored, he said.

Dan barely put his phone down before he got a reply.

Mood, Phil said.

Dan opened the text. He wasn’t even sure how he would reply, but Phil was already typing again.

Where are you?

Dan glanced around his dorm room. dorm, he sent.

Where’s dorm? Phil asked.

Dan settled back into his pillow of blankets. you know where i live, he replied.

I forgot.

Dan laughed. ur the worst friend, he typed.

Just remind me lol don’t mock me like this

Dan wanted to push it further, but he also wanted to know why Phil wanted to know where he was. walton, remember? he sent.

That’s only ten minutes from where I am rn lol, Phil sent back. Wanna meet up?

Dan only hesitated for about ten seconds this time. sure, wya?

Phil sent him the address of the coffee shop where they first met: The Daily Grind.

Dan responded with a thumbs-up emoji. He shoved his feet into his sneakers and left his dorm faster than he would have thought humanly possible.

It was embarrassing, he reflected, how easy it was to get him to go places Phil would be. Maybe he would go to classes more often if he got someone to text him saying Phil would be there ahead of time.

The walk was supposed to be ten minutes. Dan swore the anticipation made it feel like at least twenty, but according to his watch it was actually seven and a half.

He arrived at the coffee shop only slightly out of breath. He saw Phil almost right away, but had to wait ten minutes in line for his coffee before he was able to slide into the seat across from Phil.

“Hey,” he said.

Phil smiled. “Hey. How’s it going?”

“Okay. I got started on the next MP today.”

Phil’s eyes lit up. “Good!” he said. “Not too hard, I hope?”

“Yeah,” Dan said, deciding to quickly change the subject. “What are you working on?”

Phil frowned at his screen. “Thesis things.”

“Writing?”

Phil shook his head. “No, not yet. Just looking at data.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure,” Phil said, turning his laptop around, “But it probably doesn’t mean much to you.”

It didn’t, but Dan nodded anyway. “Nice,” he said.

Phil shrugged. “It’s not really nice at the moment, but thank you.” He paused. “Did you bring anything to work on?”

Dan had his laptop and most of his notes for his classes, so he could work on those, he supposed, but he didn’t want to. “I was hoping we could just hang out. If you’re not too busy, anyway.”

“I could use a break,” Phil admitted, closing his laptop. “What do you want to talk about?”

Dan thought about it for a moment. “Tell me about your thesis topic,” he eventually said.

Phil started. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” said Dan. “Just make sure to explain it to me like I’m three, because in Computer Science years, I am.”

Phil nodded slowly. “So, I’m studying human-computer interaction. Do you know what that is?”

“No idea,” Dan said, sipping his coffee.

“Well, it’s basically- like, we communicate with computers using a keyboard and mouse. Or a touchscreen if you’re on a phone, or a touchpad if you’re on a laptop, or whatever- you get the idea. And mostly that works okay, but what if there were better ways to communicate with your computer?”

“Are there?”

Phil shrugged. “Well, I like to think that what we have now is better than crawling around inside a computer and reconnecting vacuum tubes like they did seventy years ago or whatever.”

Dan nodded.

“But then when you get to weird, complex stuff like AI, it’s like, we could communicate with this the way we communicate with regular computer programs. But we could also do literally everything in the terminal, and we don’t, partly because it’s a pain in the ass and partly because it makes technology super inaccessible to non-tech people.” Phil paused. “Like, could you imagine scrolling through Instagram by running a program in the terminal and putting in a new command to see each photo, and there was a special command to like or comment or share? That’d be a terrible user experience.”

“I don’t even know how to do anything in the terminal,” Dan confessed. “I think the only time I’ve ever opened it is when someone else did it for me.”

“Exactly!” Phil said. “It’s also really unfriendly to beginners. Like, can you even imagine having to program computers in an era where you’d actually have to program in actual machine code? I would die.”

Dan confirmed that, he, too, would probably die under those circumstances. Or just pick a different major.

“So anyway, to make, for example, things like AI more accessible to people without a PhD, or people without any technology background whatsoever, we need to build user interfaces for those. And those user interfaces might not look anything like computers we’re used to. For example, some people are looking into AIs you can communicate with the same way you’d communicate with another person, or computer programs that are controlled by your brain. I mean, they’re a long way away, but I’m actually doing some research with that.”

“That’s… really cool,” said Dan.

“So yeah,” Phil said, messing with his coffee mug. “It’s way more complicated than that, obviously, but that’s the gist of it.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Dan said.

Phil shrugged. “Thanks for listening. I know it’s not really interesting unless you’re already interested.”

Dan shrugged. “I’m interested in you. So it’s interesting.” He realized the way that sounded when the words were just halfway out of his mouth, and he felt blood rising in his cheeks.

Phil’s cheeks colored. He cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he said awkwardly.

Dan tried really, really hard not to die. Luckily, Phil changed the subject. “So, how’s everything else going for you? Like, the not-CS stuff.”

Dan decided not to tell Phil that his life was, in fact, falling apart, and he had no friends. “It’s going okay,” he said. “My classes are honestly really intense, though, I haven’t had much time outside of them.”

“You said you got a start on MP One, though, right? That’s good.”

Dan shrugged. “I cloned the repo.”

“That’s still a start,” Phil encouraged.

Dan shrugged again.

“Feel free to ask for help if you need it. Office hours are basically 24/7, and this time I’m not doing Sunday office hours, so I’ll have some free time then if you want me specifically.”

“I think I’ll be okay,” Dan lied. “But thanks.”

“Yeah, any time,” Phil said, looking down. His phone buzzed and he jumped. “Fuck.”

“What?” Dan asked.

“Sorry,” Phil said. “I have class in fifteen minutes.” He glanced down at his phone. “I mean, it’s just a lecture….” He trailed off.

“No, you should go,” Dan said. “I have class soon too.”

“Yeah,” Phil said, shoving his phone into his pocket. “Sorry. Um, see you soon?”

“Yeah, of course!” Dan said.

Phil hesitated for a bit, leaning towards Dan as if he was going to give him a hug before lurching back again and awkwardly waving goodbye. “Text me,” he said, before leaving.

Dan did, eventually, just not under ideal circumstances. The next week, he sat down to start actually coding for MP1.

He didn’t understand the documentation or the starter code, or what an object was and why it was oriented and programming. In general, as the kids would say, he was not vibing.

He considered texting Helen, but then he remembered how stressed she was before the last MP deadline and thought better of it.

He remembered Phil’s offer to help. He hesitated, but reached for his phone anyway.

i need help, he texted Phil.

Don’t we all, Phil replied nearly instantly. With what?

MP1, Dan said.

We can meet up if you want? Unless your question is pretty basic, then you can just ask now

Even though Phil had offered to help him, a wave of relief crashed through Dan when he realized Phil really meant it. He hesitated. meeting up would be good if you’re not too busy

I’m not! I’m just hanging out at the daily grind all day. Let me know if you want to stop by.

Dan didn’t want to look too desperate for help, but at the same time, he was. i’ll be there soon, he replied. He tossed his laptop and charger into his bag and left the library.

***

“That was fast,” Phil commented when Dan slid into the booth across from him.

“I was nearby,” Dan said.

Phil closed his laptop. “So what do you need help with?” he asked, leaning across the table.

“I think something’s wrong with my constructor,” Dan said.

Phil frowned. “That’s like, half the checkpoint. Can you be more specific?”

“Uhhhh,” Dan said. “So, I think the issue might be that I’m having trouble with the concept of a constructor.”

“Okay,” Phil said. “What part?”

Dan felt his face go red. “All of it?”

Phil sighed. “Can I use your computer?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Phil tilted Dan’s laptop towards him, pulled up a browser and quickly navigated to the course home page, and then the slides for last week’s lecture.

“Here you go,” Phil said, clapping Dan’s shoulder. “Let me know if you have any questions about the notes.”

“Thanks,” Dan said sarcastically. He spent about 15 minutes reading through the slides before switching to watching the lecture videos at two times speed, reaching over to tap Phil on the shoulder and ask questions whenever he reached anything that confused him.

Then, when he finally finished reviewing lectures, he started the MP. It made a bit more sense now. A bit.

After he had written out most of the checkpoint, he ran the test suites, but again, his code wouldn’t compile. It listed a few errors this time, luckily not as many as he had gotten last time he had the missing curly brace. He frowned at his screen, unable to decipher what exactly they meant, before flipping his computer to show Phil and tapping his shoulder.

Phil pulled his headphones off to examine the screen.

“Hang on,” he said. “Are you writing out the entire thing before trying to compile and test it?”

Dan looked up at Phil. “I mean, not the entire thing.”

“But most of it?”

“I guess, yeah.”

“Don’t do that. Run your code literally as often as possible. It makes it easier to tell when you break it. Didn’t they mention that in lecture?”

Dan shrugged. He honestly wasn’t sure what was happening in lecture these days.

“Well, they should have,” Phil said, returning to his coffee. “Anyway, the first two errors are probably telling you you’re missing a semicolon, and it looks like the third doesn’t recognize a variable or method name. Common culprits for that will be typos or forgetting to declare it properly.” He paused to scroll a bit through Dan’s code. “Yeah, just take a look at each error on its own, fix it, try running your code again, and see if it makes it better or worse. And in the future, run your code more often so you’ll generally only have to fix one error at a time.”

Dan groaned.

“Debugging never gets fun, kid.”

Dan wrinkled his nose. “I’m nineteen. Don’t call me kid.” He decided not to comment on the other reason he thought it was weird for Phil to call him kid.

“Sure, kid.” Phil reached over to pat his head. Dan swatted his hand away.

“Oy. Don’t mess up my hair.”

Phil laughed.

“I’m serious. I spend like an hour straightening it every morning. If you mess it up I’ll kill you.”

