#in fifteen years cancer has taken ten people now

[pbandjstew]

A tribute tattoo on my right arm. The story behind it (caution sad):

When my sister passed away from cancer she was only 32 and so her two daughters were very young. When it was time for the funeral and they were asked if they wanted to put anything in her coffin for the services (she was going to be cremated, not buried). Her youngest daughter decided that she should have her sock monkey with her, because they each would still have their sock monkeys. This is because they each had a sock monkey of their own just in different colors.

So I have my tribute heart for my father on my left hand and so wanted a tribute piece for my sister but one that was less obvious. So I took my love of comics and fused Tony Millionaire's famous Sock Monkey character and adjusted it a bit with the purple sock monkey that was chosen by my niece to be with her mum in her casket (and later cremated with her). Most just see it as a joyful or mischievous monkey hugging my arm, not know it is a memory of my sister & a touching moment in time with my nieces that is hugging me instead.

Jesse Santoro - Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey tattooed in a hugging pose

A grand comic, and a fun tattoo.

[forever--darling]

not too far away - s.m. (final)

a/n: where it finally comes to an end

epilogue 

The soft music was flowing through the speakers and into the warm air of the summer night. With the sun having just set a few hours before, a gentle breeze formed, reliving the skin of all the guests, who had been in the sun all day. Stars littered the dark sky, illuminating down on the back yard that was filled with balloons, banners, and twinkling lights. 

People stood surrounding the center of the yard, eyes locked on the couple who were standing with adoration filling their eyes. The sparkling ring on her left hand proof of how much love they held for each other. Only happiness could be felt, maybe too much from the buzz that was filling everyone’s veins from the champagne. It was a night to be celebrated, and nothing could stand before that. Not even the storm warning that was said to be the forecast of that day but it ended with not even a drop of rain. It was like fate, the couple belonged together and it was seen at the engagement party. 

Now twenty-one-years old, the Canadian singer stood away from the chatter and the music. He was at the edge of the yard, by a gazebo that had been built the summer prior by the groom’s father. It was intertwined with roses and little golden lights as the view looked down at a clearing with a small lake. The trees now looking like tall shadows in the distance as the waves of the lake held the reflection from the sky above. 

He was silent, eyes just scanning, and mind not able to conjure a single thought that a year had passed so quickly. Hands shoved into the pockets of his black jeans, a light coat of sweat gathered at the base of his neck causing his curls to stick. The white button up short sleeve he wore was left unbuttoned revealing the black tee underneath and bulged against his biceps. The St. Christopher pendant lie where it did most days, hanging around his neck, placed close to his heart. His lips were pursed and he seemed lost in another world as the sound of cheers and praise from the background faded into silence.

Shawn Mendes, couldn’t fathom how it all happened. How he got to where he was from over a year ago. He had been a wreck for weeks and months unable to sing a single lyric. So many thought he had disappeared or moved off the grid. Fans worried about their idol and the young man they loved so dearly. It took a while but he eventually got through it. He had too for his family, friends, fans, most importantly for himself. He had the rest of his life to live. It was nothing but a struggle, but he had gotten through it like everything else had.

That didn’t change that every time he closed his eyes, he could see or feel her. Constantly like a movie on repeat, he would see how their lives had played out. From the very first time, he had met Y/N, at the age of five. She was four and had stood behind her father’s leg for well over an hour before she spoke to Shawn for the first time. To them being fourteen, sneaking out into the woods down the hill of their houses just asking to get in trouble. 

He could see them at sixteen. At the airport, arms wrapped tightly around her before having to depart and not getting to know that feeling for another four years. Finally, he could see all that happened a year ago. Him showing up at her doorstep after those years apart. Those few weeks where it went from taking her to a hockey game to their first kiss. From the night they made love for the first time and when he had gone to the hospital and broke down to his knees. It all was there and with each image, he saw of her smiling and her kissing him, it made his legs shake. 

He was pulled away though, from the memories, the mini-movie by a pair of soft lips connecting with the side of his neck. His pulse quickened at the contact and as his eyes gazed down at the figure beside him, he felt his heart jump in his chest because there she was. Y/N Y/L/N was and always would be a sight for sore eyes. Her body wrapped in a white jump suit with spaghetti straps. No surprise she was barefoot, having kicked her heels not even two hours into the event. 

Hair tucked behind her ears; it was just as short as it had been a year ago. She had started to like the length and now every few months would go and cut it when it started to grow again. It was curled, shiny, and soft. He knew that by how often his fingers would thread into it. Her necklace, from Shawn now a year ago, lying around her neck. Makeup slightly worn away from the day, her freshly tan skin from the summer glistened because of the humidity. Cheeks slightly flushed and eyelashes fluttering up at him, he was sure. She was the ‘one’. 

Shawn couldn’t help the smile that widened across his lips as her arm wrapped around his waist. Handing him the solo cup in her hand, that had his freshly poured drink, she reached up on her tip toes and placed another peck on his neck. “You disappeared, my dad said you wandered over here.” 

Like Shawn had said, he had gotten through the struggle that was this beautiful girl almost dying. She had pushed through the surgery and weeks, months later he had still struggled with the fear of it all happening again. He still was scared sometimes, that things would fall apart to their feet again. He was certain she was the love of his life and he couldn’t bear to be left alone without her. 

Even then though, he knew he couldn’t constantly be living his life scared she would end up in the hospital again, especially when there was a good chance that would never happen. Shawn deserved that happiness that was craved by so many. The kind that you experience for sharing yourself with another person. At the end of a dark tunnel, she was stood like a light. With every push of her love, she put him back together. 

“Yeah, just needed to get away for a few minutes,” Shawn mumbled out a reply, hand wandering to her lower back. 

“You missed the grand speech made by my brother and then his very passionate kiss with the bride to be,” Y/N said, a small groan emitting from her mouth. 

He chuckled at the small disgust heard in her voice, “They’re cute.” 

She shook her head, fingers combing through the back of his fluffy curls, “Nope. James, Demi, and cute are not allowed in the same sentence.” 

Another laugh emitted from the singer at the girl wrapped around his torso because it was the same sentence she had said a year ago, when her best friend and brother’s relationship had started kindling. Her words were said in disagreement but a small smile was laced across her lips as her eyes looked up at him with such innocence. “I think you’re going to have to get used to it because in just a few weeks your best friend is going to become Mrs. James Y/L/N.” 

“Eh, it’s going to be a horrible wedding,” she shrugged, taking a sip from the champagne full glass in her hand. 

“Wow, those are words you love to hear from the maid of honor,”  he mumbled teasingly under his breath as he took a drink from his own cup to find that it was beer. 

She laughed and as it moved through Shawn’s ears it caused his chest to flutter. Even after a whole year it still affected him that way. Untangling herself from around him, she chugged the rest of her champagne and taking both her empty glass and his solo cup, she placed it on the bench within the gazebo. She turned on her heels, hands tucked behind her back, her eyes trained back on the man she was desperately in love with. 

“Fine, they are a little cute,” she admitted, moving closer and closer towards him, taking his hands in hers then leading him up and into the gazebo, “But you know what’s cuter?” 

“What?” Shawn asked quizzically, hands finding a place on her hips as her arms connected around his neck. 

Y/N pressed her body into his, able to feel his hard figure through the clothing that separated them. She planted a feathery kiss near his jaw, hearing him sigh at the feeling. Hands moving from around his neck, down along his chest, they spalyed across his pecks. His warmth surrounded her and she nibbled onto her lower lip as her eyes stayed locked on his. 

“Us,” she whispered. 

“Really? You think so?” Shawn teased, trying to distract himself from the warmth that pooled at the base of his stomach. 

“Duh,” she laughed, “I mean, yeah, they are cute whatever. But come on they have nothing on us. We not only have been friends for over fifteen years but we have out beat an illness. Also, should I mention, that you are a traveling aspiring artist who is gone for months on end and we still manage to make time for each other? We’re cuter.” 

His smile widened, causing his cheeks to ache a little at how adorable his girl was, “I guess, I can’t argue with you on this one.” 

“Nope,” she replied, hand moving up to cup his cheek, thumb stroking his jaw lovingly. 

Letting out a sigh, his hand squeezed softly at her side, “It’s been quite a year.” 

She nodded in agreement but her smile never faltered, “Yeah it has.” 

It had been over a year since she had almost died in that hospital. Since she had sent Shawn back to LA with nothing but a video to express her love to him, thinking she was about to die. Since Shawn had scurried back to Toronto and fell apart in the hospital lobby. It had taken almost ten minutes to revive her and get her heart beating again but they did and she had remained stable the rest of the surgery. Dr. Myers had gotten all of the cancer and within hours she had woken up and was responsive. Shawn was the first one to see her and fell to the side of the bed, cradling her cold hand against his face. They had cried and hr had crawled into the bed with her, kissing her and scolding her all at once. Just like that the crisis had disappeared and they started over. Here they were now, together and alive

“I’m so in love with you,” Shawn admitted, the words slipping without a coherent thought to stop him. 

Her thumb stopped along his jaw, frozen along his skin. Her eyes were glossed over at this point, staring at him with so much love, Shawn thought he would burst from happiness. Her smile was sweet and he wished for anything to lean in and take it in. All of it. Everything about her. 

“I’m so in love with you too.” 

His cheeks suddenly became hot and he knew a blush was forming because it didn’t matter how many times he heard those words, it would still make him react this way. He bit onto his lip to hide the grin that was trying to form as his eyes looked away from hers towards the clearing again and the reflection of the stars on the lake. 

Silence fell between them and within seconds, Y/N’s gaze had fallen to where his was. She tucked her body into his side and breathed in his cologne, head spinning from the moment. The slow music was louder now, filling both of their ears and in an instant, Shawn felt overwhelmed in the best way possible. His mind began to fill with so many thoughts and he couldn’t find the switch to turn them off. Without him even realizing it, his voice broke the air causing the girl to tense up in his arms. 

“Marry me.” 

Y/N’s head tilted up to look towards Shawn, revealing her wide eyes and slightly parted lips. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting it just as much as he wasn’t but he didn’t care because it felt right in every way possible. Her arms loosened from around him and she began to sway from side to side and without Shawn’s body supporting her she probably would have fallen. 

“W-What?” she stuttered, barely able to get the word out as her hand clamped tightly around Shawn’s bicep. 

He knew by the way her large innocent eyes were searching his that she was looking for some sort of sign that this was all a joke. She was trying to pick that out because they were at an engagement party and he had to have been trying to be funny. Though as her face paled, he knew she found no sign on his face that it was a joke. He was in fact being completely serious. 

“Marry me,” he repeated. 

“Shawn,” she gasped, a breath falling from her lips. 

“I know what you’re going to say,” he paused, smiling as a chuckle slipped out of his mouth. His hand fell from around her waist and he took both of her hands in his. He was able to feel the way they trembled in his as he continued, “That it’s too soon and that we have the rest of our lives but here’s the thing, we’ve known each other for over fifteen years and I’m completely sure. Last year I almost lost you, and I know now that whether the rest of our lives is tomorrow or the next sixty years I want to spend it with you. I love you and there’s no one else I want to spend forever with.” 

As he finished talking and the last few words fell out into the air, he could see the tears that slipping from her eyes. They slid down on flushed cheeks and into the small smile that was lifting at the corners of her mouth. She was shaking still but not as bad as she had been moments before. She wasn’t able to form words and it caused Shawn’s stomach to stir anxiously waiting for an answer. Then finally, in a single second, it all fell into place sending his heart out of his chest. She nodded hand cupping around her mouth. 

He grinned, “Yes?” 

“Yes. I’ll marry you,” she barely choked the words out as more tears fell from her glazed over eyes. 

Just like that, Shawn’s arms winded around her and pulled her swiftly into his body. His lips sloppily collided with hers and maybe it was the slight buzz from the alcohol or all the love that filled the air but they were sure it was the best kiss they had ever had. As they clung tightly to each other, it didn’t even dawn on Shawn that he didn’t have a ring to slide onto her finger, but that it was hidden in the top drawer of his dresser, under his boxers.

Other than that, they also hadn’t noticed the many lingering stares that had wandered over towards them. They weren’t aware of the curiosity that had formed with every single guest as they looked at another couple who were kissing with smiles on their lips and tears in their eyes. It minutes before they noticed there were two voices yelling at them from across the yard. Y/N’s lips slowly detached from Shawn’s but still lingered as neither of them intended to turn around because they both knew exactly who it was. 

“Hey, guys, maybe you should get a room,” James grinned from ear to ear, arm wrapped around Demi’s waist as he looked towards his little sister and friend who seemed caught up in their own little world of happiness. 

“And remember to use protection,” Demi yelled after, leaning in her finance’s embrace, laughter falling from them both. 

They only laughed harder as the couple had refused to turn and look towards them, but were given the middle finger by none other than Y/N Y/L/N just as she had crashed her lips back against Shawn’s. For some reason, James and Demi knew what had happened at that moment. Y/N and Shawn weren’t sure how but they did and it only heightened the happiness that filled the air. 

And as they kissed passionately, clutching onto each other tightly, they knew things were going to always be looking up from there. Things were going to be different from now on. There was going to be no more secrets, no more heart ache, and no more time spent apart. Finally, their wrong timing seemed to click into place and nothing, not even the stars, could change that. 

[imagining-supernatural]

The Work Call

Part 18 of Seventy Percent

Series Summary: When you left on your trip to Vegas, you’d planned on letting loose for one last weekend before heading back to reality and getting your affairs in order so your best friend wouldn’t be left cleaning up your mess when your cancer finally ended your life. What you hadn’t counted on was waking up married to a celebrity who has a knight-in-shining-armor complex, connections with an oncologist, and amazing insurance…

Chapter Summary:  You call your boss to get some work to do in your free time and do a little flirting ;)

Word Count: 2,258

With Sebastian off in Georgia for a week, you felt like a teenager whose parents just left her home for alone for the first time. Suddenly, you could break all of the rules. Not that your rule-breaking was something that would get you in too much trouble…

Since the press seemed to have gotten it through their heads that you were off limits, you finally had your privacy and space back again. As a result, you were taking advantage of the last few weeks of autumn before the snow came. After your hospital appointments, you walked down the street to a cute little café and sat in one of the over-sized, plush chairs for a bit. You’d either bring a book or your laptop.

On Wednesday, the café cat apparently decided you were okay and hopped up into your lap, purring loudly as you read. You’d snapped a quick selfie and sent it off to Sebastian.

Me: [image attached] Don’t be surprised if you come home this weekend and I’ve catnapped ol’ Misty here

Sebastian: What if I’m allergic to cats?

Me: Sucks to be you, I guess

Me: The apartment’s lonely without you

You stared at the last text you’d sent, suddenly overthinking it. Sure, you were married. And, sure, you were wearing his ring now. But you two hadn’t really discussed what that meant, exactly. So was that last text too strong? Too forward?

Hell, you didn’t even know what you’d meant by it.

Sebastian: Don’t know how I feel about being able to be replaced by a cat

Sebastian: Maybe I need to up my game

Up his game?

Shit, it had been so long since you’d flirted with anyone. So long since you’d even considered a relationship. After your hellish life growing up, you’d put all of your focus into school. You were determined to set yourself up for a better life than the one you were born into. Then you graduated and worked hard to secure your place at your job. School only taught you so much, and you needed to be able to apply what you learned to real life.

Once you felt secure in your professional life and you were finally ready to start exploring a relationship, you found out you had cancer.

So to say you were woefully underprepared for this situation would be the understatement of the year.

Me: Luckily for you, I like Jenny’s coffee so much that I don’t want her to hate me for stealing her cat

Sebastian: You still thought a cat would replace me

Sebastian: That hurts, sweetheart

Sweetheart. In writing. 

Me: I’ll find some way to make you feel better this weekend

Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

Why did you never read over your texts before you sent them?

At least you hadn’t put a winky face emoji. Now that would have been a disaster.

Not that you didn’t want your relationship with Sebastian to keep going. You did. But there was a lot more pressure riding on this than there was back in high school when you went to the prom with Brad Trayton, or in college when you slept with the guy from your Chemistry 101 lab three times before having to break it off with him because he always smelled like bacon.

This was Sebastian Fucking Stan. And you were married to the guy. And you were in a literal life or death situation. If things went badly with him, that would make the rest of your cancer treatment very awkward, to say the least.

Sebastian: I’m sure you will…

Sebastian: I gotta go to a script reading rn. Skype tonight?

Me: Of course

You’d been Skyping with Seb at least twice a day since he left on Sunday night. It was almost like he never left, in that regard.

But with him gone, you found that you had a lot of free time on your hands. With your body starting to get used to the cancer treatment, you also had a bit more energy and nowhere to put that energy to good use.

So you called your old boss back home, dialing his direct extension to avoid getting his assistant. The press might have backed off, but thanks to the updates from Jasmin, people who knew you were still reeling over your marriage.

“Plathway.”

“Hey, Brendon, it’s Y/N.”

“Y/N!” he exclaimed, and you could just imagine him leaning back in his chair. Brendon Plathway was your mentor and had grown into a close friend. Of everyone in your life, you would say he was the closest thing to a good father figure you had. “How are you doing? I’ve seen your name on Facebook a few times.”

“I’m doing pretty good, all things considered. I’m in a clinical study in New York and the doctors are optimistic that it’ll work. They’re hoping I’ll get the tumor out sometime in February.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Brendon said. “And that husband of yours… he treating you well?”

“It’s not… it’s not quite like that. But yeah. He’s great.” It was a pretty decent segue into the reason for your call. “He’s actually out of town, shooting for a TV show. So I have a bit of time on my hands and was hoping—”

“Y/N Y/L/N?”

The unfamiliar voice interrupted you before you could finish. You looked up to see a guy about your age with a newsboy bag, notebook, and tape recorder.

A fucking journalist.

“I thought it was you. You mind if I ask you a few questions?” He didn’t say it like a question, nor did he give you time to respond before he sat on a stool beside you and set up shop on the small table. “If I could write an article on you, it would just—”

“I’m actually on a phone call right now.”

“Oh, I won’t take too long. I just can’t pass up this opportunity. You’re quite the enigma. No one’s gotten your side of the story.”

“And neither will you. I’m not going to answer any questions.”

He completely ignored you, flicked on the recorder, and put his pen to paper. “People have been saying that you planned your rendezvous with Sebastian Stan in Vegas. What do you say to that?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have no comment for you.”

“I thought you’d appreciate the chance to get your story out there. There are some nasty rumors spreading—”

You cut him off before he could continue. “I know my story and the people I care about know my story. I will not be answering any questions for you today.”

“Do you feel no guilt for being the reason Sebastian Stan’s reputation has taken a massive hit?”

“I’m going to give you one more chance to leave me the fuck alone before I call the cops.” He opened his mouth, but you spoke over him, voice lowering to a red-hot hiss. “And if you write a single word of this conversation or make any sort of insinuations that I said anything at all, I will slap you and whatever blog or magazine you work for with a libel lawsuit. Don’t even think about trying to manipulate your recording because you’re not the only one who has been recording this conversation. The phone call you interrupted was with my boss and it’s company policy to record all incoming and outgoing phone calls. He’s a witness that I repeatedly rejected your attempt to start an interview and anything else you say can be construed as harassment. Have I made myself clear?”

He stared at you, wide eyed. Guess he hadn’t expected a cancer patient to be so blunt. Nevertheless, he gathered his things and stood. Just before walking away, he muttered, “You didn’t have to be such a bitch about it.”

Once he was gone, you groaned. “Sorry about that, Bren.”

