#i’m consistently happiest with things i spend the least time and effort on

[peaceandlove26]

somewhere over the water ♬

[idontblushsrry]

Sesshomaru|| SFW Alphabet

A/N: Heheh he seggsy ft. a gender neutral reader

Word Count: 2140

A: Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Sesshomaru shows affection by cutting off the heads of those that would dare threaten you and overall ensuring your safety. He also lets you lay on him, whether in human form or demon form, the fact that he lets you lay on him, let alone be near him when he’s so vulnerable speaks volumes of your bond.

B: Best Friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

Sesshomaru doesn’t really do best friends, if he’s interested in you, he’ll make it known when he feels is most appropriate but otherwise you’re likely in his mind at least a subordinate or acquaintance at most.

C: Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

As stated before, Sesshomaru is a secret cuddler, even more surprising is the fact that he’s good at it. Sesshomaru’s cuddles are warm and fluffy and his arm wrapped tight around your waist makes you feel safe and secure. When he’s cuddling you, he’ll also bury his head into the junction between your neck and shoulder, to him this is where your scent is strongest and he loves to be reminded of it as the rest of your scent slowly blends into his.

D: Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

Settling down for Sesshomaru is kind of a weird term, it takes a lot of explaining and even then he’s still confused. When you ask him about it though, he informs you that you’re more than welcome to stay at his castle, but part of his duty is patrolling his land. He can’t settle down but he swears to you that you’ll never want for anything so long as you allow him to stand by your side.

E: Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

To be honest, Sesshomaru would probably just drop you off at the nearest human settlement/demon settlement (if it’s a really bad breakup he’ll just leave you to fend for yourself). If Rin is particularly attached to you, he may feel bad internally but in his mind, she’ll have to understand that the two of you just weren’t meant to last.

F: Fiance(e) (How would they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Sesshomaru is kind of already engaged to you once you accept his courting offer. While he won’t be pushy about it, he does want to marry you as soon as possible. The moment you agree to marry him is the happiest day of his long life, and the whole affair is a week long festivity followed by a month long honeymoon.

G: Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Sesshomaru is by no means gentle. Maybe if pushed to the brink of desperation to where your life was in danger, he’d crack just a little bit, the aftermath of which he’d make some excuse to always be holding or carrying you. Overall though, he’s not really gentle but he doesn’t need to be, he more than makes up for it because he treats you like you’re a gift from the heavens and a grace to all living things.

H: Hugs( Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

He doesn’t initiate hugs, ever. He lets Rin hug him and you but that’s about it. If anyone else tried to hug him, he’d cut their arms off and if anyone aside from Jaken or Ah-Un saw him receiving a hug they’d better start running.

I: I love you (How fast do they say the L-word)

Like with settling down, it takes some convincing and a lot of explanation on your part for him to understand how three words convey to you the depth of his devotion. The way he says ‘i love you’ isn’t through words (although he eventually does say so to make you happy) it’s through the way his gaze melts just a little bit when he sees you, it’s in the smile he gives no one but you, it’s in the way he’s willing to give up everything, just for you.

J: Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous)

When Sesshomaru gets jealous, it’s actually kind of serious. He doesn’t get jealous as he has no need to but seeing how Mukotsu stole you away from him and hearing how one of the thunder brothers tried to marry you made his blood boil with rage. If he hadn’t already disposed of Mukotsu he’d have made him die a slow death by Sesshomaru’s poison. Also, the fact that Inuyasha killed the thunder brothers is one of the few things he doesn’t begrudge his brother for.

K: Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

Sesshomaru’s kisses are rough and demanding, even when he’s trying to be soft with you. Something in his nature that wants to assert dominance even in the tamest expressions of love. It’s not like you mind though, his kisses always leave you breathless and wanting more.

L: Little ones (How are they around children)

As evidenced by Rin (and kind of Kohaku), Sesshomaru is really good with kids. He’s just firm and uncaring enough to keep kids in line while still letting them play and explore. And deep, deep, deep down, he enjoys kids because of the almost naive outlook they have on the world, but he’d never admit that.

M: Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

Mornings with Sesshomaru are really nice and pleasant...until you have to pee. At which point it becomes an almost wrestling contest against a clingy cuddly demon who still wants to be pressed against his mate until time forces you both to wake up. It doesn’t help either that you’re likely sore from the night before.

N: Night (How are nights spent with them?)

The SFW version of a night with Sesshomaru usually consists of you telling Rin (and a bitter Jaken) stories around the fire. Rin will probably help you put your hair up before you go to sleep and when the little ball of energy finally collapses, you tuck her in and kiss her forehead. Sesshomaru in the meanwhile, would watch all of this from a distance, his superior senses negating any need to be close anyways; plus he prefers to watch over all of you from afar before sneaking under the covers next to you while you’re asleep.

O: Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

Sesshomaru doesn’t necessarily mean to shut you out he just reveals information on a need to know basis. In addition to that, most of his thoughts are carefully revealed through small subconscious reactions or expressions that take you a while to even pick up on, much less interpret. Eventually though, he does become open with you, you become the only person in the world that he trusts with the full breadth of his secrets and vulnerability.

P: Patience (How easily angered are they?)

He’s a 50/50 split. He can be patient when he wants to, but sometimes people are moving too slow for his liking and he starts to feel his hand twitch with the urge to use his claws. To get him angry to the point of it being visible on his face or even to the point that he shifts into his demon form is something few (namely Inuyasha and Kagome) are capable of. With you though, he does get a little impatient, especially at the beginning when you didn’t understand his grunting, but never fully enraged to the point of transforming.

Q: Quizzes (How much would they remember about you?  Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Sesshomaru remembers things about you like your scent, what makes you happy, what makes you mad, etc., all very basic information for him. He doesn’t really bother to remember things like anniversaries or birthdays just for the simple fact that his concept of time is completely different to yours. He doesn’t see the point in celebrating anniversaries (he manages by noticing the changes in your scent when yalls anniversary is approaching) and he finds it amusing that you celebrate his birthday, he hates celebrating yours though because it just reminds him that you’re human and each year is closer and closer to an eternity he’ll have to inevitably spend without you.

R: Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

Sesshomaru’s  favorite moment in your relationship was when Rin accidently likened you to a parental figure one day. You managed to keep it together, but the moment she got distracted you turned to him and just sobbed into the fluff of his tail. The memory still makes him laugh but you swore him to secrecy, and he fears ever so slightly what you’d do if he broke that vow.

S: Security (How protective are they? How would they like to be protected?)

Sesshomaru does all the physical protection in your relationship. He can sense danger better even when far away and has skills and senses that you really can’t compare to. Although, Sesshomaru never sees you as inferior to him, as long as you rub his head and shoo away Kagome whenever she tries to be too sisterly with him, he’s all good.

T: Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

As mentioned earlier, Sesshomaru, while he doesn’t care for anniversaries, definitely makes a big event out of showing his love to you. Although the two of you aren’t dating, you’re courting (or married), he still manages to make you feel like the most beautiful person on Earth when he takes you out. If your date isn’t a private personal affair, he’s making a big show of it. Everyone in the land will know that you are his and that you are incredible in every way (basically multiple feasts/parties held in your honor).

U: Ugly (What are some bad habits of theirs? (I’m gonna add arguments here because they aren’t on the prompt list I found))

A bad habit of Sesshomaru’s is his impatience. He can be patient, but it’s mostly a façade, one in place to maintain his cool, unbothered persona. Truth is, many things bother him and he tends to just bottle it up and let it build until it boils over. Now, he may snap at you, but it’s most likely that he’ll walk away to go hack at a tree and not speak to you for a while. This leads to his second bad habit, his aloofness. While Sesshomaru is always aloof, it’s not usually a bad thing. But if he gets into one of his moods and you push and push and push, it will cause an argument.

V: Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Sesshomaru isn’t concerned with his looks, he always looks flawless. 

W: Worry (changed bcus I don’t like how the original frames relationships)

Sesshomaru does worry about you a lot. He tries not to say anything or let it bother him but it seems like every second he’s reminded of your human fragility. One day for trip over a tree root, the next you poke your finger sewing Rin’s clothes, and just one after another until your damned birthday comes around again and he’s reminded of the fact that you’ll get old much faster than he will. Needless to say, he worries about you a lot.

X: (E)xes (Any previous relationship experience. How does that factor into your current relationship?)

He has some previous relationship experience, mostly from matches his mom set up or random hookups. You’re most likely his first and only serious relationship.

Y: Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner)

He thinks people who seek to gain power/get ahead through frivolous means to be some of the most distasteful scum of the Earth. Aside from that he doesn’t really dislike anyone, aside from humans, or half-demons, or other demons, or anyone weaker than him, or... we could be here all day, but he pretty much only likes you, Ah-Un, Rin, Kohaku, and sometimes Jaken

Z: Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Sesshomaru has never really had to sleep in a bed proper before you so he can just kinda fall asleep anywhere and be perfectly fine. His other skills include sleeping while standing and sleeping with his eyes open.

[painted-crow]

Do you have any specific advice for figuring out your secondary when you're neurodivergent? I have ADHD and I've always been bad at social stuff, bad at consistent effort, and easily get obsessively interested in things. IDK how to separate who I am personality-wise from the symptoms.

"Separating out" neurotype when Sorting?

There's an implication here I should probably address before we get into the SHC stuff. I'm not sure how well I'm going to be able to articulate this, because it is complicated and I'm not an expert or anything, but I'm about to Do My Best here so don't get upset with me, folks ^^;

The word "symptom" is hard to work around, because ND folks find that a lot of our traits get pathologized, even if they aren't inherently bad or harmful traits. Some ND traits are unhelpful to us because the world isn't set up for us, but whether that makes them a symptom is... complicated.

It's okay to be neurodivergent! It's okay that you have struggles that aren't super familiar to people around you! A lot of the context around words like "symptom" is like... "let's separate you from your neurotype and try to 'fix' these Bad Traits," rather than "you're struggling in some ways that are unique to ND folks; here's how to handle that in a way that makes your life easier."

This gets into Complicated Identity Stuff that I'm probably not the best person to talk to about. Here's what I'll say about it: you don't have to be neurotypical, or hide all your ND traits, to be a worthy human being.

I'm not trying to minimize your struggle--it is real. Executive dysfunction is a PITA, time blindness is weird as hell, sensory issues are no fun at all, and jumping through all kinds of hoops trying to hack your brain around that stuff just to cope is a huge task. But you’re you, buggy brain and all, and that's okay!

Why am I talking about this? Because, to me, it sounds like your problem is almost less about your Sorting than about accepting yourself. And, as you've discovered, it's pretty hard to Sort yourself when you're rejecting part of who you are.

So, maybe you don't need to separate that stuff out, for the purposes of Sorting or otherwise. The ways you can do things are valid, even if society thinks they're lazy shortcuts and you're not trying hard enough or doing things properly or blah blah blah blah blah.

Badger secondary pressure

And you don't have to be a Badger secondary either :p don't think I don't see that negative self-talk there!!! Society really pushes Badger secondary, and it sounds like you're getting a lot of that pressure.

Badger secondaries are easy to organize in a lot of work and school settings, and stuff tends to be set up for them, sure. But being easy to organize doesn't make you a better person. It doesn't even make you a more effective person! (It doesn't even always make you more accepted by society; actual Badger secondaries still tend to feel like they're not good enough at using Badger, because the cultural message is so strong.)

I have a half-drafted, scrambled-thoughts post on this kind of thing sitting in my drafts. Might be a bit before I get around to it. I have thoughts on this subject that haven't been easy to compile.

So... the actual Sorting?

Think about how you act when you're happiest--not about when others most approve of you, not about when you show the fewest ADHD related traits, but when you are happiest and least stressed.

How do you get stuff done when there's no pressure on you to do it? (The way you act with hyperfixations does count, btw.)

If all your needs were met and nobody was scolding you for not working hard enough or whatever, what would you be doing? How would you spend your time, and what methods would you use to work on your projects? If every job paid the same, what would you want to do and how would you want to do it?

Bird secondary and Bird sec models do seem to be popular with ND folks, so you might think about starting there :) keep in mind that Birds tend to take their secondary for granted, because they think it comes easily to everybody or because they enjoy it (so it can't be Real Work, right?), so do check if that's a thing you're getting stuck on.

Good luck!

[asocier]

🎰

( five random connections; accepting! )

Emile & Beatrice 

          beatrice being quiet and more soft-spoken would work really nicely with emile’s own demeanor since he also tends to be more introverted! i think he’d take an interest in her writing and would support her effort in trying to become an author. he’s rather directionless in life in his main verse despite having a stable job since he’s not really the happiest he could be, so maybe putting his attention in something new ( proofreading drafts ? ) would make things more interesting for him! it’s also be funny watching emile learn about the esports world because he’s such an old soul, he’s like a boomer sometimes but minus the crankiness alksjdlksa  

Cedric & Tobias

          i don’t think cedric would have any problems handling tobias considering cedric is very close friends with nate from my blog, and nate also gives off bad boy, troublemaker energy. i’m not sure how cedric and tobias would cross paths necessarily, especially because they don’t have many shared interests it seems ( also, i feel like cedric’s “i’m better than you” attitude would piss tobias off akjdklsa ) but if they ever did have to spend a considerable amount of time with each other, cedric’s capable of keeping the chaos to a minimum, or at the very least, doing damage control if things get out of hand rip 

Alison & Minato

          oooh a non-shield breaker muse! ngl i know nothing about the persona franchise, so i had to do a dive into the wiki for context ( i didn’t read the whole thing, but enough to understand his personality at leasts! ), and i feel like minato is the type of character that always piques alison’s interest, especially during her high school years. the silent type seems to draw out her curiosity, and in a high school setting, she’s quite reserved herself so her curiosity would probably manifest through her being attentive to minato whenever he was in the room or if she overheard conversations mentioning his name or involving him. if they finally ever had an encounter, she’s a big sweetheart even if she’s quiet herself, so there would be an effort to be friends. if he’s nice to her in return, she’ll come back for more interactions, so that’s a possibility for them to meet and form a relationship! in alison’s canon verse, it’s a little trickier to think of an idea, and if i understand correct, you portray minato during a very specific time of his life, but in any case, if his personality is still pretty consistent with what i read in the wiki, it’s possible for him and ali to get along!

Aito & Mash

          another instance in which i had to read a wiki aljkdlkas but this pairing seems interesting since there’s like, an element of genetic engineering in mash’s story that, while unfortunate due to the short life span it causes, also aligns well with aito’s general interest in science-esque things like that ( even if the world mash comes from seems to have elements of magic in it as well, which, i guess is ironic when paired with science lmao ) but still, mash and aito could have a lot of intelligent conversations together that i think she might enjoy, and he could always teach her things too. aito as a whole is a very free spirited and fun character, so maybe he can make the time mash has left fun for her :’) 

Leah & Gavin

          since leah already seems to be worming her way into the shield breaker’s gaming house, it’d be really easy for her to meet gavin lmao it’s likely that if jordan is busy, she’ll bounce from member to member until she finds someone doing something interesting, and considering how gavin loves to cook, she’d be really keen to watch him or even help since she’s not too bad of a cook herself if you give her a recipe! maybe he can give her some pointers on how to improve her cooking or give her easy recipes to try out whenever she’s not in the gaming house that she can make in her dorm!!

[og-danny-dorito]

Some Quick Alfie Solomons Headcanons

why? because ive been thinking about this baker dude for like a week ok don’t @ me

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S F W:

- big man is warm all the time, no lie. it can be any time of the year and he’s still basically a space heater with legs, although he doesn't really move much if he can help it. 

- yeah work is GREAT and all, but he’d much rather sleep until 5, wake up to get like some food or a drink of something, and then just fall back asleep with his dog tbh

- highkey doesn't like Italians because the Italian mob consists of some dickheads (in his eyes at least) but honestly wouldn’t mind an Italian s/o??? like yeah he might not trust them at first but after a while he’ll soften up to them

- i kind of see him as maybe bi, but i don’t know. he seems more inclined to females in particular, but there could always be that sort of curiosity there he REFUSES to acknowledge. yes he finds that guy kind of attractive, no hes not gay-

- it kind of takes him a while to get comfortable with anyone, just because hes been conditioned over the years to doubt who you trust. usually if he feels too comfortable with someone for the first few days or weeks talking to them, he’ll distance himself away and maybe not show up for a while just to try and space himself out 

- once he does finally become comfortable though? he won’t leave you the hell alone

- seriously, this dude might show up at your house at 3 am because Cyril seemed kind of distressed and he doesn't really trust anyone else to take care of his dog. or he might show up at your house in the middle of the day just for the hell of it, or at your work. of course he’ll make up and excuse, but the fact of the matter is that he just wants to spend time with you. and i can assure you he’ll have less of a struggle admitting it than a certain peaky blinder would

- probably more down to just lay around and read or something, but he doesn't mind going out every once and a while. id think that he kind of likes going to eat or something, but eating at home is always nice too. and NO drinking cause gross. hes kind of a hermit really, it’s just how he is

- highkey likes thiccies why? because i said so. that and he likes it better that way. it may be a secret kink but we wont address that because these are sfw and i haven’t made nsfw ones yet. to him people with more meat on their bones look like they could boss him round without a problem

- if you're self-conscious he won’t be having ANY of it. don’t think your eyelashes are long enough? not on his watch, expect to get kisses all over your face. don’t think your skin is clear enough? not on his watch, he’s going to make sure you feel like the most beautiful person on the planet. don’t think you look good in your clothes? dON’T MAKE HIM GIVE YOU FACE KISSES AGAIN-

- but seriously he’s v supportive and sweet

- he also may not show it, but he cares a whole lot about you. when you’re at work you may get a random bouquet of flowers and a little basket or container of your favorite sweets or food. he also low key makes lunches for you sometimes (he won’t admit it but he’s pretty doting on you and takes a lot of extra effort out of his day just to make sure you feel loved)

- very very out there but he probably likes it when you call him pet names like ‘sweetheart’ and ‘bear’ or something like that. it makes him all blushy and he starts smiling a lot. in turn he also calls you names like ‘love’ or nicknames while holding you from behind

- boss man likes it when you randomly grab his hand while you’re both walking. ESPECIALLY in public. seriously, just walk up and grab his hand and continue walking with him and he’ll get all flustered and grumble under his breath about people being around