“Okay, okay,” Phil said, leaning back. He raised his hands in the air. “No hair touchy. See?”

“Good,” Dan said, returning to his work. Occasionally, he stopped to ask Phil questions. Phil was annoyingly unhelpful. He refused to answer half of Dan’s questions, instead redirecting him to google or the documentation.

“It’s my sacred obligation as a tutor,” Phil said. “You’re never supposed to just give people an answer. You have to give them the skills to find the answer themselves.”

“Did you memorize that from a handbook somewhere? That’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.”

Phil shook his head, looking hurt. “I wrote the handbook we use to train Course Assistants.”

Dan laughed. “Of course you did.”

Phil looked insulted. “Someone had to.”

Dan relented. “I’m sure it’s a great manual.”

Phil sat back, still pouting slightly. “We didn’t have any training procedures before I took over the program.”

“Thank you for your service,” Dan said.

“You’re welcome,” Phil said. “Now get back to work, kid.”

They fell into comfortable silence. Phil put his headphones back on, and Dan slipped his earbuds in.

He was actually making decent progress when Phil interrupted him by pushing Dan’s computer screen down slightly.

Dan looked up.

“It’s getting late. I think I’m going to go back to my apartment,” Phil said.

“Oh,” Dan said. “Okay.”

Phil started clearing his books of their table, then hesitated. “Want to come with?”

Dan’s heart started to beat faster. “Yeah, sure,” he said, doing his best to sound normal.

“I hope that’s not weird. Sorry, I just get my best work done there, and it’s getting close to dinner- if you don’t mind staying for dinner, anyway, we could also grab something on the way.”

“I’m cool with whatever,” Dan said, starting to pack his things.

“Instant ramen it is!” Phil said. “I also have mac and cheese if you’d prefer that. The college staples.”

“Sure,” Dan said. “It beats dorm food. They’re having meatloaf tonight.”

Phil winced. “Is that as bad as it was at my undergrad?”

Dan shrugged his backpack over his shoulder. “Probably. Meatloaf is bad everywhere.”

Phil laughed. “Don’t tell my mom I laughed at that.”

“Why do moms everywhere think meatloaf is so great?”

“I wish I knew,” Phil said. “Maybe I’d be able to get them to stop making it.”

“The one thing technology can’t do,” Dan mused.

“I promise you there’s a Silicon Valley startup dedicated to that somewhere.”

“Really?” Dan asked.

Phil rolled his eyes. “There are dumb silicon valley startups for almost everything.” He stood up. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” said Dan, following.

“My car is in the shop,” Phil explained. “I hope you don’t mind walking.”

“That’s fine,” said Dan, who would never dream of saying anything even if he did mind.

“It’s not too far, just twenty minutes. I normally walk it, actually, since parking on campus is hell.”

“I walk that far all the time. I still haven’t figured out the bus system,” Dan admitted.

Phil laughed. “Wait until it gets cold. You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“God, don’t remind me,” Dan mumbled. Phil laughed.

They spent the rest of the walk in comfortable conversation. Phil asked Dan about his family, and Dan asked about his in return. Dan told Phil about his younger brother at home in California and his parents who were so insistent that he get his degree. Phil told Dan about his older brother who already ran his own business, was engaged to his girlfriend, and was only a year and a half older than him.

“It’s kind of hard to measure up to that,” Phil said with a slightly bitter laugh. “I mean, I love Martyn, I really do, but I’ll never be like him.”

“Is it your parents pressuring you about it? Or just yourself?” Dan asked.

Phil shrugged. “Mostly me, I guess. It’s nothing they’ve really done, I just… feel like I’m not what they’re supposed to want. Even if they don’t mind.”

“You’re getting your Master’s degree,” Dan said, “In a subject that will actually get you a job after you graduate. That’s better than a lot of people can say.”

Phil was quiet for a moment. “But I’m me,” he said. “I dropped out of my PhD program and my grades in undergrad sucked and I don’t even know why they let me in here. And my parents want me to hurry up and have babies, and I’m, well, gay.” He shook his head. “Sorry, that’s so dumb. I was joking with that thing I said the other day about my mom, they don’t mind. Literally everyone around me is fine, I’m just… not. I don’t know, I can’t imagine someone not being disappointed in me.”

“No,” Dan said. “I get it.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

Phil cleared his throat. “That was sad.”

Dan laughed. “If you want sad, we can talk about my relationship with my dad.”

Phil shook his head. “That’s okay. Unless you want to.”

“There isn’t much to talk about. He’s just, y’know. Vaguely a homophobe.”

“I’m sorry,” Phil said. Dan could see the pain reflected in Phil’s eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “But thanks,” he added more softly.

“Sure,” Phil said.

Dan cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, changing the subject, “You mentioned you knew a lot of dumb silicon valley startups?”

Phil laughed. “Luckily, most of the worst ideas never got that far. Mostly, I’m just annoyed about how pushy those people get. I once had a guy try to talk to me about his password manager startup the week before finals while I was in the library trying to study.”

Dan laughed. “Did you let him?”

“That’s the worst part,” Phil said, letting his voice rise to a whine. “I didn’t want to be rude and tell him to go away so I just sat through his entire ten minute pitch. It was awful.”

“Oh no,” Dan said, giggling.

Phil thumped his shoulder. “Don’t laugh at me,” he whined. “It was traumatizing!”

Dan laughed harder.

“Don’t pretend you’d be any different,” Phil reproached.

“You don’t know me,” Dan defended himself. “Maybe I’m secretly super confrontational.”

Phil wrinkled his nose. “Sure, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid,” Dan reproached.

“Sure, child.”

“That’s worse. I will have you know I am a legal adult.”

“Sure you are,” Phil said.

Dan pouted. He didn’t look that young. “I’m not that baby-faced,” he said.

Phil looked skeptical.

“I’m not,” he insisted.

“Sure,” Phil said, smiling. “Anyway, my apartment’s just over here.” He led Dan to a door just a few feet into an alley. He jiggled his key in the lock, pushed his shoulder against the door, and led Dan into in his apartment.

Dan didn’t really know what to expect from a college student’s apartment, but he supposed Phil’s apartment fit the stereotypes. It was small and dimly lit, but mostly clean, with a common area with a sofa and a TV connected to a kitchen and a hallway that Dan assumed led to the bedrooms.

“We can work in my room, if that’s okay,” Phil said. “I don’t want to bother my roommates.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Dan said automatically. Inside, though, he was freaking out. Phil’s room? He was almost 99% certain Phil didn’t mean it like that, but if he did...

Phil must have noticed the look on Dan’s face, because he paused. “Are you sure it’s fine?”

“Yes,” Dan insisted.

“Was it what I said earlier? I was just teasing,” Phil said softly. “You’re not that baby-faced. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”

Dan’s face felt warm. “No, it’s okay. Sorry, I just-”

“You don’t need to apologize if I made you uncomfortable,” Phil said.

“You didn’t,” Dan said.

“You’d tell me if I did, right?”

Dan shrugged helplessly.

Phil shook his head. “I swear to god.”

“I’ll try,” Dan said.

“Good. Now, do you want to go to my room or do you want to stay in the living room?”

“Your room is fine.”

“Okay,” Phil said, leading Dan through his living room, down a hall, and into his room. He immediately dumped his backpack onto a pile of (hopefully) clean laundry. “Sorry it’s a mess,” he said, clearly embarrassed. “I wasn’t expecting to have anyone over today.”

To be honest, Phil’s room was pretty messy, but Dan wasn’t in a position to judge. Living in a single dorm room without his mom to yell at him to pick up his dirty laundry meant things could get pretty bad in his room.

Phil gestured to his bed. “You can sit here if you’d like. There’s also my desk.”

Phil’s desk was buried under mountains of papers, and it looked like there were some stacked on his chair too. There were way too many papers for someone whose main assignments were submitted via GitHub. Dan sat down on the bed.

“Cool,” Phil said. “I’ll be back in a minute, just going to make the ramen. Make yourself at home.”

Dan was tempted to snoop, but he opened up the MP again instead, staring at his code. He was only failing one test suite now, but he couldn’t figure out why. He checked the time. He only had an hour before he had to submit his code.

He frowned, as if glaring at his code would make it suddenly make sense. He thought he might be making progress when Phil’s door opened, interrupting his thoughts.

Phil handed Dan a mug and a spoon. “Sorry,” he said. “All the bowls are dirty.”

“That’s fine,” Dan said, setting aside his laptop. He could take a few minutes to eat.

It seemed like Phil had the same thought process, sitting next to Dan on his bed with his own mug and bowl. They ate quickly in companionable silence, but Phil was the first to finish, downing the last of his broth and setting it on his desk. Dan followed his lead.

Before Phil could get too absorbed in his own work, Dan tapped his shoulder.

“Can you help me with this for a sec?” he asked.

“Sure,” Phil said, looking over Dan’s shoulder. He paused for a moment, head cocked to the side, before speaking again. “That for loop- why does it only go until the length of the array minus one?”

“Because otherwise-” Dan stopped. “Oh. I was trying to avoid an index out of bounds exception, but I guess I didn’t need to do that there.” He was acutely aware of Phil’s shoulder pressed into his back.

Phil shrugged. “Let’s see.”

Dan changed the code and ran the test suite again.

Slowly, the symbols next to each test case turned green.

Dan stared at it, unbelieving.

“Don’t forget to commit and push,” Phil said.

Dan nodded, still in shock, his hands moving to submit his work almost automatically. “It worked,” he said breathlessly. “It worked!”

Phil closed his laptop and set it aside. “Really,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I was right?”

“Literally shut the fuck up,” Dan said, putting his laptop on top of Phil’s and flopping down so he was lying right next to Phil. “You’re so fucking annoying.”

“Really,” Phil said, laughing into Dan’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Dan groaned, and then Phil’s eyes were right there, so close, and then they were even closer, and their lips were touching, and it was nothing and everything like Dan had imagined.

