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havin-a-wee · 3 years

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If Only She Knew

pairing: dad!harry x cheerleader!reader

word count: 4.2k

warnings: smut (fingering + unprotected sex), cheerleading position implies readers weight, 20 year age gap

hi! ive been having some really bad writers block but i wrote this and even though its def not my best work i like it enough to post it :) also, i totally didn't mean to imply the readers weight, i only realized afterwards, so im really sorry about that. also the age gap is kinda big, so if ur uncomfy with that you shouldn't read this <3

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU ENJOY

“Geez watch where you’re going!”

You don’t even look up at the girl, recognizing her nasally voice easily from how annoying it is. You were nose deep in a book while walking down the school hallway, and of course your worst enemy had to be walking down the same hallway, at the same time, in the opposite direction. You are both at fault for the collision, considering Ella had her eyes locked on her instagram feed. But knowing the girl, there is no way in hell that she will take any responsibility, even though you are the one who has coffee dripping down the front of your white blouse.

Since middle school, Ella Styles has always hated you. You have never known why, but she seems to have a vendetta against you, and tries her best to make your life miserable. You never let her, always refraining from giving her the explosive reaction that she was looking for. And that makes her hate you even more.

High school is over in 2 months, and although you are going to miss the freedom of being a child, you most definitely won’t miss the people from the tiny town you’ve lived in since you were young. You’ve always been the type of person to have a small friend group, only 4 people in your circle. But that’s how you like it, because crippling social anxiety makes it difficult for you to meet new people.

“I- sorry.” You still don’t look at her, instead peeling the soaking wet top off of your stomach.

“You better be sorry.” She flips her blonde hair, ensuring that the fluffy locks hit you right in the face. You are lucky this time seeing as she didn’t take it further, because sometimes she would purposely embarrass you after small incidents such as this one.

Tears well at your waterline and you run into the nearest bathroom, pushing open the blue door and locking yourself in a stall.

After all these years of torment, Ella rarely was able to get to you. But sometimes, she does something that pushes you off the edge, leaving you with red, tear-stained cheeks. The final straw this time was her ruining your brand new shirt, the one you were anxiously waiting to debut at school.

But now there was coffee dripping down your chest and staining the bright white fabric. Your only saving grace is the cheerleading uniform in your backpack. In fact, you were walking to the locker room to change for practice, and then for the game at 6 tonight.

You had been excited for the game, knowing that Friday night games always led to parties and fun afterwards. You rarely go to parties of course, but the buzzing energy never fails to rub off on you. But now that stupid Ella had to go and mess up your day, you’re dreading seeing her smug face while she asserts her dominance as cheer captain.

You untie your top and rip it off in a haste, frustrated tears running down your face periodically. You could’ve put a jacket on and gone to the locker room, but Ella would be going there soon, and the last thing you want to do is run into her with teary eyes. She can’t know that you let her get to you.

You brush your hands down your uniform, pulling down the skimpy costume and stuffing your old clothes in your backpack. Once out of the stall, you pull your hair up into a high ponytail, reapply your lip gloss and walk back into the hallway, having already done your makeup that morning. You’re happy that it’s a home game today, because the home game uniforms are two pieces and the skirts are smaller than the ones on the away game uniforms. There is a certain someone you are looking to impress, and the way your tits spill out from the top of the outfit will most certainly help you in your mission.

It’s not like you need to impress him, because he’s shown time and time again that he finds you sexy no matter what you wear. And when he doesn’t tell you, he shows you, by pressing his hard on up against your ass after you just woke up, despite your messy hair and bare face.

However, he also loves when you tease him. And that’s exactly what you’re planning to do.

You sling your heavy backpack over one shoulder and trudge down the hallway, the old fluorescent lights practically blinding you on your journey. The locker room is dingy, smelling of cheap soap and Victoria’s Secret perfume. At least it doesn’t smell like the boys locker room, which smells like sweat and more sweat.

It's already bustling with people, your teammates scrambling to get ready in time as to not get yelled at by the coach.

“Y/N!” The familiar shout of your best friend Rose is like a breath of fresh air, and you bound over to her. She’s standing in front of your lockers, the two of you obviously picking ones next to each other. “Wait, why are you already changed?”

“The bitch spilled her coffee all over me,” you grumbled, your eyes shifting over to where Ella and her little goons are giggling.

“I keep telling you, anytime you want me to beat her up I will gladly do it.”

“Not that I doubt your abilities Rose, because I know you would have her on the ground in a heartbeat, but I can’t let you do that. She can’t know that she upsets me.” You lower your voice for the second sentence, irrationally fearing that she can hear you over the loud chatter echoing through the room.

“I still think you should let me beat her up, but you do you I guess.” Rose shrugged her shoulders and turned back to her locker, bursting out into laughter with you after a beat of silence.

The rest of the getting ready process goes smoothly, Rose distracting you from the girl side-eyeing you in the corner. Soon enough, the whole squad was in formation outside, and you have your hands on the shoulders of Rose and another girl named Bethany. You are a flyer, meaning that you’re the one who the bases support while you pose and flip in the air. Its a hard job, but you are one of only three girls on the team who is advanced enough at flying to be safe doing it in routines. One of the other three girls is Ella.

Ella is the flyer for the middle group, seeing as she is the captain. You are on the right and the other group is on the left. Luckily, Rose is a base in your group, so you feel a lot better putting your safety in the hands of someone you already trust with your life.

“ELLA! YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!” Coach Habbiths voice is piercing, her angry shrieks bouncing off your ear drums. Ella audibly huffs, displaying her frustration with the critiques she has been receiving since we learned the routine weeks ago. That’s one of the biggest problems with Ella, she believes that she's always right.

Every single practice she has done a needle instead of a scale at the end of the routine. It's aggravating for everyone, and that frustration is amplified everytime she makes the same mistake over and over. “Alright, everyone down. group 1 and group 3 take five, Ella and group 2 stay on the field.

The team obliged to her instructions, and you are brought down from the air.

“Okay Ella, I want you to watch how Y/N does the last move, because she’s actually doing it correctly.” Coach is standing in front of you now, and she emphasized the word ‘correctly’. This is much to Ella’s dismay, and much to your excitement.

Nothing brings you more joy than seeing Ella’s face when you one up her, and this time is no exception.

Aside from a few eye rolls and nasty looks, Ella corrects the move without much fuss. By now there's 15 minutes until the game, and the players have been warming up on the field for about half an hour.

“Did you see her face!” Rose tugs on your arm while you walk back to the locker room, water bottles in hand.

“I know! I should’ve taken a picture!”

“We can only hope that it knocked her ego down a peg.”

“I doubt it” Rose nodded in agreement and you continued your chatter, talking about the random things that best friends talk about.

“It’s go time ladies!” You jumped in surprise when Coach Habbiths yelling booms through the locker room, the hefty amount of metal in the room enhancing the echo.

In a blur, your entire team rushed out onto the field, the crisp air cooling your warmed skin. There was a huge crowd. probably the biggest the teams ever had. But that makes sense, because this game was against your school's biggest rival. Luckily, despite the huge crowd you were able to lock eyes with those piercing green irises you have gotten to know so well over the past couple months. Everytime you see him he gets more and more attractive, and this time is no exception.

At this point, the teams routine is muscle memory and you’re done with it before you can blink. Most people would think that being thrown in the air is memorable, but your main concern is the growing wet patch on your panties that spreads each time you squeeze your thighs together. Just the thought of the man is enough to turn you on, and now that you’re sitting on the cold metal bench your imagination has time to go wild.

The only thing that snapped you out of your daze was the eruption of appaulause from the audience, and the realization that the other cheerleaders were standing up and running towards the players. You breath out a sigh of relief, recognizing the cheering as a signal that the game has ended.

“Hey, you coming?” Rose tugs on your arm, looking down at you still on the bench.

“Um, actually I don’t feel so well, I think I’m going to go home.”

“I should’ve known. You know, one day you’re going to have to go to a party.” Rose places her hands on her hips, giving you a sarcastically annoyed stare.

“And today is not that day.” You grab your backpack and sling it over your shoulder, turning back to Rose for a second. “Have fun and be safe.”

“I always do.” Rose places a chaste kiss on your cheek before turning back to the gathering crowd on the turf.

Instead of heading to the sidewalk and walking home, you duck under the bleachers and walk down the gravel path, pushing open the fence that separates the field and the school. The contents of your backpack slosh around while you sway your hips as you walk. Finally, you make it to the back wall of the school, leaning your back against it and plopping your heavy backpack down by your feet.

And now you wait.

Much to your convenience, the wait this time isn’t long, only five minutes passing before you see the familiar man following the same path you did earlier.

He has a pair of brown slacks on, pressing against his waist courtesy of his black belt. A button up white shirt hides the tattoos on his stomach, but he's rolling up his sleeves as he walks over to you. He's walking with intention, hungry eyes zeroed in on you.

When he’s only steps away, you cheekily bite your lip and use your finger to push up your skirt a little bit more.

Your actions have the intended effect, his eyes blowing wide and hands grasping at your waist.

“Y’can’t do that.”

Before you have a chance to ask what he means, his lips collide with yours, his tongue slipping in only moments after the initial kiss. But as soon as he started, he pulls away.

“Y’can’t be teasing me on the field like tha’, had me hard next t’my friends.” His hand is on the wall above your head, and his other arm is wrapped around your waist pulling you into his chest. He’s panting, and you are too.

“Sorry Mr. Styles,” you push your bottom lip out in a pout, giving him the most innocent look possible. “Just wanted to wear it cause I know how much you like it.”

“Aw, my babygirl wore this f’me? Well I guess y’can be forgiven. Now let’s get t’my house before I fuck yeh right on this wall.” He places a soft kiss to your lips picking up your backpack from the floor and turning to the direction of his car.

“But it hurts!” He turns around again, giving you a sympathetic look and caressing your cheek. The rings on his fingers are cold, but you’re used to the feeling.

“I know sweet girl, but I can’t take care of yeh here, s’too risky.” He pauses for a moment, thinking of a solution to your not so little problem. “How bout I give y’my fingers in the car? Hows that sound hm?” You nod eagerly, pulling his hand down from your cheek and holding it. He takes the signal and begins walking to his car while you follow him.

You never planned to sleep with your bullies dad. But a few months ago your parents dragged you to a family friends housewarming party, and that friend happened to be a friend of Harry’s too. There were no other teenagers there, so your focus was on the attractive older man who had been checking you out since you first locked eyes, and after ending up in the upstairs bathroom together the two of you have been fucking at least twice a week. You only learned that he’s a dad when you saw him for the first time outside the party. He didn’t look the part, and you actually thought he was in his 20s until he corrected you. He’s 38, having become a parent at only 20 years old. Your relationship is a bit taboo, but you’re a mature 18 year old and you and Harry get along well. So well that your time together has developed from casual sex to a mutually exclusive relationship. (Neither of you like labels, but you’re basically boyfriend and girlfriend).

He makes you really happy, and when you have to face off against Ella, it helps knowing that you have power over her, even though she doesn’t know it.

“Did she do anything today?” Harry is walking beside you, hands still intertwined.

“Besides spilling coffee on my shirt, nothing much.” Harry sighs in frustration and squeezes your hand as a show of affection.

“M’so sorry, I wish y’didn’t ‘ave to deal with her.”

The thing about Harry and Ella is they can barely be considered family. Ella’s mom is, for lack of a better word, a bitch. She’s snobby, conceited, and rude, and those behaviors have rubbed off on Ella. Another thing that rubbed off on her was her mom’s hatred for Harry. Being young parents put strain on their already struggling relationship, and they split before Ella’s first birthday. Harry said he tried his best to make it work for Ella’s sake, but her mom was looking for someone to pay for her life, and Harry had just started working his way up as a businessman.

Now, he’s a CEO, but luckily Ella’s mom already found a new beau with plenty of money, so she didn’t come crawling back to him. However, the success Harry achieved only a few years after their breakup made her jealous, and so she instilled that anger in their daughter. So currently Ella spends most of her time with her mother, and when she is with Harry she doesn’t treat him kindly.

“It’s not your fault Harry, you don’t have to apologize for her actions.”

“I know, I jus’ hate tha’ she treats yeh like that.” He sighs again, reaching into his pocket to grab his keys. In a few more steps you’re standing outside the sleek black suv, walking around to the passenger seat and sliding in once you hear the click of the door unlocking.

You both take a few seconds to breathe, an unspoken gesture to prepare for the night's events. Harry turns to you, a sexy smirk plastered on his face. “What d’ya think about fixin’ that ache darlin?” You nod eagerly, sliding down a bit in your seat to give your legs room to spread. “Think yeh can take off y’skirt fo’me?” Your head bobs once again as you nod, hooking your fingers under the elastic waistband and shimmying out of the skirt. While you’re doing that, Harry turns the car into the deserted street, using only one hand to steer.

You toss the tiny skirt into his lap, giving him a signal without distracting his eyes from the road. He reacts immediately, his free hand coming down to squeeze your thigh. You mewl at the contact and bite down on your lip, trying to stop your hips from bucking up in search of relief. His squeezes move up your thigh, and finally his fingers press against your weeping cunt. Swiftly, he pushes your soiled panties to the side, swiping his fingers up your folds collecting your juices. You shriek and buck your hips up into his hand, but much to your dismay he removes it from between your thighs. The car comes to a stop at a red light, and Harry takes the moment to look at you, his eyes wandering your squirming body. He’s practically drooling when he places his fingers in his mouth, tasting your sweet wetness.

“Sorry pup, jus’ needed t’taste yeh.” He chuckles again, and you whine softly in desperation. In one quick motion, he dives his hand back to your pussy, pressing his thumb on your swollen clit.

“Fuck!” The pleasure shoots up your spine, goosebumps raising across your body as he rubs circles on the puffy button. “Harry- please,”

“What d’ya want puppy? Want m’fingers?”

“Yes, yes,” you breathe out, words barely comprehensible through your panting.

“Alright, alright, I gotcha.” And with that his two fingers press into you, filling your tight hole perfectly. There is no hesitation before he begins pumping the digits in and out of you and his thumb never lets up on your bundle of nerves. “Such a needy puppy, got yeh soaking f’me from out in the stands hm?” His eyes are still on the road, but you can picture the lust filled eyes that are undoubtedly on his face.

“Get so wet jus- just thinkin’ about you,” you gasp, writhing as his fingers slam in and out of you.

“Yeah? This is my cunt, m’the only one who can make yeh this wet, isn’t tha’ right?”

“Only Harry.” At your confirmation he speeds his hand up, your vision clouding with white spots as the knot building in your stomach grows tighter and tighter.

All of a sudden, he pulls his fingers out of you, leaving you empty. “Wha-” You begin to question him but you realize that he’s pulling into his driveway. Instead of complaining, you sit up quickly and unbuckle your seatbelt, pulling your skirt back up your legs to avoid being nude on his front lawn.

As soon as you feel the little jolt your hand yanks on the handle and you hop out of the car. Your brain is fuzzy with need and all you are focused on is alleviating the aching between your thighs. You hear Harry lock the car while you're on the steps, and you turn back to ensure that he’s behind you. And sure enough, he’s hot on your trail, just as eager as you to get inside and onto his bed. Your foot is tapping on the ground anxiously, waiting for Harry to unlock the front door. After what seems like an hour, he is next to you again, fumbling with the silver keychain in his hand, eventually unlocking and pushing open the door. You both practically run inside, hands roaming each other's bodies and lips locking as you shuffle through the hall.

You disconnect breathlessly when you reach the stairs, subconsciously wrapping your hands around Harry’s neck so he can pick you up bridal style. He does so hastily, barely a second passing before he’s plopping you onto the fluffy mattress. “Finally,” he pants, hands fumbling with his belt buckle. There’s a prominent bulge in his trousers, and although you’ve seen it plenty, you are always in awe at how thick and big he is. While he’s busy removing his clothes, you are practically drooling at the sight of his bare cock, full, heavy, and dripping precome.

“Harry?”

He looks back down at you with his emerald green eyes, simultaneously dropping his recently-removed shirt on the floor. “Can I ride you?” The look he gives you is indescribable, a mixture of need, lust, cockiness, and beauty all rolled up into one.

“Whatever y’want puppy,” His hands scoop under your ass, and he lifts you up and switches your positions. Now it’s your turn to undress, and Harry makes himself busy by running his hands up and down your torso. “So gorgeous, y’know that?” You nod quickly then pull your shirt off of your head. “Most beautiful girl in the world I reckon.” You blush at the compliment, butterflies being added to the many sensations occuring in your body. You straddle his thighs, wrapping your hand around his length and tugging a few times. A loud groan rumbles through his throat, and you smile knowing you’re the one who made him feel like that. “Thought- thought yeh said y’wanted to ride me pup.”

“I do.” You keep your hand on his cock, sitting up on your knees and lining him up with your weeping cunt. All at once, your body is put at ease as his cock fills you up perfectly. He bottoms out inside of you, both of you moaning and groaning while you adjust. “So big-” Your words come out in choppy pants, the syllables being cut off by your heaves. You suck in one deep breath and move upwards, sinking back down onto him quickly. His large hands hold a tight grip on your waist, guiding you up and down his member. His lips attach to your neck, suckling on the supple skin just enough so that it doesn’t bruise.

“What a dirty little puppy you are,” he growls, eyes focusing heavily on where your bodies connect, watching himself disappear inside of you as you bounce up and down on his cock.

“Feel so full-” Tingles ricochet down every part of your body, and your legs are becoming weaker with each movement. Harry can feel your movement faltering, so his hips thrust upwards to meet yours, fucking you from underneath. “Harry!”

“I know pup, I know.” His thumb strokes your cheek and he leans in for another kiss, devouring your plump lips and swirling his tongue around yours. “So fuckin tight,” The words tumble from his mouth in a low growl, which sends the butterflies in your stomach into a frenzy. His cock twitches inside of you, encouraging you to muster all your energy and finish both of you off. Adrenaline kicks in and your strength returns, riding him faster and harder than before. “Let go f’me Y/N.” It only takes a few more thrusts for you to come undone, Harry’s orgasm following suit. The waves of pleasure roll through your body, and you throw your head back in ecstasy as you allow the feeling to overcome your body. Spurts of his hot cum cover your velvety walls and you ride out your orgasms together, resting your foreheads against one another.

You end up sleeping at his house, feeling safe knowing that Ella is staying with her mom today. It’s normal for you to sleep at his place, seeing as both of you are usually so tired that you pass out before you can leave. What isn’t normal is for you to be woken up in the morning by Harry’s phone ringing. Harry is a deep sleeper, and you laugh at the sight of him conked out while his ringtone blares on the nightstand just a few inches away. Carefully, you reach over his sleeping body and grab the phone, planning on hanging it up and going back to bed. However, when you saw that it was Ella calling, you changed your mind. Making a split second decision, you slide the icon to the right, holding it up to your ear.

“Hello?” Her whiney voice rings through your eardrum and you wince. Not the nicest thing to be woken up to.

“Hello,” you answer, your voice not reflecting the cocky grin that spread across your face.

“Who the hell is this!” she shrieks, and you make a mental note that she must not be a morning person.

“A friend of your dads.” Your response is once again calm and monotone, trying to stifle the laugh that is bubbling in your throat.

“Ugh! What’s your name?”

“Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N”

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sweetsoundsofignorance · 2 years

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For the writing asks! 4, 17, 24 and 26 🖤

i'm going to limit most answers to fic.

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

It’s a word you often use, scuttle, but not feral in a bad way. Somehow the word evokes something predatory in me, like the need to pounce.

Also, apoplectic.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

I guess I’ll talk about the one I’m currently posting? Only good things happen here started as a joke between you and me while we were slogging our way through the drivel that was season five of Riverdale.

Betty seemed very (sexually) repressed and always looked like she was itching to do violence, but the writers NEVER LET HER. They put a chainsaw in her hands, and then blue-balled us. Only good things happen here begins during the key party (they couldn’t have made it more boring, I agree), so at the time, Betty was only in a friend with benefits type situation with Archie (if I remember correctly?), but she still seemed pent-up, and she clearly hadn’t processed (good luck doing that with Archie) what happened with TBK (trash-bag-killer… god, grant me the serenity…). From where I was sitting, Betty seemed on the threshold of a psychotic break for the entirety of season five, so B was due.

And Jughead was such a sad and pathetic little meow meow who is also probably going through a dry spell (which I’ve seen is one current running theory in fandom, lol). I theorize that may be because he idealizes his relationship with Tabitha and/or he has severe sexual hang-ups from his toxic and hateful relationship with Jessica as well as his breakup with Betty, where she cheated on him with his best friend. I mean, that entire hallucinogen in the bunker suggested he is dealing with some larger issues sexually, in my opinion, especially since in his fantasy, it was high school Betty (still weird) and they talked about forgiveness. Also, he’s an alcoholic, and we all know how that can affect one’s sex drive, and he’s dealing with writer’s block, which is a blow to his ego. Idk, Jughead appeared to have lost his entire sense of self-agency in season five.

Anyway, clearly it seemed like these two were headed toward an explosion (I realize the irony of that now; in this story, it is not a literal explosion...)

Riverdale likes to pussy-foot around its darkness, and I’m predisposed to just pushing characters off the deep-end, so this story is one possible trajectory for season five that you were kind (crazy 🖤) enough to encourage me to write. I know it is a fucked-up way for both Betty and Jughead to process their trauma, sure, but I felt placing Jughead in a pit, and Betty by proxy, would create this sense of inescapable claustrophobia where they would have to confront and reconcile with the worst parts of themselves. There will be a ton of self-reflection, a lot of nastiness and resentment and trading barbs between the two, which will end with an explosion but also (hopefully) some cathartic self-actualization. This all feels very serious, but it is also supposed to be darkly humorous because it’s sassy little bitch Jughead up against a sadistic and psychotic Betty.

Crap, did I give it all away? I mean, I hope it was obvious based on the premise and the first chapter?

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

If you mean research, shit all. I often forgo prep work because most of my stories don’t require it. If it’s a period piece, I rarely go back farther than the 80s, so it’s pretty easy to pull enough period-perfect details because I’m more comfortable with those decades, especially pop-culture wise.

The only story that's required a lot of footwork is the cult fic, and that’s why it’s taking soooooo long because it necessitates more research, but it’s important to me that I get it right, the psychology, the methods of indoctrination, the process of deprogramming. This looks like a lot of reading (memoirs, fiction, philosophy, nonfiction) and documentaries. I’m dipping into books on the occult and pagan Christianity to develop the cult’s mythologies. I enjoy it because who doesn’t love learning new things, but I also just really want to get on with it orz.

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

I don’t know? I just sit with it. Music helps a lot. I’ll start with an action, whatever plot point, usually initiated by an antagonist, and then I imagine what emotion that might invoke in whatever character, the potential succession of emotions and predict the reactions and downstream consequences and how it snowballs from there. I never write it down, though, which I think counts as a demerit in my organization column, but it sort of looks like a flowchart in my head. I stew with the character in question, whatever traits I’ve given them, usually piecemeal aspects from canon, whichever ones I’ve chosen to amplify, and that helps dictate the flow of emotions and reactions, hence flowchart.

I struggle to get out. It’s why my stories often get away from me. You know how tumbleweeds eventually end up joining with other tumbleweeds and creating this gigantic tumbleweed that then piles up against an obstacle? But the tumbleweeds don’t stop, and they just keep piling on top of each other. You’ll see heaps of them accumulated against fences in empty lots. Idk, that’s the mental image I get, just a pile of tumbleweeds, and those fuckers are thorny, so sometimes there is much regret, me climbing over tumbleweeds to scale the obstacle, which is of course the exit out of the story.

I’ve explored some very dark topics in the devil’s daughter, delved into some psychologies that are immensely painful. It’s why sometimes I have to step away from it, if it starts infecting my day-to-day. It’s also why I struggle to respond to comments, especially right now, because just thinking about the ending makes me start ugly sobbing.

Thank you for asking 🖤🖤🖤 (remember tit for tat 😈)

#asks

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mellifluousmalfoy · 4 years

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violet. // fred weasley x reader.

i’m so so so sorry this took so long, i’ve had the absolute worst case of writer’s block and it’s taking me decades to sift through these requests!! thank you so much for requesting and i apologise for taking years to write this @helloallthethingsilove <33

warning(s): cuss words, and the tiniest pinch of angst i swear.

word count; 3.5k

okay, maybe this is a slight spin-off to flower curse, but you don’t have to read it to read this.

in which you share the same injuries with your soulmate.

“Calm down, [L/N],”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! He’s a downright git is what he is.” I was fuming.

“Who does he think he is to just up and leave me here? I mean, after everything we’ve been through together, I’d assume he’d had said something to me, don’t you agree?” My dorm mates simply rolled their eyes. According to the letter my boyfriend had left me, this outburst was completely spontaneous.

Spontaneous my arse. I had watched him sneak off with his brother and best friend, whispering for the past week or two. He had every chance to tell me yet now he’s run off, only left me a letter with his reasoning.

Lee, poor Lee, had heard the bitter half of my wrath, promising me he would try his best to get hold of my idiot of a boyfriend. Heck, I could just feel they were experimenting with their newest products to come because I was sporting a yellow bruise on the side of my thigh and it was growing immensely painful.

Fred Weasley, you’re going to suffer for this.

Merlin, the thought of him was bringing tears to my eyes. This was the Yule Ball all over again. The git had ditched me that night, but he came back. He always did come back. The fear bloomed in my stomach knowing that this time, this time he wouldn’t be coming back. He said so in his letter, he wouldn’t be returning so as long as that cow of a professor was still here.

I huffed, standing to leave the common room. Being Fred Weasley’s soulmate was a big joke that Merlin or whoever was playing on me, yet it brought to me my best memories. My stomach sank, he was gone.

I bit back the tears that threatened to escape and muttered an excuse to my dorm mates before turning to leave, praying they wouldn’t follow me because I knew they were worried for me. I grumbled to myself as I left the common room, weaving through the halls towards the library.

I sighed contently when I saw the library was rather empty. I tore my bag off my shoulder and settled down into a desk. My arse of a boyfriend may have left, but I still had important exams that would determine my life to complete.

Hogsmeade was busy as always, bustling with students in third year and up, some on dates, some stuck to the side of their friends. I looked around the streets, it was slowly getting warmer as summer approached and I was thanking the heavens for that. I tried to spot the bright red head of hair that was apparently waiting for me.

Lee had managed to get a hold of his best friend and arranged for us to meet in Hogsmeade.

Walking through the excited sea of students, I tried to manoeuvre through the crowd when I spotted an oh so familiar head of hair. I picked up my pace and headed towards the tall gangly male.

He caught sight of me struggling through the crowd and threw me the cheekiest smile he could muster, only to be met with a glare.

Once I got through the crowd, I basically stomped towards the idiot. He held his arms open, expecting a hug only to be met with a hit to his stomach, which would cause both of us to most definitely sport a good bruise.

He winced at the impact and groaned, “What was that for?”

I simply glared at him and straightened my back, staring down at his hunched figure, “Is that really what you’re asking me, you idiot?”

He straightened up at my tone and knew he was definitely in trouble, “Look,” he paused, shifting uncomfortably in his jacket, “I’m sorry, it really was-”

“Cut the spontaneous bullshit, Weasley.” He frowned at my cold tone and I tried my best not to cry. I may have sounded brave now, but I was seconds from crying. I held my breath as I tried my best not to sound vulnerable, “Why couldn’t you have told me?”

I wanted to curse myself for sounding so small, and his frown softened. He removed his gaze from the floor to meet my sad eyes, and I could see the guilt filling his eyes, “I didn’t expect you to be this upset.”

“Then what did you expect, Fred?” He seemed to relax at my use of his first name and took a hesitant step toward me, “How would you feel if I just upped and left with only a letter as an explanation? I still don’t see why you didn’t tell me, so I could have prepared myself a bit better for the time you did leave.” I nibbled on my bottom lip, a stray tear gliding down my cheek which I quickly wiped with the sleeve of my jumper.

I shook my head when he went to take another step towards me, continuing to speak my innermost demons, “If this is a thing about trust-”

“Don’t be daft,” he was quick to cut me off, and I knew my words were wrong, but feelings took over my brain and I couldn’t stop myself.

“For me, it is Fred. This terrifies me, and you can’t blame me for thinking you would do this once we are finished with school.”

“This is different, I have a reason to leave. You know that.” His voice was stern, different from the silly tone he held before, and his eyes were cold.

“Do I?” The question rang in the air and the tears never seemed to stop coming, “Maybe this isn’t for the best. Maybe we-”

“No, you cannot do this. Not now.” He shook his head, his stern tone replaced by confusion. His eyes were begging me, begging for the truth. He knew I was lying to not only him, but myself.

“Fred, I can’t trust you.” It was a lie. I trusted this man with my life yet I continued to lie to him. He knew I was lying to him, it was my turn to beg. Beg for him to tell me I’m silly and to stop lying, to save our relationship. But he only nodded.

“Sure, okay then.”

“A break.” I left the statement out in the air. I wanted to slap myself across the face, to scream at myself and to ask what exactly I was doing, to try and knock some sense into myself. Yet, I continued to push myself away from the man I wanted and needed most. And he let me.

“If things work out, we’ll meet again someday,”

“And if they don’t?”

I didn’t answer his question, the answer was something that I was terrified of. Losing Fred was something that scared me beyond comprehension, yet here I was, making my worst fears come true.

“Just forget about it, Fred.”

“And just what should I forget about?” I wanted to physically stop myself from speaking, stop myself from hurting this man anymore. I wanted to snap out of it because the hurt in his voice, it wasn’t worth all of this pain. The tears that seemed to fill his eyes wasn’t worth all this, yet I continued.

“Us.”

I wanted him to call me stupid like he always did, to pull me by my elbow and hold me against his chest like he always did. I hated myself for hurting him, it was the last thing I had wanted to do. My mouth wouldn’t stop running, completely ignoring the conversations I played in my head the night before, the ones where I would hug him and tell him I missed him, the ones where I’d jab him on the shoulder and he would hug me and apologise, but instead I was a complete idiot.

My tears wouldn’t stop when I turned to leave, and they only seemed to increase when I knew he wouldn’t run after me. I pushed him far enough away from me that he wouldn’t run after me, and I hated myself beyond belief for it.

A year or so later.

Summer was hitting hard surprisingly.

Summer in the UK never seemed to be hot, but this year it was striking down, particularly in my tiny area of England. Although, summer never seemed to be a fun time, especially if Fred was no longer in the mix. Heck, even my family was upset we were no longer together, they owed him my life in so many ways.

Ever since the summer before our sixth year, he was a regular visitor in our house, so much so my parents had let him stay on more than one occasion. My mother always seemed to make the wedding jokes, but the underlying tone made it obvious she was far from joking.

Merlin, I missed him so bloody much.

Graduating Hogwarts was difficult. All the years spent there were now becoming insignificant, the gossips in our houses were barely thought about now. Some say a burden is lifted from your shoulders after graduating, but the burden of being an adult, finding a job and eventually moving out of my family home was heavier than school could ever be.

Surprisingly, the bruises seemed to decrease over time, and it seems as though the experimentation period had been long done, and seeing a glimpse of their shop whenever I went to work, I knew they had achieved their lifelong goal.

Working as a wandmaker had always been my dream, and I only ever confided in one person, and now he wanted nothing to do with me. Garrick Ollivander had agreed to let me be his apprentice and I had been working with him until the store was in ruins mere days ago. Working under such an incredible craftsman was more than I could ever ask for, (perhaps I had to thank my father’s status for that), but I couldn’t find it in myself to be excited, relieved that I had my life set out for me.

Something was itching in the back of my mind. The letter Dumbledore had given me days before his death remained unopened on my bedside table, and I tried to convinced myself it wasn’t important. But Dumbledore himself had handed me the letter, how could it not be important.

It’s been months since I was given the letter yet it still remained untouched.

I grumbled, cursing myself for not having any more restraint, and I walked back into my house and upstairs into my room. The letter was glaring at me, the red wax begging to be opened.

I hesitated for a moment before approaching my bedside table, ripping the letter open before I could second think about the situation.

My stomach flipped at the contents of the letter, Dumbledore had asked me to join the Order of The Phoenix, guessing I already knew about the elite group, and I did. Fred always told me everything- well he used to. Of course the man knew I wouldn’t open the letter until the last moment, because the date of the meeting and the date he had given me the letter were aeons apart, yet he knew.

The date of the meeting was etched right in the centre, and I knew this was it. The someday I had mentioned to Fred, and if he was willing to have me again, I was willing to give my all to him.

I second checked my bags, it seemed that I needed more than just an overnight bag from what Dumbledore had said in the letter, and I packed as much. I made sure I had my wand and any other important things before stepping into my fireplace, reading out the name of the place Dumbledore had written in the letter and threw the floo powder, letting the flames engulf me.

I was met by a warm living room and a Mrs Weasley who seemed to be fluffing the pillow before she snapped around and welcomed me into her arms. I smiled into the hug she gave me and greeted her, “It’s lovely to see you too, Mrs Weasley. But I would love to move my bags if I could please,”

“Oh! I’m sorry dear! Let me get out your way. Don’t be ridiculous, one of the boys will take it off your hands.” And then she bellowed out the boys’ names in the loudest voice she could muster before turning back to me with her signature smile, “Tea? Coffee, dear?”

“No, thank you. All I really want is to sit down for a bit if that’s alright.” I was exhausted, I hardly slept the night before because all I could think about was Fred. Ron sneaked around his mother to grab my bags off my hands and disappeared into the doorway he came through, only giving me an awkward smile as he did so.

“Yes, yes settle down, love. I’ll show you to the kitchen, ‘S where the rest of the Order are.” I could tell the older witch was itching to ask me something from the way she kept glancing at me as we walked down the long hall to the kitchen, “Dumbledore did say you would come around, we’ve been waiting for you for years, dear.”

I wasn’t surprised as to what she said to me, I knew Dumbledore had known I would come around later from the date in the later, I was more shocked at the fact she had said ‘we’, who else had been waiting for me?

The Order was bustling full of Weasleys, they were everywhere, and I was quite surprised to see Bill here. I had met Bill at one of the few Christmases he had come home, and it seemed like he never came home, not as much as Charlie at least.

I looked around the room expectantly, hoping to see Fred amongst the crowd but came up with nothing, only meeting the awkward eyes of George, who oddly seemed apologetic. Merlin, why couldn’t he dislike me? I broke his brother’s heart along with my own.

I sat down into the seat Molly had pulled out for me and suppressed a groan as I settled into the comfortable chair. The room seemed to grow quiet, some staring at the door, some staring at me. I knew he was here now and I tried to fight the urge to glance at the door yet it was useless.

I looked at him and it seemed he only got more handsome over the two years I hadn’t seen him. He no longer had those boyish features, only boyish charms. His face seemed more sculpted and he looked more built. Merlin, how could I have ever left this man.

I held the edge of my seat in my hand, tight enough for my knuckles to turn white. His brown eyes met mine, and I had expected them to be cold but this was different. He seemed completely isolated as his eyes met mine, the smile that was on his face was fading now.

Before I could even understand what happened, he was dragging me by the wrist down the halls, through doors until we settled at what seemed to be his room.

“What are you doing here?” His hand had never let go of my wrist and I was more than focused on it. I had missed his touch so much that this gave me multiple serotonin boosts at once, electricity was radiating off his hold and it was all I could focus on.

“Dumbledore invited me,” I could barely mutter the three words as I looked into his eyes. His walls were so high I couldn’t break them down if I tried, and I knew they had to come down willingly or this would all be lost.

“It’s been so long,” His words held so much weight. He was aware, we were both aware that we had both done some serious growing up which we needed, and maybe we didn’t know each other so well anymore.

“I missed you.” My voice was barely above a whisper as I adverted my stare to the wooden floor below us. I couldn’t lie anymore, I didn’t want to lie to him anymore. I never wanted to tell a lie to him again because it always came with pain. My words stayed in the air in a way that I hated. Did he not miss me?

“Shit,” he muttered, pulling me by the wrist he still held and towards his chest, “I missed you too.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and burrowed my face into his neck, and I knew, this was our someday. This was our time, we had grown as people and now we could go back to each other. We were no longer dumb 17-year-olds who thought they knew what they were doing, we were older and much wiser.

Fred sniffled into my hair and I realised the idiot was crying, but I couldn’t deny that I was too, “Is this our someday?”

His question came out as a whisper and I dug myself further into his jacket, “This is most definitely our someday, Freddie.”

Being with Fred during a war was almost impossible, yet we managed. Our houses were reconnected by floo and he frequented at my home once again, much to my parents’ pleasure.

The war. It was here now, it was inevitable yet I wanted to avoid it, to spend more time with Fred as selfish as it sounded.

The castle was now in ruins. The sanctuary of all the students was now crumbling.

I looked around the castle, ran through the wrecked halls trying to find Fred. We had both been assigned to two different parts of the castle to protect, yet I couldn’t stop myself from having to see him. Something was wrong, I could feel it.

The world felt as though it was slowing down as I deflected the spells dark wizards had been throwing from left and right, throwing back my own curses on the way.

My steps were getting slower over time, and as I neared his part of the castle I knew nothing was right in that moment. My ears were ringing, no longer being able to hear my surroundings.

I couldn’t hear Percy, but I could see he was screaming, crying. And it was over Fred’s body. The whole world seemed to cave in on me. This must have been some joke, a big joke the world was playing on me. There was no way in Merlin’s name he was gone. He couldn’t have been. He had promised me he would never leave me again.

My feet seemed to drag along the floor as I approached them. Percy, who heard my approach, snapped his head towards me, holding out his wand until he saw who it was. Merlin, the man was wrecked. I could barely breathe once I reached his side, “This must be some joke, Weasley.”

My voice was hoarse, my throat running dry as I tried my best to compose myself, “You promised, Fred! You promised you’d never leave my side without telling me! Even leaving a letter behind would mean much more than this.”

My heartbeat was banging against my ears, and I realised. What did this mean for the soulmate link? Death was knocking at my door, I could tell. All I had to do was open the bloody door.

I sunk to the floor crying, no longer being able to hold myself up. I was dying, and I wanted to. Percy remained silent as he watched the life drain from my face.

It happened so quickly. I hadn’t expected death to consume me so quick. The last picture in my mind before my body fell limp was his smile, the genuine one he held whenever he was happy, not that cheeky smirk, not that sheepish grin, but that big happy smile.