“Is that something you have to deal with often? That’s horrible.”

“No. Not since I got sick because stupid reporters were sticking their germy microphones in my face and Seb threatened them with lawyers.”

Brendon hmphed. “Well, you sounded like you had that speech prepared. Sounded like you’d said it a few times.”

“Before he left, Seb made sure I knew how to threaten any reporters like that. Luckily this was the first time I’ve had to remember what he told me.” The reporter had shaken you, and it took a few deep breaths before you felt calm enough to continue with your conversation. “Anyway, back to my original reason for calling… Are there are projects I could jump on long distance? I’ll probably only be able to put in about ten to fifteen good hours of work a week, but it’d be nice to have something to do other than wait for new episodes of my shows to come on Hulu.”

“Let me poke around the office a bit. I know there’s a big one coming up next week. Rachel’s heading that one. You’ve worked with her before right? She’d probably appreciate your input. Trent is in the middle of one for a pharmaceutical company, but he’s not feeling too sure about it. I’ll see if he wants you to try and hack the system and find holes.”

“Anything. I’ve worked with both of them before and I think we work well together. I did quite a few initial proposals before I left for Vegas and I enjoyed those more than most people do.”

He promised he’d send any projects your way that he could. After a few more minutes of catching up, you ended the call and headed outside to wait for Sean in the chilly fall air.

“How was the reading?” you asked later that night. “Any juicy plot lines?”

“Not that I can tell you,” Seb replied. The phone in his hand shifted as he settled further into the hotel bed that Marvel was putting him up in. “But it was good. We’ll start shooting tomorrow.”

“Excited to lube up your arm?”

He laughed, head falling back against the headboard. “I take it you finally did some research on me?”

“A little. The hospital was running behind today, so I was there a bit longer than I planned and I fell down the YouTube abyss of interviews. Anthony seems like a fun guy to work with.”

Sebastian grinned. “He is. Speaking of work, did you call your boss?”

“Yeah.” The reminder of the phone call – or rather of the interruption – made your roll your eyes.

“Didn’t go well?”

“No, no. It did.” You knew your news was not going to go over well with Seb, so you took a minute to get settled into the bed. It had been a long day and laying down felt good. You turned your laptop on its side so your face would still be the right way on Seb’s phone. “Brendon’s gonna check around work and find some projects and work to throw my way. That’s all good.”

“Then what is it?”

With a deep sigh, you began. “While I was on the phone with him, some hipster reporter dude interrupted.”

“Son of a—”

“It took a minute to get it through his thick skull that I was not going to give him a story but he finally left. It just kinda took a bit out of me.”

“God, Y/N. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yeah, it’s not,” you agreed softly. “But you prepared me. I handled it. Then Sean made me eat dinner with him and his wife. She’s an amazing cook. Sometime when you’re home, they want to have both of us over. And when this is all over, we definitely need to think of a hell of a way to thank him for everything. He’s done so much more than a driver gets paid to.”

The two of you brainstormed for a bit about how to repay Sean for his kindness and friendship. Then your conversation moved on to different subjects, bouncing around for a bit until you yawned for the third time in five minutes.

“You seem more tired than usual. You doing okay?”

“I’m fine. I mean, I haven’t been sleeping well, but that’s your fault.”

“My fault?” he asked.

“Yeah. You made me sleep next to you for two weeks then you just up and leave me alone. It’s rude, Mr. Stan.”

Something in your words sparked something in his eyes that filled you with… excitement?

“Well, Mrs. Stan…” His words were accompanied by a wink that stopped your heart. Forget your brain tumor. Sebastian was going to be the source of your death. “You only have two more nights before I’m home for the weekend.”

Flirting? Were you flirting?

“Two nights with you and five nights without you is just not a fraction I like.”

My god, you were flirting.

“If you can convince Marvel to move their studios to New York, I’m all game. Until then, we’ll have to make the best of those two nights.”

“Make the best of them, hmm?”

“Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “Mackie’s commentary on The Voice isn’t as good as yours. I’ve been waiting to watch the new episodes until I’m with you.”

The unexpected twist made you laugh out loud. It didn’t escape your attention how his eyes crinkled at the sound, affection flooding his expression. “The Voice on Friday and Dancing With The Stars on Saturday?”

“I’ll pen it in my calendar, sweetheart.”

“Ooo. I’m pen-worthy. That’s so much better than pencil-worthy.”

“You’re white-out-worthy, baby. I’d white-out plans I have with someone else to pen in plans with you.”

Fucking hell. Baby was a new one.

If he’d put on half this much charm on you in Vegas when you were drunk, it was no wonder you’d married him.

“Then I guess I need to go erase the pencil plans I had for Saturday evening and make room for you. Maybe even buy a special pen just for you.”

“Maybe wait for tomorrow? You’ve had a long day. Seems like you need a good night’s rest.”

“You too, hun.” The pet name felt foreign on your tongue, but it somehow felt… right? “Shooting starts tomorrow. You need to be ready to keep up with Mackie’s energy.”

“He wants to meet’cha, you know. Apparently I haven’t shut up about you.’

“Gimme a few more weeks to get used to this treatment and maybe I can spend more than three seconds around him without needing a nap,” you joked. “Unless he only has that energy when there’s a camera on him…?”

Seb laughed. “That is him all the damn time.”

“Then I better let you go for the night. You’ve spent the last few weeks shlumping around with me. Gotta get your rest to keep up with him tomorrow.”

“And you gotta get your rest so you can hand out candy tomorrow.”

“I’m excited for that, actually. Trick or Treating really slowed down back in Utah lately. I think last year I got, like, maybe three groups of kids?”

“You’ll get your fill this year. A lot of the kids in the apartment complex go to every door. Just be careful, okay? I don’t want you getting sick.”

It took twenty more minutes before you were finally able to say your goodbyes and hang up. You stared at your phone for a moment before placing it on the side table beside Sebastian’s bed and turning off the light.  

Houston, we've got some flirting!!! Also can we just take a minute to appreciate how amazing Sean is? But things seem to be looking up!

CHAPTER 19: THE LONG DAY

[radishandstone]

I am filled with rage.

I was in a gated community that is built at the bottom of a small mountain. It is quite densely forested, there are streams and ponds, paths up the mountain, very beautiful. On my way out I saw a dog laying on the ground.

Obviously I was horrified to see an animal in that state. Asked around to see whose dog it was, but everyone said it is a stray, it is no ones dog, such a shame to see her looking that way... And that was it. So I took a picture and sent it to my vet asking them to send the animal transport van. Spent the next half hour picking ticks off her and cleaning the worms out of her open sores, got her to drink maybe 150mL of water. A lady who lived there told me the story: she belonged to a foreigner who moved back to Germany, instead of finding her a new home they just left her outside. She has been living outside for over ten years now, she is 15 years old! Another foreigner had her spayed, but they were only in Shenzhen for a year. A few years back someone new tried to take her in but she didn't want to go inside and they gave up. People put out dog food, she has always looked healthy and been very active.

Until sometime recently. This lady was cagey about how long she had been sick, claimed she was fine before lady went away for a week, then admitted maybe she had been getting thin.

Someone had a vet come by, vet said she had liver cancer, nothing they can cure, and then they left.

The van showed up, I loaded her in and this lady wanted to come along. I had a really bad feeling about it but figured she knew the dog's history, was familiar with her....

That was a goddamn mistake.

To START with the vet says the check up will be about 2-3000yuan, and this lady is on the group chat asking everyone's opinion, wants to wait until 9pm so people have a chance to see the messages. I said no, we do the check NOW, I will pay for it.

The vet was aghast. Double eye infection, and the poor thing was so dehydrated her eyes were sunk in deep enough that every time she blinked a mass of puss slid down her face like tears. Liver cancer, massive tumor and her abdomen is filled with fluid, a mix of puss, water, and blood. Severe heart murmur, so much that IV drugs were not possible, she'd have a heart attack. Her condition was awful. Getting enough blood drawn for the tests took fifteen minutes. Those results came back and she was off the charts, levels too high or too low to accurately measure for almost anything.

There is nothing that can be done for her, there is absolutely no chance of recovery, alleviation of pain medicine will give her a heart attack, she hasn't eaten in over a week and she will die of dehydration in a day or two. Euthanasia is the ONLY humane option.

This lady though... She has been updating the group chat, asking what they think, another lady has come to the vet?! Lady 1 wants concensus from the neighbourhood group, after all this is everyone's dog.

Hold up, what?! Two hours ago it was no ones dog! You all let her get to this state! No one took responsibility and got her to the vet for check ups, no one took her to the vet when she was obviously sick. Some vet came and had a look and LEFT HER IN THAT STATE. I asked my vet if she ever would have just left her there and she said NO.

Lady 1 insists on calling around to find contact info for some man who buys dog food sometimes, for this dog they call Hei Niu. This man... He hears Lady 1 out and say no, we do not have permission to euthanise this animal who is in agony with no possibility of reprieve.

Fucking AGHAST, I take the phone, I explain. I give the phone to the vet, she explains. Still no. I tell him to come to the clinic.

He comes, still says no. She is a free animal, she has no master so we have no say in when it is her time to die, who are we to decide her fate, blah blah.

He wants her taken back to the community so she can die in her home. The vet offers to euthanize her there, in the place she knows, but that is a no-go. She has no master, etc., etc.

He tells Lady 1 and Lady 2 to bring her back. Lady 2 is in tears, asks Lady 1 why she told her to come, why she ASKED the group instead of telling. Apparently the neighbourhood will be angry with them if they go against Awful Man's decision, now that they have someone saying no. I beg them to blame me, say you know how foreigners are, always coming in and doing what they want... No dice. Lady 1 is in tears, apologizing to me, I am furious.

I couldn't stand to see them take her back. I asked them, if they will not take her in and try to make her comfortable, to just LET. HER. DIE. Vet refunded me, that group can club together and pay, whatever.

I was added to their neighbourhood group chat, I see pictures of Hei Niu back to laying on the ground. She ate a couple bites after much urging, they are all congratulating themselves. A few days go by, and these people... They find her wherever she has hidden herself away and coax her to drink, eat a bite. She has known these people almost all her life and she is a DOG, of course she will force herself to eat a bite, have a sip. She throws most of it up and the group all console themselves that they are trying so hard. A week, a WEEK LATER, after these people have been refusing to let this dog die, some other man finally can't take it. The vet comes and euthanizes her, they bury her. The group chat is filled with people sending prayers, sending red packet donations, thanking people for all they did for her...

What they did for her was NOTHING. She was abandoned by her family and no one took her in. No one made sure she was healthy. Yeah, they gave her food, okay, but when she was sick no one did anything about it! When she was dying they listened to some bombastic, self righteous prick who spouted nonsense about this dog being her own master, and instead of doing something for her, letting her GO, they forced her to die slowly, dying of dehydration and starvation, in constant pain. And she ended up being euthanized a week later ANYWAY. A week of torment. Do they think that she was happy? Thinking “gosh I am so glad to be here in agony on the dirt that I know, dragging myself off to hide and die, only to be found again and again and barely kept alive, prolonging my suffering which has no chance to abate!”?

Her whole life people let her down, and here they are feeling virtuous, a circle of congratuations and praise. The last gift they gave her was a painful end to her life.

I hate them. I hate them ALL. They all did that, and they felt superior.

In the vet's office those three told me I just don't understand, I am not Chinese so I can't understand the culture. I understand that culturally going against the group would have made them an outcast, I get that. I do not think I will understand the mind of people who see that much suffering and do not try to help. I will never understand people who think that a quick release from pain that CAN NOT BE MITIGATED is wrong and prolonging agony is right.

I did learn something from this experience, however... The SECOND I get to the vet's office with a rescued stray animal, the first thing that happens is registering them under my name. I pay the fee and it is MY animal legally, which means we listen to the goddamn vet instead of an echo chamber of performative virtue.

[somedayonbroadway]

Looking at your Newsies AU list, I'd love to see that Now You See Me idea. These fellas strike me as the Robin Hood con artist type

Absolutely I can!

Now You See Me AU

Characters

Jack Kelly- J. Daniel Atlas

Katherine Plumber- Henley Reeves

David Jacobs- Merritt McKinney

Racetrack Higgins- Jack Wilder

Obadiah Wiesel- Arthur Tresler

Joseph Pulitzer- Thaddeus Bradley

Bryan Denton- Dylan Rhodes

Hannah- Alma Dray

Jack Kelly (The Lover)

Jack is an illusionist.

He’s a bit of a ladies man and nows how to get what he wants while also being a complete and utter control freak.

He’s been practicing magic since he was four years old and the last thing he received from his biological parents was a book on magic tricks

He grew up in the system with his little brother, Charlie

He was abused most of his life and used his magic tricks as a way to cheer up his little brother and himself when things got bad

He begins preforming on the streets when he’s fifteen, just to make a little extra money.

At age twenty he is one of the worlds best illusionists.

His little brother gets really sick when Jack is sixteen. Charlie is twelve by then. Bone cancer.

Since they’re in the system and his foster family gives them up so that they don’t have to deal with it, Jack finds a lot of the pressure on himself to provide for his little brother and keep him alive.

The system splits them up, placing Jack with a Mr. Snyder and Charlie with a Miss Medda who promises to help

Jack has to run to avoid getting killed by his foster father. But he still sneaks over to the hospital to see Charlie once a week. And he steals for the orphans he left behind in that boys home.

Medda knows he’s there but never calls him out.

Charlie survives but is not truly out of the clear. Jack visits him whenever he can.

Jack lives on the streets doing magic until he’s eighteen. He buys an apartment and starts doing actual shows with his assistant, Katherine Plumber.

Jack Kelly actually begins to become fairly famous. Him and his assistant are proud. They make good money before they split up when Jack was around 22.

Jack gets his card when he’s 24. His card to join “The Eye”.

He’s doing a street show, just for fun.

He does a card trick for a young, beautiful, drunk girl who he ends up taking home that night and almost sleeping with before he sees it.

He kicks her out of his apartment and immediately gets ready to go on his way.

Katherine Plumber (High Priestess)

Katherine is an escape artist.

Katherine had a relatively normal childhood. Mom, Dad (who worked all the time). 

She was an only child. 

When she’s little, she learns about this magician names Harry Houdini

Baby Katherine is fascinated 

Growing up, she’s a bit of a loner, the only people who really talked to her being teenage pricks who wanted to get in her pants. 

Her father was a great magician too. She wanted to be just like him. Except, when she was around seventeen, he quit, instead choosing to depict the illusions rather than perform them.

Katherine left home the day after she graduated high school, running off to join some magic act where she meets the famous Jack Kelly.

Yes, they sleep together. Several times. But their quest for fame gets the better of both of them and things don’t quite work out at first.

She leaves Jack when she’s 24 and starts her own shows and acts, doing magnificent escapes and tricks

She gets her card when she’s 25

She’s doing a show for a paying audience. She does a morbid trick that involves chains, a glass box filled with water and flesh eating piranhas.

She finds the card floating in the large tank after her show.

David Jacobs (The Hermit)

David is a mentalist.

This means many different things.

First off, he can hypnotize people easily. He is self taught and very good.

Second, he can read people easily, causing people to believe that he’s psychic or can actually read minds.

Third, he’s overall just very smart and takes information in easily, which helps him out a lot in his career path.

David grows up poor, with his father and his mother and his little brother. He has to start working when he’s sixteen and he does mentalism on the side which actually brings him a lot of cash considering he kind of shakes people down by threatening to give up all their secrets that he gets out of them

He’s very smart.

The most important person in his life is his little brother

His father can’t work after he breaks his leg. It never fully heals.

It’s David’s job to support for his family.

David’s mentalism career takes off when he’s about 23. He does a couple tours around the US. But all of his money goes straight to his family.

His career dies down when his father dies and he has to go take care of his mother and baby brother.

He gets his card when he’s 26.

He’s doing a street show for some tourists where he meets a couple.

He figures out that the husband is actually cheating on his wife with his wife’s sister and he forces the husband to give him everything in his wallet in order to make the wife forget she heard it.

He does it to a lot of people that take their family for granted.

Racetrack Higgins (Death)

Race is a sleight of hand. More well known as a pickpocket.

He is also very good at throwing cards and using them as weapons.

He has anxiety.

Race grows up as an orphan.

He’s put through a lot of homes and is taken advantage of a couple of times by some foster parents.

Eventually he lands in a boys home run by a mister Snyder.

He’s about ten when he lands there. He never meets Jack officially, only sees him a couple of times at the window, passing around some food and blankets to the littles.

The kids are like vultures. They grab for it even though Jack asks them to share. None of them know him since he ran before all of them got there. They just know him as the boy who brings them gifts.

Only once does Race get to talk to him. When Jack realizes he never gets any food or blankets. He makes a point to give Race some.

Race looks up to Jack so much even before he really knows him.

Snyder is cruel to Race.

Race is loud and likes to talk back so Snyder constantly locks him in closets or in the basement. He starves him and makes him do chores before locking him up again.

Race gets sick of it fast. So he teaches himself how to pick locks. He teaches himself how to lift things off of people like food and wallets and anything he can just to survive.

When he’s thirteen he runs away. He wants to be just like the mysterious boy who helped him and the other boys out for so long.

But he’s too scared to go back.

Eventually, he finds the boy who helped him. Jack Kelly. He’s a magician. And Race is his biggest fan.

Race starts teaching himself how to do magic after he sees his hero do it so easily and confidently.

Living out on the streets, Race gets amazingly good at pickpocketing and sleight of hand tricks. He also gets very good with cards. Throwing them, of course.

He gets his card when he’s seventeen.

He’s doing a trick on a ferry ride, promising that if someone could figure out how he bent a spoon with his mind, he’d give them a hundred dollars.

One man figures it out, but the second he steps up, Race slips his wallet off of him, giving him a hundred from the man’s own wallet and taking the rest.

Then he runs and jumps off the ferry as it pulls away.

He finds a card in his pocket only a couple minutes later.

The Four Horsemen

These four magicians meet at an apartment building, all believing they were the only ones chosen to be apart of a group called the eye — the cards being their invitation. (The eye is an exclusive group that defends and protects magic, just to sum that up real quick). David arrives first, finding that the door is locked and waiting to see if it will be unlocked.

Only moments later do Jack and Katherine find each other in the streets and immediately recognize each other. Jack tells her to wait outside while he takes a look, trying to protect her or be the gentlemen when she immediately pushes him away and walks up to the apartment first.

The minute they get there David laughs and shakes his head, disappointed that he wasn’t the only one chosen. He immediately does a read on Jack, concluding that he is an artist as well as an illusionist and a control freak who may or may not have an OCD problem in every aspect but his art. He pretends to know Katherine’s name, but Jack quickly points out that it’s on the coffee cup she’s holding because he doesn’t like Davey all that much right off the bat.

David hates that Jack calls him Davey.

They start to argue a bit while Jack tries to open the door, when they are interrupted by the last member of the future crew. A teenager who sees Jack and freezes for a moment. Race recognizes Jack. Jack does not recognize him.

Race goes fully into fan mode, telling Jack how he’s seen every trick Jack has ever done and how all of it was so impressive and cool. And Jack would thank him and shake his hand David would ask if he got a card, at which point they would reveal all of theirs (Lover, Prietess, Hermit and Death) and Race would ask why they were all standing around and they’d tell him the door was locked, in which Race would reply that nothing was ever locked and he’d pick the lock and let them all in.

That’s where they’d find plans. A lot of plans. A years worth. It would be hidden by some effects. Water and dry ice and lights.