- highkey doesn’t want you to wear revealing clothes because he doesn’t like it when others ogle at you. that body is his to touch and his alone, so seeing other people stare at you like some slab of meat isn’t going to fly without a slightly-pissed-off-yelling of “What the ‘ell are YOU looking at?” and him gripping you tighter to his body. he gets jealous rlly easily

- it’s not so much women that make him angry, he doesn’t like to get mad at women in particular just because he sees it as a sign of disrespect. if a GUY is doing it though the fucker is gonna get his face beat into the ground. he’s not fucking around, and may poor guy that dares to think he is when it comes to you will find that they’re sorely mistaken. he can and will do anything to protect you, even if that means beating the shit out of some guy publicly just to make the point clear that you’re taken

- if his violence scares you at all, he probably will try to keep his job and his more erratic nature away from you so as to not drive you away. once he’s gotten used to you it’ll feel weird to have you gone because of some dumb thing he did, and so he tries to avoid that situation at all costs. you mean more to him than anything else, and your word is law

- in any fight you guys get into he’s mostly pretty cool and collected, but there are occasional bursts from his cold exterior. usually he’ll play the ‘I’m not mad, you’re just being irrational’ care, which will result in more outburst on your part and eventually his inevitable angry venting. he tries not to do it, but after a while he does apologize and doesn’t start anything a long time after that. like I previously said he’s too scared of loosing you, so he tries not to make anything he does cause that

- probably would feel more safe protecting you than you protecting yourself. it’s not that he doubts your skill! he just doesn’t want you to get hurt. and he’s fairly certain bodyguards are much more powerful than just one person, right? you’re basically treated like a piece of valuable jewelry at all times

- low key pampers you. like,,, if you say that you like a particular item ONCE you best believe you’ll get it ASAP as far as he’s concerned. he gets you all sorts of stuff; clothes he thinks you’d like, clothes HE likes, etc etc. you could simply say that he likes to make you the happiest he can at all times, but perfectly understands if you’re more simplistic and really just enjoy his company. he probably feels more secure with someone who’s simplistic really, it lets him know that he doesn’t need to constantly get them things to keep them by his side

- would most likely loose his shit if you ever got anything for him. like in a Oh My God Thank You But Why™️ way because he doesn’t actually get gifts that often? literally anything will make him happy, but little homemade things really make his heart melt. you painted him a picture? he’s going to frame that shit and put it in his office dude

- he may be a mob boss but that doesn’t mean he’s always hard and macho, he kind of just needs to be held every once and a while. just hold him, pls he needs it

- all in all he cares a lot about you, and in the end he can’t bear the sight of you even slightly distressed or hurt. he’d lay down his life for you, and if that requires that he protects you at all costs and eliminates all threats then so be it, because he’d die in his spot before he let the enemy get to you

[jooliargh]

Happy, NOW, like THIS

Not wishing put a downer on anyone’s Christmas any more than, y'know, 2020 has put a downer on everything in general, but I'm not the most Christmassy of people. I sometimes joke that I'm a bit "bah, humbug" but that's not quite true: I want everyone to have a great time, I get great pleasure giving someone a gift I know they’ll enjoy unwrapping, I just don't usually quite feel unbridled joy myself. I'm rarely actually unhappy, just sometimes a bit... meh. I don't have a tragic reason why I should be, in my case it's more that there's a limited, prescribed set of ways to be happy, and you have to do it on this one specific day (and then another kind of happy on this other specific day a week later and  by an accident of birth I have ANOTHER day I'm supposed to be happy slap-bang in the middle), and "be happy, NOW, like THIS" feels like a lot of pressure. Like... what if I don’t want to? What if I’d prefer to be just quietly content?

I imagine this is somewhat true even if the family you grew up in were like the OXO family, which most people's probably weren't. My childhood Christmases weren't awful, but they weren't like the ones you see on TV. At risk of launching into a seasonal version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, we were poor. Lots of people have it a lot worse - we had a roof over our heads and enough to eat - but for as long as I can remember, I was aware that my parents couldn't afford much, and any gifts I got were at the cost of sacrifices elsewhere.

My teenage Christmases... the less said the better. I got dumped in December three years running. (I volunteered for a few years at a hospital radio station, and one running joke was that any time I came to the studio in December, whoever was on air would cue up Lonely This Christmas by Mudd and leave the mic open so I couldn't loudly tell them to fuck off.) One of those Christmases I still lived at home, another I spent on my own, and one I was the charity case invited to my best friend's in-laws. (Which was actually pretty hilarious, and I am forever grateful. But nobody wants to be the charity case at their best friend's in-laws.)

So where were my family, you may ask? I grew up as an only child. For some reason people think that sounds tragic in itself but honestly it was fine. Or at least, the difficult things about my childhood wouldn't have been any better for having siblings living with me. Dad died when I was 11 (nope, that's not the tragic backstory either - happy to talk about it any time you like, but it would be a huge digression here), so for seven Christmases it was just me and my mum. I left home at 18 and while there was no bad blood between us, we just didn't see much of each other. She took to celebrating the solstice instead anyway. I have extended family on both sides and it's lovely to be in touch with them again the last few years, but we’d see each other a couple of times a year at most, then managed to go thirty-odd years without seeing each other at all, so clearly we're not a family that does family much.

Then just after Christmas, I have a birthday. Perineum birthdays (because that's the only description for the time between Christmas and New Year that ever seems to stick) are great as a kid - everyone comes to your party because everyone's parents leap at the chance to be rid of their spawn for a couple of hours, regardless of whether that spawn is even vaguely friends with the birthday child. For the price of a colouring book and some crayons it's a bargain. In the early 80s parties outside the home were for people with more money than sense, or nice things they didn't want kids to break. We had nothing worth caring about getting ruined so my parents were quite happy to let us run riot, and generally it was great fun.

As an adult, perineum birthdays are fine if you have modest expectations. There's no barb to that, I mean it quite sincerely. Most years I wouldn't throw a party if you paid me. Going to the cinema, having a wander around town and a meal out, seeing a few friends in the extreme case, is more than enough. The last big milestone birthday I decided to have my get-together in March just to save everyone the awkwardness of having to make excuses and myself the effort of making them feel better about having to make excuses. I like my friends; I'm not going to oblige them to celebrate with me when they could really do with a couple of days doing nothing.

And that brings us to New Year's Eve. One side of my family is from Scotland. I had one Hogmanay up there when I was about four years old and I think my general attitude of “could we just not...?” started there. I have the sketchiest recollection which consists of only: a real coal fire (a novelty having grown up in London), Andy Stewart on the telly, whisky, LPs of bagpipe music, and adults crying. To this day I associate bagpipes with crying. Sorry, Scotland. It may have also influenced my ongoing choice not to start drinking.

I have had some fun NYEs - generally the ones where a few of us got together at a friend's house and spent the evening on the sofa, playing games, talking and laughing. The shittest ones by far have been in pubs. Midnight was spent dodging either strangers who wanted to either kiss and hug everyone within range or strangers who wanted to fight everyone within range.

The one where my (then-)boyfriend went out and partied while I stayed at home with tonsillitis so bad I cried every time I swallowed was less awful than some of the NYEs I've spent in pubs.

I'm going to put it out there: any indoor New Year's celebration with over 20 people is shit. If you think I'm wrong, consider going to a massive New Year’s party, sober. I'm absolutely not the kind of person who abstains from alcohol and thinks everyone else should, drunk people can be very entertaining and I’ll happily spend an evening in the pub with a few friends any other time of year (except when there’s a plague on, anyway). But if you can't imagine having fun doing something without at least a few drinks, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the thing itself is probably not fun.

So why do we have this image that staying in on NYE is like the black mark of social failure? And why do I stay at home with my partner, having a perfectly lovely evening, and yet still feel like I should be out doing something more extravagant, even though experience tells me I'd rather have tonsillitis than go to a pub?

Truly, I don't know. But please don't think I'm having a miserable time because I'm a bit quiet, or I'm not wearing a Christmas jumper and belting out Slade for all I'm worth, or not partying on my birthday, or not going to a pub on New Year's Eve. I'm fine. Probably quite content, in fact. The thing most guaranteed to put a serious downer on the festive season for me is being told these are the happiest days of the year, therefore I should be happy, NOW, like THIS.

[gwenbrooks]

Here's a Wilbur Writing with no Point

Wilbur’s week consisted of two options for his nightly routine. The first paid the majority of his bills; during the days, Wilbur led tours of the French Quarter, sometimes venturing out when he was needed for a whole city bus tour and three nights a week he led ghost tours at night. It was fun, but it paled in comparison to show nights.

As long as he’d been in New Orleans, Wilbur had been singing in whatever venue that would have him. Lately, he’d been lucky enough to find a gig with a local burlesque troupe. Sarah said it was because he was always ready to make the run to a drugstore for whoever needed it. He’d trek through Frenchman Street or Bourbon in order to get to whatever bar, and lately they’d moved up to bars and restaurants along Canal Street. Tonight, it was one a few blocks off of Bourbon, and as usual he had his garment bag over his shoulder. 

There was usually just enough time to shower and shave after tours, and Wilbur was bound and determined to never arrive with water contaminated with whatever bodily fluids had hit the streets by eight in the evening. He wanted to smell like whiskey and cigarettes, not whiskey, cigarettes, and Bourbon Street. The bar for the night was attached to a hotel and had blocked off the distressingly large restroom of the hotel lobby, as they did every Thursday for the troupe. He gave a nod to the concierge, knocking on the door of the bathroom. 

“It’s me,” he called. “Everybody decent?”

“Hardly,” Sarah laughed, opening the door. “No one’s made the switch from robes to costumes. Get in here before the lobby catches a peek.”

“Everybody set?” he asked ducking in obediently and going to hang his clothes over the back of the door.

“You love us, right Wilbur?” Ana asked, arm around Rachel.

“Now of course,” he smiled, tilting his head. “I’m guessing it’s lashes?”

“And a lip liner,” Rachel added, holding out cash. 

“I appreciate you two telling me before I got the suit on this time.” He nodded again to the concierge as he left, swinging by the bar and putting the cash down. “The usual?”

“Now or when you walk back in.”

“The latter.” He was already out the archway, turning right and spotting that CVS would be his stop for the night. This was part of the routine, usually. Sometimes it took until almost time to go on stage for someone to realize they needed makeup, lotion, tights, tampons, or cigarettes. Since he required the least effort to get ready, he had slowly developed a map of every drugstore in the Quarter. He’d also learned that the best way to get down Canal was looking directly at wherever he was heading and duck between people if need be. 

Ana always forgot her lashes, and he’d memorized what kind she liked. Rachel didn’t care if her lip liner matched her lipstick and while Wilbur didn’t fully understand the intricacies of contouring one’s lips, he did know a dark peachy nude was usually what she wanted. At first, he’d kept a running note on his cellphone, listing the brands and colors of anything he was sent to fetch. Only guests threw him off now.

When he made his way back in, Andy held out his drink from behind the bar. He mouthed a ‘thank you,’ tracing a heart over his chest with his free hand. The girls were still lined up along the counter in their robes. He made his way along the row to greet Sarah then Megan, then Ana, then Rachel, then Julia, kissing the temple of each and placing his hand on their upper back. As things calmed, Wilbur finally changed, tucking his shirt in and fastening his dress pants just in time to hear his name called again.

“Can you help lace me?” Sarah asked, followed by Julia’s request for him to grab the bottle of wine the bar gave them before each show. 

“After I help Sarah,” he nodded, fingers working into the laces and pulling hard. “It’s getting stuck on your sparklers.”

“I know. Stoned the whole thing without thinking about the logistics  But it’s a damn good costume.”

“It is. And luckily ya got me here because time’s running tight again.”

“As usual,” she conceded. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Be stuck with Steven being a creep?” Sarah let out a huff of agreement as he tiet her off. “I’ll be back with wine. Y’all got cups or need them?”

A chorus of “Got it”s came, and he downed his drink, going to the bar and getting a bottle and a refill. Megan had finished, pouring for everyone as Wilbur finally ducked out the hotel’s side door with a cigarette and his drink. Richard was on piano tonight, Wilbur making note everyone was here and accounted for and ready. Sarah was the den mother and ran the troupe, but he’d happily taken over making sure everything ran smoothly. He didn’t think somebody in that tall of heels and a corset should be running the errands. When he heard the volume of people pick up inside, he dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it into the sidewalk before heading inside and standing at the side of the stage.

It was the usual crowd, but he made note of the group of men already bothering the female patrons. Bachelor parties rarely decided a burlesque show was the right place for them, but he could hear them talking about the strippers they were about to see. The bachelorette party across the bar from them, however, would be the ideal group as long as no one decided to come on stage. When he heard the piano begin to play, he set his drink on the small table beside him. 

“Welcome to the Jaded Flask, I’m your host for the evening, and I’ll also be singing so that you can be blessed by the girls you are about to see tonight. Who’s ready to have a good time?” The response was the usual one that came before the first drink. “Oh, if y’all ain’t ready, we can all go home. Let’s give that one more try.” The bachelorettes put in enough enthusiasm for everyone. “Now, before we get the ladies out, here’s how the night works. I’ll serenade you once the girls give me the signal. And we gotta talk about the rules before any of the ladies come outta the dressing room…”

Once he’d gone through the reminders not to take parts of costumes and that they sure as hell weren’t to touch anyone. As expected, he had to chide the bachelor party, and they left early to go to the Hustler club on Bourbon. The night went smoothly, and he succeeded in reminding everyone about the giant champagne flute everyone tipped into. Singing is what felt right, and he loved being able to do it while hosting the show. When the first show ended, he brought the flute to the dressing room, letting Sarah split it up. 

“Anything needed for touch ups?” he asked, knowing they’d have an hour or two this time. 

“Well, one thing,” Julia started. “Can yo-”

“The chicken shack?” he grinned, digging another cigarette from his hoodie hung over a stall. “I know the between show drill here. You already order or?”

“We all put our order in. Thank you,” she nodded. Wilbur gave a salute, lighting his cigarette when he hit the street. He picked up the chicken at the street window, waving to the locals he recognized. Everyone performing along these blocks ended up here to grab something to eat. When he got back, he set the food on the counter, dropping into a chair for the first time since he’d arrived. He closed his eyes, rolling his neck to crack it. 

The second show went more smoothly than the first, and Wilbur placed most of his cash and his suit into his garment behind the hotel counter, back in his shorts and t-shirt. He made his way the five blocks that stood between himself and the bar he’d been sent the pin for by one of his friends. All of his friends who performed nearby met at whatever bar the first to finish picked. At the end of the night, he picked up his suit and made his way back to his condo in the Garden District. 

On the nights he came home from leading tours, coming home could feel like a relief. He liked to seem like what the tourists wanted from a New Orleans tour guide, wearing chunky rings and weird shirts. Coming home let him act like himself again. If he went out, it was in a quiet bar he’d found near his house, but it wasn’t him getting to spend a few hours recharging by performing. He’d chosen a little family in the quarter, but he also chose to keep himself in the Garden District. He didn’t want to give them the chance to realize how badly he needed them. That was always how it went. So on the nights he came home from his happiest places, he still poured himself another drink because coming home reminded him how, no matter how much everyone he performed with seemed to like him, he’d kept everyone at enough of a distance that the empty condo reflected how alone he felt.

[dhominis]

Complaining about me having Food Issues. This is vaguely whiny and has way too many details and wow I’m gonna regret posting it!

Also, caveat: this is a vent post, but pretty much everything in my life is amazingly good right now and I am so lucky. Not representative of my broader brainstate.

Advice welcomed. “This part sounds stupid and distorted-thinking-y” especially welcomed.

CW: If there’s anything health or food/weight-related you want to avoid you should probably not open the readmore; the post consists mostly of detailed discussion of Things That Look Like An Eating Disorder.

The last half of 2018 was bad for me; it culminated in me dropping out of college and finally moving away from my parents (like, half a continent away), and things are weirdly better now. I am happy and healthy-adjacent and resolving Personal Problems that have been insoluble for most of my life.

(The home environment was not conducive to proper emotional development.)

Almost every part of it has been strangely easy. Getting an apartment, getting a job, managing money, catching up on the Normal Young Adult social skills. It feels like I’ve just got more cognitive resources to devote to life, now.

...The only thing that hasn’t become easy is food.

I don’t get hungry often enough, and when I do experience hunger, it doesn’t motivate me to eat (I’ve been describing this as essentially pain asymbolia but for hunger). I also just don’t enjoy eating -- intellectually I can recognize when food tastes good, but it’s still unpleasant to eat it. (Not an anhedonia thing! Other pleasant stimuli are far more enjoyable than they were a few months ago and life is amazing.)

There also are a lot of gastrointestinal symptoms -- nausea and pain, et cetera. They have been present at a low level for a while but worsen when I don’t maintain a relatively stable caloric intake. (I can’t eat because I am in pain! I am justified in not eating! Never mind that eating causes significant pain specifically because I haven’t eaten in a few days.)

Inflammatory and celiac markers are normal, IBS could explain part of it but not really the upper GI tract symptoms. It is maybe plausible that this is an autonomic thing? I already have a lot of autonomic dysfunction things and sometimes people with my connective tissue problems have weird gut motility. (Incomplete listing of symptoms I get that are plausibly gut-dysmotility-related: passive regurgitation and GERD and cramping and diarrhea and upper GI pain and vomiting and postprandial nausea/fullness and occasional difficulty swallowing and other things I am forgetting about right now.)

It also is plausible that at least some of this is psychosomatic -- stress sometimes seems to make it worse -- but the broader cluster hasn’t always coincided with periods of emotional stress. The first time the symptoms interfered with my ability to eat was during one of the happiest and most low-stress parts of my life, and it definitely preceded the Food Doesn’t Feel Good problem. (And autonomic dysfunction worsens with stress too.) Although it maybe helped condition me not to want to eat, since eating causes a grab-bag of annoying symptoms.

(the most accurate diagnosis probably is “neurotic-intellectual with-ill-defined-GI-problems syndrome”)

Having food in my stomach feels bad and wrong in a way that is not about the physical pain. (Meal replacement shakes and protein powders mostly fix this but are not financially feasible, are often incredibly low-calorie, and also if I’m mostly doing liquid calories I get worse physical symptoms when I do solid food.)

