#i have extremely dry skin so i can’t use anything too drying.

[ultimaid]

an update; i’ve been regularly washing my face for just a few days now and already i’ve noticed a drop in my acne. it works, folks.

does washing your face daily actually work to prevent breakouts or am i doing this for no reason?

[daddyfordaeddy]

Kisses for a Kitty

Pairing: cat hybrid! San x f! reader

Word Count: 1686

Genre: Smut, fluff, hybrid au, E for explicit, smut warnings under cut

Summary: When you return from work, San wants to cuddle...except it leads into something more.

Happy birthday to me hehe <3 It's not amazing cus i was bouncing between like five other wips trying to decide what I want the most...but this is the one that spoke to me. It was the perfect segue to admit that San is one of my biases after almost two years of vehemently denying it LOL

Please enjoy!

Smut Warnings: Unprotected [dont do this], some praise, subby San, if you squint hair pulling. pretty vanilla all in all lol

-

As soon as you enter the door, a blur is the first thing you see before you’re pounced on by your cat hybrid, San. “You’re home!” he chirps, pressing his face into your neck and lightly kissing and licking your skin, a sign of affection you’ve had to get used to in the few years you’ve had him. His arms tighten around your waist and you chuckle at his clinginess.

“I am,” you chuckle, reaching up to pet San, brushing lightly against his ear. “Just like I am every weekday after work.” Your tone is light, teasing, and San pouts, his eyes narrowing.

“I just missed you,” he frowns, his voice sweet and soft, and you can’t help but to smile at his antics.

You stand on your tiptoes to kiss the temple of your overgrown kitty. “I missed you too, San. Come on, let me go shower and then we can cuddle, okay?”

San’s pout deepens. “Can I sit in the bathroom with you?”

Without fail, he always asks this whenever you take a shower, take a bath, hell, even when you just brush your teeth or apply makeup. You only ever let him join you for the last two, and today is no exception. “Sorry, San. Why don’t you go make yourself a snack? I’ll be fast, okay?”

To ease his upset, you comb your fingers through his hair, and San is immediately playdough in your arms. “Mmkay…but can we at least cuddle on your bed?” You narrow your eyes at him and San has the nerve to pretend to be sheepish. “...yeah I made another nest in your bed. But I promise I didn’t put anything hard in there!”

As much as you try to, it’s extremely hard to say no to his shiny eyes and pouty jelly lips, and so you just sigh. “Okay. We can cuddle in my bed.”

San chirps again, pleased judging by the way his ears twitch and his tail curls around your waist. “I’ll be waiting!”

-

When you walk out of the bathroom in just a towel after blow drying your hair, you can see San’s eyes poking out of the covers of your bed, eyes sparkling as he watches you. Although he’s seen you in worse conditions, your face still warms up. “San, close your eyes,” you scold half-heartedly. He won’t close his eyes, and you won’t press any further. You know he wouldn’t watch if it truly made you uncomfortable, but it’s become almost a ritual.

As soon as you slip into some pyjamas and turn back, San has already open the sheets to reveal his little nest, some of your clothes and his scattered about as well as a heating pad. “Get in before it gets cold,” he pouts, and you chuckle again, crawling in and curling around San, kissing the top of his head.

“How was your day, Sannie?” you ask, and San hums, pressing his face into your neck.

“Was okay…boring though. Oh, your mom stopped by and dropped off some food. I had that for lunch.”

You acknowledge with a nod, but then the two of you settle in a comfortable silence. San’s breathing has evened out, his heart lulling although his eyes are open and his tail flicks occasionally. He loves being close to you like this, and you love to indulge him. You’re fond of him, and you know it goes both ways, but neither of you have ever approached it. It’s too daunting of a subject, and so the two of you just enjoy the unlabeled relationship you have.

As you’re lost in your thoughts, you stroke San’s hair while kissing the tips of his silken ears gently. It’s comforting to you, but you can feel San squirm beneath you, his breaths becoming a bit more laboured.

“Sanah, are you okay?” you hum, breath tickling his ear. To punctuate, you leave another gentle kiss on his ear, and San groans low in his through before sitting up, grabbing your waist to pull you onto his lap. Before you can even react, he presses his mouth against yours, hungrily kissing you and nipping at your lower lip. “San–”

Every noise that leaves your mouth, San captures with another kiss, his tail wrapping around your wrist to bring you even closer as he noses into your cheek. “YN,” he whines into your mouth, his lips moving sloppily. “I need you,” he groans, hips twitching and lightly pressing his growing erection into your hips.

“Sanah, what–” you’re cut off as you look at his flushed face and glazed-over eyes. “Sanah, are you in rut?” Your brows furrow as you quickly press a palm to his forehead, testing the temperature.

San whimpers, his ears pressed back against his head as he nods. “Mmnh– yeah– Fuck. It uh...It came early.” At your concerned look, he knows he can’t get away with no explanation. “I…really like it when you kiss my ears.”

His voice trails off, embarrassed at the admission, but to his surprise, you sigh fondly. Before he can react, you lean back up to press a kiss to his lips. “You really like me that much, huh?” Your voice is light, teasing, and San groans again as he presses his hips into you.

“Don’t– don’t tease please–” his voice is pitched, whiny, and you press another kiss to the tip of his ear. San grits his teeth but it doesn’t quell the long moan he lets out as his hips twitch and his fingers dig into your waist. His voice goes quiet after that, and your eyebrow arches.

“San…did you just come in your pants?”

A low whine leaks out of San’s throat, his eyes squeezed shut in embarrassment, but you can still feel his hardness against your hip. “San,” you repeat his name, more gently this time, and he cracks an eye open, “Sannie, do you want to fuck me?”

San’s eyes sparkle and his mouth parts slightly as he nods happily. Before you can even make any move, his hips jerk again and you can feel the wet patch in his sweatpants. “Fuck– YN, please,” he whine.

You can’t keep the delighted giggle out of your mouth as you lean in to press your lips against his again. “Hold still, baby, okay? You can come in me but only if you’re a very good boy, okay?”

San’s face scrunches up at your words, and you just know he’s fighting himself to keep from making a mess in his pants even further. “Okay…” he whimpers out after a long moment, and you immediately reach down to shove his sweatpants down.

His hard length is already twitching, a mess of cum and precum coating the head and you have to resist leaning down to take it into your mouth. You can’t help dragging a finger through the stickiness, however, ignoring the low groan San lets out as you lick your finger to taste the saltiness.

“Are you ready, baby?” You meet San’s eyes and when he nods, you shove your sleep shorts to the side and position the head to nudge against your slick entrance. San’s hands immediately come to grip your waist as he drops his head onto your shoulder, his fluffy ears tickling your chin.

It’s too perfect of an opportunity and you press another kiss on the top of his ear right as you shift your hips to sink onto his cock fully, and San keens as he bites into your shoulder, teeth gentle, drool and sweat pooling in your collarbone at the effort he needs to keep from coming.

“YN–” he chokes out as you start to slowly roll your hips down on him “–please…”

You chuckle, the rhythm of your hips making your eyes roll back. “Are– are you gonna be good for me, Sannie? You gonna let me use you?” A whimper is the only answer you get, and you chuckle at how much of a puddle he’s become, letting you fuck yourself on his thick cock like a dildo. “Fuck– you’re such a good kitty for me, so perfect,” you praise, peppering his ears and hair with soft kisses as you bring yourself closer to the edge.

San’s fingers dig into your flesh in a bruising hold as his hips twitch involuntarily. “YN, please, I’mma come, I can’t–”

He’s a whining mess against your body, and you let out a breathy chuckle as you tilt his chin up with a finger to press a sloppy kiss to his mouth. “Come for me,” you hum, and San wastes no time as he pulls you down even further onto his dick, searing come filling your insides.

His hips cant up into you though his climax, and you can’t help but moan loudly as the head of his cock nudges against your walls so perfectly. “Shit–” You can hardly finish your sentence when pleasure crashes into you and you moan into San’s mouth, your hands tugging lightly at his hair.

It’s almost too much, your eyes rolling back as San’s cock won’t stop pumping you full of cum combined with the delicious stretch. You’re almost as far gone as San is, licking into his mouth, the only thing left grounding you.

San’s warm hands shift from your waist to cup your face, pulling you closer as he nuzzles against your cheek, his breaths steady. His hips are still grinding into you slowly, his cock still hard, but his eyes are soft as he looks at you adoringly. “I love you, YN,” he hums, pressing his lips against yours in a desperately sweet kiss. “I love you.”

You sigh, deepening the kiss as your hands come up to stroke his ears gently. “I love you too, Sannie, so much.” He chirps happily in response, kissing the corner of your mouth, his nose bumping against yours.

“I hope you’re ready for a couple more rounds,” he hums, the innocence of his face a stark contrast to the way his hips are rolling against yours again. “After all, I need to show you just how much you mean to me.”

[undergaunts]

A Long Time Coming

Sebastian Sallow x Reader

Summary: aka three times Sebastian is a flirt, one time he gets called out on it, and one time he finally does something about it.

Rating: Teen & up (very light suggestive moment but nothing extreme)

Word count: 5.4k

Read on AO3 or below the cut <3

I.

The Library is almost silent - unusually quiet for a Wednesday afternoon. Only the subtle sound of a ticking clock, and the occasional turn of a page breaks through the quiet. Somewhere amongst the bookshelves, Madam Scribner is ensuring the books are in the correct places, and a couple of first years had run off, upstairs undoubtedly, in an attempt to find a book that doesn’t exist, tricked by second years into believing it does.

In the centre of the room, seated at a wooden bench, heads buried in their homework, were the Slytherin trio, who these days seemed to never leave each others sides.

She’s focused on writing what seems to be a remarkably boring essay for Potions, hair tucked behind her ears as she scribbles away, quill rough against the parchment, cursive writing adorning the tanned sheet.

Ominis is tracing the shapes of words in his book with his finger, frowning every so often when he comes across something so ridiculous that he wonders if throwing it across the room would help him understand it more.

And Sebastian is - well, Sebastian has decidedly given up, doodling various patterns into the margins of his Herbology book. Only when his quill runs out of ink does he groan, rather too loudly, dropping his head onto the page in frustration.

“I’m bored,” he informs his friends, and Ominis immediately shushes him. “Sorry, but this is so boring!”

“I don’t care if you are bored,” Ominis almost hisses, his milky eyes searching in Sebastian’s direction, finger never once leaving the page of his book. “We are busy. I’m sure there’s something for you to do elsewhere.”

Sebastian has been used to Ominis’, what he would call ‘soft rage’ for a long time (he often gets angry at varying things, but he’d never do anything physical about it), but he still flinches a little, lifting his head from the book, before turning his focus to the girl next to him.

She’s still writing, evidently not as bothered by Sebastian as Ominis is. He watches her for a minute or so, marvelling at how quickly she glides the quill across the paper, brows furrowed in concentration.

“I can feel your eyes burning a hole into my skin, Sebastian,” she whispers, momentarily glancing at him, before continuing to write.

He smiles, still watching, as she finally comes to the end of the page, and, thankfully, the end of her essay.

She places the quill down, quickly scanning over the parchment for any mistakes, before pushing it to the side to dry. She lets out a long, deep breath, stretching her neck from side to side, and flexes her hands, shaking out the stress and the aches from the day.

She’s got small hands, Sebastian thinks, even Anne’s hands are bigger than hers.

“My hands aren’t small,” she frowns at him - Ominis shoots them an angered look - and Sebastian realises his thoughts were not contained in his head, but actually said out loud. He’d blame it on his tiredness from studying, but he hadn’t really been studying. He was just an idiot.

“Well,” he straightens his back, coughing a little in an attempt to cover up for the light blush covering his freckled cheeks. “I just mean…no, you do have small hands.”

She scoffs. “They’re not small. They can’t be that much smaller than yours or Ominis’.”

“Ominis’ hands are freakishly large,” Sebastian retorts. It is not entirely true - Ominis’ fingers are long and slender, making them seem a lot bigger than they are, but they’re not freakish. Just a tad strange.

Ominis rolls his eyes, then uses one of those hands to cover an ear so he can continue to read.

“Then they are not much smaller than yours.”

Sebastian raises an eyebrow, then a hand, palm pointing towards her. “Look. My hands are big,” he says, proudly. “Compare yours to mine.”

She lifts her hand, pressing her palm against his in a quick motion, fingers splaying to rest against his. He can feel the pink on his cheeks spreading further and deepening in colour, so he coughs again.

“Oh,” she laughs. It’s rather obvious - the size difference. Sebastian’s hands are bigger. Not hugely - not in a weird way like Ominis’! - but definitely. He could cover her hand with his, easily. Her fingers could interlock with his, rather comfortably.

“I told you, did I not?” Sebastian smiles. He’s glad he was right, and takes joy in proving her wrong - possibly for the first time.

“You did,” she sighs, dropping her hand from his. “You are correct, Sebastian Sallow. For once.”

He’s grinning, oh so proud, and she laughs at him, shaking her head. “Let me just,” he says, grabbing her wrist and pressing her hand against his again, confirming what they already knew. He’d never deny he was a gloater. “You see this, Ominis?”

Across the table, Ominis is glaring, fires almost burning through the white snow of his eyes.

“No, of course I don’t see.” Ominis responds, and this time, the entirety of Sebastian’s face turns bright red.

II.

Sebastian has been watching the door all evening. First, it was the Undercroft gate, then the Slytherin common room door, and now the Great Hall. None of the doors had opened, to reveal the girl he was waiting to see.

Damned doors, and their constant closure.

She’d been gone all day, from the very moment the sun had started to rise, til now, as it was setting. She was undoubtedly doing some good deed for someone she’d never met before, in a hamlet she’d never been to casting spells she’d hardly practised.

Curse her, and her kindness.

Sebastian had had the brilliant idea to save her a portion of the roast dinner they’d been served, but it was getting cold now, and he was getting increasingly worried as the minutes went by. Had she been eaten by an Acromantula? Kidnapped by poachers? Mauled by a pack of dark mongrels?

“I can feel your worry from over here,” Ominis says. He’s sitting across from Sebastian, putting his last pieces of potato into his mouth. “It’s souring my supper.”

“Sorry,” Sebastian responds. He’s not really sorry, but he prefers to sate Ominis’ frustration. “She’s been gone since this morning. She’s usually not gone for more than a few hours at a time.”

“But she is often gone for a long time,” Ominis places his knife and fork, parallel in the centre of his plate, before picking his napkin up to wipe his mouth. “She is the hero of Hogwarts, after all. And a rather busy hero at that.”

Almost as if to cut them off, the dirty plates and empty trays of food suddenly disappear, and then reappear, replaced by dishes of apple pie, sticky toffee pudding and custard. Most of the students hurriedly scramble for their dessert - it’s always the most popular part of the meal.

Sebastian quickly reaches for a portion of the sticky toffee pudding, which is snatched away by Imelda with a sneer. He shoots her daggers, before quickly grabbing another portion, this time successfully. He tries to grab another - to set it aside for his friend when she finally gets back - but it is taken by a third year, before he could even start to reach.

With a wave of his wand, Ominis manages to grab himself a portion of pie, before every plate of dessert has been spoken for.

Sebastian huffs, realising she now only has a cold plate of roast dinner to come back to.

If she ever does.

He returns to the previous conversation, a frown on his face.

“No, she…she should’ve been back by now, she should be-“

It is, at that moment, ironically, that the large doors to the Great Hall open, and she walks through them, perfectly alive. A little windswept, to be sure, a slight rip at the bottom of her skirt, and a tiny cut on her lower lip. But alive.

Sebastian stands up. She spots him in the crowd of people, and immediately smiles, running over to squeeze herself into the spot on the bench next to him.

He can feel his heart go from aching, to relief, to almost beating out of his chest within seconds.

“What a day!” She laughs, sighing as she sits down, Sebastian soon following her. There’s a small smile pulling at Ominis’ lips, and Sebastian allows himself to smile too.

“Sebastian was rather worried about you,” Ominis says, and in that moment, Sebastian wonders, if he leapt across the table, would his hands accurately find Ominis’ neck so he could choke him?

“Only Sebastian?” She asks, and Ominis, this time, smiles a little wider, a slight glint of white teeth showing past his lips

“I was worried too, I am not afraid to admit. But he wouldn’t stop worrying aloud,” Ominis brings a spoon of his pie to his mouth. “It was rather irritating.”

“Oh,” she laughs, side-eyeing Sebastian, who blushes (annoyingly, he’s been blushing far too much lately). He nudges her, in a ‘please-redirect-your-attention-away-from-my-red-face’ kind of way, pointing her to the dinner he’d saved her.

“It’s a bit cold but…”

“Oh marvellous!” She grins, pulling the plate toward her and grabbing a fork, which she stabs into a piece of carrot. “I’ve not eaten all day!”

In the least weird way he can possibly muster (which is still extremely weird, he must admit), he watches her eat, enjoying that she is enjoying her food, glad she is safe and sound. He sighs, softly, allowing himself to relax before taking his spoon and slowly starting to eat his dessert.

Once she finishes her food (which doesn’t take her all that long to eat, clearly hungry from an exhausting day, she takes a long drink of the glass of lemonade that had poured itself for her, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

She takes a moment to breathe, pushing a piece of hair out of her face. Sebastian sees her look around a little, at the other students still picking away at their puddings.

“I did try to save you a portion,” Sebastian says, and she looks at him, shaking her head.

“It’s alright. I was very late. And some people,” she glares across the room at Leander, who has two plates of desserts in front of him, alternating bites between the two. “Always take too much.”

But he can see it in her face. She’s a little disappointed. It’s only a silly thing; a dessert, for Merlin’s sake, but he feels guilty.

So he drops his spoon, and slides the rest of his pudding to her. “Here. Have mine.”

She rolls her eyes at him, and pushes it back. “Honestly, you’ve done enough, Sebastian. I could’ve not eaten at all.”

He pushes it back to her. “Please.”

Again, she slides it. “No.”

“I’m not arguing,” Sebastian again pushes the bowl, and holds it there, picking the spoon up and offering it to her. “Just have it. It’ll make me happy.”

“Sebastian-“

“Merlin’s beard,” Ominis mutters. “Just eat the damned pudding, would you? Or I think he might explode.”

She laughs. Sebastian laughs. Ominis glares. Just the way it should be.

Thank the Gods she’s fine.

III.

The weekend Sebastian had spent in Feldcroft was lovely. Perfect, even. Spending time with Anne was rare these days, so to be with her, uninterrupted for forty-eight straight hours was joyous. He really did miss her.

Yet, returning to Hogwarts didn’t make him feel sad. He actually felt excited, for the first time in a long time, to get back. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, but he just knew, as he entered the school grounds, that the butterflies in his stomach weren’t just for his return to Transfiguration class.

As he walked the school, he realised he’d missed supper, it seemed, from the hordes of students gathered throughout the corridors near the Great Hall.

Sebastian desperately tried to find a familiar face (or at least one he wanted to see - Leander and Gareth were easily seen with their red heads, but he didn’t fancy talking to Idiot One or Idiot Two).

It took a little while of searching, before he found a group gathered in a more secluded area. He noted Natsai, Poppy, Amit, Ominis, and her.

Sebastian grinned. He hadn’t noticed the smile creeping onto his face at all really. He simply let his feet do the walking, striding over to his friends, and without warning, snaking his arms around her waist and pulling her into a bear hug from behind.

“Oh!” She jumped, but laughed almost immediately, as if she knew it was him just from his touch.

Surely not.

“Hi,” Sebastian smiles, pulling her close to him, resting his chin in the dip of her shoulder, and looking at the group in front of him. “Hi guys.”

For a moment, they all look stunned. Weird, Sebastian thinks, perhaps they didn’t expect me back so soon

“Hello Sebastian,” Natty is the first to speak, breaking what was starting to feel like an awkward silence. “We had just been speaking about you.”

“Oh?” Sebastian raises an eyebrow, glancing between each persons face, all looking a different level of uncomfortable

“We were just discussing how we think you should-“ Poppy starts to say.

“We,” she chimes in, her hands tugging at Sebastian’s arm, pulling him off of her. He’d be offended, but she quickly redirects him, pulling his arm around her shoulders, and tucking him into her side. He feels her arm wrap around his waist, and decides this is possibly better. “We’re thinking you should spend more weekends in Feldcroft.”

“Ah, dying to get rid of me?”

“Always,” she smiles. Sebastian has a hard time tearing his eyes away, wondering how she often looks like she’s glowing. Like sun is emanating from her very soul. It’s addictive.

“We should probably return to our common rooms and rest for a bright and early start in the morning!” Amit chimes in, and Natty and Poppy nod, agreeing.

“Alright,” Sebastian shrugs. He notices Natty tilt her head a little, and before he knows it, his arm is being pushed away, and his side is left cold and empty.

“We’re just trying to work out a charm,” she says, stepping over to Natty. “I’ll see you two in the common room a little later?” She gestures to Sebastian and Ominis.

“Of course,” Ominis finally speaks up. The group disperses, and Sebastian finds himself having to jog to catch up to Ominis, who seems like a man on a mission to get to bed.

“Wait!” Sebastian finds himself laughing as he finally catches up to his best friend. Ominis huffs, which causes Sebastian to reach out, grabbing his arm and stopping him mid stride. “Is something wrong?”

“With me? Oh, no. But I do believe something is wrong with you, Sebastian,” Ominis shakes his head. His brows are furrowed, almost angry, yet he seems more frustrated than anything. “It is almost aggravating. I cannot understand how you are yet to see the issue at hand.”

He’s speaking in riddles, Sebastian is sure of it. The blond was always one to be mysterious, but this is taking it to whole other level.

Sebastian doesn’t respond, which, in itself, is clearly a response enough for Ominis, who turns on his heel, and with a small flick of his wand, is on his way, leaving Sebastian standing in the hallway to ponder whatever in Merlin’s name is going on

IV.

“Sebastian!”

His head whips around, trying to see who or what called his name, but there’s a few too many people outside the Bell Tower to actually see. He stands on the tips of his toes, before he finally sees the culprit - Poppy, who is heading towards him, determination on her face and…a Slytherin scarf in hand?

He frowns - his scarf is definitely back in the dorm, and it’s rare for Ominis to wear his anyway, so…

“Could you-“ Poppy starts.

“Is that-“ Sebastian questions.

“She left it in Beasts class earlier,” Poppy confirms. She’s come to a stop in front of Sebastian, and hands him the scarf, which he takes, gladly. “Could you return it to her? I’m afraid she’ll get cold without it.”

“No problem,” Sebastian nods, and Poppy smiles. She thanks him quickly, before scurrying off. Poppy was weird, always had been, really, but Sebastian guessed they were friends by association, so tried not to judge too much.

He’s left, standing there, holding a scarf. Her scarf. It’s strange, but for a moment he doesn’t know what to do. It’s like his legs won’t move, too focused on this object in his left hand.

He can’t quite understand why.

But luckily he shakes it off, and starts to head for the Slytherin common room. Poppy was right, she might get cold without her scarf. She’s got more, yes, but…well, she probably preferred this one. It’s certainly keeping his hand warm, so it probably good at keeping her warm, and…

It feels like he’s been walking for hours. He’s got a death grip on the scarf, like he couldn’t it bear the thought of dropping it. Losing it. Damaging it. He could buy her a new one if he did. But it wouldn’t be the same, would it? It wouldn’t be hers, it wouldn’t have her name written in ink on the inside, it wouldn’t smell like her…

Before he even knows it, he’s standing in his dorm room, back pressed against the door, keeping it closed. The room is empty, thank the Gods, because he’s still holding the scarf. He can see his, dangling over the end of his bed, and it might seem weird if he had two.

His breathlessness and warm face and open mouth might also be weird.

He steps away from the door, certain it’s closed, then moved toward his bed, where he sits down at the edge, eyes desperately trying to avoid the scarf, but he just can’t do it. He wets his lips, nervous, double, triple checking the room, ensuring no one is there once again.

And, finally, he lifts the scarf to his nose, and inhales deeply.

It smells just like her. Of course it does, it’s hers, but it’s unmistakably so. The scent of lavender and honey, probably from the soap she uses. A little of mallowsweet, and fresh air. It’s intoxicating, and he can’t bring himself to put it down. Even if he suffocates in the wool, it would be a wonderful way to die.

There’s a feeling, that starts in his stomach, that he’s trying so hard to ignore, but it’s getting lower and lower, and his head is spinning. He inhales again, and his eyes roll back a little. His breath hitches in his throat, and he can’t stop himself, he moves his right hand, over the side of his thigh, straight towards-

“What are you doing?”

Sebastian’s head whips round to the door, where Ominis is standing, deadly still, wand in hand, staring straight at him. Surely not? He surely can’t see, can he? No, what a ridiculous notion. He can’t see what Sebastian is doing.

Hopefully he can’t see what Sebastian is doing.

He realises he’s said nothing for an awfully long time, and stutters over his words as he tries to get a coherent sentence out.

“I-I, uh, was just,” he glances around himself, trying to find another object - anything but the scarf - to use as a distraction. His eyes settle on a spell book, he’d left next to his bed. He drops the scarf onto the bed next to him, and quickly reaches for the book. “I w-was reading! Homework, you know.”

“No,” Ominis flicks his wand, ever so slightly, the tip glowing read, as he steps over to Sebastian. “I heard you. You were…smelling something. In a very…odd fashion.”

“N-no,” Sebastian counters. “I…wasn’t.”

Great, that’ll show him!

Ominis scoffs. “What were you-“ he waves his wand again, and the scarf suddenly levitates, floating through the air and landing in Ominis’ hand. Damn him, and his stupidly intelligent wand. “Is this-“

“Ominis-“

“It’s her scarf. Was this what you were smelling? It must be.”

Sebastian shuts his mouth. The two of them are quiet for a moment. Ominis just standing there, and Sebastian sitting, feeling increasingly guilty.

“Don’t tell her.”

Ominis frowns a little. “Tell her what?”

“That I was…doing that.”

“I will not tell her,” Ominis says. Sebastian feels relief for a moment, but then Ominis speaks again. “You will.”

“What?” Sebastian squeaks. His voice has never been that high-pitched before. He’d be embarrassed if he wasn’t in this situation.