A Year Later

These four magicians are books out in Las Vegas where they are doing a spectacular magic show. At the end of which they promise an audience member that they are going to rob their bank. They do. And they give their audience 3.2 million dollars.

That’s when the FBI is tipped off.

Agent Bryan Denton of the FBI is put on this case which he calls stupid and low profile because the people they were trying to catch were magicians. He goes to their hotel with a small team and arrests them. The four horsemen (as they call themselves) are smug and not at all concerned as they are led away in handcuffs in front of a cheering crowd.

Denton easily notices that the group is a bit tight knit. He notices that Jack gravitates towards Race a bit when they are arrested, like he wants to protect him a bit more than the others.

When Denton goes into interrogate them, he’s told that Interpol will be assisting them on this case. That’s when he’s assigned a temporary partner. Hannah Dray. He doesn’t appreciate the help and constantly tells her she’s not needed but brings her into interrogation anyways. But she is the one that connects with the people they interrogate, beginning with the man who was chosen to have his bank stolen.

It is revealed the man was hypnotized during the show and a trigger word will make him believe he is a violinist playing in an orchestra.

Denton and Dray interrogate all the magicians, where they are told by Jack that they have no ground to arrest them because if they did it would be like the FBI was admitting that they believed in magic and they couldn’t possibly do that.

In the end, the four horsemen are released.

Denton immediately questions that decisions where his coworkers ask him what changed and he says he met them.

One of the other agents rushes up to tell Denton that someone recorded the entire show. A Joseph Pulitzer. A former magician who now reveals tricks in TV specials.

Pulitzer meets with them and takes them down to Vegas where the trick was done and shows them how it was pulled off, consisting of the four horsemen targeting the man in the audience and hypnotizing him to believe he is actually in Paris when the truth is They’s robbed a Paris bank prior to the trick.

The four horsemen get on a plane to go to their next show.

Their benefactor, mister Wiesel is traveling with them to New Orleans for their next show. The horsemen joke around with him and Jack, to show Davey up, tries to get a read on Wiesel by simply looking at him and fails miserably.

The FBI and Pulitzer attend the next performance, conveniently taking place during Mardi Gras. The four horsemen start their show and explain that they have four separate acts that they are going to make work together.

It’s a spectacular performance.

Prior to this, the FBI figures out that Jack is a pretty big control freak. He puts trackers on the entire team. Not just the horsemen, but stage hands as well.

What they don’t really know is that it’s more to make sure they’re all okay at all times.

At this show, the horsemen admit that every audience member was a victim of hurricane Katrina and they were tricked by their insurance company. Wiesel insurance.

They rob Wiesel and the Denton immediately runs up to arrest them, showing “freeze” as Jack waves to him, only to be tackled to the ground by hypnotized audience members.

Hannah, Denton and Jack eventually end up in a chase through the crowds of New Orleans. Hannah catches up to Jack for a second, holding him at gunpoint, but letting Jack slip away, not shooting on account of him not having a weapon. Denton gets irritated and chases after him again. Jack eventually loses them with the help of Race who plants Jack’s tracker in Denton’s own pocket.

Denton questions Hannah’s motives later that night and Hannah tells him she’s just doing her job. Eventually she tells him about the eye and some tricks that she had to look so far into the past to figure out.

At some point during their chat, Denton realizes that they planted a bug on him, leading him to discover that Jack had lifted his phone off of him during their interrogation and had planted a clone on him instead.

Denton tells them to leave the bug in the phone, believing themselves to finally be ahead of the horsemen.

Meanwhile the horsemen are panicking back at their hideout in New York where the FBI now knows they are. Jack destroys Denton’s phone as they scramble to execute the plan they were given perfectly.

Race in particular is frantic.

He keeps telling them all that he doesn’t think he can do this and that he doesn’t want something to go wrong. He sees his card. Death. He doesn’t want to die.

Jack eventually lashes out and tells him that if he wants they to stop treating him like he kid and more like an adult, then he needs to start acting like one and just do this. Race is taken aback and almost starts crying, which is when Jack tells him to stay and burn it all, only offering him a small pat on the back as a sort of comfort.

Jack feels bad about it but doesn’t have time to offer Race much else.

Davey, Katherine and Jack all leave Race to destroy the evidence in the apartment they met at.

Denton finds him.

Race tries to sneak away, trying to avoid the FBI, but is forced to engage in a fight that ends up being another epic chase. Race uses his sleight of hand techniques to trap another FBI agent, as well as disgusting his voice to sound like Denton to ward off the rest of the FBI and then fighting by throwing cards, pulling disappearing acts and eventually rushing out of the apartment and sliding down a garbage shoot.

He lifts the keys to an official FBI vehicle where Hannah, who wasn’t allowed to go inside on account of jurisdiction, catches sight of him. He drives away and she commenders a car where her and Denton end up chasing him onto the Brooklyn Bridge where Racer ultimately crashes and dies in a big fiery car crash.

Denton tries to pull him from the burning wreckage, only able to grab onto the plans the kid had been trying to hide from him before the car explodes.

Pulitzer calls Denton up after the whole thing, asking Denton how much he trusts Hannah. Denton then questions her place there once again, accusing her of being the mastermind behind the four horsemen.

Only a day later, the remaining three horsemen release a video on YouTube, where Jack tries to explain that they will be having one more show in Race’s honor as he tries not to cry. Davey has to finish for him.

Denton is all over it, feeling guilty over having a teenager die like that and wanting the horsemen to answer for it.

The FBI use Race’s papers to find the next planned crime scene, where they stop the safe from being driven away and put it on full time guard. Pulitzer shows up and tells them to open it, where it is revealed to them that the safe they have is full of balloon animals and magician’s props.

The FBI heads to the horsemen’s show, Hannah and Denton stay together and try to figure out the horsemen’s play. The horsemen DONT truly gives a show, instead saying goodbye to their audience when the show had hardly even begun and managing to jump off the roof of the building they were on, showering their audience with fake money that had their faces on them.

The FBI finds all the stolen money overflowing out of Pulitzer’s car. They arrest him.

Pulitzer waits in a cell until Denton comes down to visit him, where Pulitzer explains to him that he was framed and that he knows how the horsemen did it. He tells Denton that the safe never left the building it had been in and that someone had planted a mirror in the room to make it look like the room had been empty. And while the FBI had gone after the fake safe, someone broke into the warehouse to steal the money.

It was Racetrack Higgins.

Denton said that that was impossible. That Race had died right in front of him. But Pulitzer would explain easily. The other three horsemen had been on the bridge waiting for him. Davey drove a bus, Jack drove a cab and Katherine drove van. They got Race out of view of the FBI for a second where Davey let an identical car lose and had it crash, a cadaver from the mall at the wheel. Race made it out just fine.

Denton asks Pulitzer who put it all together. Pulitzer says he doesn’t know but it had to have been someone on the inside.

He turns around for only a second to think.

When he turns back, Denton has disappeared. Pulitzer then realizes who had been behind it all.

Meanwhile, Jack and Kath and Davey make their way to Central Park where they find the gate locked only for one Racetrack Higgins to come up and tell them that nothings ever locked.

Jack pulls Race into a hug and apologizes for yelling at him and Race holds on a little tighter than he means to.

This is the only real family he’s ever had.

They make their way to the center of the park towards the carrousel. That’s when they see the mastermind.

The one and only Bryan Denton.

Denton tells them that they did phenomenal and are now apart of the eye.

About a week later, Hannah is back in France at her regular job where she sits on a bench to read the paper. She finds an article from twenty years ago stuck in the middle of it.

And Denton sits down next to her.

He explains that his father was a famous magician who had been called a fraud by Pulitzer who revealed all his tricks. He explained that his family had been tricked out of their money by their insurance company, Wiesel insurance. He tells her that he is the fifth horsemen.

And she tells him that some things are better left a mystery.

I wanna write scene from this. What scenes should I write?

Thank you, Anon! For more AU’s, check out my list!

[lifepros]

#9655

When i was young i saw a need to change my life. So i compiles 16 rules to live by. I would read them every day and try to apply them and work on them. I had copies in places i could see them many times a day. On my fridge, locker, binder and bedroom door.

Accept everything the way it is This is law one. Before you can continue with the other fifteen laws you must accept everything the way it currently is, in your life. Accept your job, accept your relationship - just accept everything the way it is. The only way you can evolve as a human being is to firstly accept that you need to evolve. Accept there are things in your life that are not going to plan, things you feel you deserve more of. When you accept all these things you are in control. To be in control of your life is to have the ultimate power over your destiny and overall purpose here on this planet. Take a moment to think about the way your life currently is, think about your financial situation and think about your social situation and everything else you have going on. Once you've done this, move on to law two.

Take Responsibility You need to take complete 100% responsibility for everything in your life that you thought of in law one. Everything you are today is because of you. You are your own doing. After you've accepted what you are and you've taken responsibility for the entire course of your life you can begin the process of improving areas you are not happy with. Work on yourself, not others Think of a person you are just getting to know. How do they make you feel? Do they make you feel nervous? Is their opinion important to you? Do they make you feel that you've got to impress them at every step? No. They don’t make you feel anything. You make yourself feel this way. There is no need for you to work on them by impressing them, since the issues of you thinking you need to impress them are all internal. It's yourself that is the issue. You've taken responsibility for who you are. Now you can start unwinding the negative parts of your situation. If you spend the majority of your time ‘working' when you're interacting with a people, you're doing it wrong. It should flow. Stop making identity meaning from external events, things or people You are not your car. You are not your house. You are not your money. You are nothing external, (external will be everything that is outside of you), so there is no need to think you are. You need to severe the connection you have with associating yourself as anything external. When you are called a name, let's pick ‘loser', that does not mean you are a loser. This is an external event and therefore has no impact on your inner identity. These things should be shrugged off as mere childish behaviour from the person providing it. If you are struggling with inner identity issues then most likely you are accepting external events as being true and you question yourself. Questioning yourself will allow the external event to grow inside of you like a cancer until you start believing it's an internal identity that you carry. Let go of all external events and issues that you currently carry and from this second onwards, deny all further external events, things or people that judge you in anyway shape or form. You make your inner identity decisions, no-one else. Failure is great; it's the best learning process Without failure you wouldn't be half the person you are now. When you successfully complete something you gain what you want. When you fail something you don't gain what you want. There is only one major difference with success and failure and that when you fail, you learn a great lesson. Learning that lesson in most cases is more important than what you gained for succeeding. This means you should go for that new job, you should do it because whatever happens you will gain something. Compare your progress only with yourself Everyone is different and there will always be people better than you and worse than you, this is just a fact with the amount of people running around today. When you achieve something you should only compare it to your previous achievements and see how far you've come personally. Comparing to other people will put your achievements in the hands of the external and as we covered earlier, you need to stop making internal meaning from external events. If you don't measure up success wise to one of your friends, this doesn't mean you're a failure. It means you are on a different race track and you're running a different pace. You may have a friend who scores 95% on tests. This is not something to beat or challenge and you shouldn't be reading posts such as this to do such a thing, because it will almost always end in failure and as we talked about earlier, failure leads to a great learning. So I'm saving you time by telling you now that the great learning you will learn is that you don't need to compare yourself against other people, only yourself. Evolve constantly Do you read? If you don't, you should. If you do, you should read more. I'm not being mean by saying that to you, I'm just saying that you should evolve constantly. Always move forward towards what you want. Always improve yourself with new ideas and information developed by other people. Always develop yourself with new experience by doing new things. Ever climbed a mountain? Go for it! Evolving constantly should be something you do for yourself. Make sure you remember that you are not evolving for your wife, your boss, your friends or that girl you want. You are evolving for yourself, which brings us to the next law. Stop seeking approval You do not need approval for anything you do. You especially do not need approval from strangers in the sense that you approach them and basically ask for it by feeding them something like "Can I ask your name?" Approval seeking is bad because it shows your inner confidence and how much you lack it. The only person that should give you approval is yourself. When you've done a good job, you should congratulate yourself and pat yourself on the back. Don't do things to achieve approval from others because in the long run you will be disappointed. Make yourself the centre Do you hold any beliefs such as extremely good looking or successful people are above you? Or are not equal to you in any way shape or form? If so, you need to delete that belief. You need to make yourself the centre. This basically means that you are in charge of you. There is no-one above you that has the ability to dictate to you your way of life. Being the centre, everything revolves around you. Most people assume when I say that I'm asking you to be selfish and arrogant. Believe me I'm not saying that. I'm merely saying that you should hold yourself in high regard instead of holding people above you. Everyone else is your equal. When someone looks up at you and thinks you are above them, help them. Show them how they can be the centre too. Do not get an ego around this law. Aim for long term gratification This means that you should completely stop your short term thinking. Short term thinking involves you doing something to gain here and now. For example, did you think this post would have gave you 16 perfectly good laws that'll change your life in 5 minutes as you read? I bet some of you did. Instead of thinking about things short term, think long term. This means you need to plan the next year, 5 years, 10 years or whatever, instead of just planning tomorrow. By planning long term you put yourself in the frame of mind of a successful person and you will enjoy long it more. Short term is easy to plan, easy to get and easy to lose. Long term plans are the plans that last the rest of your life. Never whine or complain The first ten laws were very universal in their use. The last 6 laws will focus more on what you should do in order get what you really want. Never whine or complain. Whining or complaining is the trademark of low status individuals who are not worth much. By whining or complaining you are basically telling everyone who sees you do it, that you have no control over your life and you are completely lost. Eliminating all whining and complaining is the way forward. Control your emotions I don't mean become a robot. I simply mean for you to control your emotions that show weaknesses. To a certain extent, weakness can be helpful but for now I'd just like for you to limit the weak emotions you may show. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous law on no whining or complaining. Be honest and direct This is one of my favourite laws by far. By changing this simple thing about you can change so much in your life. Being honest and direct gives you so much status with people that it's unbelievable. I assume it's because it's not so common these days to find a person who will speak their mind and be completely blunt, honest and direct about anything. This shows complete self-confidence and strength as a man or women to be able to speak your mind without fear of repercussion. Lead As a strong person you are bound by certain traits that you are born with. These traits include dominance, strength and leadership. People are hardwired to notice people who are leaders, they find them very commanding. Being a leader is a massive advantage in the real world since you have the power to command. If you aren't the leader of your social group now, maybe you should create another where you are the leader to test this out. I assure you that leadership is one of the gold coins of life. Don't be boring or predictable Being boring or predictable will leave people wanting more. People want the excitement and uncertainty of you being unpredictable. They find it very thrilling. If you find yourself repeating the same routine day in day out, change, because you are boring. Turn everything into an adventure This again is one of my favourite laws. Being a person of adventure is a tough thing to do, but the rewards are endless. If you treat everything as an adventure not only will the masses notice but they will queue up to go on the adventure with you. This is an extremely important trait to show and this is the final law of the 16 that you need to be successful. Be that person of adventure.

[scientia-rex]

Sick leave in residency: yet another clusterfuck

If you get sick as a resident, everyone on Earth will still try to convince you to come in, except your friends, who may, for instance, have cancer while being pregnant, and be utterly horrified when you mention on Facebook that you’re delivering babies while ill, and ask for the name of your hospital in a way that feels vaguely like they’re threatening to call your superiors and demand that you not be allowed to come in, which, whooooo boy, would be a terrible thing for you! Because she doesn’t understand that all residencies are like this, that sick residents (and sick attendings) are going to work constantly. Everywhere. Everywhere in the US and probably the world. Your doctor is a vector.

(That part might have happened well before COVID-19. You weren’t as much of a direct threat to the health of neonates at that point. You were, of course, still a threat.)

But anyway, if you get sick, people will want you to still come in to work, because the alternative is someone else has to give up their extremely precious limited time off to cover for you, and that sucks. Unless! Unless you’re on a rotation where that isn’t true, in which case it feels like it doesn’t matter, and why the hell SHOULDN’T you stay home? Sure, you still have guilt, but at least it’s not dragging-in-at-risk-colleagues guilt.

But then, if you discover you’re really sick, like sick for two weeks sick, and some days you manage to get in and limp through and some days you don’t, what the fuck do you do?

Because there are two potential consequences of taking sick leave in residency, and one of them is much worse than the other. One of them is that you run out of paid time. That’s bad, and more complicated and annoying because you’re on salary and not paid hourly (if you were, you might be making less than minimum wage), but it’s fine.

The other is that you are required to make up time at the end of your residency. And if you, for instance, just bought a paper wall-hanging calendar and literally numbered every single day until graduation, and can say, for instance, that right now you have 111 days left in second year and then 362 days in third year, that idea might seem terrible! It might seem very terrible and bad. Sure, people extend their residency time all the time, usually for having babies but sometimes for developing rheumatoid arthritis in intern year because of the goddamn incessant physical and mental stress, or because of taking a month for severe depression, just to name some things that might have happened to people other than me.

So if you got sick for two weeks and missed 3 workdays at the beginning of this COVID thing, and had already missed a workday earlier in the year for another respiratory illness, are you going to need to repeat? No. But what if you get sick again? What if the first thing you got wasn’t COVID, but the next thing is?

Well, my program says we accumulate sick leave at the rate of one day per month worked. Which is fine, if what we’re talking about is money. It’s still dumb as hell, because people get sick any old time, not just after they’ve “paid their dues.” But it doesn’t answer my question: Am I at risk of needing to extend my residency?

I asked my site director. He laughed gently and said, “Don’t worry about it!” which is suuuuuper unhelpful. The last time he told me not to worry about something, it was my clinic numbers. The American College of Graduate Medical Education, the body that sets the rules for what residency must entail, says you have to document a certain number of outpatient and inpatient clinical encounters, of a variety of types. I’m on track for inpatient, I know, because our program is wildly inpatient-heavy. Handling nine months of inpatient in first year, then ten in second year and many in third year, is excessive. But I had a feeling I was light on outpatient encounters, and he said not to worry, and he said it at the semi-annual review where he is required to have looked at my actual numbers, and then I pushed even harder and he looked up the numbers and whoops. I’m two hundred short. That’s like fifteen clinic days. To wedge into my schedule. Somewhere.

So I’m not terribly reassured by his reassurance!

“But kristophine,” I hear, “just take your PTO days!” Yes. My vacation paid time off days. Which I have already taken two “weeks” of (we get fifteen days), and have my final five days scheduled. For a week when my husband also requested and got the time off. And then my program has tried to schedule me to work at least two times and maybe three. I keep blocking it. I do not want to give up any of those days with my husband, because the alternative is working in the ICU, and that’s not fucking restful! That is stressful as hell! The attendings are insane! The good ones quit and we’re left with Batshit Crazy Russian Woman who actually screamed at our radiology tech in front of me!

I have tried to look up sources for how much time we can actually miss. I have yet to find a hard and fast resource. The best I can do is: it’s either 20 days in a year, or a month in a year, or your Program Director has to evaluate it and decide.

If it’s 20 days in a year, I can miss one more day between now and the end of June without having to repeat, and that is scary! If it’s a month, I’m probably fine. If it’s “accumulated one day per month worked” I should have like TEN additional days. NONE OF THIS IS AN ANSWER.

I! HATE! RESIDENCY! SO MUCH! We don’t hire enough coordinators to deal with the administrative burden of running this shitshow and the national guidelines and fucked and weird and don’t even always apply to us because we’re a weird program! Right now on paper it looks like I’m working 60 hour weeks but I am usually on a twelve-hour call I can’t document overnight at least one night a week which means I’m actually working like 72 hour weeks, every week, and our program doesn’t believe in “outpatient” rotations. I’m on an outpatient rotation now and I just spend like 24 hours of the last weekend physically in the hospital over two nights and two days. I’m on call again on Wednesday! FUCK MY LIFE.