The maladaptive food behaviors have been present on and off for most of my life, and the GI symptoms have been a thing since like... early 2018?, but last semester was the first time I’d consistently gone for months with an energy deficit; I’ve had a lifelong tendency to not do well with eating but never to this extent. But this was -- there were some weeks when I ate maybe four meals, some two- or three-day periods when I didn’t eat.

Predictably I lost weight. (Weight loss is not good! I like having energy stores and muscle mass and also being able to sit on the floor without my ass hurting.) I lost enough weight that my doctor got really worried; I was not overweight and am edging down towards the lower end of the reasonable range. She was definitely worried in the context of physical symptoms, but I suspect that if I had presented the cause of the weight loss slightly differently, she would have been worried about the psych component. It’s stupid too. I do not want to lose weight! I want to have enough energy to do shit without dipping into fat stores!

Also last semester: vomiting. The postprandial nausea occasionally has been bad enough that it makes me vomit. (I have a supply of ondansetron and this is no longer an issue.) More frequently the postprandial nausea is bad enough that I can’t tolerate it, it’s a constant reminder that there is food where it should not be, and I induce vomiting. I haven’t done this since I moved out, but I have really really wanted to. Ondansetron helps here too but not completely. Or I don’t have nausea, but there is food in my stomach and this feels really unpleasant and, well, there’s one thing that’ll fix it right away (plus give me a nice adrenaline rush).

Solutions: ondansetron; don’t go to the bathroom for a while after I eat; if eating at home, try to do meals when my roommates are home so I can’t vomit because they’d hear it; distract myself until I don’t feel horribly full.

(Which takes a while, sometimes. Maybe too long. I have vomited basically undigested food a few hours after a meal. Not sure whether that’s abnormal, and if it is it’s really plausible that I did this to myself by not eating enough. Gastric emptying is not my strong suit?)

...Going days without eating because I just don’t want to. Weight loss. Defective hunger response. Being exhausted and not having the energy to eat. Hiding this from people, too; I had told people about the physical symptoms but not the fundamental aversion to eating, not the going days without eating. Conscious displays: mixing coconut cream into tea, here, I am eating, this is eating, I am making an effort, it is not my fault. And a refusal to reduce physical activity. I generally ate only dinner, if that, but still spent my breaks between classes pacing around campus. Even though I knew I shouldn’t. (Sometimes I justified this as an attempt to maintain muscle mass. That is patently stupid and honestly I could have just done some squats if that was my real goal. I didn’t have a real goal. The closest thing I had to a goal was -- keep moving.)

This guide from a SSC reader convinced me to treat my eating problems like a thing that is actually bad, not like “oh my stomach hurts if I eat so I’ll just not do that.” (Also took it more seriously after I started having difficulty resisting the urge to vomit.) But, uh. It’s scarily familiar. I am trying really hard to eat enough.

I’d hoped that getting out of the supremely stressful situation would help with the eating problems. To some extent it has -- I’ve been able to force myself to eat every day, there’ve been only one or two days per week where I’ve skipped one meal, I haven’t vomited since I left. As of three weeks ago I hadn’t had substantial further weight loss. Eating still is difficult to an extent that I can’t really understand, and it’s difficult when nothing else is. Finding an apartment was easy. Getting a job was easy. Work has been fun and easy and amazing. But pretty much every meal has been a struggle, I’ve been having to force-feed myself, I’ve felt more distress about putting food in my body than about anything else since I left home.

If it doesn’t settle down soon it’ll be pretty tiring. I am concerned that this level of effort is not sustainable.

And... I need to buy a scale. (Spending money is not a skill I have. I don’t like it and I don’t want to do it. Even on food and transportation. So I pretty regularly walk several miles instead of taking the damn bus, and if I forget to bring lunch I just won’t eat at work.) I suspect that I’ve started losing weight again, in large part because my physical activity is way up and I am really busy. Also I underestimate how many calories I need. I am young and physically active and hormonally male and it’s not reasonable to expect e.g. three 500-kcal meals and a snack to let me maintain weight, let alone gain it. It feels like I am eating so much and this probably isn’t true.

(Tracking caloric intake has historically been a bad idea, because my brain doesn’t do effortful things well, and there’s an observer effect: if I have to expend the necessary effort to write down what I ate, I will probably just not eat the thing so I don’t have to expend the effort. This was true even back when I liked eating.)

I don’t know. It might get better -- I’m putting a lot of effort into it but it’s reasonable that the eating problems aren’t resolving in the month and a half since I left home. Everything else has gotten substantially better and the food issues are only lagging by comparison. I am young and impatient. Also, I’ve gone from [regularly going days without eating, vomiting after I eat, losing a lot of weight really fast] to not doing any of that; this is a huge success and I am complaining about it not being completely solved within a month and a half!

In another month and a half I’ll have health insurance. If it hasn’t improved more by then, I’ll try to find a therapist. (Three months of having Significant Food Issues when not in a horribly stressful environment absolutely is enough to justify spending money on the copay.)

...I am worried it’ll get worse and I won’t notice or I’ll try to hide it. I am worried that it won’t get better and I’ll consider getting therapy and then not be able to stomach (pun intended!) the $20 copay, because even though I am financially secure enough for that not to be an issue, it’s twenty dollars and I don’t spend money on things. I am worried that it won’t get worse but it also won’t get better and I’ll have to spend the next several decades hating food and intensely wanting to vomit for like an hour after every meal.

(There are safeguards and I probably will not hide symptoms getting worse. I am pretty confident I can make myself find a therapist. I’ve had this problem for only six or seven months and most of that was under circumstances that extremely will not continue and I’ve gotten way better at handling it and it is way too early to be worried about this lasting indefinitely.)

Eh, I don’t know. I am handling it, I am taking steps to handle it. It sucks but I’m not concerned about my ability to handle and/or fix things that suck. Life’s awesome. Worst-case scenario is I just have to spend stupid amounts of money on meal-replacement drinks and get all my calories that way.

The best-case scenario, according to my brain: a doctor prescribes meal-replacement drinks and I get adequate nutrition and don’t have to eat solid food and also don’t have to pay for it. This would be really nice! I recognize that it’s not exactly great that I see this as the best-case scenario. A more reasonable best-case scenario: I figure out how to enjoy or at least not actively hate eating, and then I just do that like a normal person.

it’ll be fine even if it kind of sucks short-term

[mel-is-a-melon]

My analysis, observations, and predictions for Team Tardis

So, bringing the Four Humors into this, a team of four usually consists of the strong-willed leader (Choleric), the optimist (Sanguine), the intense brooder (Melancholic), and the quiet, stable one (Phlegmatic) - though that’s watering it down. Who’s who in Team Tardis? Believe it or not, Thirteen is not the leader - she’s the optimist. Yaz is the leader. While I’m unsure at this time, I’d bet that Graham is the quiet, stable one, and Ryan is the intense brooder (though I almost want to switch those two). It’s a little early to be totally sure, but that’s the vibe I get so far.

The team pushes each other to figure things out, not just the Doctor. They throw questions around, and each person has a moment where they’re the one who figures it out. Thirteen does stand out as the one to do it most often, but she is far from the sole contributor. They work together really, really well in action scenes, too. Each person is needed to bring about success.

The whole episode takes place at night. In the day, they didn’t know each other. By the next dawn, they were a family. Night is known as a transitional period, during which we ease from one day/state to another, and come out in a new day/situation.

Now, in terms of each of them separately:

Ryan

The Melancholic person of the group is often associated with being a guardian. The Phlegmatic is associated with loyalty. Either way, I can definitely see him being the first to jump to protect his friends.

Mother died six years ago, dad is unreliable, nan is dead now, and he doesn’t have a great relationship with Graham. His idea of family is going to need some working on, and will develop with the character.

In the beginning, looking at the recommended videos on the side of the screen, it looks like he’s put some real effort into figuring out how to blog. Likely, this is one of the first ones he’s done so far (not THE first because he mentioned telling them in an earlier video that he had dyspraxia). I’m betting there may be more in the future, documenting trips with the Doctor.

If I’m being honest, his nan was set up to die. He didn’t have a great relationship with the guy his beloved maternal figure married and the only thing connecting them was said beloved maternal figure, despite efforts of guy who married her to connect with him. Beloved maternal figure then dies, and the two are left to grieve her together and bond through the experience. It’s a trope as old as time, and (in my opinion) an overused one. One of the only things that disappointed me.

Another trope (even more overused, though not as bothersome) is the bonding of friends into something more, which is seen with Yaz and Ryan distinctly. They’re gonna end up together sometime in the next season, I’d bet good money on it. And while it’s cliche, I appreciate that neither is interested in the Doctor. I prefer the whole “circle of friends” to the “star-crossing lovers” tbh.

Has a temper on him. Or, at least, the dyspraxia is a sore point for him that he doesn’t like getting poked at.

Probably impulsive, as shown by the pressing of the light in the middle of the woods.

Acts like he has something to prove. Will spend quite a lot of his time in the Tardis trying to make his nan proud. It’s going to be a major motivator for him. Might shift to trying to make Graham proud too in the future, depending on how their relationship develops.

Wants to be a mechanic. Can see this leading into a lot of Mechanical Knowledge Ex Machina.

Owns up to his mistakes.

Yaz

Fits in perfectly with the leader role. She has a strong head on her shoulders, and is constantly trying to take the lead in the situation. Even when stuff she’s unsure about is going on, she keeps cool. It’s quite an admirable trait.

Obviously wants to prove that she’s made for more, and wants to be tested. Will most likely get a chance to do so with the Doctor. I can see it now, a point at which everyone else is incapacitated in some way and she has to save the day. A lot of angst could be generated by her failing or almost failing to do so.

Again, set up to fall for Ryan. Already said a bit on this, not much more for now.

A realist, from what I can tell. In disbelief when confronted with the Hershey Kiss Container (the only way I will refer to it). Slowly gets used to the idea that the Doctor is an alien. She’ll probably be the first to say “no way” when Thirteen introduces something new.

Very attached to her job as a police officer. Even with the chaos going on, she slips right into her role and tries to take charge of the situation. Probably has a backstory about it that will be told during an emotional moment.

Isn’t taken seriously in her everyday life. Probably struggles to be heard and will be happiest when contributing to the team.

Graham

Discussed the way he’ll connect with Ryan through grief above. Though, coming back to it, I’m wondering which will lean on the other the most, and whether either will turn to the Doctor or Yaz. I think Graham will reach out to Ryan before Ryan reaches out to him, and I can definitely see Ryan turning to Yaz. He has a bit already.

Seeming overwhelmed by the idea of his universe being bigger than he thought it was. Less so than Carl, but still. Seems to be the type that “even seeing isn’t exactly believing until I have further proof”. However, once he believes it, he believes it. He’s pretty on board by the end.

Has no verbal filter. Needs to be reined in by Grace a lot. Will probably say a lot of stupid things in the future.

Is pretty much the opposite of impulsive. Always sticks to the plan. Scared of operating outside of parameters.

[somekindofseizure]

When the Ink Dries VI (ch 13-16)

Rated: Explicit

Thank you: @icedteainthebag for brilliant feedback and guidance

Warning:  This story contains many potentially sensitive topics, too many to separately mention.  Read cautiously or have a friend vet it for you if you’re sensitive to something in particular.

Apology:  for it taking so long.  I recommend a refresher, if you can stand it, of at least the most recent chapters.

Read the previous chapters here

*****

Chapter 13

 Mulder was on the porch when he got the phone call, the shrill landline ringer pricking the post-midnight air from behind the screen door like a chorus of crickets.  Out here in the middle of nowhere, it seemed a new species of bug came into existence once a week.  They used to refer to the place where he was sitting as Scully’s spot - now, like it or not, all the spots were his.  He’d been watching the driveway like a Golden Retriever every night since she moved out, faithfully expecting his vigilance to bring her back sooner, full of self-pity and priding himself in his loyalty.  The past couple of years, it seemed like he was busy anytime she was sitting out there.  But the tasks on his to-do list which were once so important only held his attention so long as the smell of her shampoo still hung in the doorway over her empty coat hook.  Once that was gone, there was nothing left to do.

 In the rush and hush of it all, Stella’s smooth, silvery voice sounded even more illicit than it did any other time - so much so that at the beginning, he’d had a moment of panic where he wondered how he’d wound up on the phone with a nine-hundred-number.  

It was a very brief conversation.  She said she was calling so he wouldn’t worry.  He wasn’t worried, he told her.  Not mentioned was the fact that he wasn’t worried because he didn’t know Scully was gone in the first place -  that’s how little they’d spoken.  And “speaking” had really only consisted of text messages.

 Where’s the dustbuster?, he’d type unceremoniously.  And she:  Under the kitchen sink, are you okay?

 - or -

 Are there working batteries anywhere in this house or do we just keep circulating them from appliance to appliance to see which can operate with the least juice?  

 In the fridge, are you okay?  

 Her question marks ended every conversation and he let them. He’d stare at them for long minutes, aching as he studied their upper curves.  He’d picture her face, the one he’d watched puzzle over mysteries of the universe for so many years, and think with sorrow and nostalgia of how stoically she coped with never getting any conclusions.  No, he wanted to say to these question marks, he was not okay, he couldn’t fucking find anything and he felt dead inside, and at least one of those two things was her fault.  But that was not a conversation to have in text messages.  So he’d just go get the dust buster or the batteries and feel satisfied that somewhere, she was feeling guilty, and guilty that that satisfied him.

 When Stella hung up abruptly, he stared at the arched plastic back of their archaic telephone and thought of the few other times he’d spoken to her on the phone.  Most of the time, it was because he’d answered and was saying hello before he passed her off to Scully.  Or because Scully had handed it to him to explain his own latest confounding endeavor. Most of the time.

 *

 He’s holding her right hand with both of his and his legs press against the side of the hospital cot.  His palms have gone clammy and the pleats of his trousers have been smoothed at the knees from hours on a plane, hours in a taxi, hours in this chair.  He ignores his buzzing cell phone for the eleventh time and bends to kiss the top of her head - it seems to be the only bit of the building that smells unruined, unbroken, in need of no fixing.  She closes her eyes frequently as she speaks, as though she needs to rest them, or as though she feels put out by this whole affair, but he knows she’s really just making sure she doesn’t start crying.

 “It sounds like he was able to somehow die in your place.”

 “Mulder, that’s…” And here her eyes open as she prepares to scold him, and then close again.  “I don’t know.”

 “It’s not a sad story, Scully.  For once.”  Jesus, this woman doesn’t know how to take a win.  “He got what he wanted and you’re still here.”

 She shakes her head, swallows and he realizes, as he often does, even now, even six years into their partnership, that he’s missing the point, that he’s many steps behind her.  Someday, he daydreams, he’ll give her a ring and promise to be one step ahead or one step behind, but no further.  He knows this with some amount of certainty and zero anxiety.

 “What if… I’m…”

 And then he sees it swirling in her eyes, the blue softening helplessly, rims filling like violet bulbs in the rain to match the little spots on her hospital gown.  He knows what she’s thinking about and he has to work to subdue the automatic glee he feels whenever she’s been forced to consider fake things becoming real.  She needs reassurance now, not gloating.

 “What if you’re immortal?” he assists.

 “Like that psychic said.  I mean, I always thought he was being sweet and never gave it much thought but then… Felig made it sound so awful.  And then he shot me and I’m still here.”

 Mulder doesn’t know what to say.  It’s possible.  Anything is. But he knows, in this moment, she doesn’t want that to be the case, so he reaches for what he thinks she would say to him instead of what he wants to say to her.  The cell phone buzzes against his hip again.

 “You’re not immortal, Scully.”

 She nods quickly, four times, but then licks her lips.  And if you were, Mulder wants to tell her, you wouldn’t be like Felig.  You’d just keep finding people to love you, over and over and over again.  You would never be lonely, you would never be bitter, and the world would have done one thing that made sense.  But he decides to stay on-message.

 “No one is.”

 “Then what was going on with Felig?” she asks.

 “I don’t know,” he says and smiles, priming to tease again. It’s the only way out he can think of. “You’ll have to ask your new partner.”

 She blinks and passes a corrupted laugh through her teeth.

 “I hope you weren’t too hard on him.”

 “I would’ve killed him if anything had happened to you,” he says more seriously and she bites her lower lip, twitchy.  Though she likes - maybe is even addicted - to his passion, the reliability of it, she also doesn’t like to be reminded of how thoroughly he can lose himself or his mind.  It scares her more than it scares him, scares her more than maybe all the other stuff does.  “Luckily, he’s a bad shot.  Or you’re immortal.  Or whatever.”

 “Don’t you want to get to the bottom of it?”

 “No, Scully.  I really don’t give a fuck.   You’re okay.”

 She cocks her head, a coy little smile at the corner of her lips and it’s the first time he’s really convinced she’s okay.  

 “You might actually be experiencing growth, Mulder.”

 And suddenly, the cell phone’s buzz seems louder, or maybe it’s just that they’re both ready to hear it.

 “That’s Kersh, isn’t it?”

 “I’m sure.  My supervisor’s probably complained by now.  Backgrounds aren’t going to check themselves.”

 He’s been doing a requisite amount of sulking at his desk since his life’s work has been taken from him.  He’s been professionally frustrated and permanently aggravated, but it’s also the happiest he’s ever been.  Whatever inane questions he’s forced to ask all day, however miserable the hours between nine and five, they’re preceded and followed by Dana Scully’s warm, de-suited body (and he is making an effort to think of her as Dana) pressed and sometimes writhing and sometimes, when the stars align in his favor, slamming against him. She makes up for everything.  She is everything.  

 Which is exactly the kind of thing that unnerves her to hear. He needs balance, she tells him.  

 “You can’t piss him off if we’re ever going to get our work back.”

 He doesn’t know whether she cares more about the X-Files than she ever meant to, or that she cares on his behalf, but either way he’s moved by it.  He knows there’s a part of Scully that would be happy to do what they’re doing right now for a while.  He has never met anyone else who is perpetually tempted by boredom but always returns to adventure, instead of the other way around.

 “I know,” he says, though he feels like grumbling.  This part is their fault, not Kersh’s.  They can’t seem to bring themselves to address what’s going on between them, and for that, they suffer.  This is a good love, by far the best he’s ever had, better probably than he deserves, but it’s also a fucked up love, a weird love, a love that seems to function on its own terms like one of those sushi restaurants that doesn’t have a menu, closes for hours at whim.  He follows a long kiss on the mouth with an ear to her chest - th-thump, th-thump, yes okay.