It was warm. I felt as though I was floating on a bed of clouds as I refused to open my eyes, to wake up from my sleep.

The sleep I had just woken up from was so good and I hadn’t felt this good after a sleep in what felt like years, and in all honesty that was probably true.

“Love, come on it’s time to wake up,”

“Five more minutes, Fred.” I yawned, turning away from his voice, digging my face into the blanket that was draped over me.

“You said that ten minutes ago, love.”

“And what about it?” I asked, turning my head back toward him. It seemed as though I was dreaming, surely he wasn’t truly here. And so I thought of this as a dream and conversed with him like I always did.

“I have to show you around, don’t I?” I could tell from his voice that he was smiling, and it made me want to return it. I finally opened my eyes and met his own warm brown ones, he seemed so real, “Good morning, lovely.”

“G’morning, Freddie.” The smile that itched at the corner of my mouth took over and I beamed up at him. I had never felt so happy to be in his presence, but what he said earlier rung in my ears, “What do you mean by showing me around?”

“Well,” he paused to press a kiss to my forehead, “it’s not every day you meet your soulmate in the afterlife.”

#harry potter #harry potter one shot #harry potter imagines #harry potter imagine #harry potter x reader #harry potter x you #harry potter x y/n #fred weasley #fred weasley imagine #fred weasley imagines #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x you #fred weasley x y/n #harry potter x male reader #harry potter x gender neutral reader #fred weasley x male reader #fred weasley x gender neutral reader

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definegodliness · 3 years

Text

University of Curiosity

End of summer. Bright days. Kind weather. I went to a school, a vast university offering countless of seemingly random programs and courses, designed to let people tap into their full potential. First day. Bit nervous. We were with a group of say fifty people. There were three mentors, and after a short introduction they split us up into smaller groups so we could talk and get to know each other. My group was full of creative people. Writers, poets, painters, musicians, the lot. We got along fine, but not all too long after being grouped together, one of the three mentors, our specific mentor, came into our communal room. We went silent, but he told us to just continue whatever we were doing. Then, he glanced over us, observing the group as a whole, then, all as individuals. I had forgotten he was even in the room, and time must have flown cause all of the sudden it was late dusk, but sudden as a lightning strike he spoke.

"All right, that's enough."

He split us into pairs and directed each pair toward a pod-like room with little more than a door, and one kingsized bed. I was paired with a girl with emerald eyes and long wavy honey brown hair. She was about my height, with broad shoulders and a strong build. Not toned, but soft. Stocky yet feminine. Cream skin. We dropped our belongings in the little space left around the bed and sat on it. She immediately came onto me. Which made me uncomfortable. The lighting started flashing, as if due to electric failure, and through our open door I could see into the other pod-like rooms where the other pairs already were fucking. I remember thinking, 'well, that's what you get.'

Meanwhile, honey brown hair girl was getting annoyed by my standoffishness, and the way I kept rejecting her. She had already dressed down to her underwear, dark purple lingerie, trying to get on top of me. She looked back at the open door, then at me, as if I were some of the worst kinds of puritan prudes, then jumped off the bed to close it. I took in her figure, her comely curved legs, round butt, and small breasts, wondering why I was making it so difficult. She glanced at me the same, as if saying: 'what the fuck, dude?'. I told her, apologetically, it had just been a while. Explaining the sitch. And she rolled her eyes fiercely, and pounced on me again. This time we kissed. And I decided it be best for me to, uncharacteristically, just give in.

I took over. A shift in dominance. Clutching her wrists as I splayed her on the bed, then letting my hands travel to her throat and chin. She wrapped her body around mine vice-tight. So tight I had to use all my strength to move. It was a kind of physical euphoria unknown to me. The lights started flickering again. Our door slammed open, but I didn't care. But then all of the sudden I had to stop. Startled, I looked at her cream skin. Around her wrists, around her chin and throat, where I had touched her so firmly, her skin had blackened as if smeared with ink, or coal.

We sat on the bed for a while, confused. She looking at her hands, me looking at her face. We felt no fear. It hadn't hurt her. It was just so weird. The black faded as if her skin absorbed it. All good again. She smiled at me.

We stood up. Facing each other. Both thinking the same thing. We interlaced fingers and pushed into each other as hard as we could. Her hands and arms gradually turned black again, smoking and sizzling. Mine turned bright white, emitting flashing light. And shadows and ball lightning shot from us, through the open door and across the communal room.

"Do you see that? Do you see that?!", I heard the voice of our mentor ecstatically exclaim. They must've been looking for this to happen. And he stood in the center of the communal room, looking at us through the open door. We were just standing then. She with the blackened arms, mine still bright white.

"Can you do that again?"

And I flung my arms forward, shooting great beams, pillars of light. As if in a dance. Honey brown haired girl watched me, her jaw dropped as the light traveled onward. I wanted her to join in dance with me. Clash the black and white and see what happens. But all of the sudden a grey haired man in a suit came barging into the room.

"All right, that's enough."

The lighting stopped flickering. And our hands and arms returned to normal instantly. I tried evoking the light again, but couldn't.

I woke up.

And instantly fell back to sleep.

I found myself wandering the university's offices, looking for our group's mentor to explain what just happened. But as I walked through the corridors, I came past a room where the grey haired man in the suit was speaking to other suits, saying it was time to fire the three mentors and end the program I was in. The program designed to let people tap into their full potential. I picked up the pace and frantically searched for that mentor to tell him and maybe find a way to prevent all this from happening.

Long story short, because the second dream is hazy: I didn't find the mentor, but ganged up with honey brown hair girl again. She had become my friend and study partner. Together we ended up at some kind of space observatory on a hill, after a little adventure full of sneaking past suits and professors, where we were able to get our hands on all documentation about the program. Our intention was to give all that stuff to our mentors, so they could continue the program independently. But I woke up at the moment we were sure we had everything.

And instantly fell back to sleep.

The new campus was on green fields amid a forest area. The last dream was a bit more social drama. Honey brown hair girl had a friend, who for no reason hated me, and hence annoyed the fuck out of me. I spent that dream trying to get my study partner continuing our adventure, but her friend kept dragging her away for trivial you're-not-giving-me-enough-attention matters.

Seeing the laissez-faire approach of the program, we both we're entirely confused what to do next. All we knew was that we had homework for the next day, but there wasn't a hint as to what that homework could be.

Now the drama part of the dream isn't very interesting. At one point I had enough of the friend, when honey brown hair girl was on the opposite side of a revolving door, and she kept blocking my way. I started pulling faces at her, first mocking her behind her back (very mature, I know, but I was fed up and had no intention to get physical). Then, when she noticed and turned around angry, I just kept doing it until ending with, ‘there, those are the ugliest faces I can pull’. She spat at me. And I was like, "seriously, during covid times?" She also stole my bike, but the other people, offended by her spitting, swiftly returned it to me. I didn’t see the friend after that. Finally I could go on, and through the revolving doors, to my study partner.

The triple dream ended when we discussed the homework. We agreed you had to figure out what to do for yourself, and all we had to fall back upon were our experiences during school time. That, and our own toolbox of skills. I told her I would write an essay about all that happened over the last period. And jokingly added it would be hard because so much had happened. Then, her eyes turned to the floor for a while, till she looked at me and answered:

"You think that's hard, but I have to write a poem about loving someone who loves someone else."

Sad eyes met mine. I fell silent.

I woke up for the last time before I could answer.

#dream #triple dream #dream diary

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secretgamergirl · 3 years

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A Little Horrifying Primer on Transphobes

Some time ago, I put together a Little Fact Checking Primer on Trans People, as a basic resource for disabusing people of some of the many completely ridiculous yet absurdly widespread beliefs about trans people that simply have no basis whatsoever in reality. And wouldn’t you know it, every single lie exposed in that primer is not only still widely believed, but is presently being used as a basis to sign some absolutely horrific human rights abuses into law. So it’s high time I follow that up, in this case focused more on who keeps actively spreading these lies and why. I’m going to try and keep things as light as I can here, but we’re going to be looking at the most monstrous side of human nature, so apologies in advance if this is a dark read.

First, let me just note that there are two things I don’t plan to do in this piece. I’m not going to waste time debunking the arguments of the people I’m highlighting (much of this is already covered in my earlier primer, others have done the work in cases where I haven’t, and frankly these people’s claims should be self-evidently utter nonsense to begin with). I am also going to be very selective in what I link to, or even share related images of, as I would frankly not like to fill a post on a blog I generally try to keep safe for all audiences with media directly dealing with, for instance, child sexual assault, and much of the relevant information also involves stochastic terrorism against innocent people, and I would prefer not to throw more fuel onto such fires.

Transphobes lie constantly, about everything.

To some degree this is obvious. We’re talking about people who scaremonger about the possibilities of trans women dominating competitive sports and assaulting people in restrooms, despite the status quo already reflecting the conditions they insist would make these inevitibilities for decades and centuries respectively, and their grim visions never once having come to pass, and also constantly insisting that the woman in the photo below is actually a man, going further to say this is evident to anyone giving her the merest glance.

It goes beyond that though. There’s at least a little plausible deniablity in claims like this, or that “science is on their side” if they were simply uninformed about the world they live in, never actually looking into what laws exist, what science actually says, and never actually meeting a trans person or even seeing a picture of one of us. I’m talking really bold lies here. Like wholecloth fabricating a story that a convicted murder was trans, including anecdotes about wigs dresses and a planned name change, in a major newspaper. Or to cite an old favorite of mine, the time a pack of bigots walked up to a crowd of people peacefully picketing a transphobic legal proposal, started roughing them up and taking closeup photos of members of the crowd to stalk online when they got home, got sufficiently riled up for one to straight up assault an innocent person half her size, filmed the whole thing, uploaded it to youtube, and used stills of that assault as acomanying photos when they went home to write articles about the assailant being a “grandmother” attacked by rowdy trans women. And yes, they did monkey’s paw my wish to see that specific image on newspapers. Interesting side note, when it came to real public light that J.K. Rowling endorsed this sort of hatred, it was because she accidentally pasted some profanity laden rambling about how the imagined moral character of the other party in that incident, years after the fact, into a post praising a child’s fan art of her work.

To be a little less niche, transphobes can’t get enough of spreading the lie that the young fellow in this photo is a girl. Specifically a trans girl, providing proof that all their scaremongering about the dastardly threat of trans girls in competitive sports has finally come to pass.

To be fully clear, that’s a man (or a boy if you want to split hairs about him being 17 in that photo). Mack Beggs. A rather insidious choice for this sort of story, considering the actual context for that photo. See, Beggs attended high school in Texas, during a (still ongoing as I write this) period wherein that particular state had caved to this exact sort of propaganda, and in order to head off a wholly imagined wave of trans girls competing on girls’ sports teams, and enacted a law mandating that in all such competitions must compete under whatever gender is stated on their birth certificates. And as it happens, the first, and to my knowledge ONLY time this has come up was with Beggs here, who again, is a man, as no one with a grip on reality could argue against, has “female” on his birth certificate. Which is another way of saying he is a trans man. The guys in the same boat as trans women who we talk about a whole hell of a lot less because their existence is extremely inconvenient to the majority of transphobic propaganda. Case in point. And this is all information it is really impossible to come across if you’re coming across this photo in any sort of respectable source. Take this story, which is as unambiguous about this as you can get. And yet, in the very comments section of that story, there they are. Carrying on like this story about a trans guy, forced by a transphobic law to compete as a girl, which he absolutely did not want, and received horrific threats over, using phrases like “female to male” and bringing up that he was assigned female at birth and is on testosterone-based HRT, is about a trans woman cheating the system. Or to quote word for word, “Now also transgender female want to be male also compete in female sport. biological born“ That’s not “being confused,” that’s standing next to you in a white desert and complaining about being adrift in a black ocean, bald-faced, not even trying to be convincing just make a power play, lying through one’s teeth.

I could spend this whole article on just this point. Lying about who they are, various people’s falsified credentials, whole websites full of “anonymous parents of children who think they’re trans” turning out to be one single woman documenting the abuse of her very much trans son, or of course the people behind the whole “bathroom bill” panic candidly admitting it was all based on utter fiction. I do have other points to cover though.

Transphobes are firmly entrenched in the media.

It is extremely difficult to find oneself in a position of having to explain to people that a particular group of people is effectively in control of press outlets, as that is rather classically a claim conspiracy theorists absolutely love to toss around at various marginalized groups (including trans people hilariously enough, but of course the most common and lingering version of this is the antisemitic variant). I really can’t get around it here though. Specifically in the U.K., you honestly can say that transphobes control the media. I already touched on this with the assault case I mentioned above and the fabricated story about the murderer, but this is a pretty well-documented situation. I mean, even The Guardian calls out The Guardian on this, and that’s the outlet that gets the most attention because it’s the one with the most otherwise respected name, but every paper in the country has been running transphobic propaganda pieces on a weekly if not daily basis for years now, and while they do get reprimanded by watchdog groups and have mass walk-outs over the worst of it, it’s not like there’s some governing body with the authority to step in about it. Meanwhile the BBC is constantly inviting diehard zealots like Graham Linehan to news programs where he compares being trans to being a nazi, and hosting debates where someone just sits down and repeatedly chants the word “penis” at a trans woman.

Things are better in the rest of the world, but we still have right-wing creeps like Jesse Singal both writing horrific propaganda pieces (we’ll get back to that one) and blackballing trans writers out of covering trans issues ourselves (and personally stalking the hell out of those of us who try). We’ve got our Joe Rogans and Tucker Carlsons out there (no way in hell I’m linking videos here, have a real information link and a still).

The line between diehard transphobes and straight-up nazis basically does not exist.

What even is there to say here? You can easily poke around havens for nazi activity for yourself and compare the particular unique vocabulary used there to the primary bastion of anti-trans hate speech on the internet (the “feminism” section of what was originally a site for parenting tips before violent fascists took the forums over) or just peruse the follows of the thousands of people I’ve blocked on social media and see if you can sort out a clear division in the networks of channers with frog avatars and the accounts with names like GoodieXXrealwoman, or you can read up on Gab and Spinster, the two twitter alternatives that are just different portals to the same server, set up by the same guy. Maybe do some research into “the LGB Alliance,” or WoLF but any way you slice it the only real difference to be found is the general purpose nazis take a little time off now and then to watch borderline pedophilic anime and the really dedicated transphobes think to use language that sounds vaguely well-educated and left-leaning. I mean, this came from the “feminist” side of the fence:

And not to belabor the point here, but the ones claiming to be a bunch of “feminist mums” sure do let the mask slip any time they’re confronted with the fact that “women” includes black women, and oh just have a whole thread about all the weird conspiratory theories these people have about how trans people’s whole existence is some sort of Jewish plot for world domination. I swear a few months ago they were all passing around a story about some bank having an above average number of trans employees and they were all just “and we all know who controls the banks, right?” about it.

Transphobes endorse an awful lot of people who are openly pro-pedophila.

This is the part where I am really loath to link the many many specific examples I have on hand. Or to talk about this at all for reasons of good taste. Or, for that matter, to talk about this in a tumblr post when there’s an ongoing problem of people with backgrounds strongly tied to this site making baseless accusations of pedophilia against every queer person they can find, so let me be very clear just what I’m talking about while avoiding anything too graphic.

That’s James Cantor. Transphobes love him for being one of the closest things they have to a scientist on their side. And I am featuring him in a screenshot here showing that he is followed by current queen of the transphobes J.K. Rowling, while speaking to both another big name in transphobic circles, Debra Soh, and based on their names, what I’m guessing is at least one straight-up nazi. And in case you think “the P” he’s talking about adding to LGBT (or “GLBT” as weird anti-queer bigots who also have issues with women often write it) might stand for “poly” or “pan” he’s all too happy to clarify that.

This is the entire thrust of Cantor’s work and life. He is the world’s biggest pedophile rights advocate. He wants it declassified as a mental disorder, all stigma on it removed, and tirelessly pushes forward the idea that the majority of.. people who feel compelled to sexually assault children are good people who present no potential harm to anyone and should in fact be lauded.

I am not generally one to claim that someone with a PhD is spewing out questionable garbage with regard to their field, but the reason I am aware of Cantor at all is that other transphobes keep trying to hold up a particular post on his blog as "a study” (which it is not) that offers “proof” (in the form of a blurry jpeg of basically some random numbers) of some ridiculous quackery about how trans kids will “grow out of it” if exposed to conversion therapy (another way of saying torture), which Cantor himself seems to be pushing, so I am somewhat skeptical of his academic chops. And I am, of course, REALLY suspicious that all these other bigots gravitate to him purely because they’re that desperate to find anyone with a PhD in anything that backs them up against literally every scientist in a relative field, to the point that they merely forgive his particular advocacy they are plainly all aware of, particularly when such a common fig leaf used by transphobes is “keeping children safe from sexual deviants.”

And of course, Cantor is most often invoked when coming to the defense of Kenneth Zucker. This Kenneth Zucker.

Those are separate papers. Zucker isn’t controversial though for organizing panels to discuss how attractive people agree small children are (at least not exclusively). Mostly, he’s known for running a conversion therapy center which subjected gay and trans children to various sorts of torture in an effort to “fix” them, which at least for those trans "patients” I have spoken with involved a fair amount of having them strip completely naked and talking a lot about their genitals.

Zucker is something of a controversial figure with the transphobic scene, as they are extremely on board with his sexual torture of queer children, but he does actual work (for some value of the term) involving trans people and thus is not able to commit as fully as they would prefer to making life horrible for trans people, due to a professional obligation to acknowledge reality now and then. As an aside, the similarly positioned Ray Blanchard, while not to my knowledge particularly interested in the attractiveness of children, lives in a similar purgatory of trying to reconcile his career, bigotry, and sexual hangups, yielding compromises like this:

Of course, that’s just looking at the straws transphobes grasp at when looking for scientific credibility. Real leaders of the movement include Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy, which is about what you are afraid it might be, and features a very young child in a cover feature he did not consent to posing for. Or Julie Bindel, who among other things is rather infamous for writing whole articles on subjects like whether a teenage girl she came across maybe has a huge penis you can totally see if you really squint at her skirt. Again, I will not share a link to go along with that one.

Transphobes terrorize and attempt to defund charities and other unambiguously good organizations.

Graham Linehan, previously best known for cowriting some sitcoms and possibly spending a year angling to get into my pants so awkwardly I didn’t pick up on it is now best known for trying to pull the plug on a children’s charity, in a story that somehow also involves Donkey Kong. Well, and the interview about nazis. And possibly the other interview about “defending me from nazis” until it got into his head that I might not be as young and hot as he imagined. Rather not link to a far right extremist youtube channel though.

There’s also a current effort to replace Stonewall (an organization named after the location where a pair of trans women kicked off a riot which is generally agreed to be the start of the LGBT+ rights movement) as the UK’s primary LGBT+ rights organization with the “LGB Alliance.” The hate group mentioned above, with the skull face and the rifle. Closest I can find to an article on that effort on short notice that isn’t propaganda.

Transphobes paper areas in truly disgusting propaganda.

I don’t want to directly link to grown adults skulking around children’s playgrounds and bathrooms plastering surfaces with mass printed stickers of crudely drawn penises, but would encourage you to read this very long post, being sure to load all the images, to really understand how deeply strange this behavior gets.