Phil was warm and soft and solid in his mouth, under his hands, beneath his skin. His hands ran over Dan’s chest, dipped under his shirt. Dan gasped.

“You okay?” Phil asked, his normally light eyes dark with concern and something else.

“Yeah,” Dan said. “Yeah, that felt��� really nice.”

“Okay,” Phil said, running his hands down Dan’s arms. “We don’t have to-”

“I want to,” Dan said, gripping Phil back. “Please don’t stop.”

“Okay,” Phil said, and he kissed him again, and this time he didn’t stop.

Afterwards, when the heat and grasping hands were done, Dan sat up, but Phil pulled him back down.

“Don’t go,” he said, wrapping his arms around Dan.

So Dan didn’t.

***

Dan’s alarm was blaring. He shifted, mindlessly, reaching for his phone to turn it off.

He fell out of bed. “Ow,” he mumbled, finally getting his phone to shut up.

Phil’s head poked out from his bedsheets. “Dan?” he asked groggily.

“I have a class,” Dan said, pulling his boxers on.

“It’s so early,” Phil said.

“Yeah,” Dan snapped. “That’s how eight am’s work, Phil.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Phil said, sitting up. “Do you need anything?”

“How long does it take to get to the main quad from here?” Dan asked, yanking his shirt over his head.

“Like half an hour? I can walk you-”

“Fuck,” Dan said, looking at his phone (which was at a disturbingly low percentage). “I’m going to be late.”

“You can skip, Dan, I really want to talk to you-”

“No, I can’t,” Dan said harshly. He was tying his shoes now.

“Okay,” Phil said, “But Dan, we really need to-”

Dan left before Phil could finish his sentence.

***

He wasn’t sure if he should have bothered going to class. All he could think about was Phil anyway. The way his hands felt tangled in his hair. The way his mouth felt on his skin. Certainly not definite integrals.

He had classes back to back until his CS 115 lab. He didn’t even have time to go back to his dorm to change, just to scarf down a quick meal in the dining hall. He hoped no one noticed he was wearing yesterday’s clothes, but who even would? It wasn’t like anyone cared enough about him to pay enough attention.

He considered skipping his lab. He never really got anything out of it, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to face Phil possibly ever again.

He checked his grade. Well. No chance of missing lab, then.

He slunk in the back of the classroom and chose the closest seat to the door. He tried not to make eye contact with Phil when he walked in. Phil didn’t even seem to notice Dan. He looked disgustingly put together, Dan thought. He had no right to look like everything was fine.

Phil approached his lab table. Dan looked down.

“Dan?” Phil said. “Can I speak with you after class?”

Dan’s face was hot. He continued staring resolutely at the table. “Fine.”

“You and your boyfriend fighting, Howell?” the guy at the end of his lab table mocked.

“That was inappropriate, Nathan,” Phil said.

Nathan just rolled his eyes. Dan’s face got even hotter.

He didn’t finish his lab. At a certain point, he gave up trying. He was useless at coding, and he was even more useless with Phil standing behind him every time he turned around. He scowled, staring at his screen, willing a solution to appear. He was almost grateful when Phil dismissed the class and he could put his laptop away and give up.

He started to head out the door when he heard Phil’s voice.

“Dan,” Phil said.

Dan turned around, rolling his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

Phil blushed. “I hope you didn’t forget about our meeting,” he managed, flustered.

“How could I forget?” Dan asked, sarcasm lacing his voice.

“Dan.” Phil took a deep breath. “I’m trying to give you some leeway right now, given the situation. But that is not an appropriate way to speak to your TA.”

Dan stared at Phil sullenly.

“Okay,” Phil said. “Dan, you’re not doing very well in this class.”

Dan continued staring.

“I’m not here to encourage you to drop the class or anything. Hopefully this is a temporary setback we can work through. There are a lot of resources available to you as a student of this university. We want you to succeed.”

“That’s nice,” Dan said. “Anything else?”

Phil sighed. “Dan, can we talk?”

“About what?”

“I think you know what. You kind of ran off this morning.” Phil took Dan’s silence as encouragement to keep talking. “Dan, I- I shouldn’t have done that. I’m your TA, and you’re my student. That’s bad enough. But Dan, you’re my friend. I wanted to make sure that everything we did last night… that you were okay with it.”

Dan stared at the ground.

“I would never want to hurt you. But you need to tell me if I did.”

“You didn’t,” Dan said.

Phil relaxed slightly. “I’m glad. But I’m still sorry.”

Dan rolled his eyes. “It was that bad, huh?”

“I just meant- Dan, I really like you. But I can’t do this while you’re my student. I’m sorry. I just can’t. Maybe next semester, if we’re both still interested, but right now, I’m just not comfortable with that.”

“Great,” Dan said.

“Really, I’m sorry. I hope we can still be friends.”

Dan’s stomach twisted. “Friends.”

“It’s okay if you can’t do that. It’s okay if you never want to see me again. You can switch lab sections. You can-“

“No,” Dan said. “You’re literally my only friend. I’m not losing you over something as stupid as this.”

“That’s really sweet,” Phil said. “But you really need to get more friends.”

“I know,” Dan said. He did, unfortunately, but knowing he needed more friends didn’t mean it was easy to make them.

“Dan. If we’re going to be friends, I just need you to know I really am sorry. It was my job not to cross any boundaries, not yours, and now I’ve gone and made it all weird.”

“Stop acting like this is all your fault!” Dan exploded. “Stop sitting there fucking apologizing like you did something I didn’t want. I’m nineteen, I knew what I was doing, and if I didn’t want it, I wouldn’t have fucking said I wanted it.”

Phil stared at Dan. “Dan, I- look, I’m just saying-”

“Well, stop.”

Phil raised his hands defensively. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Okay then. I guess we’re done. Unless you have anything else you want to say.”

Dan glared at him. “No.”

“Okay. See you next week, unless you decide to switch lab sections.” Phil reached for his coat.

“Wait,” Dan said. “I have a question.”

“About?”

“Computer Science.”

“Okay,” Phil said, stepping closer to Dan.

“Do you like CS?” Dan asked quietly.

Phil sighed. “It’s, well, it’s a love-hate relationship. And to be completely honest, I hate it more than I love it most days. But when I love it, I really love it. And even when I hate it, I really do believe that software has the power to change the world. And I want to be a part of that change.”

Dan nodded, staring at the floor.

Phil moved even closer. “I know a lot of people go into CS for the wrong reasons,” he continued, even more gently. “It sounds cool or the starting salaries are so high or they want the power to reshape the world in their image. And then they get here and it turns out computer science is hard, and frustrating, and time consuming, and sometimes, it’s just not for them. And that’s okay. It doesn’t make them any less valuable to society or less intelligent.”

Dan stared even more intently at the floor, willing himself not to cry.

“Are you thinking of changing majors?” Phil asked.

“I don’t know,” Dan said, and his voice came out disturbingly watery. “What would I even change it too?”

“You can figure that out. It’s okay if you do. It’s not for everyone.”

“No, it’s not,” Dan said. He blinked and suddenly the tears that he had been trying to hold back rushed out. “It’s not,” he repeated, this time through a sob.

“Dan,” Phil said, reaching for him, then closing his fist on thin air. “I’m really sorry.”

“For the last time, Phil. Stop apologizing.”

“I just want you to be happy, Dan. I hate seeing you like this.”

“That must be really fucking hard for you, Phil. Want to tell me more?” Dan couldn’t help the bitter laugh that spilled from his throat.

Phil watched helplessly. “Computer science is hard, Dan. Especially if this is your first class. Computer science is frustrating and confusing and hard and no one’s code ever works right on the first try and if you’ve never had a breakdown over an assignment you either have incredible time management skills or you’ve only been doing CS for like a month or you’re a liar. And I’m not going to pretend that doesn’t suck, but you come out from it a better version of yourself each time. I’m the programmer I am today because of all of the times I’ve failed.”

Dan couldn’t help the waves of anger that rose up sharp and aching in his lungs. “That’s great, Phil, thanks. Thank you so much for being helpful. Really, it’s all going to be fine, because even though I’m fucking miserable, I’ll be a better person at the end of the day.”

“If you’re really that miserable you should drop,” Phil said.

Dan was silent.

“The drop deadline for CS 115 is in a week,” Phil said. “You have time to think about it.”

Dan nodded and wiped at his face.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asked desperately.

“I don’t think so,” Dan said.

They stood in silence for a few more moments before Dan left. “I don’t think we should talk anymore,” he said shakily, before walking out. Dan didn’t look back, and Phil didn’t follow. He went back to his dorm room, where he was finally able to cry again.

***

The actual moment was rather anticlimactic. The form was less than a page, and all he needed to do for it to be official was get his academic advisor to sign it, which wasn’t difficult, considering his grade in CS 115. Then he uploaded it as a PDF to his student portal and his major change was approved two days later.

Dan expected to feel better afterwards. Somehow, even though this had been sitting like a pit in his stomach for months, he just felt worse.

Without CS 115, his schedule felt weirdly empty. He had gaps in his schedule where he used to go to lecture (sometimes), study, work on the MP, and have mental breakdowns.

He left his dorm more often. He paid more attention in his other classes. He even made a few friends from his film class that he studied with sometimes. They even had time to hang out when they weren’t doing homework. One of the girls in the group probably had a crush on him. Dan supposed she was kind of cute. He didn’t know. He didn’t know much of anything lately, including what the fuck his sexuality was and whether or not he wanted to mess with some girl’s feelings in the process of finding out. And that was without even considering whatever the fuck had happened with Phil- if he was ready to move on from that relationship, if it could even be called that.