 “Still alive?” she quips and he wishes he could squeeze her, pull her into his lap.

 “Far as I can tell,” he says and grips her hand tighter, settling for it in place of a full body tackle.

 He really only has Stella’s number for emergencies, he doesn’t ever call her himself, doesn’t dare tip the scales in any way.  But his finger finds her name as soon as he steps out of the elevator, the revolving doors whipping him like a frisbee into the city that never sleeps.  It chugs caffeine out of blue and white paper cups, churns raw meat into magic meals, spins pretzels in squalor and spotlights, makes him feel alive in the way the hospital interior made him feel dead.  How nice it would be to stay here with Scully, get her out of there and spend a few days recovering in some beautiful hotel they can’t really afford.   Watch barges pass under periwinkle bridges at twilight, go shopping.  

 This is why Stella is doing it, he knows, to be there for Scully, not as a favor to him.  But it doesn’t matter.  Three thousand miles away, someone is dismounting some poor schmuck with a hard-on and packing a bag, dropping everything for the same person he would drop anything for.  That, he thinks, has to be its own kind of love.  

    Chapter 14

  Scully sat up with her hand pressed into the cleft of the sofa as she gathered her bearings.  She felt like she’d slept with one eye open, cupped gently around Stella at the edge of the couch like a human seatbelt, worried she’d crush Stella if she really let her mind rest.  Now the cushion was cool already, almost as though Stella had never been there, as though Scully had imagined the warm wounded body inhaling and exhaling its tacit trust, as though she’d drunk-dreamed the scene on the carpet. She knew she could not blame the drinking.  She’d only had one glass of red wine and a finger of Scotch.  The finger itself had done all the damage.

 The youthful thrill of a rebellious night ran up her spine as she looked herself over:  blue sweater split down the middle over her bra, the skin on her lips raw under the pads of her fingers, and bottom half bare but for a mauve mouth-shaped welt on her inner thigh (so much daintier, more delicate than the ones she was used to.) But Scully had never been very good at breaking the rules, and in her stomach was the past-curfew pleated-skirt emotional hangover that promised consequences for her actions.  How many years they’d tiptoed around the invisible boundary set up shortly after their first encounter to protect their friendship as much as to protect Mulder… and last night they’d tripped it like an electric fence, taking the hard jolt it gave off again and again like adrenaline junkies, proving how flimsy it had really been all along.  

 She could not lose her.

 Scully took a deep breath and dragged the fluffy white robe folded affectionately over the back of the couch, sash tied like a welcome ribbon around its front.  She shimmied out of her clothes, blushing a bit at the ripe cocktail of sex and sweat the fabric gave off, and replaced it with the bright Fairy brand detergent scent of the bathrobe.  Somewhere upstairs, Scully knew, was a collection of these things in silk and lace - colors so faint they feigned nudity, cashmere so rich you’d be afraid to drink your morning coffee.  This had to be the most innocent of them and Scully was half-offended, half-flattered that Stella picked it for her.

 “Stella?” she called softly, hopefully, as she rose to her feet with her back to the kitchen, robe wrapped tight.  There was the sound of a teaspoon twinkling like a wind chime as she turned, a faucet whispering like an intermittent breeze and suddenly her anxiety seemed ludicrous.  Stella was leaning belly-first against the sink, looking out the window, her back to Scully as she watched her city slowly stretch itself awake.

 It was a treat to see Stella here amongst her things - her shiny, voluptuous espresso machine and her svelte heavyweight silverware.  Watching Stella perform her morning routine was like going to church, setting things on the altar, spacing them accordingly, sipping with reverence.  A room full of people who’d seen it a hundred, a thousand times, would do it one more time;  she was certain she could watch Stella drink her first cup of tea and butter her toast one bite at a time every Sunday til the end of time.  This is the body, this is the blood, and this, well this is my new religion: Stella Gibson, poured into a charcoal grey sweater dress, bare legs balanced on possibly the highest black heels ever made.  

 “I didn’t realize we were dressing for tea this morning,” Scully said, but she felt the smart-aleck go right out of her as Stella turned to face her, placed a backward-fisted hand on her hip so that her shoulder jutted forward. The dress was quite tight, covered skin from neck to knee -- appeared to be wearing her rather than the other way around.  Scully stepped a little closer and found herself under a jungle canopy of musky jasmine perfume.  She knew Stella only wore it when she went out.

 What am I, chopped liver? Scully had teased once or twice from her double bed as she flicked the remote at the TV.

 Unless you intend to put your name in my little black book, yes.  

 A tiny, ridiculous, starved-adolescent piece of her wanted to think Stella was wearing it for her this time, that she was preening and posing for her.  But she knew even before Stella told her that that was not what all of this was about.

 “I’m going to go into the office for a bit today.”  

 “Were you on the phone?  I thought I heard you...”

 “There’s been a homicide and I don’t want to be terribly out of the loop when I return.”

 Scully cleared her throat.  This was not going to be easy.

 “And how are you this morning?” Stella asked with a hint of impatience, as though observing a quaint Victorian social grace she didn’t personally adhere to.  “Any rug burn?”

 “I’m fine.  Stella--”

 “It won’t be the whole day,” Stella said, returning her cadence to its bright clip, honing the edges of her accent into slender cliffsides, fresh-ready for a tumble or a jump.

 “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Scully said.

 The sweater dress twisted, wringing itself at the tiny black belt banded around Stella’s waist.  She pushed her hip deeper into her hand, waiting out Scully’s censure like an aggravating little rain shower on a summer day.  Scully pressed on, stepping forward, snaking an arm around Stella like a second skinny belt.  Various beauty product scents lapped at Stella’s neck like spring’s first bloom, nauseatingly sweet but sublime.

 “Wouldn’t you rather stay and play house with me?”

 Stella granted her a tiny kiss on the neck and then:

 “No.”

 The chill of it whipped Scully off her feet and took her all the way back to a dingy hotel in Philadelphia where they’d spent their first night alone together.  The kettle of tea might well have been a sticky, lukewarm plate of pancakes, the neat brow bone sutures a spate of scars up Stella’s thigh, and Scully was as light-headed about the former as the latter.  (A student had since asked whether she’d ever gone weak about slicing up a human body.  Once, she’d said.  But I wasn’t even there when it happened.)  

What she’d done - what they’d both done - that time in Philadelphia was panic and Scully was determined not to do it again.  She poured and sipped her tea.  Ankle deep in silence, she waded toward a bulletin board that reminded her of a police station, gave her the eerie impression that Stella was running her kitchen like an open homicide.  Amidst pilates class schedules and receipts was a twenty-pound note, neat black-markered writing across it.  He that loves not abides in death.  It was from the Bible, Scully was pretty sure, John maybe.  She listened to Stella tapping the neck of her teaspoon against her glass and she took the piece of money down.

 “What’s this?”  

 It seemed like safe-enough territory.  After all, the things saved up here were the things Stella was willing to put on display.  And the thought of Stella quoting and framing Bible quotes was too curious to ignore, like finding out your math teacher had a hobby - tennis, jazz music, archery - when all you could picture them caring about was prime numbers.

 “I found it.  Outside the psychiatric hospital where they were holding Paul Spector.”

 The detective in Scully stirred and she couldn’t help herself.

 “And you kept it?”

 “Mm.”

 “Brought it all the way home from Belfast?”

 “Yes,” Stella snapped.  

 “Little sentimental for a multiple homicide case, don’t you think?”

 “Is this an inquisition?”

 “It just doesn’t sound like you.”

 Stella turned and placed her cup in the sink, ran the water hard enough to wash Scully’s voice down the drain.

 “Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think,” Stella said.

 A blind shot over the shoulder, but a bullseye nonetheless. Scully looked at the floor and then quickly forced her eyes back up, though Stella was not facing her anyway.

 “Don’t do this,” Scully said bravely, or foolishly.  “I’m sorry I crossed the line.  Don’t disappear on me.  I’ve had more of that than I can handle.”

 Stella’s shoulder blades rose and fell on either side of the teardrop shaped hole that buttoned the dress at the nape of her neck, her bones slithering into place beneath the snug wool weave - sometimes it was easier to see her softening than to hear it in her voice.  It still sometimes bothered Scully that Stella had to work so hard to trust her.  But it was not news that she had a weak spot for people who made her feel worth the effort.

 “I picked it up and kept it without much thought at first, and then after, it seemed too meaningful to get rid of it.”

 Scully could tell by her tone of voice that she had permission now to ask.

 “Why would you want to be reminded of him?”

 Stella turned on one hand, replaced the other one on the counter at her side.  She was like a ballerina in a jewelry box, pinned and spinning in a fixed spot as Scully wound her up.  She held her chin high, eyes bright as diamond studs.

 “Do you know what he did to me?”

 Scully had of course drawn her own conclusions based on what she could see, based on the way Stella moved and responded to touch, but she knew this wasn’t a test of her forensic savvy.  She shook her head no and locked her jaw as she braced herself.

 “He hit me, close-fisted.  Here,” Stella said and brushed her fingers along her temple.   “There was a table, here.  I felt it dig into my hip.  That’s the last specific moment I remember, but there’s video of the rest because it took place in an interview room -  interrogation room.”

 Scully looked down so as not to provoke Stella with the elevation of her eyebrows, the jutting of her chin.  What the fuck, why the fuck would she...

 “So you watched the tape.”

 “Yes.  I’m sure most of the team did.  Dani. All of them.  Wouldn’t you?”

 Scully scrubbed the discomfort from her lips, took a breath out of the room that she intended to keep.  Stella continued.

 “And it was quite a show.  There were several more punches.  Here… here… here, I think… and I fell to the floor.  It was cold, concrete, I remember that part, the shock of it after the heat of the blood bursting at my cheekbone.”

 The evenness of Stella’s voice, the poise, was unnerving, like listening to one of her own autopsy recordings, the sound of her own voice discussing death with such indifference.

 “He kicked me.  I was caught between him and the wall.  I was trembling when the other officer came to me.  Like a little dog.”

 “Stella,” Scully begged, but there was no room for her sympathy here.

 “It was the worst physical pain I’ve ever felt, and do you know what I thought when I was lying there?”  Scully shook her heavy head as gravity tugged at her whole body.  Any minute, her knees would buckle, but she had to finish listening.  “This is nothing compared to what he did to them.  Nothing.”

 Scully crossed her arms over the robe in a self-embrace and swallowed, digging her nails into the fabric to feel the pile under her fingernails, root herself in something tangible and present and good.

 “And do you know what I thought when he killed himself?”

 Yes, Scully thought, she did.  The two people she knew best were similar this way - the darkness, the self-loathing, the ability to take responsibility for things that had nothing to do with them, and the tendency not to take responsibility for those that did. The pattern on the kitchen floor blurred as all her concentration flowed toward the goal of not becoming hysterical.

 “I thought, I deserve this.  I told him exactly how to beat the system, how to beat me.”

 Scully allowed a breath, bit her lip and blotted her face quickly with the inside her wrist.  She had one responsibility here, had come to London for one purpose, she reminded herself - Stella’s recovery.  None of that stuff last night mattered, nothing she’d been worried about this morning.

 “It’s awful.  All of it. But it’s not going to avenge anything to refuse yourself the time to heal.”

 She turned to re-clip the stupid banknote to the board, though she wanted to tear it up and burn it.

“Do you think I’m capable of love?” Stella asked as Scully turned back to face her, placed both hands on the island in front of her.

“Sure,” Scully replied.  “I almost got you to love me once.”

“I don’t think I almost loved you,” Stella said.

 “Oh no?”

 Scully kept looking her in the eye to show that she could take it. She walked round to the other side of the island so that she and Stella faced one another over the moat of kitchen tile.  Her bare toes, polish uncharacteristically chipped, met the smart points of Stella’s shoes. The whole morning had been wild, flooded with emotion and Scully was comforted now by the idea of Stella’s characteristic grit drying it up.

 “No,” Stella reiterated.  “I think I did love you.  I still do.”

Scully blinked several times, her breath caught somewhere at the bottom of her throat.  

 “Why are you looking at me like that?”  Stella asked.

 The day Stella visited before taking her plane back to England, her knees rubbing the kitchen floor, Mulder’s arrival weeks later in the rain.  All of these years...

 “I don’t understand.”

 Stella licked her top lip, cocked her head as though considering a gallery portrait.  She hadn’t expected this to be a surprise.

 “I couldn’t do it the way he could.  I didn’t think it was what you’d need.”

 Scully gulped, trying to control the tears welling up at the corners of her eyes.  She could feel the tip of her nose turning red.

 “But occasionally, like when I look at that thing,” Stella said with nod at the banknote,  “I wonder if something’s wrong with me.”

Scully wanted to reassure Stella, but she wasn’t even sure of what.  So she nodded, dried her cheekbones again, for a moment unable to remember the last period of her life she had cried this much.  When she remembered the answer, she cried more.

“Please stop crying,” Stella said.  “You’re supposed to be taking care of me.”

Scully smiled, shuffled forward, closing the space between them without squeezing, by now aware of exactly where to press and where to protect.  She buried her face on Stella’s shoulder just long enough to recompose herself and then glanced at the marks on Stella’s face, so similar to the ones Ed Jerse had given her years ago.  She’d given Stella the play by play of it with her eyes on the road and a console between them, but by the end of the night, Stella would close that distance. And then some.

“Have your turn, then,” Scully teased with a nudge to the hip. “Cry.”

Stella blinked with the weight of five thousand pairs of eyelashes.

“Make me.”

Scully snuck her left hand into the dark roots of Stella’s hair, licked two fingers on her right hand.  Stella tugged her hem up with the nonchalance of a puddle jump as Scully kissed her.  Their mouths were hot, tingling with English Breakfast and caffeine.  Scully grinned as she found smooth-shaved swimmer’s thigh and simple seamless underwear, and then the wet part of her hand disappeared into the wet part of Stella.  She pinned a knee between Stella’s legs, tacking her to the sink like one of her bulletin board items.  Here is something you may want to attend.  Here is something worth remembering.  Stella’s neck tendons strained against her hand.

 “You wear this dress to work, Detective Gibson?”

 “Detective Superintendent,” Stella said in a slightly pitched voice, a tone like a meringhe, one that made her regular voice seem put-on, one that made Scully’s tastebuds dance, her hips grind.  Stella held onto the lapels of her robe like she was an airline pilot or a soldier, uniformed and disembarking.  And then she suddenly realized why Stella had chosen this particular bathrobe for her.

 “You took this. From that hotel in Chicago.”

 Stella half-smiled, pleased at her own rare display of nostalgia.

 “Had to purchase it, actually.”  She licked a small section of her top lip and Scully kissed where it left off.

 Below, Scully’s fingers slipped and pulled and Stella breathed deeply, winced from deep inside her ribcage.  Her hands seemed small and gentle as they clutched birdlike at the sagging sleeves of the robe.  What would she keep from this visit, what would she flash winkingly at Scully in another fifteen years?  Scully wanted to keep nothing so much as this, this skull breathing into the palm of her hand, this pair of knees going weak between hers and this smooth unclothed calf muscle rattling the cabinetry.  She pulled away to watch Stella’s face -- eyelids dancing like dervishes, honey-sweet beige lips parting like buttercups, the hills and valleys of her brow deepening.

 “Look at me,” Scully coaxed.  Then firmer, “Look at me.”

 Scully waited until she had Stella’s attention, waited till her breath was hitching and dragging, waited because fifteen years plus one more breath seemed like exactly the right amount of time.

 “I love you,” she whispered and Stella dropped her nose against Scully’s face, coming and crying in tandem. Her body sucked at Scully’s fingers, her face wet against Scully’s cheek, shivering and then still.  

 The silence simmered.  A clock ticked loudly.  The Bible verse loomed.  Outside, a plane soared by, yawning across the grey sky toward brighter places. Scully summoned some authority into her voice.

 “You’re not ready to go back to work.”

 Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson did not let go as she stepped out of her heels.

 *

She has been taking the stairs up to her apartment after work. If she were to take the elevator, she might meet a neighbor, and if she met a neighbor they’d ask how William was. She doesn’t like questions she can’t answer.

 It begins to smell like Stella just a few steps into the corridor. The scent changes halfway down the hallway to the fresh coat of adult-colored paint they applied over the weekend, and then to that of a smoldering pack of East London incense on one of the cheap plastic cake plates she keeps around. (Not the 26-pack of first birthday ones she purchased prematurely.  Those have mercifully vanished since Stella arrived, along with lots of other things. The smatter of baby powder she’d otherwise find on a dark blazer here or there.  The drawer full of clothes she didn’t give the Van de Kamps.  The stores of formula and diapers that used to live at the bottom of the linen closet.)

 She turns the key and finds the homey sizzle of shallow-panned garlic.  The warm breath of pasta water still hovers over the sink as Stella sets the table. Scully doesn’t know how Stella plans this so well, one foot in the door and hot food on the table.  One moment later, and Scully knows she would make it alone to her room, empty stomach, no shower, and fall asleep in her clothes. But instead -

 “Sit with me while I eat?”

 It’s the only question Stella ever asks.  She already knows how her day was, how she feels, and it won’t do either of them any good to have it declared aloud.  Scully manages a tired smile for her friend and sits, rests her weight, her day, her misery on her elbows.  Her seat is free of a place-setting, as it is every night, and she is grateful for the lack of expectation.  No one else understands her well enough to do - or omit - things like this, not her mother, maybe not even Mulder.

 Mulder.  Where the hell are you.  She barely has the energy to wonder.


Stella swirls spaghetti over her dish between a fork and spoon.  There’s a larger serving bowl at the center of the table, a decorative and deceptive thing that makes it look like they’re celebrating.

 “I heard from my idiotic sister today,” Stella says.  “She wants to race horses now.”

 “What do you mean, race them?”

 “Sponsor one.  She wants to know if I want to put any of my portion of the trust into it.”

 Scully postpones a blink, waiting for the punchline.

 “I told her I could imagine better ways to buy sixty seconds of pleasure.”

 Scully can’t quite bring herself to smile, but she does reach forward for a strand of spaghetti hanging over the side of the painted ceramic bowl. It goes down easier than she expects and she licks the sweet, tangy tomato off her lips.  

 “She’s older, right?” she asks.

 “Yes.  The pretty one.”