Finally, I cannot stress this enough, this really extreme behavior I’m citing, and the specific people involved in the examples I’m giving, these aren’t random cranks on the fringe of things. The people going on televised panel discussions, writing up news stories, and testifying before lawmakers in efforts to pass horrifically discriminatory if not literally life-endangering laws (there is a major ongoing effort to legally end all medical care for trans people, and I don’t just mean care directly relating to being trans) are literally the same people involved in the sexualization of children, nazi collaborations, and roving gangs assaulting people in the street. At a bare minimum I urge people, when booking guests and handing out writing contracts, to do background checks and see if they’re platforming actual terrorists. If we could actually bring legal consequences to bear against the worst of this, that would be great too. As things stand though, the whole world is just consistently citing a bunch of racist, woman-hating, serial liars with no real credentials, and questionable attitudes towards the sexual abuse of children, as “trusted experts” and refusing to seat actual trans people or people who have legitimately committed lifetimes to academic and practical work with trans people any seats at the table.

#trans #transphobia #educational resources

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madmadmilk · 4 years

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#madreads | stuff i’ve been reading lately 👀

heyyo i’m just making a list of books i’ve been reading lately IRL. most are just swishy, feel-good, HEA romance stuff. I’ll update it periodically~ ✌🏼💛✨ enjoy, and feel free to recommend!

“The Flat Share” by Beth O’Leary: sharing a flat with someone you’ve never met? Tiff needs a cheep & easy place to stay, and Leon works nights and needs the $$. Leon takes the bed in the day, Tiff at night.... they’re bound to meet sometime, right?

“The Hating Game” by Sally Thorne: easy-peasy office, enemies-to-lovers. Lucy and Josh share an office for 40 hours a week, PAs for a recently merged companies. constantly one-upping each other, and playing ‘games’ in vengeful silence with arbitrary, made-up rules–– but lucy will never let josh win. especially when there’s a promotion at stake. if she wins, she’ll be josh’s boss, and if she loses... she’ll resign.

“Beach Read” by Emily Henry: Augustus is an acclaimed author of literary fiction, and january writes best selling romance. they’re opposites in every way.... right now the only thing they have in common is they’re neighbors and both struggling with writer’s block. they make a bet, augustus will write a bright happy romance while january tackles the “next Great American Novel.” of course they’ll take field trips of rom-com montage fame, and he’ll take her to interview backwoods death cult members (???) and absolutely no one will fall in love, lmao.

“Man Crush Monday” (and Stand-In Saturday) by Kristy Moseley. bruhh..... just read it. amy clark is a happy, peppy girl who works on the train... every monday her crush comes aboard, handsome and dorky. lool one day, they meet off the train, and love blossoms from there......

“The Billionaire’s Wake-Up-Call Girl” (and the entire series tbh) by Annika Martin: bruhh lol ya girl works at a company and tries to stay on her best behavior. so when she can’t find a “morning call service” to wake up her boss..... she takes it upon herself to make the call. so yeah, obviously she is the sweetest person ever at 4:30 AM–– oop. and soon enough, boss man is tearing down the city to find her.

“Come Back to Bed” by Kayley Loring: a grumpy lawyer dude moves in next door to an artist, and the only thing she can be sure of is that he’s hot hot hot and has the cutest lil dog ever. when they first meet, he recognizes her long-time and flailing crush on her artist boss..... sparks fly from there lmao

“Happy-Go-Lucky” by L.H. Cosway. Maisie works as a researching for a PI firm, and is nothing but kind to every one there. lol then at the christmas party, intimidating cameron grant shows up and out of the kindness of her heart, she sits by to talk to him. looool he tells her he despises everyone’s behavior at their workplace even her’s to a degree–- be deems her most tolerable. lol even jabbed, her lil office crush on him doesn’t waver. things become even more awkward when he takes her home.............

“Would Like to Meet” by Rachel Winters. evie has been a an assistant for 7 years, hanging on a thread for a promotion. too bad her job is in the hands of breakout-director ezra, for hollywood’s next rom com. lol but he’s suffering from writers block. in order not to lose her job, she collects data and stories from going on “meet-cute” dates and scenarios to “inspire” ezra lol and maybe find herself a real date along the way?

“The Unhoneymooners” by Christina Lauren. olive is ur typical unlucky gal–– constantly outdone by her perfect twin sister, who she still loves and adores. so ofc, on her sister’s wedding day she is paired with her worst enemy, ethan (who happens to be the best man). just 24 hours to get through, and things will be back to normal. lol too bad that everyone at the wedding gets food poisoning, leaving olive and ethan the only people unscathed. her sister refuses to let her honeymoon package go to waste so... she encourages olive and ethan to go... together. looool

And that’s all i can think of for right now!!! i haven’t been reading anything too serious, i just want these fluffy chick lit HEA romances to get me through the rest of the year.... like... just give me some serotonin pls. alright and lemme just say... getting a kindle (and kindle unlimited bleh) has changed my reading life.... it’s so much easier now lol 🥺💛✨

if you have any recommendations or notes to add, feel free to let us know! happy reading!!!!!!!!!!!!! ❣️

tagging: @rae-gar-targaryen and @ that one anon that asked hahaha

#madreads #fic rec #personal #madmadmilk #reading #?????? idk what to tag this lmao #long post

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thefallenangelsgang · 4 years

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Fic Writer Meme Tag (oh boy)

@just-another-wasteland-merc tagged me for this and let me tell you I am honored. I don’t even have a fic out yet and here she is. I’m tagging my best friend and rumored gay lover (when will that rumor ever die?) @helena-bug, all around fandom mom and lover of Macready @theartofblossoming, and newcomer to my feed and lovely person @dumbwastelander. And anyone else who wants to do this can name me as their challenger if they so wish!

Name:

Sm0lp0tat0

Fandoms:

Lets consolidate this to things I write for, shall we? Fallout, The Hunger Games, and Minecraft Diaries (mainly for nostalgia factor I’m probably not going to post it anytime soon)

Most popular multichapter:

Oh Jesus it was a disgustingly bad fic for Minecraft Diaries from when I was twelve. It had something like 3k reads on Wattpad and was just awful. It doesn’t exist anymore.

Actual worst part of writing:

Writing through writers block. Mine can last up to a year so I’ve gotten in the habit of writing through it until I get inspired again. What I write doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be words. Also losing all of your files. That happened to me once. My phone straight up broke (likely a software error but we still don’t know) and locked me out one night. I tried old passwords, I tried current passwords, nothing could get me in. We had to wipe the phone and I sobbed myself to sleep.

How you choose your titles:

They usually come out of nowhere. I also name my books before I even get to writing them. For my Fallout fic it took some doing. I was looking up name inspirations, the works. I finally settled on The Fallen for the first one (originally it was The Fallen Angels Gang but it didn’t feel like it fit) and One More Tomorrow for the second because that song slaps so hard. For my Diaries fic it’s I Can Do Better, I Promise, I Swear which were names that meant nothing until I developed the story further. For my Hunger Games fic Dead Giveaway was there from the beginning (once again from out of the blue) but I struggled a lot with the other names of the books. I just recently named them. Catching fire is named Rules and Roses, Mockingjay is Requiem, and the epilogue period is called The Burden of Tomorrow. They had names before that I hated, A Shadow In A Dream, Throne of Names, and Children Of Silence. They didn’t fit at all.

Do you Outline?:

Hah, no. I have a general path I follow usually (ie the plot of the work in writing about) but 9 times out of 10 I’m swinging wildly. The one exception is The Fallen. Because I have the opportunity to use dates (WHICH NEVER FUCKING HAPPENS) I am incredibly excited to plot it literally day by day.

Ideas I probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice?:

I’ve always wanted to write an original story. I actually have an idea for one. I t has to do with gods and fantasy warfare (I actually wrote a short story for Lit class of it that I might post.) I just don’t have the inspiration or the time to work the whole thing out quite yet.

Callouts @ Me:

Stop being down in the dumps about not writing enough! You wrote! That’s an achievement. If you didn’t write at least you stared at the screen for a while thinking! You used your brain!

Best writing traits:

Both bad and good, I edit as I write. It’s easier for me if I have the full picture in my head.

Spicy Tangential Opinion:

Most writing advice is bullshit so don’t let it shame you. Everyone has a different process. Some can pound out chapter after chapter. Others don’t share their work. It’s okay. If you write anything, even just dumb scenarios, you are a writer.

#Fic Writer Tag #i am v hungy right now #nvm i got up and got cereal #fic writing #fanfiction #The Hunger Games #thg #Fallout #Fallout 4 #Fo4 #Writing

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dearsubconscious · 4 years

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Warning: the following is a story of psychological/emotional/narcissistic abuse that may be hard for some readers.

Finding the right emotions to say

Some context is needed before you continue reading. This is an introduction to my new Tumblr account and an overview of how my story started. I originally wrote this in May of 2019. When I wrote this, I was trying to get out all of my thoughts during a very dark time. I wrote this over the course of weeks of sleepless nights when my mind wouldn’t stop running. It may read a bit disorganized, but I wrote it as a way to explain to the people that matter to me what I had come to realize about myself. Only two people have read it prior to me posting this, neither of which are my family members. I am still not comfortable with any of my family knowing about this and I have never really talked about many of the details of what happened out loud, even to the two people that have read this. Many of my specific memories are not included in this story...some were just too brutal for me to even write out without completely mentally breaking down at the time. I have decided to start telling my story as a way of mental therapy. Even if nobody on here reads this all of the way through, it will help me mentally just to organize my memories and thoughts. I hope that I can also open a discussion on a sensitive and (I believe) very overlooked topic, hard as it may be to talk about. If you have found yourself in a similar situation, I truly hope that have a better present and/or future. I wouldn’t wish this mental torture on anyone. As you will see in posts that follow this one, I will explain how the long term effects of the mental damage have caused persistent problems with my relationships with all people that matter to me, my working life, my financial stability and my overall health. This is a long read, but here it goes:

Please read all of this carefully and in its entirety. Its long and it will be uncomfortable to read, but it’s very important to me. I would prefer that it be read all at once, which may take a little while, so if you don’t have time to soak it all in, please save it for another time.

My mind goes around and around in very vicious circles of emotions. I feel...well...a lot...is all I can describe in simple terms. That just doesn’t cut it, though. I keep telling myself that I’m probably insane. I don’t know if I just don’t want to believe it, if I’m just hurting that bad, if I’m in shock or if there is something deeper than that that I just don’t understand. I’m not sure if I know what to feel or believe anymore because my own mind has been keeping an enormous secret for years...

I know who I used to be and who I want to be and for years I have been upsetting myself on a nearly hourly basis because I can’t figure out why I behave the way that I do in many normal situations. I know what the right thing to do is in almost every case, but I can’t seem to be able to do the right thing most of the time anymore. The most logical explanation, until very recently, was just to blame it on regular stress. It seemed too obvious, yet it has a very empty and incomplete generalization of what I would actually be feeling. I have continued with my habits and behaviors very frustrated with myself every time, which is usually many times daily. I spend a lot of time contemplating why I don’t feel okay even though so many things are going well in my life. It’s like I’ve been living very much in a haze and I don’t believe or understand who I am.

The impulsive eating, nagging need to always be doing something special or interesting, yet always coming up short or simply doing nothing at all (and knowing the whole time that there was always something else that I needed to be doing to be more “responsible”), impulsive buying, and, above all else, the incredibly infuriating mental “freeze” that has seemed to be ever present in everything that I do. Most prominent were the “freezes” in my passions, in tasks that are incredibly important and almost anytime I have to make a decision. Not following through on so many things and seeming apathetic about the task of finishing. I would, again, just tell myself that it’s from stress, but I always knew that this was simply not true. Most people use stress as a motivator to get things done, but not me. I, for some reason, find myself doing the exact opposite. This leaves me very frustrated, empty, and numb.

I stress eat a lot and this, coupled with other bad habits feel impossible to break even though I very much mentally want to. I “freeze” at the moment that I should make a better choice and feel great anxiety when faced with the decision. I usually end up doing nothing at all, or doing the wrong or bad thing, thinking that it’s just easier and thoughtless. I hate myself for it. I really do believe that I can and will get better someday; that I will be much healthier; that I will work out regularly; that I will be productive every day, but instead I fall victim to my own mind almost every time...

Years ago, small physical/mental changes started happening to me that I couldn’t explain; long before the seemingly learned or self-induced behaviors that I just explained.

I was always a night owl, but through most of my childhood and early teenage years I would do it on purpose to do things like watch movies, play video games, etc. As I grew older, however, it started happening without a desire to. I was very alarmed by this at first. I couldn’t sleep even though I tried hard to; even though I was tired and exhausted; and I would fight very hard to change my poor sleep habits. I started to believe that maybe I had caused my own insomnia from staying up late as a kid, but there was a very different...anxious...feeling underneath it.

Through most of my school years I had been an eloquent speaker and writer. I would get compliments on it from teachers, family, family friends and strangers frequently. However, during high school I began to trip on my words at times and I would have to find simpler words to use when speaking and writing. I thought for years that this was attributed to my lack of sleep. Maybe it was. But this started to feel like a chain that didn’t make sense, as it couldn’t be attributed to simple stress, but was undoubtedly connected.

I’ve always been a very...very...patient person. I remember my step mother said years ago that I have an “old soul.” She described me this way as a compliment to my patient, calm, wise and passive demeanor in everything that I do. So when I began experiencing deep anxiety that would violently wake me up in the middle of the night during my few hours of sleep, I was very alarmed. I noticed that my attention span began getting shorter. In more recent years, I began lashing out, breaking my calm and passive personality. I get uncharacteristically angry or upset with little things that never bothered me before and do it visibly for those around me with immediate and harsh behaviors. I despise this more than almost any other behavior that I have. I feel that I’ve lost control when it happens and I immediately regret it. It isn’t who I am...

As time has progressed into full adulthood, I have found even the simplest of tasks incredibly hard to be motivated about. The “freeze” began spreading to things such as picking up something that I dropped on the floor. I would feel very anxious about the task of picking it up but truly frozen from simply picking it up for long periods of time because my brain would just go around in vicious circles of stress. I became a messy person. I was no longer able to prioritize tasks in my mind in a proper manner. It’s incredibly embarrassing when I get caught in a mental freeze as it is, generally, pretty visibly obvious on my face. And, as recent as the last few months I have been struggling much more deeply with words when speaking. I will start to say something and know exactly what I want to say, but it seems as though my brain is working much faster and cluttered than my mouth. I won’t be able to get out a full word or phrase. The words will very literally slur together in my mouth and no matter how hard I try I am unable to say it properly. Even if I try to slow my words way down I can’t get it out. It’s like a mental block between my brain and mouth. It’s mentally very frustrating and painful.

I feel that I have lost the ability to fight most of my impulses, leading me to eat poorly and a lot, spend a lot, laze around in a fog a lot, etc. I know that this deeply frustrates those around me and I hate it when it does. I want to change my habits and impulses, but it mentally just isn’t that easy for me...I’ve needed help with this for years and I just don’t know how to admit it or face it. I also don’t know how anyone would actually help and asking for help feels very weak and stupid...

Under pressure from difficult situations or pressure-driven decisions, I freeze in a way that infuriates those around me and it infuriates even my self very deeply. Sometimes my freeze causes me to make a wrong or bad decision almost unconsciously. This leads me to a dark, swirling set of emotions about my self, especially when I’m called out for my wrongdoing.

I’ve also had a very low self esteem for quite some time that has been ever present in all aspects of my life and overcoming it at times is incredibly difficult. I have become a very shy, easily embarrassed, easily uncomfortable person for things that should excite me or bring joy and I just can’t seem to get passed my self-made walls. And I hide these insecurities as best as I can so that nobody knows that I’m actually in very bad mental distress at any given moment...which has been more often than not for a while...

I’ve had a deep and growing feeling of confusion and despair. I used to be very depressed in middle school and high school that I was sure I had gotten past, but I’m not sure anymore. I knew that I had been through the worst feelings of my life, but it seems to all be coming back to haunt me in a very different way that I never could have imagined. And I’ve been very lost and numb from my confusion over what has been happening to me.

I have spent years trying to justify my actions and behaviors to myself as “stress” or something similar simply because I have had no idea what has been happening to me...

Then something occurred that sparked something sleeping much deeper in my subconscious than any of that...

A little over two months ago a random video came rolling through my Facebook feed about physical abuse in a specific relationship in England. This happened recently and I believe that it said that this was the first case where a female was charged with physical assault for abuse in a relationship against a man in the UK. I haven’t seen or read much about true abuse in relationships, so I watched the whole short video to understand the specifics. It told the story of what happened to the boyfriend and how it went almost unnoticed by everyone even with glaring signs and such seeming-apathy from both the man and the woman about his constant injuries. He would make up stories to everyone including the police and hospitals about his injuries because he feared for his life. One day recently, the police were called to their residence for a yelling-noise complaint made by the neighbors. Upon arriving they found the man bloody on the stairs, and he told them that he tripped and fell and hit his head (because his girlfriend was in the room). They agreed, aided him, but immediately noticed the many other injuries that weren’t as new and they recognized the signs right away from experience. Through some coercing, they managed to pull him outside, away from his girlfriend, and got the real story from him. She had been manipulating, threatening, hitting and cutting him on a daily basis for years since nearly the beginning of their relationship to control him and trap him. The police officer that spotted the signs and made it a point to bring out the truth and knew that he would be more likely to talk about it away from the girlfriend because he was afraid for his life.

I couldn’t comprehend going through such obvious physical trauma and nearly being overlooked. I am thankful that I have never been physically abused. I immediately scrolled on and distracted myself with some video of planes, I’m sure.

But for the next several days I kept thinking about that video and story and I couldn’t get this weird feeling out of my head about it. I couldn’t place it at first but it began to remind me of the overarching confusion and despair that I have been feeling for a long time about my self. It felt very...not at all nostalgic...but familiar... It started to become far more clear from there...

I immediately began researching and reading. Perhaps too much at times...

My mom has been going through abuse for years with my step father in multiple forms and though I have subconsciously, and even quite consciously known that it was occurring, I think I was too afraid to research the specifics of the abuse. The subconscious side of my brain must have been telling me not to because I was too afraid of what I would find for a very different reason...

For over four years I was very brutally psychologically/emotionally abused every minute of every day.

Sxxx (blocked for anonymity) (a name I rarely use, because I have subconsciously wanted to block it out for the rest of my life) did far more than a little bit of manipulation to control me and everything about my life. I know this was probably somewhat apparent to most people around me but the abuse was much deeper and more prevalent than anyone could have ever known or imagined...and more than I noticed or wanted to admit to myself... She did so many things, big and small, blatant and subtle, in public and in private (mostly), that completely destroyed me mentally. I think that I blocked out each incident as best as I could and I became very visibly numb but subconsciously extremely damaged with every passing day.

As this realization began to sink in, after the Facebook story, I went into a state of emotional shock that has had me trapped in a very vicious circle of negative emotions. I began researching deeper into it and reading a lot of articles, news and health journals, Wikipedia pages, news stories, blogs, etc. that drove home the realization. But I wanted to have some sort of immediate validation of this, so I searched for quizzes by mental health organizations that help individuals determine if they are in an abusive relationship. The first quiz had a long series of “yes” or “no” questions. I read every one very carefully and took the quiz as honestly as I could, treating it as though I was still in a relationship with her and reliving the way I was treated, digging up memories that I didn’t even know that I have...and I definitely don’t want to have. When I finally reached the end, it gave a percentage score of the likelihood that I was abused... 98.8%...