Anyway!!!! If I have to extend, will it be the end of the world? No. Would I like to know, now, whether I’m likely to have to? Yes, goddamn it!

If you are someone who actually knows--please, no educated guesses--what the requirements are as far as the ACGME is concerned, let me know.

[quirkydeaky]

Life is Real {Chapter One}

ROGER TAYLOR 

how will Roger cope when he finds that his new best friend,  whom he's falling in love with, is slowly dying?

HI! So I’m back and hoping this series will not flop, lol. A few people have been interested in seeing this, so here I am with what people want! If you want, drop a comment or send me an ask and I’ll add you to my tag list. Mwah!

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Also... This story is a multi-part fan-fiction with heavy, mature themes. The Original (and Main) Female Character has a type of Cancer. The type will not be mentioned, but there may be some scenes with heavy implements of medication, treatment or heavily implied scenes at a hospital. 

I DO understand that this topic hits close to home for a lot of people, and if this angst-based series is not something for you, please ignore. Thank you.

[also, send me asks because I need mutuals and also need entertainment!]

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W/C: 2k+

Warnings: Angst. Mentions of personal struggle.

Main Characters: 80s!Roger Taylor, MammaMia2!Lily James (Lillian)

[the start will be a bit slow, but please hang in there! this will begin to swing into place in chapter two, fully being immersed in the plot once we hit chapter three! amazing! love you guys. show love, and enjoy.]

Don't you know... I'm still standing; better than I ever did." Lillian quietly sang, her mind foggy, hazy... cloudy with confusion at the thoughts cramming her brain. "Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid." Why were these thoughts circling in her mind? She was fine, that's what everyone thought. It's what it looked like... looking like she had the normal life, maybe some even classified her as privileged after coming out of Oxford University with a post-graduate degree in English and Creative Writing. One with creatives wonders and endless ideas, she was. Her apartment was a bare representation of her mind that was constantly running at the speed of light, a new idea popping up maybe every five minutes, but, the only real action taken in her apartment was the jingle of her keys as she placed them down on the bench of her kitchen, her shoes she chose to wear that day - their clunk hitting the wall as she slipped them off and walked the rest of her way towards her room where she would immediately strip herself of the day's clothes and swap for an oversized hooded jumper. The twenty-seven-year-old always had the audacity to write about her dream life, always adding to the one project she would constantly come back to, like she always has. It had been her side piece throughout university, her majors and lectures always taking priority, a negative fact of her life, as she always wanted to work on this specific piece. The one about her life, not her life in this reality, but the next. Almost a replication of her life if it could be done over again. Her life would be a buzz in this reality. She'd have a better childhood, not one where her father left at the age of eight after providing a solid year and a half of social and financial abuse, leaving herself and her mother with nothing. They grew from that, though. Her mother found better, and even though Lillian hated the guy at first, they grew to become mutual towards each other. Nothing more. She'd have a sibling or two in this life. She'd always wanted one, always wondered why all of her friends had one and she didn't, an only child. But with life moving quickly and a fast independence building for herself, those friends soon faded from her life when she finally found her dream career she was going to work hard to get anywhere near the end goal. A form of desperation, giving her one of the few things she wanted in this life, which would be the only reward she'd receive in this life, too. But the next, she'd be twenty seven, hopefully engaged. Maybe even be a little risky, perhaps, and have her own child be a part of her bridal party. Her son, a page boy? Her daughter, a flower girl? But this life, her real life, held something different. She was twenty seven, at home in her bare, white coloured walls of an apartment writing this supposed dream she wanted to live; this supposed... fantasy, she wanted to fill. But instead of filling this void with her next dream and fantasy, she was filling it by achieving her goal of becoming educated enough to write a book. So that's what she did. Working one, singular shift a week at the local grocer, this is what she lived off. The basics. That's all she needed. She'd had her own form of independence for a while, ever since she finished school, her mother now an obnoxious brat who had her new man, completely forgetting about her daughter that was still under her care at age seventeen, as that's when she completed that form of education before shipping herself straight off to university. Don't get her wrong, she was glad she got this early offer for Oxford, her grades and teacher's recommendations actually getting her somewhere. Yes, don't take her as an ungrateful woman, glad that she was given somewhere to go after being shipped off to Oxford, her mother providing substantial money to find and buy an apartment. Yes, that's right, buy. Her mother even covered costs of attending university, and she was eternally grateful, but also disappointed she couldn't fulfil her duties of being independent as she wanted to, but she wasn't selfish, either. Ten years later and she could count on one hand how many times she's had a call from her, yet, after promising on those calls that both herself (her mother) and her 'father', would come visit. She couldn't even begin to count on one hand how many times they've come to see her. Zero. And, besides the point, she never had the heart to tell her mum that she was going through some tough things in life, fearing she would be met with words similar to 'stop being silly, you're just uneducated', or even better, 'you just don't know how to go about life', - all before she got to the actual reason she called. But that wasn't it at all, because she was perfectly fine in the aspect of having resources. She had an excellent education, a roof over her head and skills to get her somewhere in life, whether she had much of it left, that is. That's why she didn't have the heart, nor the confidence to tell her mother that she was dying, over the phone. She also feared that her mother wouldn't care. Wouldn't believe her. So here she was, strolling the streets in, the dizziness the succumbs her in the morning, the feeling of nausea that doesn't drift until around lunchtime a lot of the time. She tries to prevent wearing black in pure daylight, it attracts sun and heat, which could make her pale and fragile skin burn, making it turn red and peel at a much faster rate than what the rest of the human race would know. Refraining from wearing black also means the people who walk behind her oddly skinny figure don't have to see the constant fall of her blonde hairs that shed from her head, sticking to the material of her clothes. She doesn't want to freak anyone out. But today, Lillian wore black. She typically wears a long sleeve on the top half and long pants on the bottom half, prevents from scaring people, and more importantly herself away, from her constantly bruising skin, the weakness of her own skin bruising at the slightest touch with a little extra force, for example, hitting her elbow on the kitchen bench. Bruise, almost a few hours later, black and blue skin in a circular shape. With a negative mindset almost half the time, her mental health isn't always they greatest, as she sees how her body is affected from treatment, how strong it's getting as her body somehow, after some rounds, grows weaker. Independence was important to Lillian, as mentioned before. She had one, a real friend who stuck close by for a while, but dropped out of the degree they were in together half way through to move to Scotland. Sophie was her name, but after tears and shouted goodbyes at the airport, a promised call every week soon turned into calls once a month, and then once every birthday, maybe on Christmas day if she were lucky. Lillian doesn't even know if Sophie remembers her. So she didn't tell her. No one knows. It's hard that no one knows about that battles Lillian has with herself every day, fighting through the pain, the surprises and the side effects. She doesn't have an outlet, anyone to go to. Her confidence is drained to the point of no return, so she wouldn't even consider going to visit someone like a counsellor. It's been three years and seven months as of the beginning of July 1980. Today. January 1977, not the nicest way to start off the year when you're diagnosed with cancer and given, at that point in time, a message, one saying to 'live the next five years of your life to the fullest', because the doctor's didn't even know if Lillian would be here for her thirtieth birthday. This really isn't how she imagined her life to go. She knew since she was fifteen that she wanted to be an author. Yes, she was eternally grateful that she had an excellent education, the beginning of her life set up for her. But she also wanted to become an author, whether that meant she published a book and it made two people's bookshelves at home or if it meant she became the most known author in the world for the next ten years. She didn't know, she didn't care, she just wanted to get a book published. Lillian is twenty-seven years old. Her birthday is in April. In all honesty, she has a maximum of two years to get this book out, and if she does, she will die a happy woman, as long as she gets one of her works published. She didn't care if she didn't have a boyfriend, a husband for that matter. Yes, she may have been a little upset at the fact that the chance of her having children was becoming closer to impossible than highly unlikely, but what could she do? She was a woman walking around, her 'cancer tag' of sorts, invisible to the rest of the world, to the naked eye of the people that walk past her on a day-to-day basis. She'll sometimes get bruises on her shoulders when people unnecessarily barge into her. But what she felt right now was a sense of loss of direction. Her recent chemotherapy session was a little stronger than the last, and one of the side effects was a lack of remembering things. Forgetting things all of a sudden. Surroundings, thoughts, all those types of things. This thought overwhelmed her, as she tried to escape her routine of staying home in isolation for most of the week and escape to the different parts of England, wanting to explore. If she didn't have long left, she needed to do it. Lillian really didn't know where she was; picking up the pace as she sees street signs not far ahead through her blurry vision, both from tears and as a side effect. Speed walking was a common thing Lillian did, sometimes to escape the world when it all got too much. Running was something she refrained from doing, the speed her legs were to travel at making her muscles stiff after a while. Another side effect. She knew the city she was in. Norfolk. She was still in England, but she doesn't remember what specific part she's in. This is the difficult part, trying to remember. Slowing down as she enters a street with townhouses, mostly single or double storey, nothing extravagant. A quieter part of the town. Friendly looking. Lillian calms down a little, walking slow with an effort to make her heart rate drop back to average resting rate, so she wouldn't visibly stress once more. But her heart rate only sped up as she realises she's reached the end of the street. A no through road, no way to get to any other part of own unless she turns around, but that was the opposite of what she wanted to do. Her breathing increases, the effort to summon her energy to turn around and walk back to where she originally came from disappears, so she turns back and walks forward towards the door in which she was standing not too far away from. Knocking. A thing that makes her nervous. The chance of having to communicate with someone. She wasn't introverted, god no. She was as extroverted as could be... or, more or so used to be. She believed she still was, but, that was for both her and whoever answered the door to find out. Her breathing may be rapid, and her mouth may be dry, desperate for water. She was dehydrated- but her breathing only increases once more, her mouth becoming impossibly dryer than she's met with a confused face of a man, blonde. He's beautiful, and she knows who he is. She seems to forget everything she's supposed to know as she makes eye contact with this man's piercing blue eyes. She knows who he is. It's Roger Taylor. Drummer. Famous. Queen. "Uhm... Hello?" He asks, clicking his finger in front of the startstruck girls face. "Can I help you?"

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[fuck-customers]

Life at the Ko of Shops

Warning that this may run long and may have a few triggers for emotional abuse.

I worked 14 years at the Ko of Shops. I had the job of receiving and was excellent at it. My record keeping and knowledge was immaculate and I was the equivalent of a receiving manager without actually being considered a manager---which allowed many managers to take things out on me and refuse to listen to me and what I said often. 

I had to look for a new job recently as our company has entered liquidation and bankruptcy at the end of last year and beginning of this year. It's not so much the fault of the store or the company per se---I'm going to blame it on something we'll refer to as the Captials of the Sun. They bought us in 2005 with the intention of us ending up here all along. As it was a leveraged buy out, we were forced to put up everything for collateral. To make matters worse they put us in the hole further by selling our land and buildings. It turned us into renters. The Ko of Shops suddenly found itself in the hole to the tune of $1.2 BILLION dollars. Of course they kept this from us lowly store workers. None of this came out until the house of cards collapsed. On top of all that, the Capitals of the Sun took out dividends to the tune of $179.5 million rather than paying the Ko of Shops bills. We're not the only company the Capitals of the Sun has done this to. We're number 5 in TWO YEARS. They own 360+ other companies and they will keep doing this to them. 

In the wake of this, it makes me look back in anger. Throughout my whole time there, it took me TEN YEARS to earn a dollar more an hour in pay than when I started. TEN YEARS. We had several years where we were told there would be "no merit increases" because the company couldn't afford it. IF we did get a raise, it would be (and I wish to God I was kidding) TWO CENTS more an hour to FIFTEEN CENTS more an hour. They were far too busy paying the Captials of the Sun than actually valuing our hard work and dedication that allowed them to rip money out for the shadowy investors to buy yachts or private islands or whatever it is greedy rich people buy. It infuriates me that we spent all this time being woefully underpaid and unappreciated simply so the Capitals of the Sun could rake it all in.

That being said, that isn't what this submission is really about. It's about the nonsense and emotional scarring I faced during the last eight years or so especially of this job. It never mattered to them how competent I was or how many times I saved the store's ass when corporate or the regional loss prevention came to investigate. I constantly faced being lectured by my direct manager---I called it being "little roomed" because he would drag me into my office and "mentor" me until I was in tears. I can't count how many times this happened. I will humbly admit that a few times were my fault and I asked for it by my stressed out reaction behaviors at times, but most of the time it was not my fault and I would be taken into the room to have another talking to. If it wasn't him, it was the store manager refusing to listen to me when I told him something or how to do something or why I was doing something a certain way. Rather than just listen to what I was saying about MY area, he would routinely talk over me. Two weeks before I quit, he actually had the gall to tell me, and I quote, "You know your job---for the most part." Really? He has NO idea how to do my job at all and never tried to know. It was beneath him to know. And if it wasn't him, the other manager in the store would routinely poach me and shove me into his area to do his crap---but only recently as the first manager in this had left and wasn't yanking me away from my detail heavy area to "help the rest of the store because everyone thinks you're not doing enough." This last manager also had the gall to tell me that I have to simply accept either vendors or customers yelling at me rather than trying to help me deal with them. Essentially, that tells me that in his view my job was to take abuse from all comers as a matter of course. That's despite them telling us as a team repeatedly to call a manager if someone treated them like crap. 

A year ago one of my coworkers contracted cancer and died. She was the only other person in the store that knew anything about my job at all. When she fell ill, management did not find someone else to train as backup. It was NOT my responsibility or call to name that person. It clearly stated that in the description for that backup person---to be named and trained by management. Nope. No one was picked. I had three weeks of vacation to use. I ate it all---well almost all. I took one weekend off to attend a function before she got sick. After that, I trembled at the thought of fighting for my vacation and the battle that would break out. If I asked for time off, I would be lectured about the fact there's no one to cover for me. So, I just didn't fight. It might not have been a wise decision, but at the time I just didn't want to be lectured or "mentored" or told why they couldn't have someone and how other areas of the store are either more important or as taxed in staffing. So I worked almost a whole year without any time off. I don't blame the coworker we lost. I blame management for NOT doing their damn job to help alleviate the issue her absence created. I also don't regret pushing for and organizing a team to celebrate her life and find a cure for cancer for a local charity drive. 

I can't tell you how many times I've gone home in tears and in total frustrated stress. I can't tell you how many times I ended up with a huge pit in my stomach and dreaded going to work every day.. Part of my story is my own fault---I stayed way too long and didn't try to get out because I needed a job. I live in a rural area so this was really the only option I could see to make sure I paid bills, etc. It was the devil I knew and I didn't want to have to start over or find something else or risk worse---being fired and not having a back up ready. So I put up with it for years.

We're not even talking about the normal retail BS. Black Friday turned into marathon shifts without being asked or consulted. I would be forced in on Saturdays after working all week already for that week. I would be put in charge of the carryouts through the door only to be told I was being lazy and not doing enough to help the store---despite freezing or being overwhelmed. Often, I was expected to do three jobs all at once and if I ever expressed any frustrations in any way---reasonably or otherwise---I would end up in the "little room." Its unreal to know that I spent so long in a store that didn't bother to care about me or my coworkers. 

The only reason I stayed that long beyond the need to pay bills was my other coworkers. They were in it with me and knew---well for the most part---how bad I had it and how bad they were treated as well. They got it. We would all vent when possible---just so we wouldn't go crazy. I will miss them the most. I worked with a couple for the entire duration of my stay. One is a character of a man that made the job at least bearable with his antics and personality. Others came later and we became close friends that supported one another through thick and thin. I plan on staying in touch with all of them now that I have officially quit. 

I actually have a happy ending. I quit because I have a new full time job starting immediately. It may actually pay me a full dollar more an hour before too long, which in the scheme of things isn't a whole lot in comparison to the money the big cheeses of the Ko of Shops will get in their parachute or the Captials of Sun will rob before the curtain finally totally drops, but if it is enough for me to pay my bills, help my family, and go to graduate school online, then it's better than anything ever. I look forward to working for something meaningful and helping my community through it. I'm scared to death of this change and yet I am excited, too. 

For all of you still trapped in retail or other service work, you can get out. Do something. Find your path. Take my story as a lesson. Don't just stay and put up with it. These companies don't care about you or you families. They just want to steal as much money as they can destroy the livelihoods you rely upon. Do something else. You can get out.

I did. 

[winnipegpatty]

We’re Fatally Flawed | five | s.m. series

a/n: this is 5.4k of cute shit, and i’m in love with it. please send me feedback. catch up with the masterlist in my bio, and feel free to support me on ko-fi if you like what you read! <3

“We are always in motion Like the winds, the tides, the ocean Everyday I'm born again I wake up I feel that second wind We're gonna be alright, we're gonna be alright”

At the age of nineteen, Mandy hadn’t been on many dates. She’d spent most of her teenage years listening to punk bands and attending Warped Tour with her best friend Valerie. But at nineteen Mandy had also been in college for a semester, and felt like her life was quickly changing forever. She was pursuing a teaching certificate, and he style was changing everyday. She’d lost some of her punk flair for a more reserved, comfortable style. She’d started researching child psychology and wondered more and more about how she may one day change lives for the better.

It was in her first psychology class where she met James. He was handsome, with short, styled blonde hair. His eyes were a bright blue that were captivating, and Mandy wasn’t quite sure she could trust him. But when he’d asked her on a date, there was a part of her that wanted to say yes simply because she hadn’t been on a date since coming to college. And that’s part of the big college experience, right? Dating, going out, partying? Some part of her, admittedly primitive but nevertheless there, felt like she may have been missing out on some grand life experience.

So she’d yes. And on a Friday evening, in the heart of downtown Toronto, Mandy felt what it was like to be completely broken for the first time. When she’d arrived at a movie theatre, expecting to meet an eager James. She’d thought, maybe they’d get a popcorn to share and half way through the movie maybe he’d kiss her. That’s what people always did in the movies anyway. But it became increasingly apparent as their agreed upon time and spot grew closer. Fifteen minutes. Ten minutes. Surely by five minutes? And then...ten minutes late. Twenty minutes late. Mandy was sure the previews were probably over. Maybe the movie had even started. But, she’d been standing outside of the theatre for a half hour, and it was embarrassing to turn around.

So she did what any independent, strong, slightly hurt girl would do. She marched up to the ticket window in her brand new black platform boots and ordered a ticket for the Fault in Our Stars. They’d planned on seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier. But, if Mandy wanted to watch a romance movie then she fucking would. The movie had been out for weeks, and had been moved to one of the smallest theatres. When she entered, the movie had just begun. From the back, she could see another person sitting towards the middle, but no one else. Another lonely soul. She wondered for a moment what their sob story must be. Did it rival her own? Mandy took a seat a few rows in front of the guy, and leaned back into her chair, hoping to absorb herself in the story of Augustus and Hazel and forget for even a moment about herself.

It just wasn’t in the cards for her.

Hazel was sitting in The Heart of Jesus, which Mandy was pretty sure she probably couldn’t say without a trademark at this point, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked to her left to see a boy, slender in figure with boyish curls and a sweet smile, hovering near her.

“Any one sitting here, or do you happen to be as lonely as me?” His lips lifted slightly as he motioned to the seat next to Mandy.

She let out a soft laugh, feeling somewhat embarrassed at being called out on her loneliness, but she really couldn’t deny it.   