 Scully frowns as she takes another strand of spaghetti stranded on the side of the bowl.

 “Everyone’s sister is the pretty one,” she says and of course, Melissa comes to mind.  These days, there are a lot of spare sad thoughts, like wet umbrellas under restaurant chairs on a rainy day.

 “She was my mother’s favorite,” Stella says, leaving her father’s favorite unspoken.  Her attempts to be chatty and distracting make Scully well with gratitude. “However, now she’s bored and angry so I practice tolerance when she calls.  Even when she’s a cunt.”

 “That’s a strong word, isn’t it.”

 “No.”

 “What does she do that’s so bad?”

 “It’s just a lot of passive aggressive criticism, negativity disguised as helpfulness.”

 Scully picks at another strand of pasta and Stella pushes the serving bowl at her for her convenience.

 “I still can’t believe you can cook like this,” Scully says.

 “That’s exactly what my cunt of a sister would say.”

 Scully finally laughs briefly and then immediately wants to cry. It’s as though all her smiles still belong to William, as if they all remind her of him.  

 After dinner, Stella runs the water in the bathtub and sets out a towel, waits for Scully to pass by on the way to her bedroom.

 “Come here.”

 She closes the bathroom door behind them as though for privacy.

 “There’s no one else here,” Scully says.

 “Keeps the heat in.”

 Scully waits limply while Stella undresses her:  sexlessly unbuttons her shirt and pushes it back off her arms, unzips her skirt at the side, holds a hand out for balance. Scully steps into the flat, bubbleless water.  It has been years since Stella has looked closely at her naked and a few selfish, superficial thoughts cross her mind, immediately followed by guilt. How can she have vanity about her stretch marks when she’s abandoned the child who made them?

 She has a stray whim to pull Stella in with her, clothes and all, just for company.  She doesn’t want to be alone in there tonight.  Somehow, Stella knows this, and kneels at the side of the tub, reaches for the loofah, squirts soap onto it and begins to lather bit by bit - arms, chest, belly.  Scully sucks in her waist a moment at the tickle of it and blinks hard.

 “Mulder used to make fun of the pouf.”  

 She watches Stella hear this, hear his name, and she knows what she’s thinking, what everyone is thinking.

 “You think I know where he is,” Scully says.  “I don’t.”

 “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”  

 “I’m not.”

 Stella is watching some vacant spot in the bathwater.

 “Dana, when we first met, the night you thought Mulder and I had slept together…”

 Scully waits.  She’s not worried, but has enough sense to wonder if she should be.

 “What about it?”

 Stella shakes her head.

 “I was taking a sad bath.”  She smiles gently, gulps.  “Like this. And  Mulder walked in.”

 Scully licks her teeth, mild surprise registering.  She can picture Mulder blushing and stammering.

 “That’s all.  It was very embarrassing for both of us.  He never told you?”

 Scully shakes her head no, tries to show some appreciation for Stella’s trying to make her laugh. She closes her eyes and lets her whole head sink like a boulder as Stella sends the soap down her legs.  Stella takes her hand, holds it atop the ledge as if to remind her that eventually, she must come back up to dry land.

 “Shall I leave you?” she asks.  Scully shakes her head no, feels the heavy, wet weight of her thoughts roll against the sloped ceramic back of the tub.   She half expects to leave a dent there.  

 “I don’t think you’re ready to be back at work,” Stella says.

 “I have to.”

 “No you don’t.”

 “I don’t want to look like I’m feeling sorry for myself.  It was my decision.”

 Stella nods.  There are tiny tear-shaped drops of water polka-dotting her blouse, rings of suds round her wrists.  It occurs to Scully that this is how she would have bathed Emily, how the Van de Kamps will bathe William.  The words feel like toothpicks pricking her tongue.

 “I had a daughter too.”

 She’s been trying this lately, being cruel to herself just to feel something, just to have a reason to keep her head above water.

 “I didn’t know that.”

 “I know.  I’ve never told you because I didn’t really feel like it was fair to call her mine. I only knew her for a couple of days. But she was my biological daughter.”

 “What happened to her?”

 “She’s dead.”

 And she looks at Stella, wanting to catch the glimpse of judgement - it can be very fleeting on Stella and Scully is adamant about getting her fair share of shame.  But Stella only licks her lips and swallows.

 “Have you ever had an abortion?” Scully asks.

 “Yes.”

 Scully waits and stares at Stella, her eye makeup so smudgy she can see black out her peripheral vision. She wants to hear that Stella knows, or she wants Stella to think she knows, so she can tell her she doesn’t.  She wants to tell her fuck you for getting rid of something I would have wanted so badly.  She wants to be angry.

 “It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t anything like this,” Stella says.

 And then Scully just wants to go back in time and be there in the waiting room for her.  She wonders if anyone was.

 “I’m sorry,” is all she has to offer.  It’s precious little, but few people have even given her that much.

 “It’s all right,” Stella says with a little melody in her voice to prove it.

 “I went right back to work then too, after Emily.  And it seems only fair that I do it now.”

 Stella chooses this moment to pull the plug and the water begins to senselessly chase itself, clinging to Scully’s body momentarily before it’s sucked down into oblivion.

 “Do you think I sound foolish?  Wanting to treat my two absent children fairly.”

 “I think you probably weren’t ready to go back to work then, either. No sense making the same mistake twice.”

 “I make them over and over and over again.”

 Her body cries before her mouth does, her back convulsing off the floor of the bathtub.  She used to be able to tell what William wanted by the way he was crying.  She wonders if he would be able to do the same, what her voice would sound like on a monitor.

 Stella takes her arm and pulls her to her feet, wraps a towel around her and holds her, pressing her wet head down as she waits for the sobs turn to shudders, and then the shudders to grow further apart, kernels of sadness popping at slower and slower intervals.  She’s quiet by the time Stella leads her to the bedroom, pulls the covers back and guides her in.  Scully stares at the spot where William’s cradle used to be and remembers how difficult it was when it came time to move it into his own room, the separation anxiety she felt then, just that tiny distance.  What a fool.

 “Move over,” Stella says and climbs in behind her, sets her fully clothed body around Scully’s naked one, twisting her ankles around Scully’s like a candy wrapper as she she rests her head on Scully’s ear.  The room goes quiet as a womb.  Scully marvels for a moment at Stella’s patience and wonders how long it’ll last.

 “The dishes,” Scully says, unable to tell how loudly she’s speaking with her audience so close and her acoustics so distorted.  A hot drop of water falls from her ear canal onto the pillowcase and feels like a pool deep enough to drown in.  

 “I’ll do them when you fall asleep,” Stella says and moves her face to the back of Scully’s neck, parts her hair with her nose.

 “My hair,” Scully says, and wants to cry again.  “If I’m going to work tomorrow, I have to dry it.”

 There is a pause and she can hear the mechanism of Stella’s brain moving through the impetus to argue the larger point at stake.

 “You’ll be up early.  I’ll do it for you in the morning.”

 “Are you sure?”

 “Ssssh.”  

 There are no vowels to drag and no consonants to pinch and so it sounds country-less, sounds the same as when Scully said it to her son, or when her mother said it to her, how the Van de Kamps will say it.  Scully is warm now as she borrows heat and breath and even life, rebooting off the rhythm of Stella’s thumping, whirring body.  An inhale and then an exhale.  Her crying-headache melts away a bit.  She catches a glimpse of herself in the future, okay.  

 “Stella,” she whispers as she feels her body finally settle into the mattress, the weight she’d been putting on her elbows, or in Stella’s palm, or against the back of the bathtub, now anchoring her, promising her imminent numbness.  She has never felt so heavy, not even nine months pregnant.  “How am I ever going to repay you for this?”

 Stella’s nose is against her shoulder, her lips soft.

 “You’re not,” Stella says.

 *

 Thunder shook the stiff clouds by their shoulders and lightning cracked the proud chest of the old sky open.  Scully had so far only seen the English rain dither and retreat, and this sudden show of decisiveness impressed her.  Below the window, umbrellas flared like nostrils, people scurrying and drains opening.  Commit and the world conspires to assist, said somebody.  Goethe?  Now that was the kind of thing she might have expected Stella to tack to a bulletin board, some broad-backed German sturm and drang, even some British keep-calm-and-carry-on would have been more appropriate than a Bible quote.  Scully took her book and went back to the bed.

 Across the room, Stella suffered her mandatory day off with dignity, ironing clothes with her closet door propped open, racks of newspaper-toned blouses and skirts and pants neatly lined up.  She had a tank top on now, some pajama pants, a hoodie, of all things.  

 “Looks like a piano in there,” Scully said.

 Stella gave a restrained smile as the steamer cleared its throat and dropped a silk sleeve.  She changed one white item for another slightly-less-white item with childlike concentration, a taskmaster’s peace of mind.  Outside, May raindrops spangled the streets while inside, clean, wet heat spoke sense to silk collars.  Eventually, Scully’s eyelids begged off into a nap, and when she woke, the streets were quiet, the sky returned to its thick impenetrable flannel texture, and Stella was lying awake beside her with her hand on Scully’s stomach.

 “What’s the matter?” Scully slurred.  “Run out of things to press?”

 “Yes, give me what you’re wearing.”

 Scully laughed quietly and tried to blink the sleep away. It was hard to recognize the waking world when it looked and sounded like Stella.

 “Want to go for a walk?” Stella asked.

 She felt like an old couple on the walk, like they’d done every day after dinner together for years.  They passed a flower stand with a dripping awning and bought bluebells and hydrangeas.  Stella pointed out things in the neighborhood, the shops she liked, the house that had had a small fire last year, the solid granite side of a building she’d once let a second date press her into in the dark and lift her skirt.

 When they got home, Stella set the flowers down.

 “There should be a vase here.”

 Scully laughed as Stella clipped stems.  Not a single broom in the house but a whole pantry full of flower vases.  She filled one with water and felt a space inside her fill as well - this had felt so abstract before, so impossible to articulate to Mulder.  It wasn’t that she’d needed him to Do Something.  It was that she’d needed for them to do be able to do nothing at all together.

 They ate dinner in easy silence and Scully looked over Stella’s injured eyebrow with a sharpened squint, reached for her glasses.

 “When were those stitches put in?”

 “Oh right, I missed the appointment to get them out.  It was in Belfast but I couldn’t stay there any longer.”

 “The skin is starting to grow over them.”

 “Won’t they just dissolve?”

 She blinked and cocked her head cheekily.

 “Did they say they would dissolve?”

 “Well, I had my medical doctor coming to visit, didn’t I?”

 Scully smiled.

 “After dinner.”

 They set up the urgent care at the breakfast island - rubbing alcohol and clean towels, the sterilized hot pink tweezers and sharp nail scissors.  The patient perched on a barstool, hugging the doctor rather inappropriately between her thighs as she fingered the stem of her wine glass.  

 “Hold still.”

 “Bedside manner please.”

 Scully gave her a little glance down the bridge of her nose.

 “You’re good at this.  Taking care of people,” Stella said and Scully would have been annoyed at the implied surprise in her tone, except she knew that it was a surprise to Stella whenever someone was good at things like this.  She knew what Stella really meant was that she was better at accepting it than she’d expected to be.

 “Thank you,” Scully said.  

 “Are you worried about him?”  Stella asked and Scully re-sterilized the tweezers, shifted her weight. “It’s okay, you can still talk about him to me.”

 Stella’s eyes moved like water, following Scully’s wrist this way and that as she tended to the partially embedded stitch.

 “Not in a physical sense.  He wouldn’t hurt himself.  He’s too driven.”

 “Toward what?”

 Scully knew the question was rhetorical, or if it wasn’t, should be.  Stella knew as well as anyone that Mulder had never really known what he was looking for. That was part of his brilliance, his readiness to find whatever there was to be found.  But it was also his deathknell.

 “Break, please,” Stella said sweetly.

 There was barely anything to take a break from.  Stella was drawing it out on purpose.  Scully pulled her hands away and waited while Stella sipped her glass of wine.  When she was done, she turned her chin back up to Scully and placed her hands on Scully’s waist.

 “Distracting,” Scully whispered.

 “That’s all right, I think,” Stella said in her huskiest voice. “You’re not putting them in, you’re taking them out.”

 “Bossy patient.”

 “That surprise you?”

 “I’m on the last one.”

 “This morning you mentioned the line we crossed.”  She folded the sides of Scully’s t-shirt into ripples between her fingers. “I don’t want you to worry about me when it comes time to cross it back.”

 Scully pulled the final stitch through and dabbed Neosporin on the freshly mended skin. The eyebrow glistened like otter fur, swam up her forehead as Stella raised it.

 “Are you hearing me, Doctor Scully?”

 Scully rested her hands on Stella’s shoulders, searched her face. She missed Mulder, she did worry about him, but the idea of giving this up again -

 “What if I don’t want to cross it back?” Scully asked.

 “Let’s stay in the present.”

 Scully turned and began to clean up, ashamed of her own confusion and the havoc it might be wreaking.

 “Which present?”  she asked with a self-conscious snicker.  “The one where I take out your stitches and attempt to make a proper cup of tea or the one where we have sex on the living room floor?”

 Scully stumbled as Stella hooked four fingers under the hem of her shirt and tugged her back to the spot between her legs.  The stool pressed into her lower back as Stella held her round the waist, aimed her voice like an open vent at Scully’s ear.

 “The latter.”

 Stella lifted the back of the shirt, drew an apple-sized circle on her lower back.  After all this time, Scully still had trouble remembering there was something there. She had only ever seen it clearly, straight-on, up-close once - in a photograph she’d taken from her own case file. Otherwise, it took a lot of twisting or multiple mirrors and she had simply never cared that much what it looked like.  

 Stella’s hand circled it aimlessly as her chin drifted past Scully’s shoulder.  Scully could feel her attention settling off to the side and something about the mood, the meditative tone in Stella’s voice, made Scully reach out for the shiny, sharp nail scissors still there and cover them with her hand.  Stella kissed her sleeved shoulder.  There was a long pause, a river of Bordeaux breath tickling her neck.  

 “It’s not why I have them,” Stella said.  “But I did used to like them for that, once upon a time.”

 Scully said nothing, embarrassed at her own transparency.  She was glad she had her back to Stella.  She lifted her hand off the scissors.

 “I’m sorry, that was silly.”

 “No.  I like that you look out for me.  It’s sweet.” And Scully could hear the slow, drawling smile in her voice.  “You cover my scissors and hide the painkillers… behind the coffee grinder.”

 “Not very well, apparently.”

 Scully hesitated.  She took a deep breath and measured the question like the well-formed circle of cigarette smoke she would have made similar use of at fifteen or seventeen or twenty-three.

 “Do you get tempted still?  When something really horrible happens?”  Like this, she meant, like lately.

 For what felt like hours, Stella didn’t answer.  Her chin and lips seemed frozen to Scully’s shoulder, the edge of the stool wedged permanently between two vertebrae on her lower back.  She worried Stella didn’t really want to be holding her anymore but didn’t know how to let her go.  Of course, Stella probably knew how to let go of people better than anyone.

 “Will you go somewhere with me?” Stella asked.  

 “Anywhere,” she said, and then picturing all manner of international dens of iniquity, “within reason.”

  *

 The tattoo shop in Shoreditch smelled more like a department store than Scully thought it should - its diligently practiced irreverence dripping away over the wax-pool edge of an expensive amber-glassed candle.  The walls were tastefully decorated and serenaded at a reasonable volume by a female folk singer over the sound system. The proprietor was disappointingly unintimidating -- a naughty-smiled, meticulously professional twenty-four-year-old woman with a string of lovely lavender and blue planets up her arm and an innocent name (April).  Dainty jewels dotted her face in various big dipperish coordinates.  Scully wandered the perimeter like a health inspector, trying to find something wrong to make things seem right.  Not a single sheet of wholesale sailors’ sparrows and pinups for easy drunk customers, not so much as a crack in the paint job.

 “You’re lucky you caught me here this late.  I was just cleaning up,” April said.

 Stella was flipping through a portfolio while April slowly churned her hands, trying not to seem nervous.  The Stella effect.  Scully looked at her watch.

 “It’s only 8:30.”

 “They’re all like this now,” Stella murmured.  April looked on with indifferent miscomprehension, as though they’d been conversing in another language and she was waiting to see whether it concerned her.

 Scully felt partially responsible for whatever would or would not happen here.  Generally, she felt entitled to play Responsible One, but she wasn’t exactly the posterchild for well-planned tattoos.  She turned to face them and crossed her arms.  April leaned her flop of dark hair into Stella’s frame of view, watching with self-conscious pride as her work was examined.  On her arm, the planets moved, a meteor inched its way from her sleeveless band t-shirt to her wrist.  It made Scully feel irreversibly old to picture April discovering Fleetwood Mac for the first time, hearing them on a playlist or a movie soundtrack and digging up all their songs, a dollar ninety-nine at a time, pushing each one through little white earbuds.

 The plastic page-turning was peppered with all sorts of questions that Stella seemed uncharacteristically happy to answer. They were multitasking - flirting and making decisions - this could be done now, yes there was room in the schedule, yes she’d like it to be covered at work.  On the one hand, it seemed to Scully like cheating to get a tattoo in a place that closed at the same time as a bank.  Where was the risk, the stakes?  On the other hand, somewhere on Stella’s body, there was a slice of skin Scully was never going to see naked again.  

 “Stella?” Scully nudged like the spoilsport she was accustomed to being.  “Do you want to think about this a little longer?”

 “No,” Stella said and absently patted the column of Scully’s shin beside her.  April smiled at Stella and cocked her head coyly up at Scully.

 “Your girlfriend have any?”  

 “She’s not my girlfriend,” Stella said.  “But yes, you should look at it.”

 Stella’s face was still buried in the binder, making it difficult to glare at her.

 “Lemme see,” April said brightly.

 Scully turned at the waist and quickly lifted the back of her shirt so as to make as small a deal of it as possible.  She could only imagine the judgment she was going to get from this stylish little -  

 “Mm.  Very nineties,” the artist said as though there were nothing more delightful than the nineteen fucking nineties.  “I can do one of those, if you want, so you match.”

 A little knot in Scully’s chest (of what - concern? jealousy?) unwound into a laugh.  Stella smiled and licked her lips.  

 “That… won’t be necessary.”

 “Sisters?” April prodded.