The only reason that it wasn’t 100% was because the only question that I answered “no” to was a question pertaining to children and houses, which we obviously never shared.

I took another, shorter test and scored a 92% for very similar circumstances. It’s true that what I experienced wasn’t physical abuse like the story that I read, but it is, basically, absolute that I was psychologically/mentally abused for years and, while it generally doesn’t come with standard PTSD, as the world knows it, like physical abuse does, it can be seen as more serious and have much worse long term effects that tend to go mostly unnoticed, but are extremely detrimental over time...according to the research that I’ve done anyway...and which I am finding that I believe from experience... I found in the research that I have most of the long term symptoms and a lot of my behaviors and tendencies are tied to mental changes that happened during those years...

The emotions and shock came rushing in like nothing I’ve ever felt. It began with a deep upsetness, followed by a deep anger. How could I have let that happen? Why didn’t I realize this years ago? Who am I actually because of this?

The research didn’t help. I started to tell myself that it can’t be true out of pure denial, reinforced by the research. Many articles and pages seemed to have a consensus that males arent typically affected by abuse in a deep way like females and are so overwhelmingly usually the perpetrators of abuse that psychological/mental abuse against males is seen as essentially non-existent. Only four pages that I read of the dozens agreed that abuse can happen equally to any gender, in any relationship and have equal effects. But, in order to read more about symptoms, long term effects and how/why abusers abuse, I had to read articles/stories about male abusers.

I started to feel like I was crazy. Like I wasn’t supposed to feel any feelings about what happened to me. Like I was supposed to pretend that it didn’t happen at all. It feels oddly sexist of me to believe that this happened to me, and also weak of me to believe that I was so brutally abused and mentally scarred because of how so many pages and people made it a male-against-female-only situation. Maybe it is very sexist and weak of me and I need to just bottle it all up as if I never knew what happened (I essentially have been for years anyway)...maybe I am just crazy and remembering things wrong or imagining things... I know that there are many people out there that are abused and are/were in far worse situations than I am...including my own mom. I don’t know... it all just feels so...confusing and intimidating...and too much for me to understand or handle... This feeling is very reinforced by the way I was and always have been treated as a “pushover” by many people for what happened during those years... I know that I wants, but it’s far more complicated than just being a “pushover”...

Maybe not all of the issues that I listed early on in

this...whatever-you-want-to-call-it are related to what happened to me, but the more I am piecing things together, the more I am finding that it was likely the brutal subconscious driving factor in all of it. I’m far too embarrassed by it all to bring it up in person or face it and I feel very foolish and selfish to blame all of my problems on something that happened years ago, but it actually makes a lot of sense...

It’s very frustrating, as well, that every medical page that I read was about actively being in an abusive relationship and their solution to every problem was always to change the way the abuser behaved in the relationship or end the relationship entirely and that should just fix everything... yet they also all agree that there are long term effects, water the relationship has ended, that can last for years or even the rest of a persons lifetime that they just don’t discuss solutions for...

The biggest problem of all is, now knowing all of this about my likely-abuse, I still don’t know how to move forward and progress past all of these issues that I have now. I almost regret knowing more than not because it has made my emotions much stronger and more confusing. I don’t want this to define me or keep ahold of me and everything that I do, but it’s a constant battle against my own brain that I just can’t seem to win...especially as the bad memories start flooding in uncontrollably...

She used to make me believe that all problems were my fault, that I was never good enough, never would be good enough, and that I should give up on everything because I was wasting everyone’s time, energy and life including mine with my “stupid and ridiculous” ideas, hobbies, activities, etc. and I “wasn’t good at any of them anyway.” I was treated as though any decision that I made was a bad one, a wrong one, a stupid one... she would manipulate me into joining things or going to things so that she would look better than me to everyone there and try to make it look as though I didn’t care or that she was the victim...

For the entire four years I had to be in constant contact (usually by text) within every 5 minutes at most to prove that I wasn’t ignoring or “cheating” on her. If I didn’t answer within five minutes I usually received a text that read “bye” to make me feel abandoned, worthless and guilty. It would make me feel as though I had been ruining her life. I would be constantly (usually a dozen times a day or more) having to apologize and explain myself. She would usually continue to ignore my long pleading messages for several hours or even until the next day, then either pretend like nothing ever happened, or say that I owe her. She would always claim that because I didn’t text back that I missed out on something big or important to her and that I must be cheating on her or simply didn’t care about her. No matter how much I would say or very visibly show that I cared she would treat me as though I was still very wrong. I was never once put first in her life. I could handle not ever being first, but to be not only far from first, I was, instead, constantly put down as though I was the bane of her existence. I went very out of my comfort zone and disobeyed rules, teachers, family, etc. to “make it up to her.” This was incredibly beyond my character but she would put me in a very dark and anxious place nearly hourly. She used my extreme patience and sympathy against me by keeping me trapped in a destructive cycle. I would have to leave home when I wasn’t supposed to or miss so many important events with my own friends or family without permission to walk to her house and apologize in person, only to be shunned initially at the door.

She made me join the speech and debate team. I probably could have been good at it too... she made sure that I was part of her group, but that I wouldn’t actually participate in the group. Any part that I had was to be done away from the group with no understanding or explanation of what I was tasked with. I was isolated from everyone and everything happening. When I would have to rejoin the group the day before a debate I would be barated and torn down by her followed by the rest of the group because I did everything wrong. We went to several debates and at one of the very first ones I made a small and simple mistake in the debate against a team from another school that I didn’t know I had made because I was never taught. She got visibly mad immediately, even with the judges and opponents in the room. As soon as that debate was over, she stormed out of the room with no explanation and walked back to the waiting area without saying a word to me. As soon as I arrived (shortly after her), I immediately found her ranting to her friends and our classmates in front of everybody else about how stupid I was and how I ruined the debate for her and our whole school. She cast me in a very bad light and made it sound as though the mistake was so simple that I must be a “complete idiot” to make it. She went on about this for about an hour, even stretching the conversation to neighboring opponent schools seated nearby. And any time I would try to step into the conversation to defend my self she would angrily cast me off to a secluded table away from them and everyone for the rest of the day. She took away my phone and anything else that I had claiming that I didn’t deserve it because of my screw up (something that she did often with phones and other meaningful objects). I tried to hold hands with her and plead with her on the two hour car ride home in the back of her dads car but she would angrily refuse with the silent treatment all the way until I was dropped off. It didn’t matter how many times that I would agree with her that I was “stupid” and “worthless”, she would still treat me as though I was even lower than that.

At every school dance that I attended with her, she would immediately leave my side to go find friends. Every time I would catch up with her she would leave me again to find a different friend for no other reason than just to find them. She would do this to control me, make me feel abandoned and make sure that I was always paying attention to her and nobody else, isolating me from everyone, even in a large crowd of people that I know. And as the night would go on she would begin to tell people that I was ignoring her because I wouldn’t stay right with her (because I couldn’t keep up or I wouldn’t immediately notice that she silently left again) and I must not care about her, even though I would spend the entire time in a mad dash back and forth trying to find her, never having time to stop and talk to anyone that I knew that was trying to talk to me. She or someone would spill something on me by accident but she would just laugh and usually make it worse somehow (spilling more on me, finding people to embarrass me for being a klutz to, etc). If I accidentally spilled something on her or even near her it was a guarantee that she wouldn’t talk to me or pay attention to me for the rest of the night. I was always expected to pay for everything and drop off jackets and pick them up and carry her stuff everywhere, but never received any kind words or gestures, as was true for everything and everywhere we went for the whole four years. I was young and very naive about relationships at first, so while I thought it was strange, I just thought that I was being polite and gentlemanly and showing that I cared, but I was very much told and shown the opposite, which became far more obvious over time. It was simply expected and if I didn’t then she would use it as a reason to prove to others (and to me in our many daily arguments[consisting mostly of her yelling and saying incredibly rude things to me while I would spend a lot of time apologizing]) that I am a rude person who doesn’t show that I care.

One day, we had gone to a movie with her little sister at the movie tavern and, after the movie, we had lots of time to kill before the bus came to take us home so they decided that they wanted to go to kohl’s. We wandered around for a while and eventually ended up in the jewelry department. As usual she was trying to lose me in the store as a “game” much like she would do at dances or...well...anywhere public that we would go, really. The aisles were very small in the jewelry department and I turned a corner too quickly, very seriously trying to keep up with her to avoid the claim that I “left her because I didn’t care” and, in doing so, I accidentally stepped on the back of her heel and “flat-tired” her shoe, so-to-speak. It was minor and I almost didn’t even noticed that I had done it but she immediately yelled “ow” and screamed at me and threw something at me. It left a small red mark on her heel that she showed everyone. She claimed that I abused her and she claimed that to everyone, including her family and mine for years after that. She made me pay for everything that her and her sister had picked out at kohl’s and made me change my plan (to just go home) and instead walk them all the way back to their house (about 2.5 miles) carrying everything. They walked ahead of me about 15 feet the whole way to their house and spent the whole time making fun of me and barating me.

Her and her family tried very hard to make me change religions. They made me watch many documentaries and shows about their religion against my will and they even brought several holy figures and very religious friends to their house for special occasions just to try to convince me that their way was the only right way. They would ask me a lot of derogatory questions to make me feel stupid for not believing or participating. They would make me participate in things that I knew nothing about and didn’t want to do. I respect their religion, as I do everyone’s, and politely tried to abstain but she would get very mad, again claiming that I must not cares out her, then, and make me participate. I attended every special occasion that I could for her and her family. I even spent an entire Christmas Day away from my family and the traditions/plans that we had made so that she could make me watch her and her family open their gifts and partake in their traditions. This would have been okay if I had been seen as welcome, but instead, since I wasn’t part of their religion, I was intentionally isolated the entire day, especially by her. And the gifts that I had bought for her she wasn’t very fond of, so she would trash talk about them and how I could have done better and how I must not care about her at all because the gifts proved that I “didn’t know her at all” even though she would keep them and wear them (jewelry) or display them (souvenirs, stuffed animals, etc). She would pry at my insecurities to make them worse and make me feel like her life was miserable because of me.

Marching band meant the world to me, as did flying and filmmaking. She hated all of these things about me because they were things that she didn’t participate in, didn’t enjoy and were things that would take my attention away from her for a bit. She would constantly say things like “well why don’t you just quit school and break up with me to go be in the marching band, then.” That’s a very light attack compared to many that she had said to me on a daily basis and she meant them in a very serious and derogatory way to make me feel bad for participating in the things that I love. She only attended one marching band event throughout the entirety of high school but she wasn’t actually there to cheer me on. She managed to pull that facade off for my family and friends while she was there, but she slowly started isolating me from the band and all other people as the night went on so that she could keep control of me and my life. At any other time (all other performances and rehearsals throughout high school [including band concerts]) she would get mad immediately if I brought them up in conversation and when I was actively at them because she saw them as optional things that I was participating in because “I cared about them more than her”. She never attended any other event because, even though I would invite her and her family well in advance, I would remind her the week of or week before and she would claim that I never invited her and that it was way too late, she had something else to do during those times or simply wouldn’t attend out of spite. She would make me believe that I hadn’t invited her sooner and that I was crazy and stupid for thinking that I did. She argued with me on a daily basis about how I cared about band and filmmaking more than her even though I began giving up those parts of my life for her and I would break the rules and secretly pull my phone out all of the time to message her to keep “checking in” and keep her relatively calm while in class, at rehearsal, during concerts, etc...though she was always mad anyway. I attended every choir concert and IB event; church and family event that she had and cheered her on whole heartedly...hoping that she would be happy that I was there. Instead I would get ignored, not introduced to people I didn’t know, and constantly made fun of whenever possible...

Her strangle hold on my life may sound like something I could just walk away from at any time, but it was far more complicated than it seemed. Her and her family found ways to subliminally, and very forwardly, threaten me into staying in the relationship on a daily basis, again using my patience, sympathy and insecurities against me and degrading me like I was too naive and stupid too understand how to be in a proper relationship so they needed to teach me. I was, in fact, very naive because I believed them (specifically her) and believed that giving in to their lives, lies and treatment was for the better.

I hated myself and believed that I was a truly bad person in every way. I believed that I owed her and her family the world and my life. When I would tell her that I was in distress, she would just tell me that I should “go kill myself, then.” I subconsciously knew that a lot was wrong but I saw no way out but to try even harder every day, actually making my mental state/scar significantly worse every day...nearly leading me to a very different way out...

She always tried to make me plan dates that I couldn’t afford or wasn’t capable of doing at that age because I always “owed her one” for everything that I do wrong. I planned three dates in a row one time and she didn’t like a single one of them. Quite in the contrary. She told me flat out that she hated them and hated my ideas because they were childish, stupid and she didn’t like participating in the types of things that I had planned. These included a picnic, a nice dinner and movie with frozen yogurt at her favorite place, and an active date to jumpoline. She made me feel like I didn’t care; like a failure; like I didn’t know her at all; like I was stupid. She, of course, told everyone that we knew or met for weeks about how horrible I was at planning.

We had several classes together throughout high school, mainly French. She always made sure that I was aware that she knew French better than me and that my experience didn’t matter. If I tried to correct her when she said or wrote something incorrectly, she would get very angry; tell me, very seriously, to “shut up” and usually ignore me for a while. She would always try to be in a group with me in activities in that class but, just like speech and debate, she would isolate me from the group right away and insult me every time that I got something wrong. This morale destruction happened so frequently, slyly and subliminally that I believed that I was bad at everything and so I began shutting down in every class and activity that I took in high school, participating in activities less and less. I stopped doing homework for fear that I was always wrong and had no understanding, which was constantly reinforced by my poor testing and grades. At the time I truly believed that I was just stupid and couldn’t understand anything in school, not knowing that it was all in my head and I just wasn’t ever fully engaged ever again. I felt very left behind in school. Something that has always pained me very much...

This, of course, all came to a head on homecoming night of senior year. The night started at her house for photos where the attention was, no doubt, completely on her and how she looked. I wore one of my dads nice shirts, and, though it wasn’t the nicest shirt, it was what I had and what we could afford. For years, she had been buying dresses and sending me samples of the colors to force me to match her. She would refuse to help me pick anything out and I couldn’t afford to keep getting new outfits to match every special occasion. This time I had chosen my dads shirt because, even though it wasn’t a perfect match for color, it was a complimentary color. It was a nice shirt but it wasn’t the perfect shirt, which was made clear to me right away. She was immediately mad as soon as she saw me. She was quick to insult my outfit and so was her family. They felt that I looked like trash, that I have no class or style and that I didn’t care about her especially on special occasions. I was constantly reminded about that every time we encountered another person throughout the night, as she insisted to everyone that I didn’t care, which was obvious because I “didn’t try at all to match her and my shirt was awful”... This put me in a bad place from the get go.

We went to my dads house for a nice home cooked meal that I picked out and she, of course, hated. She didn’t eat much of it and very blatantly didn’t finish or clean up or have any gratitude for.

After dinner, my dad had offered to take us to the school for the dance. She didn’t like this idea because she hated my family very blatantly and picked out a few key things that my dad had said in the car on the way to the dance to immediately throw in my face as soon as we got out. My dad can definitely be abrasive, but that night he had actually been incredibly pleasant and kind to her all the way until we dropped her back off at home that night, so there was extremely little for her to be angry about, but she latched onto something and threw it in my face in front of everybody standing in line to get into the dance. She stormed off without me with her ticket to find one of her friends in line. I couldn’t find her so I had to enter the dance alone. As soon as I found her inside, she threw it in my face that I left her alone... the dark place grew so much stronger. She dragged me to do photos with one set of friends, then immediately abandoned me on the dark dance floor to go find different friends for no reason other than to make me chase her. I looked for her for almost a half an hour, but couldn’t find her, so I found some friends at a table in the cafeteria to sit with and calm down. Not even five minutes after that, she shows up and yells at me in front of the friends about not caring, abandoning her, how terrible I look and how I am an all around terrible boyfriend and person. She then found a way to quickly convince our friends to scramble away with her again to go find other friends, leaving me alone at the table...

I didn’t get up and chase her that time...

I sat and stared at my phone for the rest of the night as though I was doing something important as best as I could to cover up the fact that I was in an extremely dire mental state. I was just staring at a blank phone in all actuality. But the plan worked. Nobody talked to me or noticed me for the rest of the night. When she finally came back a long while later, alone, she only came to request that I call my dad to come get us and take us home. I did so, then made one final plea for help to her without being too obvious about my distress so that I wouldn’t leave myself open for an attack for being “stupid” or “weak” about my emotions, but she ignored me, as usual, and sat in silence. We left in silence and dropped her off in silence.

That night, I got home and immediately got into PJs...barely...said goodnight to my dad and step mother, thanking them for all that they did that night and went to bed. I lay my head down and wanted nothing more than for the mental torture of myself (believing that I was a horrible person and I ruined her life and her important night again) to stop and stop for good, so I buried my face in the pillow and pinched my nose as hard as I could, thinking that I could smother myself and it would at least look like somewhat of an accident. Only moments later I passed out...

Fortunately, I had rolled away from the pillow and had managed to breathe again. I didn’t wake up until the next morning, however. I woke up very dazed and confused. I wasn’t sure that what I had done the night before was actually real but it very slowly sank in as I lay in bed for hours, slowly thinking. I was lucky to be alive and, though that was a very stupid and ineffective way of thinking of killing myself, I realized that my thoughts were so clouded that night that I didn’t have time to contemplate a better way. I knew that if this continued that I eventually would, which actually scared me literally almost to death because it’s not who I am. I didn’t understand then why I had decided that I had decided that this was the best course of action that I could possibly take. I thought that I was just generally depressed and that I was overall terrible at life. I didn’t understand what was actually happening at all but I knew that something had to change. I immediately began planning a long, difficult, but desperate plan to leave her. Subconsciously I knew that it was the right thing to do, but I never full understood why I knew it would make things better...maybe that makes me very naive...but that’s just the truth...

When I finally did leave her, it was a very messy situation, but I felt very liberated. I was very foolish and rash in everything I did for a while because I was so mentally damaged from such a long period of abuse. I had no idea that was what was going on, though. I felt better, but not right. I thought that I would feel like I was always supposed to. Like I would be healthy and smarter again. However, I actually felt very hollow and damaged. I didn’t know why and I definitely didn’t realize that the scar was so deeply created... It never went away...and perhaps got much worse over time, in fact, as it’s had time to brew subconsciously without me knowing.

These are only very few of the incidents and daily torments that I was put through. I didn’t realize how much pain it had actually put me in or how much pain it would continue to cause me for years. I never really knew why I wanted to kill myself over something so seemingly small. I guess, in a way, I knew subconsciously all along, but never wanted to pick at the details because it hurt too much as it was...