“Nope, it’s just me.”

“Two makes company,” the boy offered.

Mandy smiled, but didn’t respond as the boy walked around the row of seats and into her own. For a moment he stood by Mandy, still not sure of taking the seat.

“I’m Shawn.” He offered his hand to her as he finally took a seat.

“Mandy,” she shook his hand, then looked at the screen, “And that’s Hazel Grace. She has cancer.”

“Damn that must suck,” Shawn muttered, also turning to the screen.

Mandy chuckled and just whispered a ‘yeah’ under her breath.

Being the only two people in the movie theatre was pretty great because you could laugh and talk as much as you wanted.

“What a fucking bitch,” Shawn shouted, completely outraged at the way Monica had dumped Isaac.

And then they’d gone to egg the house, and Mandy about lost her mind.

“You’re daughter’s done a great injustice, and we’ve come here seeking revenge.” Gus had said when they decided to egg Monica’s house.

“Oh, that’s a good one. I’ll have to use that one day,” Shawn laughed and Mandy laughed along with him.

And then they’d gone to Amsterdam, and Gus told Hazel Grace his cancer had returned, and Shawn cried. Mandy cried too, but it wasn’t as loud.

“They’re so young,” Shawn whispered to her.

“I know,” Mandy hiccuped lightly. “Why the fuck do people like this movie?”

They walked out of the theatre together that night with each other’s numbers, red eyes, and bleeding hearts for Hazel Grace and Gus.

__

“Mandy?” Shawn whispered.

They were laying in bed, Friends playing on the tv across the room, and Mandy was dozing between consciousness and a blissful sleep. Her sleeping since Shawn had told her about the tour hadn’t been stellar, and she didn’t even want to think about what was going to happen when he was gone.

She hadn’t slept alone for two years.

Shawn was leaving in two days on a red eye out of the country. She wasn’t ready, but she knew it was coming with or without her permission.

“Mandy?” Shawn whispered again, this time nudging her lightly.

“Hmm?” She asked, not asleep but at that point when you’re right on the edge and really don’t want to be bother.

“Come with me.” Shawn said.

“I’m not going anywhere, this bed is warm, and I’m going to sleep in the next ten minutes,” Mandy said in a monotone.

“No,” Shawn stammered, “Come with me. On tour.”

There was a pause – and not like a good pause, an accessing pause – before you Mandy sat up in the bed.

“Excuse me?” She asked, pushing her back up against the headboard.

“I know we said that you’d visit and I’d visit and we’d talk. I just, I don’t want that for us Em. I want to be with you, in person, together. So come with me.”

Mandy scoffed, she actually scoffed.

Crossing her arms, she looked at Shawn before saying, “I can’t.”

“I know,” Shawn whined, “You have a job, but I’ll be making money Mandy! We can afford it. We’ve saved, tour covers the costs of living. You can quit and come with me, and we can be together.”

“No, Shawn, I can’t quit.” Mandy responded, her tone reeking of her annoyance with Shawn.

They’d talked about this, discussed it like the adults they were, and now Shawn just wants her to up and quit her job to be with him? It wasn’t happening.

“Come on, Mandy,” Shawn groaned, throwing his hands up in a frustrated gesture. “It’s just a job, and you can get a new one when we come back. There’s always going to be another job for a teacher.”

“Shawn it is the middle of the school year, my students rely on me, and I cannot just leave them because my boyfriend doesn’t think he can live without me for a few months.”

“Thirteen months, Mandy. Thirteen. It’s more than a few,” Shawn’s voice rose slightly. “You realize, that thirteen months is getting quite close to half of the time we’ve even been in a committed relationship. We’re not talking about a short vacation or a small business trip. We’re talking about over an entire year Mandy. And I want this relationship to work, and I just don’t know that it will last a entire year of long distance.”

“Winter break is in less than two months Shawn,” Mandy reasoned. “I’ll see you then. I’ll buy tickets right now if you want me to. We’ll be long distance for a few months, sure, but we can handle it. And then the summer will be here before you know it. I am willing to work on this Shawn. This is important to me. You are important to me. But I cannot quit my job. I will not give up on the kids. I won’t give up on Jack right as I’ve begun making progress. You’re important, Shawn. God you’re so important to me, you have no idea. But my job and my dreams are important too. Please, please understand this.” Mandy pleaded with him. “Please,” she whispered finally.

Shawn stared at the ceiling for a minute, feeling dejected. He knew Mandy was right, but the sinking feeling in his gut told him they weren’t going to last even a month of tour. He told himself that was just his anxiety talking to him. He did his best to push those thoughts away.

“I’m sorry, babe,” Shawn resigned. “You’re right, and I had no right to ask you to do something like that.” He leaned over the middle of the bed and lightly placed a kiss on Mandy’s lips, before he turned away from her. Shawn laid down, covering himself with his blanket, and turning off his bedside lamp. “Goodnight, Mandy.” He mumbled.

Shawn tried his best to fall to asleep instead of falling into the anxiety attack that felt like it was lingering at the door, waiting for his guard to come down.

___

Dating Shawn had been like a dream, consisting of everything girls grew up hoping for. Over the five months they’d been dating, Mandy had seen Shawn transition out of business college and into a budding musician. He’d gotten his lip pierced, which Mandy found to be incredibly attractive. And his once small gages had grown two sizes. His curly hair had grown, and now his curls flopped in front of his face lightly if they weren’t styled. He’d switched from wearing slacks and dress shirts to torn band tees and ripped black jeans. Mandy wasn’t sure if Shawn was just becoming who he’d always wanted to be, or if she’d taken him to one to many punk shows on the weekends and started to rub off on him.

She couldn’t really bother to care though, because she loved any version of Shawn that he wanted to be.

Five months wasn’t much time, but Shawn knew it was enough time to fall in love. Because that’s exactly what happened to him when he met Mandy. He had no idea what had possessed him that night at the theatres to tap on her shoulder and take a seat next to her, but he thanked his lucky stars everyday for it. It was around the fourth month when he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he loved her. There was no momentous moment that brought his attention to the feeling.

It was just like any other day. It was warm outside, which was something Canadians didn’t get frequently. It was early August and there was a carnival in town in his hometown of Pickering. He’d made the drive with Mandy on a Saturday morning. Classes hadn’t started up again for her, but Shawn wasn’t going back this semester anyway. The drive was quiet, peaceful. Mandy had her window rolled down, and the wind was blowing her hair in her face. She never seemed to mind though, a quiet smile on her lips as she watched the buildings of toronto turn into trees. The sun was shiny onto her tight brown curls, making them appear lighter than they were. Over the four months, her freckles had become more pronounced than when they’d first met. Her thick, round, metal rimmed glasses sat perched on her nose, and she just looked like a dream to Shawn. She was perfect to him.

When they’d stepped out of the car, the carnival in full swing, Shawn looked to Mandy and smiled. She was a few inches taller than usual, in her favorite black platform docs. Her plaid skirt was short and her black long sleeve crop top finished off the look. Shawn was always stunned by beauty, sure, but what made Mandy special was her confidence in wearing whatever she wanted. She’d show up to a punk rock concert, not a single piercing or tattoo on her body, feeling completely at ease where other may feel intimidated. She’d show up to class decked out in fishnet tights, a polka dot red dress, and three inch platforms. She didn’t give a fuck what others thought about her. And Shawn admired that about her.

“Where to first?” Shawn asked, reaching for Mandy’s hand as they walked into the sea of people.

It was like breathing in childhood nostalgia. The small of corn dogs and cotton candy, kids running around screaming with balloons in their hands, couples kissing sweetly behind game booths. Carnival workers hollered out at passer bys trying to tell tickets, trinkets, or the like.

Mandy hummed, “Funnel cake.”

“Funnel cake,” Shawn repeated happily.

With their hands tangled together between them, they set off for funnel cake. Shawn paid, and they found a plastic table to sit at while they talked softly about Mandy’s next semester of school. Shawn’s left hand rested on Mandy’s thigh as they both ate. Mandy sucked the powdered sugar off her fingers, and rested her head on Shawn’s shoulder as he ate the last few pieces.

“Wanna go ride the sketchy death machines?” Mandy’s smiled into Shawn’s shoulder as she mumbled the words, referring to the carnival rides.

Shawn’s chest shook with his laughter and he nodded, “I’d love to ride a sketchy death machine with you Mandy Stein.”

She giggled sweetly, “That just might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me before.”

“Well, I’d hope so,” Shawn rolled his eyes, “I just said I was willing to die with you. It better earn me some boyfriend points.”

Mandy peered up at Shawn through her mascara covered lashes, “You already have all the boyfriend points you could possibly need.”

Shawn beamed down at her, lightly kissing her lips, tasting the sugar on her tongue as their breath intermingled. As they pulled away, Shawn squeezed her thigh before patting it lightly. “Okay, up. Time to die.” He said sarcastically through another laugh.

“Off we go!” Mandy shouted, as she dramatically skipped off to the ticket booth.

If Shawn thought Mandy looked beautiful in the sunlight of the car ride down, then he wasn’t prepared for her beauty at sunset. They’d managed to spend the day at the carnival, sharing kisses, playing rigged games designed to make them lose, and eating enough sweets to make someone hurl. It was perfect. It was beautiful. They were getting tired, but Mandy was determined to ride every ride one more time before they could leave. Now, the sun was a golden orange and the sky was a blushy pink. They were buckling into a ride that would lift them high and swing them in a circle (a glorified swing for adults is how Shawn described it, but Mandy said that took the fun out of things). Their legs began to dangle as the ride lifted off the ground, and Mandy squealed in anticipation in the feeling of her gut dropping. Rides like this gave her such an adrenaline rush, and she’d stay on them all day and night if she could just chase that feeling forever. Her short curls blew backwards and her legs swung freely. A look of bliss swept her face, and Shawn smiled contently, knowing in this moment that he really did love her. He knew-- not because her beauty, though it was breathtaking-- but because he’d do anything to see that look of happiness again. He’d do anything to put that look on her face, and assure that she was always as happy and free as she was in this moment.

As the ride came back to the ground, Shawn felt more grounded than he ever had in his life. Grounded with Mandy by his side, he ran his hands through her hair and tugged lightly on one of her particularly tight curls. She looked at him, thinking he wanted her attention. Her eyes were bright, and Shawn smiled down at her. While they waited for the ride attendant to come around and unbuckle the bar, Shawn took the moment to appreciate Mandy. He cupped his hands on her cheek and leaned in to kiss her softly.

He pulled way, his lips inches from hers and whispered, “You’re beautiful, I hope you know.”

A blush ran up her fair skin, and Shawn loved that. Loved that she blushed just as wildly and easily as he did.

“You’re beautiful,” He said again, this time with a slight fire in his belly and his tone stronger, “And I love you.”

A small gasp slipped from Mandy’s lips, puffing over Shawn’s lips.

“You love me?” She whispered.

“With everything in me.”

“I love you too, Shawn.” She push forward, connecting her lips to Shawn in a passionate kiss. He nipped on her lower lip and she moaned ever so lightly. He pulled away, leaving her breathless, her lips plump and red.

“I love you so much, Mandy Stein. I could never come up with the words to make you understand.”

__

Shawn leaves for tour tomorrow, and Mandy was determined to make the most amazing, not at all sad, memorable day that he’s ever had. She wanted it to be a day they could look back on and smile and remember fondly. Not a day that they thought back on and were sad. There would be no tour talk today. No talk about distance. Or missing each other. No, this was going to be an exciting day filled with adventure and memories.

And if it wasn’t, so help Mandy, she would find a way to turn back time because a bad day simply wasn’t an option.

She may have an entire day full of activities planned that Shawn had no idea about, but could she really be blamed? She had no idea when would see Shawn next, and she wanted to remember this day. She woke up at six, which was unusual for a Sunday morning, but she had a plan to execute. She started with a quick shower, styling her curls into a top bun to keep it out of her face. Then she headed to the kitchen to fix Shawn’s favorite breakfast, french toast and bacon. It was around seven when she heard Shawn shuffling down the hall. He entered the kitchen with a yawn, scratching his stomach like a fucking chimpanzee scratching itself. But he looked cute, his eyes still heavy with sleep.

“Why’d you get up so early?” Shawn asked through another round of yawns.

“Wanted to make you breakfast,” Mandy said as Shawn leaned his large frame onto hers, causing a laugh to spill out of her. “Get off of me you fucking giant.”

Shawn mumbled, “Don’t wanna.”

He wrapped his arms lazily around her waist, nuzzling his nose into her neck.

“Ugh, you’re such a baby koala when you’re tired.” Mandy adjusted under Shawn’s heavy embrace, to be slightly more comfortable under his weight.

“You’re supposed to love it when I’m clingy and cuddly,” Shawn said with a pout on his lips that Mandy could feel on her neck.

She laughed softly, “I love everything about you babe, even when you’re clingy as fuck.” She pinched his love handle softly and jumped a bit, muttering a quiet ‘hey’.

“So can I eat this food? Or is just for show?” Shawn asked, kissing Mandy’s clavicle quickly as he popped off her, standing up straight. Mandy straightened up from the release of Shawn’s body on hers.

“Of course, eat as much as you’d like.” Mandy smiled, pushing up on her toes to kiss Shawn on the lips lightly. “And good morning.”

Shawn returned Mandy’s smile, “Good morning.”

They sat next to each other, eating quietly in the peaceful atmosphere Mandy had tried so hard to create.

“So, I had something I kind of wanted to do today,” Shawn said as he finished his last slice of french toast.

“Oh?” Mandy asked, not giving indication that she’d already had the day planned completely.

“Yeah, I…” Shawn stuttered for a moment. “Well, I don’t know if you’d be up for it, but I was just thinking maybe it would be cool.”

He continued to ramble for a moment before Mandy finally interrupted, “Shawn, stop rambling. What are you talking about?”

A light blush covered Shawn’s cheeks, “I have an idea for a tattoo I want.”

Mandy’s brow creased, “And you want to do it today? Why today?”

Shawn scratched his neck for a moment, “Well...I want you to get the tattoo too,” Shawn trailed off.

“What?”

“Like...I want to get matching tattoos.”

“Shawn, I don’t have tattoos…”

Shawn nodded, “I know, and I know you can’t have them at school...so I thought maybe you could like...get it on your shoulder or leg or something that’s covered by clothes.”

Mandy stayed quiet for a moment, thinking about Shawn’s words. “You’ve really thought about this?”

Shawn nodded quickly. “If you don’t want to that’s okay. But like...I think it would be nice. It’s like a reminder that we’re going to be waiting for each other...” Shawn’s blush deepened, “I don’t know maybe it’s stupid.”

Mandy shook her head, placing a hand on Shawn’s thighs. “It’s not stupid. If that’s important to you, then I’ll consider it. What’s the design?”

Shawn’s face lit up with hope. “Hold on!” He was beaming as he stood up from the table and bounded back to the bedroom. He came running back with his phone moments later. “Okay, so like I was thinking this.” Shawn pulled up a picture on his phone of a bird.

Mandy eyed him, “A...bird? You want me to get a bird tattooed on my body for the rest of eternity?” She was skeptical. She thought he’d have something romantic in mind...not a fucking bird.

Shawn chuckled. “Not a bird...a sparrow.”

As if that were better?

“Shawn...that’s a fucking bird.” Mandy said pointing accusingly at the photo.

“It’s a sparrow, and it’s cute,” Shawn pouted again. “It has a meaning. It’s not just a bird.”

Mandy rolled her eyes at his adorable pout. Even with a lip ring, gages, and a tattooed chest, he somehow looked like a little boy asking his mom to buy him candy. “Okay, well, what is it?”

“The sparrow is one of the only bird that remembers it’s home.” Shawn said, his eyes lit up with excitement. “And sailors used to get this tattoo before going on a long voyage, it was the sign of someone who’s a traveler and away from home a lot, but that they remembered their true home.” Shawn’s lips lifted slightly as he looked at Mandy smiling. “And well, Toronto is great and all, and sure Pickering used to be home...but Mandy,” his breath ghosted Mandy’s lips and she did her best not to shiver, “You’re my home now. And I don’t want to forget that, and I don’t want you to forget that I’m always going to be coming home.”

“Well, shit,” Mandy breathed. “When did you become a fucking poet.”

Mandy’s plans for the day flew out the window as they got dressed together, going to a tattoo parlor down the road that Shawn loved.

“Anthony is literally the best in Toronto,” Shawn said as they walked into the parlor, nervous energy pouring out of him.

“Okay babe,” Mandy laughed after squeezing his hand.

“Hey Shawn!” Anthony hollered at Shawn from a chair where he was finishing a tattoo for someone. “Be with ya in just a minute, man.”

“Thanks Anthony,” Shawn smiled.

Fifteen minutes later, Anthony was wrapping the person’s tattoo and was giving after care instruction before he came to greet Shawn with a shake and a clap on the back.

“Been a while, man.” Anthony smiled. “What can I do for you today?”

“Looking to get two tattoos. One for me and one for Mandy,” he gestured to Mandy.

Anthony nodded, “Can absolutely help you with that. You have an idea? How big are we talking?”

Shawn reached into his pocket pulling out his phone, showing the picture. “I’m going to get it here,” Shawn pointed to his right hand. “About this big,” he made a circle that took up a good portion of his hand.

Anthony nodded, turning to Mandy, “And yours?”

“Same one,” Mandy said quietly.

“Same place?” he questioned.

She shook her head, “No, uh,” she looked up at Shawn, questioning. “I think on my thigh, here.” Mandy gestured to her left thigh, just right below where her underwear would end.

Anthony nodded. “Okay, about the same size?”

Mandy nodded.

He walked behind the counter, opening a book of appointments. He muttered a few things to himself for a moment before looking up to Shawn. “You okay with coming back in about two hours? I have enough time to get you both in back to back then. Otherwise, we’ll have to do them separately.”

“Yeah, that works.” Shawn smiled.

“Okay, be back at eleven-thirty and we’ll be ready. Send me that picture so I can prepare a bit.”

Shawn nodded, sending the picture to Anthony’s number. They’d worked together enough that this had become a routine.

“See you,” Shawn said as they walked out of the parlor.

Mandy smiled, thinking she could probably execute a few of her plans with Shawn before they’d have to be back for the tattoo.

“Okay, my turn now.”

Shawn smiled, holding her hand tight. If he knew anything about Mandy Stein, he knew she probably had an entire schedule planned for the day. Her type A and teacher personalities sometimes came together to become controlling of time spent together. He’d been a little worried about Mandy being okay with them just getting tattoos on a whim like this, but she was doing so well at going with the flow.

“Where to, Ms. Stein.” Shawn smiled, “I know you have a million things you want to do.”

Mandy’s cheeks heated, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Shawn hummed, unconvinced.

Mandy refused to give any clues as to just how planned the day had been prior to Shawn’s interruption. But she really didn’t mind. If Shawn was happy, she was happy. She led them to High Park, just wanting to go for a walk and enjoy his presence. She hadn’t wanted this day to be full of tourist adventures or excessive experience after another. She just wanted to spend the day doing all of the things she and Shawn had been doing with each other every weekend for the past three years. She wanted to remind him of their life together.

“You wanna go to a movie tonight?” Mandy asked as they walked through the garden.

“Sure,” Shawn shrugged, not really concerned.

“Cineplex is having a throwback weekend,” Mandy said mindless as she stopped to look at a particularly patch of daisies.

“Yeah?” Shawn questioned.

Mandy hummed, “Thought we could see The Fault in our Stars again,” she replied quietly.