 “We worked together once,” Stella said and Scully felt herself blink an extra time.  She should have been used to it.  She and Mulder had undersold one another in introductions for years.  My partner’s in there, my partner’s been shot.  Such a small, peremptory word to describe so much. Ironically, it only got worse once they finally were together.  Girlfriend seemed trivial and partner made them feel like they were still at the FBI. Sometimes, they’d joke, roommate.

 “What are you thinking?” April asked.

 “A rose,” Stella said simply.  “I’ll leave the style to you.  I like your work.”

 April beamed.

 “What ya have in mind for placement?”

 Stella lifted her arm up in the air and pointed at a spot on her black silk crepe shirt.

 “Show me how big.”

 Stella spread her fingers right… exactly… where her ribs were cracked.  Jesus Christ.

 “Just a couple of centimeters, okay,” April said and went to prepare her station.

 “Stella,” Scully said, now quite comfortable issuing warnings. “You can’t.”

 “Why not?”

 “Unimaginable pain, that’s why.”

 Stella gave her a clear-eyed, short-tempered look.

 “Wait until it heals a little.  Please,” Scully begged.

 “Why don’t you go get us both some coffee somewhere?”

 A few feet (or meters) away, April sound checked the foot pedal on her stylus.  Scully sighed out her nose.

 “Okay, ready.”

 They got up and went to where April was reclining a lounge type chair into the shape of a table.  Scully remembered the thing she sat on in Philadelphia as a scraped up stool that wobbled so badly the artist had to slip cardboard under a leg.

 “I’m going to have you take your shirt off and lie on your side with your arm folded up over your head, like this,” she said, demonstrating. Scully watched, trying to calm her nerves by focusing on Stella’s shiny, capable fingernails on her buttons.  And as Stella’s body met the leather surface, Scully felt a strange sixth sense swoosh through her, a vivid memory of what it felt like to finally be expecting something permanent to land in her life. If she’d known then how few things she would ever get to keep, she might have gotten more than one.

 April flicked a lamp and light fell in a hot, bright circle on Stella’s ribs.  

 “Oh my God,” April gasped.

 Scully looked at the floor, embarrassed for all their sake - for Stella’s pride, April’s shock, for her own failure to hit the brakes on this. None of these emotions concerned Stella. She slunk down as the artist had instructed, hip up to the ceiling, almost exactly as she’d slept on the couch.

 “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting… hm,”  April said, trailing off, her mouth making a noise like an engine struggling to turn over.  “Listen. I can’t do this.”

 “Yes, you can.”

 Stella’s translucent skin wove between pink and purple blotches and her breasts spilled from her day-off black bra against the leather table. Her eyes, when they met Scully’s, were calm and satisfied, twinkling night-sky blue as she tossed her moon-white hair up over her ear.  Scully gulped as she tried not to be taken by the beauty of it.

 “I’ve never had anyone ask me for something like this. And I’ve been asked for some crazy shit. I tatted an eyeball once.  I don’t…  I don’t know.”

 “I’m going to have someone else do it if you won’t.”

 A long pause and then April glanced at Scully, as if for permission. Scully saw no benefit in making the girl feel any worse than she did.  It wasn’t poor April’s fault Stella was psychotic.

 “She has very high pain tolerance,” Scully said.

 “Not that she knows first hand,” Stella said and then winked. “Just friends.”

 Winking.  Really, though.  April looked at Stella with a dropped jaw and wet lips, one eye nervously twitching as she rubbed her hands on her torn up skinny jeans and half glanced back at Scully. She shifted her focus back to the canvas at hand.

 “Put your hand exactly where you want it again,” she said.   Scully knew that she and the girl were thinking the same thing - just a little to the right or left and it wouldn’t have been so bad.  But Stella placed her hand right in the middle of it all.

 “Okay, I’m going to undo this,” April said with a cleansing breath, and reached back for the clasp of the bra, folded it forward carefully, so as not to expose too much, and then placed a sketched piece of parchment on Stella’s skin.  Her ribcage rose and fell under April’s hand, striped beneath the light.  “That all right?”

 “Yes, feels nice.”  

 “Compression.  Like I showed you last night,” Scully said with the pointless insouciance of a hostage. “Just so it’s clear, that is not the same as a needle burning through bruised flesh.”

 “Dana likes to play doctor,” Stella said, thoroughly amused with herself.  April was staring the spot and wiggling her fingers, as though mentally proceeding through the whole thing to a successful finish.  Surgeons did this before a procedure sometimes.  

 April reached for a drawer, hesitating only a little.

 “You mind?” she asked, and took out an already rolled joint. Now, this was a tattoo parlor.   “Don’t normally, but…”  

 She offered it to Stella, who took a drag from April’s fingers, eyes closed.

 “Mmmm.”

 April held it out to Scully.  She started to shake her head no, but to everyone’s surprise, her hand reached out to take it.  It tasted strong and peppery, nothing like what she remembered, almost too smooth. People knew too much about weed now for it to be any fun.  Not that she’d really had that much fun with it before.  She handed it back to April, shoulders finally slumping down from her ears, belly going soft.

 “Thank you.”

 “I’m going to place my hand here while I work, is that okay?” April asked, her hand hovering over Stella’s side just under her arm.  Stella nodded and April’s palm rested itself on the soft, intimate spot beneath the armpit.  The bra slipped a bit further forward toward the table.  Scully felt warmth spread from hip to hip like melted butter, her heartbeat speeding to a telling pace between her legs, her mouth watering.  She cocked her head, jerking the leash on her facial expression, embarrassed.  But Stella was staring back at her, angling her jaw like a jungle cat with dinner plans.  Scully heaved and dropped a tiny sigh.

 “You’re crazy,” she whispered, and for a moment felt like they were alone.  Stella licked her lips, shrugged the shoulder closer to her ear.  April threatened with a few more buzzes of the pedal and Stella looked down at it, lips parted, hungry for it.

 “Ready?”  April asked.

 Stella nodded and Scully realized she was holding her breath. Stella’s ribs hurt when she laughed, sneezed, hugged.  Even just now, when she had to touch the spot to show April, she was ginger about doing so.

 The pen began to buzz, at first high pitched, and then growling lower as it met Stella’s skin.  Stella closed her eyes, swallowed a grunt, held her breath a second.  The instrument went quiet as April hesitated. Scully wondered how many people jumped ship at this point.

 “No, no, just do it.”

 And the sound resumed, ink guzzling its way toward the tip of the needle and braiding itself into Stella’s flesh.  Stella’s closed eyes twitched.  After a while, the muscles of her abdomen began to tremble, fatigued from resistance, and Stella’s facial expression sharpened.  Scully stepped behind Stella’s head and and took her hand, watched her fingers turn purple in Stella’s grip.  She pulled a spare chair over to sit.  April paused and switched tools and Scully watched Stella try to catch her breath.

 “This is going to be a motherfucker,” April said and Scully sighed. Right, the color.  “But it’s almost done.”

 Stella keenly watched as April dabbed sweat and blood.  The buzzing returned and grew louder like a treadmill pumped from walk to run.

 “Fuck me,” Stella whispered.  The artist glanced up but this time was strong-stomached enough not to turn off the needle. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

 Scully bit her lip, put her free hand in Stella’s hair, found it damp, raked her fingers through the same few inches over and over without moving the heel of her hand.  

 “It feels good,” Stella assured them and Scully knew this was mostly bullshit but a little bit true, that there was a kind of purity to the pain, the way it made things like tumors and bruises disappear, the way it made you new.  And… at least, for her… yes… Stella’s eyelashes were fluttering, mouth going wide, a little croak escaping her throat.  Scully felt like she might slide off her chair, tried not to fidget as Stella moved her head slightly to make contact with Scully’s nose.  Her head smelled like gardenias and salt, shampoo and sweat, mortal.

 Finally, the buzzing stopped.  Each of them began to breathe normally again as they suffered the postcoital awkwardness of it all.

 “No bras the next couple days. It would be uncomfortable, not that you seem to much give a fuck.  But you also want it to heal nicely.”

 Scully tried not to smile as she watched Stella register a lingerie ban, surrendering the bra down her arm and covering her breasts with her forearm as she sat up and turned to the mirror to get a good look.  April looked on with wide knees, one bouncing, her black-polished nails picking at one another - a kid who’d just shown her mom her coloring book.  Stella’s expression was unreadable, as ever.

 “It’s beautiful,” Scully jumped in, unable to bear April’s anticipation any longer.  For a moment, she pictured herself living here full time, following Stella around just to reassure the admiring young women she held in suspense on a daily basis.

 Stella made some noises of sincere agreement and turned her back to both of them, folding her bra into her back pocket, holding out a hand for Scully to hand over her blouse.  When she put it on, there was the uncommon sight of fabric falling like water over the natural shape of Stella’s breasts, stopping to ripple only at the twisted-up points of her nipples.  The shirt was collarless, but Stella shook her hair like there was one anyway.  April was collecting a palmful of spotted towels.

 “Here,” April said and handed Stella the rest of the joint. “You might want this later.”

 “I don’t think we--” stammered Scully.

 “Thank you,” Stella interrupted.  She put it in her front pocket.  She left the cuffs of her blouse undone and the hem untucked.  As though, with no bra, there was no point polishing the look.  “What do I owe you?”

 The girl’s face twitched as she feigned nonchalance and shrugged.

 “Fifty?”

 “Fifty?”

 “It says your rate is one-fifty an hour,” Scully said with a glance at the time.  Her reflexes felt a little slow and blurry, but she could still tell time.  “This took what?  Almost three.”

 “Fifty’s all I’m going to take for it,” she said, appearing to think of a better, more conspiratorial argument.  “I’m off the clock.”

 “If you say so.  Thank you,” Stella said and April shifted her weight from one Doc Martened foot to the other. Her tongue played with the ring on her lower lip, toying with the possibility of  one final question.

 “Who was he?” she asked.  Stella looked down as she counted the cash.

 “No one important,”  Stella said and April nodded like she’d already known the answer.

  *

  Young people crowded the sidewalks outside every bar and restaurant in the neighborhood, talking loudly in harmonized accents, passing cigarettes and laughing in the face of their own futures.  The rain had turned the concrete the color of spinning pottery and their heels sounded wet and messy when they landed.  Scully hugged Stella’s arm a little tighter as they passed a drunk couple making out clumsily.

 “You didn’t have to tell her I wasn’t your girlfriend so many times.”

 “Hm?”

 “You heard me.”  Stella smiled.

 “I believe it was once,” Stella said.

 “I didn’t like it,” Scully admitted shyly, she hoped, playfully, watching her shoes.

 “Why not?”

 “I don’t know.”

 “I don’t use that word for people I only do things in private with.”

 “Is that the rule?” Scully teased weakly.

 Stella huffed and stiffened, feathers clearly ruffled by the topic at hand.  She turned and spoke, voice now on ice.

 “You’re going back to him, Scully.  You’re always going back to him.”

 “How do you know that I’d mind it in public?” Scully asked.  

 “And when you do go back to him, I think you should apologize, frankly.”

 “Stella.”

 “And then tell him to fuck you, for fuck’s sake.”  Her cheeks were turning pink, and Scully wondered if she’d ever seen Stella truly angry before, if every other time had only been aggravated, perturbed, mildly inconvenienced.  This was altogether different.  “This is an inane conversation.”

 Scully finally allowed the levity to leave her voice.

 “Admit it, it isn’t what I’d have trouble doing in public, it’s what you’d have trouble doing in private.”

 And that did it.  Stella grabbed her arm and stopped them both in their tracks, took her face in hand and kissed her like they were back on the Persian carpet.  Scully felt strands of cold hair, sticky as summer lemonade, brushing past the hollows of her cheeks as they coke-bottled inward, tangling between their noses and people wove their way around them like a parade of ants round a suddenly fallen branch.  Someone whistled.  

 They came up for breath, remaining close to study one another’s faces.  Maybe the answer to this situation was somewhere in the wet corners of their eyes, sitting like pollen on their eyelashes.

 “You feel all that blood rushing to your cheeks?” Stella whispered, distracted, but still intending to make a point.

 “Not all of it.”

 Stella smiled, dropped her eyes to Scully’s lips and back up.

 “Do you mind if I blush when you do it?”

 Stella thought a moment.

 “No, actually.  No, not a-t’all,” Stella said, vowels tearing from their syllables like meat from a bone. “Let’s go home.”

 Scully tried not to look away from the people who stared as they made their way forward through their audience.   It was a couple blocks before she spoke again.

 “Why the rose?”

 “The name of the last woman.  The one we got back.”

  *

  The monitors hum and the ventilation system cranks beneath the squeak of soft-soled shoes on clean linoleum, a familiar song Scully spent her twenties losing sleep to.  She cradles the morphine pump loosely in her left hand and slips her right one under the blanket to preserve the warmth where Mulder had squeezed it.  She is somewhat sorry there is no justifiable excuse for Mulder to be at her bedside rather than work.  They have never reported their couple status officially to the FBI.  She’s not even sure they’ve reported it officially to each other.  They’ve only just started, though it doesn’t quite feel like a beginning.  It is impossible to picture an end.

When she hears the high heels, she assumes someone’s gotten the wrong room, and when she turns her head and sees Stella approaching the bed, she thinks she might be hallucinating, might have accidentally hit the button under her thumb.  

“What are you doing here?”

Stella kisses her forehead and sits to her left.  The morphine gun rolls onto the crinkly hospital sheets as Stella takes her hand.

“Are you high?” Stella asks with a standard touch of naughtiness, eyes on the little black button.

“No.  I’ve barely used it.”  This statement is not without a bit of regret.  There’s a part of her that keeps hoping she’ll need it so this would make some sense.  A shot in the gut should hurt more.

“You look exhausted,” she tells Stella to take the attention off herself.

“I just got off a plane. Mulder called me.”

Scully feels her eyes go wet immediately.  They’ve been brimming for days – Felig’s morbidness, his loneliness, her own confusions and ultimately, fear.  She hopes if he really was able to “take” death for her, that it suits him as well as life does her.

Stella intertwines their fingers, careful not to disturb the IV, brings their joined hands up to her mouth. Scully can feel Stella’s lips trembling against their combined knuckles, her teeth setting playfully there as she pretends she’s going to bite Scully.  She’s hiding.

“I thought you were dead,” she croaks, nose between Scully’s second knuckle and one of her own. Scully knows Stella is not embellishing about this. Mulder has a way of starting a conversation at the wrong end. Scully-got-shot-long pause is how he would’ve put it, waited for Stella’s stunned what to share the fact that she was fine.  Stella swallows and her regular voice returns.  “I’m going to kill him when I see him.”

“I know that feeling.”

Scully weighs the next part, doesn’t want to have to explain it all right now.

“I don’t really need to be here.”  Stella doesn’t need to be told twice.  Her hair looks slightly green under fluorescent light and her shoulders go high and tight whenever she looks at the IV stand.

“Then let’s go.  I’m at the Royalton.  There’s a fireplace.”

“I don’t know… how to ask them to leave.  I got shot yesterday.”

“Don’t ask.  Tell.”

Scully licks her lips and chews a bit of chapped skin there. Stella reaches into her purse and hands her a luxe ginger-flavored lip balm to apply.  She looks more tired than Scully knew she could, blue eyes draining grey into the collar of her white silk shirt.  She seems to melt toward Scully’s bed, slowly lowering her head to the cot, drapes herself over Scully’s body.  The chair howls against the floor as she moves it closer.  Scully takes her right hand from under the blanket so that she can wrap both arms around Stella, clasp her hands between Stella’s shoulders. Her spine rises and falls beneath Scully’s forearms.

“I’ll tell them for you,” Stella says.  “In a minute.”

Scully knows this will make no difference.  The only people they’ll listen to are wives and husbands and parents and children, the official relationships of the world.

“A fireplace?  A real one?”

“Mm, they come up and light it for you.”

She doesn’t have official relationships.  But what she has might be even better.

 Chapter 15

Chapter 16 

[melissahappyplace]

HAPPY PLACE:  What Are Your Top 5?

What are the TOP 5 things that bring you joy?  What type of things give you an endorphin rush?  Your answer is the key to creating your Happy Place.  Your answer informs what you need to incorporate more of in order to live your BEST life.  Self-care has to be intentional.  It doesn’t happen accidentally.  You have to (a) think about what brings you comfort and renews you, and (b) make a consistent effort to prioritize them and bring them more fully into your daily life.

I’ll help you get started by outlining my TOP 5!  You should understand that what brings me joy is very personal.  What works for me will not necessarily give you an endorphin rush, but the overarching idea is the same…  Sometimes the simplest things bring us the most happiness.  Don’t underestimate the value in paying attention to those things that give your life the richness and peace that you deserve.

 #1: BOOKS

I have been called worse things than a “book sniffer” and I am NOT ashamed to be one!  I cannot tell you how much pleasure I get out of the smell and feel of a book.  Believe it or not, there are several different types of scents a book can have and there is one in particular that is indescribably pleasant.  It’s a gift to my senses that I feel grateful for each time I pick up a book and throughout each reading experience.  

As I read, I feel the pages and every once in a while give the book a good sniff. My husband likes to tease, “You dirty, rotten book sniffer.”  I smile coyly and return to the pleasures of my book.  Even if the story that unfolds in a book is disappointing, I feel rewarded by the world I have been taken to and the people I have met.  Nothing gets me out of my own head like a book.  It’s the only activity that effectively enables me to truly let go of the day’s challenges and the things that are worrying me. Reading feels like I am in a safe little mountain top cabin warming up by the fireplace safe from the thunder and lightning outside.

As I have said many times, a book can make any place a Happy Place.  Whether I’m on my lunch break at work or waiting in a doctor’s office, I pull a book out and I am transported.  I am fully engrossed and present for the journey the author is taking me on while the rat race goes on around me.  

Fiction takes me to places I have never known or comforts me by reminding me of places I know well.  It introduces me to people who help me to better understand myself and those I love.  Sometimes it reminds me of who I want to be and other stories warn me of what can happen when our character flaws win out over our best inclinations.