“Are you a fool, Sebastian Sallow?” This time, Sebastian is the one to frown. That wasn’t what he was expecting Ominis to say. Admittedly, he was expecting some extortion, maybe a promise of some kind, but not an insult. “You must be the only wizard alive unaware of your feelings for her.”

He’s suddenly taken aback. He tries to form words, but quickly gives up. His mind is racing, trying to comprehend what Ominis had just said to him.

Because, Merlin’s beard, was he right?

Surely not. She was his best friend. They had fun, broke rules together. They spent hours at Hogsmeade together. They studied together. They visited Anne together. They…they did everything together. Because he couldn’t bear not doing things together.

And of the times she wasn’t there, he just thought about her, wishing she was there. He hadn’t had a class with her since that morning, and all day he’d thought about getting back to the common room and seeing her.

Then there was the butterflies he got when he saw her. How beautiful he thought she was. How he’d often find an excuse to touch her. How he’d look for her in crowds. How he just never stopped thinking about her, because…

Because he had feelings for her.

“Merlin,” Sebastian mutters, the realisation hitting him like a tonne of bricks. It’s all he can say, because how had he not seen it sooner? It was glaringly obvious, and if Ominis was correct, was he the only one who hadn’t realised?

“It’s taken you far too long to realise,” Ominis sits down on the bed, a few inches from Sebastian, placing the scarf in between them. “We’ve been talking about this for weeks.”

“You’ve been talking about me?”

“We’ve been talking about how painfully clear your feelings are, and how idiotic that you have not said or done anything about it sooner.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

Ominis pauses, contemplating whether he should say or not. But everything is out in the open, so why not?

“The usual suspects. Myself, Poppy, Amit, Natsai,” Sebastian nods, and starts to speak, but Ominis continues. “Gareth, Leander, Imelda, I believe Everett knows as well. Possibly some others.”

“Gods,” Sebastian sighs. He’s half tempted to laugh, but he’s still too shocked. “Does she know?”

Ominis blinks. He squeezes his lips together in thought, and then nods his head. “She took some convincing - couldn’t quite believe you’d ever feel that way for her, and I’m still half-convinced she isn’t entirely sure.”

“And does she-“

“She has feelings for you too. Of course she does. Don’t continue to be foolish, Sebastian. Would she let you carry on the way you do, if she didn’t? I certainly wouldn’t.”

Sebastian laughs - a sudden, chesty laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, which in turn makes Ominis laugh - a rare sight.

“Am I truly that oblivious?” Sebastian asks through his laughter. “I mean, I’ve never felt like this before, so I just assumed it would be clear when I liked someone.”

“Not everything is clear,” Ominis reassures him, then, “But you are simply an idiot.”

The two of them laugh again. Sebastian looks at the scarf next to him, before sighing loudly.

“I’m going to have to tell her, aren’t I?”

There’s a gentle touch on his shoulder. Ominis nods (he’s not one for touching others, but he clearly feels Sebastian needs reassuring). “And sooner rather than later, hm? We’re all dying to see the two of you together.”

V.

He’s been avoiding her, like she was the Black Death, and he curses himself for doing so. He’d managed to return her scarf (thankfully, because he was certain he’d do something he’d regret if he didn’t), but for the rest of the week that was it. He’d eaten early, returned to his dorm early, pretended to be engrossed in conversations during classes and very busy after them.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her. Quite the opposite, in fact, but he was still trying to wrap his head around the whole thing, and come up with a beautiful string of words that would explain how madly in love with her he was, and why exactly she should be with him.

And it was proving to be a lot more difficult than expected.

Ominis, may the Gods bless him, had agreed to keep their conversation a secret - at least for the time being. Sebastian was sure that the others had noticed that something was up, though, as they seemed much more concerned about him than they usually did. But he didn’t allow himself to be perceived by them for too long. He would dodge conversation, and keep to himself. Every waking moment seemed to be consumed by thinking of how exactly he would confess.

Ominis had said she felt the same, but was he sure? He’d said he was sure, yes, but was he truly sure? Sebastian was not sure, about any of it. He also wasn’t sure that sure was a real word anymore

The following Friday, he’d been invited to Hogsmeade for Butterbeers, but made a big fuss of how much homework he had to do. It was true, he did have a lot of homework, but his mind was not on that now.

Instead, taking advantage of a mostly empty common room, as most students had headed out for the evening, he sat himself in front of the fireplace, legs stretched outward, arms crossed against his chest. It would be the perfect opportunity to just think. Staring into the fire, he hoped an answer would appear. And he stared, for a long time, trying to decipher something in the flames.

“Sebastian?”

He almost jumps out of his skin, scrambling a little to sit up straighter. Because there she is, standing beside him, a gentle smile on her face.

“Hi,” he looks up at her. She looks extra pretty this evening, he thinks. Hair pulled back with just a few pieces framing her face, a gorgeous, flowing teal dress framing her figure perfectly. “I thought everyone was heading to Hogsmeade?”

“We were,” she says. She sounds sad, as she sits down on the armchair next to him. “But then Ominis said you weren’t coming, so I came back.”

There’s a flutter in his stomach, and a little voice in his head, that says see, she does like you.

But he can’t let her spoil her fun, and most definitely not for him

“Go,” he tilts his head towards the stairs. “I’m sure you can catch up with them. I’m quite alright on my own.”

He watches her glance over to the stairs, and ponder for a moment, before she shakes her head. “You’ve hardly spoken to anyone all week. I’d rather know you’re well and not moping about alone.”

“Not moping,” he chuckles. “Just…been thinking.”

She studies him for a second, then places her elbow on the arm of the chair, and rests her chin in her hand. “A knut for your thoughts?”

Sebastian turns his attention back to the fire. It eats away at the logs, just like his thoughts had been eating away at him. Ominis’ words ring in his ears: She has feelings for you too. Of course she does.

He tries to form some words. But they still evade him. Still run from his tongue and his mind, teasing him with the very possibility of being with her, yet being unable to, due to the annoying fact that he just cannot speak.

Her voice is almost a whisper, but he can see the way her face crumples a little. “Have I done something to upset you?”

“Hey, no,” he says. “I’ve just been…in my own head, that’s all. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

She nods, but looks like she doesn’t quite believe him. She joins him in looking at the fire, and they sit in silence for a few moments.

He steals a glance at her, and she looks like she wants to speak, but she’s holding back. Their silences are not often awkward, but there’s a tension in the air, and he wants to cure it, somehow.

It’s only when he decides he must say something, that she clears her throat, and stands up from her chair.

“I’ll let you get back to your thoughts,” she smiles ever-so-slightly at him. It’s half-hearted and almost makes him wince. “Good night, Sebastian.”

He’ll see her in the morning. She’ll go to bed, as will he, and he’ll see her over breakfast, or catch her in the hallway.

He’ll see her, so why do his feet carry him, following her, as if he won’t?

“Wait,” he says, only a step behind her. They’ve stopped in the middle of the common room, looking each other, her body in an awkward half-turn, from where she’d been leaving. “I think I should probably tell you my thoughts.”

She frowns. “You should?”

“Yes,” he confirms. “It’s been plaguing me all week. And I’ve been putting it off but-“ a deep breath. “I should probably get it off my chest.”

She looks beautiful in the shimmering moonlight and rippling waves of the common room. He traces her with his eyes, taking her in. If he hadn’t been certain about how he felt up, he most definitely was now.

But he had been certain. It had just taken a while for him to see it.

“Look, I,” he starts, eyes dropping to the floor. This time, without realising, he lets his heart do the talking. He doesn’t hope his brain will find the words, instead he lets all of his heart and soul spill from his mouth. “I haven’t told you the truth. Mostly because I didn’t know the truth, until quite recently, and it seems everyone but I knew. But now that I do know, and I’m entirely sure it is the truth…”

She’s frowning. So is he, a little. He’s not really making sense, so he tries again.

“All my life, I assumed love - I mean, having feelings for someone - would be obvious, glaring, and heart wrenching. I never realised it could be subtle, or slow, or easy. I also was never sure I’d actually find it. I thought I’d be waiting my whole life, if ever, to find it. It’s why I didn’t realise, for a long time, until now, that…I have feelings,” he pauses, then clarifies. “For you, I mean.”

She looks shocked. Her eyes wide, mouth open, trying to search him for some kind of proof he’s just jesting. Just toying with her emotions.

But he’s not. He’s not one to cry, but his eyes well a little. He wants to step forward, to envelop her into a hug, to hold her in his arms, finally, in the way he’s always wanted.

“Are you,” she eventually speaks. “Are you quite serious?”

He can’t help but laugh. Her brows knit together, concerned at his joking manner.

“More than serious,” he confirms. “Deadly.”

She gasps, very softly. It is her that steps forward, closing the large gap between them. Only a few inches apart. So close he could reach for her, if he wanted.

So he does.

He reaches for her hand - which are just the right size for his, as he’d previously confirmed - and brings it closer to him, squeezing it gently.

“Sebastian,” her bottom lip quivers. “I also,” she pauses, to find her words. “Feel…feelings. For you.”

Their eyes lock. He doesn’t think he’s seen eyes as pretty as hers. Merlin, he doesn’t think he’s seen anyone as pretty as her. And here she is, standing in front of him, hand in his and heart open, ready for him to take care of it.

It’s almost silent, aside from the crackle of the fire and the patter of their hearts.

Sebastian does not think he can take this longing for one more second, so does what he has always wanted to.

He kisses her, and in that moment, finds all he has ever wanted.

[cult-of-husbandos]

yandere!shigaraki tomura - until he met you

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki is not a people person. His childhood should already be a big enough indicator of that.

🖐🏻 ━ His quirk always kept others miles away and his appearance didn’t help much.

🖐🏻 ━ He always saw love as a fatal flaw that could bring to the downfall of the strongest heroes and he’s witnessed it firsthand how true that sentiment is.

🖐🏻 ━ Until he found you.

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki would become fixated on you, constantly thinking about you to the point where it affects his judgment.

🖐🏻 ━ The LOV would be caught off guard when they walked into the bar area and saw a random civilian sitting, smiling, and drinking with their crusty, dusty leader.

🖐🏻 ━ This is clearly a date. Right?

🖐🏻 ━ Noticing their presence first and oblivious to their flabbergasted faces, you introduced yourself first.

🖐🏻 ━ Or at least you tried to.

🖐🏻 ━ “Oh! Hi!”

🖐🏻 ━ “Um… hello…?” Twice would be the first to greet back, albeit confused.

🖐🏻 ━ “Wow! You’re really pretty! Who are you? Are you new?” Toga rattled off, excited for a fresh cute face.

🖐🏻 ━ “Aw thank you! My name is–”

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki cuts you off by pulling your arm forcefully, pulling you off the stool and into his arms.

🖐🏻 ━ “Don’t waste your breath on these insignificant morons.” he snarled.

🖐🏻 ━ Toga and Twice gasped loudly and shouted back to their offensive leader.

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki drags you away from the bar, careful not to grip your wrist with all five fingers but still maintain an intense grasp on you.

🖐🏻 ━ “Oh, um! Bye guys! It was nice meeting you! And you’re really cute too!” you yell back, still smiling as if you weren’t being dragged away.

🖐🏻 ━ As soon as you both reached his room, he slammed the door and flung you onto his bed.

🖐🏻 ━ He flopped on top of you and immediately buried his face in your neck.

🖐🏻 ━ “Why’d you talk to them?” he grumbled.

🖐🏻 ━ You softly rubbed his back and giggled when you felt his dry lips graze your skin as he talked.

🖐🏻 ━ “I was just being nice.” you answer.

🖐🏻 ━ “Don’t be nice,” he snapped. “Don’t talk to them. Don’t look at them. Don’t smile at them. Don’t breathe around them.”

🖐🏻 ━ You laugh. “That last one might be hard.”

🖐🏻 ━ He gripped your waist tightly and growled harsher into your neck.

🖐🏻 ━ “I don’t care. I’d rather soon dust this entire league than have them so much as be in the same room as you.”

🖐🏻 ━ “But that would be rude. I can’t deliberately ignore a person when they talk to me.”

🖐🏻 ━ You spoke very calmly.

🖐🏻 ━ “And I want to get to know your friends.”

🖐🏻 ━ “They’re not my friends!”

🖐🏻 ━ You laughed and peppered his face with kisses.

🖐🏻 ━ “Please Shiggy~?”

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki fought with himself. As much as he wanted to say no and keep you locked in his room, he couldn’t resist your soft pouting lips.

🖐🏻 ━ “Ugh! Fine!” He finally gave in.

🖐🏻 ━ “But listen to me (Y/N). You’re mine now. No one else gets to have you, understand? If anyone tries to come between us, especially those worthless rejects out there, I’ll make them disappear… right in front of your eyes.”

🖐🏻 ━ “Lmao OK.”

🖐🏻 ━ He won’t tolerate anyone getting close to you. If he perceived someone as a threat, he’d remove them, either by intimidation or more extreme means.

🖐🏻 ━ The only person he’d trust you around is Kurogiri.

🖐🏻 ━ But, that wouldn’t really matter since he’s forbidden you from leaving the hideout. Which you didn’t mind as much since Shigaraki would cater to your every need.

🖐🏻 ━ Before getting together, he would stalk you. Always needing to know where you were and who you were with. You didn’t have a quirk so his need to “protect” you from anything and anyone would be overwhelming to everyone around him but you.

🖐🏻 ━ You find his overbearing attitude towards you to be endearing and sign that he really cares for you in a way you’ve never felt before.

🖐🏻 ━ “You don’t need anyone else. I’ll protect you from everything… even from those “heroes” that would love nothing more than to rip you away from me. And even if a hero could take you away, I’d kill them before they could lay a finger on you. Remember that. No one can save you from me. So don’t even think about leaving me. Because if you do… I’ll destroy you, and I’ll destroy myself so I could follow you.”

🖐🏻 ━ “But if you destroy yourself… I wouldn’t be able to hold and kiss you anymore…”

🖐🏻 ━ He uses his influence and power as leader of the league to isolate you even further from the outside world. Wherever you were living before would be cleaned out of your stuff and moved into the hideout. Your job would try to contact you, but to no avail. Friends and family would reach out to the community to ask where you went and search for you, but with no luck. To everyone from the outside, you no longer existed. You had seemingly disappeared without a trace.

🖐🏻 ━ He also makes the others go on errands for anything you needed, no matter the time or how busy they were. If they didn’t want to be dust, they’d be your loyal servant.

🖐🏻 ━ However, one day after waking up from a nap, he would feel around the bed after not feeling you in his arms and when he opened his eyes… you were nowhere to be found.

🖐🏻 ━ No one, not even Kurogiri, could stop the rampage that followed after Toga, Twice, Dabi, and Mr. Compress told him that they had no idea where you were. They had just gotten back from a mission. They had no text from you and Kurogiri also admitted that he saw you in the bar area for a while, but when he went to check on something for a minute, you were gone and he assumed you went back to his room.

🖐🏻 ━ This began the ultimate decay storm. He screamed, he threw punches and furniture. The members were awestruck by the insane scene happening before them. Over you. A quirkless random. There was nowhere to go.

🖐🏻 ━ When Spinner walks in, he barely manages to dodge a half-dusted stool hurling towards his head.

🖐🏻 ━ “What the fuck?!”

🖐🏻 ━ “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY WENT?! WHERE THE FUCK IS MY (Y/N)?!”

🖐🏻 ━ “(Y/N)?! They’re fine! They went to go get something to eat like 15 minutes ago!”

🖐🏻 ━ Suddenly, the raging storm turned silent. The other members took this as a chance to make a run for it.

🖐🏻 ━ “Outside?”

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner gulped anxiously, feeling a chill run down his spine.

🖐🏻 ━ “You let. MY (Y/N)! GO OUTSIDE?!”

🖐🏻 ━ The remaining stools in his hands quickly turned to dust as he gradually trudged towards the green lizard with heavy, ominous steps.

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner froze, unable to move an inch.

🖐🏻 ━ “I-I was busy! I was getting information and there was no food in the fridge. The others weren’t here and (Y/N) said they were hungry so I gave them the keys–”

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner could tell Shigaraki wasn’t listening. All his excuses were falling on deaf ears.

🖐🏻 ━ Just as Shigaraki’s hand was mere mere inches away from Spinner’s face, he knew what would get him to stop.

🖐🏻 ━ “I KNOW WHERE THEY WENT!!”

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki stopped in his tracks and pulled his hand away as he stared down at the shaking heteromorph.

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner is Shigaraki’s loyal right-hand man. The first person he met when all hell seemed to be on them. The first ones to bring together this league. To bring down the heroes. Spinner would never lie to Shigaraki. And he knows that.

🖐🏻 ━ “Tell me where they went… please…”

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner and Shigaraki have always had a soft spot for each other.

🖐🏻 ━ When you first came into the picture, Spinner saw this as just a passing fling – mere puppy love – and soon Shigaraki would get bored of you and throw you away.

🖐🏻 ━ Looking at the nearly destroyed common area and how close he came to being dust himself, he was obviously wrong. He realized that Shigaraki would destroy everyone and everything around him if he were to lose you.

🖐🏻 ━ Meanwhile, you are having a great time. You’re sitting in a restaurant waiting for your to-go order and scrolling on your phone.

🖐🏻 ━ It was pretty peaceful despite the busy lunch rush. The only thing on your mind is getting the food and going home. You were honestly starting to get sick being around others and their loud conversations. Shigaraki really spoiled you by keeping you inside all the time and having others get food for you. You honestly wonder how you put up with this in the past. You cursed under your breath when you felt your pockets and forgot your headphones.

🖐🏻 ━ You checked the time again for the fifth time when a huge crash rattled the entire store.

🖐🏻 ━ Customers started to scream as bodies flew across the restaurant slamming against the floor and walls. Customers and staff that weren’t blocked by debris ran from any exit they could find, trampling over bodies and others trying to flee as a white unmarked van skidded into the entrance, the bumper and blood covered in blood.

🖐🏻 ━ You were about to make a run for it too when you heard a familiar voice.

🖐🏻 ━ “(Y/N)!”

🖐🏻 ━ You whipped your head back and immediately smiled at the familiar face emerging from the van.

🖐🏻 ━ “Shiggy!”

🖐🏻 ━ You ran towards Shigaraki, nearly tripping over the broken glass and concrete debris blocking the way.

🖐🏻 ━ As soon as Shigaraki felt your arms wrap around him and your body press against him, he nearly forgot how mad he was.

🖐🏻 ━ Nearly.

🖐🏻 ━ “I warned you. Did you really think you could leave me (Y/N)? I told you that I’d kill everyone around you if you ran away from me.”

🖐🏻 ━ The leftover customers and staff stood shell-shocked at the scene playing out before them. A few are already on the phone with the police.

🖐🏻 ━ You tilted your head quizzically.

🖐🏻 ━ “But I didn’t run away.”

🖐🏻 ━ You said it so calmly. Like you weren’t afraid of him or perturbed by his words.

🖐🏻 ━ “You disobeyed me! You went outside! You left me!”

🖐🏻 ━ “Shiggy, I told you I was going to get food. Don’t you remember?”

🖐🏻 ━ “Don’t lie to me, (Y/N).” He stared you down intensely and gripped you tighter like you were going to fade away right before his eyes.

🖐🏻 ━ “I’m not, babe! During our nap together, I went to the kitchen to get a snack and the fridge was empty. Toga, Dabi, and Twice weren’t there and I didn’t want to disturb them because they’ve been so busy lately so I asked Spinner if he could pick up some food for us.”

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner, still sitting in the driver’s seat, halted his breath wondering if you were going to throw him under the bus since he didn’t get the chance to fully explain the situation.

🖐🏻 ━ “But Spinner was also really busy so I asked him if I could borrow one of the cars to go get some food. He said he would only allow it if you approved.”

🖐🏻 ━ “I don’t remember you asking me anything…” Shigaraki remembers falling asleep in your arms, but nothing else.

🖐🏻 ━ “Awww~! Was someone half asleep?” you teased. “That’s so adorable~!”

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki couldn’t stop the blush that spread to his face. If Shigaraki was really awake, there would be no way in hell he’d approve any of this.

🖐🏻 ━ You stood on your tiptoes and gave Shigaraki a gentle kiss on the lips. Surprising everyone including Spinner and Shigaraki.

🖐🏻 ━ You’d only given him cheek and forehead kisses. This is officially his first kiss. You pulled away and smiled at him lovingly.

🖐🏻 ━ “I’m sorry for worrying you. I won’t do it again.” you apologized. “Honestly, being outside sucks. I just want to be back home with you.”

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki felt a warmth in his chest enveloping his heart. Without a doubt he knew what this feeling was. He hadn’t felt it in a long time.

🖐🏻 ━ “U-Um…”

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki’s eyes turned sharp as he glared at the vile creature ruining the moment.

🖐🏻 ━ “Oh! Is the food ready!” You smiled at the stunlocked worker covered in the building’s dust holding two large plastic bags trembling in his hands.

🖐🏻 ━ You took the bags from their hands and gave it a quick lookover. You hated it when workers gave you your food and left out important utensils or missing items.

🖐🏻 ━ “Yep! This is it! Thank you–”

🖐🏻 ━ “Didn’t I tell you not to be nice to others?” He grabs your face to look only at him as he glared at the worker you were freely giving your smiles to.

🖐🏻 ━ “Look! I got the league and us ramen! And look at this! They also have ohagi! Your favorite! I had a feeling you’d want something sweet after your nap.” You raised the bags and turned around to face him.

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki felt even more confirmation about this feeling than he thought possible.

🖐🏻 ━ This is love.

🖐🏻 ━ He wants to snatch you away from this place, away from the leering and perverted eyes of the disgusting NPCS walking this earth, but…

🖐🏻 ━ A honk cut clear through the tension.

🖐🏻 ━ “Okay, lovebirds! We gotta go unless we want to get some heroes to-go too!” Spinner called from the car.

🖐🏻 ━ Shigaraki led you by the waist and carefully placed you into the backseat of the van like you were made of porcelain.

🖐🏻 ━ Before he got in himself, he turned to the dazed customers and staff one last time.

🖐🏻 ━ “I guess I won’t blow this place up… Maybe I’ll decide after eating.”

🖐🏻 ━ As Spinner drove off, he kept glancing at the backseat as you and Shigaraki continued talking light-heartedly like they hadn’t committed domestic terrorism in a search for you.

🖐🏻 ━ Spinner sighed in relief as the storm finally blew over.

🖐🏻 ━ Call it true love or obsession, Shigaraki had no intention of letting you go.

🖤🖤🖤

a/n: my first reaction post for mr. hands aka crusty dusty. my love for him out weighs my love for sleeping. so i turned him into a yandere. pls enjoy!

[coalswriting]

being protective of reader in the wilderness + subtle demonstrations of affection headcanons - natalie scatorccio

a/n - my ass got a lil carried away with it but SURE WHATEVER lol. i also tried to play off natalie's over-protective nature as 'subtle' because i feel like she's way too hard-headed to be simping like crazy

(approx 1.1k words)

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

the two of you had first kissed at the party the day before the flight for nationals.

you decided to put your romance on hold until after so that you could focus on the match.

when the plane first crashes, the first thing nat does is look for you.

she finds you a few metres outside the plane, groaning in pain; you were shot out during the initial crash.

you have a concussion and a few gashes but surprisingly, no breaks or anything that requires misty’s surgical skill (thankfully!)

natalie is already naturally a stand-offish person, but after the disaster that unfolds, she closes off even more.  

you try to talk to her but she keeps giving you reasons why she can’t.

“sorry (y/n), i have to go hunting with travis.”

everybody notices the way you look at her longingly as she leaves every morning.

you’re always sitting by the fire, sharpening the knives when you catch her eye. it’s part of your routine at this point, and you swear you can see a remorseful look in her gaze.

eventually, natalie, overcome with guilt, tries to be more attentive to you.

one day she invites you out hunting.

“uhhh, look, (y/n). i know i haven’t been great but do you want to come with me? hunting? just the two of us…?”

you say yes almost immediately, longing to talk to her about unspoken things.

natalie is a bit awkward as it’s been a while since you’ve properly talked. you fall into a tense silence.

however, things brighten up a little when you trip on a fallen log. before you can hit the ground, natalie snakes a sturdy arm around your waist, holding you close to her.

“careful,” is all she says, her warm breath hitting your neck.

both of you blush hard and you cough as she lets go of you.

hunting with natalie becomes a normal occurrence (which travis hates because he thinks she’s totally into him).

one day, natalie gives you a wildflower. it’s half dead and looks like shit, barely able to survive on the coarse, dry ground, but your cheeks grow rosy, and you melt.

you give her a tight hug, to which she instantly stiffens up. after you apologise, she brushes the awkwardness off, but you swear you can see a small smile on her warm face.

natalie likes to give you lingering touches. she hates to be one of those ‘obnoxiously in love’ people, so this is her way of showing that she likes you. you notice the touches and appreciate them a lot.

for example, she might have her arm touching yours when you sit together eating or link your pinkies together when you’re standing/sitting next to each other.

she touches her foot against yours as you sleep, but after it starts to get a little colder, you wake up with her arms wrapped around you.

she denies it at first, extremely flustered, but starts to own it after the other girls tease you about it.

natalie never admits it, but she’s a little spoon. despite this, she will try to big spoon you even though she always ends up curled into your side, your arm draped over her securely.  

she’s honestly a bit of a radiator and her warm breath against your skin is one of your favourite feelings when you’re sleeping.

being the competitive girl she is, natalie has a lot of competitions with you; think competitions about who can find food the fastest.

she always coincidentally gets ‘distracted’ when there’s a deer around the corner. you know she just loves to see your joy when you think you’ve gotten her beaten.  

when winter hits, natalie is reluctant to let you hunt with her because of the terrain. however, you convince her with your very innocent puppy dog eyes.

cue natalie tightening the strings of your hood before you go out every morning – it’s such a subtle caring moment but you love it. you always smile at her when she does it, and she grins back.

another thing she does is rub her palms together while blowing her breath on them, and then putting them on your cheeks to keep you cozy. it really doesn’t work when you’re in freezing temperatures, but you appreciate the sentiment.

she also loves snowball fights. you’d be blabbering on about something and she’ll suddenly assault you.