One of the things that has picked at me the most in recent years is how my mom views me. She believes that my high school struggles and my messiness and my lack of motivation are all learned behaviors from her because of the way she behaved and that my step father had put us both down to, which she believed was her fault for keeping him around. I always knew that this wasn’t true, it wasn’t her fault. The situation with my step father definitely didn’t help, however, I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t her fault or even his fault. I never could tell her that I disagreed, though, because I didn’t have an answer for why I am who I am and I have behaved the way that I have or why my high school years went so poorly. But, in these last couple of months I have realized that I actually had all of the negative behaviors and thoughts that I have described before she did and that it isn’t learned from one another at all. I realized that my years of brutal abuse started before hers and she has been going through it too now with my step father, and we just both react to our abuse in a similar way. I feel really guilty for not realizing this sooner and helping her understand and feel better about who I am and how I have turned out; that it’s definitely not her fault. She has taken so much out on herself about my life and it makes me very depressed. But I don’t know how to confront her about this now, because I don’t think that she will believe me or understand; at least not for many years after her relationship with my step father is over.

I am very broken and depressed and angry with myself and upset and...so many other feelings from this shock of realization of my abuse that I can’t help but feel the same put-down feeling that I had while it was happening. It’s like living in a nightmare, but it’s already happened before and it’s just as scary this time around. I am finding that I’m very sensitive to certain words, phrases, actions, etc. that I never know are coming, but they trigger little moments of panic or depression out of nowhere that I try very hard to hide. I never expect them and I know that none of them are intentional or with the same destructive motive at all, so I just usually have to mentally talk my way down, which typically doesn’t take very long if I have something to distract me, thankfully. But hiding it can be tough and I am sorry for all of the times that it does show (which is hopefully never) because it isn’t a baggage that I want anyone to ever see in person or have to put up with. These little triggers have been around for many years now, but I never really understood why. Sometimes they trigger little unpleasant memories, make my heart race, give me a little panic attack, make me suddenly defensive, etc. I like to think that I am pretty good at hiding the moment and just keeping them internal these days, because they are generally small enough moments and easy to hide, but the long term effect of each trigger is usually a depression that may last hours. I’ve been blowing these off as nothing more than unpleasantries that nobody needed to know about. I guess, for years, I just assumed that everybody has similar feelings and moments, which many probably do. It never really occurred to me, though, that having them daily...and multiple times daily...wasn’t a normal thing. I found out in my research that these are actually symptoms of a specific post traumatic illness that is very similar to PTSD and generally called, classified and treated the same way...

This is not who I am, but I know that this is part of my life now and forever and I have to find a way to push on...especially as other parts of life get a bit rough...

I have so many good parts of my life right now that I know I will never get back to my darkest state. With all of the little stresses piling up recently, it can be easy to give in to the depression that has always been there and likely always will be and it isn’t an opportune time to have had this realization...but then again...when would be... I just keep telling myself that I am very fortunate for the here-and-now and that everything is ok and will always be ok. I know it’s true and I just have to let that feeling fight it’s way through the rough...

All of this is a realization and also a confession that I hide a lot of things. I hide that I suffer from constant small headaches from muscle tension and grinding my teeth from stress, the constant aches and pains in my muscles from stress; I hide my constant anxiety and the real depth of my insomnia; I hide my nearly constant dark feeling; I hide my trigger moments; I hide my many health problems that concern me; I hide my very low self esteem. I don’t like hiding these things at all, but I am extremely embarrassed and nervous to ever let them show or discuss them. That’s why I usually shy away from the topics when they are brought up and start reverting to short answers with a dull look on my face... When asked if I’m ok, the answer will always be “yes”, but the reality is almost always “not really” and I actually hate that very much but I’m too afraid to say so because I’m embarrassed, so I hide it. I know that everything is and will be ok anyways, but it’s still very tough...

One of my least favorite parts of this is that every time I have a very good, happy, laughing, excited or enjoyable moment, it is almost always followed by an immediate, deep crash into negative emotions and depression that I have to try extremely hard to hide for the betterment of those around me (so that I don’t ruin the good moments) and out of embarrassment. Sometimes, I will try so hard to hide it and I will become too seemingly positive or excited about stuff that I may go overboard with it and almost seem like I’m awkwardly trying to cover up something which brings out my biggest fear that I will be caught in my insecurity. I try really hard to come across very positive for those around me all of the time, or as often as possible. I always have as I like helping others. I like helping others see a different perspective; I like making others feel like their life matters, I like being seen as a positive, uplifting person when people need it most. I don’t mind being the mediator in tense situations if I know that I can bring the conversation or mood back to a calm and happy one. The horrible truth is that, usually, when I am being positive for others I am actually in one of my mentally darkest moments. I am hiding my pain with my positivity. I don’t like having to hide things this way, but my desire to be positive for others is real at the same time. It’s very complicated to understand this mix of feelings as I don’t understand it myself. I feel that my positivity leads people as far away from my dark insecurity as possible and theirs at the same time. It makes me feel safe from giving into negativity for the world to see and keeps me from being the center of attention in a very negative and embarrassing way. It sounds very selfish when I put it all out this way, but I do actually want those around me to be in a good place and I’m glad that I can help them.

Letting out all of these thoughts is maybe what I need but to also relive what happened to me when I thought that I had blocked most of it out makes it hurt all over again, almost as much as it did in the moment. However, I know that I already learned a lot from that period of my life and I’m still learning a lot, I guess, but it is still hard to get passed it anyway. I know that good things are always coming and this deep pain will hopefully pass. I do fear that I won’t be able to hide what is happening to me forever and showing it is the last thing that I want. I don’t ever want this to interfere with anything good in my life or any time that I get with the people that I love and care about in my life. I truly hate that she still has a strangle hold on every aspect of my life because of the way that she damaged my mind and I hate that it is so difficult to break out of the habits, emotions and behaviors that have such current and long-lasting negative impacts.

I don’t want to feel the deep negative emotions from my trauma all over again, but they are here to stay for a while, and I know that they won’t ever quite go away, but it will lessen with more time...I hope. And this rough patch will be short lived because of all of the real love I receive from everyone around me... and for that I am always grateful...

If you are reading this, then I have decided that sharing this was important to our relationship. I am by no means looking for attention or sympathy. In fact, quite the opposite. I have been very undecided about sharing this at all because l am very embarrassed by it and it makes me feel weak and I have had a deep and unfounded fear that I won’t be understood...it has nothing to do with wanting to keep secrets or worrying specifically about how anyone will take it because I know that, in reality, everyone will be accepting and caring. Those that I am closest to truly love me very much and I know that. I don’t want you to think that it has anything to do with you or our relationship (whatever that may be) that I didn’t share this sooner or haven’t been open with you. I care about you and our relationship and my relationship with everyone close more than anything else in my life, which is why I know I need to share this. It’s just really hard to put all of your insecurities out in the open to anyone...I hope that you understand that... As I’ve been writing this for about two months now (mostly written in two nights with constant editing and adding since) and reading over and over, I’ve been so dazed on it all. Maybe I’m just being very over dramatic about the whole thing, but the emotions from this are very real and very strong. I sit in my car at lunch eating alone, trying to figure out how to be okay with myself so that I can keep going. I’ve spent a lot of my sleepless time working on this, making sure that I say everything that I want to and mentally building up the courage to share it and trying to decide the right time to let this be read... I don’t think that I’m ready to talk about this in person yet, but thank you for taking the time to read it and soak it in with me...it means enough right now...

#abuse #emotions #story #memories #memory #hurt #pain #writing #aesthetic #my story #emotional abuse #psychological abuse #narcissistic abuse #thoughts #long reads #reading

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ink-flavored · 4 years

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Writeblr Q+A

Tagged by @silver-wields-a-pen !! Thank you <3

Rules: Fill it out, post your answers, and tag some pals.

1. When did you first learn you enjoyed writing?

Well, I’ve known I enjoyed reading pretty much ever since I could comprehend words. Before I even really knew what I was doing, I would tell myself and my younger sister stories, and write down my day in a journal to have stories to read later.

My first experience with creative writing was in middle school, when we were asked to write poems every day for our poetry unit. That’s when I remember actually enjoying the act of writing for writing’s sake, but you could count my 6 year old ramblings too, if you wanted!

2. Tell us about the first project you ever wrote.

The first one I remember, not sure if it was actually the first one I ever wrote, was about a girl who had a wereworlf-esque ability to turn into a dragon. It was pretty much my dream. It still is.

3. How does your favorite media shape who you are as a writer?

To this day, my favorite book series -- The Inheritance Cycle -- has influenced the way I write magic systems, telepathic connections, my penchant for fantasy, and is absolutely where my love of dragons came from. I’m not sure where I would be without The Inheritance Cycle, truly.

But it’s not the only one! Reading House of Leaves was a fascinating dive into a genre I don’t normally read, and it really showed me that horror wasn’t just about gore and monsters (which is why I normally stay away). Playing the Dragon Age games showed me just how much you can do with characters. Probably some more I can’t think of have influenced me as well.

4. What's something you've wanted to write, but aren't sure you could? (A tv show, a genre, a style, a time period, a video game, etc)

I’d like to finish the game I started writing, one day. Maybe write some more.

I’ve dipped my toes into horror a little bit, but I know I’m not at all experienced enough to write a narrative in the genre. The problem is that I’m a giant wimp who doesn’t like being scared and also I’m squeamish. So that rules out a giant chunk of horror content for me to study lol

5. What is the thing that keeps you from writing the most?

Myself, for sure. Whether it be writer’s block, getting stuck in the fine details that don’t matter, or simply not having a plot to go with the story I want to write the most.

That, and having to work a nine-to-five. I suffer at the hands of capitalism.

6. How do you deal with an inner editor?

I don’t, really? I’m one of those people who’s half-editing as they write, though I’ve been trying to curb it lately. I’ve gotten over myself recently, not really caring what any of it says until I actually have to be editing. I just focus on having fun!

7. How long have you been writing?

Uhhhh... good question.

For Real Actually, probably since that middle school English class from earlier. Maybe “officially” the next year, but definitely around that time is when I decided I really loved writing and wanted to do it for a living.

8. What is your general writing process? Do you write chronologically? Do you do a lot of planning?

Pfft. Process, that’s cute.

I kinda do whatever? Stories come to me in all manners and in all forms -- just aesthetics, just a plot, just a character, just a single scene or line of poetry. I do as much planning as my brain allows, but I do like to have a skeleton outline of the main story beats before I actually sit down to start writing anything.

I absolutely love world-building tho. I do that so much.

9. Assign a scent to your writing style.

Oh, but that depends so much on WHAT I’m writing!!!!

But if I must choose... a scented candle in an abandoned house, covered in dust and falling to ruin. Comfort in a place where comfort should not be.

10. One book you hope everyone reads?

Lately, I’ve been re-discovering Eavan Boland’s poetry, and I’m currently reading her most recent collection. I’d recommend anyone who wants to write poetry -- or even just likes poetry! -- to read anything by her.

11. What is it about your least favorite genre that makes it your least favorite--and how might you change that to better appeal to you?

You know how they say hate and love are two sides of the same coin? There’s a difference between a genre boring me and a genre inspiring enough passion to incite hatred. That difference, reader, is wanting it to be better.

I used to think horror was the worst genre on the planet (anxiety and panic disorder notwithstanding) even though a lot of the genre has things I should like -- putting characters through trials to reveal their true selves, stories that make you think about yourself and the world, all that stuff. I hated it because, from what I saw in popular media, it focused too much on gore and was more concerned with being a scary story than an interesting story -- which has its merits! It just wasn’t what I was looking for.

Stuff like House of Leaves and Welcome to Night Vale really showed me exactly the kind of horror I like. Which is, little to no gore and scares that settle deep. There is so much about both that I think about to this day, episodes I haven’t listened to in months or years. House of Leaves is a story about the protagonist descending to madness and you get to watch it in real time -- knowing it could easily be you. I like horror that reminds us we’re all human, and that being a human is very, very scary on its own.

So, more horror needs to be like that.

12. Design a "collector's edition" for your first novel. Include items that might be of interest to your audience.

MAP. BIG HUUUUGE MAP. I love maps. It’s gotta have a big map poster in FULL COLOR, BABEY!!!!

13. If one thing was real from your project, what would you want it to be?

Dragons. You have no idea how much I want dragons to be real.

14. What's something you always include in your work? Do you have any other Easter eggs?

I like magic, I like dragons, and both of those show up an uncanny number of times in what I write.

15. What is your favorite passage from your own work?

Jeez, that’s a tough one. I write so much stuff! But something I am very proud of is from a flash fiction called One Minute:

You cannot move, or the minute will reset. If you move, you will have to keep sitting. You will have to start over. The creature will surely kill you. If you move. The minute. Will. Reset. If you move. You. Will. Die.

It has been forty-five seconds.

You can’t see the creature, but you know that it’s big. It blocks the light behind you, casting a massive, dark, endless shadow. It is darker than a shadow should be. Darker than the night sky. Darker than the blackness behind your eyes.

You pray to God. You pray to any God.

It has been forty-nine seconds.

I like to read it out loud!! It sounds nice to say imo

Aaaaand, that’ll be it!

Tagging (no pressure!): @royalbounties @rrrawrf-writes @rainy-rose @blueinkblot @sunrisecitrusuniverse @tenacious-scripturient and anyone else who wants to do this!! Consider yourselves tagged!

#annika talks #ask game #long post

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blueluneacy · 5 years

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Personal Update

If you've been following me for a while, then you're probably used to this blog going through… Phases. I tend to have periods of high activity and low activity. It's a combination of both my mood and my schedule, but Recently, I discovered something that horrified me, my worst nightmare realized.

After staring at a page for over an hour, I realized I had burnout. I looked for other causes. Maybe I was tired, or sick, or just had writers block. I looked for legitimately any other cause, because the idea of not being able to write absolutely horrifies me. I've always been writing, always been a writer. It was a massive blow to me. I've always heard about burnout, but I thought, never me! Besides, I don't have the time to be lazy, all of you are waiting for my next post. If I don't post soon, people aren't going to care anymore. In a funny twist, I, the person who constantly preaches on how you need to write for yourself, was not doing that.

And it's not to say that I don't enjoy the requests I'm getting! Some of them can be very same, but I have the power to delete something already done! If I don't like it, I don't have to do it, right? Well, sorta. I've been forcing myself to do something… Weird. I've been making myself write requests in order of when I get them, as some sort of act of fairness. Which on the one hand, sounds fair, but on the other, has honestly made me hate some of my own ideas. I hate writing TA Jotaro now, because I'm constantly doing it, and I don't know why. I used to love the concept, hell, I came up with it! Is there something wrong with me? I don't know.

I started looking into cures for burnout, to try and get something, some pill so I could keep working. But, it doesn't work like that, unfortunately. The only way to cure burnout is… To change. To stop, take a break. But I took a short break before, and I'm still here, burnt out. Well, I never really solved the problem of before, I only prolonged the time it would take me to get here. I honestly don't know what to do other than wait. Even writing this feels agonizing to me for some reason. And it's not just jojo, either. I tried writing so much, from stuff with my ocs, other fandoms, even poetry, but nothing came out. I don't know what to do at this point other than wait it out, but that idea scares the heck out of me, if I'm not writing, what do I do?

For those who don't know, I work at a Bath and Body Works as well as go to school. My job isn't my passion, but it helps fund college and it's decent work. The people are weird, but that's not the point of my little anecdote. At work, part of what I do is sell candles. Massive, three wick scented candles, meant to last for over forty hours of continuous burning. But, I also do returns. About once a week, someone comes in and returns an empty candle container,all used up. While I think it's the stupidest thing, our return policy states that we have to take them, so take them I do, looking over the empty container, with metal prongs and char all along the sides. And God, I feel like those empty candle containers right now! And the problem is, at work, we throw them out. You get rid of them and get a new candle. But I can't just throw out my brain and get a new one. And writing is my outlet, my coping mechanism. I don't know what to do with myself when I'm not attempting to write.

A friend of mine told me to look at things from a different angle. To turn what I'm thinking on its head and work from there. So… I'm gonna try. I'm closing requests now, and I'm still going to attempt to work on them, but well… They'll get done eventually, I just don't know when. As for me working on my burn out… I'm going to try and work on something new. I want to finish Wrong with the Reaper, I want to write more Diavolo, I have so many ideas that I feel like could be interesting and outside my normal realm of what I do, and thinking about them does make me excited in this time where I honestly feel so… Dull.

They say burn out can manifest physically, in extreme exhaustion. I've been sleeping almost all the time when I'm not working, to the point where my dad asked if I needed to have a sleep study. In a way, this realization has made a lot of pieces in my head click.

The raffle is still gonna end at the same time. I'm gonna draw tomorrow still and make a post, and the raffle winnings are gonna take precedent over the requests, just because they're a prize and all. I'm hoping maybe these longer flics will help too, maybe I'll work more on prose or something.

If you want to interact with me, talk to me, or maybe see my wips (always lookin for proof readers lmao), join my discord server at https://discord.gg/gQEEVMf. While I'm still gonna check my inbox here, it's a much easier way to reach me and talk to me.

Thanks for reading. You guys mean so much more to mean than you could ever possibly know. In a way, my burnout has stemmed from my constant race of being up to my own standards, as well as trying to be something that uplifts your day in my writing. I don't know anymore. What I'm trying to say is, thank you all. I'm writing is at almost four a.m. when I couldn't sleep, and I'll probably post it when I wake up. I never thought anyone would like my writing, but people who I have considered fucking idols in the jojo writing section of tumblr have even complimented my work, and it just makes me so happy that people I adore like my work, but also terrified, horrified that I will sooner or later disappoint. But, I'm still alive, I'm still living, still going. And I know that if I keep going, eventually, I think I'll get through this.

#personal update #personal #not writing #requests closed

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timelordthirteen · 5 years

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Killing Time 18/?

Detective Weaver/Belle French, Explicit

Summary: A Woven Beauty Law & Order-ish AU. Written for Writer’s Month 2019.

Chapter Summary: A little time apart, brings clarity.

Notes: Warning in this chapter for more talk of the miscarriage. I'm surprised at the low levels of hate I got on that last chapter. I thought there might be a bit more venom, but I had also hoped it was obvious that Weaver wouldn't be leaving for long. I hope this soothes all the wounds as we set up our pair for the homestretch and some surprising revelations.

Warnings: Miscarriage reference and discussion. Please see AO3 for complete warnings and tags.

[AO3] Previous: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

By the time the elevator reached the ground floor, Weaver knew he had fucked up.

By the time he stepped out into the cool fall air and lightly falling rain, he also knew he deserved every one of Belle’s cutting remarks. In the moment it had been hard to stop the same old things from happening, to keep from pushing and pushing until they both said things they’d regret. Of course he’d stormed out of his own apartment like a jackass, and even though he wanted to go back up immediately, he needed to clear his head and figure out what to say before he did.

He flipped up the collar of his jacket and shoved his hands in the pockets, heading north towards the convenience store that was two blocks away. It was a walk he made often. When his mind couldn’t let go of a case, he would make his way down to the store, a short list of grocery items in his hand; milk, bread, or the chocolate chip cookies he’d become a little too partial to. The distance there and back was long enough to unwind his brain and either let him see the connections he was missing, or helped him to relax and let it go until tomorrow.

Sighing, he waited at the corner, watching the traffic pass, the tires squelching against the wet asphalt. He hoped Belle was all right. That was truly his greatest worry, that his leaving wouldn’t just upset her, but that it might send her into some kind of fit, like what she’d had when they returned to her apartment. He didn’t know what went on in her nightmares or in the moments where she would stare off into space, only to startled herself back to reality.