Shawn nodded, “I’d love that.”

They returned to the parlor not too long after they’d eaten an early lunch.”

Mandy got on the chair first, nervous and ready to get the everything over with.

“Okay, just show me where,” Anthony asked.

Mandy pushed up the left side of her flowing yellow sundress, pointing to the area on her leg she wanted it. Anthony went to work preparing her skin and the needle as Shawn sat in a chair next to Mandy.

“How much is this going to hurt?” She asked Shawn quietly.

“You’ll be okay.” Shawn smiled.

“You might have to sing to me.” Mandy laughed lightly, nerves keeping her on edge.

“Happily.”

Anthony swiped over Mandy’s thigh with a pad and rubbing alcohol. The feeling cold on her skin, as Mandy felt her muscles tense. Anthony pulled out  razor, unwrapping it from plastic, and then quickly shaved the peach fuzz hair off Mandy’s thigh.

“Okay, Mandy,” Anthony spoke, “Which direction do you want the bird to face.”

Mandy placed the bird the way she thought it would look best, and Anthony got to work tracing the stencil onto her skin. Shawn and Mandy talked quietly, just going about business as usual as if someone weren’t coloring on Mandy’s skin.

“Okay, just going to get the machine ready, and then we’ll be ready.”

Mandy breathed deeply, trying not to think about it.

Shawn chuckled lightly as Mandy pushed her head against the chair, closing her eyes.

“This isn’t funny, Mendes.” She grumbled.

“It actually is. You always act so tough, listening to your punk music, and going head first into a mosh pit, but here you are scared of a little needle. It’s pretty funny.”

Mandy’s teeth gritted, “Needles are sharp.”

Shawn laughed lightly.

“You’re lucky I fucking love you,” She said with her eyes still closed.

“You’re right, I am lucky.”

“Okay, I’m ready. I’ll do the outside of the bird before doing the inside. There’s very little shading involved, so it really shouldn’t take too long.”

Mandy squeezed her eyes tighter, “Okay.”

And Anthony was off, diligently pressing the needle in and out of Mandy’s skin. Anyone who said tattoos didn’t hurt were lying to themselves because this hurt really fucking bad. Mandy grumbled a bit under her breath, doing her best to breathe.

“Want me to sing?” Shawn asked with a glint of humor in his voice.

“Wipe the fucking smile off your face first,” Mandy said without even opening her eyes.

“No idea what you mean,” Shawn’s eyes gleamed, not that Mandy could see.

“I know what your smug voice sounds like. So either shut the fuck up or sing a song.”

Shawn laughed, thinking through songs he could sing. He finally settled on a song, starting the verse of End Game.

“Really? Taylor Swift?” Mandy asked, not able to help the small smile on her lips.

“You got beef? Take it up with T Swift. She’s an icon.” Shawn laughed, continuing to sing the song.

I wanna be your end game. I wanna be your first string. I wanna be A team. I wanna be your end game. I don’t wanna touch you. I don’t wanna be just another ex love you don’t wanna see. I don’t wanna miss you, like the other girls do. I don’t wanna hurt you.

Shawn eventually transitioned out of Taylor Swift and moved into a Shawn Mendes original. Mandy smiled at the sound of his sweet honey like voice filling her ears, imagining she was laying in their bed at home and not in downtown Toronto in a tattoo parlor. She’d never get tired of hearing Shawn’s voice sing to her like she was the only person that mattered in the world.

“Okay,” Anthony said sometime later, Mandy almost having forgotten he was even there. “Just gonna bandage it up real quick.”

The next thing she knew, she was trading places with Shawn, and Anthony was prepping Shawn for his matching tattoo.

“See?” Shawn smiled, “Not so bad, babe.”

“Whatever.” Mandy mumbled, but smiled back.

Shawn, of course, took his tattoo like a champ despite the fact that Mandy knew it had to hurt like a bitch to get a tattoo right on the bones of your hand. Shawn didn’t even complain once though. Mandy and Shawn and Anthony chatted idly as Anthony worked with the confidence of a pro. Once Shawn’s hand was bandaged like Mandy’s own tattoo, they went to the counter to pay.

“Send me pics of it when it’s healed up,” Anthony said to Shawn as they started to leave the parlor, “And don’t be a stranger!”

“Thanks, man!”

They walked out of the parlor, Mandy holding Shawn’s left hand.

“So it’s official,” Shawn smiled, “We’re an annoyingly cheesy couple with matching tattoos and call each other their homes.”

“I hate us,” Mandy grumbled.

Shawn bumped her hip as they walked down the street, “Well, I love us.”

She loved them too, really. Even if being a stereotypical cutesy couple went against every rebel fiber in her body. She’d conform to every societal norm if Shawn asked her to.

tagged: @fourtristattoos @shavvnmendcs @unhealthyobsessionwithmarvel @justanotherfangurl272 @yourwonderbelle @babyangelshawn @rosecth

[nickygrows]

Pass the Honey

By Nicky Jones

My grandfather was a Beekeeper. Sometimes his breath would smell like honey from the honeycomb he would chew. Memories of childhood can be so elusive. The bigger the space between then and now, the more difficult it can be to conjure the portal that allows us to peer through time and look back on those days. I remember being intrigued by a peculiar device that my grandfather owned. Maybe I was seven.

It was a little hand-held contraption made of tin. It had a small cylindrical chamber with a smokestack and a bellows attached. As a child, it would seem very odd to me when my grandfather would gather pine straw from the yard, stuff it down inside this tin man accordion of sorts, and light it on fire. Once it was burning and smoking quite nicely, he would pump the bellows, which would push thick plumes of smoke out through the smokestack. It was enchanting to watch. What I describe to you is called a bee smoker. It does just what the name implies. It smokes bees. Since smoke happens to make bees really calm, this is an important beekeeper’s tool. You can actually go and get one of these nostalgic little devices right now on Amazon for around fifteen dollars. The design has remained unchanged through the decades. In contrast, much has changed with me.

Image by Alexander Wild.

I have lived half a lifetime since my childhood and my grandfather’s bees. Along the path, I lost and found bits of myself. I lost my grandfather, or at least lost touch with him a few times along that stretch of years. Then I finally lost him for good about ten years back. A quick fisticuffs with cancer and he was gone. What can never be lost is the near druidic respect for the natural world that my grandfather imparted in me. My grandfather the beekeeper. My grandfather who was also a welder and a veteran, a woodsman and a poet, and an old-timey gardener who was many years ahead of his time with his composting; but that’s for another discussion.

So I made the decision to have bees this coming spring 2019. It was actually more my wife’s idea than mine. We were standing in the kitchen just after the new year, enjoying some bread & butter pickles from the garden and talking. “So what’s next for us in the gardens this year?” she asks. “Bees?” My eyes lit up! Did she just say Bees?! She was completely unaware that I had been on a quest that very week to find us some local honey. It was not a simple quest! I had posted in several of my gardening and beekeeping groups on Facebook seeking honey. A friend of mine from one of the groups pointed me to a guy that he claimed was selling honey fairly local to my area. With a phone call, I found out that this honey guy had nearly ten years experience as a beekeeper, he had thirty hives, and he only lived two miles away from my house! I contacted him right away.

It took us almost two weeks of missing one another to finally come up with a solid day to meet and discuss bees. Our schedules kept conflicting and the weather was far from ideal. The day before I was finally supposed to meet my beekeeper friend for the first time, I suffered an acute episode involving my spine. I was taken to the hospital via ambulance suffering a boatload of pain and I couldn’t walk. I spent over seventeen hours in the emergency room before I was finally admitted into the hospital. I texted my beekeeper friend to let him know I wouldn't be able to get together with him. The next day, I spoke with my mom on the phone from my hospital room. During the call, I struggled to stay positive. She could tell I really missed my family and that I was pretty disheartened about not making my meeting with the beekeeper. I wasn’t giving up on this idea of honeybees in the spring so during my few days in the hospital, the bees became an integral part of my healing process. I had to build hives and buy bees. I had to meet my beekeeper friend. I had to get home. But first I had to walk. So i did.

I was surrounded by an unbelievable support system that fast-tracked me back to walking and out of that hospital in about five days. My wife, an amazing nurturer with nearly a decade of experience working as an RN, oversaw every facet of my care. She enveloped me with positive healing energy and bottomless love every second of every day and then she brought me home. My first day back home, of course I called my beekeeper friend. I had just set up a meeting with him and hung up the phone when there was a knock at my door. It was a package from Amazon. I opened the box and nearly cried. I pulled out a brand new beekeeper suit! When I had spoken to my mom from the hospital, she heard it in my voice how badly I wanted to become a beekeeper. So she ordered me a suit!

There is work to be done. Hives to be built. Processes to be learned. As the Crocuses burst forth from the snow, raising their sleepy heads to herald spring, a queen bee will call her court. Her colony will grow and develop and thrive because of an amazing group of people that love and support me. The queen will owe her deepest gratitude to a beekeeper that hasn’t tended hives in many, many years: my grandfather the beekeeper. What an amazing honor to continue in a noble task that an old timer showed to a young boy half a lifetime ago. I will be a beekeeper!

Image by Liz Mackney.

RIP Smythe Howard Bell

[5hfanfiction]

Wicked Games (Chapter 21)

“Every time I look into your eyes I see it, you’re all I need.” - Daniel Caesar

It was now Thursday and the team was huddling together during a timeout. We were in the middle of our game against our rivals, Bearmount College.

Not only is Bearmount College a traditioned rival to our school, since we both typically are always battling it out for the top spot in the conference in almost every sport. There was also an extra level added for our pride because Coach Tommy and Bearmount’s head coach played in college together. For me though, the biggest reason why I take this game so seriously is because their top guard is my own personal college rival.

Hanna Grace. Don’t let the name fool you, she does not have much grace to her. She is cocky and overly aggressive. Her play style is completely different from mine. I like to beat people with my technical skills, she likes to beat people mentally. I have to give credit where it is due though, she is phenomenally talented at what she does. She has incited numerous fights and has personally caused multiple people to get suspended throughout her career. I would imagine much of Bearmount’s success is linked to how she is able to manipulate and distract her opponents into making reckless, emotional mistakes.

She is one of those players that does everything she can to get under your skin. She talks to you the whole entire game, biting on every insecurity you may have. If you make a mistake, she won’t let you forget it. She constantly swipes at your arms in a very subtle manner that most referees do not notice because it is when you don’t have the ball in your hands. However, when you do have the ball in your hands, she is not afraid to get in your personal space, screaming at you, and if she fouls you, she fouls you hard. The whole forty minutes she pushes you physically and mentally.

I dread, but also look forward to playing her every year. She is a senior same as me, so I have dealt with her my entire college career. I have won some against her and she has won some against me. To me, the real victory is being able to get through the game without losing my cool. Aside from one time my sophomore year, I have been able to accomplish that.

Ever since I started getting really successful on the court during my sophomore year she has taken a special interest in making my life hell. I learned the hard way that year that the girl does her research. She brought up the fact that my mother had cancer during a game. In response, I got in her face and started yelling at her. For the first time in my life I wanted to punch someone, but luckily I held back. She did enough to earn me a technical (my only technical of my career), but it didn’t go any further than that. I thought something like cancer should be an off limits topic, but Hanna is ruthless, nothing is off limits to her if she can gain a special edge and help her team to a win.

Although I have only truly been affected by her once, I was worried for this game. My emotions have been on a roller coaster ride this past month so I am not so confident I will be able to keep calm. I normally consider myself one of the best in the game at keeping my composure, but against her, anything can happen.

We were up by five with one minute left in the first half. Despite the lead, I had been playing mediocre by my standards and Hanna was enjoying every moment of it. I had kept my composure well so far, but I could not deny that she was starting to wear on me. Her aggravatingly high pitched, but stern voice had not been quieted since the game started. She was in my ear whether I was on offense or she was on offense. I was amazed that she could even make time to breathe.

The refs were not calling many reaching fouls either and Hanna was taking advantage of that. Her arms and hands were all over me any time I had the ball in my palms, which was making it much more difficult to keep hold of the ball and run through our plays successfully.

“Camila!”

I looked up at Coach Tommy who had just yelled my name, realizing I had completely zoned out and missed everything he was telling our team. He looked at me with a mix of frustration and understanding.

He quickly strode towards me, putting an arm around my neck and angling me away from the rest of the girls so only I could hear what he said. “Is she starting to get to you?” he asked more softly than I would have expected. Coach was just as antsy as me when it came to playing against their star player. After four years, he understood as well as anybody else how much importance I placed on this game and besting one particular girl on the other team.

I hated to admit it, but she was starting to get to my head. I had missed my past three shot attempts and in our most recent offensive possession I had turned the ball over on an awry pass that was deflected by Hanna. I could hear her calling me ‘weak’ over and over again in my mind.

The refs blew their whistles signaling the end of timeout. Coach Tommy pulled out of his arm lock, but put his hand on my shoulder, demanding my full attention.

“You can either give her what she wants and believe all the nasty things she is saying about you, or you can believe in yourself and how great you can be and achieve what you want.”

I nodded at him, feeling his belief in me. Getting down on myself was only feeding into her hands. It would only benefit her, which is the opposite of what I want to happen.

The refs blew their whistles again, growing impatient with our stalling. I made eye contact with Coach Tommy’s dark blue eyes and nodded, letting him know I was mentally back in this game. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up with one his large hands. I turned and ran back out to the court with a newfound determination.

I stood in the right corner, watching Normani bring the ball down the court, putting two fingers in the air, signaling for our play called “Two”. Two posts go set a high ball screen at the top of the key for Mani. One post goes on the left side and one post goes on the right side. This play is rather simple for my position because the other two guards space out in the corners to be outlets if needed. The play begins once Mani makes her choice on which post screen she wants to use.

I was waiting for Mani to make that decision when Hanna’s irritating voice reached my ears.

“Too scared to have the ball in your hands again?”

That was a sly comment meant to dig at my pride and remind me of my recent mistakes. Before our timeout that would have bothered me, but since talking to Coach Tommy I felt much calmer. Besides, that comment was extremely tame in comparison to a lot of other things Hanna has said to me before. I didn’t even give her a glance.

Mani did an in and out move faking to her right and then crossed over to use Dinah’s screen on the left. Her defender got completely caught on Dinah’s brick wall of a screen, which forced Dinah’s defender to step out on Mani. The very moment she did that though, Dinah slipped towards the basket. Mani faked a pass to Emily in the corner, making Dinah’s man jump slightly to the right just enough to create an opening for Mani to give Dinah a beautiful bounce pass. Hanna tried to help over but by the time she got there it was too late, and even if she did get there in enough time I would have been wide open in the corner for a three. Dinah scored an easy left handed layup.

We weren’t given much time to be happy about that though because Hanna quickly threw an outlet pass from out of bounds to another guard on her team who sprinted up the court in transition, making an incredibly arching pass over my head to her teammate that was running down the opposite side of the court. Mani was there at the basket, preventing her from getting an open look, but the Bearmount guard performed a hesitation move, impressively finishing the contested layup.

Missy inbounded the ball to Normani and she lightly jogged up the court. Coach Tommy was yelling out instructions and tapping the top of his head, which means he wants us to slow down and run the clock out. The team went into their positions for the play Coach was calling for.

Mani tried to come in my direction, but her defender cut her off, purposely forcing her towards Emily’s side.

Mani drove towards the left wing and Emily dropped down to the block, making a V cut running up towards the opposite elbow to set a screen for Missy. Missy ran over top the screen, sprinting across the paint towards the block Emily just left. Unfortunately, her defender snuffed it out and she was not open for a pass.

Dinah from the other elbow stepped over to set a screen for Emily so that she could sprint up to the top of the key. She was only open for a small moment, but Normani was able to funnel a dagger to her that only Emily could catch.

Dinah set a screen on Emily’s right side, which she was subsequently about to use when her Bearmount defender stepped out and made a literal wall with her body, totally attempting to send Emily back to her left. They must have scouted this play because they knew exactly where we wanted to go with the ball. Emily made a freshman mistake and tried to force her way to the right anyway, but lost control of the ball as her defender swiped at it. Her and the Bearmount player got tied up and luckily, she held on long enough for the refs to blow their whistles and call a jump ball. It was still our possession.

I looked up at the shot clock, noting that we only had fifteen seconds left as we set up our sideline out of bounds play. Once again I was hanging out in the right corner, getting out of the way. The play was ran through, but nobody was open enough to get a comfortable pass. Eventually, Mani was able to get a risky long pass over to the left side of the court above the three point line. She drove towards the basket, but was cut off by a help side defender around the block. She quickly retreated back out to the wing.

“Ten, Nine, Eight!” our bench began screaming how much time was left on the shot clock. The play had broken down so I needed to get the ball in my hands. I swung my arms in the air, signaling to Normani to make a cross court pass to me.

I caught the ball on the right wing, with Hanna a mere inch from me defending, lifting her arm to swipe at my right hand once. I pivoted away from her, avoiding that strike.

“Five! Four!”

I started slowly dribbling towards the left, pretending to be looking for a hand-off from Emily who was standing at the top of the key, but then I quickly went into a crossover between my legs that Hanna bought and paid for. She lost her balance for a moment, not ready for my sudden change in direction, and I was able to dribble past her. I appeared to have an easy layup ahead of me, but just when I jumped off the floor, I felt a hard shove on my back and a stinging smack across my arm. I went down to the ground, hard.

I looked up, watching the ball roll around the rim and out as the shotclock buzzer went off. I missed, but heard the whistles from the refs, calling the obvious shooting foul.

“This is real basketball,” Hanna hissed at me as I laid on the ground, pain shooting from the knee I landed with all of my weight on against the floor.

For some reason, Hanna has always been of the opinion that I don’t play what she considers real basketball. She grew up in the inner city of Los Angeles, so she is accustomed to street style play. To her, I cannot handle aggressive opponents. Maybe that was true when I was a young freshman, but now I have no problem with that.

Why she is so narcissistic to think her form of basketball is the superior form of basketball, I don’t know.

Dinah and Missy rushed over to me and each one grabbed a hand of mine and helped me up.

I got up with a terrible pain and soreness emanating from my knee. I limped towards the free throw line. I stretched my leg, and bent it back and forth, trying to shake out the discomfort. Coach Tommy called to me, asking if I needed a sub, and I shook my head at him. No way was I coming out of this game and no way was I giving Hanna that satisfaction.

I went through my free throw routine. I spun the ball and dribbled it twice very quickly before going into my shooting form. I missed.

“Really Cabello? Can’t take a hit?” Hanna chimed in from my left using the wrong accent.

I clenched my jaw for a moment. The fellow senior purposely pronounced my name wrong just to irritate me more. It’s so small and stupid and yet it works. I am used to my name being mispronounced, but when you hear your name intentionally said wrongly about a hundred times in the span of one game, it starts to tug on your nerves.

“Quiet, 23,” the ref under the basket finally scolded her. A small smile reached my lips as I finally experienced some quiet.

I shook my leg out once more, the pain starting to subside slightly. The ball was passed back to me and this time I made sure to slow down and take my time. I took a deep breath, went through my routine, and then paused for a moment, making sure to bend my legs and then took my shot. Swish.

I ran back on defense for what I presumed to be the last possession of the first half. There were now sixteen seconds left and surely Bearmount was going to utilize the entire clock.

They started running through their play when their point guard lost control of the ball and it ricocheted off of her shin in my direction.

The ball was rolling across the floor and both me and the point guard from Bearmount dove on the floor to get it. We got on top of each other, fighting for control of the ball, until the refs blew their whistles to call a jump ball.