“yeah, mrs stevenson was so damn strict, right? but i think she was going to go on maternity leave right before we left for nat- ooph! did you just fucking throw something at me?”

natalie’s face is red as she laughs her ass off, nearly losing balance.

“you should’ve seen your face, (y/n)! you were all like ‘arugh!’” she’d exclaim breathily, mimicking your shocked expression.

her face changes to faux fear the moment she sees you sprinting her way.

you tackle her into a snowbank, knocking the breath out of her lungs and the both of you wrestle, giggling as if you’re just two teenage girls with no fears in the world – no plane crash, no death, nothing.

natalie suddenly sobers up and you stop laughing, noticing.

“you okay, nat?” you ask, before she grabs your cheeks and pulls you in for a kiss.

ah, yeah. the whole romance thing you never ended up talking about.

you both discuss it as you walk back to the cabin, and that night, natalie seems a bit more obvious with her romantic advances.

one day, you get split up while hunting and as it grows darker, natalie can’t find you.

she returns back to the cabin hastily, begging for you to be there waiting for her.

but you’re not.

tears streaming down her face, she tries to leave to find you again. anything can get you; the cold, wolves, your clumsy ass could even trip and fall down a cliff or something.

tai and van have to physically hold her down to stop her from pursuing you. after all, she’s too much of a skilled hunter to die.

the next morning, she looks for you. she thinks that she’s out of luck and starts heading back to the cabin at the end of the day until she sees a flash of green in the snow. your jacket.

she runs over and starts digging, finding you, cold and barely responsive.

with a newfound adrenaline, nat brings you back all by herself. the girls are shocked to see you and after you’re warmed up, she talks to you.

she can’t stop crying the whole time and you hold her face with trembling, weak hands, giving her a kiss.

this is the first time natalie ever tells you she loves you.

and god, does your weak heart swell with adoration.

that night, she’s the big spoon and she traces shapes into your back while breathing on your nape.

she’ll warm you up as a thank you for all the time’s you’ve warmed her cold heart up.

she just loves you so much, and you love her too.

[slytherinshua]

◍ 　CARING HANDS 　( 최상엽 )

genre fluff , established marriage , pregnancy au , husband!sangyeop x pregnant!fem!reader   cw mention of dry and bleeding skin due to cold weather , pregnancy symptoms , overall just cute and fluffy , not proofread   wc 566   request @completely-zoned-out for sangyeop + scarred hands for the 3k event   note originally i wasn't gonna make this a pregnancy fic but i was running out of ideas to write for the prompt and i did rly want to include what you said in the req so i thought this would be a good way to do all of it?? i hope you don't mind skdjsk but the dad sangyeop agenda goes absolutely insane in my mind. the way he's always wanted to be a father and a good dad :(   net @kstrucknet

“You forgot to use your lotion again,” Sangyeop pointed out gently. He was never harsh when scolding you, especially during the past few months. 

You had never been this forgetful, but pregnancy symptoms had made you extremely absentminded. It was hard to adjust to along with the other struggles and pains pregnancy brought. Your skin had never been too kind to you even before you got pregnant, but back then, you at least remembered to take care of it before it got too bad. This year had been brutal— hormones making your skin even more sensitive to the weather changes than usual. You’d spent weeks with dry skin and bleeding hands, a very sad sight to look at. 

Luckily, your husband was there to remind you of everything you were prone to forget. He liked taking care of you, and your pregnancy gave him even more of an excuse to do it.

“My skin really doesn’t like the winter, I guess,” you said sheepishly, letting Sangyeop guide you to sit down. He grabbed a small bottle of hand cream that he had produced somehow. You were never quite sure how he always seemed to have anything you needed. 

“Give me your hands. You always miss spots,” he said, intent on applying it for you. You bit back commenting on the ridiculousness of his motherlike attitude towards you and let him do as he pleased. It was true that he was more thorough with it than you.

“You’ve been playing my guitar too. Your fingertips are sore,” Sangyeop noticed, frowning. 

“I need to teach the little one when you’re not around, although I can’t sing like you,” you smiled as your husband massaged the lotion into your hands. The warmth of his palms helped to soften it, and it was soothing against the soreness of your skin. 

Now almost seven months pregnant, Sangyeop’s favourite activity was singing to your bump and feeling your baby girl kick in response. He was currently busier than usual with shows, though, finishing up festivals and a few tour dates with the band. You liked to pick up his guitar when he was gone. 

It was all in hopes your daughter would develop the same love for music as you and your husband shared. Sangyeop had already thought extensively about what instrument to start her on. You thought piano seemed like a good option for when she was little. Sangyeop had images of teaching her guitar himself, picturing how big his acoustics would be in comparison to her little size at 3 or 4. It was an adorable thought. 

“All done,” Sangyeop said, bringing one of your hands up to press a quick kiss to it.

“I’ll try to remember next time,” you muttered. “I make you work so much to take care of me.” Sangyeop shushed you before you could say any more words to feel worse about your forgetfulness. 

“You are already doing all the hard work growing our baby. I am more than happy to take care of you. Let me do my part in this,” he defended. You let up quickly, supposing that he had a fair point. 

Sangyeop bent down until he was at eye level with your stomach, pressing a hand to your belly with a smile. 

“Remind your mama to take care of herself too, okay?” he whispered. He felt a little kick in response.

lucy taglist (bolded could not be tagged): @eternalgyu,, @evalevaeva,, @weird-bookworm,, @seunghancore,,

@chenleszone,, @chewryy,, @hursheys,, @loserlvrss,, @lexeees

[satorqn]

needle through his heart

geto is such a luvrboy he would do anything for u // hs time bc im in love

“yo, can i pierce your ears?” you peer over your book to meet suguru’s gaze, he too peering over his own book from the opposite side of the bed. 

“hmm,” he hums in contemplation as he notes the page he’s on before closing his book, setting it in his lap. “sure.” 

suguru would never in a million years, admit to anyone how tightly you have him wrapped around your finger; he’s like a puppet and with your every smile, laugh, plea and beg has him jerked and pulled into your grasp. he’ll also never admit how much he also enjoys your stupid ideas. because seriously, what the hell are you going to pierce his ears with? he doesn’t even own a pair of earrings! but his book was getting extremely dry and while he cherishes even the quietest, most mundane moments with you, he was getting bored. but if he were to ever give more than a deadpan “yeah, sure, i guess.” it would only enable more antics and that’s pushing it. 

suguru watches as you shuffle around his room, looking for god knows what. you kick aside a dirty t-shirt, making room to pull out the chair tucked into his desk. “what’re you looking for?” he continues watching as you pull through drawer after drawer, pushing aside pencils, paper-clips, stray post-it notes and paper scraps. 

“you got a thumbtack?” 

“oooh hell no,” 

you swivel around on the chair, a wide smile plastered on your face. in your hand, a small, bright pink thumbtack, no doubt stolen from ieiri. “ohh hell yeah.” 

you giggle your way over back to the bed, the thumbtack pinched and held like some sort of trophy. even suguru can’t fend off the growing smile on his face, watching you prance over to him. 

taking the book off his lap, you replace its spot. “hey.” suguru smiles up at you, his hands perched on your hips, thumbs absentmindedly tracing circles into your warm skin. 

“i’m gonna wing this.” you declare, free hand coming up to cradle suguru’s face. he, ever so slightly, leans into your touch. you can feel him hum of satisfaction as your finger traces a line from his cheek, down his jaw, and finally his ear lobe. his gaze never leaves your face, you can feel it, as you note an imaginary dot on the center of his lobe and bring the sharp tip of the thumbtack to it. 

“go for it, baby.” it’s almost like a purr, from deep within his chest and it makes all the blood in your body rush to your own cheeks and ears. 

even your hands start shaking. suguru’s always got a way to make you flustered, no matter how long you’ve been dating. your hands drop from his ears and into your lap as you try to hide your face in the crook of his neck in an attempt to hide the blush blooming across your cheeks. “don’t call me that.” it’s muffled into his sweater. “i’m the one with the weapon here.” you weakly hold up the bubblegum pink thumbtack, the short needle shining, catching the sunlight just right. you get a 2/10 on the menacing scale (+1 for effort,  honorary +1 because he loves you). 

you feel him chuckle against you, his hands moving to rest on your thighs. “sorry, won’t happen again baby.” 

“not after i stab you, it wont.” 

“yeah, yeah...”

you bring your attention back to the thumbtack and suguru’s ear, bringing the needle against his skin. “can i use your book to catch the back?” you’re already eyeing the book resting besides you, the hardcover shiny and brand new. he just bought it the other day, for full price. 

“yeah, go ahead.” 

needle in place, book behind his ear, you meet eyes with suguru. “you sure?”

“so sure.” 

“you ready?”

“so ready.” 

under the early morning light, suguru looks ethereal. long, dark hair splayed all around him, soft, steady breaths as he sleeps peacefully. it’s as if you trained your internal clock to wake up before your lover, just so you can steal a few quiet moments to just admire; admire the rise of his cheekbones, the fullness of his cheeks, the dip of his jaw. you gently run your fingers along his features before slowly combing through his hair, working out the knots. 

a particularly harsh tug elicits a deep groan from suguru, waking him from his slumber. he mutters a groggy “good morning” as his arms snake around you to pull you impossible close into his chest and you can’t help but to smile. you continue to play with his hair, before the glimmer of his earring catches your attention. 

you trace the dark jewelry, twisting it in the process. “did it hurt, when i stabbed you?” 

suguru is nearly curled into you, face tucked against your collarbone. he shakes his head, “i’ve felt worse.” 

an: ragagagag many thoughts rn || i’ve had this idea forever, initially for yoshida (csm) bc he has hella piercings but tbh not many ppl know him so </3 || inspired by that one super old dolan twins video where they literally stab hella thumbtacks into their ears lmfaoo || ik this is kinda shit but im just procrastinating studying for chem even tho i should bc im def gonna fail hehe || i was also going to say dont pierce your ears by yourself but thats what i do so just dont do it with a thumbtack lol

[thetorturedbuckydepartment]

bonus - chapter eleven: he better lock it down*

pairing: Bucky barnes x plus-sized!reader

summary: Six months ago, you were appointed to be Head Nurse to the Avengers by Tony Stark. Every day, you count your lucky stars, knowing the horrible past you quickly ditched back in England. It holds you back, restrains you, from getting close to anyone when on your new job.

That's until you met and fell in love with Bucky Barnes. The supposed assassin with a heart of gold, who seems to be eager to get to know you. To peel back your layers piece by piece, but could you trust him once you're laid before him raw and vulnerable?

masterlist

PREVIOUS PART -- CHAPTER TEN: I DON'T WANT YOU LIKE A BEST FRIEND

warnings: smut(18+ PLEASE: thigh riding, one orgasm, dry humping, softdom!Bucky, praise(good girl), just soft smut tbh), feelings

word count: 3.5k

Taglist: @scott-loki-barnes @cjand10 @blackwidownat2814 @blackbirdwitch22 @laughterafter  @blackhawkfanatic @mcira @bxckybxrnes24 @rachellovesloki @toffeacademia @bean-bean2000 @lana525 @selella @lalalalokii

A/N: my first time publishing smut I wrote lol...hope it's not too bad?? idk I've never had an orgasm bc im sexually dysfunctional (yay hormones!) so im sorry if its wrong? my source is literally other smut fics! hope u enjoy the bonus chapter!! so excited for you guys to read

“Buck, I’m being serious, get closer.” You’re already shivering in bed, and Bucky just won’t budge the way you need him to. He’s helped you put on fuzzy socks, got out the extra thick duvet and has stuck to you like a second skin, and you’re still freezing.

“Doll, I can’t physically do that.” At this point, the sun’s begun to rise, the both of you still wide awake after catching approximately one hour of sleep, and you feel like you’re beginning to annoy Bucky. He kisses your hair lovingly, chuckling at how cold you are, even when you’re tightly pressed with your back to his chest. You just grumble, the past few days leaving you overly exhausted, and the subzero temperature truly isn’t helping. You’d think, having lived all your life in England you’d get used to it.

But you fear there’s no force on Earth that could’ve prepared you for the New York cold. 

“I have one idea. Do you trust me, doll? I promise, I won’t do anything you don’t want.” You grab his forearm with your free hand, the other encased in his metal one, your head resting against its bicep. The near silent whirs are extremely calming, and you find yourself wishing and praying that all of your responsibilities disappear, just so you can lay here with him. 

“Of course, Buck. Go ahead.” 

“Can I touch you?” His voice is a near whisper, a brand new edge to it that you had been teased with a few hours ago, when his thumb has pressed against your teeth as he commanded you to moan for him. 

“Yes.” After a moment’s pause, your voice comes out more breathy than expected, your heart already racing. He misinterprets it.

“Hey, don’t worry doll. It’s just me.” He rubs at your hip, kissing the shell of your ear. 

“I know. I…please, Buck. Touch me. Make me feel warm.” You feel your eyes close at he gently traces his hand down your thigh and grabbing the inside of it, almost missing the way he groans at the touch of your soft skin. You’re wearing nothing but his oversized T-shirt he all but begged you to wear, along with your panties, and dear God he’s been trying his best to act like it’s not driving him crazy for the past couple of hours. His fingers are so warm, your entire body shivers at the change in temperature. 

“Spread your legs for me, pretty baby. That’s it, good girl.” You can’t stop the whine that slips past your lips as you comply. You don’t know how you’ve gotten here, but in this state of mind you would do anything he asks, anything at all. 

He slips his thigh between the both of your legs, pressing it against right where they meet, and you suppose that’s the benefit of being a super soldier. Bucky’s body is like a warm furnace that is now attached to more of you than ever before, and you let out a sigh of relief and let your body fully relax against the mattress.

“That feel better, pretty girl?” God, his voice is so sexy, you could listen to it for hours and hours on end. 

“Uh huh. Much. Thanks, Buck. I’m so sorry I kept you up so late, I’m sure you must have so much work to do and I just wasted all of your precious sleeping time.” You pout, even though he can’t see you. 

He kisses the back of your neck again. “Not a single moment with you is wasted, doll. Plus I have the day off. I have this really sexy nurse taking care of me, right now. And she’s advised me to take a break today because of all of my injuries.”

“Mm, I think she also has a holiday. The last few shifts have been…rough, to say the least.”

It’s quiet for a while, and so you let your eyes close, finally ready to give in to the temptress of sleep, whispering so sweetly against your eyelids to just give in. 

“I’m sorry.” His voice is hard, unsteady. Heavy with the burden of guilt.

“Hey, what are you apologising for? It’s not your fault I was whisked away on a mission and then had to work a double shift the second I came back because Denise suddenly got food poisoning. Unless…you didn’t feed her that chicken did you?”

“Oh, God no. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot barge pole with the way she’s treated you.” 

The both of you giggle at that, eyes still closed. You shuffle, ever so slightly to try and get more comfy against your personal radiator, and subconsciously grind your hips down. The friction is just right, and it makes you gasp. “S—Sorry, I’m just trying to—.”

“Do it again.” His voice is dark in a way that has your mouth parting, and your hips comply for you, before you can even think of a single word to move past your lips. You turn to bury your face in his arm, to stifle any noise you might make as you give in. Eager to please, eager to be pleased. 

He shudders, hand on your hip gripping tightly, almost making sure to leave a pretty bruise behind, a mark he was ever here, with you like this.

“Don’t hide your face baby. Let me hear you, let me hear all those pretty noises you make.” You’re already panting, eyes fluttering closed at his rough voice and sweet praise. 

“S—Sorry, I’m just a little shy, I think.” You don’t really know why you’re acting like this, so shy like you’ve never been touched. With a man who desires you as thoroughly as Bucky, it might as well be the case. You didn’t know that kissing him earlier tonight could feel like that, like the man is starved for your very soul. You didn’t know that even the slightest friction against where your legs meet could feel so delicious, leave you wide and aching for more. 

Even in such little touch and exploration, Bucky has made you feel a million times better that any previous partner ever could. At this point, you’re convinced he’s fucking magical, especially when he kisses the shell of your ear so sweetly, hand drifting to trace across your stomach. Fear temporarily seizes you, at the thought of what he might think as he touches you, and learns every nook and cranny of your body, the one that has been shunned and tolerated a million times over, so deeply ingrained that you almost can’t believe the next words to leave his lips.

“Don’t apologise for anything, beautiful. God, you feel so good under my hands, do you have any idea how long I’ve fucking waited to have you like this?” He ends the question with a rasp, the passion in his voice overtaking any rational thought he might want to have. His hands are practically shaking from holding back from you, knowing he wants to do nothing more than to turn you around and watch you as you make yourself cum all over his sweatpants, and finally find out which fantasies of his are true. 

“How long?” He guides your hips over his thigh yet again, and this time, your ass brushes up against something hard, and you can’t conceal the moan that tumbles out of your mouth, squeezing your eyes shut at the proof. That he wants this, that what he’s saying is true.

“Since the very first moment I saw you, balancing for dear life on that damn ladder.” He’s trying his best to control his own breath, but the sounds your making are just so beautiful, that he can barely contain himself. He’s heard these sounds before, through a paper thin wall and with heightened senses like a downright pervert, but to know that you trust him enough to lay with him, like this, and make those sounds right in front of him? He’s definitely losing his mind. Maybe he died on that last mission, maybe the Hydromanias had gotten to him and he’s dead. And somehow, somewhere, someone has granted him passage to heaven. His bed, with you.

He can’t bear it, he needs to look into your pretty eyes, to see your pupils dilate as you notice the lovestruck look on his face, to taste your moans and your lips just seconds after you’ve cum all over him. “Really?” Leaves you in a breath, as he turns the both of you around in a flash, so you’re facing him with his leg still pressed up against you.

“Yes. Why do you think I cooked you an entire meal to make sure you’d like me? If you were anyone else, I wouldn’t give a single shit.” Your hand reaches out, caressing his cheek as you stare into his eyes and wondering if another colour even exists aside from lust-hazed, love-tinged cobalt. There is no hesitation to his words, and you can’t help yourself. You shuffle in closer, your entire upper body pressed against his, and you kiss him. Softly, sweetly, like one would enjoy ice-cream on a scorching summer’s day. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had a crush on you the second you didn’t let me fall off of it and break my arm.” You whisper against his lips and he closes his eyes, relishing in the feeling of you. 

“It does. You have no idea.” He kisses you again, this time it’s more passionate. You wind your fingers into his hair, softly scratching the nape of it as he moans shamelessly into your mouth, spurring you on. Maybe you don’t have to be shy.

“Take what you want from me. Please doll, I can’t take it any more. Fuck, please.” He moans against your lips and your lower body moves again, grinding against his thigh. How can you deny him when he begs so prettily? When he’s so clearly desperate for a taste, a touch of you? He pulls you in closer, cementing your chests together as he helps guide you.

It doesn’t take more than a minute for you to struggle to kiss him back, mouth hanging open as you let out a litany of sounds he wants nothing more than to absorb, for it to be the only song he ever hears for the rest of your life.

“Bucky…” When his name slips past your lips, he groans.

“Look at me, gorgeous.” He asks you to open your eyes, and you comply, grinding your hips faster and faster as the pressure builds so perfectly against your clit. 

Luckily, you and Bucky are the only two people to inhabit your floor, and so you forget to be quiet, using your voice so that he knows who it’s all for, who’s making you feel like this.

But it isn’t enough. As the hot pressure builds in your stomach and you feel yourself so close to the edge you want to cry, you just can’t do it. He mutters praises and kisses every part of you he can reach as you continue your salacious ministrations against his adored sweatpants. But still, you can’t cum, something keeps pulling you back the very second you find yourself on the precipice. 

“Bucky…please help. Please make me cum, I can’t do it by myself. Please…” Your moans get louder and louder as he smirks, abandoning the bruises he was planning to leave on your neck.

“Yeah, pretty girl? Does my pretty baby need help to make her cum?” His grin has your eyes rolling in the back of your head, being tipped back at his very words. You nod, trying your best to speed up. 

“My poor baby, so worked up…so needy…” He snakes a hand between the both of you, gently tracing your clit over your underwear. And you are so worked up in a frenzy, you’d do anything to feel his bare skin on yours, giving and taking whatever the fuck he needs. Whatever the fuck he wants. 

“Yes, yeah, all for you Buck—Only for you.” He takes you in for a brief moment, cheeks flushed and hair sticking to your forehead, yet eyes feral with a lust for only him, in a way that makes him feel like the most perfect man in the entire world. And he doesn’t even know that’s exactly what he is to you, because you can’t push it past your bruised throat from his hungry teeth or swollen lips from the way he desires you. 

And then he acts, pushing your panties to the side and finally giving you what you need, and you let out the loudest moan you’ve probably ever mustered in your entire life, as your back arches, pressing those perfect tits he’s dreamed about against his chest, his dog tags. His vibranium hand is so cold as he touches your frenzied heat, but you can’t ask him to switch, not when it feels so good. You begin to rut against his hand instead, coating it thoroughly with your arousal as he draws the most perfect circles on your clit. Your eyes gaze downward, eager to watch him as he gives you everything you’ve ever needed, eager to watch the way your thigh nudges against his erection. 

“You want me to keep going, baby?”

“Yes, don’t stop, please don’t stop, it feels so good, James, please.” You’re too focused on the glimmering gold and black dancing between your legs in the moonlight to register what you’ve just called him. 

“Fuck, say my name again, and look me in the eye this time, pretty girl.” You immediately obey, eyes flitting up to his as he rests his forehead against yours. “Your hand feels so fucking good, James. Much better than anything I’ve ever—oh.” He rubs even harder and faster, eliciting the most filthy sounds you’ve ever heard from your cunt, a wet squelching that brings heat to your cheeks. God, how does he do it? 

You watch his pupils dilate, his breath quicken as he never slows, watching you give in to your desires, ones you’ve denied yourself of for the longest time, as he too can’t hold himself back from grinding against your thigh in turn, content with just the look on your face as you’re mere seconds away from coming undone. “That’s it, pretty baby. You look so beautiful riding my hand like this.” And that’s all it takes to send your hurtling over the edge, clamping down on his wrist and still never looking away from him as your orgasm washes over you, bathing you in the most pleasure you’ve ever experienced and leaving your entire body trembling with the aftershocks.

 Maybe it’s the intimacy of having him care, of having him look into your eyes, entranced by the sight, by the person staring back at him. He swears he’s never seen anything prettier, never seen anyone look as beautiful as you do in this moment. When you come back to, he’ll tell you. For now, he’ll enjoy the way you seek more of his touch and squirm away from it at the same time as everything becomes too sensitive, but never breaking eye contact once.

That’s all it takes for him to cum as well, repeating your name over and over again like it’s his favourite prayer, his flesh hand coming up to caress your cheek gently, as it’s now your turn to watch him lose himself, staring at you like you’re the reason he can’t help but cum in his pants like a goddamn teenager. Your opal eyes are all he can think of, joining you to him in the most intimate way. He’s dreamed about this for so long, it almost doesn’t feel real. 

When a dopey grin overtakes his features and his head slumps back against the pillow, you kiss him. Gently, sweetly, like you have all the time in the world.

“I liked that.” You don’t know what else to say, burying your face in his neck. He chuckles, tugging at your hair ever so gently, an attempt to get you to look at him. 

Your eyes take him in, from his sweat-mussed hair to his parted and swollen lips. He looks ethereal. How is he not a figment of your imagination? You run your hand along the curve of his jaw, as he turns to press breathless kisses to your palm. 

You must be dreaming.

“I liked it too, pretty girl. More than you know.” You’re staring at his mouth, unable to stop the question from flying past your lips as you swipe your thumb over his.

“What are we, now?” His eyes widen, unsure how you’ve managed to miss that you’re his everything and that he’d die for you. He’d kill for you.

“Whatever you want us to be, doll.” Your eyes drift back up to their familiar resting place and you offer him a gentle smile. His heart stops at the look in them, cumdrunk and lovestruck. It’s all he wants to see for the rest of his days, until they lower him into the ground. 

Bucky suddenly finds himself wishing he were an artist, just so he could paint you exactly the way you look in the darkest before dawn, with hot cheeks and a beautiful smile, and the promise of light coming to illuminate your figure at any moment. He would paint you a million times over, from memory, in every single medium that exists as a way of wordlessly expressing his love for you. And then, he would scribble I LOVE YOU in large red letters on every blank inch of canvas, to really drive the point home. But alas, he can barely remember how to hold something that isn’t a weapon. But he knows how to hold you, soft and warm underneath his callous hands, and that’s a start.

“I must admit…I’m quite a traditional woman, James. I like being taken out on dates and being publicly acknowledged, and respected and desired. If I feel something for you, I want you to be my boyfriend. I want to be your girlfriend, even if it might sound silly to say at our big age. But I want exclusive and absolute. If…If you want something casual, it’s best that we nip this whole thing in the bud. I can’t deal with the emotional fallout of that again, you—.”

His mouth claims yours, and you relax into him, forgoing the muscles that temporarily tightened at the thought of him not feeling the same. Oh, how quickly he quells the torrid fears that wrench your soul apart.

“I want that too. Absolutes, exclusivity, you. I want you, above all else. I’d die to have you, I’d kill to have you. I want you either way, even if tomorrow you wake up and tell me you’d rather spit on my grave than spend another single second in my presence. I want you, doll. Only you. I want to be your boyfriend, I want to take you on the most cliche dates, and I want to kiss you in the rain. I want to make you laugh at all of my lame jokes all night, and most of all, I want you to know that through it all, I am absolutely enamoured by you. I wouldn’t have it, have you any other way.” 

You kiss him again. And again and again, and you just can’t stop because his lips are so soft and his words are so sweet and his desires are so tangible, laid before you raw and awaiting. You hands find his wondrous hair again, pulling him closer to you, pulling him on top. 

Not in a sexual way, but you need his weight on you. You need to feel him close, skin to skin, no barriers, in a way that transcends sex and spirituality and religion, praying to the ideation of his affections and worshipping at the altar of his lips. Finding the sacred temple in the small dips in his back, reciting the familiar hymns of love and lust and everything in between. The sun is rising, yes, but you are so entirely lost in the devotion of him, of his mouth and soul, that when the light hits, you don’t even break apart. 