Dan filled his life with the things college was supposedly supposed to be about. He went to parties. He spent time with friends. He stayed up too late. He experimented with his look, leaving his hair in its natural, curly state instead of straightening it every morning. He wore clothes that weren’t baggy sweatshirts and jeans. He painted his nails. He even started wearing a tiny bit of makeup.

So why did he still feel so empty? It was probably natural after a breakup, or whatever you were supposed to call what had happened between him and Phil.

Dan had no reference for “normal.” He didn’t know what this was supposed to feel like, but he had a hunch that it wasn’t like this.

He stumbled through his days. He made an appointment with his school’s mental health center, but he wouldn’t be able to see a therapist for at least three weeks. Midterms were coming up, the woman on the phone explained, and they always filled up quickly around then. For now, all he could do was wait.

About two weeks later, he got a text from Phil.

You down for coffee today? I know you said you didn’t want to see me which I totally understand but I really miss you and I want to talk some things over.

Dan wasn’t sure how to respond. He wasn’t even sure if he did want to see Phil again.

idk i have a lot of homework

Phil replied almost instantly. You can bring your homework! I have some work to do too

Dan hesitated.

His phone dinged. We can be study buddies lol. It’ll be fun

Again. If you don’t want to come that’s fine. I just wanted to talk

Dan picked up his phone. sure, he typed, sending it before he could regret it.

Alright! 3:00?

sure, Dan sent again.

Perfect! See you then!

And then Dan had nothing to do but wait.

He regretted not asking Phil to meet up with him earlier than three. Now he was just going to spend the next two hours feeling incredibly anxious.

He tried to work on some homework, but he couldn’t focus. He could feel the same feelings he used to have for Phil bubbling up inside of him again, and he did his best to shove them down. Last time they spoke, Phil had said he wanted them to be friends. He had also had sex with him, so Dan felt Phil was sending a few mixed signals, but that wasn’t the point.

Dan wasn’t even sure what he hoped to gain out of a conversation with Phil. Closure, maybe? Some sort of reconciliation?

He certainly wasn’t hoping for a relationship. Was he? He wouldn’t have agreed to meet with Phil if he didn’t at least want to be friends. Probably.

He let himself imagine it. Just for a second.

He shut his laptop, grabbed his keys, and shoved his sneakers on. He needed a walk. He went through the process of leaving his dorm almost automatically, taking the back staircase instead of the elevator so he wouldn’t have to run into anyone else. Once outside, he shoved his hands in his pockets, doing his best to ignore the chill in the air.

He had put on his angstiest short playlist before he left, but when it ended about half an hour into the walk, Dan’s hands were too cold for him to even consider taking them out of his sweatshirt pockets for long enough to select a new playlist, so he just went back to his dorm, collapsing on his bed. He checked his phone. He still had an hour to go. He glanced longingly at his Xbox.

He probably had time for a quick game, he decided, reaching for his controller.

After just under fifty minutes of Skyrim, he felt much better. He rolled out of his bed, and after messing with his hair for a bit in the mirror, he put his thickest sweatshirt back on and left for The Daily Grind.

He spotted Phil almost immediately, staring at his laptop with two coffees sitting in front of him.

Dan approached.

Phil looked up. “I’ve got our drinks,” he said.

“That was fast,” Dan said.

Phil shrugged. “Maybe I got here ten minutes early to make sure you had your coffee when you got here. Who knows?”

“Thanks,” Dan said, sipping his coffee.

“Yeah, of course,” Phil said, and the way he said it made it sound so much like Dan had done him the favor that he almost believed him for a second.

They sat in silence for a while, before Dan spoke. “I submitted my major change form.”

Phil’s face lit up. “Dan, that’s great! What did you decide to change it to?”

“I was thinking something more arts-based. I’m taking a film class this semester and I really like it. I also really like the idea of creative writing. I don’t know.”

“Well, the good thing about most humanities majors is that it’s way easier to pick up a double major or a minor than in engineering. I actually really wanted to minor in English in undergrad, but I just didn’t have the time.”

“Wow,” Dan said. “How didn’t I know that?”

Phil shrugged. “I don’t talk about it a lot. Everyone has dreams that died, I guess. It’s impossible to fit them all into one life.”

“What if I don’t have any dreams?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Phil said with so much confidence that Dan almost believed him.

“I guess,” Dan said.

They were quiet for a few more minutes. “I dropped CS 115 too,” Dan said.

Phil looked up, his smile slowly growing. “I’m that shitty of a TA, huh?”

“I feel bad,” Dan confessed.

“I always felt bad whenever I dropped a class in undergrad,” Phil said. “I can’t imagine dropping out of an entire major.”

Dan focused on his coffee. “You said you liked being a TA because you liked to help students succeed.”

Phil paused. “I did,” he said. “And I do. It’s probably the most rewarding part of my job, and I’m going to miss it a lot after I graduate.”

“Even after watching people like me fail?” Dan asked.

“Dan,” Phil said. “No. You didn’t fail. You realized a subject wasn’t for you. That’s incredibly different.”

Dan shrugged. He didn’t really want to get into an argument with Phil, but he still felt like a failure, and he wasn’t sure anything could change that.

Phil sighed and changed the subject. “So how have things been going for you?”

Dan filled Phil in on the changes in his life, and Phil talked a bit about what had been going on in his. They avoided any difficult topics, choosing to stick with idle chitchat instead, but the pit in Dan’s stomach was growing.

There were some things he needed to ask. He gathered his courage. “Are you doing anything today?”

Phil looked slightly surprised, but he just shrugged. “Depends why you ask.”

“I’d like to hang out some more. If that’s okay.”

Phil blinked. “Hang out… why?”

Dan shrugged. “You’re really cool and I’d like to be friends with you.”

Phil looked disappointed. “That’s all?”

“Well.” Dan took a deep breath and looked at Phil’s eyes, studied their not-quite-familiar composition of blue and yellow and gold. “Maybe more. If you’d like.”

Phil reached across the table to take Dan’s hand. “I think I would.”

They sat in comfortable silence for a few more moments before Dan spoke. “You know, it’s getting cold out.”

Phil smiled. “It is. You still need that jacket?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Want to head to my place then? You can grab it there, and we can… hang out. Do whatever you want.”

Dan smiled. “Sure.”

Dan left Phil’s apartment the next morning. He forgot Phil’s jacket.

Oh well. He’d just have to come back.

[thebrochtuarachs]

Arranged: Chapter 5

Modern AU. Set in 2018. Where Claire and Jamie are arranged to be married.

CH: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

AO3

A/N: In celebration of my 25th birthday, I am finally updating this fic! Hope you like it and so excited to share the coming chapters ahead! _____________________________

Monday rolled out and she hadn’t heard from either Jamie and Frank over the weekend.

Frank did warn her that communications will be hard as being in remote areas during his excavation project in Egypt and she really didn’t expect much from Jamie since they agreed to keep discussions off about their arrangement during weekends. It should’ve soothed her mind but she jumped between feeling calm and restless as the weekend passed by.

As a woman of science, Claire relied on logic in dealing with issues in her life and more than not, logic helps her arrive in a viable and proper decision. However, being in a relationship is more than quantifiable facts and figures. It involves – should involve – a matter of heart and emotion that she will have to take into consideration.

On one end, the choice should was clear – Frank. Although they have only been going out barely a month, at least, to her - them, they were official. He was older with a stable career, more mature – sometimes too much – but she can get on with it. But more importantly, he likes her enough to actually pursue her even at the risk of his job.

But then last week, she went home for dinner only for her family to announce that they were arranging a marriage for her to her childhood friend who she hasn’t seen in the past half year. She was definitely angry and confused at the beginning, however, she couldn’t deny that continuously spending time with Jamie the past three days have been entirely pleasant, even if it was in the most common and domestic situations. It surprised her to feel that what she looked forward to the most was the time of day they’ve scheduled just for themselves at the cafe. She couldn’t lie to herself and not say that Jamie was somehow in her emotional mix now regardless of how that came to be.

It was unchartered territory to her and she was definitely unsure what the outcome will be and that heightened her anxiety a different level.

Claire shook her head and refocused her mind on her classes instead as she drove on her way to school. The day went by fairly normal. Not hearing from either men didn’t trigger anything and she was thankful for that, saving her energy now that she was on the way to the café to meet up with Jamie.

As she walked to the parking lot, she heard voices from behind one of the larger vehicles that kept the group of men hidden from plain view. Despite that, she heard one voice that was entirely too familiar. One would think that living in Scotland for most her life that everyone’s accent would be the same but Jamie’s voice registers uniquely to her.

She paused, waiting to hear what was going on. She peeked at the situation but didn’t intervene.

“Let him go, Grant.” Jamie said warningly.

“What will ye do then, Fraser?”

“Ye coward, picking up on someone ye know canna fight ye fairly.” Jamie dwelled for a moment before declaring. “I’ll fight ye.”

“Jamie, no!” a person unfamiliar to Claire pleaded back. “Let them do as they wish to me.”

“No, no, no.” Malcolm Grant said. “Tis’ an offer I canna pass. Finally having a chance to give the famous Jamie Fraser a piece of this.” Malcolm held up his fist but Claire saw Jamie unbothered.

Malcolm shoved Jamie’s friend to the side and when Claire saw his difficulty getting up, it became clear to her what Jamie meant by fighting fairly. Ian wore a prosthetic on his right leg.

Her thoughts abruptly stopped once she heard the sound of a punch landing on the face. Malcolm and Jamie didn’t waste time getting at it with Jamie getting the upper hand because of his size and strength. He landed two punches that sent Malcolm at a distance but then two of his groupies suddenly appeared from nowhere and it was now a 3-on-1 battle.

“This is our fight, Grant. Ask yer men to leave”

Malcolm ticked his tongue. “Awww, since when was I fair on anything, Fraser?” he remarked, smirking at the upper hand he now has. “Get him” he ordered and his guys held Jamie by the arms, rendering him at a great disadvantage. Jamie’s friend tried to join the fight but his prosthetic was easily deformed by Malcolm that left him to watch Jamie deal with it all by himself.