She didn’t think he noticed as much as he did, so he chose not to interrogate her, the same as he’d done after the miscarriage. He realized now, entirely too late, that method had probably made things worse. What had happened recently wasn’t healthy for either of them and was likely making it all worse. She didn’t love him. He’d resigned himself to that fact, in spite of the attraction that still simmered between them.

A sign glowed up ahead, MINI MART in large red letters cutting into the darkness, and the rain started falling faster. Weaver pushed inside the store, and headed for the counter.

“Evening, Detective.”

The man behind the counter smiled at him, and Weaver gave him a short nod. “Pack of Parliaments, please, Sam.”

Sam’s eyebrows lifted as he reached up to retrieve a pack from the slots above him. He set it down and then slid it forward across the counter before stepping to the side to ring up the purchase.

Weaver tossed a cheap Bic lighter on the counter as well, and then pulled out his wallet. The math had been familiar once upon a time, the cost of a pack of cigarettes and a lighter at your average convenience store or gas station.

“8.50,” Sam said, waiting as a ten dollar bill was laid down. He dropped the change in Weaver’s hand, and frowned as he walked out the door.

Outside, the rain was more insistent. Weaver peeled the plastic off the outside of the pack and dropped it in the trash can on the corner. He stared at the rows of cigarettes in the slim, white box, and exhaled. It had been over ten years since he’d quit smoking, replacing the periodic smoke break with scotch at the end of the day, but old habits were too easy to fall back into lately.

He pulled one out, stuffing the rest of the pack deep in his pocket, and set it between his lips. The lighters were even cheaper and more finicky than he remembered, and that combined with the fat, steady drops hitting him, made it take several flicks before the flame sprang up. He could feel the heat of it on his thumb, almost searing with how close it was. The wind made it wobble, and then abruptly snuffed it out, and he sighed. Perhaps it was a sign.

“Hey, buddy, you got one of those for a man who served his country and then got the shaft?”

Weaver turned, frowning, and saw a man in a long green coat, military style, sitting on a bench. The jacket was not unlike the one he’d picked up at the surplus store ages ago. The man looked mildly disheveled and dirty, like he’d slept in his clothes one too many nights, and Weaver assumed he probably had, likely on that very bench or in one of the many alleyways. His face was thin, and his beard and hair ragged. The city had done a lot recently to try to help the homeless population, but it was clearly not enough.

“Sure,” Weaver said, giving the man a crooked smile. “Take the whole fucking pack, mate.”

He tossed the cigarettes at the man, who caught it one handed, followed swiftly by the lighter.

“You for real?” The man looked at his hands and then up at Weaver.

Weaver shrugged. “Yeah. I quit too long ago to start up again.”

The man nodded and lit up, sending a curling stream of smoke into the wet air. “I hear ya, but a man’s gotta have something to get him through his troubles, right? Good brew, good smoke, or a good woman.”

Weaver looked away, and then reach inside his coat to pull out one of his contact cards. “Hey, you know the diner over on 15th? Granny’s?”

The man eyed the card as he held it out. “Yeah?”

“Take this and give it to the waitress with the red streak in her hair. She’ll make sure you get a good meal.”

The man took his card carefully, holding it up as he took another puff of the cigarette. “Detective Weaver.” He looked up and shoved the card in his breast pocket. “I appreciate that, but as you can see I am a bit down on my luck at the moment. Left my wallet on the bus.”

Weaver let out a short laugh. “I know that feeling.” He pulled out his wallet again and took out his last bill, handing it to the man. “The meal’s on the house with my card, but there’s a place just down from the diner, across Lake Street. It’s not great, but this’ll get you a room for a few hours, get you out of the rain. Take care of yourself.”

He turned to leave as the man blinked at him, calling out, “Thanks, Detective.”

Weaver raise his hand, waving the man off as he stalked back down the street. He was starting to feel damp, and there was a tightness in his chest again. Fucking good deeds. He’d never done much of that before Belle. He wouldn’t have chased the man off, but he wouldn’t have given him the time of day either.

The walk back to his building was faster than the walk to the mini mart, but not just because of the increasing rain. He hadn’t really decided anything except that he wanted to be home, with Belle, whatever that was for now. He’d have to apologize, but she wasn’t wrong. His father’s influence plagued him even now, decades after leaving Glasgow and a grave behind. He wiped a rough hand over his face, and shook his head. She was right. As soon as things had become difficult, he looked for the corner to cut. It was how he’d come close to nearly drowning a man in a warehouse, and how he’d walked away from the best thing in his life.

The miscarriage hadn’t been the start of anything, only the culmination of the pile of fuck ups that his life had always been. The worst was that Belle was still carrying it with her, even almost three years later. The circumstances of it hadn’t helped, and overall it had clearly been more traumatic that he’d ever understood. It triggered the end of their marriage, and he was sure that had only contributed to her dwelling on the event.

All because they’d both been too afraid to talk about what they were thinking and feeling.

Shaking his head again, he punched in the code for the outside door and yanked it open as it buzzed.

Bell’s tears dried on her cheeks as she lay curled up on the sofa.

Eventually, she made herself get up and go to the bathroom where she stripped off her clothes and stood in the hot spray of the shower. The steam curled up around her as she drew her finger down the glass, clearing it momentarily and watching as it fogged over again. She could still see the line, the smudge of her skin left behind on the glass, just as she could still see Jack’s blood in her kitchen when she closed her eyes.

Turning, she tipped her face up into the water, letting it run over her head and soothe the steady ache in her temples. Surprisingly, she wasn’t worried about where Ian had gone. He often went for walks when a case was bothering him. Sometimes she’d go along, the two of them strolling quietly arm in arm for a few blocks, listening to the city around them, before turning and heading back home.

This was still his apartment, and it was unlikely that he’d stay away all night. After he returned, she needed to apologize, and it didn’t matter how late that was. She doubted she’d sleep much without him around anyway. Bringing up his father had been a low blow, something she’d never ever done before, not even during their worst fights. Everything she’d heard of the man was despicable, and to throw that in Weaver’s face, especially when she suspected he was just as vulnerable as she, was unfair.

She scrubbed her face and washed her hair before turning around to let the water beat on her neck and back. Her head was still pounding, but that always happened after she was upset, and it was nothing that a little aspirin wouldn’t cure.

Her mind drifted back to the moment in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago. Ian had said he loved her, and she’d been so ready to say it back, as soon as she caught her breath, when Rogers called. Since then she’d been holding it in, thinking that somehow it would be better if he went on thinking she didn’t feel the same, that it would make it easier to go back to their separate lives when all this was over.

She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for them to be together again. Despite their best intentions, things between them only ever seemed to get worse. If they tried again only to fall apart once more, she wasn’t sure she could come back from that, not after - everything.

More and more she had been thinking it might be a good idea to talk to someone about what had happened to her, both the attack and the miscarriage. She didn’t have perspective on any of it, and how could she when they were things that happened to her? The logical part of her brain said to stop dwelling on it, to let it go, but that was obviously easier said than done. She’d tried, so many times, and at one point she was convinced she’d finally moved beyond it, only to have the stupidest thing bring it back.

Maybe it was the fact that she blamed the miscarriage for ruining her marriage, and as a by product, herself. Again, logic insisted that was silly. Yet here she was, standing in the water as it slowly turned cold.

She shivered and reached for the faucet.

Belle was back on the sofa, a movie she’d seen at least ten times playing on the TV, in her soft flannel pajama pants and a tank top, when Weaver came home. She heard the click of the lock before the door slid open, and twisted in her seat.

Weaver seemed almost surprised to see her, but he gave her a flat smile and a shrug.

She pushed herself up, goosebumps rising up on her bare arms. “I'm sorry.” She waited until he turned back to her, having draped his leather jacket over one of the bar stools. “I - I didn't mean it,” she continued. “I swear, Ian, I - I didn’t.”

He shook his head and took a step forward. “No, you did. And you were right.”

“No,” she insisted. “I'm not.” He frowned slightly, and she noticed his hair looked slightly damp from the rain. “Where did you go?”

“Down the block to the corner store,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “I bought a pack of Parliaments, stepped outside, realized I hadn't smoked in a fucking decade, and I really didn't want to start up again.” She seemed startled by that, and he sighed. “So I gave the pack, one of my cards, and my last twenty to a homeless Vet, and sent him to Granny’s.”

Belle’s head tilted. “Ruby still work there?”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another cautious step forward. She hadn’t moved from her spot by the sofa, though she had obviously showered and changed. Perhaps she hadn’t felt as bad about his leaving as he’d feared, which only solidified her lack of feeling for him in his mind.

“I told him to give my card to the woman with a red streak in her hair and she'd make sure he ate well.” He gave her a half smile and shrugged.

“See?” She smiled back at him even as tears sprang to her eyes. “You are better than your father. You're a good man, Ian.”

He looked down at his boots. “Sometimes.”

“No.” Her strong voice, made him look up. “All the time. You're not - “

He shook his head again. “No, I am. A lot more than I ever wanted to admit. Shit gets hard and I...”

He sighed and swallowed.

“Ian...”

“You pushed me away,” he managed, somehow finding his voice even though his throat felt dry and tight. “After...”

She nodded, her lips pressed tight as her arms folded around her torso. “I know.”

“I didn't know what to do.” He let his right arm rise and fall, palm slapping against his thigh. “Or what you wanted me to do.”

“Why?” Belle sniffed loudly and wiped at her eyes. Her lip wobbled and she touched her fingertips to it, fighting to hold back the anguished noise on the back of her tongue. “Why did you let me? Why didn't you fight for us?”

He exhaled heavily, his eyes closing for a moment. “I know how to fight for what I want when it's work,” he admitted, the realization like a lead weight in his gut. “When it's a case, or a warrant, or a theory. But not - not when what I want is you.”

She came closer, drawn in by the raw emotion in his voice, until only the width of the sofa separated them. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I didn't know what to do either. I knew something was wrong. I knew and I should have...”

Her body swayed, and Weaver moved quickly, catching her by her arms so she wouldn’t fall to the floor. Her hands came up, but she didn’t fight him, just pressed her hands to his chest, her eyes fixed on the sliver of exposed skin where his shirt opened at the neck.

“I should have...” She cut off her own words with a ragged sob and curled her hands into fists.

“Belle, no,” he said, trying to pull her to him. “No, please, sweetheart. Come on, let's sit. Let's just calm down.”

She reeled and pushed hard against him, trying to shove him away, but there wasn't enough strength left in her arms.

“I don't want to calm down!” One hand pulled back and came down on his chest in a feeble thump. “I want to be angry! I want to scream!”

Her body shook again and her eyes squeezed shut as she let out the most tortured noise he’d ever heard. His heart nearly broke at the sound of it, and he let her fall against him, his arms coming up around her to hold her tight as she buried her face and yelled into his shirt.

“You be angry then,” he said, squeezing her gently. Her breath was hot through the fabric, and he could feel the faint wetness of her tears, almost the same as the rain outside. “Be whatever you need to be.”

Belle’s face turned to the side and one hand opened against him, her palm pressed over his heart where it was pounding in his chest. “You weren't there...”

“I know.” He took a shaky breath and closed his eyes, resting his cheek on top of her head. He wasn't there when she needed him, and it would be his greatest regret. “I'm so sorry, Belle. You're right, I should have been there.”

After a minute, he guided her towards the sofa, and they sat down, side by side. His arm stayed around her shoulders, and she twisted sideways to curl against him. She seemed so small and fragile to him, so diminished from her usual fiery self.

"We were so happy," she said. "And then - then everything fell apart, and I couldn't stop it. It was like you put a wall up between us. I thought maybe you hated me."

Weaver pulled back as she sniffled into his shirt. "What? No. Why?"

She glanced up briefly. "Because of the miscarriage?"

His eyes went wide. "No! No, never, Belle, never. I could never ever be mad at you for that, okay?"

She breathed out and in, relief flooding her as she let his words sink in. "I didn't know that then. I didn't know what else had changed other than that."

He sighed and pulled her close, rubbing his hand up and down her back in what he hoped was a soothing motion. It felt good to be letting out the insecurities and uncertainties he'd been mulling over in his head for years.

"I thought you wanted space. I thought you'd tell me what you needed, what you wanted me to do. I didn't know how to handle any of it. It was like - like I'd lost some part of you too."

Her head moved, shaking no against him. "I didn't want space. But I didn't understand how it might feel for you."

She closed her eyes and relaxed into the steady stroke of his palm. It had never dawned on her that he felt the loss of their baby as keenly as she did. It wasn't fair to assume he could have just moved on as well.

"I felt like it just happened to me. I didn't think..."

"We both didn't." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and breathed in the light scent of her shampoo. "It was easier to focus on work, on things I could control. I thought it would all pass and then we'd be fine."

"Like it never happened?"

"No, not like that." His hand moved around to her side and hitched her closer, until she was practically sitting across his lap. She came willingly, her face pushing into the warm crease of his neck.

"I didn't want to forget that it happened. I just...I didn't want to see you hurting anymore," he said. "I thought maybe me being around was making it worse. We kept fighting over stupid shit."

She looked up at him with puffy, red rimmed eyes. "That was mostly my fault."

"Stop. Okay?" His gaze and voice were soft. "Just...nothing is anyone's fault anymore."

"It was," she insisted. "And I didn't realize that it would make you think I didn't want you around. I needed you and I pushed you away..."

"I should have asked why you left, but I just..." He exhaled and tried not to think of his father. "I gave up. I don't believe you can make anyone stay in a relationship, I learned that the hard way with Milah."

"Yeah."

The mention of his ex-wife stung. His shit of a father and his awful ex; how many more terrible memories could she dredge up and throw in his face?

"I wanted you to be happy. I thought if being rid of me did that, then okay, I would give you that, and I wouldn't fight it."

She shifted, freeing her arms enough to wrap one around him and lay the other over his shoulder. She needed to hold him as much as she needed to be held. She needed him to know that it was okay, that she didn't blame him either.

"God, I fucked everything up."

His lips twitched. "I think I contributed a solid sixty percent."

She pulled back just enough to give him a look. "So this is a group project now?"

"Explains why everyone is miserable."

Unable to help herself, she let out a snort into his chest, and bit her lip as she smiled up at him. "It's not all bad."

"No?" His look was almost incredulous. "We have six dead bodies, two serial murderers, and zero actionable leads."

"I meant with us," she clarified. Her lips quirked slightly at him. "But thanks for the depressing recap, Detective Maudlin."

He rolled his eyes and muttered a sorry, grateful for the break in the tension. “Do you feel any better?"

"Yeah," she admitted, sliding off of his lap and pushing to her feet. "Sorry, I guess I had kinda saved all that up."

Both of his eyebrows lifted as he stood. "Apparently..."

She gave him a look and shook her head, more at herself than anything. "I'm sorry I hit you. Before."

"Don't worry about it." He smiled crookedly and rubbed at the middle of his chest. "I'm tougher than I look." Belle smiled and looked away, and he reached for her, resting his hand on her shoulder. “Do you...want to talk about anything else?”

Belle sighed and raised her hand, pulling his hand off her shoulder as she turned. “No. I just - really want to go to bed.”

Her hand slipped into his, and he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles as he exhaled. Another night sharing a bed with Belle probably wouldn’t kill him. “Okay.”

“And, um...” She took a breath and squeezed his hand. “I love you.” Weaver blinked at her, and she shrugged, giving him a soft, half smile. “I never stopped, Ian. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner.”

He felt the air rush out of him as her hand moved up his chest. She looked tired and worn out, but her red tinged eyes were still the most beautiful he’d ever seen. He felt all the tension draining out of him, all the shit from the last two years and the last few months fading to the back of his mind.

“I love you too,” he managed as she pushed up on her toes to kiss him.

It was soft, almost startlingly so given how rough and passionate their most recent encounters had been. She caught his bottom lip, briefly, and when she made to pull away his hand came up to cradle the back of her head and draw her back to him. Her mouth opened, her tongue brushing lightly over his. It was teasing or wanton, but more familiar and quiet, like the kisses they'd often shared in the late hours before they both fell asleep.

She swayed a bit as she broke the kiss, but he held her firmly, the corner of his mouth curved.

“I don't...I don't know where we go from here,” she said, her fingers playing with the collar of his shirt. Her mind felt dizzy and sleepy, her body almost languid now that she'd let out so much of what she'd been holding inside.

He sighed and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a hug. “Me either, to be honest.” She yawned against him, and he dropped a kiss to the top of her head. “How about we start with sleep, breakfast at Granny's, and take it from there?”

Belle tilted her head up and smiled. "That sounds like the best idea you've ever had."

It was a matter of minutes for Weaver to strip off his clothes, leaving himself in just his boxers. The rain had tapered off, but the lingering chill sneaking in through the drafty corners made Belle shiver. She drew back the covers and climbed into bed, settling herself on her usual side, waiting. A moment later, he slipped in next to her, sighing as she turned over and pressed against his side.

There was something achingly familiar about what they were doing, but instead of a sinking feeling of dread and a slight pain in his chest, there was a calming peace and a pair of cold feet on his leg. Her hair tickled his chin, and he smiled, closing his eyes.

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #woven beauty #woven beauty fic #my woven beauty fic #fic #killing time #cw miscarriage #omfg this chapter is so long

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let-it-raines · 5 years

Text

Catch Me If You Can (3/?)

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

But then he came back and won the World Series.

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

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

A/N: Shoutout to my spectacular beta @resident-of-storybrooke 🧡 I’m the worst writer and send her multiple chapters at a time instead of just the one, and she gets things back to me in record time!

We get some background information on Emma in this chapter to further set up the story, and I thank you for reading! I’m really, really excited about a lot of the things I have planned for this story!

I promise they interact in all chapters after this

Found on AO3: Beginning | Current

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Tag list: @sals86 @iam2307 @ashley-knightingale @snowbellewells @karenfrommisthaven @skyewardolicitycloisdelena91 @scientificapricot @captswanis4vr @emmas-storybook @ultimiflos @jamif @idristardis @nikkiemms @resident-of-storybrooke @tiganasummertree @wellhellotragic @bmbbcs4evr @onceuponaprincessworld @jennjenn615 @mayquita @captainsjedi @teamhook @kmomof4 @ekr032-blog-blog @ultraluckycatnd @cs-forlife @andiirivera @jonirobinson64 @mariakov81 @galaxyzxstark @qualitycoffeethings @thejollyroger-writer

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“What are you getting David for his birthday?”

Emma looks to her right where Ruby is stretched out on her yoga mat, doing a stretch that definitely isn’t anything that’s taught in a certified class. She can’t tell if she’s gotten stuck that way or if she’s simply given up on getting some early morning exercise. They really have to start going back to spin class sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow.

“I bought him some new dress shirts.”

“That’s boring.”

“Have you not gotten him anything, Rubes?” She swipes her blush against her cheek waiting for Ruby to answer. She doesn’t. “The party is tonight. You know that, right? And we’re about to be at work all day editing.”

“Why do you think I’m asking so that I have time to get Graham to go get something on his lunch break?”

“You have no shame.”

Ruby falls onto her mat, star fishing out on the floor before propping herself up on her elbows, her bun coming undone so that it hangs messily on her shoulders. “I know. So, what should I buy him? He’s turning forty. Is he having a midlife crisis? Should I get him some hair dye?”