And the best part? He is searching right back, for the Holy Water laced in your fingers, washing him over in colours of purity and affection. You don’t know it, but he swears you’re God when you wrap your legs around his waist, an angel when you touch him and all of his scars without hesitancy or remorse. You are pulling him apart and stitching him back together, moulding him on top of you like you are Prometheus. He swears that you are ordained, sent to save him, to fill all of his cracks with molten gold and kiss it all better if it should ever burn.

He is passion, you are devotion.

He is on fire and you are the flames.

Nobody gets him like you.

Nobody gets you like him.

And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

BONUS PART

[siancore]

SamBucky | E | 2.3k | AO3

Summary: While taking down alien bio-weapon arms dealers in Madripoor, Sam is hit with a dart containing a weaponized aphrodisiac substance. Bucky takes Sam to Wakanda for help even though he risks arrest by General Ayo if he shows his face there. But, Bucky would do anything for Sam, and considering Sam's dire situation, Bucky just might have to.

Content: Fuck or Die; Mildly Dubious Consent; Hand Jobs; Explicit Sexual Content; Porn with Feelings

A/N: My first time writing a Fuck or Die fic. I hope it's good. Thanks for reading.

“We were tracking targets who’ve been making bioweapons and selling them on the black market in Madripoor. We got intel that they were making a large sale, so we went to apprehend them,” says Torres in way of explaining what had happened and why he, and the rest of the New Avengers are standing before General Ayo pleading their case. “We went in to incapacitate the targets and then Cap was hit with a dart that injected him with something. Initial scans detected alien tech was used, so Barnes pulled rank and said we had to come here.”

Ayo raises her eyebrow, looks at Bucky, and says, “You were told to stay away from Wakanda for the time being, James.”

Bucky steps forward and gives her a pleading look as he says, “Ayo, please. It’s not me asking another favor. It’s Sam. He needs help. He needs the best and the brightest to fgure this out, and they’re here in the Golden City. Please, General. For Sam.”

“Very well,” Ayo replies. “Captain Wilson can stay, but the rest of you must leave.”

“No,” says Bucky. “I can’t. I won’t – I won’t leave Sam right now.”

“You are yet again testing my patience, James.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, but I can’t leave him on his own, Ayo. I just can’t,” says Bucky solemnly, and Ayo sees a look in his eyes that she knows all too well herself: Love. 

xXx

Sam and Bucky are waiting in a private room at the Royal Medical Facility. The doctors in Birnin Zana have run numerous tests and the pair are awaiting the results. 

“I feel okay,” says Sam as Bucky paces the floor. “Sure, a little warm, and maybe kinda hazy. But I – oh. Oh.”

“What is it?” asks Bucky as he comes to a halt and looks down at Sam. 

The other man looks equal parts sheepish and mortified.

“Nothing,” says Sam. 

“Come on,” Bucky urges as he takes up a seat next to Sam. “The Doc said to let her know if there’re any changes in how you feel. What is it, Sam?”

It is in that moment that Sam begins to present with symptoms. He is suddenly feverish and restless. His mouth goes dry, and his throat feels somewhat tight. His skin feels like it is burning, and his heart is racing. He is also, to his surprise and dismay, growing sexually aroused. Sam can feel the heat pooling below as an erection begins to swell.

“I just – I feel kinda hot,” says Sam.

Bucky instinctively reaches his hand over to test Sam’s temperature, Sam leans into the touch.

“You’re burning, Sam!” says Bucky as he gets to his feet. “I’m goin’ to get the Doc.”

Before Sam can say anything in protest, Bucky rushes out of the room in search of someone to help.

xXx

“It’s a weaponized aphrodisiac,” says Doctor Shem’ka

“A what?” asks a confused Bucky as he knits his brow and looks between Sam and the doctor.

“An aphrodisiac is something that causes sexual arousal –” 

“I know what that means, Doc,” Bucky supplies. “But weaponized? How? Why?”

“I’ve heard of alien bio-technology similar to this, but no one is quite sure of how it works,” she says.  “Basically, it is an aphrodisiac that, once injected into the target’s bloodstream, ingested, or inhaled, it remains there and works against their whole system.”

“How?”

“It makes the target experience extreme sexual arousal.”

“Okay, and that’s dangerous?”

“Yes, in this case because unless the extreme sexual arousal is relieved, and therefore expelled from their system, the patient can suffer a number of fatal side effects.”

“Fatal?” both Sam and Bucky ask at the same time.

“Yes, these cases can end in the patient dying if untreated.”

“So, how do we treat it? How do we stop it from attacking his system?” asks Bucky before Sam can even form a sentence. 

“The patient has to engage in sexual activity. Like I said before, we have heard of these types of weaponized aphrodisiacs, mostly in the form of sex pollen. It attacks the victim from the inside out and can only be treated by the patient engaging in sexual activity.”

“Okay,” says Sam, processing the information he is being told while trying not to ogle Bucky.

“Will he live?” Bucky chokes out, as he places a hand to Sam’s shoulder; Sam wants to press his whole body against Bucky’s and almost moans from the thought of it. 

“If he’s able to receive treatment.”

xXx

“So, it really is fuck or die?” asks Sam, trying to lighten the mood before he flinches from pain once more.

“That’s how they explained it,” Bucky replies, trying to avert his gaze. 

Sam looks so uncomfortable. He is in the private room while being monitored remotely. His face looks flushed and pained at the same time. He is trying to hide his straining erection while steadying his breathing. He really, really wants Bucky. He can smell Bucky. He bets Bucky’s cock will taste better than he smells. He bets Bucky’s cock can split him –

“Cap?” asks Bucky after a moment of silence from Sam. “How you doin’?”

Sam is drawn from his lascivious thoughts from the sound of Bucky’s voice. 

“Hmm, I’m okay,” Sam lies.

“Sam?”

“What?”

“How’re you doin’?”

“Well, I’m so hard that it hurts,” Sam says flatly. “And it feels like my skin is burning me alive.”

Bucky moves to the bedside table and pours Sam another glass of water. He brings it around and hands it to him. Sam takes it, gulps it down, and then stares up into Bucky’s eyes. There’s a fire behind his gaze as he looks up through his pretty lashes. Bucky’s dick twitches at the sight before he reminds himself that Sam is in a dire situation and Bucky’s little crush on him should not be causing him distraction right now. 

“Buck?”

“Yeah? You need me to get someone?”

“No. No, I need. I need you to touch me.”

“Sam.”

“Please, Buck. I’m so hot for it. I need you. Your hand or your mouth. Please, just touch me.”

Sam looks down to his own lap covered by the hospital gown and Bucky sees how hard he is through the flimsy material. Bucky is ashamed that his own erection grows at the sight of Sam’s dripping cock soaking the fabric. He looks away.

“I’ll be back.”

“Buck?”

“Just wait here, please,” says Bucky as he makes his way toward the door. “I gotta check something with the Doc.”

Bucky’s heart clenches at the sounds of Sam pleading with him as he slips out of the door. When Bucky finds the doctor, he gets right to the point.

“What if Sam relieves himself?” asks Bucky, not wanting to do anything unless they explore all of the available options. 

“Captain Wilson has already masturbated while you went to make the call to update your team,” Doctor Shem’ka answers. “It relieved his symptoms marginally.”

“Really? That’s umm, that’s. Shit. Umm. What if – what if I touched him?”

The doctor contemplates what Bucky is asking.  

“Maybe masturbation by someone else would work. Sergeant Barnes, if you do not want to, we can get one of our medical staff to —“

“No!” Bucky says quickly. “No, I can — I’ll do it. Sam’s my partner. If he needs help, I’ll be the one to help him.”

“Very well,” the doctor replies. “We will continue to monitor his vitals from here, but you and he will have complete privacy while engaging in the act.”

Bucky’s face flushes hot, but he has no time to think about his modesty. He turns to leave, but then says, “I don’t know what this substance has done to Sam. Not entirely. But does he know what he’s askin’ me for? Does he want this? The sex, I mean?”

“It’s difficult to tell for certain,” Doctor Shem’ka answers honestly. 

“So, he might not really want me touching him and it’s just the drug talking?”

“It is a possibility.”

Bucky looks sick a moment as the realization sets in. 

“But I can tell you this with certainty, Sergeant Barnes. If Captain Wilson doesn’t find relief and treatment soon, he will not survive.”

xXx

“I’m sorry, Bucky,” says Sam when Bucky steps back into the room. “I just really need you right now. I need you.”

Sam sounds so out of it. He is reclined on the bed, sweat covers his body, and his eyes are so dilated Bucky can scarcely see the amber in them.

“Hey, come here,” says Bucky as he sits and then lies on the bed next to Sam. “I know. It’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna help you. It’s gonna be okay.”

Sam makes a pleased sound as he shifts closer to Bucky and reaches his hand out to take Bucky’s. He guides it up under the hem of his gown and places it to his hardness. Sam moans and Bucky almost gasps out loud. Sam is so hard. So, so hard and his taut skin feels as if it’s on fire. His cock feels heavy in Bucky’s hand and Bucky finds himself wrapping his fist around Sam’s girth. Sam covers his hand and tries to guide him up and down.

“Hold on,” Bucky whispers. 

“Buck-eeeeeee,” Sam pleads moving closer to the other man. “Please. Please.”

“Shh,” Bucky soothes as he turns to grab the bottle of lube he brought back into the room. “I don’t want our first time doing this to be uncomfortable for you.”

Sam moans something unintelligible and closes his eyes as Bucky squeezes lube into his fist and coats Sam’s hardness. 

“Bucky,” Sam breathes out. “Oh, God. Bucky.” 

Before the man whose name is falling so deliciously from Sam’s perfect lips can say anything, Sam is reaching up and pulling him in for a kiss. Bucky is stunned a moment, and a little disoriented by the feeling of Sam’s lips claiming his. He had dreamed of this moment more times than he would care to admit. He imagined sharing their first kiss after Sam’s first mission as Captain America. He imagined it happening down on the dock in Delacroix as the sun hung lazily in the Louisiana sky. He imagined them sharing their first kiss on a quiet Sunday afternoon on Sam’s couch. He never imagined it would have happened like this. With Sam being drugged by a substance that has him burning with desire. In a moment of clarity, that little voice inside of Bucky’s head reminds him that Sam, in this state, would desire the touch of anyone, not just Bucky. Even though, as Bucky strummed at Sam’s gorgeous cock, Sam was calling his name. 

A clever slide of Sam’s tongue to deepen their kiss brings Bucky back to the present moment. Sam’s kisses are better than Bucky imagined, and he instantly feels guilty for thinking so. Sam doesn’t want this, what is transpiring between them. Sam doesn’t want him. 

Sam breaks the kiss and moans into Bucky’s mouth as Bucky continues to stroke his hardness. Sam’s breath is hot on Bucky’s lips. Bucky opens his eyes and catches Sam’s lidded gaze. He looks out of it; delirious. He looks beautiful like this. So fucking beautiful as Bucky catches his lips in another kiss. He draws Sam closer, one hand holding Sam safely, the other sliding up and down Sam’s dripping, veiny dick. 

He knows this feels more intimate than it should be. He knows he just needs to get Sam off, and hopefully the drug will be flushed from his system. But it all feels so intense for Bucky, lying there drawing pleasure from Sam; soothing Sam; healing Sam. Saving Sam. That’s all he wants to do. And if this is how it has to happen so that Sam can live, well Bucky will do it a thousand times over. 

Sam pulls back a little as his eyes clench shut and his body goes rigid. Bucky keeps strumming him as Sam finally finds his release and comes hot in Bucky’s fist. Sam moans as his orgasm ripples through his body. Bucky strokes him through it and holds him, peppering soft kisses to Sam’s sweat drenched brow as he fights to catch his breath. Sam seems dozy as he basks in the afterglow of his climax. Bucky keeps an eye on him as he falls into slumber. 

He doesn’t want to move and leave Sam there, but he needs to check in with the medical staff to see if the drug has been expelled. He watches as Sam’s chest rises and falls languidly as sleep takes him a little deeper. 

Bucky manages to disentangle himself from Sam and amble toward the door. Just as he is about to make his exit, he hears Sam stir behind him. 

“Bucky?”

“I’m here,” he replies before turning to face Sam; what he sees almost tears his heart out. 

Sam is lying there, feverish and sweating once more, and sporting another painful erection. It didn’t work. Fuck. It did not work. 

“Bucky, please,” Sam begs as tears fill his eyes. “It hurts. It hurts. I need you.”

“Oh, Honey. I’m sorry,” says Bucky wetly. “I’ll try again, okay? Whatever you need, I’ll give you.”

 “I want you. I want you so bad, Buck. Please.”

Bucky knows it’s the drug talking. He knows Sam wouldn’t really truly want this from him. Would never want this with him. But something about the desperation in Sam’s voice makes Bucky’s resolve shatter, even though he knows better. 

“I – I want you, too, Sammy,” Bucky finds himself admitting. “I want you so fucking much it hurts. I’d do anything for you. Just tell me what you need.”

“Bucky, please. Please. Fuck me. I need you to fuck me. I’ll be so good for you, Buck. I’ll be so good, I promise.”

“Shhh. I know. I know,” Bucky soothes as he climbs back into the bed and kisses Sam’s temple. “I’ll help you. It’ll work this time. I’m gonna fix this. I’m gonna make you feel better. You’re gonna feel so, so good, Baby. I promise.”

[kvothes]

If the idea interests you, for the ask game, no.39 for spirk?

hell YEAH i love this prompt: BECAUSE TIME HAS RUN OUT

“One hour you have,” the Shi’ni’rian says, in cut-up standard. “Contact deities. Beg them relief.” Then he slams the door, leaving the landing party once again in darkness. 

Yeoman Lawton is crying, though she is trying to keep it quiet. This cannot be helped, Kirk thinks: she is only seventeen. She has been very brave. They all have.

“Report,” he says. “One by one. Anything you noticed. Any ideas you have.”

Spock presents himself first. He is somewhere to Kirk’s left. The darkness is disorienting and terrible, but the Vulcan’s voice is familiar. “We are approximately one hundred meters underground,” he says. “There is one passage to and from this cell, presumably heavily guarded. The Shi’ni’rians avoid direct skin-to-scale contact with us.”

“Telepathic?”

“Or extremely sensitive.”

“We could work with that.” Kirk rubs his mouth. “Lieutenant Uhura?”

She gives her report: the language is not one with which she is familiar, though it has glottal stops that hint at some similarity with Klingon. Ensign Gordon is almost certainly suffering a concussion, but he managed to retain his communicator in the confusion. They’re too far below ground for a signal, but Kirk is happy they have it. Yeoman Lawton, through her tears, tells Kirk in a wobbly voice that she’s frightened and trying very hard not to be and she’s sorry she can’t be more help. He hears Uhura move closer to the young ensign to comfort her, and he’s grateful. He tells her that this is far beyond what she should be expected to handle and she is performing admirably. Dry your tears. We’ll manage just fine.

Inwardly, he is not sure. He wishes he could see Spock’s face. He reaches out and finds the Vulcan’s arm, pulls him closer so they can confer. Spock isn’t one for false hope. He does not see how they can fight their way through one corridor full of Shi’ni’rians, with Gordon concussed and young Tina Lawton not yet trained in combat. Privately, Kirk agrees. But he cannot—will not—say so. They speak in low voices. They have very few choices.

As their hour draws to a close, according to Spock’s impeccable internal chronometer, the landing party takes up positions on either side of the door, feeling their way in the dark. They will attack the first guard to enter the cell and go from there. Kirk is hopeful that their reluctance to touch the prisoners betrays some weakness. “Give it your all,” he tells his party. “Ensign, that communicator is yours. Bring up the rear and keep trying to hail the ship as we go.”

“Yes, sir,” Lawton says, and though her voice still wobbles she sounds determined.

There are footsteps thumping down the steps to their dark cell. Kirk draws in breath and holds it. At his shoulder, he can feel the heat of Spock’s body, drawing close. Just as the keys scrape in the door of the cell, Kirk feels a touch to his hand. Two of Spock’s fingers, tapping against the two first fingers of Jim’s hand. His skin is warm. Kirk hooks their fingers together for the briefest instant, drawing strength from the touch, offering his strength in return. Against his shoulder, Spock breathes. Kirk feels it against the side of his neck.

The door opens.

[kekaki-cupcakes]

I dare you - Leo V x gn child of Nike/Reader

part five

┈┈┈┈┈◦•✩•◦┈┈┈┈┈

“You promise?”

“I pinkie promise,” they muttered back with a little smirk, rolling their eyes and flopping back onto their bed with a ‘oof’. 

Leo smirked back at them, “because you’re super dooper whooper good at-”

They dry retched, getting comfortable on their bed, which had a lot of fluffy pillows and and a poster of a musical he didn’t recognise pinned next to it. The other two beds in the room had lots more decorations, including a few spots that looked like a bedazzler had exploded. “I actually said that?”

“You were drugged up,” he shrugged, and sat next to them. “But you promise?”

“I promise that if you stink of sawdust and make me sneeze, I’ll kick you out.” They extended their left pinkie, and narrowed their eyes sharply. “You better not stink of sawdust and make me sneeze.”

Leo shook on it triumphantly. “I had three showers.”

“Well, you might need another one if I start bleeding again,” they muttered, and started to unwrap the bandage encasing their hand. The cast had come off a few days ago, but Kayla had redone the bandage and told them to wait another few days before doing anything extreme. 

They got out of dishes, but were also banned from most other activities, which the entire camp got to hear them complain about. Leo peered at their hand hesitantly, “is it supposed to look like that?”

“To be fair, it hasn’t seen the sun in at least a week,” they mumbled, and stared at it with wide eyes as well. Their three remaining fingers were squashed to one side, which should straighten out after a while [hopefully] and the old and new scars were oddly discolored, a stark contrast from the normal tone to their skin. THe skin that rounded off into little numbs where a pinky and a ring finger should sit. 

They extended it to him with pleading eyes. “Please fix it.”

“That’s my job, silly,” he replied, and took their hand in his, trying not to go red as their shaking fingers curled around his. 

They rolled their eyes, settling back onto their mound of pillows as Leo took a few thick shards of celestial bronze and started molding it. “Well I ain’t paying you.”

“You don’t need to.” Leo said simply, heating his hands enough to work the metal smoothly into a general finger shape, but not hot enough to burn what was left of their two fingers.

They looked away, scrunching their shoulders a little and grinning. “Stop being stupid.”

“Impossible.”

Leo sanded down the edges and used a screwdriver to carve the dips around where their fingernails should sit, so that grooves were the same. When he pulled the leather straps that connected to a strap around their wrist, holding the shiny golden fingers in place, he was afraid he’d cut off their blood. “Does that hurt?” 

“Nah,” they grinned. “You can’t hurt me.”

He squinted for a moment, “is that a challenge? I don’t wanna hurt you!”

They gave him a deadpan glare as they wiggled the three attached fingers on their right hand, which only made the guilt seep back into his veins and crawl up his throat. Leo shook his head quickly. “You shouldn’t have grabbed it, why-”

“I wasn’t about to let you be decapitated.” They mutter with a raised eyebrow, like they were thinking ‘how could Leo be so stupid?’. “I like you being alive too much.”

Leo chuckled and finished sanding the leather straps down so they wouldn’t cut into their hands. “Aw, you like me!”

When he looked up, putting the sandpaper away and the screwdriver, his heart decided to clamber into his throat and stay there. They were watching him with soft eyes, sitting close enough that Leo was scared they’d hear his breath catch. 

Part of him was tensed up and ready to look away, but the rest of him screamed to not move, be quiet and stay still so that the thick bubble of something between tension and tenderness wouldn’t pop. He tried for a little smile, but then the fingers he had just built were curling around his own in a way that made his smile stretch wider.

Apparently in the split second he’d taken to glance at his shaky hands, they had made a decision, because his head was tilted and then pushed back a little when their lips were pressed to his.

His eyes fluttered shut as warmth danced across his cheeks, probably making him as red as a strawberry. 

That wasn’t a problem though, because there were hands on his hips and his own flew up to their jaw a second later as he smiled into the kiss. The kiss, they were kissing him! Leo resisted the urge to grin too much, he didn’t want to pull away, even as his lungs argued with his emotions.

There was a muffled shriek, and he was pushed backwards, laying on their doona as they held themselves above him with their elbows, a surprised look on their thoroughly kissed face. “Uh,” they gulped, a hazy look over their eyes. “Sorry, I shoulda-”

Leo’s brain finally caught up with him, and he pushed the internal exclamation points aside for a moment, keeping his hands on their face. They were so warm and breathtaking, he never wanted to stop staring at them. He cocked his head. “Why are you apologizing? Don’t say sorry, I really wanted you to-”

“I shoulda asked,” they mumbled but their eyes drifted, as Leo noticed his lips seemed more appealing than the conversation at hand. He couldn’t relate more. 

“Okay,” he said back, pulling them down a little bit and closing the gap. He smiled when he pulled away, savoring the taste of them. “Ask, then.” 

They only kissed his cheek with a grin, their hands tangling around his dark curls that he’d been planning on cutting shorter soon. The feeling of their hands in his hair got rid of that thought quickly. 

“Ask,” he kissed them again, short and sweet. “I dare you.”

[Title drop! And also the last chapter. Thanks to everyone that loved this fic!]

[skinnipinni]

Things that helped me survive:

Don’t exclude things. It is scary, like wtf crisps are caloric af. But it will help you to not binge. You feel like eating some crisp? Eat some, count it into your daily intake. Maybe eat them tomorrow too. That way you wont fill yourself with unsatisfying food and still end up binging on whole bag…

Protein is the most important thing. Buy everything wit “protein” on its label

Celebrate Christmas and Easter with your family. This one day won’t change anything. Really. Your family doesn’t deserve to worry on Christmas Eve and you can eat food that only occurs at special occasions.

Take vitamin D

DON’T CHEW GUM. Research shows that actually it makes you more hungry.

Water is mandatory. 2 litres have to be drank daily.

You can drink cola 0 on ketosis while fasting. Somebody once told me that I can’t. You can drink it because it doesn’t have carbs so your ketosis is safe <3.

If you binge, don’t fast right after it. After your fast you will just binge again. Come back to normal restriction and try fasting in 2-3 days.

Buy good skin care and hair care products. You will need that. Your skin might start being grey and dry and hair will just fall out. Buy good brush, use masks, conditioners and hair growth products. Use t-shirt/special silk towel to dry it. Don’t bleach it. It will only make it worse.

VOLUME EATING - a real lifesaver, it will make you soooo satisfied. You can make whole bowls of low cal protein and veggies. Your stomach will feel full and you will have no space to eat something “forbidden”

Go for a walk. Really, that’s enough, thats how I lost 40kg. Unless you want to be toned walking is enough and you won’t faint and over exercise yourself.

Dieting can be cheap, but you have to plan for whole week.

If you live with someone, don’t even say a word about dieting. I had situations at home when I fasted for 3 days and my mom yelled at me for getting close to the fridge because she didn’t know I haven’t eaten anything for long time. Be normal about it. Hide the scale after using it. Make a password for your computer, phone, tablet. Have your own bin in your room and empty it regularly. Don’t do too much lax because they will notice you occupy bathroom for too long. Eat something high cal once in a while in front of them.

My friends are always going out to eat. If you have a boyfriend just give him some of your portion, if you are single order something lower in calories than other options and start with eating low cal ingredients. Don’t waste money on food at restaurants, buy something cheap, you are not going to eat all of it anyways. You are supposed to get skinnier, not your wallet.

If your friends want to drink, try drinking non alcoholic beer. It’s not so high in calories and you can find excuse for drinking it. If you really want to drink alcohol divide it into two portions and drink it with 0 cal cola. 0.5 shot of vodka and rest of the cup is cola, then repeat and you will appear normal.

Don’t buy konjac, I know its tempting but believe me it won’t help you with your toilet visits.

Don’t overuse lax. It took me 2 years to start sh*ting without problems and extreme pain again.

You can watch fat mukbangers or 600lb life. It makes me motivated. BUT DON’T POST FATSPO OF RANDOM PEOPLE. IT IS JUST EVIL. IF YOU DO THAT JUST STFU AND GET OUT, UR HUMAN PIECE OF TRASH. People on those shows were there voluntarily and they know they will get critique but random girls on social media don’t deserve it…

Find manual hobby that requires a lot of concentration. It will take your mind of fasting and will relax you <3

Remember ED is not pretty or cute or delicate dainty fairycore sh*t. It is pain and tears and mental damage. It’s not glamorous as we want it to be.

[jasdiary]

“This really doesn’t seem like a good idea….Okay well wait for me!”

Full Name : Sinan Aspen Keene

Nicknames : S.K, Sinner, Princey (Meryl @rosietrace ), Lord Sinan/Mr. Sinan (Gwen @starry-night-rose ), Sinny/Sinnamon/Princley (Ellis), Nana (Gemma), Si (Nyla)

Jp Va : Kengo Kawanishi

En Va : Howard Wang / John Cusack

Age : 17-18

Height : 177 cm (5’9)

Homeland : Gale Empire

Birthday : 11/25 November 25th

Zodiac sign : Sagittarius

Species : Ice Fae/quarter Wind Fae

Hair Color : Navy Blue

Eye Color : Caramel Brown

Gender : Male (He/Him)

Sexuality : Demiromantic Pansexual

Family : Boreas Keene, Gale Keene(Mother)†, Nevin Keene (Older brother)

Occupation : Student at Scepter Hall Institute, Prince of the Gale Empire

Twisted From : Spike from Tinkerbell

!Neka.cc is just a placeholder until i have the time to draw him!