Jamie tried to fight off the two men but it was to no avail. Malcolm came close to him, patting his cheek. “Such shame to destroy this pretty face”

Then everything happened quickly thereafter. With Jamie helpless, Grant threw one punch to his face, then to his stomach, and the last straight to his nose that caused him to bleed profusely.

Everything happened so fast that it took Claire a second to react and interrupted them.

“What the hell is this?! You better leave or I am calling the police?” she made herself known with the threat.

“And who might you be, pretty lass?” Malcolm asked, definitely interested in the lady that has arrived.

“Claire – leave…“ was all Jamie managed to say as he heaved, recovering from the punch.

“So the pretty lass has a name. Claire…beautiful” he started walking towards her and Jamie tried to get away again but Malcolm’s guys were fast and held him off.

“Stop right there.” Claire commanded as she pulled at her phone and started dialing.

“Okay, okay.” Malcolm raised his hand and backed off. “Come on ye two.”

“Really boss?!” One of them inquired.

“Ye, ye.”

The two men shoved Jamie towards where his friend was and the three started walking away. Malcolm turned around, looking at Claire with a smug face. “This isna the last ye’ll see of me…Claire”

Claire all but ran to Jamie’s side, checking up on his condition. “You’ve broken your nose”, she assessed while trying to see any other injuries.

“I’m fine.” Jamie said, standing up and then turning to his friend to help him up too.

“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding, you bloody Scot! Come on, we need to get you to the clinic to fix that nose…”

“Claire Beauchamp, this is Ian Murray. Ian Murray, Claire Beauchamp.” Jamie interrupted her with his introductions.

“Hello, Ian.” She turned to him, checking him up to. “How’s the leg?”

Ian’s brows rose in surprise then his eyes drooped in embarrassment. “I am sorry.”

“Whatever are you sorry for?” Claire said, hoping that her message came to Ian in kind and not in spite.

“How did ye know?” Ian asked.

“Just by observation, nothing to worry about.”

“I think Grant hit the mechanism when he shoved me. We really need to go to the clinic.” Ian explained and Jamie groaned at the inevitable.

The three of them walked awkwardly towards the clinic while Claire repeatedly reprimanded Jamie under her breath. “Being punched three times, broke a nose and says he’s bloody fine...”

Jamie laughed that sent more blood to ooze from his not but he didn’t care.

“Don’t laugh! Who were those guys anyway?” she asked.

“Ach, no one, Sassenach.”

“They’re the Grants.” Ian answered instead. “They love to bully me around uni but Jamie wouldn’t allow them to no matter how many times I asked him to stay away from it.”

“Why to they pick on you?”

“Er, the obvious I guess.” Ian explained.

“Just for that?”

“Eh,” Ian just shrugged as they finally arrive at the clinic.

The nurses didn’t waste time fixing Jamie up as soon as they saw the bloody mess on his face. When asked how he broke his nose, Jamie explained that he fell off the stairs. The nurses raised an eyebrow in skepticism then looked at Ian and Claire for confirmation. They just nodded because if they knew the real reason, it might cause something else they don’t want to deal with.

It took less than half an hour for the nurses to fix Jamie’s nose and cuts and for Ian’s leg to be working again and they were out with strict orders of rest and fluids.

“I’ll see you home, Jamie.” Ian offered but Jamie refused.

“No, tis’ alright, Ian. Ye ken we live on opposite sides of the city plus I’m fine, really and home is just a bus ride away”

“I wouldn’t mind”

“No, and tis that. Go home, Ian. I’ll see ye tomorrow.” Jamie patted Ian in the shoulder in assurance.

“If ye say so. Head home, too, and rest. You’re more banged up than I am.” Ian returned the gesture and turned to Claire. “Tis nice to meet ye, Claire. I just hoped it was in better circumstances.”

“It’s nice to meet you too. I’ll see you around.”

Ian left the opposite direction leaving Claire and Jamie to deal with themselves.

“I dinna think I can go to our wee meeting today, Sassenach. My head’s a bit woozy right now” Jamie turned to Claire sheepishly, trying to scratch a small itch on his nose but hissed when he touched a sensitive area.

“I’ll take you home, Jamie” she offered.

“No, ye dinna have to do that, Claire.”

“Please. I brought my car today so it’s no bother really.” she countered, not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

“Alright, I dinna want to argue wi’ anyone anymore today.”

The drive to Jamie’s was silent, mostly because Jamie dozed off during the ride. When they arrive at the Frasers, Ellen asked the same questions as the nurse at school and also turned to Claire for confirmation to story they all know not to be true.

“Claire, if you could settle my son at the living room, I’ll get some ice from the kitchen.”

“Mam, ye dinna have to bother…”

Ellen Fraser only have to give Jamie a look for him to follow her orders and Claire giggled.

“Don’t laugh, my mam is going to have my hide no matter how grown up I am” Jamie chastised humorly.

“How are you going to explain this one away?”

“I dinna ken, maybe stay silent until she just gives up?”

“Like that’s going to work on Aunt Ellen”

Jamie gave a scottish grunt just as his mother entered the room, handing Jamie a pack of frozen peas.

“Must be some slippery stairs for you to fall face first and break your nose, my son.”

“Aye, tis”

“Your father and I will love for you to regale that tale over dinner. Claire, my dear, will you be joining us for dinner as well?”

“Oh? I - uhm..”

Jamie looked at her with pleading eyes to stay and help him get through his family’s questioning.

“Let me just call my mom” Claire took out her phone, dialed home and after a few minutes. “I’m free for dinner”

“Fantastic! Now, I’ll leave you two kids to fend for yourselves. Dinner will be ready in a few hours”

Ellen Fraser left for the kitchen and Jamie stretched on the sofa, tending to his swollen face. The silence stretched and Claire wasn’t really sure how to go about it. She never really had a reason to stay long at the Fraser’s house unless it was one of their family dinners and it was definitely a long time since she stayed over their house for no reason at all. It wasn’t uncomfortable, she just didn’t know what else to do.

“Claire” Jamie turned to her, breaking her thoughts and sensing her slight uneasiness. “Do ye still know how to ride?”

“Of course, I do”

“Would ye like to look around the estate?”

“Sure”

-

It was a lovely afternoon for a ride and Jamie was pleased that the horse he’s chosen was immediately taken to Claire. She’s a natural rider, he observed and he was glad that she looked to be enjoying herself.

They reached the farther ends of the property, going to areas they’d frequent before as kids - the river they’d sneak off to in the summer, the treehouse fort they’d only let their parents enter with a password, the pond they’d skate around during the winter. They talked about memories of their childhood until they found themselves at the top of a hill, watching the sun fall from the horizon.

Claire dismounted first and walked towards the huge oak tree near the edge. Jamie dismounted after her but only took the reigns of her horse and let her wander towards the edge.  

“It’s beautiful. Why don’t I remember this place? Haven’t I been here before?” Claire asked in succession and Jamie just stayed silent. He had planned on taking here there a long time ago to tell her of his intentions to court her but timing always never felt right until it was too late and he found out about Frank Randall.

“We hadn’t rode this far before.” he excused.

“Well, I’ll definitely come back and visit this place. Just look at this view! The endless rolling hills!” Claire excitedly proclaimed as she took out her phone and took a photo. Once the task was done, she turned around to head back to Jamie and her horse. And in that moment as she walked, the sun perfectly aligned behind her, creating a silhouette that took Jamie’s breath away.

Ah, dhia. She is beautiful.

Surprising even himself, he had enough awareness to hand her back her horse and ride away without getting too caught up in the situation.

A few minutes later the house was in view and they were depositing the horses back in the stables.

“Thank you for the ride. I haven’t had the chance in a long while, I almost forgot how much I loved it. I know I should be studying or doing our research but this is way more fun and relaxing. A nice break, is it not?”

“Glad you enjoyed it, Sassenach. Tis’ my pleasure.”

From the back door of the kitchen, Ellen called out that dinner was ready.

Jamie and Claire settled their horses and before Jamie could muster what was happening, Claire shoved passed him and started running like a child towards the house.

“Tag! Last one to the house is the loser, Fraser!” Claire called out and they were off to the races, she with the headstart but Jamie not far behind her. Their laughs echoed throughout the deserted field and it was just like they were 7 and 9 again. Jamie fought the urge not to tackle or hug her from behind resulting in his loss.

“Wash yer hands before ye proceed to the table” Ellen ordered upon the duo’s entry. Claire continued her victory cheer as she headed for the sink to clean up. Ellen Fraser greeted her son by the door, gave him a smirk and then tousled his hair to disarray to which Jamie only happily rolled his eyes.

-

Thankfully, Jamie’s parents didn’t push him enough to explain the bruises he has but let it slide for the time being, happy that he’s home and safe.

Dinner had been a lovely affair for the foursome. Ellen and Brian regaled childhood memories of Jamie and Claire’s, laughing and embarrassing them both to no end.

“Let me just get us another bottle” Ellen stood and Jamie followed his mam to help her.

In the recess of the kitchen, Ellen turned to her son who was reaching for another bottle of wine.

“Tis’ nice having dinner with Claire.” Ellen remarked, leaning on the counter.

“Ye have dinner with her once a month, mam, for the past 20 years. Ye’ve known her all yer life.” he retorted.

“True, but tonight, seeing ye and her, getting to know the woman she is and becoming” Ellen sighed. “I love that girl like she was my own daughter, ye ken. But now, I really wish she was my daughter, if ye get my meaning”

Jamie turned around to give his mother an exasperated look but was stopped in his tracks when his mother produced a small, black velvet box from her pocket.

“Mam..”