Hanna ran over and helped her teammate up, her high ponytail swishing from side to side. “Oh don’t worry, I know she loves that girl on girl action, that little lesbian,” she laughed to her teammate, motioning in my direction.

I smiled sardonically and shook my head in disbelief. How did she always know the perfect thing to say to poke the fire? I pushed my palms against the wood and got up from the ground.

Since we got the ball last jump ball, it was Bearmount College’s possession still. There was only nine seconds left now, however.

That means one thing. Hanna Grace is getting the ball.

I was proven right immediately when the ball was inbounded directly to her. She dribbled to the left wing calling for her teammates to clear out. I kept my eyes on her midsection, focusing on her body language so I could anticipate her next move.

She smoothly and easily crossed over between her legs twice, getting extremely low to the ground, waiting for me to slip up. I kept my footing and stayed solidly in the center of her body, angled slightly towards the baseline where my help defense is.

She dribbled towards the left for a moment, getting me to shift my feet, and then threw the ball behind her back. I assumed she would drive all the way to the basket. I assumed wrong.

I sprinted to get back in front of her and rushed to beat her to the basket. Only problem was that she didn’t go to the basket. She performed another behind the back along with a small step back once she reached the free throw line. I didn’t anticipate that, so I was too far back to reach her as she jumped in the air with her arm bent into her shooting form. She went through the motion and the ball went through the net as the buzzer went off.

She left her follow through in the air just to be a cocky jerk. One side of her mouth was lifted in a tight smile of disdain. “Too easy, Cabello! Too easy!”

I let my head drop for just a moment. She didn’t break my ankles, but it was nearly just as humiliating. Dinah put a hand on my shoulder as we jogged back towards the locker room. “You’ll stop her next time,” she encouraged me.

Back in the locker room, Coach Tommy went through his half time talk, making adjustments to our game plan. Our new emphasis for the second half is to feed it inside because Bearmount’s posts are weak in comparison to Dinah and Missy. Simultaneously, our trainer was poking and stretching my knee, applying some sort of tissue pain relief cream that smelled terrible. My knee was already turning a deep shade of purple, but honestly a bruise is nothing to really fret over because it could be something much worse.

“Are you just gonna let her push you like that?” Lauren exclaimed suddenly. I am not sure when she got here, but Lauren was seated at the locker to my right. My guess was she was referring to Hanna.

I had not spoken to Lauren once since Tuesday unless I had to because of basketball. It was nice being the one ignoring her for a change. Although my heart would still beat excitedly every time she attempted to speak to me, I would always remember the Matt situation, and it would immediately dampen those feelings. That gave me the courage and motivation to not respond to her. Maybe it was petty, but it was the best way I could think of to keep myself from forgetting that she is bad for me. I don’t trust myself to stay away from her and not see the fantasy version of her I created in my own mind. Instead, I keep the memory of her kissing Matt, the memory of her public declaration for him, and the memory of how guilty she looked when Keana exposed her at the forefront of my brain. If any other memories of good times between us tried to fight their way to the surface, I would cut them off immediately by flashing to the ones that hurt me.

“Hello?!” Lauren waved her hand in front of my face with clear agitation because I didn’t respond.

I looked at her coldly for just a moment and then looked back at the white board, pretending to focus on the play Coach Tommy had written on there. A simple, “yeah,” was all I gave her, which was even more than I wanted to offer.

She groaned and grumbled some words under her breath that I could not hear. Then she got up and left me alone at last.

I came out of halftime with my game stepped up to a higher level, but so did Hanna. Most of the possessions were like a chess match between us two. She was hitting buckets that shouldn’t go in and I was reading defenses like a book, making the right passes and taking the best shots.

It was the beginning of the fourth period and we were only up by three now. Our team was setting up our zone defense before Bearmount’s in bounds play started when Hanna shoulder checked me on her way to pass the ball in.

“Oops,” Hanna lipped with heavy sarcasm.

“Watch yourself, Grace,” Lauren threatened out of nowhere, appearing next to me.

Hanna stopped in her tracks and turned to the raven haired girl. “Oh, this doesn’t involve you sweetie.” Hanna spoke with a sing-song tone as though she was speaking to a child.

“She is my teammate so actually I am involved,” Lauren fearlessly stepped up to her.

“Who are you again? I don’t even think you were on the scouting report,” Hanna dismissed her and started walking again towards out of bounds.

I could already tell that comment had my teammate boiling by the furrowed eyebrows, stiffened body, and slightly popped open mouth about to respond with something equally nasty. Feeling like a parent reprimanding their child, I yelled, “Lauren!”

Her head snapped in my direction as I realized this was the first time I had directly addressed her in days.

“Stop. She’s not worth it,” I told her, doing my best to abate and deescalate the situation. Lauren nodded, but I could recognize that Hanna had already gotten to her with that one comeback. I quickly leaned over to her and whispered in her ear, “You’re playing amazing, don’t let her get to you.”

It was true. Lauren was playing one of her best games in a long time. She was on a roll, having just recently scored her fourth three-pointer of the game. If I wasn’t so mad at her, I would have been proud. I could not allow Hanna to mess with her confidence because this game was still close. Even if Hanna wasn’t lying like I presumed she was and Lauren wasn’t on the scout, she clearly should have been.

The ref handed the ball to Hanna to get their in bounds play started, so I had no more time to chit chat.

A few more minutes went on when Lauren hit a shot that was suspiciously close to the shot clock buzzer. None of us, including the referees, were quite sure if she had gotten the shot out of her hands in time or not.

We were all standing around, waiting as the refs reviewed the play using the monitors at the scores table. Of course, this was prime opportunity for Hanna to come bother me some more. She stepped up beside me. I braced myself for for more onslaughts, but she didn’t say anything for a minute or so, like she was just trying to annoy me with her presence. I was thankful though, because it was her damn voice that drove me insane, I could deal with her bad smell for a few minutes just fine. Then she had to go and ruin the quaint silence.

“Heard you and your girl broke up.”

That got my attention. I looked at her, my nostrils flaring at the mention of Emma.

She grinned triumphantly, seeing that she had finally won a reaction from me. “Oh.. sore subject?” Hanna’s voice dripped with fake sympathy. Her dark and long eyelashes fluttered with joy. “My condolences.” She over dramatically put a hand over her heart, feigning like she cared.

“Shut up,” I spoke through gritted teeth.

“Oh Cabello, why do you want me to shut up? Are you worried I’ll bring up the reason you two split?”

It was finally working. Hanna had found an angle that she could crack me open and mess around with my insides with.

“I heard she didn’t want you anymore. She finally realized that you’re nothing. Good for her.”

If smoke could fly out of my ears like in the cartoons, they would be in this moment. The game temporarily faded from my mind. I stalked towards her, staring her dead in the face with no fear. I was daring her to try something. She flinched backwards slightly, but only for a moment, keeping up her tough facade. 

“You’re all bark and no bite,” I snarled.

She narrowed her eyes at me, but the arrogant smirk didn’t leave. “I know you’re probably desperate for a rebound, but I’m not gay, so could you please get out of my personal space?” she finished with a small shove to my shoulders.

We were standing close to the Bearmount bench so when Hanna shoved me a few of her teammates stood from their chairs and started talking excitedly, egging her on.

She was certainly very brave for shoving me like that. Most people in my position would have started swinging, but I am not most people. I knew what she was doing, she was trying to provoke me into doing something stupid that would have repurcussions. Something that would get me ejected from the game and possibly suspended. My team needed me in the game, not to get in a useless fight. Although I was pissed off and wanted nothing more than to punch her so hard that she could never smirk again, I was not going to let her get the best of me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same for another dark headed brunette on our team.

“Get the hell off of her!” I heard Lauren growl from behind me. I turned to see her charging towards us and before I could stop her, she shoved Hanna so hard she nearly fell backwards past the sideline into her bench.

I didn’t even have time to enjoy the sight of that because that is when all hell broke loose. Bearmount’s bench erupted. From the corner of my eye I could see multiple players running towards Lauren. Hanna was rushing back towards her too, with her arm wound up, ready to punch. I wasn’t about to let that happen, especially after Lauren had just come to my defense. I crossed the distance between me and Lauren as fast as lightning, wrapping my arms around her, basically picking her up, and started pushing her back to our side of the court. As I wrapped my arms around her, I felt a slight pain on the back of my head and realized it must have been Hanna who was in the process of punching Lauren, until I got in the way just in time. Instead I got punched in the back of the head. I ducked, hoping to avoid anymore hits.

Lauren was fighting me every inch of the way and hurling swear words at the other team. I had seen the green eyed’s temper before, but never in this capacity. She was like a rabid dog and started swiping at my arms and screaming at me to let her go.

I could hear yelling, but I had no idea what was going on behind me. To be honest though, I didn’t care. My only objective at the moment was calming Lauren down. “Lauren,” I spoke sternly, trying to gain her attention. That didn’t work, she was still looking everywhere but at me. I put my hands on either side of her face and firmly, but more softly this time said, “Lauren, Lauren, look at me.”

When she finally did what I asked and green met brown, I collectedly assured her, “It’s ok, I’m ok, calm down.”

To my surprise, Lauren instantly relaxed. For a moment, there was an unfamiliar tenderness in her eyes while she was looking at me. Despite the chaos of what was going on, my knees started feeling weak as I got lost in what felt like a trance looking into Lauren’s eyes. My heart started beating uncontrollably fast as we just stared at each other. I had all of her attention and I was addicted to that. I was relapsing quickly, getting high on her. My eyes could not help but to find their way to her full lips.

A very loud whistle from a ref snapped me out of it and I finally realized my hands were still resting on her cheeks. I quickly removed them and took a step back from Lauren, confident that she wouldn’t try anything else. I turned to my left to see Coach Tommy walking up to us with an upset look on his face. He immediatey huddled us back to the bench and yelled at us to stay there as he ran back out towards the court where now I could see there was two groups being separated.

Dinah was being held back by Normani, Jamie, and CG, while on the other side Hanna and six other Bearmount players were being held back by their coaches. The refs were in the middle of the two groups, mediating the situation.

Lauren and I shared a look like 'holy shit, what did we do’.

Ally placed a hand on my shoulder and her, along with the rest of our team on the bench started asking us questions about if we were ok and what happened out there. We both tried to answer the questions, but there was still so much commotion going on that I couldn’t focus.

I couldn’t make out what Dinah was saying, but she was screaming her head off back and forth with the group of Bearmount players all by herself.

Eventually, everyone was separated and dragged back to their respective benches. Dinah was pacing by the water cooler, ranting to Normani. Coach Tommy’s head was so red I thought it might explode and CG was yelling at Lauren by the gym doors at the top of her lungs. I understood why they were furious with Lauren, but I was feeling the complete opposite emotion. I was flattered.

She cares.

Yeah, maybe it is not in the way I want, but I have lost sight of the fact that she does care about me as a person. It’s not fair that just because I have feelings for her that she can’t reciprocate, that I should cut her out and ignore her. Yes, it will be extremely difficult for me to be friends with her, but the least I should do is try.

It did not take long for the refs to come to the decision to eject Hanna, Lauren, and three of Bearmount’s bench players. It is an NCAA rule that if a bench player steps on the court for any reason during a fight, they are automatically ejected. Luckily for us, none of our bench players stepped on the court, mainly due to the quick thinking of CG and our trainer, who held everybody back.

The rest of the game went on relatively without a hitch. The tension and aggression levels were still pretty high, but without Hanna on the floor, Bearmount stood no chance against us. They have no one else on their team that can match her level of obnoxious intensity.

We all sat around in the locker room after the game, everyone abuzz with the events of the game. I, on the other hand, was sitting quietly in my locker, somberly reflecting on everything that had occurred. I was proud of myself for how I handled the nuisance that was instigating and prodding at my anger, but things she had said, particularly about Emma, left me feeling down. I was elated that we won the tumultuous game, but I was not impressed with how I performed. 

I looked to my right to find Lauren sitting at her locker with an almost equally crestfallen expression. For a small moment I wanted to get up and go hug her, but then I remembered the prior week’s events and re-centered. Still, I needed to speak with her.

I trudged over to her, slightly nervous. I was still shocked that she came to my defense the way she did and conflicted about how I should approach our friendship with the feelings that I have. I still had not decided whether I should be glad for what Lauren did or angry at her for it either.

I cleared my throat. “Hey.”

The pale faced Junior looked up at me. Her mouth twitched slightly as she blinked at me, but her facial expression did not change much. “Hi,” she spoke delicately.

I sighed, scratching the back of my neck and feeling awkward. “I just wanted to say thank you. You stuck up for me and I wanted to let you know that I appreciated that.”

Lauren’s eyebrows raised slightly, astonished. “You’re welcome.” Her eyebrows went back down as she crossed her arms and continued, “That girl is just jealous of you.”

I scoffed and shook my head, not believing that for a moment. 

She made eye contact with me subsequently after my dismissal and added, “What’s there not to be jealous of?”

I stared at her and she stared at me. My mouth dried at the flirtatious undertone of what she had just said. 'Wait, no’ I thought to myself, 'she is just being nice’. Here I go again, trying to believe in this fantasy version of Lauren, trying desperately to assume that every look she gives me is filled with love or desire, and every thing she says to me has a seductive motivation. 'Stop being delusional’ I censured myself. 

“Um.. thanks,” I responded before quickly spinning around to go back to my locker and leave my delusions in the dust.

Coach Tommy gave us all a long and critical talk in our post-game meeting. He understood Lauren’s response completely, as most everyone did. Many heads nodded in agreement when Coach expressed that sentiment, however he was disappointed in how she had handled her feelings of anger toward Hanna Grace, as well as her need to protect her teammate. 

To my resentment, Coach made an example out of me. He told our entire team that how I handled the situation should be how everybody handled a situation like that. I felt bad for Lauren because I could tell she felt like no one was supporting her or coming to her defense, so I did.

I raised my hand and once Coach Tommy saw me, he nodded in my direction, giving me permission to talk. “Lauren had my back like a real teammate today. Sure, it is unfortunate that we might lose her for a couple games over this, but I know now that Lauren is loyal to this team and willing to defend all of us if someone should try to bring us down. I trust her as a teammate more than ever now and I just felt like that needed to be said.”

I was relieved to see most of the other heads in the locker room nod in agreement. I chose not to look at Lauren because who knew what kinds of feelings that might stir up inside of me.

Soon enough, the talks were over and we were all free to go home for the night. I was relieved because I needed to work on my Neuroanatomy project tonight. 

I changed my clothes, packed up all of my stuff, and said my goodbyes to my teammates. Exiting the locker room door, I turned the corner of the hallway to head for the parking lot doors. Leaning up against the wall with one foot propped up was none other than Hanna Grace. Her jet black hair was put up in a messy bun. Her duffel bag was lying on the floor next to her and she was in normal clothes. Nike leggings covered her long, athletic legs, and a basic Bearmount College basketball sweatshirt, covered her upper body. She smirked with contempt as soon as she saw me.

It did not take long before she had something to say. “Was that your new girlfriend coming in to fight your battles for you?”

It was like she had been waiting for me and had prepared that line. She truly is one of the most annoying people I have ever come across. “With how weak your punch was, I don’t think it would have been much of a battle for me,” I countered.

She laughed bitterly, nodding in approval to my comeback. She had one of her own though. “Does the rest of your team know about your new romance?”

My jaw clenched slightly, but I smiled, pretending to be completely unfazed.

“Want me to tell them? I can spread the good news for you,” she continued.

I laughed at that comment. The threat was real, but I was unconcerned because I knew my team would never believe her anyways considering she is the source. I relaxed completely knowing she had zero leverage against me and I had come out victorious tonight. The girl was now grasping at straws to edge out a mental victory, but I was not going to allow that for her. I realized in this moment that I truly had bested her today, considering she was going to these kinds of lengths to try to get to me after the game.

“Have a good night, Hanna.”

I waved her goodbye and strolled out of the building into the cold breeze of the night.

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Wattpad: mothertruckin

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Her Child’s Cry Dunphy by S.A.

Boyle & Kenneally #3

 WOW…finished the last page and that word popped out of my mouth though nobody was there to hear me say it. Just…WOW!

 What I liked:

* Returning to the team to see what they would be dealing with next

* The team: a tight unit that works well together

* Jessie: behaviorist, team-leader, has an interesting past explored in previous books, intelligent, tenacious, focused…like her

* Seamus: brilliant, skilled, lethal, kindhearted, sees connections, problem solver, team focused, gets things done…like him

* Terri: computer genius, tech guru, puzzle solver, there for her team, gets the job done

* Dawn: Ireland’s Garda – or chief police person, Jessie’s friend from childhood, interesting past, strong, interesting, intelligent…want to know more about her

* The police procedural aspects of the story

* Where the clues led the team…and how the plot was exposed

* The writing

* Getting to see how Rosie – the kidnapped girl – was doing

* The surprises…and there were many

* The tie-in with Uruz: an easy to hate serial killer that will probably be featured throughout the series

* Being able to detest the bad guys…and there were quite a few of them!

* Thinking about the future and what it holds for the team…hope some good will come their way eventually.

 What I didn’t like:

* Exactly who and what I was meant not to like – evil people and the atrocities they committed

* Having to say goodbye to the team not knowing what will happen next

 Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I read more in this series? Definitely

 Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC – This is my honest review.

 5 Stars

       BLURB

 ‘I just want my little girl back. She’s so little, she needs her mummy. And she doesn’t even have her panda bear with her. Find her, please find her, before it’s too late.’ Little Rosie Blake has been taken. Since going missing from the hospital where she was being treated for cancer, Rosie’s distraught parents haven’t heard a word. And time is swiftly running out. They have to find her, and right away, because Rosie can only survive for ten days without her medication. With the police unable to find any leads at all, criminal behaviourist Jessie Boyle and her team are brought in to help. Who would be so evil as to steal a sick child? Narrowing down on a suspect, Jessie quickly moves to arrest them, only to discover the suspect’s dead body instead... And with no Rosie in sight, the case becomes even more desperate. Who killed their chief suspect, and where is Rosie now? And is Rosie’s disappearance linked to the sudden revival of Dublin’s Hellfire Club, an ancient and terrifying cult obsessed with death and human sacrifice? As the race to find Rosie intensifies, her heartbroken parents know their little girl’s time is running out. The clock is ticking, but Jessie clings on to the hope of finding her safe. Then her search leads her to Ireland’s remote mountains... Will Jessie be able to survive the deadly threat that awaits her, rescue Rosie, and get her back to safety, before it’s too late? An utterly compelling crime thriller that will have you hooked from the very first line. Fans of Patricia Gibney, Lisa Gardner and Lisa Regan will not want to miss this.