School Information

Dorm : Forêt Gelée

School Year : 2nd (Sophomore)

Class : 2-B

Best Subject : Incantations / Wing Study (Wingology)

Worst Class : Physical Education

Club : Ice Skating

Dominant Hand : Right

Favorite Food : Summer Salad Bowls

Least Favorite Food : Corn

Likes : Relaxing, Not doing anything, Teasing people, Naps, Babysitting Meryl, Spending time with his father and brother, Talking about his mother, Daydreaming, Decently done work, Skincare, Windy weather, hand holding

Dislikes : Extremely hot temperatures, Not being taken seriously, Being bored, His sleeping habits, Dry skin, Getting a low grade, Being unnecessarily provoked, Large Crowds, Not having physical interaction

Hobbies : Ice Skating, Sledding, Sleeping, Slight of Hand tricks, Coin tricks, Playing with snowflakes, Messing with Nyla, Fashion

Personality : Sinan comes off as lazy, blunt and a little sly. Which is 100% correct! No one knows if his half-lidded, smirking stare intimidates or attracts them. Sinan’s very straightforward with his words, but is still playful nonetheless. He’s an unintentional flirt. The way he speaks and presents himself gives others the impression of the bad boy(which he really isn’t ☠️) you can’t resist. Despite all of that, Sinan is very well liked for his cool, go with the flow attitude.

Unique Magic : ‘Secret Of The Wings’

“Why don’t you try a little harder? Y’never know, you MAY succeed. Emphasis on the may~ Secret Of The Wings!”

Sinan summons a flutter of butterflies formed from sparkling ice that surrounds him as an impenetrable shield. The shield protects Sinan from both physical and magic attacks. Coming into contact with the shield will freeze or frost whatever it touches. Despite being mostly winter fae, using Secret Of The Wings too much will cause his wings to crack ever so slightly. It may not be noticeable, but it is definitely felt.

Backstory :

Sinan Keene is the youngest son of the late Queen Gale Keene, who was a beloved ruler of the small fae dominated empire that bore her name. Sinan's mother was known for her kindness and compassion, and she instilled those same values in her children. The small prince grew up surrounded by love and support, and he always knew that he wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps and become a leader in his own right.

Despite his royal status and the expectations that came with it, Sinan was always a laid-back and chill individual. He had a tendency to be lazy and procrastinate, but he was also a natural jokester and had a way of making those around him feel at ease. Sinan was approachable and easy to talk to, and he made friends easily.

Sinan’s attitude comes from his heart that cracked from a young age when his mother passed away. He was very much a mama’s boy, always clinging to her. His mother was his best friend. Gale Keene wasn’t violently taken from this world, she was just ill. It didn’t hurt the Keene family any less however. The energetic, hard working boy that Sinan Aspen Keene once was had vanished. For a while, not even his older brother he looked up to so much could motivate him. It took Sinan months before he decided to just…let things happen. He’ll let life take the wheel for now. He’ll take control again one day. He just doesn’t know when.

For now, Sinan hides those sad and dark parts of himself deep inside and shows only what he wants others to see. There are certain people who get to see these sides of Sinan, but you wouldn’t believe them if they told you.

Random Trivia!

His first friend at SHI was Gemma Phaedra. It wasn’t that Sinan couldn’t approach people, Gemma just beat him to it! From then on, they became attached at the hip.

Sinan knows Nyla is scared of ice-skating, even if she denies it.

Sinan makes Mercury want to murder him whenever he makes a snarky comment ; it's a bloodbath when it comes to them.

Admittedly, Sinan became Meryl's new crush after Porter got expelled! She's always so flustered whenever he speaks to her, and she's practically clinging to him like a koala.

Sinan is.... Apprehensive about Eclair and how she treats Meryl. He can tell that Eclair adores her daughter, but with the way she essentially locked her up in SHI for all of her life is.... Disturbing to Sinan.

Sinan takes after his mother the most. When she passed away, it was hard for Sinan’s father to look at him for too long because he looked *too* much like her.

Sinan’s mother was half ice fae and half wind fae, making Sinan a quarter wind fae.

Sinan wants to be a professional ice skater.

Sinan may be on the sillier side, but he’s smarter than he lets on. He’s always one of the top students in his classes.

Sinan tends to twirl his hair. He usually does it when he’s nervous.

[a-bucket-of-trash]

The Mercy of the Golden Mask- Kelvin x Neutral Reader – One shot.

Prompt: * sobs * RIP

Tag: Angst af

Your time on that island, despite the mutants and cannibals, the extreme weather and other inconveniences, hadn't been entirely hellish, thanks to Kelvin, your mate and lover. Alone, as the sole survivors of the helicopter, you had quickly grown fond of each other. The sporadic glances had grown, the touches, the plans, the tasks, the chats with signs and writing that became verbal when his damaged ears began to recover minimally their hearing, the extra closeness you had to have on cold nights, everything had fostered the basis for your relationship to stop being merely friendly.

Now you were both against everything, shoulder to shoulder, always close to each other, sleeping intertwined, hands always in contact with each other, with tender caresses there when there was a bit of peace, gushing love.

But the island was relentless, the enemies endless, and your own energies could not keep up with the wave of cannibals that seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth like ants escaping a flood.

Eventually, they were too many for the two of you. There wasn't the amount of bullets, traps, arrows and axes to deal with them, despite the fact that Kelvin now fought with the same violence as you, tireless and accurate.

The battle was frantic and exhaustingly long, but at least all the cannibals in that contest were dead, half-dead, dismembered, or unconscious on the ground. You were exhausted, somewhat injured, several parts of your body ached, but you were still breathing, so you looked around, looking for your partner, whom you had seen fight by your side several times, when one of those monsters had wanted to cut off your head.

You saw him on the ground and you hurried to go to him. You knew that he was very good at fighting, although he used to stay on the floor for a while after finishing a fight, since that kind of thing made his head ache like a thousand demons. But as you knelt beside him, you felt your heart freeze and clench, seeing his bulletproof vest barely hanging from his left shoulder, and a deep gash running diagonally across his torso, from his shoulder to his groin, drenched in blood.

“K-kelvin…H-hold on…” You tried to calculate where to put pressure, but it was a wound too long for placing your hands on one spot to work.

You were getting desperate, you weren't remotely close to the base you had built, and even there you didn't have anything to deal with such a cut. You saw his brown eyes fix on you, full of pity and resignation. He was a soldier, painfully aware of his situation. And you too.

"No... D-don't even think about it!" You exclaimed, taking the piece of bulletproof vest and resting it firmly on his torso, trying to stop some of the bleeding “You p-promised to teach m-me how to ski in winter, remember? You c-can't go back on your promise… I'm g-going to get really mad i-if you do it…”

Distraught, you saw him hardly take off his gloves to tenderly touch your face, while your eyes clouded with tears.

“Kel… Kel… p-please…” You begged, sobbing, not wanting to acknowledge what was about to happen.

"F-forgive me... h-honey..." He murmured, barely, feeling your anguish as his own "I don't want... to leave you a-alone..."

"Don't leave me alone then! S-silly!" You cried more when you felt his hands on your cheeks, gently rubbing your skin "Stay!"

"You know v-very well... that this cut... will not heal..." He tried to dry your cheeks with his trembling hands, watching the torrent of tears fall non-stop like the waterfalls of the island "H-honey..."

"It's my fault... It's a-all my fault..." You despaired even more, seeing the pool of blood growing under him "Forgive me... K-kel... I s-should have fought more... I should have w-watched you..."

“Stop it…” He half sobbed, wanting to hide the fear he was feeling growing inside “I love you… it wasn't your fault…”

"But…"

Kelvin gently pulled your face, so that you crouch down enough to be able to kiss you, long and anguished, in a kiss with a farewell flavor, noticing his own body weigh him down and stop aching, numb and cold.

You stared at his face, his eyes, repeating him an "I love you" over and over again, between tears, caressing his hair and cheek, feeling your own soul leave as you saw his skin slowly pale and his hands stay still on his damp stomach.

You heard him say a couple of “I love you”, almost without a voice, like the whisper of the wind in the leaves, and you remained static, almost breathless, noticing how his breathing stopped in a short exhalation.

The scream that came from your throat crossed the island and you hugged his head tightly, crying heartbreakingly, calling him, begging him to come back, even knowing that it was not possible, even knowing that he was gone.

After everything he had been through, even after surviving a brain injury, your beloved Kelvin was gone like sand between your fingers.

You stayed there, crying for him, kissing his head, for a long time, until you noticed something, so you gently closed his eyelids with your hand and cupped his cheeks with all the love you had left in your shattered soul.

"Wait for me, my love..." You smiled sadly, between tears, listening to the heavy footsteps approaching behind you "I'm going with you..."

You closed your eyes in resignation laden with relief and leaned your forehead against his, knowing that the huge cannibal behind you was going to, unknowingly, do an act of mercy.

[jodilin65]

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2018 Giving a few Facebook friends till the end of the year to interact with me. If they don’t I’m deleting them. I don’t know why but I’m very picky about that. I don’t add people to my friend list for decoration. There’s gotta be some interaction even if it’s only once a month or so.

Are the Twenties ignoring me or something? I asked them about the uptick in commercial planes and if they knew anything about it but they’ve completely blown me off. They would interact with me occasionally but lately, there’s been nothing. Mr. Twenties claims he’s not using Facebook because of privacy issues. Yet he seems to be on playing games. I have a feeling he has me blocked from his posts but oh well. His account, his choice.

At the end of the year, I will be doing friend list housekeeping and deleting a few deadbeats. Kim and Eileen from Massachusetts will likely be going and so will Sandra, an older PB lady in Tennessee that I never hear from anymore either there or on Facebook. I’ll have to look and see who else is worthy of being deleted but I don’t have many friends there to begin with. For some reason, I’m extremely picky about who I add there and I currently only have 22 people added. I’ve become more into keeping people I know and “reality” separate from other sites like PB, Twitter, etc. To me, Facebook is reality or at least it should be; real names, real people, so I’m not going to be sharing journals and stuff like that there anymore.

So what’s with the strange loud motor? In the mornings lately, I’ve been hearing what sounds like large utility trucks entering the park. Yesterday I heard the steady drone of what sounded like something running that wasn’t too close but that was probably pretty loud. I have no idea what it could’ve been but I’m dreading the next project I can’t drown out with sound machines. I still say they’re going to pave the roads if they don’t tear them up again for some shit that got fucked up somehow. Or to replace something with newer stuff.

I want the new MacBook Air. Maybe someday. It would help if the US would get with the times and not cost its people so much in medical expenses. The water tank’s pressure valve is leaking now, too. Starting to think that going to Hawaii one more time and getting a decent bed that won’t sag in a few months is just a dream.

Yesterday was a wonderfully calm day with sufficient energy. Why can’t it always be like that or at least 75% of the time? Now I don’t know what the hell to think anymore. Tom thinks I was just anxious on Monday because it was the start of the week when he’s going to be out for five days in a row. But then why do I sometimes get anxious when we’re hanging out together on weekends? We know the medication was responsible for the problems I had when I first went on 75s and when she tried me on 88s. That’s a no-brainer. But maybe the random anxiety really is due to my lady hormones still fluctuating unless I’ve got something else going on with me I don’t know about which seems unlikely. Too soon to say whether or not the Liothyronine or magnesium supplements are helping. Skin is still pretty dry so that may not be a good sign but then I am older and I do live in a climate that’s damn near close to being the desert.

I seriously wonder when it’s going to rain again. We’ve only had a few days of rain in about half a year. It could make up for lost time in a month or so, though. I love the rain and how it keeps things quieter but I don’t want the roof to get any worse before we leave.

Nothing from Norma so I’m guessing she either didn’t get a chance to talk to Tammy or she learned that Tammy’s just being her usual hypochondriac self. Maybe she feels uncomfortable saying anything negative about Tammy so she’s chosen to say nothing at all. Well, I’m not going to say anything more. I’ve got to live my own life and worry about my own problems.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2018 Yesterday was Kate Jackson’s 70th birthday. Jaclyn Smith is a few years older.

Tom said several people are quitting at work and going to work at some other warehouse but doesn’t know what the pay is. The thing is that they were already making a lot less than he makes. It would really be nice if he could get a job working graves because it would make doing things in the daytime easier, like going to appointments, but I can’t believe any other place would start him off at $19 an hour. But if it was third shift then being an American company wouldn’t matter. It would suck if he couldn’t get as many days off but at least he wouldn’t have to take days off for appointments.

The water was off yesterday although I went to bed right before they turned it off. The fucking water is going off again on Thursday. Damn, am I sick of this place! I hate to think of being here another 5-6 years. I can just imagine all the projects I’ll be in for. Never lived anywhere before where I dreaded the possibility of them working in the road or cutting trees down with their thunderously loud saws and wood chippers. I also can’t believe all the planes here. There have definitely been way more commercial planes. Early yesterday morning it was one after another and I’ve heard several since I’ve been up. There’s no getting peace here even at night.

I wish noise was the worst of my problems but unfortunately I was very anxious yesterday. It was almost to the point where I dreaded the idea of him leaving for work. Stopping the Amberen again after reading that they recommend stopping after 90 days and then if you have symptoms doing another 90 days. It’s a mega longshot but there is a very very slim chance that it could be contributing to my anxiety even though I wouldn’t think a blend of vitamins and minerals would do that. I suppose anything is possible even though I doubt it has anything to do with it. So far today I’m calm but it’s a little early in my day. That’s usually a midday thing so I’m still about 3 hours away from any potential trouble. Going to be taking my magnesium, vitamin D and multivitamin in a few minutes. If I get unusually anxious I may stop the magnesium. A few people did say it actually wound them up. Can’t say if the Lio had anything to do with it or not. Looking at my notes, it seems I’ve had 5 anxious days out of the last 15. As I may have said before, I’m beginning to think that if I was meant to fix this then I wouldn’t have had it for so long to begin with.

The glasses came today and I’m still not sure if progressives are right for me. I hate how you have to look through a specific spot in the lens in order to see certain things. Sometimes I wonder if I should go back to traditional bifocals even though I would lose mid-range that way. They’re awfully loose too, so they’ll have to be tightened. The round raspberry frames look better on me than the rectangular purple frames but the purples are only for the computer anyway.

Norma replied saying she hopes Tammy and I work things out, sisterhood is important, her sister left her and her brother, etc. She said she’ll keep my message between us and hasn’t spoken with Tammy recently but will call tomorrow (today) to see what she can find out.

I would still think that if she was really dying, Norma and I would’ve been notified. Plus, Tammy’s been on Facebook pretty much daily. If you were dying, would you really be on Facebook every day?

I think I’m still a bit too nice, too caring, and too forgiving. Meaning that I know I should simply ignore Tammy regardless of biology if Norma confirms she’s not dying after she calls her today. Saying you want to die, are thinking about dying, feel like you’re dying, or think you might die at a specific time is one thing. Saying you “won’t be around long” is another. That’s low. That’s just really low. That’d be great for her and the girls if she wasn’t checking out anytime soon but I’m definitely done with her, without guilt or shame, if I learn she lied about dying.

Plus there’s all the other drama I could do without. I’ve had it with the she said/he said game, and I’m not going to defend or explain myself to anyone either.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2018 I guess I better get caught up here before I get too behind.

Tom worked from home yesterday on and off for about 11 hours and made a couple of hundred extra bucks which never hurts. I may have more appointments but he’s been costing us more medical-wise, as I love to bust him about.

We both took our first magnesium supplement yesterday. He noticed no effects but it may have made me a little drowsy. I’m tired today as well but only because I was up a long time and only slept 6 hours.

Went to Walgreens yesterday morning where I got some M&M’s and pork rinds which I pigged out on and ended up having heartburn and nausea at the end of my day. If I get it again today I’m going to wonder if it’s the magnesium. Took it for the second time a couple of hours ago. Still way too soon to say whether or not it’s going to help me with anxiety. I’m taking every preventive measure I can think of. I’ve tapped, I’ve taken my multivitamin, my vitamin D, and my Amberen. I’ll probably take that last one every other day instead of every day. I still don’t think it made me anxious but I have to try to find out what’s what and I can’t do that if I do too much at once.

Took my 5th dose of Liothyronine and I’m nervous about that approaching one-week marker. There are actually a few milestones I have to hope I get through. First one is a week.

At Walgreens, I also got some soda and colorful gems that you stick on whatever. I used the purple ones to stick on the little green spot of light on my laptop power cord. It’s amazing how such a teeny tiny spot can give off so much light and be so damn bright. It’s literally like having a night light in here. My alarm clock is much worse, though.

Saturday I decided to take a chance and sleep without the earbuds since my appointments aren’t right around the corner. Sure enough, traffic woke me up.

We ordered a narrow shower curtain that’s 36x72 for the master bathroom shower because I would still like to have that shower as an option if I want to shower when he’s asleep like right now. We’re going to remove the leaky glass door but not get rid of it. We’ll put it back on when we leave. That is, assuming I really survive to get out of here someday! The shower curtain has a beach scene on it with ocean, sand, and sky.

I also ordered another bronze figurine, this one doing a yoga pose. They call it a pigeon pose. This one is a little different than my other bronze ladies. The others are completely nude and in sensual or casual poses. This one has a painted body suit.

Last night the planes were amazingly quiet but I’m sure that around 6am the commercials will be zooming by one after another. I never did get a reply from them either. I sent a message to the Sacramento Airport.

Last night I had a dream Tammy and I were working on our computers side by side. We were both on Facebook. Only our “computers” were these large touch screens on the wall. I saw Tammy tap a button to add me as a friend. I accepted and wrote, “Hello, bitch,” with a smile emoji.”

It was after this that I finally decided to do something I’ve been debating on… Go to Norma and beg her to keep my message between us. If she betrays me I will simply delete her. No words, no confrontation, no nothing. I’ll just delete her. I filled her in on the situation and hopefully she can give me some concrete information as to what’s really going on with Tammy.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2018 “Implying that you’re dying simply because you’re pissed is low. Like really low.”

That’s what I posted publicly on Facebook wondering if the drama queen might see it and come to her own defense, giving me an idea of whether or not there’s any truth to her implications. But there’s no evidence she’s seen it or been to my blog.

I was also hoping that if she didn’t, maybe Norma would ask whom I was talking about and I could get some information from her. I thought about sending her a private message and begging her to keep our chat between us but I know she won’t. She’s always favored Tammy over me and while that in itself is fine, I know she can’t be trusted. She proved that 30 years ago in Springfield when she automatically assumed I was behind the prank phone calls she was getting and went to Ruth about it. I swear I have no recollection of ever calling her but it was a small city, so if I ever did call her, I dialed randomly and got her by accident. This happened to Andy a couple of times with a couple of people. Norma did apologize for the false accusation and admitted she should have gone to me but I still wouldn’t trust her with a secret.

Tom needs to invent a browser toolbar with drop-down menus with links to pages on the same site. I want to bookmark all my blogs on Blogger but that would take up a lot of the bookmark toolbar space.

Went down to the lake to give the ducks the old bread and felt warm, a bit weak in the legs, and my heart raced a bit as well. My vitals were fairly decent, though, after I got back and relaxed a bit. Might have happened even without the Lio since it’s happened before and is common in women my age.

Now I’m still a bit warm, slightly light-headed, and tired. The biggest thing is not getting anxious. I’ll make my special Sleepytime brew at around midnight.

They’re going to be turning off the fucking water for 6 hours on Monday. I’ll be asleep through most of it. I had a feeling about this too, before Tom told me he got a message about it. He said a few days ago he saw a major pipe burst by the gate. They capped it off temporarily.

We’re going to be dropping our eye insurance plan at the end of the year because of the way they restrict when we can get exams. Rather than pay them to tell us when to go, we’ll just pay for it ourselves and go when we want to.

Last night I had a dream I spotted Linda Ronstadt in some restaurant. I was eating alone and she was three or four tables away, also eating alone. I thought of going up to her but I didn’t want to bother her. Seeing that she was almost finished and would leave before I did, I decided I would say hello on her way out. Yet when she got up and walked past me, I had a big mouthful of food and couldn’t chew and swallow it fast enough to say anything. So off she went without a word from me.

Then I had this dream that I was in this strange jail. There was a lake that was pretty wavy for a lake in which we swam in. We also had these really weird gadgets that I guess were phones. I don’t know why I was there or for how long but it was weird. Stacey might have been in the dream as well.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2018 I was so exhausted yesterday that I fell asleep early and got up a little early. Felt a bit wound up toward the end of my day yesterday as well. My schedule’s definitely been rolling slower and I think it’s mostly due to how exhausted I’ve been getting. So many days I’m too tired to stay up my usual 16 to 18 hours. I see both Dr. A and Dr. O on the 17th of December and right now my schedule is ideal for my morning appointment with Dr. A but if it backs up too much more it will make Dr. O really hard.

I’m back to tapping more and having more Sleepytime tea for whatever good it may do me, and we even ordered Triple Calm Magnesium capsules from Amazon that a friend on Prosebox recommended. There are some scary reviews but most look promising. I don’t know if it will help with my particular kind of anxiety because I don’t even know exactly what it is. Is it generalized anxiety or does it fit into some other category? Tom still thinks a lot of it could be on my hormones and not the meds, which I’ve survived my second dose of. Tom wants to try them for leg cramps that sometimes wake him up.

77% of the reviews are 5-star while 4% are 1-star. Some said it made their palpitations worse and kept them up at night. The more desperate I get, though, the more I’m willing to risk potential side effects.

So far, I have more energy today and I’m still fairly calm but like I said yesterday, anxiety tends to be a mid-day thing so that’s when I’ll have my Sleepytime tea as a preemptive measure.

Worked out on the Bowflex for 10 minutes and the treadmill for a half-hour. If my energy levels and hips will let me, I’ll add a half hour a day until I’m walking two hours a day. That way I burn a little over 400 calories.

Even though the Amberen is an unlikely culprit because this particular kind of anxiety didn’t start until about 5 months after I started it, I’m going to back off of it for a while and see how I do. I’ve had a little more in the way of hot flashes lately but not too much lightheadedness. That was the biggest thing it seemed to help the most with.

The only good news is that Tom gets to work Saturday which gives us a couple of hundred extra dollars but he gets to do it from home. He’ll be working from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. instead of his usual hours.

Last night’s dream may have been a glimpse into another dimension since I lived at home with an older sister and younger brother. We lived with our single mom who looked a lot like Vera Farmiga, Mrs. Bates on Bates Motel. We were trying to talk her into going on some game show and making big bucks because she was really smart and was able to answer all the questions they asked their contestants.

The layout of the house was pretty clear. Some of it, anyway. I don’t know how old I was but to one side of my room was a bathroom in which my mom’s room was off the other side. To the other side of me was my sister’s room and my brother was across the hall.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2018 Well, I’ve got shitty news and I’ve got good news. The shitty news is that I was both anxious and depressed during the last half of my day yesterday. First half started off a little tired and a little light-headed but that improved.

The good news is that I’ve survived my first dose of Liothyronine. But one dose is far from enough to tell me anything either way. All I can say is that it’s very unlikely I’ll ever have an allergic reaction to the stuff. The next milestone will be getting through a week, then six weeks, then over two months. If I can get over two months without incident, that would be great. It would be beyond great, however, if it could help stop the anxiety.

Yesterday’s surprising and disappointing bout of anxiety has me more confused than ever as to what could be the cause. The thought of never being able to figure it out and never being able to do anything about it is, to me, a very real and scary possibility. I’m trying not to go there in my mind but it both does and doesn’t make sense for it to be the Levothyroxine. My T4 isn’t elevated right now so it can’t be that. Could my lady hormones still be out of whack despite being virtually menopausal? Could some of it simply be my way of reacting to stress these days?

I don’t know. I just don’t know what to think anymore. All I know is that I find myself entertaining some very dark thoughts way too often at times and if the anxiety doesn’t stop soon, who knows how many more years I can take of this shit before I seriously consider acting on them? I don’t want it to come to that but I don’t want to live to suffer so much of the time either.

No anxiety yet today but for some strange reason, it tends to get me in the middle of my day. I’m just tired today because I’ve been sleeping shitty for a few days now. Until I can get good sleep, I’m not going to have much energy. I have a feeling that even if I was never anxious again, I would still be fatigued a lot of the time. I’ll still take that over anxiety, the anxiety is the absolute worst.

I’ve been itchy a lot lately and I’m having serious doubts about ever finding my LS in remission. Even if I did, though, the past always comes back to haunt me. Sooner or later it will return.

On his next birthday, we’ll be able to start checking every month to see how much money he could get if he retired at that moment. I’m sure the only thing we could afford would be those $300 studios back up in Oregon.

Crazy Lisa was in my dreams last night. I was writing her letters by hand. We were talking one day and she told me she was selling them online. Apparently, selling postal letters had become a big thing since they had become less common.

My dream self loved this idea and was all excited to start selling letters too, even though I wasn’t getting any, LOL. So she was about to sign me up on a site I could sell them through, which needed my credit card info. I decided to wait and see which credit card of ours Tom thought would be the best one to use so I asked her to just give me a site tour until he got home.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2018 Worked a little on the dollhouse but might need his help with the wiring. I’m sorry I got this kit. It’s way too much work and it’s actually kind of boring. Every time I think I’m almost done, there’s more to do.

Next time we replace half of the fish’s water I’m going to remove the wasted castle and plants. He’s shown no interest in any of it and it would make it easier for me to suck shit off the bottom.

We’re also going to keep the rats on the bottom of their cage and close the upstairs because of how hard it’s gotten for them to walk.

I’m not feeling as bad as expected today but I am a little tired. I was a little light-headed earlier as well but that’s cleared up and I’m perking up a bit. I didn’t sleep all that great because I kept waking up.

I wish to hell I was oblivious to climate or liked cold weather and snow. Canada would be a great place to retire as long as the cost of living was reasonable. They have mobile home parks for older people too, and Universal Health Care. It’s a liberal country that takes care of its own. What’s not to like about it?

A cold climate would definitely make for a quieter place to live as I wouldn’t have to hear the loud obnoxious sounds of landscaping every single fucking day nor would there be as many motorcycles. They may keep making vehicles louder despite the technology we have these days but it would be a lot quieter overall. I just can’t see myself suffering through such cold and snow all over again, though. I really want to be in a tropical climate even if it means more motorcycles, more noise in general, the risk of hurricanes, and also losing a good chunk of our money to medical expenses. If we go somewhere where it’s significantly cheaper to live, like Florida, maybe that will help balance out the medical costs that will increase as we continue to age. I don’t know, though. We have to pay a grand for his MRI and now a grand for his steroid shot. We’re not going to get a place 2k cheaper per month because not even this place is that much.

When the time comes, he is going to switch to a more expensive insurance plan that will take a little more money out of his paychecks but that covers more.