“It would give me great pleasure if ye gave this to her.” holding up Jamie’s hand and pressing the box to his keeping.

“Our situations complicated enough..” Jamie said as he tried to hand it back to his mother.

“I’m no asking ye to give it to her tonight. Just...” she paused, raised one hand to his cheek to get his attention. ”hold on to it, aye?”

-

Unbeknown to the two, Claire had been watching the entire scene unfold through a small opening in the kitchen door. Brian had asked her to follow them to request for the cake as well when she heard their conversation.

She meant to show herself sooner but when Ellen produced the ring box, she was frozen on the spot. She watched Jamie try to refuse it but to no avail. Aunt Ellen didn’t mean to pressure Jamie either, it seems, much to her relief. However, she couldn’t deny the small curiosity in what is beneath it.

Claire shook her head and pushed the thoughts away. As she saw Jamie place the box in his pocket, Claire entered the kitchen asking for dessert.

[topimagines]

Tip Toes

Summary: I’m on my tip toes, trying to see past my ego. Reaching for something more than this feeling of being important. Leaving my heart behind is bleeding, but my pride is screaming. My future will listen to me, listen to me.

Warning: I wanted to write angst, but this came out. IDK how to label it. Listen to tip toes by half alive while reading. issa long one

Y/n had not dated much. Actually, she did not start looking for a relationship until her freshman year of college. By then there weren’t many people she talked to and considered a friend; therefore, the idea of dating someone, being close to someone that was not her friend, did not pique her interest. Around the time she met Brendon and Sarah, she had lost all hope in a romantic relationship. It almost seemed too good to be true, a truly happy relationship seemed unattainable.

This feeling came in waves, making her feel nauseous like she was on a boat in a hurricane. It became truly difficult to accept a happy reality that ended in kids of her own and a husband or wife, but she knew it was just about impossible. Her best friends were a married couple and a gay man (who was also in a happy relationship), they always rooted for her. But they didn’t understand, she was a twenty-something-year-old who had no idea how to even kiss someone. Everyone always told her (especially her friends) that it was admirable that she held out for so long like she was waiting for the right person or something.

In other words, y/n would describe herself as the biggest virgin on earth, and it genuinely was from a lack of trying.

It almost felt as if her own future didn’t belong to her.

Some days were better than others, just like the day Sarah asked her to come to hang out at her house. y/n had just gotten done with finals, so she had basically a month of sitting around and waiting for the Spring semester to finally start. Sarah and Brendon cuddled on the couch, y/n on the chair in the corner of the room actually watching the movie and trying to not pay attention to the couple that was no doubt finger banging each other under the blanket they shared.

“I think I should go,” y/n said, “I have to work in the morning so I can’t stay up too late.” She stretched her arms and legs when she got up from the chair. Sarah seemed to be frightened out of a daze when she looked up at her friend.

“Oh, okay!” Sarah chirped, pushing Brendon away from her, “Do you want me to walk you out?”

y/n shook her head, “no thanks, I’m fine.”

“Well… I’ll see you later?” Sarah asked. Y/n didn’t really want to. It wasn’t that she didn’t like hanging out with them, they always made her feel lonely. And sad. But mostly lonely.

“I don’t know, I have a busy week at the hospital; I will text you when I get time,” y/n said before bidding the couple goodbye and leaving the house.

Sarah looked at her husband, who had gotten entranced by the movie in the five minutes since he was trying to sneak his hand into her pants. “You are such an idiot.”

“What did I do?”

-

Y/n got home that night very confused about her feelings. Her brain was spiraling out of control with delusions of being married and having someone who would dote on her the same way Brendon did Sarah. At the same time, she never really paid attention to them behind the scenes, so maybe they’re dysfunctional and she never saw it.

That didn’t make sense, if she knew one thing about the couple, it was that they talked about everything. And Sarah told her everything, every fight they had, Sarah would go to y/n’s apartment and sit until Brendon sulked his way over.

Every time she thought about the couple, she got a weird sensation of butterflies in her stomach.

No, she thought, I am not developing a stupid crush just because I’m sad and lonely.

That night she couldn’t sleep; it didn’t help that she knew she did have work in the morning and the hospital was unforgiving when the lab techs were late. By the time she finally stopped swimming in her thoughts, she had dreams of her friends, holding her hand and kissing her on the forehead.

It was 6 AM before she knew it, and she had to get up and get ready for work.

Hopefully, tea would help wake her up before she got to work and did a piss poor job.

-

Y/n had never been more appreciative of the hospital. She had fond memories of staying there, almost dying, meeting so many different doctors that she just didn’t have it in her to leave.

Sarcasm, that was the key to understanding her outlook on life. Constant use of sarcasm.

But she would be lying if she said that today, and every day for the past week, she was so glad they had a week full of emergencies and a trip planned for a conference with Lab Technologists across the country. This trip would take her to Boston and all she could think of was the idea of seeing every museum she could for one full week and going to a conference full of people who had a thorough understanding of microbiology and hematology. It was almost enough to make her come in her jeans.

What she did not appreciate, was Brendon coming to visit her while she was supposed to be working. She had just gotten a lab sample to test for any drug she could when Brendon waltzed in with In N Out in his hand. He greeted her with a hug and handed her the bag.

“Sarah is at work,” he sighed, “she doesn’t get a lunch today because she’s busy or something, so I thought I’d visit my bestie.” She was too distracted to notice what he was saying. Brendon tried to call her name, the third time she snapped.

“What do you want?” she half yelled, looking away from her specimen.

Brendon looked taken aback; he didn’t even know how to reply when he has never seen her so angry before. Her coworker, a younger man by the name of Jeremy Ren, looked up from his microscope and stepped over to her area.

“L/n, you go take your lunch break, I’ll take care of this shotgun,” he took the test tubes and brought them back to his microscope with him, still eyeing the two.

She scoffed and stomped out, ditching her lab coat at the door. She led Brendon to the hospital cafeteria and sat down with him in the corner.

“What’s wrong? You usually aren’t so…” Brendon trailed off, “Are you still being overworked? Have you talked to your boss about time off?”

Y/n shook her head, “I’m just… fine, I’m fine.” Internally, she cringed. If she talked to him about it, maybe she could resolve the war she had inevitably put herself into.

But the idea of not telling him anything was far more appealing. Nothing had to change.

“Are you sure? You look tired, have you been sleeping?” He reached over and grabbed her hand, tracing his thumb over her knuckles.

God, Brendon, she thought, Stop being so caring, it’s not helping my situation. She pulled her hand away and tucked it under her pants. This couldn’t happen. She did everything she could to give herself a reason not to develop a stupid crush on the man in front of her. She could only come up with two.

1.       He’s married to her best friend

2.       He definitely wouldn’t see her the same way

Number two made her heart bleed. Not literally, she knew the severity of an actual bleeding heart, she worked in a hospital for Christ’s sake. But if she were to imagine the pain, this would be it.

“I’m just… excited for this trip to Boston next week,” she confessed. It wasn’t a lie by any means, she stayed up all night a month ago when she heard she was going on the trip, planning what she wanted to pack. This didn’t change the stare he had on the table where her hand used to be, and his hand still sat.

“Oh, that is coming up, isn’t it?” he put a smile on his face, trying to quickly recover from whatever feeling he felt. “I’m sorry, I’m a bit off today. We haven’t seen you all week, we miss you at the house.”

She frowned. There was an impulsive need in her to put her hand back and comfort him. But she knew she shouldn’t do it because she knew it would only make her feel worse.

“I’ve been busy with work, had a lot of emergencies and stuff,” she explained, “I’m free this weekend, I’ll try to come over before I leave for the airport on Sunday.” That was not what she wanted to say, why did she say that?

“Sounds like a plan!” he seemed happy with that suggestion though, so maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about.  “How has your week been, then? What kinda emergencies did you get?”

She and Brendon talked for a while, she told him about the guy who came in with necrotic tissue on his arm from heroin, and he told her about his charity live stream and how proud he was of everyone who donated.

Watching him so happy as he explained what happened, she felt herself swooning. They sat in silence for a few moments after he finished speaking, both focused on eating their food. One of the surgical nurses walked passed them with a smile on her face.

“Y/n, I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!” Brendon smirked and opened his mouth to explain that they weren’t a couple, but the nurse continued on, “you’re always going on about how lonely you are! It’s nice to see you’re finally getting out there.” Y/n’s eyes were wide, and a blush crept across her cheeks.

“Uh… thank you, Andrea,” she said with a shaky voice.

“So proud of you, my dear,” Andrea smiled brightly t the two before she walked away, bidding them goodbye.

“You’re lonely?” Brendon asked when Andrea was out of earshot.

y/n couldn’t speak as she stared at her fries, the only response she gave was a small nod.

“Why are you lonely? You never date… or expressed a desire… to date.” Damn you, Sarah, she thought, that was supposed to be a secret.

“well… lately, it’s been a bit different,” she sighed, “I’m almost 30, I’ve never been on a real date or…. Done anything, really. I thought I’d at least have a boyfriend by now.” That was easier to get off her chest than she thought.

“You’ve never done anything? Not even like… a kiss?” Brendon knew he was badgering her now, but this was so unbelievable to him. She was so smart and beautiful; how could anyone look passed her?

She shook her head, eyes still on the fries that were no longer steamy, “Can we drop it please?”

Brendon took in the shakiness to her tone and decided to drop it like she asked. This topic would definitely come up later with Sarah, though. He had so many more questions.

When they parted ways after lunch, Brendon couldn’t hold back a smile as he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. She blushed harder than she had at lunch when she said bye to him. No one, besides her parents and grandparents, had ever kissed her on the cheek.

She kind of liked it.

-

Sarah told Brendon everything he wanted to know. She didn’t know why, at first, but he explained what happened during lunch.