My other favorite type of book is self-help.  I won’t lie. I hate that term!  “Self-help”…ick!  It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me that I need and like these books. When the reality is that people who are constantly in pursuit of a fuller, bigger, more meaningful life are the strongest among us.  I am fully aware that one book can change your whole life.  I read two books in the last year that were real deal changers. Last summer, I read “Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert and the writing of this blog was born.  In the fall, I read “Girl, Wash Your Face” by Rachel Hollis and my health and fitness journey began.  2 books! . . . 2!  Maybe 6 hours spent reading and reflecting on a book led to fulfilling my dreams as a writer and better health.  That’s BIG MAGIC!

 #2:  OFFICE SUPPLIES

I’ve admitted this one in a past article.  I love myself some pretty office supplies! I don’t want to know how much I have spent on pens, colorful post-its, well designed file folders, and notebooks.  I even know the exact style of pen that makes me the happiest… Black Bic Velocity 1.0 or higher.  And I’m not ashamed!  They just make me happy!  I work better, think better and feel better when I am writing with my favorite pen in a colorful notebook.  I get a little rush when I put a document in a stylish file folder.  And let’s face it… there are much worse habits and it’s a relatively inexpensive way to put some pep in my step.

Yes, I am a nerd and I’ve passed this addiction down to my daughter and I got it from my father.  It’s a 3 generation addiction and love for office supplies!  If you come to my office at work or at home, you’ll see the nicest supply of pens and post its this side of Indiana.  Don’t hate me because my pen collection is beautiful!

#3:  NATURE

I started out loving being outside as a tomboy living in LaPorte, Indiana.  I climbed trees, dug up worms and came home with feet so covered in dirt my older sister thought she’d never get them clean during bath time.  When the weather is nice and we don’t have a lot going on I will spend all day in my favorite chair outside reading a book and soaking in our wooded backyard.  It feels like the ultimate retreat!  When I smell leaves or wood burning outside, I breathe that favorite smell in like it’s my last breath.  While walking on the Notre Dame campus where I work, I am constantly soaking in the gorgeous landscaping work, the statues, the butterflies, and more.  My favorite place to exercise is outside taking in the beauty and smells of the outdoors and checking out my neighbors’ homes and pets. I feel as at home outside as inside.

My favorite part of nature is WATER…any body of water will do really.  Whether it’s the South Bend river or walking along the canal in Indy or the river front in Chicago or the beaches along Lake Michigan, I am in my Happy Place along the water.  My favorite colors can be seen in the ocean – blues, teals, greens, oh my I love them! The sound of rushing water…the sunlight reflecting on the moving water…the sunrise or sunset on water…people playing in the water.  I just can’t imagine a happier location than on the water.  For some, it’s the mountains and for others the deserts out west. But, for me it will always be a beautiful body of water and a deep breath… Ahhh, my Happy Place!

#4:  MINIATURES

I am not sure how or where this little passion started for me.  But, I adore miniature anything!  I never had a doll house or paid attention to miniatures as a kid.  In recent years, anytime I see miniatures on social media I get a childlike thrill that rushes through my body.  Miniature plants, paintings, household products, furniture, books, anything you can imagine shrunk to the tiniest size possible!  I even watch a miniature food cooking show called, “Tiny Kitchen.”  Its where all my miniature dreams come to life!

Miniature images are a place my mind likes to go to feel comforted.  It makes me feel like life can be far less complicated and cozier. Every adult longs to be a child once in a while and miniatures gives me little breaks from adulting.  My definition of self-care is unique to me and while miniatures may sound like a strange passion, it works for me so I don’t question it.  I just let it be what it is…brain candy…a mini-Happy Place.

#5:  GIFTS

I should start by saying this one is last, but certainly NOT least.  I love buying gifts for my friends and family!  It brings me so much joy to think about the person, who they are, and go out in pursuit of gifts that will make them happy. Bringing me as much pleasure is the gift wrapping process!  I love to buy beautiful wrapping paper at Old World Market, the Container Store, etc. and cover my gifts in gorgeousness. I cannot give someone a gift that hasn’t been lovingly packaged and wrapped.  It’s not about impressing anyone either.  It’s about the pleasure I get from beauty!

I always ask the women I interview for this blog, why does beauty matter?  And while their answers have never been exactly the same, they all centered around the meaning and richness that beauty brings to our lives.  If beauty didn’t matter, I’d hand a gift over to someone in a brown grocery bag.  It the intentionality of selecting beautiful wrapping paper at the store and the joy that wrapping a gift brings me that matters.  For some, this type of beauty doesn’t bring them happiness.  For some, what brings them happiness is beautiful clothing, home décor, woodwork, and it’s all good stuff… as long as you find the things that are beautiful to you and make you happy…it’s all good!

YOUR TURN!

So what are your top 5?!?  What are the strange and everyday things that bring you a surprising amount of joy?  Are they in your life enough?  How can you intentionally make them a bigger part of your daily life?  It seems like a simple question, but I feel strongly that it is the key to self-care and intentionally enjoying your life to the fullest.  If you aren’t sure what your top 5 are, it’s even more important that you spend time figuring it out.  If you’ve lost touch with the simple things that take you away from the stresses of everyday life…you’re missing the point entirely!  We only get this one life…start the journey to find your Happy Place now … the end is nigh.

[andrewromanoyahoo]

The Ever-Trumpers: ‘I never expected consistency, so I’m not surprised or shocked’

A little more than a year ago, as Donald Trump was solidifying his frontrunner status for the Republican nomination in the face of a mounting toll of gaffes and outrageous pronouncements, Yahoo News set out to answer the question that had many establishment Republicans scratching their heads: Who are his supporters, anyway? In a series of profiles, we explored the backgrounds and beliefs of voters who had fallen early and hard for Trump. Now, with the president’s approval ratings near historic lows, we have gone back to these voters for their views about his presidency as it nears the 100-day mark. Are they disappointed that Obamacare hasn’t been repealed? Excited by the administration’s stepped-up deportation efforts? Dismayed by reports of chaos in the White House? Or energized by the president’s continued outspokenness? Here is one of those reports. Links to the others and a summary of what we found are here. [link to intro].

_____

In recent days, Beltway pundits have taken to speculating that President Trump’s rapid-fire reversals on a dizzying array of subjects — Syria, Russia, NATO, China, the Export-Import Bank — might strike his voters as a betrayal of sorts: proof that the candidate they cast their ballots for isn’t the president they wanted him to be.

But for Ron Vance, at least, Trump’s willingness to change positions — his “flexibility”— is precisely the reason he voted for the Manhattan mogul in the first place.

“He’s unpredictable — and I see that as a positive, not as a negative,” the 60-year-old insurance agent from Pahrump, Nev., told Yahoo News. “He’s a salesman, not a diplomat. He’s a master marketer, not a bureaucratic manager. He’s a macromanager, not a micromanager. He likes controversy. He likes confrontation. He’s an entrepreneur. He has always said, ‘If something doesn’t work, let’s try it another way. Let’s rethink the process. Let’s get back to work and get the job done.’ I never expected consistency, so I’m not surprised or shocked. I’m liking it.”

Back in March 2016, we profiled Vance as part of a series of portraits of the real people supporting Trump in the Republican presidential primary. Vance was “the independent”: a college-educated social liberal who’d previously cast ballots for Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney (and who even admitted that Hillary Clinton was his No. 2 pick for the presidency, after Trump but ahead of the other Republicans who were still in the race at that time).

When Trump was elected, Vance called it “one of the happiest days of my life,” citing Trump’s deal-making résumé and his “good common horse sense” as signs that the “bomb-throwing” outsider might actually shake up Washington at last.

So what does Vance think of Trump now, 100 days into his presidency?

“If I had to give him a grade,” he said, “I’d give him an A-minus.”

Though Vance said he would dock the president a few points for failing to “overthrow” Obamacare, otherwise he’s pleased — especially by the aspects of Trump’s presidency that seem to scare the Breitbart wing of his base.

“Trump is listening to a lot more advisers,” Vance said. “This whole Steve Bannon thing — Bannon is pretty far out there. But otherwise Trump has some very, very competent people in there, and I’m glad he’s turning to them for advice.

“I’ll throw out a few names,” he continued. “Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser, from Goldman Sachs. Richard LeFrak [a New York real estate developer]. Stephen Ross [another real estate developer]. Stephen Schwarzman from Blackstone. These are the people on the economic side — on job growth — that we’re going to be hearing more from over the next three and a half years. Other people might not like that he’s listening to a Democrat [Cohn], but I don’t have a problem with it, being an independent.”

Vance supports abortion rights, and he thinks the GOP’s “obstructionist” decision to “stonewall” President Barack Obama’s “qualified” Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, was “wrong.” But when asked to single out Trump’s biggest achievement to date, he immediately named Neil Gorsuch.

“It’s a slam-dunk,” Vance said. “Five stars. The guy is 49 years old. In 30 years I’ll be long gone, but Gorsuch will be making decisions that will affect this country in, I think, a positive way.”

As for Trump’s biggest flop, Vance said he’s confused about the president’s unfounded allegation that Obama tapped his phones during the election — and many of the other “lightning bolts” that Trump tweets out in the wee hours of the morning, seemingly to sow “chaos” and “discord.”

“I don’t think the wiretapping thing is true,” Vance said. “I don’t know why he brings it up. He’s a little thin-skinned, and his Twitter is a little crazy at times. So he can lay off some of that stuff.”

Looking forward, Vance is eager for tax reform — he expects it to benefit his Allstate insurance business — and he can’t wait for the so-called wall.

“They can’t build it high enough or fast enough for me,” he said. “It’s not the answer — but it’s a good start.”

Still, after a campaign in which Trump promised a less interventionist foreign policy, Vance is concerned about the president’s recent muscle flexing in Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea. He’s wary of another George W. Bush.

“Trump has surrounded himself with three generals at really high positions,” Vance said, naming Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. “The military always thinks there’s a military solution to these problems. And that’s not always the case. I hope Gary Cohn and Schwarzman and these other guys put their nose to the grindstone in terms of getting back to putting America first — our economy — and don’t spend an inordinate amount of time with these other countries. I don’t want to see us going down a rabbit hole, dropping big MOAB bombs every week over in Afghanistan.”

If Vance has a message for his fellow voters — both the liberals who are resisting Trump’s agenda at every turn and the conservatives who fear Trump isn’t really one of them — it’s this: “There’s no need to push the panic button.”

“The presidency is not a sprint,” Vance said. “This whole ‘first 100 days’ thing started back in 1933 when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. The country was in dire straits. We had 20 to 25 percent unemployment. The stock market was crashed. Banks were closing every day. We’re not in those same times. I don’t care if Hillary got elected or Trump got elected. The presidency is far and away the most difficult job on earth. It’s a learning process. And Trump’s learning, he’s growing, he’s adapting.”

Vance paused as he searched for the right analogy. “It would be like going to a basketball game and predicting who’s going to win in the first five minutes,” he finally said. “It’s ludicrous. So everybody just sit back, take a deep breath and see where this thing goes. It’s too early to pass judgment.”

[rainforeststudies]

100 days of productivity

"The Full Potential Challenge Ever wonder what your life would be like if you lived up to your full potential? Would your body be healthier? Your skin clearer? Bank account bigger? I think about these things all the time, and, judging my a previous post, you guys do too. Below is a chart designed to help all of us live up to our full potential. I’ve broken it down into time frames to help keep you from getting overwhelmed. Write the chart down and hang it someplace where you can see it all the time. I will be starting this challenge ‪tomorrow‬, 9/8. I’ll check in with you guys every Sunday to track my progress. I have specific goals in mind for myself, and you guys should make some too! I really want to know how you guys are doing. Tag your progress posts with #sbfpc so I can track it and take a look. Let’s get to it! EVERY MORNING Stretch. First thing. Really give your body enough time to wake up. Touch your toes. Roll out your shoulders. Do not hit snooze! Do your full skincare routine. I have mine detailed here, but do whatever works for you and your complexion. Be gentle and consistent. Brush your teeth and floss. I used to be a big floss-skipper too, but you’d be amazed at how big of a difference it makes. Rinse with a whitening mouthwash. I use one by Crest, and I notice a major difference in my teeth’s overall whiteness in just a few days. Give yourself enough time to get ready. Whether you’re a wash-and-go kind of girl, or someone who spends an hour doing a full contouring routine before class (and either one is fine!), make sure you aren’t rushing. If you need to wake up a few minutes earlier than normal, so be it. Rushing sets an awful, stressed-out tone for the rest of the day. Allow yourself to be relaxed before taking on the day. Eat something. I’m not going to say eat a big breakfast, because some people (myself included) just can’t eat in the morning. But you should eat, or at least bring a little something with you to work or school. If you can’t eat a full breakfast, grab a fruit! You won’t be as hungry come lunch time, making you less likely to gorge yourself. Shower. You can do this at night, in the morning, whatever. Again, this is something you should allow some time for. I don’t wash my hair every day, but I do condition it every day (from the ears down). Scrub yourself with a delicious-smelling body wash. If you shave, make yourself as smooth as a dolphin, dude. If you don’t, then don’t and don’t ever ever ever let anyone make you feel bad or weird about it. When you get out of the shower, wrap yourself in a fluffy towel and totally slather your sexy self with lotion. Top to bottom. Do it as soon as you can post-shower so it can really sink in. Put leave-in condition throughout your damp hair and comb it through. Put on an outfit that makes you feel good! So important! Drink water. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water!!!!! Take a look at your daily to-do list. Knock out the most pressing stuff first. Take pride when you cross things off your list. Make your bed! Oh my god, make your bed. Do it. Do it. Do it. EVERY AFTERNOON Follow the “touch it once” approach. This is a truly life-changing thing. When a task is in front of you, no matter how big or small, just do it right then and there. How many times have you gotten a work email or homework assignment and thought, “Eh, I’ll do it later”? And then later never comes? Once something pops up, do it once. Squash it and be done. Cross things off your list and feel like a badass. Try to go for a walk at lunch. Even one little lap around the block or campus will reenergize you like nobody’s business. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water!!!!! Be present. This is so hard for me too, but you have to make a major effort to be present in whatever you’re doing. Be engaged and plugged-in and just exist in the moment. Give 100 percent. Be friendly to friends and strangers. A smile goes a long way. Eat something. Eat what you packed for lunch (see below) and take a break from working while you do it. You need “you time”! EVERY EVENING Take your makeup off as soon as you’re in for the night. Wash your face with your full routine and let your skin have a break. Workout. You can also do this in the morning. Whatever works for you. Make a great playlist and go hard af. Get your cardio in. Get your strength training in. Earn every freaking sweat bead forming on your forehead. Earn your shower! Knock out your homework. Life is infinitely better you don’t have anything hanging over your head. Half the time, the energy and emotion you spent dreading/putting off your work is ten times worse than the work itself. Make a list of what needs to be done ‪tomorrow‬. It’ll set you up for success the next day, and you won’t forget anything! Drink water. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water!!!!! Lay out your clothes for ‪tomorrow‬. This will save you SO MUCH TIME in the morning omg I can’t even tell you how important this is. Eat something great. And once you’ve decided to be done eating for the night, be done. Brush your teeth so you can’t eat again. After brushing, do a whitening treatment. Whether it’s classic baking soda, a Crest white strip, or a laser. Do something. And floss! Retainers in too, ladies 0:) Relax! Take a few hours to do what YOU want to do. Scroll through Tumblr, binge on some Netflix, FaceTime gossip with your friends, anything. Do whatever makes you happiest. Shut the electronics off an hour before you want to go to bed. Put your phone on sleep mode. If you stare at the screen, it will keep you awake and alert and you won’t be able to fall asleep. A good night’s sleep is crucial for weightless and general happiness lol Do a quick sweep of your room and see if there’s anything you can put away real quick. A clean space is a happy space. Crawl into your bed (aren’t you happy you took the time to make it?!) and read a book by lamplight for a while. When you start to feel sleepy, go to sleep. Don’t push it. You kicked ass today and you deserve rest. EVERY WEEKEND Do something with your friends. It just has to be one thing. Even if you’re just hanging out at the coffee shop, spending time with your squad will make you a better, happier person. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water. Drink water!!!!! Do something just for you. Set your laptop up in the bathroom and watch a Netflix marathon while you take a bubble bath. Buy an old school bottle of Mr. Bubbles ($3 at Target!) and really just soak. Relax. Light a candle. Do something creative. You can read a book, write, blog, draw, code, anything. It just has to be something that speaks to your passion. Track your progress. Just do this once a week so it doesn’t become all-consuming. And remember that non-scale victories are just as important as shedding pounds. Take the time to be grateful. Tell your friend how much you admire her taste in music. Mention to your mom how much you love her cooking and how happy you are that she takes care of you. Thank your teaching after an especially interesting lecture. When you do something awesome, take a moment to admire yourself. Be grateful for even the little things. Anything I missed? Reblog + add yours! Don’t forget to tag your progress!" I'm not sure where I got this from since I just found it in my notes but I know it was someone here on Tumblr. Please let me know if it is yours and you want it taken down or you know who's it is! I know this isn't quite what I've seen other people doing with the 100 days of productivity challenge but I'm doing this my own way, if there even is a right way. I'm going to incorporate this into my daily life and see how much it helps. The official 1/100 days post will be coming later!

[vidovicart]

Living Lagom in Sweden: An Interview With Lola Akerstrom

Back in 2006, during my first trip around the world, I met a Swedish girl. We traveled together for a bit and the following year I went to visit her in Sweden. Though that relationship didn’t last, my love for Sweden did and, in subsequent years, I learned Swedish and even tried to move to Sweden. I love everything Swedish. And so does my friend Lola. Lola and I met back in 2008 when travel blogging was in its infancy. Unlike me, she’s had success in making a life in Sweden, where she now lives with her husband and son. She’s one of the favorite people in the industry and I love the imagery in her writing and the beauty in her photography.

In her new book, Lagom, she discusses life in Sweden and Swedish culture. Today, I jealously interview her about life there.

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone a bit about yourself. Lola: I’m a Nigerian-born, US-educated, Sweden-based writer and photographer focusing mostly on exploring culture through food, tradition, and lifestyles. My photography is represented by National Geographic Creative, and I was recently awarded the prestigious 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award from the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).

I actually took a nontraditional path to this new life, as I worked as a web programmer and GIS system architect for 12+ years before the full career shift into the travel media industry.

I’ve always been fascinated by the nuances of culture: what makes us different and what our similarities are. And so this curiosity and acknowledgement really underpins pretty much all my work as a travel writer and photographer.