Random thought of the day: I was remembering when I was shown a private girls’ school close to home when I was 16 before my mother gave me up to the state. Although there may have been much more freedom there than Valleyhead ever had and I would later come to wish I had chosen the damn place since I would end up with no choice in the end, what kid wants to voluntarily leave home to live with strangers no matter how unhappy their home life may be? Huh? Tell me. What kid? Did they really think I was going to come out that day and say, “Oh wow, this is cool! I like it! I want to live here so bad even though I don’t know a damn person in this place. I want to leave my home and all that’s familiar to me even if my mother’s an abusive bitch who doesn’t do my mood and self-esteem the least bit of good. I’ll be happier in a house full of strangers where I don’t have much of my belongings and nothing is familiar to me. So exciting!”

Well, guess what, Dureen? The daughter you were so sure was crazy was really normal after all.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2018 Yesterday I was exhausted all day and a bit depressed as well because of it. Today I had enough energy to go for a walk and I feel pretty good overall. I’m just enjoying it while I can because I know it won’t last.

Last night my mind raced with all kinds of questions and possibilities. I thought of all the stories pertaining to near-death experiences that I’ve heard over the years describing tales of visiting both good places and bad. Well, I still don’t know if I believe in any kind of an afterlife, but if there is such a thing as Heaven and Hell, I wonder if there are different versions of these places because different people have told different stories of both places. That is unless they’re just that…stories. Or maybe they’re hallucinations or dreams that they truly believe are real.

When you consider those who believe you automatically go to hell if you don’t accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, this makes me wonder about some things. If this is true, how could I get myself to accept something I don’t even know if I believe in? This is just a story people tell and not anything I can verify as true or not. I can’t make myself believe what I don’t know. And what about babies who die before they’re old enough to be told these stories and possibly turned into believers? Do they automatically go to hell?

Lately, I find myself questioning what my behavior may achieve in the end if there is any such afterlife where our actions are judged. I worry I may “pay” for it in the end if there is an afterlife and I continue to ignore my family. But at the same time, I know I should follow my heart and my head whenever I feel it’s best to do so and just be myself for there are no guarantees I’m going to be judged for anything even if there is an afterlife.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2018 Woke up with this horrible pain in the center of my back but it’s better now. I’d say it’s time I stop the HIIT routines. I’m too old and heavy for those. I’d rather just do basic cardio, work my core, and play around on the Bowflex every now and then. I just wish I had the energy to do it more regularly!

I also woke up very tired. I was up a long time last night unable to sleep because I had been caught up on sleep the day before. I was up for about 19 hours and slept for about 9. I’ve been very tired ever since. I wonder if I overdid the tacrolimus, if I had a huge sugar crash from the cheesecake I ate, or if it’s something else. I’m just sick of feeling so blah so often. Even if I had a good story idea (though I don’t), I’m still too tired for too many days to do things like NaNoWriMo next month, especially with a hard word count of 50k.

We ordered the glasses today so they’ll be here within two weeks.

We used the new fish tank vacuum hose to siphon out half of the betta’s water and replaced it with filtered water. I aimed the temperature checker at the stream of water coming out of the faucet to make sure it was within the ballpark of what it’s supposed to be before I filtered it and Tom added conditioning drops.

I’m still stressed out over the upcoming Liothyronine experiment and going back and forth in my mind between reaching out to Tammy and the girls and not. I still don’t know what to make of her cryptic message. I’m just not sure what the right thing to do would be. I don’t want to come off like I don’t care at all but if they don’t care about me, then why bother? If they’d rather not hear from me then I should respect their wishes, but is that what they really want? I just don’t know what they would prefer. Hell, I don’t even know what I would prefer. We may have our differences and Tammy has certainly been both directly and indirectly responsible for causing me a lot of grief in life but I don’t want her to suffer or die. I realize, though, that if she is really dying and not just hyping things up because she’s pissed or wants attention she can’t otherwise ask for, for some reason, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Tammy has never been dumb but she isn’t bright either and I wonder if something’s been wrong with her brain these last few years. She’s always had a habit of seeming forgetful or not able to grasp quite what I’m saying almost in the way Andy has, though not nearly as bad. Yet these last few years I’ve noticed it more. It’s like no matter how many times I explained certain things to her like what I really meant when I said I didn’t want any drama, she still doesn’t get it. Is she just not understanding? Or is she just determined to make a situation what she wants it to be? I suppose both age and stress along with the health issues themselves could mess with her mind and the way her brain functions.

I realize this may be selfish of me but if the end is near, I feel like I’m less obligated to attend her funeral and have to deal with her kids. I would be ready with some excuse if it came to that, and truthfully, we really do need to watch our money since we have to pay so much in medical expenses as we age and continue to acquire more health issues. I feel I have enough of my own health issues right now to be taking off on my own, assuming Tom would be unable to accompany me. So yeah, I’m torn between being compassionate and selfish.

For once I got to have weird and funny dreams.

In one dream I was sleeping in a king-size bed between Palma and her husband of all people and they had a newborn baby in a nearby crib. We were all settling in for the night and I dreaded being woken up because I knew the damn kid wasn’t going to remain quiet all night.

Then I got up since I wasn’t ready to sleep anyway and was moving about the house which seemed to be in the form of a circle. Picture a circular hallway. Later, I was commanding Alexa to turn off certain lights before returning to bed. As I climbed over Palma and slipped in under the covers between the two, Palma was still awake if only barely and asked what I was doing. I said something about turning the lights off.

In the next dream, I was going down a slide in a park somewhere over and over again. A guy in his twenties who was noticeably taller than me but skin and bones was calling out lewd and perverted comments to me. Not only was I confused at why he would say such things to someone decades older and on the heavy side, but I was also getting pissed. So after I hit the ground I walked over to him and asked, “How much do I weigh?”

He looked at me with confusion. Just like I look younger than my age, I look lighter than I am. So again I asked him how much I weighed and he shrugged and said, “I don’t know, 120 maybe?”

I grabbed his wrist painfully and said through bared teeth, “152 pounds of pure steel, fat and fury. I suggest you think twice before calling out whatever to whoever.” Then I turned and walked off leaving him stoned behind me.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2018 What the hell did I just read???

I accidentally messaged Tammy on Facebook about my medication changes and all that, then said I was sorry for hitting her name by mistake. She said that’s okay, she’s in crisis too.

I asked what she was talking about and she said, “We haven’t spoken because you stated that you didn’t want any drama. No problem. I won’t be around for long.”

She misunderstood what I meant when I said I didn’t want any drama. I was upset with her kids calling me out on my own posts. That’s what I meant about the drama.

“Don’t reach out to my daughters either. I have one dealing with breast cancer and one with a bleeding ulcer and a hole in her stomach. This family loves and supports each other unconditionally. We still have your messages about family drama and being deleted by you.”

Wrong again, sis. I deleted you, but your selfish, narcissistic kids deleted me. Their choice. I’m just respecting their wishes.

As far as I knew, though, we’d moved on past this shit. I wished Sarah a happy birthday in our family group message and both she and Tammy thanked me for saying hello to everyone. I don’t know why she’s bringing this up now. Some of what she said didn’t make sense and she would only hint at some things.

I told her to please not say she won’t be around much longer and that we know she will be because she’s tough. They once told her she would die from cervical cancer but she didn’t.

“Guess again, Jodi,” she said.

Guess what???

Okay, so she’s well aware of the dream premonitions I’ve had throughout the years and my concerns for when she’s 62. Well, that’s less than a year from now and she’s hinting at something bad. Something very bad. But because she’s not exactly spelling anything out specifically, I’m going to assume she’s just having a rough time and try not to worry. Even I feel like I’m not going to be around much longer at times. Hell, I wonder if I’ll survive the upcoming meds experiment! bites nails fearfully Seriously, I hope this is just her usual exaggerations. She’s been a hypochondriac all her life. Until and if she ever says otherwise in a way I can be sure isn’t some kind of twisted joke out of spite or for attention, I’m not going to read much into it. Even Tom said not to bother overthinking that one. I think if she were literally dying and was given a terminal prognosis, I would’ve been notified. I’ll not contact her again unless I do hear more from her.

As for her kids…last time I’ll say this: I’m sorry if anything I ever said or did hurt them which was never my intention, I’ve already apologized, and I still have a right to post what I want without being called out on it just like they do.

Meanwhile, will Lisa ever apologize for wrongly calling me a liar and going ballistic on me over a simple misunderstanding she had with someone who was bordering on dementia before they died when she could’ve politely and kindly asked me about it in a civilized manner? Apparently not and apparently this family does not love and support each other unconditionally, but that’s okay. I’m done bickering over petty shit that happened years ago, so yeah, I don’t want any drama. I have enough going on in my own life right now that needs to be dealt with. Besides, it’s okay to hurt me as far as they’re concerned. My feelings don’t matter.

If any of Tammy’s kids have what I’m told they have, I’m sorry. Really, I am. But while these things may suck to have to deal with and be very scary, they can be taken care of. 50 years ago, maybe not.

There’s more I could say to Tammy and her kids right now but I won’t for reasons I just stated. Also, if this is one of those rare times that she’s not playing things up, I don’t want her to go out of this world with us fighting.

For a while, I’ve had a feeling about that 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s thing. Larry died in his 50s. Parents died in their 80s. Been having feelings about Tammy dying in her 60s and me in my 70s. If I’m right, then technically I shouldn’t be too worried about my own health, but I was wrong about Tom’s mom dying at 87 or whatever the fuck it was. She’s 95 now. So yeah, I do worry at times about not living long enough to get out of this state someday be it because I throw in the towel because we can’t figure out how to stop my anxiety or because I’m surprised by something sneaking up on me be it a heart attack, stroke, cancer or whatever.

Later…

Three out of three appointments are now out of the way and I can now enjoy being appointment-free for 2 months… As long as there are no issues with the Liothyronine, of course. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of thinking I have longer than I actually do before the next appointment.

Felt great today and we both had our eye exams. Same doctor for the last 4 years or so. She has the same assistant too.

His vision hasn’t changed much but I’m more farsighted this year. I figured as much. I’ve noticed that I’ve been having trouble when using my phone and laptop.

According to the test I took on a site that sells glasses, I don’t have a round face like I thought I did but a pear-shaped face instead. My pupil distance is 53, which is on the small side. I’ve got a dark pink round frame picked out for my progressive/transition lenses and a purple rectangular pair for my mid-range lenses that I’ll use for my laptop. Tomorrow we’ll add in the prescription numbers and order. The pink pair is 14 g and the purple pair is 17 g.

She said my OH is stable and it doesn’t look like I’ll ever have to worry about getting glaucoma. His eyes were dilated but I opted out of that this year. Next year she’s going to take pictures of the inside of my eyes so she can make sure the optic nerve is still healthy.

We stopped at McDonald’s on the way out where I got chicken strips and he got burgers.

No bounding pulse today. It was pretty consistent yesterday and I’m still not sure why. Tom thinks it’s just stress. Well, then why didn’t I have this problem when I’d be stressing in the past? Different time, different situation, he said. I guess he has a point there.

Walmart now delivers in our town so we’re expecting a delivery in the morning. Like other stores, they don’t always have everything but they are cheaper and I do like their site better even if it’s not perfect. They also have a better selection than Raley’s and Safeway.

We were kind of pissed to get a bill for a grand for the steroid injection he had in his ear. I find it awfully hard to believe it cost that much. Actually more when you consider the part that the insurance paid.

As for Tammy… I still don’t know what to think. Despite having definite health issues, she is a hypochondriac and I would think I would have been told if she was really dying. I think she knew damn well what I met when I said I didn’t want any drama, too. This may sound funny, but if she’s hyping things up and is still alive in a year I’m going to be pissed. Implying that you’re dying when you’re not just because you’re pissed or you want attention is low. I mean really low.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2018 Managed to get through yesterday without feeling anxious and I’m doing okay today as well. Not great, but okay. Even when I’m not actually anxious I’m still stressed out and worried about the upcoming experiment and sometimes just worrying about being anxious can be bad enough. However, my bounding pulse is more noticeable today than anxiety. Definitely gotta ask my PCP about that in December. It’s getting old.

The experiment may start on Wednesday or Thursday instead of Friday because of a slight change in his schedule. He may work at home on Saturday night.

It really does seem like my whole problem has lied within my T4. This is what I’ve suspected all along too. It would explain why I go hyper while having hypo numbers, though my T4 was never actually hypo. I’ve always had a normal T4. It really does seem like my body feels best as long as my T4 remains at the very lower end of normal. I don’t understand why my pituitary gland keeps screaming for more but I’m hoping that the T3 (Liothyronine) will shut it the hell up since the louder it screams the more of a risk there is of enlarging my thyroid.

Charlotte R was in my dreams last night. Since people have shown up in my dreams twice that I remember right after they died, I checked the obits but she’s still alive. She would be very old now in her mid to late 80s.

In the dream, my mother was alive and I was with both of them and maybe some others in my childhood home. I don’t know if I was younger but my mother and Charlotte seemed like they were maybe in their 50s or 60s.

I came down the stairs dressed in pajamas and Charlotte looked at me funny and said something about suggesting a different style of pajamas or something like that.

“They’re only PJs,” I told her, with a dismissive wave of my hand.

Then she was looking from the living room into the kitchen but instead of a dining table being there, there were cabinets and shelves with some kind of boxes and containers.

“What the heck was that?” she asked and walked toward the boxes. Even though I didn’t see any mice, she decided one was trapped inside one of the boxes. Then she said, “Well, that mouse wants out,” and she started to adjust the boxes so it could get out.

“No, it doesn’t,” I assured her. “I know rats and mice may look similar but their behavior is different. I could tell you all the differences but that’d take too long and probably bore you. But I can assure you that mouse definitely does not want out.”

Speaking of mice, when I went into my main office in the living room and connected to the large monitor, I still experienced mouse jumping. Was hoping the upgrade would stop the jerking motion but I really can’t stand it in there anyway because of the loud daily landscaping that’s much easier to hear in there. My God, though, how many fucking times a week can you mow the same blades of grass and how many times can you blow the same fucking leaves?

Even trash day is a big production here. As horrible as Phoenix was, they drove up, dumped the trash, and then they were gone. But now it’s like they take forever, and as Tom said, they drive around aimlessly for no apparent reason.

We’re going to be ordering groceries from Prime Now to try it out sometime soon. It’s supposed to be same-day delivery.

Still waiting on the rat pillowcase from China. I guess it hasn’t cleared Customs yet. It was in San Francisco last I knew.

Wondering when I’m ever going to stop spotting. Really hope I get an even longer break before the next period!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2018 Reapplying the Return to Sender spell today and started praying to a God I don’t know exists or if it even gives a shit about me if it does. So far I’m oddly and wonderfully calm. I don’t know what to think at this point. I really don’t. I truly don’t understand why it’s so erratic. Why do I go hyper with hypo numbers? Again I wonder if there could be something else wrong with me that we don’t know about but that’s hard to believe with all the tests I’ve had done. Tom doesn’t think anything else is wrong either.

Someone recommended acupuncture, saying that her husband has OCD, PTSD and anxiety and it worked wonders for him after just 4 sessions. I doubt our insurance covers that but if I knew it would work, we would pay for it.

Aly said it didn’t do her dad any good for his back, but a Fitbit pal swears by it and goes monthly for help with anxiety and panic attacks.

The paramedics were at the stroke house again yesterday. I saw Virginia meet them. I guess it couldn’t have been too serious cuz they were here a while.

Because I stupidly removed the earbuds thinking I was getting up sooner than I did, traffic woke me up twice. Still slept better and feel more refreshed though not exactly bursting with energy, and the best thing is that I don’t remember a single dream from last night. Skin’s better too, so it was probably just a lotion thing. Regardless of Amy’s recommendations, Curél is still what my skin likes best.

Unfortunately, Aly’s current boyfriend, Cam, joined Ask and reached out to me with a question about whether or not I believe in witches. I answered politely and asked him a question in return but hesitated to get too involved. Knowing Aly’s fondness for nutjobs, I don’t want to become a potential target when the two of them break up in a few months. I can already tell he’s the type who would gladly in happily troll someone if he was pissed enough. He may not be crazy per se but he seems a little high on himself and controlling based on some of his answers and his bio which states he bends people to his will whether they like it or not. WeaknessSeeker is his username. I mean, come on. What does that alone tell you? Aly describes him as having a type-A personality.

Other than one leg still being sore, my bounding HR annoying me again, and the usual annoyances from landscaping, traffic and planes, not much else is going on at the moment.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2018 So much for thinking that only the nights bring out the depression in me because I’m pretty down right now. Yesterday I felt good but today I’ve got a lot of fatigue and my legs are sore as hell from the HIIT routine I did. I started to feel traces of anxiety and I even got a little teary-eyed because the upcoming Liothyronine experiment has me stressed out.

I’m just afraid of my worst fears being realized in the end where I’m stuck with this for life and we can never figure out what it is or how to fix it. That’s my worst fear right now. In some ways, this fear is greater than death itself, which has always been one of my greatest fears. I’m worried that because I floated up to where I was just bubbling underneath the surface of anxiety today it could mean I’m in for an anxious day tomorrow. Especially if the problem is the medication itself because now I’m taking it more often even if it’s a lower dose.

Sometimes I wonder if I should take the time to draft an “it’s a bust” message to Dr. O in hopes of jinxing things into working out in the end and not needing it, thus having it end up being a waste of time. But somehow I doubt that that will make a difference. If the problem is the medication itself, it’s not going away any time soon. If something up there is cursing me, it may never go away.

If this shit does go away I would need a good six months, preferably a year, before I could finally let out a long sigh of relief and declare victory over this demon. A few months isn’t enough when life has had a way of yanking the carpet out from under my feet when things run smoothly for a few weeks/months.

My hair and skin are dry, appetite is down, but that’s the least of my concerns right now. Keeping a daily log on Google Docs for my doc.

Last night’s dreams were long and disturbing. Well, one of them was.

In one dream I had lunch with Kathleen and the dentist was with us. Probably just a spam dream.

In another dream, I pulled out a clump of hair. Could be a sign that the Liothyronine is going to cause hair loss like the Levothyroxine initially did.

The kind of long, detailed dream like the last one I had is the kind that makes me wonder if it could have been a glimpse into another dimension. It was actually a series of continuing dreams. The first one started with us back in Arizona and living in a rural area. The house didn’t look anything like the house we had in Maricopa, though.

We were hanging outside when a woman drove up in a silver medium-size car and informed me that I was on unsupervised probation for the same shit I was supposedly vindicated for nearly 19 years ago. So we talked to this middle-aged lady with blonde shoulder-length hair. I guess I emailed something to the black bitch or was thinking about something I had emailed her a while back. I’m not sure which. But I guess I did something because, on another day in another dream, the same woman returned, also while we were outside. She informed me that they “found a partial email” I sent and therefore I would have to report.

I remained silent until she was getting back inside her car, turned to Tom and said, “There’s no fucking way they could have found anything.”

But I knew deep down I was guilty of something and wondered if I should keep that to myself or not. I also wondered what I should do if the police drove up if I failed to report, which I assumed would eventually happen, or if I should just go to the damn PO that I assumed would still be Scott.

Initially, I decided to remain stubborn, determined not to let history repeat itself. I was not going to be told what to do, where to do it, and when to do it.

Then one evening, just as the sun had almost completely set, I was home alone, nervous and paranoid as hell. I realized that it would be very hard to hide with all the windows we had and since we had no garage, we couldn’t hide Tom’s car when he was home. There was no way we could constantly hide in the dark at night without making a sound either.

Things aren’t what they were nearly 20 years ago, I thought to myself. You’re going to have to abandon your online life completely if you want to go underground.

Then I heard a vehicle approaching and saw headlights shining, though I couldn’t see who it was.

At this point, I woke up, fell back asleep and the dream continued yet again where Tom and I were out somewhere and I was expressing my concerns. He didn’t seem worried, though.

Next thing I know we’re at the probation office. I guess we decided to just deal with it after all. I sat in a waiting area and observed some woman and a guy behind the counter. I thought wow, if that’s Scott, he lost some weight and grew a little hair on his head. We figured the reason he always wore a cap in real life was that he was going bald.

Then we were finally led into a room and I realized the guy wasn’t Scott because he was too tall and his voice was different.

We all took seats, them on what looked like a twin bed, me on a chair, and briefly joked about something. Suddenly, I had a rat on my lap but no one seemed to notice or mind. I hoped it wouldn’t get too fidgety or take a dump during the meeting.

Then the guy went on to read some journal excerpts I’d written about my supposed polycythemia vera that I sent the black bitch and thought to myself, so the first email address I guessed from memory really did go through and really was the correct one.

I don’t know if I admitted sending the email or denied it because the dream ended at that point and didn’t continue on in another dream.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2018 It was with mixed emotions that I returned to my endocrinologist yesterday. She looked the best I’ve ever seen her and I like her hair longer (bet she’ll cut it by our next visit) even though she may have put on a few pounds, and while she may be one of the smartest doctors I’ve ever known, I would have preferred never to have to see her again on account of the on-and-off anxiety I’ve suffered for over 4 years now. Just when I think it’s gone for good (along with my period) back it comes with a vengeance!

I ended up leaving her office not so much feeling relieved but definitely feeling both nervous and hopeful. I don’t know how confident she is that the new regimen will help and I didn’t think to ask. All she said was that she hoped it would help since she’s been surprised by others who have responded better to Liothyronine. She said that due to the anxiety I’ve had she had been hesitant to try me on it. She wouldn’t want to try me on Armour because it’s too much, she said. I’ve heard that because it’s pig thyroid it’s not as consistent as the synthetic version.

I am to drop to 50 micrograms for one week and then add 5 micrograms of the Liothyronine which should put me where I was on 75s. Yes, I’m nervous about it, but as I told her, I’ve gotten pretty desperate and I need to try whatever I can possibly try. I guess that if worse comes to worst I’ll have to take just 50 micrograms of Levothyroxine only and leave it at that. I would be so devastated if I started having problems on that but as far as I remember, I didn’t have problems the last time I was on 50s. If I could just go more than 6 months without anxiety, then I could begin to think maybe we’ve figured out and solved the problem.

Levo is T4, Lio is T3. Funny that yet again that very unlucky number 4 is connected to the Levo, a drug that’s made me feel so horrible. I’m still nervous as hell, though, cuz they both list similar side effects. It’s scary because the anxiety and racing/booming heart it can cause is so awful and terrifying. It’s not like I might get a headache or gassy or something like that.

Oh, fuck! I just read that a single dose of Lio can reach its max effect in just 24 hours since it’s so powerful and can even cause cardiac arrest. Great. Just great.

Okay, so Tom and I did more research. It should only be risky if you’re in a coma or something and receiving it intravenously. It also seems to be a short-acting drug which is a bit comforting to know so it wouldn’t take weeks or even months to recover like when she tried me on 88s.

He suspects Doc O thinks the low thyroid is causing my anxiety and that Levo isn’t treating it properly. Not sure if I agree, though. I mean the 88s definitely caused anxiety and panic attacks. Definitely. But could the “stabbers” be the low thyroid? But then why didn’t I have the same problem before I was diagnosed?

As I also told her, I’m doing better overall than I was in 2014-2015, but why this comes and goes when my numbers have never shown me to be hyper, we have no idea. I didn’t seem to have anything wrong with my pituitary or adrenal glands when she checked them way back when, so I’m still thinking that the main culprit is probably what I’ve always suspected, something about the medication itself. It’s too extreme for perimenopause and I can’t believe I would just up and become this way for no reason and so late in life. So if it’s not the meds, then maybe it is something else related to the thyroid.

Anyway, I went to the lab right after I saw her which was on the main floor of the building. Despite the horrible traffic to and from the place at least it has a lab in the building.

When I first entered the Endocrinology Department, it was actually kind of dead. In the past, it was usually crowded. I was checked in by a beautiful young woman with perfect teeth who was so friendly for such a good-looking woman. Usually, women that pretty are snobs.

I was taken in by a nurse who seemed kind of bored, mechanically going through the motions of her job.

BP and HR were slightly high.

The doctor opened the door slowly when she came in, so she knew Tom was there. Did she spot us from an office on the way in or did the nurse tell her I wasn’t alone?

I told her of the symptoms I’ve been having, including the bounding pulse but she didn’t seem worried. She listened to my heart, felt my thyroid, and checked my hands for tremors. My lungs were tight enough afterward that I needed a hit off my inhaler but that was probably due to stress.

What was strange was the doctor’s overall demeanor. I can’t really put a finger on it and describe exactly how she was acting. It wasn’t anything she said although she did seem to talk less and listen more this time around. I swear in her message to me she said she wanted to see me to go over “all the issues” with Liothyronine. Yet the only thing she really said about the stuff was that it can cause the same problems Levothyroxine can cause when it’s too much.

The way she moved and the expression on her face makes me think of anything from amusement to being uncomfortable with me to having a thing for me. Could it be that she was thinking of Peter and perhaps a bit embarrassed? I don’t know what to think or make of the airs she gave off but if I didn’t know any better I would wonder if she was into me in some way or at least liked what she saw yesterday. I can’t believe the last one is the case, though. The last time I saw her I sensed both discomfort and impatience coming from her. She was very businesslike and didn’t even crack a smile that I recall. Again, it’s very hard to subscribe but she was totally different this time. As good as I am with words, I can’t quite put my finger on this one or find the correct words to describe it. It’s times like that that I wish Aly could’ve been a fly on the wall just long enough to observe the scene and give me her opinion. She’s extremely intuitive and smart. I’d like to think I am as well at times but I’m stumped on this one. It’s not important as long as she helps me. I’m just naturally curious. I also have a gut feeling saying she reads my blog. Maybe not regularly but enough to get a general sense of what’s up with me.

She was complaining about the new computer system they just got. Yeah, change sucks. It’s frustrating as there are always problems and new things to learn. They changed the portal, too. Not sure if it’s better or not.

I’m to return to the lab and see her in a couple of months. In fact, I see her the same day I see Dr. A. It’d be great to get them both over with on the same day.

In case I didn’t already say so, I absolutely love my new White Water Fairy. She really does look like she’s kneeling in water! You can also see the finely detailed painted purple flowers on part of her dress better in person than online. Love her long auburn hair too.