“But you can’t badger her or make her feel bad,” Sarah emphasized, “She always felt self-conscious about it, even after we became friends.” Brendon understood, even though he never had to deal with stuff like that. He had lost his virginity early on, and everything just came naturally after that.

“I would never.”

-

“So, what’s with you never dating anyone?” He had promised not to pry, but now it was late at night in y/n’s apartment and he had more than a few drinks in his system. Sue him, he wanted to hang out and she brought out the wine.

“I just… don’t do it?” y/n had a few drinks in her too, the wine was making her feel like being truthful. If she were sober, she wouldn’t be telling hi anything, but maybe she needed to get it off her chest? Drunk y/n thought so, anyway. “I didn’t get my first boyfriend until my freshman year of college, and before that, I only had minor flings with girls from my school. I don’t know, dating always makes me anxious.”

“And you’ve never done anything?” He knew her answer already. This was beginning to get repetitive and even drunk y/n was fed up with it.

“Why do you keep asking that?”

“Because it’s… it’s so rare! You’re like a unicorn!” he laughed at his comparison. She shook her head, she felt kind of offended, but she knew what he was saying. He hadn’t meant it to be an insult at all, he was kind of proud of her, even with pressures that a woman date and be married by her age, she didn’t feel that. She was unabashedly herself.

He didn’t know what came over him when he opened his mouth next, “I mean, I can always help you.”

y/n looked into his eyes, and she swore that if she were a meme, she would have question marks floating around her head. “What?”

“I mean if you ever want your first kiss… or something else… I can always help you,” he didn’t know why he was saying it, but he couldn’t help but offer. The offer was outlandish, yes, but he knew Sarah would be alright with it. She had mentioned before how much she liked y/n, in a more than platonic way.

Before this whole topic came up, Brendon was planning on asking her to be their third, if she wanted to be. However, she told him she hadn’t dated someone very seriously.

“But… wh- h- Sarah?” y/n was blushing, her face and ears were bright red. This was not how she expected this to go.

“She would want to do the same thing, she has a thing for you,” drunk Brendon was an honest Brendon, apparently, “was gonna ask you if you wanted to go on a date with us the other day but obviously I didn’t.”

Y/n didn’t know what to say. Like, of course, he had to do this when she was drunk and couldn’t very well keep her thoughts to herself.

“Um…. Are you asking me now if I want to go on a date with you and Sarah?” y/n asked.

“Well, that wasn’t my first question,” Brendon leaned closer, and cupped her face with his left hand, “Tell me to stop if you want me to stop.” He continued leaning in, slowly but surely. He waited for her to protest; when she didn’t say anything, he finally connected their lips. If he were to compare all of his other kisses to the one right then, she wouldn’t be the worst. She was inexperienced, but her lips were soft and tasted like peppermint from her seasonal chapstick.

When she pulled away, he almost chased after her.

For the rest of the night, he explained the logistics of kissing, and eventually, they both fell asleep on the couch after he went on the the longest tangent on what kind of guitar he would get now that his “cream dream" was gone.

-

She left for Boston after saying goodbye to Brendon or Sarah. She had also talked to Robert (her other best friend) the day before the trip; he yelled at her for not telling him right away about everything that had been happening. To be genuinely honest, she needed this vacation after her night with Brendon.

It was a relief when Brendon left in the morning after they had kissed. The memory of her first kiss still burned in the back of her mind, but she didn’t want to focus on that. Right now, it was her time to relax.

That was until Brendon texted her asking what hotel she was at. She told him, just assuming he wanted to make sure she got there safe. Why would she think anything else?

She should have thought of something else. Now she was sitting in her room, scrolling through the TV when she heard the knock at the door.

He didn’t, she thought, please tell me he didn’t.

She opened the door and saw the couple standing in front of her with giant smiles on their faces.

He did.

“what are you doing here?” she said instead of greeting them.

Sarah let herself in, “we wanted to surprise you! You’ve wanted this vacation for a while, and we thought you’d want company!”

She really didn’t want company, but she put a smile on her face anyway.

-

After spending the whole week with Brendon and Sarah, y/n was exhausted. She only got a real break from the two when she was at the conference. They had both wished her luck that morning and went back to giggling under the blankets of their shared bed.

Now she was back in Los Angeles, and she was so fucking happy to go back to normal.

However, they didn’t necessarily go back to normal. Brendon spent a lot more time at her apartment than he used to. He started to initiate cuddling, press kisses to her cheek and hairline, and hugging her more than he used to. She started to see more of Sarah, as well. She did it more subtly. She bought y/n drinks and take her to fancy restaurants, surprises her with jewelry and takes her shopping, anything really.

All y/n wanted was for one of them to say something.

And when she least expected it, Brendon did.

“Have you ever wanted to lose your virginity?” Brendon asked during a movie one day. y/n shrugged, she couldn’t say she was surprised, she knew he would ask eventually.

“I guess,” she sighed, “its just not something I really let myself think about. I never thought anyone would… y’ know, want to. And I’m 28, no one wants to date a virgin at my age.”

“Don’t say that,” he took her hand in his. Recently, it had been his sign of comfort to lace his fingers with hers and rub his thumb along the back, “I already told you, me and Sarah love you…”

y/n couldn’t look up at him, she only stared at her fingers. She didn’t say anything, either.

“you never answered, you know,” he whispered, “let us take you on one date. A fancy restaurant, or a movie, whatever makes you least anxious.”

y/n shook her head. The feeling of drowning, even before saying yes, was obvious. She felt like she couldn’t breathe and had to remind herself how to focus on the feeling of his hand in hers.

“or, we can keep it low key, not label it… just the three of us?”

“um… okay..” y/n thought, “no labeling, just… just us. Let’s go see the new Jumanji.”

“That sounds perfect,” Brendon smiled down at y/n.

Maybe her future did belong to her.

[legendofzeldaalinktothepast]

Opalescent Tides - Chapter 7

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter 

As she waited for Pearl to show up, Amethyst sat at a picnic table and drew shapes in the sand with her bare feet. The air grew cooler, and the shimmering sun descended over the ocean. Amethyst rubbed her bare arms and felt goosebumps on her skin; she wished she'd brought along a jacket.

"Good evening, Amethyst!" 

Amethyst perked up and met a very familiar pair of baby blue eyes. "Oh, hey!" she greeted in response. She pulled herself to her feet and made her way towards Pearl, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jean shorts. "You ready for our little nighttime stroll?"

"I sure am." Pearl smiled warmly. She reached into the brown and black checkered bag hanging from her shoulder, grabbing a little bottle and pouring a fragrant pinkish-white substance onto her palms. Noticing Amethyst's curious expression, she offered the bottle over. "Do you want some lotion?"

"Ah, sure?" Amethyst said, though she had no idea what purpose it served. She cringed as Pearl squeezed some of the "lotion" onto her palms, and cautiously rubbed it in in the same manner Pearl had done. It smelled... fruity and floral, but she wasn't sure if she liked it.

"So... what goes on in Pearl world?" Amethyst asked; they'd spent a few moments walking together in silence, save for the sound of lapping waves, and she could sense Pearl's unease. It was clear she had something specific in mind she wanted to talk about.

"Ah... Quite a few things, actually." Pearl laughed nervously, a slight blush spreading across her cheeks. "Running a business can be a bit overwhelming... Thank goodness I'm not doing it alone, at least." she said.

"Yeah, sounds like it'd be a pain in the ass sometimes. I'd never be able to do something like that..." Amethyst said. "You ever get shitty customers? Aside from me, obviously."

Pearl chuckled. "Oh, please. I'm over that little incident by now." she said. "But aside from that, not very often... It is a tourist town, so it's inevitable that we'll get a few unpleasant folks here and there... But for the most part, customers are fairly pleasant..." She fidgeted with a button on her shirt as she spoke, keeping her gaze lowered.

"Well, that's good." Amethyst said. Damn, did she hate small talk... But when it was with a cute girl, it wasn't quite as bad.

"And..." Pearl continued, taking a deep breath. "I have something I need to get off my chest. Are you good at keeping secrets?"

The right answer to that was a big "hell no", but Amethyst's curiosity overpowered any shrivel of desire she had to be honest. "Totally."

Pearl smiled gratefully. "Perfect." she said, taking a deep breath and a long pause before she continued. "I... I've never fully trusted my own mind. Only Garnet knows this, but... I can't remember anything from before my twentieth birthday."

Amethyst's heart sank.

"According to Garnet, I had some sort of accident a little while after I turned twenty... Someone found me on the beach, unconscious. Nobody's really sure what happened to me; I didn't have any injuries, at least according to my doctors, so they're not sure why it happened, but... Whatever happened gave me permanent amnesia." Pearl sighed. "I don't really... have any contact with my family, so Garnet was the one who helped me through it. Over these past nine years, I've created new memories, reformed my relationships, but... For whatever reason, anything before the year 1986 is just... blank. I haven't been able to recover them, no matter how hard I try, or how much Garnet tells me, it just never sticks."

Her heart racing, Amethyst struggled to respond. She placed a comforting hand on Pearl's shoulder, thinking back to the night she woke up on the beach earlier that month... 'It can't be a coincidence... Something is up, and it involves both of us.' "Damn..." she finally responded. "I'm sorry, girlie. That sounds like it must've been hard..."

Pearl smiled softly. "Well, it's all in the past, now. No need to be sorry about it." She shrugged, biting her lip. "The only thing that really scares me is... Not being able to trust my own brain." Pearl continued. "Sometimes I... I struggle to fall asleep at night, worrying that I'll wake up and it'll happen again. And... and sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. A few weeks ago..." Pearl paused to swallow a lump in her throat. "I-I saw something that wasn't real. Garnet assured me that the heat was just getting to my head, and perhaps she was right, but... i-it was something involving you. So... that's why I've been so strange around you. It just... keeps reminding me of that night, of feeling like I can't trust myself, of feeling like I'm..." Her voice cracked, and she cupped a hand over her mouth.