How did you end up in Sweden? I met my husband in 2006 while living in the US. After logging thousands upon thousands of air miles, as well as temporary stints in Stockholm, I officially moved over in 2009. It really was an intercultural, interracial, and intercontinental union in many ways. We now have two kids, so Sweden will be home for a while for many reasons, the prime one being that it’s pretty darn perfect for families.

How do you find life in Sweden? Good? Bad? Life in Sweden is what you make of it, and that’s why I also wrote this book — as a handy cultural guide that can help you integrate and deeply understand Swedish culture and its nuances. Having lived in both Nigeria and the US for extended periods of time, I appreciate living here with a young family. Overall, the quality of life is fantastic in terms of stress levels. There is enough time to dedicate to the family, as well as generous benefits, which we all contribute to through our taxes.

What’s your least favorite part about living in Sweden? I often say Sweden is the most open society run by the most private people, and I explain why in the book. Sweden does have its dark sides, and I always say the main difference is this: I can be like Oprah Winfrey if I want to as a black woman in the US, despite all the racial tensions. In Sweden, while you’ll be left in a small corner to live your happy life, trying to be a CEO or magnate like Oprah is a gargantuan task. There are people who still don’t get called for job interviews because of the names on their résumés. So overall, while I love living here, no society is perfect, and Sweden has a lot of integration issues it needs to work out.

Why did you write this book? So, the Swedish word lagom has recently emerged as the lifestyle trend of 2017 and of course, publishers are jumping on it with different lifestyle books — from recipes to interior decor.

But I needed to put a book out there that was beyond cinnamon bun recipes, because lagom is not a word that is warmly embraced or even liked by many Swedes themselves for various reasons, including the fact the ethos has over time morphed to denote average, boring, and middle-of-the-road. I detail all this in the book, as well as explain why lagom itself is inherently a good ideal as opposed to jante, which is the negative parasitic ethos that attaches itself to lagom and brings the negativity. But it is the key to understanding the Swedish mindset.

I have been living in Sweden for eight years, and writing about the country and its culture for even longer. I am also married to a Swede and have a unique vantage point of observing the culture both objectively and subjectively. So I explain lagom in a way that a foreigner fully gets it, as well as holding up a mirror to Swedes so they see how lagom is expressed in interactions with other people. It can be very difficult to write about something that’s very intrinsic to you in a way that others can fully understand without coming off as patronizing and condescending.

It really governs the Swedish psyche, and individual bubbles of lagom are definitely changing and morphing with each passing generation.

I needed to write a well-balanced cultural book that could still stand once the Scandi-trends wave washed over.

What does lagom mean and why is it important? On the surface, lagom is often described as “not too little, not too much, just right,” but it’s a lot more nuanced than that and lies closer to “optimal.” It is the key to unlocking the Swedish psyche and governs almost all aspects of life and culture in the country.

It also transforms its meaning in different contexts — from “less is more” in terms of décor and “moderation” in terms of food to “harmony and balance” in terms of society and “mindfulness” in terms of well-being.

If one were to boil down the true essence of lagom to its very core, it means striving for the ultimate balance in life that, when applied to all aspects of one’s existence, can help guide you toward operating at your most natural, effortless state.

The state and measurement of lagom mean different things to different folks. My satisfaction may vary from yours, but we can both be satisfied. Lagom represents the ultimate sweet spot or golden mean in your own life, and more importantly, it encourages you to fully operate within that sweet spot that’s just right for you.

For travelers to Sweden, how can they detect lagom at work or play? Many people often describe Swedes (in Sweden, not outside of Sweden) as reserved, inaccessible, and maybe even cold and flippant, but it’s often just lagom’s mindfulness at play. Locals will give you your space and ensure you’re not inconvenienced by their presence. So, Swedes naturally keep their distance from a place of mindfulness, not because they don’t want to be around you. (Outside of Sweden, they are quick to ditch lagom in social settings.)

At work, lagom is always looking for the best solution, so there’s a lot of planning, lots of meetings, lots of consensus, lots of teamwork, you get the gist… to make sure they arrive at the optimal, lagom solution to all problems.

For example: Many foreigners working or doing business in Sweden often lament the amount of time Swedes put into upfront planning and preparation. Agendas are triple-checked, and several meetings are called to plan every single item on said agendas. Plans can take months to put in place before moving to the next step of implementing each item on those plans.

For a culture that prides itself on efficiency, it could seem these inherent acts of zealous planning are counterproductive, and they can be seen as wasting time and resources. However, because lagom craves balance by trimming excess around its edges, it requires adequate planning. “Adequate” is measured by whatever it takes to prune irrelevance, regardless of how long it takes.

To be efficient means to perform and function in the most optimal manner possible with the least waste of time, resources, and energy. This very definition of efficiency mirrors the core of lagom.

So lagom says it is perfectly OK to spend as much time as needed to prepare ourselves and strongly develop our plans, because that’s the only way we can guarantee efficiency.

For travelers who would like to date a Swede, how can understanding lagom help them? Swedes don’t naturally divulge information or overshare, so sometimes it can be hard to even gauge or assess what’s going on in a relationship. And it’s not a culture that overly gesticulates with hands or uses flattering words, so knowing if a Swede is interested in you can be denoted by their unusually prolonged eye contact.

So, when out on a date, always have follow-up questions to keep the conversation going and to avoid your date awkwardly ending at “yes or no” answers. Because they will do so, in an effort not to overshare without being asked.

For someone going on a date expecting to be lavishly wined and dined, Swedes are generally conditioned to split their bills, to always repay favors, and to not be duty-bound to anyone, especially financially, by keeping that scale balanced. So this can come as a nasty surprise at the end of the night if you haven’t discussed it before the waiter brings out the menu.

And if you’re in relationship with a Swede and have issues or questions, just ask straight out because Swedes are very direct. And be prepared for those direct answers!

Why are people so fascinated with Sweden? I think a lot of the fascination comes from the quality of life and just how progressive the society is. Another more superficial angle has to do with physicality — from people and landscapes to interior décor and architecture. I mean, the city of Stockholm itself is absolutely stunning, and it spreads across 14 islands, which you can view from some nice vantage points in town. Sweden consistently ranks in the top 10 happiest countries, so there are clearly things Sweden is getting right.

What’s the one thing you want people to take away from your book? Lagom is a mindset that fundamentally battles stress. Having too much or too little causes stress, so lagom tries to find its balance between both with the optimal solution by reducing excess. Not perfection, but the best solution.

Think of it as a scale that always needs to be balanced. Too much or too little tips the scale sharply to one side or the other, so lagom balances itself (“just right”) by trimming excess and getting rid of all sources of stress within our control — from material things to relationships that drain us.

Lola A. Åkerström is an award-winning writer, speaker, and photographer with National Geographic Creative. She regularly contributes to high profile publications such as AFAR, the BBC, The Guardian, Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, and National Geographic Traveler. Lola is also the editor of Slow Travel Stockholm, an online magazine dedicated to exploring Sweden’s capital city in depth. She lives in Stockholm and blogs at Geotraveler’s Niche. You can pick up a copy of her book on Amazon. (It’s really interesting and I highly recommend it!)

The post Living Lagom in Sweden: An Interview With Lola Akerstrom appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

[jsharporiginals]

A Year on a Roller Coaster

It’s been a long time since I last felt the urge and inspiration to express my thoughts through my writing. Since then, I’ve been focused heavily on day-to-day living and trying to take life one step at a time, but I’ve decided to give this a shot as 2017 comes to a close. I’ll give a high-level recap of my experiences this year, and as always, I’ll end with some advice in case anyone is going through similar experiences.

2017 has been one of the most challenging years of my young life. I’ve experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows of any calendar year I can remember. The year kicked off at the lowest point, and if it were an actual roller coaster, no one would get off without throwing up or suffering from whiplash. With that being said, i’m grateful for every moment. Because of the low points, I spent the most self-reflection time I’ve ever done in my life in a calendar year. Therefore, I believe I’m a better version of myself today than ever before.

Anyone that knows me knows that overthinking, especially late at night, is my favorite (not really) pastime. 2017 proved to be filled with plenty of time stuck inside my own head. However, I chose to take a different approach this year than in past years. A wise person I care about very much once said, “It’s okay to not be okay.” Now, I had never been good at admitting something was wrong or talking it out, so I made a conscious effort to have those tough conversations with those I’m closest with on a consistent basis. I’m still not fantastic at it, but I’m better, and it’s proven beneficial in the long-run.

Another habit I’ve worked hard to kick in past years, not just 2017, is fighting for what I want until the very end. I’ve always been determined to be successful, but I was never quite as determined to fight for happiness. I pinned a quote to the top of my Twitter page that reads, “Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.” This was said by the great Winston Churchill, and it has served as fuel for the fire in 2017.

With all of this being said, there have been plenty of times when the light at the end of the tunnel was hard to see or not visible at all, but just because you can’t see the light doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Trust me, it’s still there, and I promise you won’t ever get there if you don’t keep walking.

My advice for the end of 2017 is simple:

1) spend some time reflecting on yourself and if you’re the version of yourself that you’re happiest with. If you’re not, that’s completely fine. Use that as material for your New Year’s resolution(s). For me, I used friends and prayer to help guide me whenever I felt like I was in a spot that I couldn’t quite get free of. Use the resources that are available to you to keep your fire going in 2018.

2) Live every day like what you want might not be there tomorrow. “Never give up on something you can’t go a day without thinking about.” If it’s constantly on your mind, it’s important enough to fight for. I’ve decided that it’s always easier in the end if you’re able to say, “at least I gave it everything that I had,” than it is if you’re left wondering, “what if I had tried a little longer?”

3) Take 2018 one day at a time. Each year is a marathon, not a sprint. Do things to help yourself stay focused, energized and inspired throughout the race.

We’re in for another year of our lives, ladies and gentleman. Let make sure we give it our all, so we don’t have any regrets 365 days from now. That’s all for now. Until next time, my Beloved Tumblr Readers. Good luck and good day!

[theladyjstyle]

Back in 2006, during my first trip around the world, I met a Swedish girl. We traveled together for a bit and the following year I went to visit her in Sweden. Though that relationship didn’t last, my love for Sweden did and, in subsequent years, I learned Swedish and even tried to move to Sweden. I love everything Swedish. And so does my friend Lola. Lola and I met back in 2008 when travel blogging was in its infancy. Unlike me, she’s had success in making a life in Sweden, where she now lives with her husband and son. She’s one of the favorite people in the industry and I love the imagery in her writing and the beauty in her photography.

In her new book, Lagom, she discusses life in Sweden and Swedish culture. Today, I jealously interview her about life there.

Nomadic Matt: Tell everyone a bit about yourself. Lola: I’m a Nigerian-born, US-educated, Sweden-based writer and photographer focusing mostly on exploring culture through food, tradition, and lifestyles. My photography is represented by National Geographic Creative, and I was recently awarded the prestigious 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award from the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW).

I actually took a nontraditional path to this new life, as I worked as a web programmer and GIS system architect for 12+ years before the full career shift into the travel media industry.

I’ve always been fascinated by the nuances of culture: what makes us different and what our similarities are. And so this curiosity and acknowledgement really underpins pretty much all my work as a travel writer and photographer.

How did you end up in Sweden? I met my husband in 2006 while living in the US. After logging thousands upon thousands of air miles, as well as temporary stints in Stockholm, I officially moved over in 2009. It really was an intercultural, interracial, and intercontinental union in many ways. We now have two kids, so Sweden will be home for a while for many reasons, the prime one being that it’s pretty darn perfect for families.

How do you find life in Sweden? Good? Bad? Life in Sweden is what you make of it, and that’s why I also wrote this book — as a handy cultural guide that can help you integrate and deeply understand Swedish culture and its nuances. Having lived in both Nigeria and the US for extended periods of time, I appreciate living here with a young family. Overall, the quality of life is fantastic in terms of stress levels. There is enough time to dedicate to the family, as well as generous benefits, which we all contribute to through our taxes.

What’s your least favorite part about living in Sweden? I often say Sweden is the most open society run by the most private people, and I explain why in the book. Sweden does have its dark sides, and I always say the main difference is this: I can be like Oprah Winfrey if I want to as a black woman in the US, despite all the racial tensions. In Sweden, while you’ll be left in a small corner to live your happy life, trying to be a CEO or magnate like Oprah is a gargantuan task. There are people who still don’t get called for job interviews because of the names on their résumés. So overall, while I love living here, no society is perfect, and Sweden has a lot of integration issues it needs to work out.

Why did you write this book? So, the Swedish word lagom has recently emerged as the lifestyle trend of 2017 and of course, publishers are jumping on it with different lifestyle books — from recipes to interior decor.

But I needed to put a book out there that was beyond cinnamon bun recipes, because lagom is not a word that is warmly embraced or even liked by many Swedes themselves for various reasons, including the fact the ethos has over time morphed to denote average, boring, and middle-of-the-road. I detail all this in the book, as well as explain why lagom itself is inherently a good ideal as opposed to jante, which is the negative parasitic ethos that attaches itself to lagom and brings the negativity. But it is the key to understanding the Swedish mindset.

I have been living in Sweden for eight years, and writing about the country and its culture for even longer. I am also married to a Swede and have a unique vantage point of observing the culture both objectively and subjectively. So I explain lagom in a way that a foreigner fully gets it, as well as holding up a mirror to Swedes so they see how lagom is expressed in interactions with other people. It can be very difficult to write about something that’s very intrinsic to you in a way that others can fully understand without coming off as patronizing and condescending.

It really governs the Swedish psyche, and individual bubbles of lagom are definitely changing and morphing with each passing generation.

I needed to write a well-balanced cultural book that could still stand once the Scandi-trends wave washed over.

What does lagom mean and why is it important? On the surface, lagom is often described as “not too little, not too much, just right,” but it’s a lot more nuanced than that and lies closer to “optimal.” It is the key to unlocking the Swedish psyche and governs almost all aspects of life and culture in the country.

It also transforms its meaning in different contexts — from “less is more” in terms of décor and “moderation” in terms of food to “harmony and balance” in terms of society and “mindfulness” in terms of well-being.

If one were to boil down the true essence of lagom to its very core, it means striving for the ultimate balance in life that, when applied to all aspects of one’s existence, can help guide you toward operating at your most natural, effortless state.

The state and measurement of lagom mean different things to different folks. My satisfaction may vary from yours, but we can both be satisfied. Lagom represents the ultimate sweet spot or golden mean in your own life, and more importantly, it encourages you to fully operate within that sweet spot that’s just right for you.

For travelers to Sweden, how can they detect lagom at work or play? Many people often describe Swedes (in Sweden, not outside of Sweden) as reserved, inaccessible, and maybe even cold and flippant, but it’s often just lagom’s mindfulness at play. Locals will give you your space and ensure you’re not inconvenienced by their presence. So, Swedes naturally keep their distance from a place of mindfulness, not because they don’t want to be around you. (Outside of Sweden, they are quick to ditch lagom in social settings.)

At work, lagom is always looking for the best solution, so there’s a lot of planning, lots of meetings, lots of consensus, lots of teamwork, you get the gist… to make sure they arrive at the optimal, lagom solution to all problems.

For example: Many foreigners working or doing business in Sweden often lament the amount of time Swedes put into upfront planning and preparation. Agendas are triple-checked, and several meetings are called to plan every single item on said agendas. Plans can take months to put in place before moving to the next step of implementing each item on those plans.

For a culture that prides itself on efficiency, it could seem these inherent acts of zealous planning are counterproductive, and they can be seen as wasting time and resources. However, because lagom craves balance by trimming excess around its edges, it requires adequate planning. “Adequate” is measured by whatever it takes to prune irrelevance, regardless of how long it takes.

To be efficient means to perform and function in the most optimal manner possible with the least waste of time, resources, and energy. This very definition of efficiency mirrors the core of lagom.

So lagom says it is perfectly OK to spend as much time as needed to prepare ourselves and strongly develop our plans, because that’s the only way we can guarantee efficiency.

For travelers who would like to date a Swede, how can understanding lagom help them? Swedes don’t naturally divulge information or overshare, so sometimes it can be hard to even gauge or assess what’s going on in a relationship. And it’s not a culture that overly gesticulates with hands or uses flattering words, so knowing if a Swede is interested in you can be denoted by their unusually prolonged eye contact.

So, when out on a date, always have follow-up questions to keep the conversation going and to avoid your date awkwardly ending at “yes or no” answers. Because they will do so, in an effort not to overshare without being asked.

For someone going on a date expecting to be lavishly wined and dined, Swedes are generally conditioned to split their bills, to always repay favors, and to not be duty-bound to anyone, especially financially, by keeping that scale balanced. So this can come as a nasty surprise at the end of the night if you haven’t discussed it before the waiter brings out the menu.

And if you’re in relationship with a Swede and have issues or questions, just ask straight out because Swedes are very direct. And be prepared for those direct answers!

Why are people so fascinated with Sweden? I think a lot of the fascination comes from the quality of life and just how progressive the society is. Another more superficial angle has to do with physicality — from people and landscapes to interior décor and architecture. I mean, the city of Stockholm itself is absolutely stunning, and it spreads across 14 islands, which you can view from some nice vantage points in town. Sweden consistently ranks in the top 10 happiest countries, so there are clearly things Sweden is getting right.

What’s the one thing you want people to take away from your book? Lagom is a mindset that fundamentally battles stress. Having too much or too little causes stress, so lagom tries to find its balance between both with the optimal solution by reducing excess. Not perfection, but the best solution.

Think of it as a scale that always needs to be balanced. Too much or too little tips the scale sharply to one side or the other, so lagom balances itself (“just right”) by trimming excess and getting rid of all sources of stress within our control — from material things to relationships that drain us.

Lola A. Åkerström is an award-winning writer, speaker, and photographer with National Geographic Creative. She regularly contributes to high profile publications such as AFAR, the BBC, The Guardian, Lonely Planet, Travel + Leisure, and National Geographic Traveler. Lola is also the editor of Slow Travel Stockholm, an online magazine dedicated to exploring Sweden’s capital city in depth. She lives in Stockholm and blogs at Geotraveler’s Niche. You can pick up a copy of her book on Amazon. (It’s really interesting and I highly recommend it!)

The post Living Lagom in Sweden: An Interview With Lola Akerstrom appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

Living Lagom in Sweden: An Interview With Lola Akerstrom http://ift.tt/2k9Ba4r