We went to the Goodwill before my appointment yesterday but didn’t find anything interesting there. We also picked up “Butterboy,” as I’m calling our butterfly betta, a pastel-colored castle hideaway but he doesn’t seem interested in it. So $14 wasted unless you want to consider it a cute decoration.

With yet ANOTHER project (by Bob & Virginia) I worry about being woken up too soon this week. As is usually the case, this obviously isn’t just a day or two kinda job. I can hear vehicle doors slamming which sound like doors in apartments, and some pounding. No saying for sure that the sound machines will override it.

Furthermore, on top of the usual landscaping and traffic, that fucking car came and went 2-3 times today. Enough that it may as well just live here. God, I hope that doesn’t become a regular thing again! Love how I haven’t heard that obnoxious mutt, though.

Amazed at how fat my outdoor potted cactus has gotten!

Oh, here are my lab results. Results are as shitty as expected. T3 & T4 are normal and I’m just on the edge of menopausal. However, my TSH is 27! I showed her all the skips I charted on Google Docs on my phone so she wasn’t surprised.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2018 We got a beautiful blue male butterfly betta at Petco yesterday. He seems much healthier and much more alert and curious than Flaky did. He’s a very nimble swimmer and this time around we went with no gravel at all and wish we’d done that from the get-go. They definitely seem to like this better because the bottom is smooth for them to rest on and there’s no worrying about their delicate fins being dragged along the rough gravel or torn. He does have his leaf hammock and a few artificial plants, though. We may eventually add a hideaway as long as he lives. After losing the other one in just a week, we want to make sure this one fares well. As it was, one of the many betta fish at the store was dead.

Flaky was beautiful but this one’s even more beautiful and twice as expensive. Like with Flaky he has a dark blue-black head with a royal blue body and the tips of his fins, unlike Flaky’s, are white. No hints of green or red hues like Flaky had, though. He’s more of a vivid electric blue. Within a day he was swimming up for the flakes of food I would drop in for him. He’s not nearly as shy as Flaky started off to be. He’s got his bubble game on, so I’d say he’s definitely happy.

Backing up to last Thursday and Friday. I felt absolutely horrible those days. I was wound up, my heart raced, I felt weak and lightheaded, and I would get winded rather easily despite being in decent shape. I still sometimes get that strange humming sensation in my head too.

I went out walking both days to make sure I got some sun exposure but still felt awful.

Took my nail polish off and let my nails clear up and they have cleared up nicely. They just have the ridges they’ve always had. Putting on the last of my designer falsies tomorrow but then no more. They’re just too much of a pain in the ass as cool as they look. So, dark metallic green with silver accents then it’s back to regular polish.

I’ve been taking my medication every other day and definitely stressed out about tomorrow’s appointment with Dr. O. I worry that there are no options for me but that’s what I thought with my LS even though, strangely enough, I’ve been waking up itchy the last few days. I hope using the Tacrolimus once a day is enough! Even more so, I hope I do go into remission.

Friday I was horribly tired but part of that may have been cuz I was hung-over from taking a Zyrtec the night before.

I’m just tired of feeling like shit half the time or more! I struggle way too much of the time both physically and emotionally and it’s just not right. Never knowing what you’re in for each day is no way to live. As I’ve always said, this is absolutely not normal for me. I’m desperate enough to try any alternative but I’m also scared at the same time as I still do have a medication phobia. Worst case scenario, I stick to what I’m on and just lower my dose. At first I was thinking that I couldn’t turn these 75s into 50s since the pill cutter cuts pills in half, but then I realized that after I cut them in half I could take a cut half and cut that in half as well, and then dump the other half of that half, duh. That will amount to about 56 micrograms.

I forgot to mention that Amy said they never got the info regarding the biopsy I had done with Sutter after signing a form for a release of info. My first thought was, now why oh why does that not surprise me in the least? Figured Alyssa would give me a hard time with that. I let her have it on Facebook for it too, not that I expect she’ll ever see the message. If she does, she certainly isn’t going to say anything about it or react in any way.

Anyway, I’m nervous about my appointment tomorrow. I know what a talker she is and I’m worried she’s not going to let me get much of a word in edgewise even though I have several things to share with her and ask her. I’m even more worried that there are no alternatives for me and that I’m going to continue to suffer most of the time indefinitely if not for the rest of my life. I’m feeling hopeless enough to seriously start thinking about ending it all at the end of the year or thereabouts. I’ve had enough! Tom feels confident that suffering forever won’t be the case and says it’s only logical that I would eventually get better but after 4+ years it’s hard for me to be as optimistic. This is the last thing I can think of to try to help myself. So if no other drug helps and cutting back doesn’t help, then what’s left for me?

I’m also getting tired of how everything I eat is a problem for me. If it isn’t something that’s got too much cholesterol, sugar or sodium, then it makes me have a gassy or upset stomach in some kind of way. I’ve been trying to have more fiber to keep regular. Oh, I’m regular all right. Too regular. So just what can I eat that isn’t going to be a problem in some way?

Maybe I ought to try partial fasting since it’s not as bad for you as a lot of people think. I’ll verify it with the doctor tomorrow but it’s actually good for you. Sort of like a detox for the body. It should only be bad for your metabolism if you do it too long. Furthermore, Tom told me he just read about a study they did on type 2 diabetes. In the experiment, they had some people fast every other day and some fast for 3 days a week. They no longer needed medication afterward!

Tom decided that rather than pay $600 to get a hearing aid that only they can control and that he can’t set up and adjust on his own, he’s going to get these things called Hearphones for $500 on Amazon that he can tweak himself at any time. In fact, they’re coming today. They’re crossovers that will hopefully help with distortion. He says they may even help me in noisy situations. If I’m in a noisy store or restaurant, it can be hard to hear him. I hear him, I just don’t always understand what he’s saying but he does talk softly.

Yesterday morning we went to Sam’s Club before we got the betta and for $20 I decided to get this kids’ chemistry kit where you make your own perfume, lip gloss and bath bombs. Making the perfume was simple enough but the shitty instructions caused me to screw up the lip gloss. Not only that but the roller ball in the bottles doesn’t work well. I hate that when roller balls get stuck!

Haven’t attempted the bath bombs yet.

We updated my computer from Sierra to Mojave and so far it seems to help with the mouse jumping. When hooked up to my large monitor, it was causing a herky-jerky motion of the mouse. It could still start up at some point but so far so good.

“You’ve already shared that dog pic,” someone said on my LR Ask account.

Andy? Hmm… Aly says it’s not her and if she’s telling the truth could it be that German-speaking nurse in Serbia? But Tatiana usually asks me questions in German, if she does, and that doesn’t seem like something she would say. But Andy definitely would.

The thing is that I already shared the dog pic on my DI account. Not LR. So it’s someone who’s aware of both accounts. To my knowledge, this could only be Andy, Aly or Tatiana. I just didn’t think Andy would remember my LR account or even his login to his own original Ask account. He either logged into his first account where he would probably still be following LR and noticed I was using it again, or he remembers that account. He may also have been following it from his second Ask account, though, now that I think of it.

Last night I had this dream some tough guy and his girlfriend and I were talking and I was telling him he was going to hit the wrong woman someday. Someone like me.

“I fight back,” I said.

Then a little while later I was walking through some neighborhood with very short streets. The same guy rounded a corner and startled me and after I said I almost kicked the crap out of him for it until I realized who it was, I asked what he was doing.

“Turning the water off,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“So they’ll refuse to fix it.”

I knew this meant that someone was going to be working on the pipes in the area the following day and he didn’t want them doing that for some reason.

Then I was walking down a flight of stairs outdoors at night with two women that I was either working for or living with. They said something about getting railings put up since it could be dangerous going up and down the stairs in the dark.

Then I was talking to a guy about taking a bus somewhere because Tom would be unable to drive me somewhere I needed to be the next day and transferring buses along the way.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2018 Really like the last perfume sample I got by Jean Paul Gaultier. It’s the best one yet.

I did some research and it seems like what I have may be called a bounding pulse. There can be many reasons for it but it definitely seems like my main problem is sodium. The more I have, the more my blood pressure spikes and the more I feel and notice the pulse in the side of my neck. I don’t know why my body is reacting this way lately to sodium but I guess it’s just age.

My appointment yesterday went well. Amy can see the improvement and there’s a chance it may be curable after all. I don’t want to get my hopes up but there was a study done where a handful of people used Tacrolimus for 10 months and went into remission. The thing is that Amy doesn’t know when the study was done and how long the participants remained in remission. She said if I don’t hear from her in 2 weeks to call her for more info. She’s going to check into it for me.

For now, she recommends moisturizing cream as opposed to lotion. I didn’t know there was a difference between the two but I guess lotion has more alcohol in it and can be more drying. She gave me a goodie bag with all kinds of samples. I have like 4-5 different products and a total of 20 samples to try.

She checked the red spot on my shoulder and didn’t think it looked suspicious. I told her about the one my PCP froze with liquid nitrogen. She said if it becomes a problem she can freeze it off but doesn’t think it’s any big deal. She looked at the sprinkling of “zits” on my upper arm which is very hard to see but I can feel. It’s that actinic keratosis. This is similar to what I had on my back but I don’t think they’ll become the same problem that will need a blast of liquid nitrogen. She wasn’t worried about it. The itchy red bumps I get under my arms, however, are also LS, as LS prefers areas that get moist. She said I can use the Tacrolimus there when I get irritation.

I also asked her about the scars on my forearm from my stupid days and she said that if they were raised and reddish they could probably do something about them but since they’re flat and white, probably not. She said there’s a place that does laser procedures but it costs thousands and isn’t guaranteed. So I’ll pass!

I go back for a follow-up in June.

I continue to worry about Tom and the kidney pain he’s been having and the way he’s neglecting to get a PCP. Somehow it’s all my fault, too. At least that’s the way he makes me feel, saying all my appointments and research I asked him to do wears him out even though he says he wants me to take care of all my appointments. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do. Take care of things so I can cut back the appointments. I don’t have to see Amy or my ENT until June and my next dental check-up isn’t until March. Meanwhile, I don’t expect the eye exam to spawn any additional appointments but I can’t say for sure about Dr. O. Believe me, I’m a lot sicker of all these problems and appointments than he is!

He says it’s important that he works to support us and I understand that he needs to work since I can’t supplement our income but as I reminded him, he can’t work if he’s in the hospital or dead because he let things get out of hand. So I told him that if I stop asking about how he feels, it isn’t that I stopped caring or worrying but because it seems to bother him when I do ask. I will start doing my own research, which I usually do anyway and had only asked him in case he came up with additional info, but it’s not my fault if something’s wrong with him and I don’t think he should use my appointments or anything else as an excuse to neglect his health.

Most of the soreness in my boobs is gone but I’m still spotting. :( Still getting that strange “humming” or vibrating sensation in my head at times, too.

Looking forward to this cute white pond fairy with really long auburn hair on Saturday. We also got things in preparation for whatever new fish we end up getting this weekend which could be a betta, tetras or both. There is actually a type of tetra that can live with bettas just fine. I really like the GloFish. Our 3-gallon tank would be a little small for the bigger ones but Danios would be fine if we found some we liked.

The Brita water filter pitcher arrived and I wish I’d gotten it a long time ago! It makes the tap water almost completely tasteless like our bottled water. I think I’m going to use it in the Keurig and the fish tank along with a special chemical you add to make the water even safer for fish, but I will continue to drink bottled water and use that for the plants and rats as well. After doing some research, I found that filtered water should be fine for fish. Besides, the tank has its own filter as well. He printed out a screen to keep them from getting sucked into the bottom of it and we also ordered a new heater.

I had some weird dreams last night. In one of the dreams, a character from one of my stories was driving us to the center of this town that displayed a large number each year, though I’m not sure what the number represented. I said to “Michelle,” “Look, the number is always the same number of years we’ve been together.”

Then I had a dream that I was browsing through a store and I noticed the same particular fabric with the same colors and design on yet another style of clothing. I had seen it on purses and other apparel and this time it was on a sundress.

Then I was driving somewhere and I was absolutely terrified.

Then Tom and I got into some silly argument over abortion. More like a debate but either way he seemed to be against it even though he is pro-choice like I am. I said something to the effect of us using birth control rather than following instinct.

In the last dream, Scott and Tom were present and we were heading somewhere. Tom walked out the door of some large room and Scott was about to follow when he told me to pull my panties up. I was wearing nothing but a pair of plain white panties as if that was perfectly normal and was struggling to pull them up even though they didn’t seem to want to budge, haha.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2018 I’ve had a definite rough night and it has nothing to do with anxiety, fatigue, or anything like that. Instead, we lost Flaky.

When I got up I noticed his “tail” caught in the filter. I immediately ran and unplugged the filter and thought he would be okay. However, he struggled to rise from the floor of the tank. All he could do was sort of slither along the bottom. I thought he was a bit injured and perhaps a bit in shock as well but would eventually recover.

With him in the kitchen, I returned to the bedroom where my laptop was and heard this strange knocking sound I’ve never heard before. My immediate thought was that it was some kind of nocturnal animal underneath the house. A skunk, a possum, a raccoon… I didn’t think much of it. A few minutes later I heard it again but still didn’t think much of it. Then I went back into the kitchen to find him gone.

Although I always try to be a realist in that I look for scientific proof and evidence in things and try not to assume anything based on wishful thinking, I thought of the knocking and wondered if it could possibly be his way of saying goodbye. I’m not sure if there’s an afterlife but it was definitely a weird coincidence and I haven’t heard the knocking again since. I would think there’s some kind of logical explanation for it but I’ll just have to wait and see if I hear it again.

Then Tom got up who didn’t get home until after I crashed yesterday. He told me he was sure he didn’t die because he got caught in the filter but because he was having trouble swimming and that’s why he got caught in the filter. He thinks something was wrong with him when he got home. He was acting sick and like he was having trouble swimming.

So with sadness, since Flaky had adjusted well and seemed like a very bright, alert and friendly little guy who would swim right up to me when I would put my fingertips in the water, I flushed him down the toilet and said goodbye.

Then I took a shower and we went for a walk. Now, when I got up I wasn’t having any bleeding and thought my period might have been over as of yesterday even though that’s not what my still sore boobies were telling me. Sure enough, after we went walking, mixing in a bit of running, it ended up causing me to flow like a river. It’s beyond frustrating and disappointing but it is just my shit luck and now I realize that not only does this reset the one-year clock I was within 6 weeks of hitting, but that I’m anything but menopausal. I may not be for several years to come. Although unlikely, it really is possible to get a period every so often throughout most of your 50s. I did read that no one in their 60s has ever had periods so that’s good.

I also realize this still leaves my hormones wide open to affecting my moods. I still believe the medication is the main culprit and I always have but now I realize that some of the anxiety could be attributed to that. I just hope it’s a little longer before my next period, and yes, there will be a next one. I know better now. So I have resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to be in the perimenopause stage for quite some time to come even though I just read that the average woman in the U.S. has her final period at age 52 and I’m still 52.

That isn’t it. Oh no, there’s been quite a bit of action today. I nearly burned the fucking house down. I don’t know why I did something so stupid but I took the filter and heater out of the tank, forgetting to unplug them first, and placed them on a towel because they were wet. Then I dumped the 3-gallon tank and suddenly I could smell burning plastic. That was when I looked and saw smoke coming from the heater which I immediately yanked out of the plug and doused with water in the sink. My lungs are a bit tight now. Glad I have an inhaler but I shouldn’t need it!

I am seriously beginning to wonder if something is trying to stop us from having fish. And then I had this crazy thought about our beloved long gone but never forgotten Tinkerbell, and it’s not the first time I’ve had this thought either. We’ve had such shitty luck with pets overall since coming to this state 11 years ago that a part of me wonders if there is an afterlife and if she is there saying, “Oh no, I was the queen. No pets allowed that are even remotely as good as I was!”

Tinkerboy was a good rat and Sugar was an outstanding one but then he had a stroke. And now this friendly little fish is gone. What, was Tinkerbell up there thinking he was too friendly to be our pet that he must be replaced with a timid fish that always runs and hides whenever we walk in the room? Again, I’ve always tried to be a realist, logical and base things on science and don’t see how an afterlife or reincarnation is very plausible. But every now and then some weird things happen that make me wonder. I mean, I’m proof that people can have dream premonitions yet there’s no explanation for knowing the unknown, is there?

I wonder why my dreams didn’t warn me about Flaky but I certainly don’t see everything coming my way. I did have a dream my parents were alive and we were hanging out with Caroll Spinney. Anyway, in the dream, I asked him to do his Big Bird voice for my parents and he did. Yet my parents didn’t seem the least bit fazed.

I learned something interesting about Ask. I was a naughty girl and anonymously said something I knew would annoy Aly as a prank. Even though it was just one thing, she blocked me. I didn’t think you could block anonymous questions but then why wouldn’t you be able to when you now need to have an account, after all? I don’t know why it let me “heart” some of her answers but she never received any of my questions even though I never got a message saying that I’ve been blocked. So I’m just assuming that’s what happened even though the site is notorious for glitches. This was the Dusty Illusions account that I used mostly with Andy.

I then realized he probably did harass me as well only I never saw the questions cuz I had him blocked. This is only if Aly blocked me. If she did, then you can apparently still ask questions; they just won’t be visible to whom you’re asking.

So I decided to delete the Dusty account and reactivate Lady Rainbow and I also unblocked Andy because I’m curious to see what happens. I don’t think he remembers that account but we’ll see. I won’t ask Aly anything with my name showing so that if he’s watching her, it won’t flag his attention.

Since I couldn’t tell Aly I’m switching accounts because I sent her a nasty question and she blocked me, I told her it was because that account not only is less associated with Andy but is also plugged into an email address that still exists, and this is the truth. Dusty Illusions is connected to my old MyOpera email which is no good since the site went down 8 years ago and it won’t let me change it.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2018 Here we go again with my “gift” that I don’t exactly feel grateful for or see as a gift. I’m 52 years old, hadn’t had a period in nearly 11 months, and was pretty sure I’d hit menopause. On September 29th, I dreamed I told Stacey that I was so pissed to find I had a period starting after going nearly a year. Although the dream gave me a bad feeling and I knew deep down it meant something, I tried to push it out of my mind. But then a couple of days ago I noticed I started feeling a bit PMSy. Can you guess what happened yesterday? Yeah, you guessed it. Now the dream is an official premonition. rolls eyes This is just one of many negative dream premonitions I’ve had over the years.

I said to Tom, “Why can’t I ever see good stuff coming in my dreams?” I just got an adorable kitty figurine from Amazon that I randomly spotted when browsing the site. Now why couldn’t I have dreamed of spotting a cute little kitty figurine, then spotting one for real as I did? LOL

So I went 6 or 7 months before a period, then 10.5 months, so maybe next time I’ll go 14-15 months.

I don’t think it means anything but I also dreamed that someone asked if I was scared and my dream self automatically knew I had terminal cancer. I just said, “yup” in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Not the kind of dream a person like me wants to have (or even non-psychics) but I really don’t think it means anything.

Really getting sick of the “insufficient energy” messages I’ve been getting and how some sites run snail-slow because of it. Or maybe it’s connected to the monitor. I know I’m getting tired of the mouse jumping that I’m contemplating doing away with the monitor altogether as much as it helps me see better.

I showed Aly, who was diagnosed with severe anemia years ago, a picture of my cloudy, whitish unpolished nails and she said that that’s what hers look like. She said symptoms include pain on the left side of the breast, pale skin, feeling cold to the point of having chills, weakness and sudden fatigue. But many things can cause fatigue and I get cold easily.

She said she’s never seen ridges as bad as mine and asked if it could be a health issue but as far as I know it’s just how I am. Maybe I’ll go with unpolished nails to Dr. O and see what she thinks.

Interestingly enough, I read that low iron can cause anxiety. So they’re either not testing my iron like we think they are or it’s recently become a problem if there’s a connection at all. It could just be all the polish and remover but why now? It’s not like I recently started polishing my nails. I always have polish on my nails. Always.

In Bleederville, I’m still between spots and a light flow and my tits are still a bit sore. Wouldn’t be surprised if the dam burst into a full flow in a day or two.

Had some neck knockers in my sleep and I’m definitely feeling fatigued right now but that’s probably the period. Bleeders are iron suckers. Some things make sense now…the intense hunger I had for a few days, my weight up a few pounds, getting stuck when I was 155. That usually doesn’t happen until I hit down at 152-153. I’m 155 right now and I haven’t gone. I don’t want to either after yesterday’s butt explosion. Yeah, I may have hemorrhoids if it isn’t my LS that caused the bleeding when I took a dump yesterday. My shit has been hard lately which can cause hemorrhoids. I think it was more likely that than the LS.

Just went, actually, but my ass remained gratefully intact.

The buzzing sensation in my head gets annoying but my BP hasn’t been high lately and I’ve been monitoring it closely.

My schedule better not back up anymore because now I’m on for 5 AM Dr. O day. I don’t want to deal with her after being up 12 or more hours. If it keeps slowing down as it has been I just might make Dr. A after all.

My shower is no longer usable as water leaks out from under the door so much that I may as well shower with it open. I think the plastic guard underneath came loose but I can still freshen up in there cuz water doesn’t hit the door when I do that like it does when I shower. No problem. I can just use Tom’s shower. One of the things I like about my 2-in-1 Pantene is that while it makes my hair a little less manageable, it stays cleaner longer so I don’t always have to wash it every day.

Later…

We installed the prism window cling in the laundry room and it looks great. Maybe in a few years, for variety, I’ll get this blue floral design that will make it look like a stained glass window.

The Hawaiian course is “hatching” but still in beta and not all the lessons or sounds are there. I guess I should wait a while.

I sent one final message assuring Nissan that I would never contact her again after this unless I was contacted but that I think it’s pretty sad that some people harbor so much hate, resentment and animosity in their hearts over such petty nonsense from decades ago. I was young, for God’s sake, and I think it’s safe to say she was guilty of similar things. I mean come on, does she really think I don’t think she was behind some of those prank phone calls any more than I think Maliheh wasn’t behind the ones I got in South Deerfield?

I noticed she went and hid her friend list as small as it was and next, she’ll probably block me but I don’t care. No account is sacred to me. Especially if we haven’t paid them anything.

I know everyone is different and we all have a right to be how we are but it just seems like such an extreme reaction to what happened. Yet people can be so hateful and unforgiving for the dumbest of things. Again, where’s all this forgiveness the world preaches? No one seems to actually act on it but hey, sometimes I wish I was just as unforgiving.

Went to Walgreens yesterday morning and I got a pair of small “diamond” barrettes. They’re too small to hold all my hair but if I want to put the sides back they’re good for that.

I also got blue nail polish by Vinylux which is an expensive but great brand of high-quality polish. It lasts longer than most polishes though you still need two coats. At first, I didn’t like it because it’s such a dark shade of blue that’s almost navy and even looks black in dim lighting but it’s kind of growing on me.

Flaky really seems to be avoiding his brightly colored gravel so after finding things online suggesting they really do get stressed by bright colors, I removed the neon gravel. This kicked up a lot of debris and I really think I should change all of his water every week instead of just half of it.

Skipped my meds today and the day before yesterday. I’m a little fatigued and lightheaded but feeling better than I felt earlier. I just want to get all my fucking appointments over with!

It almost depresses me to think how long Tom has before he retires. I always loved spending most of my time alone but now I definitely don’t care for it. Hell, I’d love to go back to the days when I didn’t feel the way I feel so much of the time now, wishing he wasn’t around so damn often like when he was unemployed, never having appointments or needing medication.

The shower door in the master bedroom which is a piece of shit is leaking. That’s the one with the door that opens outward. The water guard on the bottom is bent so we’ll have to replace it again. I know this place isn’t as old as some of the places I’ve lived in but damn am I sick of old places! Please tell me our next place will be built in this millennium! Seriously, it’s no real big deal because I can still freshen up there and take showers in the bigger shower which I prefer anyway.

I wonder if they ever had the Oktoberfest concert they were supposed to have yesterday? I hope they got it out of their system while I slept because I hate it when I have to listen to the bass-thumping when I’m awake and be forced to drown it out with the sound machine or something. I absolutely hate it when others force their activities on me!

Not sure if I mentioned the adorable rat pillowcase I ordered from China with a picture of a rat on it eating a candy bar. I have one of those gel cushions on my desk chair and I think I’ll use it there.

Tom uploaded OSX’s latest operating system, Mojave, and he’ll use it for a week to test it out. If there are no problems we’ll load it onto my computer.

I had a dream I was jogging through the park at night. I was just coming around by the RVs and heading to Oak Lake. As I went to turn onto OL, I looked out the front gate at some strange bluish light just beyond.

Then all of a sudden I had this shopping cart at my side. I don’t know what was in it but this strange woman who morphed into Kathleen was curious about its contents and started sifting through the items. I asked what she was looking for and she said, “I should get some serious favors for all these questions.”

“Just tell me what you want done and I’ll do it,” I told her.

Then I was in the hall of an apartment building and could hear her arguing with some guy. One of the apartment’s doors was open and I knew it was Kathleen’s place. I stepped into the apartment and didn’t see anyone. Then I stepped back out into the hall where a black woman was passing through with an amused expression on her face which I knew was on account of the bickering. I stopped her and said, “I’m deaf in one ear and can’t tell the direction of sound. Can you tell me where those voices are coming from?”

She pointed upward and then walked on.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2018 Flaky, as I’ve been calling the betta because of the way he prefers flakes to pellets, now has some artificial plants and a leaf hammock in his tank. So far he seems unimpressed with all of it. He probably just needs time to get used to it. It seemed to take him a while to get used to his brightly colored gravel. I guess bright colors can stress some fish out. I probably should have gotten neutral-colored gravel since that is what they’re used to in the wild, after all.

He warmed up to me rather quickly. He doesn’t seem to mind it at all when I stick my hand in the tank. He was actually more afraid of the damn plants than of me, LOL.

I also got my new kitty figurine and I totally love it! Very cute, realistic, and life-size. They’re typically intended for gardens but I don’t want to throw something so beautiful outdoors to be spoiled by the elements. It’s just too adorable to eventually end up dirty and faded by the sunlight. The next one I want to get is a playful Jack Russell Terrier.