Amethyst reached for Pearl's free hand and squeezed it tight. "Pearl..." she began, but she wasn't sure how to continue that sentence. Guilt tore at her chest; of all the people that could've found her in that pool, it had to be Pearl... Why couldn't it have been Rose? At least she wouldn't have reacted like this...

Tears flowed down Pearl's cheeks, and she pulled her other hand away from Amethyst's and wiped them away. "I'm sorry, I-I'm such a mess..." she whimpered.

"No, no, it's fine! Look, I..." Amethyst spoke again, unsure of where to go with this -- but she had to say something. The silence was killing her. "Listen, I'm not a... psychologist, is that the word? I don't know how brains work, you know? But... I think it's safe to say that you're gonna be okay. If you lose your memory again, you can just... start from scratch like you did before, right? You did it once, you could probably do it again..."

Pearl burst into tears. 'Shit. Maybe shouldn't have said that.' Amethyst thought, blushing.

"Trust me, I've thought of that many times before..." Pearl reached into her purse for a handkerchief, wiping her running nose. "But... I don't think you understand, Amethyst... It took so long to learn how to function on my own again... And on top of that, I just... worry that I can't trust my own mind. I've never hallucinated like that before... What if I go insane? What if I can't trust myself, and Garnet can't trust me? What if -- "

"Pearl, shh..." Amethyst cupped a hand over Pearl's mouth before she could go on any longer. "Just... Breathe for a minute before you say anything else. You're thinking way too much."

Pearl nudged Amethyst's hand away once more; the latter blushed, realizing she'd done the same thing not a minute ago. "Don't worry, my hands are clean, heh... Washed 'em before I came here."

Pearl smiled a little at that. She adjusted her purse, turning toward the horizon of the ocean. "It's alright... Perhaps you have a point, after all... I'm sorry for unpacking all of this on you."

"Don't be." Amethyst said.

Another silence lay between the two as they stood together, watching the sun finish its journey into the horizon. Amethyst caught a glimpse of the moon hanging up in the deepening blue sky; waning gibbous.

She glanced over towards Pearl again; a smile remained on her face, but Amethyst could sense that beneath the exterior... She was still terrified, and she didn't know how to handle it... Amethyst's heart raced as an idea crossed her mind -- it was stupid, and incredibly dangerous, but... If there was anything she could do about it, she wasn't going to let Pearl continue feeling this way.

"I think I know something that might help." Amethyst finally spoke up, causing Pearl to flinch.

"Oh?" She tilted her head in curiosity.

"I can't do it tonight. It'll... take a few days." Amethyst said. "This weekend, let's meet up again. Well, not here." She gestured towards the patch of trees nearby. "There's a little section of the beach just past those trees. Nobody ever goes there, at least that I know of, and well..." she trailed off as she realized just how suspicious that sounded. "We need to be alone. Well, mostly alone, anyway. I understand that sounds kinda shady, so if you want, you can bring Garnet along." She regretted her words as soon as they left her mouth; spilling her secret to one human was enough, but telling two was just asking for trouble.

Pearl looked uncertain, and for a moment, Amethyst feared she'd still say no. But after a bit of hesitation, she responded. "Alright." she said, fidgeting with her purse. "I'm... skeptical, but I'll take your word for it. Is Saturday alright?"

"Saturday is perfect.” 

* 

Once Amethyst made her way back to the house, she was met with Rose sitting on the couch, stirring a cup of steaming tea.

"You were out late tonight." she remarked with a slightly concerned smile, taking a sip. "What were you up to? Hopefully keeping safe?"

"Oh, just... taking a walk with Pearl. And no, we weren't approached by any weird strangers this time, heh." Amethyst ran her fingers through her hair, making her way towards the stairs.

"Ah, alright." Rose nodded, setting her cup down on a coaster. "Make sure you're home early this Saturday, though. It's going to be a full moon, so it's important that you and Steven are safe."

Amethyst froze. Her instincts were telling her to just nod along and continue on her way upstairs, but... Her guilt got the best of her. "Oh, yeah..." Amethyst slowly turned around; in all honesty, she wasn't sure how Rose would react to her plans for this weekend. "About that..."

Rose glanced back from her place on the couch. "Hm?"

"So, uh... while I was out with Pearl today..." Amethyst walked over and sat down on the other end of the couch, fidgeting with the bottom of her skirt. "I kinda... Told her to meet up with me this weekend."

Rose chuckled. "You already forgot the full moon was coming?"

"No, no, I didn't. That's the thing." Amethyst continued. Rose's expression fell as she took another sip of tea; she wasn't angry, though, at least it didn't look like it… She seemed more confused than anything. "I, uh... Look, it's a long story, but…” Amethyst continued, “I think I want to tell her the truth."

Rose choked on her tea. She set her cup aside to cough, and Amethyst reluctantly patted her on the back. Once she recovered, she looked at Amethyst with a bewildered expression. "Um… I don't think that's going to happen." she finally said, clearing her throat.

"Look… I get why you're not thrilled about this." Amethyst began, "I'll leave you and Steven both out of it, I promise. But I really think I need to tell her; I think she might --"

"Except you can't leave us out of it." Rose narrowed her eyes. "Because if anyone finds out you're a mermaid, they'll start to question the people you've been living with. Do you realize what could happen to Steven if the wrong person finds out?"

"I... I mean, yeah." Amethyst sighed. "But... I dunno, Pearl's been really shaken up by this whole thing. Maybe you haven't noticed it yourself, but... She told me she's been really doubting her own brain after she... saw me. It's been really fucking her up... So I thought maybe... If I showed her that it wasn't all in her head, she'd feel a little better?"

"Amethyst..." Rose let out a sigh and rubbed her face. She went silent for a few moments, as if to ponder her words before she spoke again... Amethyst's gaze fell down to the floor. Her heart ached with guilt... but at the same time, she didn't want Pearl feeling like this if there was anything she could do about it.

"Pearl can recover from this..." Rose began, lifting her head from her hands. "But if the wrong person finds out about you, or me, or God forbid Steven... it could cost us our lives. Are you really willing to risk that for Pearl's feelings?"

"I mean..." Amethyst let out a sigh. "I don't have anything to lose. I still have no fucking clue why I'm even here."

"Maybe not, but I do." Rose said. "And if she finds out about you, it will affect all of us. This isn't about you. Do not tell her, Amethyst. Please." She reached for Amethyst's hands and squeezed them tight. "Don't leave the house on Saturday no matter what. Not for me, but for Steven."

Amethyst drew in a deep breath. 'There's no way I'll convince her...' she thought, refusing to look Rose in the eyes. Part of her knew, deep down, that Rose was right... And yet that selfish inkling of hope lingered right beside it, praying that her secret would be safe in Pearl’s hands... Or maybe that Pearl, too, was someone like them.

"Alright... Fine." Amethyst pulled her hands away. "I'll... tell her that we’ll go for our walk on Sunday instead." She refused to meet Rose's eyes.

Rose let out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Amethyst." she said, pulling her into a tight embrace. "I hope you understand… I promise I’m not trying to control you. I just want all of us to be safe... You understand that, right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Amethyst waved a hand dismissively. "Don't sweat it. Your house, your rules.” 

* 

Saturday had come; the sun still high in the sky, Rose had ensured that Steven and Amethyst were home for the night long before it would get dark. All doors were locked, a kiddy pool filled with water was set up in Steven's room, and the bath tub was filling up with warm water for Amethyst.

"Do you wanna rubber ducky?" Steven asked as Amethyst sat on the bathroom floor, watching the bath tub fill up with water.

"Huh?" Amethyst said, turning to him and spotting the duck-shaped toy in his hand. "Uh, sure, why not."

"Are you excited?" Steven sat down beside her and grinned. He placed the rubber duck in the water, giving it a nudge so it'd float across the tub. "I love transforming! It was scary when I was little, but now it's a lot of fun!"

"Really? It hurt like a bitch last time. I'm guessing it gets better?" Amethyst said, dipping her fingers into the water and swirling it around. She glanced up towards the clock on the wall; it was getting close to eight... Pearl was probably already at the beach.

"Yeah, it does. I started transforming when I was still a baby, so I don't even remember if it hurt." Steven said.

"Well, that's good. Maybe it won't be as awful this time around." Amethyst snorted.

A silence fell between the two; Amethyst glanced over at Steven, wondering why he was still sitting there.

"So, um..." Steven fidgeted once he noticed Amethyst was staring at him. "What's your favorite color? Mine's pink!"

Amethyst bit her lip. Had Rose sent him in here to keep her from sneaking out? "Purple." she finally said. "Hey, speaking of purple stuff, you wanna do me a favor?"

"Sure!" Steven grinned.

"Can you get me a popsicle from the freezer? You know which color I want." she said with a wink.

"On it, ma'am!" Steven jumped to his feet, scampering out of the bathroom and down the hallway.

'Finally.' Amethyst let out a sigh of relief. Cracking her knuckles, she pushed the bathroom window open and lifted herself up onto the windowsill with a grunt.

"Hey Amethyst, we're all outta purple!" Steven called from across the house.

"Keep looking! I know I saw one this morning!" she called back, climbing down onto the grass.

"Okaayyy..." Steven said in his I-don't-believe-you tone. It would keep him busy for another few moments, though, and that was what mattered; once she had both feet on the ground, Amethyst turned and hurried through the backyard and towards the fence.

With each step she took, though, her guilt rose up in her chest, forming a nervous lump in her throat... 'Rose is gonna be so pissed...' she thought with a gulp. As she reached the fence and began to climb over, she almost wished Rose would step outside and catch her red-handed... And deep down, she knew that what she was doing was selfish. But then she remembered Pearl, and her heart raced in her chest, and she pushed herself forward.