“Only if you want to be murdered.”

Ruby grunts before rising from her mat and stretching out. “Eh, it might be worth it. I think I’ll just get him a Shake Shack gift card. I’m not his sister. I can get away with a semi-shitty gift.”

She chuckles as she grabs her brush for her bronzer and runs it across her cheekbone, blending it in. “It’s not semi-shitty if he takes us to lunch with it.”

“True. Alright,” Ruby claps, picking her mat up, “I’m going to go shower, and then we can go to work. Ten minutes tops.”

It��s twenty minutes, which is actually less time than Emma was expecting, before she and Ruby walk out of their apartment, walking the three blocks to their train station and swiping their metro cards to get through the gate so they can take the ten-minute ride to the studios. They rarely have to go into the actual offices before ten. The only time they have to be at work earlier than that is when there’s an early game and they have to make their way across Manhattan to get to the fields. That’s a bit of a bigger commute. But this morning the weather is relatively nice, the trains aren’t crowded or full of people in T-rex costumes, and she and Ruby get to the office and through security before they have to be there.

She leaves Ruby on the seventh floor before going up to the tenth to the editing room, her eyes having to adjust from the brightness outside to the dim lights inside the room that’s really only lit by screens.

“Anton, how the hell do you live in the sunlight after staying in here all day?”

Anton twists in his chair to look at her before turning back to the screen that he’s working on, clicking on a few keys as he speaks. “It’s only dark right now because I’m trying to get the lighting right on this edit. Something is wrong with the shadows. Get Ash to set you up. You’ve got over eight hours of footage to go through, so this probably isn’t going to get finished today.”

“He’s only talking in about an hour and a half of that.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to get the filler and then your notes. It’s a whole thing when you have a big segment like this. You’ll get used to it.”

She nods even though Anton isn’t paying any attention to her, before stepping into the room and around some of the editors she’s never worked with until she’s sitting down at Ashley’s workstation, picking up the pair of headphones that she uses and rolling up to the screen as she watches Ashely piece together several clips to promote whatever tennis tournament is going on right now. She thinks it’s the one in Palm Springs, but she hasn’t really been able to keep up with things lately.

“Sorry about that,” Ashley apologizes, flashing her a smile. “Alexandria had a late night last night, and I didn’t get into work in time to finish this up until you got here. But now my attention is all yours.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. She’s teething is all. It’s miserable for all of us.”

“I bet. I remember when Leo was teething. David aged about fifteen years.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she laughs, patting Ashley’s arm. “I won’t tell you any other stories about miserable babies. Let’s talk the interview.”

Ashley nods and clicks around on her computer until she’s pulling up Emma’s file, all of the hours of footage broken down. Emma has a basic understanding of how all of this works, but it’s mostly above her knowledge and paygrade. That’s why she’s glad to have people like Ashley and Anton, especially when they can easily throw out shaky or unusable footage to narrow things down even more. She tells Ashley that she wants to work on the main interview first, to make sure she can show all of the pieces she wants, and then they’ll work on finding the filler footage and the music to be played in the background. This is the first time Emma has ever worked on an edited segment that’s more than one minute, so it’s all a whole new world to her.

“This is good,” Ashley murmurs, her voice a small whisper outside of the headphones. “Like, really good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be this open before.”

“Jones? Jones is an open book.”

Her brows raise before settling back down at a regular height. “You are literally the most knowledgeable person on this subject in this building, and you think that Jones is an open book?”

“I mean, yeah. He’s baseball player, first and foremost. He’s young, hot, likes to spend his money and go out with every woman with big boobs and a pulse.”

Ashley actually laughs at that, rolling back in her chair before rewinding the video to a part where Killian is talking about his nieces and how they collect bobble heads, particularly his, and scatter them throughout their house for their parents to have to pick up. Emma remembers laughing at that, remembers thinking it’s sweet, but she’s not entirely sure why Ashley is showing it to her again.

“I know you probably hate him for asking you out like that, which was kind of a dick move, but anyone with eyes can tell he’s a sweet guy. I mean, he spent his injury break learning how to bake and sitting with his nieces so that they didn’t have to go to daycare. Yeah, he kind of had a period where he was pictured with a lot of girls, but that was when he was twenty-four and on top of the world. I mean, when you were twenty-four, you’re telling me you wouldn’t have been all over a pretty baseball player if you met him in a bar?”

“I hated all men at twenty-four.”

Ashely shakes her head from side to side, chuckling at her again. Emma hates to admit it, but Ashley is right. She knows that he’s not a bad guy, that’s not some sleazy player. No, he did not make the best decisions in asking her out last year, but in a move that surprised her, he very kindly apologized. And she really should not judge him over that time when he was pictured with girls all the time. For one, he probably dates as much as every other guy, but his dates happen to be publicized. She hates when women are shamed for dating, and here she is judging someone else.

His incessant flirting in all of his interviews and him asking her out have likely framed her view on him when she should know better than to judge by what appears on the surface.

She should also know better than to let a few pretty words make her trust someone.

“I met Sean at twenty-four.”

Emma sighs, curving her lips into a smile before patting Ashely’s arm. “And you two are wonderful. Let’s keep editing before we get distracted by you showing me a million baby pictures.”

“Dammit, Emma,” Anton groans from his seat, “the first rule of the editing room is that you don’t talk about baby pictures.”

After letting Ashley show her new pictures of Alexandra and those adorable chubby cheeks, they finally get around to some more editing, cutting questions that have repeated answers and editing out Emma’s laugh or weird coughing sounds so that she doesn’t look like a total maniac. There’s this part in the film where Killian is standing with his back to the camera and in front of a large set of windows that show off the field, and it looks like it could be a part of the Hall of Fame. It’s a gorgeous shot, and it’s where he’s talking about his hopes and dreams for baseball as well as wanting to get to live a normal life full of everything that his brother has.

Frankly, it’s beautiful enough to make her tear up.

They may just be her, though. As much as sports are about the statistics, about the executions, it’s also about the emotions. In the grand scheme of life, a baseball game doesn’t matter. These men getting paid millions of dollars to play a game don’t change the world. Except that they do. People live and die by the game, by the unpredictability, by the fact that it’s human beings out there pushing their bodies to limits that most people can’t reach. It takes everyone away from the world for a bit, lets them cheer for a happy ending, and even though the losses can be crushing, for just that little while, people feel hope.

Killian Jones coming back from injury, no matter how minor, to win the World Series, gave people hope.

It’s that thought process that guides her in helping Ashley and Anton edit the segment, and even though they only get about halfway through editing, they stop for the day so that Ashley can go home to her family and Anton to his while she walks down three flights of stairs to get to her office shoved into the corner of the corporate floor. There’s literally not even room in there for her to have an extra chair for someone to sit with her, but considering how little time she spends there now, that doesn’t matter. And it’s a step up from the cubicles.

Damn, her segment is going to be good.

This is…she knows she complained about it, and for the right reasons, but this is huge for her career. Right now, she’s more than happy doing post-game interviews and the occasional mid-game updates, but one day she might want to commentate or have her own show. One day she might want to move onto things other than sports. She’s getting ahead of herself, she knows. She simply can’t help it.

She’s excited, and she actually can’t wait to come into work tomorrow to get it all finished.

After sending a text to Ruby asking her if she’s almost ready to go, she logs into her computer and waits for her email to load, figuring she might as well get some more work done while she waits. Ruby’s timing at work is always so unpredictable when they’re not working together, so she has absolutely no idea when they’ll be able to leave to get on the train to Astoria. If only David was in the office today.

She doesn’t have much to sort through, just a few emails asking about the segment, another few talking about food that’s available in the office (she really hates that she missed those), and then another two from Walsh that she immediately deletes. They could be work related, but they’re most likely not.

Dating someone she works with was an absolutely horrible idea that she’ll probably never do again. Walsh is definitely an asshole, one that’s worse than all of the others, but he kind of ruined that workplace peace that she had for awhile. They’d both been stat checkers together, spent their days going blind reading spreadsheets and becoming friends, and when they both got promotions to journalists (ones who actually got to write articles) at the same time, she was pretty sure that it was fate or something crazy like that. They got to have the same job, the same schedule, and she was in that phase of infatuation in a new relationship that it made her stomach constantly feel like it was in those pleasantly painful knots.

Then she interviewed and auditioned for the on-air job to work with the Yankees.

It’s a moment that’s changed her life in an immeasurable amount of ways, but the first and most obvious – before Killian Jones 2k18 – was that her boyfriend of over a year resented her. He resented her, belittled her for what she did for a living, and it all felt so painstakingly familiar that she had to break up with him before he damaged her beyond repair too.

The fact that he was cheating definitely helped that decision.

So for him to still work under one hundred feet away from her in the office and still send her emails on a regular basis is a pretty big sting.

There is no one who got more enjoyment out of her being asked out on live television than Walsh Osborne.

Ruby: I am in the bathroom curling my hair. Meet you by the seventh floor receptionist desk in ten.

Emma: Where did you get a curling iron?

Ruby: The makeup room in the studio.

Of course she did.

Closing out her computer and slipping her booties back on, she leaves her office and locks it up before making her way through the cubicles, specifically going out of her way to avoid Walsh’s desk since she knows he’s still in the office, and waits by the receptionist area with David’s present in her hand. There’s no one sitting there, all of the calls being forwarded through the machine, and she idly wonders where in the world Jacob is.

“We have got to get whatever curling iron it is they use in hair and makeup,” Ruby sighs as she walks into the room, heels that she was not wearing this morning now on her feet and her hair curled into perfectly styled waves. “Seriously, it’s fantastic.”

“It’s, like, over three hundred dollars.”

“We can split it. You ready to go? Graham is going to meet us there.”

“Does he have David’s present?”

“Yep.” Ruby loops her arm through Emma’s elbow, pulling her closer, before walking toward the elevators. “He wins the award for the best boyfriend today.”

“Who is he in competition with?”

“Your non-existent boyfriend.”

She pinches Ruby’s arm, but she doesn’t say anything as the elevator opens and they walk inside. It’s always such a pain to go to David and Mary Margaret’s townhome from the office, if only because of the amount of times they have to switch trains, but it gives she and Ruby time to talk about their days and scroll through their phone, checking up on everything that they’ve missed while working.

(She usually finds time to look while at work. Knowing what’s happening in baseball players’ lives is important to her job, right? It doesn’t make her creepy if they put it online.)

Plus, it’s a Friday afternoon, and that’s always the best time to see people dressed in odd costumes and eating full on turkeys on the subway.

Seriously. That happened once. It wasn’t even Thanksgiving.

By the time they get to the townhouse, it’s past six, and she can see cars parked up and down the street, Mary Margaret’s SUV sitting right in front of their home. She insists on driving everywhere, even when she comes into Manhattan, and Emma will never understand that. But she guesses that they live a bit outside of the most crowded parts of the city and the Mary Margaret is always toting Leo around to school and soccer practice or moving all of her crafts that she takes to her classroom. Emma loves her sister-in-law (it’s easier to say than foster mom’s son’s wife), but she is one of those people whose entire life could be found on a Pinterest board where Emma is more thrift store mashup even with her life being more established lately.

Not that there’s anything wrong with living life like that. It’s simply not Emma’s cup of tea.

“So, how many fortieth birthday themed things do you think Mary Margaret has in their house?”

“I mean, obviously forty.”

“Obviously.”

Graham is sitting on the front steps when they walk up, a small envelope in his hand as he stares down at his phone, and Ruby whistles, making him actually jump from his seat.

“What the hell?” he grumbles, clutching his hand and the envelope over his heart. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“It depends. Am I the beneficiary of your life insurance plan?”

“Oh my God,” Emma chuckles, shaking her head from side to side as she adjusts the box underneath her arm. “You two are disturbed.”

“Only my girlfriend is.” He stands from the steps and moves closer to quickly press his lips against Ruby’s. “You two ready to go inside?”

“Were you too scared to go inside without us, babe?”

“If I’m honest, yes. I’m not entirely sure what kind of party awaits us.”

“You and me both.”

Emma steps up the stairs and opens the door, knowing that it’s unlocked and that she can just let herself in. She immediately hears the sound of people talking, most noticeably Leo in his high-pitched voice, but everything looks as normal as it always does. The living room is still neatly arranged, a mixture of white and gray furniture, most of it antique, all scattered throughout. The dining room has place settings arranged, but no one sitting there, so she walks to the back of the home where the kitchen is to find everyone all standing around the island eating off of the veggie place that’s set out.

Huh. So maybe David turning forty means that everything is low-key. That’s a refreshing change of pace.

“Emma,” Leo screeches when he sees her, hopping down from the countertop and running toward her, pushing her back with the force of his hug.

“Hey, kid,” she laughs as she moves David’s present so that she can hug Leo back. He’s getting so big, is nearly as tall as she is now, and he’s only ten. She can’t imagine what he’s going to be like when he gets older. She doesn’t really want to. She’s that aunt who gushes about remembering the day that her nephew was born and grossing him out by talking about it. “Why are you letting all of these people eat my food?”

“Because you don’t like vegetables.”

“I definitely do.”

“You never eat collards, and I always have to.”

“Well, that’s because I don’t like collards.”

Leo scrunches up his nose, his face twisted in disgust like he’s eating those collards, before he grabs her hand and starts trying to tug her back to the entryway. “Come on, Emma, I want to show you my new Captain America shield.”

“I’ve got to go say hi to your parents, but why don’t you go get it and bring it down to show me?”

“Okay.”

He nods his head and then runs upstairs, his footsteps loud, and she turns back toward the kitchen to start talking to people who most likely don’t have Captain America shields in their bedroom. Well, they could. He’s kind of a big deal.

America’s ass and all that.

David is swiping a carrot through a bit of dip, and she takes the opportunity to put her present on the table before wrapping her arms around David’s stomach. He’s so incredibly warm, as always, and she appreciates the solid nature of him as his hand comes up to cup the back of her head, his lips pressing into her hairline.

“Happy birthday, old man.”

“Excuse me. I am in the prime of my life.”

She rolls her eyes, unable to help herself before pulling back and patting his chest. “Sure, if you think so.”

“I do. I’m glad you made it today.”

“And miss your birthday so that I have to hear it every day at work? Never.”

“That wouldn’t happen.”

“It would,” Ruby adds in. “It would be one of those things that you’d bring up every opportunity you get. You’d feed it into her earpiece while she was on air so that she’d do that thing with her nose where it scrunches up all weird to make her look like a mouse.”

“I do not do that.”

“You do, sweetie,” Mary Margaret adds in, opening up the refrigerator and grabbing a bowl of what Emma sincerely hopes is Mary Margaret’s pasta salad. “It’s so, but it does make you look like a mouse. Or like you smelled something bad.”

“Well, I am next to a bunch of sweaty men. I could smell something bad.”

“True.”

“And Ruby, you can’t say anything. You talk in my earpiece all of the time.”

“That’s my job.”

“It’s not your job to talk about assess in pinstripes.”

“Eh,” she protests, clicking her tongue and tilting her head to the side. “I think it might be.”

“I’m sorry,” a woman Emma doesn’t know says, breaking Emma out of their little bubble to remember that there are other people in this house. “What is it that you do?”

“Oh,” she sighs, her mouth suddenly dry. She’s not conceited, she doesn’t think, but it’s been awhile since she met someone who wasn’t in her circle and didn’t know about her job. “I’m a reporter for the Yankees. Emma Swan. It’s nice to meet you – ”

“Jasmine Anwar. I teach with Mary Margaret.”

“She’s my teacher,” Leo adds in, running back in the room with a shield that’s nearly bigger than his body. “But I get to call her Miss Jasmine when she’s here, which is super cool because my friends don’t get to do that.”

“That’s our secret, though, Leo.”

“I know, I know. Emma, look at my shield.”

“Leo, it’s time to eat,” Mary Margaret says. “You can show off your shield afterwards, okay?”

“I thought we were eating cake afterwards.”

“We are.”

“So, when can I show off my shield?”

“After the cake, Leo,” David sighs before clapping his hands together. “Let’s eat.”

Inside the bowl was, indeed, Mary Margaret’s pasta salad, and in the oven was a tray of baked chicken, rolls, and macaroni and cheese. It’s the kind of meal that Ruth would make on the weekend or whenever David came home for a holiday, and for someone who eats cereal and Chinese takeout when Graham doesn’t feel like cooking, this is absolutely the best case scenario for her.

Thank goodness for David turning forty and Mary Margaret deciding to keep it low key with just a few friends instead of everyone from both of their offices.

(His thirtieth birthday was insane, especially when she thinks about the fact that Mary Margaret planned it while seven months pregnant.)

Most of the conversation halts with everyone eating, just a few murmurs here and there, but then Ruby gets a glass of wine in here – possibly two – and while Ruby can deal with liquor no problem, red wine gets to her. It’s the strangest thing, but Ruby’s already loose filter becomes, well, looser.

“No, do you guys remember the time,” Ruby hiccups, sipping on her drink while Emma very gracefully shovels more macaroni and cheese into her mouth, “that we were out in LA for work, and David nearly got arrested for walking out of a Walmart with a boxed fan because he threw away the receipt at self-checkout and they checked him at the door?”

“This is not that great of a story, Ruby,” David huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and tipping his beer bottle up to his lips.

“But it is,” Graham protests. “It was a twenty-dollar fan, man. All you had to do was pay for it again, but instead you were one more protest away from getting taken off to jail.”

“I paid for the damn fan. It was on the security video.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs as she slides her plate onto the coffee table, “but we only know that because you literally demanded to speak to the manager, had to sweet talk your way into the security office, and we spent three hours inside that building all because you can’t sleep without a fan in the room.”

“To be fair, you and I did have a great time while we were waiting. We bought that purple hair dye and streaked your hair.”

“Which was really dumb because I had to be on camera the next day.”

“It washed out.”

“Really? Because I swear I still have purple in my hair if it’s in the right light.”

She tugs at strands of her hair to prove a point while laughter bubbles in her stomach. God, she loves her friends. They’re the actual best. She doesn’t know how she got lucky enough to have them in her life.

“Your purple streaks are probably what made Jones ask you out. He saw that you had a wild side and couldn’t pass that opportunity up.”

She takes that thing about loving her friends back.

She groans, sinking down further into the couch and wishing that she had Leo’s Captain America shield to hide her face so that no one can see the blush that’s rising from her cheeks. Today is apparently a day to bring this up once every hour. It might as well go on her grave stone at this point.

Okay, that’s a little dramatic.

It can at least go in her obituary.

That doesn’t make it any better.

“Emma, can you get me Killian Jones’s autograph?” Leo questions, looking up at her from where he’s very enthusiastically scarfing down another plate of macaroni. He’s not going to have any room for cake at this rate.

“I’m not sure if I can, kid.”

“But you know him! He asked you on a date!”

She’s going to dye all of her hair purple, change her name, and move countries. That’s even more dramatic, but she seems to be on a role with being dramatic tonight.

Italy would be nice. There’s lots of pasta there.

“I’ll ask, kid.”

“I want it on a hat.”

“Leo,” Mary Margaret scolds, “use your manners.”

“I want it on a hat please,” he corrects before shoveling more food in his mouth. “Can we have cake now?”

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #Captain Swan #captain swan fic

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