I also got the final round of bamboos to complete the organizer. I got 10 stalks and I’m not sure what they are. The rings are further apart than on the lotuses but they’re closer than on the regular bamboos. The leaves sort of resemble that of the lotus but are placed a little further down the stems.

Last week was the first week I was on nights and didn’t get woken up while sleeping during the daytime. Slept with a bamboo on the headboard shelf and I wonder if it helped safeguard my sleep. Really wish they could safeguard me from anxiety! Was borderline yesterday and so far I’m okay today. I skipped yesterday but not today.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2018 We got the betta set up in the new tank and he’s definitely happier there. He’s been making bubble nests in the top corner of the tank. According to what I looked up, it has to do with breeding. Well, he isn’t getting a girlfriend!

The artificial plants going in the betta’s tank will be here tomorrow. For now, he has colorful gravel with a mix of pink, blue and green.

The filter is gentle enough so that the farthest corner of his tank is almost still and the heater keeps him at about 78 degrees.

I continue to have random BP spikes and I sometimes get this strange vibration in my head. This “humming” sensation of sorts. Worst of all, I was surprisingly anxious yesterday and well past the amount of time it usually lasts after taking my meds. Totally dismayed too, of course, and feeling hopeless where that’s concerned. Unless my endo can work some kind of miracle, I may literally be forced off the medication my body otherwise needs. Again I find myself wondering if there’s something up there and if it deliberately gave me a disease in which it knew damn well I couldn’t handle the medication to treat it with. It’s a scary thought to think something up there could do that to me but I still say it’s unlikely there’s anything up there at all. I really hope not! Either way, I really thought it would be a while before the next bout of anxiety. Really, I’m just SICK of this fucking game! Sick of trying to figure it out year after year and getting nowhere. Do I literally have to die to stop it?

Anyway, I’ve skipped today but also surprisingly, I’m still slightly wound up. Went out for a half-hour walk and now I’m doing the laundry as Tom sleeps.

Aly sure is becoming angrier these days, mostly due to political shit going on and corrupt politicians. I understand her anger but nothing is going to change the twisted world we live in and make it fair. I realize it’s pointless to get angry over things that can’t be changed. I don’t like them but I accept them.

I slept better last time around and I think this is the first week I ever slept during the daytime without traffic waking me up. Really wish I discovered these sleeping earbuds half a decade ago! They may not have existed then, though. Watch, now traffic will get even louder. Seriously, I still wake up enough on my own but as I said, I slept better. Didn’t even have to take anything. I was so tired. I fell asleep a little earlier and slept longer.

When I got up to pee, though, in the middle of my sleep, I swear my boobs felt sore as if they were watery like they would get before periods and I automatically remembered the dream where I was telling Stacey I got a period after nearly a year.

I had a dream that Liz was working in some kind of cafe that was possibly in an apartment building Tom and I was living in. One time I went there for coffee and asked if I could keep the mug for a while until I finished my coffee. Liz nodded and I left. A few hours later I headed down a long corridor and could see Liz sitting behind the counter at the end of it. She had her hair curly. I reached into our apartment that was off the corridor and grabbed the mug as well as a necklace I might have wanted to give her.

In another dream, Tom seemed kind of down in this place we were living in that was laid out differently than where we live here. I asked if he was okay and he said something about a money problem and held up a small piece of paper. For some reason, we were without a physical address for a few months which he referred to as a “drop-off.”

“Whenever there’s a drop-off,” he said, “there are always problems.”

In the next dream or possible dimension, I was living in yet another place that also didn’t look anything like any place I ever lived in before and was very small. I had the back door off the kitchen open when a teenage boy with dark hair and eyes suddenly appeared at the screen door. He asked if I could write and said something about winning money for it or being paid or something like that.

I told him I was a writer and let him in. He had a much younger sibling with him and I didn’t want the nosy brat messing with my devices which its brother didn’t seem to care to watch. So I picked up my phone and a tablet and placed them out of reach. Then I was in the living room talking to the guy when I realized there was no writing job or contest and that he was definitely up to no good. My dream mind reeled with the best way to get out of the situation and I told him I had something interesting to show him in the backyard. Not sure how that dream ended.

The only other dream I remember was looking up my lab results online.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018 Jean Paul Gaultier is going to be the next perfume sample I receive. I’ve heard of him before but I don’t know that I’ve ever had his perfume.

Had some real rain for the first time in months. There was even some thunder. At one point it was so loud I would have had trouble hearing my show if I were watching TV. I know whose TV I won’t be hearing much of tonight! Probably won’t be much flying either. That’s okay. I would much rather the sound of the rain.

A few nights ago I heard about a dozen gunshots. They came from the East. Pretty sure that’s what it was anyway. The last two shots sounded farther and farther away as if the person shooting was running or in a moving vehicle.

I dreamed about some sort of family reunion where we got together with members of his family. Mary and his mother were there only he didn’t seem too happy about it while I was for some reason.

Nissan’s lack of a reply - and I know she’s been around because she changed her profile picture on one of her accounts - is a classic reminder of the hatred and grudges so many people harbor within their hearts decades after the fact and over silly things, too.

I realize that even though I didn’t do a damn thing wrong to my cousins, say I had sent them a message saying I was sorry and wished them well and hoped to hear from them and all that; I never would have. In reality, I can just imagine all the lies they’ve been told that they believe and I have no doubt that others probably pulled various pranks on them that they automatically assumed I was behind.

Either way, the point is that I don’t understand all this preaching of forgiveness when very few people are willing to actually do it. It amazes and saddens me just how many people will remain angry for little to no reason decade after decade. But I would also be lying if I said I didn’t wish I was more like most people in that respect because then I wouldn’t bother to reach out to people who are just going to ignore me in the end. Or turn on me at some point. I wish I could’ve had it in me to not give Kathleen my number but I didn’t want to seem rude and I knew she wouldn’t call anyway.

A few days ago I started having more burning and itching similar to the kind I would have when not treating myself with anything. Not a severe burning sensation that almost makes you feel like you’ve been cut like the steroids gave me, but just general inflammation and itchiness. So I skipped a dose and the irritation backed off.

I’m both eager and nervous about my upcoming appointment with Dr. O. When I’m feeling my worst I’m willing to try anything new to stop that feeling from returning. But once it comes down to actually trying something, if I do, I’m going to be terrified, of course. Well, I can at least get more info and then decide what to do from there. Worst case scenario, I will have to skip the stuff I’m on periodically as the anxiety kicks up. It’s really too bad I can’t stand it when it does because I may be able to get some weight off if I could.

For now, I’m hoping I don’t get depressed now that I’m pretty much on nights. We’ll see if the full spectrum light helps, though I’m not flaring right now and my TSH should be too high for me to have anxiety from the medication for another month or so.

Was watching this Barbie hack on YouTube and it showed a woman dipping the hair of an old Barbie with knotted hair into fabric softener to make it easy to brush. So I went and tried that on one of my BFF dolls and it improved it a little but definitely didn’t make it easy. Her hair is pretty gnarled and tattered. I just threw it in a ponytail because it looks shabby and I’m not going to keep this doll forever anyway. Her joints are way too loose. Hey, she’s a Goodwill doll. That’s where she came from and that’s where she’ll eventually return to.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2018 The “bad guy” who dares to support his disabled wife in the oh-so-independent US that the government doesn’t give a shit about and who isn’t really “disabled” if others don’t get it or can’t see it, like with someone in a wheelchair, let his forgetful wife forget to do his ear. LOL, he’s been throwing peroxide and alcohol in it to break down the wax in preparation for his appointment tomorrow with the hearing aid people.

I don’t like the fact that I’ve been having more itching and burning lately even though it’s not like the kind of burning the steroids gave me, and Tom says it looks like it’s healing nicely down there when he checked the other day. It’s a good thing I have the Tucks and the Aquaphor and that Amy is only a week away.

Although it was a bit warm, I went out walking earlier for about 25 minutes. Did some strength training exercises on the Bowflex too, and worked my core and arms.

We ordered our new betta a square fish tank with a filter that’s 10 x 10 x 10. We’re adding a heater to it as well as some artificial plants and colorful gravel. He doesn’t seem to like his pellets as much so we’re getting flakes instead. He also seems to be a really shy guy, too. I wonder if he’ll always be this way. His alertness is cute in the way he follows my movements with his eyes as I move about the place.

I’m also getting a bottle opener to make it easier to open tough caps, an adorable 2019 rat calendar and another kitty figurine. This one is a single standing orange tabby looking upward.

During the last order we made we forgot to get the decorative window cling I picked out for the laundry room window. We grabbed it this time around, though.

Norma posted how upset she was about 1600 immigrants being denied help in Texas and how no one will help the children and Tammy was like, how are we supposed to handle an amazing number of illegal immigrants? Yes, she feels bad for the kids and it’s not their fault but their parents’ who should have come here legally.

Tom and I both agree that children should not be abused in the way they’ve been pulled out of houses and thrown into tents in the desert. However, something’s got to be done. I understand people not wanting to spend so much money on a wall and I understand that it isn’t going to keep everybody out but if it will slow the flow of moochers then it may be worth the money. I would still love it if we could take a giant knife, cut Mexico away from the US, pick it up and plop it down on the other side of the world. The middle of the Arctic would be nice. There’s just too damn many of them and they’re burdening the shit out of our resources.

Tom’s co-worker, the Indian woman named Pawandeep, recently vacationed in London. She brought back a bunch of keychains with the word London on it and Tom brought one home, not that we’ll ever use it. It was still a very nice thought. It’s hanging on one of the kitchen cabinet knobs right now.

Wondering if I’m starting to get another precancerous lesion on my shoulder where the arm and shoulder meet. Thanks, Mom, for making me sit on the beach all damn day every summer until you decided you no longer wanted to be a mother to me, even if I know you didn’t know this would happen and would’ve taken measures to prevent it if you could have.

It’s too small to say for sure what it is, but it’s definitely suspicious and similar to the other one I had on my back. It is kind of reddish and has a similar feel to the other one, almost like a bubble. When you press on it, it sort of seems like it’s filled with air. It could still be a wart or a mole. We’ll see where it ends up as time goes on.

Speaking of cancer, when I was looking at my conditions on the new medical portal, I was surprised to see polycythemia vera listed as one of them. That’s a blood cancer. I don’t see how having a couple of very slightly elevated red blood cell count readings constitutes having that condition, but even if I did, it’s so slow-growing that it would take 25 years to kill me, anyway. After having a couple of high readings, I did have a couple of normal readings, and I would be willing to bet that my next round of lab work will be normal as well. I’m sure the white cell count will be slightly elevated, though, as always.

I had a dream that I was seeing my GYN and she had a friend with her in the room. At one point the GYN asked her, “Want to get together tonight?”

“Nah,” the girl said, and then I left, realizing I didn’t have another appointment scheduled with her and wondered if that was a good thing or not.

[searidings]

You’re my favorite writer so I just wanted to send a small prompt of SC finally getting together because Kara can’t stop looking at Lena in her look from 6x16 (certainly understandable). I hope you have a great day!

(also on ao3)

It's something Eliza had taught her.

Or maybe even Jeremiah, way back in the beginning. A way to cope with the overwhelming, broadening her stimuli response to prevent overload. For anything that became too much – a crowded mall, a car backfiring in a cavernous parking garage, even a loud sneeze – she learned to employ each one of her five senses with deliberate precision, grounding herself in all incoming sensations to prevent any one individually from taking over.

It had helped with the bad and, over time, had also helped her to appreciate the good. Centring herself, focusing not just on the sight or sound in front of her but also on the feel, the taste, the smell— it brings her clarity. Enhances her appreciation, allows for more comprehensive enjoyment.

She hasn't needed these skills for years, has used them only in moments of extreme joy or pleasure that she wishes to capture and remember as thoroughly as possible. But, Kara realises, it's a good thing she has these tools in her arsenal because right now in this moment there is—

i. sight

—and Rao, what a sight it is.

She'd landed on the Tower's balcony just like any other day, walked into the main control centre just like any other day. And then her eyes had fallen on the lone figure seated on a high stool at the work bench, and suddenly it is no longer any other day.

Today, Lena is not wearing her typical boardroom outfit from her L-Corp days, the soft jeans-and-sweater combos reserved for game nights and sleepovers, or even the slacks-and-blouse ensemble she's frequented since her move to the Tower.

No. Today, Lena has pulled the dark wave of her hair up into a big, messy bun, flyaway hairs framing her face that flicker like molten amber in the sharp morning sun. The style accentuates the cut glass line of her jaw, the regal column of her throat where it disappears into a soft black turtleneck. Kara's eyes track the skintight material down, down, down to the leather belt at her waist, the skirt that hugs the curve of her hips and legs save for the slit cut to mid-thigh, the tantalising peek of creamy skin beneath. Her eyes fall lower still to the black suede of her boots, rising relaxedly to cover her knees, no—

Kara's mouth runs dry. Rising to cover her thighs.

Even if only one is visible, and even if only in part, it's still enough to make Kara's head spin. The whole look is finished off by a smudge of dark plum that draws attention to the full curve of her lips, a striking companion to the dark sweep of her brows, her lashes above the crystalline green of her eyes.

This is very decidedly not just any other day.

Kara doesn't move, doesn't breathe, for a solid ninety seconds while her brain tries to compute the image Lena makes before her eyes. Her heart has migrated up into the Sahara of her bone-dry throat, stomach dropping out her ass as her pulse thuds like a bass drum somewhere deep in the cradle of her hips.

Lena— Lena is always gorgeous. Always, in every shade and hue and state of undress and disarray. But this, this, is something else altogether.

Lena notices her at last, glancing up from the book she'd been perusing, one long elegant finger extended to mark her place. Kara's eyes trace her hands, the slender tug of tendons and the delicate lines of bone, the way the contrast of the faded page beneath her palm makes her skin appear to glow alabaster in the sunlight.

“Hi?”

It sounds like a question, one perfect brow arching as plum lips split into an expectant smile.

Kara, narrowly resisting the urge to check her own chin for evidence of drool, snaps herself out of her daze with single-minded determination. She clears her throat, licks her dry lips. “Hi.”

“Everything alright?” Lena asks when Kara still doesn't move, feet rooted to the same spot from which she'd first caught sight of her best friend. “You're, uh. You're staring.”

She certainly is. “Oh. Oh, uh.” Kara shuffles her feet, unsticking them from the floorboards and forcing them to walk without trembling to the workbench in the centre of the room. “You, um. You look really nice today.”

Lena's cheeks flush the palest pink, the first dusting of sunrise on a snowy morning. Kara's eyes catch on the pulse thrumming at her throat, the near-indetectable flicker beneath the hinge of her jaw.

She wonders what it feels like. That blush, that heartbeat. She wonders what it tastes like.

"Thanks,” Lena whispers, ducking her head, twin arcs of dark lashes fluttering. She motions to the pages before her, clearing her throat. “I, uh, I think I might have found a spell that could help us.”

Kara rounds the table to stand beside her, making a show of focusing her gaze on the page before them as Lena explains something about energy transfers and containment spells and varying interpretations of third century classical Latin.

This focus lasts all of half a heartbeat before her eyes begin to wander, insatiably drawn to the myriad details revealed by her new proximity. Her visual receptors are overwhelmed, gaze bouncing erratically between each new discovery like a ping pong ball in a vacuum.

Kara swallows hard. Her eyes lock upon the fingertip Lena's tapping against the incantation at the bottom of the page and she finds herself transfixed once more by how long Lena's fingers are, how broad her palms, how the blunt edges of her short nails round against the smooth canvass of her skin.

Next, her field of vision hones in on the soft curls at the nape of Lena's neck, half-trapped beneath the high turtleneck collar where they've escaped from her bun. This is followed by a brief sojourn on the near-translucent shell of her ear, shot through with morning sunlight, then by a rapt fascination with the fine baby hairs that skirt her temple to the arch of her cheekbone, the downy curve of her jaw.

Lena is still talking, and Kara hasn't heard a word she's said. She's just been staring at her best friend like a dumbstruck fool, and she needs to snap out of it before Lena catches on. Resolved, she sucks in a breath so deep it's almost painful, a misstep on her part that ultimately proves fatal because then in addition to sight there is—

ii. smell

—and any hope she had of regaining her composure dies a quick and painless death.

The lungful of Lena she's just inhaled is intoxicating and before she knows what she's doing she's pressing a half-step closer, eager to breathe her in again.

Lena's hair smells bright, fresh and clean like the expensive sea mineral shampoo Kara has taken to stocking in her own shower of late. There's the cloying chemicals of her makeup and the waxy sweetness of her lipstick, the worn leather of her boots and the musky blush of the perfume at her wrists. The nape of her neck and the soft skin behind her ear smell smoky and rich, the warm base scent of her accentuated by the ever-lingering tang of chemical explosions, propane and molten solder.

Unbidden, Kara's mouth begins to water. She sucks in another eager lungful just as her half-addled brain registers the sudden silence between them, snapping her back to herself with a start.

Lena has turned to stare up at her pointedly. Kara finds herself lost once more in the lush curve of her arched brow, the way the movement sends up another heady cloud of samphire-scented conditioner.

"Kara?” the object of her fascination asks, pulling her so sharply from her enthralled haze that she actually jumps. Lena's brow quirks a quarter-inch higher. “Have you been listening to a word I've said?”

“Of, of course I have,” she manages, breathing pointedly through her mouth so as to avoid another assault on her olfactory senses. “You've found a spell that might help us.”

Lena looks as thoroughly unconvinced as the weak cover warrants, but Kara doesn't have the mental capacity to worry about that in this moment. She's too busy trying and failing to focus on anything other than the utterly overwhelming amalgamation of sight and scent that is her best friend right now.

Blessedly, her Kara Danvers phone vibrates in her boot a split second later and she's shooting off to Catco with a hasty apology before anyone can start asking uncomfortable questions about her behaviour. She doesn't relax, doesn't even breathe again until she's hovering in the empty air high above National City, confident she can manage it without losing her mind.

If the crisp scent of Lena's shampoo lingers on the back of her tongue, that's nobody's business but her own.

-

The afternoon at Catco helps to push some of the lingering enthrallment from her mind and by the time her interview prep is complete and the call comes through that she's needed back at the Tower, Kara feels like she might even be able to face Lena without completely losing her shit.

The thing is, she's an expert at this. A seasoned pro at blocking out overwhelming sensations, at diversifying her sensory input in order to moderate her own response. She thinks back to her first years on Earth, to the soft knit blanket she'd squeeze to ground herself through the maelstrom of untempered superhearing and the scented dryer sheets Eliza would hold to her cheek when her x ray vision became too much to handle. Thinks of the slew of coping strategies she's been forced to acquire throughout her time on this planet, of how they might be repurposed now.

Because, okay, the sight of Lena today – in that shirt with that lipstick and that slit up the length of her thigh – might in fact be too much to handle. May have quite possibly fried her brain, just a little.

But, she reasons, all she has to do is ground herself, focus on her other senses, and keep it together.

After all, this is Lena. Kara's been practicing the essential art of blocking out the more distracting facets of her best friend since the day they first met.

And so, maybe smell isn't the way to go, given the hard reboot her mind had involuntarily undergone when she'd caught a whiff of Lena that morning. But that's okay, that's fine, because Kara has three other senses that she's going to use to remain centred and stop making a fool out of herself.

This is fine, she's fine. She's a seasoned pro. She's got this.

-

It takes all of three seconds for her to lose it again.

The main room of the Tower is deserted when she touches down, but she doesn't even have time for confusion or worry because then there is—

iii. sound

—and every iota of her previous infatuation comes rushing back full force.

Lena's heels click across the worn boards of the control centre, syncopated perfectly with the white-hot thud of Kara's heart. The material of her skirt swishes against soft suede, cotton stretching and contracting around her arms and shoulders as she sets her notebook down on the workbench.

She turns her head to smile at Kara's arrival and her superhearing picks up the gentle clink of the double sets of gold hoops adorning each of Lena's ears, the near-inaudible whisper of stray hairs against the collar of her shirt. Now that she's focusing on it, Lena is a symphony, from her steady heartbeat to her rhythmic breaths to the quiet knock of her belt buckle against the edge of the desk.

“Hey.”

And there, the sweetest sound of all, the melodic lilt of Lena's voice tripping across the space between them, hitting Kara's ears like the light tinkle of windchimes on a summer's day.

“Hey yourself,” she manages, pulling herself out of her slack jawed stupor and crossing the space to join Lena at the bench. “You called? How's it going?”

Because, yes, maybe her eyes and nose and ears are being assaulted by such a whirlwind of stimuli from this woman that she feels a little lightheaded, but there's a limit to how weird she can be around Lena in the span of twenty-four hours without drawing attention to herself, and she has a feeling she's already hit it.

She breathes through her mouth to avoid Lena's perfume, recites the Prayer of Rao backwards in Old Kryptonian in her mind to drown out the beacon of her heartbeat, keeps her eyes on the lines of the spell book so they don't wander off to any nearby curves, and tries her best to get a grip.

She actually manages to focus – albeit briefly – on what her best friend is saying; a rundown of the afternoon she'd spent in the lab, her progress on tracking Nyxly, the revised translation of that morning's spell. Kara's nodding along, mentally congratulating herself on her iron-clad concentration, when Lena reaches out once more to trace her fingertip along the lines of the hexagram on the page.

Kara's watching her, watching the muscles and ligaments shift beneath delicate skin, and then suddenly she's reaching out too and then there is—

iv. touch

—and a bolt of incandescent electricity shoots from the top of her skull to the tips of her toes.

Her hand lands atop Lena's, stilling it against the page and she can feel the confusion in the other woman's gaze, hear the question already forming on her lips.

Her skin is tingling where it touches Lena's, palm moulding to the mountain range of her knuckles, the knocked arrow of her finger and she only has a second to salvage this before it gets really weird. Her brain is still stuck, wheels spinning somewhere between the scent of the lavender soap clinging to Lena's hands and the sounds of her heels shifting against the floorboards, thus executing no oversight of the words that fall out of her mouth.

“Sorry, I just— I missed you today,” she finds herself saying, not untruthfully. “How about, um. A hello hug?”

As soon as she says it her entire being is screaming for it, for an amplification of the feeling of their hands stacked together and the chance to take Lena into her arms.

Lena, to her credit, takes the odd request in stride, which probably says more about her years of experience with Kara's weirdness than it does about anything else. There's an incredulous slant to her brow and an uncertain tilt to her mouth but after a moment, she nods.

There's an awkward second that feels like a suspended eternity as they slot together, angling arms and tilting heads but then they click, the circuit completes, and pleasure courses through Kara's veins like wildfire.

Lena's arms slide around her neck, bobbing up on her tiptoes even in her heeled boots to rest her chin on Kara's shoulder. She anchors her own arms at Lena's waist in return, squeezing lightly as they settle into the embrace.

Lena is so soft, so warm and tactile and pliable to the touch and the sum total of it all, the way she looks and smells and sounds and feels is so glorious Kara struggles to remember why she ever lets her go.

She decides to take advantage of the granted proximity, fingertips playing across the brushed fabric of Lena's skirt, the smooth juncture of her belt and up to the ribbed cotton of that goddamn turtleneck. She charts the ladder of Lena's ribs, meets the straps of her bra through the sheer fabric, up and up until her fingers trip against the folded neckline, playing through the escaped curls at the base of her skull.

She scratches her nails gently against Lena's scalp beneath the tug of her bun and Lena lets out a quiet sigh that hits Kara square between her legs.

It starts to make sense, then.

Her obsession with every minute detail of Lena's existence, her need to employ grounding techniques just to avoid being completely overloaded by her best friend's mere presence, every time over the course of their relationship that she's carefully turned her focus away from the finer points of the woman before her in order to keep a level head— it all starts to sharpen into a picture she's been ignoring for far too long.

This particular outfit, the boots and the bun and that motherfucking turtleneck may have been the tipping point, but the effect Lena has on her is nothing new.

Emboldened by her own crisis of clarity she continues her gentle exploration, knuckles brushing the side of Lena's throat as her other hand thumbs sure circles at the small of her back. Touching her is enthralling, addicting, wonderful, made even more so when Lena shivers against her chest.

"Kara?” she whispers and it's another inundation of the senses; the breathy sound of her voice, the tangible hitch of her breathing, the faintest hint of mint tea on her breath. "What are you doing?"

“You feel so good,” Kara hums before she's fully decided to, tightening her arms a fraction.

Lena pulls back, just enough that they're face to face without breaking the circle of their embrace. Her gaze is searching, eyes roving Kara's face intently as though seeking an answer to a question long buried. “Yeah?”

She looks at Lena then, the sum total of her; the purse of her lips and the skate of her jaw and the flyaway wisps of ebony hair, the viridian crystal of her eyes.

She wants to touch her. Wants to listen to her and gaze at her and breathe her in for as long as she possibly can. She wants to put her mouth on her. Wants to press her lips to the pulse fluttering hummingbird-quick at her throat, feel the bright metallic tang of her earrings on her tongue, paint her own mouth with the glossy wax of her lipstick.

Because, she realises, there's one of her five senses left as yet untested.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, meeting Lena's gaze with a steady kind of surety. She tugs her closer still, tracing paths of worship up and down her sides, squeezing as tight as she dares. “I don't want to let you go.”

Lena's gaze on her face, so heavy, so penetrating, softens at last. A breath sighs out of her, her own grip on Kara's neck strengthening. “Then don't.”

For a moment they watch each other, breathing the same air. She thinks of the question they've been skirting for six long years; sees the answer she'd never dared to dream of etched into each beloved line of Lena's face. She hopes her own answer is reflecting back the same.

She thinks that maybe it is, because in the next moment the tension pulling taught between them snaps with all the heraldry of a divine chorus and then she's leaning in, and maybe Lena is too, and there's one more moment of heady, blissful anticipation and then there is—

v. taste

—and the warm press of lips and the slick slide of tongues, the flavour of mingled panting breath and the faintest hint of fresh mint tea as they come together again and again in the most overwhelming, pleasurable, joyous moment of Kara's life and there's not a single shred of doubt in her mind that this woman, this kiss, is the sweetest thing she'll ever know.