      AUTHOR BIO

 Shane Dunphy (S. A. Dunphy) was born in Brighton in 1973, but grew up in Ireland, where he has lived and worked for most of his life. A child protection worker for fifteen years, he is the bestselling author of seventeen books, including the number one Irish bestseller Wednesday’s Child and the Sunday Times Bestseller The Girl Who Couldn't Smile. His bestselling series of crime novels (written under the name S. A. Dunphy) feature the criminologist David Dunnigan. Stories From the Margins, his new series of true crime books written for Audible, has been critically acclaimed and the second title in the series, The Bad Place, is an Audible True Crime bestseller. 

https://shanedunphyauthor.org/

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 Buy Links:

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[crcssingpaths-blog]

°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· 𝕓𝕣𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕒𝕪𝕝𝕠𝕣 ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°°

Did I just see JESSICA CHASTAIN walking around Bushville? No, false alarm that’s just BROOKE. You know, the FORTY-ONE year old MOM from TAYLOR family. I hear everyone in town describes her as INDEPENDENT, AFFECTIONATE, OPINIONATED and POSSESSIVE. Maybe that’s why she works as a DIVORCE LAWYER. You know I did hear a rumor that she’s been hiding SHE VISITS HER SERIAL KILLER FATHER IN PRISON but that could just be small town gossip. TRIGGER WARNING: CANCER, MURDER, INFERTILITY

          brooke eloise schmitt was born on april 30th, 1977 to two lawyers in bushville. her father was a corporate lawyer and her mother was a family lawyer. they were a very well to do family. she was the only child until she was twelve years old and her little brother was born. he died of cot death and not only shook brooke to her core, but it changed the dynamic of her family.           her father started to be out longer and returned home drunk and seemingly having been in a bar fight quite a lot.           brooke was fifteen when her father was arrested for the murder of seven women and one man in the last three years. he hadn’t been in bar fights, he had been murdering prostitutes and one poor man that tried to help one of the women. he was put away for life, but evaded the death penalty.           everyone knows that she is the daughter of joseph schmitt and she hated the stigma that was attached to it, how people were scared of her because they thought she’d do the same thing.            except for one girl. melissa. she was her best friend and literally told all the bullies to go suck it. they were very close. they drank their first beer together, smoked their first cigarette together and shared their first kiss at sixteen. it was glorious. brooke still thinks back to it with a smile. when she told her mother, she was actually really supportive and just told her daughter that she wanted her to be happy.           melissa and her didn’t last but they stayed friends until after senior year. at university they drifted apart but there, brooke loved to be anonymous. no one really knew where she was from and whose daughter she was. it was a relief, but she also missed her small town. that is why, after meeting her two partners, they moved back to bushville.           her mother needed a second to get used to brooke having two partners but after meeting them, she was once again really supportive. her mother is brooke’s rock, the only steady person in her childhood and during adulthood. her brother and her father left.           then, she got a letter. she was thirty-five and had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. she was still reeling from it and her father sent her a letter, telling her he was ill and he wanted to see her. she was on the verge of death herself and decided to go visit him. once.           her father is a sociopath and so, it wasn’t too unexpected that she got caught up in his web. she has been visiting every two weeks, unless she was too ill from chemo. her wives just think that she goes out for a business meeting, but she goes to joseph schmitt, the serial killer. she knows that she shouldn’t, but she does anyway.           she has been in remission from breast cancer for ten years now, and everything is going quite well but her body has taken a hit from the chemo. her breasts are now covered with tattoos because she didn’t want to have nipples tattood on and have her scars still be visable. she still misses how her chest used to be but her wives are very supportive of her and it does make her feel safer. she is also infertile after the treatment and while she has her children that she loves, she was also robbed of the possibility to ever have a biological child and that still hurts her down to her core.           her hobbies are the lapdance classes she takes as well as the drawing lessons. she isn't very good at the latter, but she likes it.

[almostafantasia]

tenderly, tragically, beautifully

Summary: In which bad things happen to the people who deserve them the least and Lexa learns that although cancer can be treated, the scars it leaves behind take much longer to heal.

Read on AO3.

Trigger warning: Clarke has cancer in this fic but it’s non-terminal and she doesn’t die. There’s a fair amount of angst though.

She feels as though every pair of eyes is watching her from the moment that she steps through the school gates. Which is just paranoia at its absolute finest because the reality is that not a single person is actually looking at her, but with the very obvious way in which the other kids are deliberately trying not to stare at her as she walks up to the red brick school building, Clarke might as well have a giant flashing sign above her head.

A giant flashing sign reading this kid has cancer, with a vertical neon arrow pointing down at her.

Clarke knows that they all know. Even if Raven hadn’t already filled her in on everything that happened while she was in the hospital, this is high school so gossip spreads faster than a race car speeding around an asphalt track.

“Yo.”

Raven makes an unnecessarily loud entrance, clattering into the row of lockers beside Clarke’s and dropping her shoulder bag to the floor with an unceremonious thud. It catches the attention of those nearby, but upon realising that Clarke is there, those heads quickly turn away for fear of being caught staring.

“Everyone’s treating me like I’ve got a deadly virus. It’s cancer, it’s not contagious!”

She raises her voice with this last bit, startling the group of freshman boys who cross to the other side of the corridor in order to give Clarke a wide berth as they pass.

“Clarke,” Raven hisses, resting a comforting hand on Clarke’s shoulder.

“I’ve been here for two minutes and I already wish I was back in that stupid hospital,” Clarke complains through clenched teeth, taking a heavy textbook out of her bag and throwing it into her locker with slightly more force than actually necessary.

“They probably all heard the word ‘cancer’ and assume that you’re on your deathbed,” muses Raven.

“I’m not.”

“I know,” Raven agrees, as she reaches out to give Clarke’s fingers a reassuring squeeze with her own. “You’re going to be fine, you’ve just got a few shitty cells in your body.”

“John Murphy’s got more shitty cells in his body,” Clarke comments, as the shaggy-haired boy saunters past the two girls with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, giving Clarke the side-eye as he passes.

“Well unlike Murphy, your shitty cells are going to be killed by the chemo. He’s stuck with his for life.”

Clarke appreciates what Raven is trying to do, but that doesn’t mean that it works. As grateful as she is for her best friend’s insistence that she’s going to survive this new obstacle in her life, it doesn’t really detract from the fact that she has months of having her body pumped full of chemicals to get through first.

“Raven…”

“What? I’m just letting you know that I’m sticking by you no matter what.” With a wicked smile, Raven adds, “I’ll always be your best friend, even when you go bald.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me,” Clarke whines, shutting her locker and turning around to lean against it dramatically.

“You finish treatment just before Thanksgiving, right?”

“Yes,” Clarke nods, wondering in which unpredictable direction Raven’s train of thought is heading this time.

“So you’ll be rocking the cutest pixie cut in town by Christmas.”

Clarke lets herself imagine it for just a second. She hasn’t had her hair shorter than shoulder length since a disastrously bad haircut at the age of ten, but when she pictures herself with much shorter hair, barely long enough to curl ever so slightly around her ears and the top of her neck, she smiles slightly. Mostly at the realisation that with virtually no hair to have to deal with each morning before school, she’ll be able to get out of bed a whole fifteen minutes later than usual, but also at the thought that with minimal effort and a bit of strategically placed styling cream, she can probably make herself look hot as fuck.

“Thanks Raven,” Clarke smile gratefully.

But Raven’s brain is always moving way faster than Clarke is able to keep up with and she’s already onto the next thing.

“Hey, do you think the chemo is going to give you superpowers? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you got x-ray vision or invisibility or something even cooler?”

“Raven…”

Class is weird. Raven walks her to the door of her classroom like a mother dropping her young child off for the first day of kindergarten, and when Raven departs with a final wave over her shoulder, Clarke feels exactly like that scared five year old, out of her depth in a world that seems far too big for her.

It’s pretty much exactly the same routine in the classroom as it was out in the school corridors, except that now, in this more confined space, Clarke can’t really do much to pretend she hasn’t noticed how everybody is behaving around her. Each pair of eyes fall onto her as she passes, then glance away when they realise who has just walked by.

And then the hushed muttering starts. Clarke’s classmates must be seriously misinformed about the symptoms of cancer if they think that she isn’t able to hear the whispering as she makes her way to her usual seat on the far side of the classroom.

As the clock on the wall just above the teacher’s desk slowly ticks away towards the start of another day at school, the desk next to Clarke remains empty. Finn Collins, the desk’s former occupant, who Clarke is ninety-five percent certain was flirting with her in the few weeks leading up to the discovery of the tumour in her back, has moved to a previously empty seat in the back row next to Atom. It’s too much of a coincidence for Clarke to blame this on anything but the cancer. Who would want to flirt with her when there are plenty of other much prettier, much healthier girls in the school to flirt with, all of whom are still going to have a full head of hair in a few months’ time?

“Hey.”

Ten minutes into her first day back at school and already so used to being treated like a bomb that is waiting to go off, Clarke actually startles in her seat a little bit when the girl in the seat in front of her turns around to say hello.

“Oh, hi Lexa!”

Lexa Woods was Clarke’s elementary school best friend until the two of them slowly drifted apart as they grew up and their interests changed. Not to say that they no longer get along, but that they move in different circles now, with nothing more than a polite smile if they pass in the school corridors.

Until now.

“This is for you.”

Clarke’s eyes widen in surprise, then her entire face twists into a confused frown as Lexa places a thick ring-binder down on Clarke’s desk, upon which lies an envelope.

“Um, thanks,” Clarke replies tentatively, picking up the envelope and sliding her finger into the small gap at the edge to tear it open and remove its contents.

It’s just a card, white with pastel coloured butterflies surrounding the embossed words ‘thinking of you’ in a pretty cursive font. Surprised, Clarke flips it open to read the message inside.

Dear Clarke,

Wishing you all the best over the coming months for a speedy recovery.

Lots of love, Lexa xx

It’s pretty much exactly the same as the twenty other cards she has at home from various relatives and friends of the family, empty words that don’t really detract from the potentially life-threatening illness that resides in her body, but it somehow means so much more coming from Lexa than from anybody else. Coming from Lexa, who could quite easily have done exactly the same as Finn and everybody else in this godforsaken school and blatantly avoided having to go anywhere near the girl with cancer.

“And this is everything that you missed while you were in hospital,” Lexa continues, opening the folder to display the thick wad of handwritten notes inside, neatly colour-coded and underlined and separated into subjects by labelled dividers.

“Lexa, what the…?”

“You missed two weeks of school and you must be really behind in all your classes so I wrote out my notes again so that you could have a copy,” Lexa explains hurriedly, a pink flush rising to sit on her sharp cheekbones. “If there’s anything you don’t understand when you read through it, I’d be more than happy to go over it with you.”

“Lexa,” Clarke sighs, feeling a rush of affection for her former best friend as she flicks through page after page of Lexa’s impeccable handwriting, laid out under clear capitalised titles and broken up with nearly drawn diagrams and tables. “You shouldn’t have.”

“It was good revision for me,” Lexa shrugs, as if the gesture is insignificant.

“Wait,” frowns Clarke, as she reaches one of the coloured dividers and enters a different subject, “do you even take Chemistry?”

“No, but I know Monty through the debate club so I borrowed his notes and copied them out,” Lexa answers. “They might not make much sense because I didn’t understand a lot of it but I’m sure that Monty would be able to explain it if you need help…”

“Lexa, this must have taken you hours…”

“Yeah, well you’ve got cancer, it’s the least I can do to help.”

The word hits Clarke like a fist in the gut. It’s been two weeks since the diagnosis, two weeks where Clarke’s mind has been consumed with nothing but that one singular word going around and around in her mind until she’s half crazy. But Clarke realises that maybe the problem is that the word has only been in her head since the diagnosis – nobody around her has been brave enough to say the word aloud since the doctor who gave her the bad news two weeks ago. Even her mother, a doctor herself, skirts around the word at home, as if saying it out loud makes the whole situation far too real to comprehend.

It’s just a word, it shouldn’t hurt so much.

Except that it’s not just a word anymore, it’s a way of life. It’s chemicals being pumped into her body, and being ignored by even those who used to flirt with her, and the inescapable unsettling worry that despite the assurances of the oncology nurse, maybe she isn’t going to make it to the other end of this ordeal with her life.

“Sorry, did I say something wrong?” Lexa’s voice pulls Clarke out of her thoughts with a lurch, and she shakes her head to focus herself back in the real world.

“No, it’s just…” Clarke tries to explain, her voice just a croak as she tries to push past the lump that forms in her throat. “It’s still quite new to me.” Trying to articulate aloud for the first time, Clarke continues, “It’s weird because it’s all I think about but it still takes me by surprise sometimes. I’m so used to everybody skating around it like they want to pretend that it’s not happening, so it surprised me how forward you were.”

“Sorry,” Lexa mumbles, bowing her head apologetically. “I shouldn’t have…”

Reaching out a hand to touch Lexa’s shoulder in reassurance, Clarke says, “Lexa, it’s fine, I…”

But she doesn’t get the chance to finish. The classroom door clatters open as the teacher enters to start the lesson, and within an instant Lexa is facing the front once more with wide, attentive eyes.

The teacher’s eyes scan the classroom as his voice fills the room to get their attention, but he stumbles mid-sentence when he spots Clarke in their midst. There’s a moment that feels like an eternity, a moment in which Clarke knows the teacher is trying to decide whether to acknowledge Clarke’s return to his class, a moment in which Clarke wants nothing more than to melt into the hard plastic chair as if she has never even been here at all, but then it passes, and the class continues as if nothing has happened.

As if Clarke doesn’t have cancer.

But she does.

“Lexa,” Clarke hisses, when the teacher turns his attention to the computer and pulls up a powerpoint presentation for the lesson. Lexa turns around to frown inquisitorially at Clarke, who forces the resentment out of her mind and the sadness from her eyes as she smiles gratefully at her former best friend. “Thanks for the notes.”

Lexa thinks about it a lot, probably way more than she should think about somebody who she so rarely speaks to these days, but it really plays on her mind. Why somebody so young, somebody with such a bright future, somebody with so much joy and happiness and vitality should get diagnosed with cancer when there are so many bad people in this world that it could happen to instead.

It sucks, and Lexa isn’t even the one with cancer.

She almost wishes that she was. And yes, she knows that’s a terrible thing to think and that she should be grateful for her own good health, but it’s the truth. If there was a medical procedure that could suck the illness from Clarke’s body and transfer it to her own, then that’s exactly what Lexa would do. Clarke has everything; a big friendship group full of nice people that nobody in their year group seems to dislike, good grades, good looks, and an aspiration to be a doctor. Lexa, meanwhile, feels as though she has nothing in comparison - only a few people that she would consider friends, two parents who somehow manage to straddle the line between loving her too much and not loving her enough, and an unhealthy dose of anxiety. It should be her that has the cancer, but instead there seems to be an unjust system of reverse karma in place, where bad things happen to good people.

There are bad people in the world, and there are good people. And then there is Clarke. Clarke, who is so good and pure that Lexa isn’t entirely convinced that she isn’t an actual angel reincarnated in human form. Clarke, who on the second day of kindergarten, helped a tearful and bruised Lexa back to her feet after being pushed to the ground by John Murphy, then declared them to be best friends for life, though only after kicking Murphy in the balls for hurting Lexa in the first place.

Nobody deserves to be diagnosed with cancer less than Clarke.

Lexa almost wonders if Clarke’s illness is karma punishing her. Perhaps fate is saying a massive fuck you to her, not to Clarke, by forcing her to stand by helplessly as the girl she loves suffers. Because there is absolutely no doubt that Lexa does love Clarke. She’s known it for about a year, though she’s probably loved her since the day that six year old Clarke offered out a hand to help Lexa get back to her feet.

But what hurts the most is knowing that there’s absolutely nothing she can do to help Clarke, nothing she can do but sit by and watch as Clarke’s health deteriorates and the side effects of chemotherapy kick in.

Lexa has never felt more helpless.

Lexa almost doesn’t recognise the girl who walks into class the following Thursday morning with bright pink hair. Nothing has changed other than the hair colour – she wears the same worn out jacket she’s owned since freshman year, the same slightly pitiful frown that’s been on her face since the diagnosis a couple of weeks ago – and yet the vibrant pink that frames Clarke’s face makes it seem like she’s an entirely different person from the girl with the beautiful golden tresses that Lexa has known for most of her life.

“Clarke!” Lexa gapes, as Clarke drops into the seat beside her, Lexa having moved back a row now that Finn Collins has taken up his new seat at the very back of the classroom. “I – wow!”

Though Lexa, quite deliberately so, does not ask for an explanation for Clarke’s sudden and drastic makeover, Clarke gives her one anyway, as if she feels like she has to justify her new fashion choice.

“I’ve always wanted to dye it,” she shrugs, reaching up with one hand to play with a single pink curl, “and I might not have hair for too much longer so it seemed like as good of a time as any to get it done.”

As Clarke glances away, a brief moment of sadness passing across her face as she does so, Lexa’s insides lurch unsettlingly at the thought of Clarke’s hair falling out against her will. She quickly remembers that Clarke will be taking the day off school tomorrow for the first of many chemotherapy treatments, which explains the unexpected change of hair colour mid-week, and just tries to imagine for a second how terrified Clarke must be at the prospect of going into hospital for such a daunting treatment.

Lexa flails silently for a moment, wondering what, if anything at all, she can say that might ease Clarke’s mind ahead of her hospital visit but nothing comes to mind that won’t do more harm than good. Lexa settles instead for saying something a little different.

“The pink really suits you.”

Eyes wide with surprise as she lifts her head to look up at Lexa, as if she hadn’t been expecting the compliment at all, Clarke softly mumbles, “Thanks,” before reverting back into a glum silence for the rest of class.

Clarke’s absence on Friday, despite her only sharing a couple of classes with Lexa, feels somewhat akin to Lexa having to spend the day without one of her arms. She’s a mess for pretty much the whole day, distracted with pondering thoughts of where Clarke is, of what the doctors will be doing to her, and of hoping that none of it is as bad as the scary word chemotherapy makes it all sound.

When she arrives home from school that afternoon, Lexa collapses on her bed with her phone in her hand, the screen unlocked and opened on a message conversation with Clarke, but she hesitates with her thumb hovering over the keyboard before she sends anything. Nothing that comes to mind quite seems right for the situation - casual well-wishes seem too impersonal and asking how the treatment went seems far too invasive and unsympathetic.

Lexa exits the conversation and locks the phone with a sigh, shaking her head in dissatisfaction. She wants to be there for Clarke, she really does, but there’s no class at school for how to be a good friend to somebody with cancer and it’s not really something that Lexa can do on intuition alone.

She decides, forty minutes later and after some assistance from her mom, on a simple Facebook post; an old photo of the two of them with their arms around each other and toothy grins on their faces at Clarke’s eighth birthday party, which she captions “Found this looking through some old stuff - partners in crime since kindergarten!” and then tags Clarke in it. Nothing fancy. It’s simple, it’s irrelevant, and it will hopefully let Clarke know that Lexa has been thinking about her all day.

She definitely doesn’t spend the next few minutes eagerly refreshing her new feed, waiting for a notification that lets her know that Clarke has seen the post.

It never comes.

She doesn’t know what she was expecting, if not a comment then perhaps at least a like, but each time the little red bubble pops up in Lexa’s notifications, it is with somebody else’s name and not Clarke’s. A selection of school friends like the post, both from their high school and old friends who knew the girls back around the time that the photo was taken. Some names are ones that Lexa doesn’t recognise, presumably friends of Clarke’s from elsewhere. Octavia Blake reacts to the post with a red heart that Lexa wishes came from Clarke instead.

The first comment is from Raven; “Double denim? Griffin, you were such a style icon!”

It hurts more than it should, two minutes later, when Lexa’s post remains unacknowledged but the little blue thumb icon appears underneath Raven’s comment with Clarke’s name next to it.

Clarke is back at school on Monday morning, almost as if she was never gone. There’s no indication that she missed a day of classes for the first of many life-saving medical treatments, no missing hair, no hospital gown or big sign around Clarke’s neck saying I had chemo. And Lexa curses herself for even thinking that things would be different.

(She decides that Clarke’s pale skin and tired eyes are just a figment of the imagination that is looking for something different in Clarke’s appearance.)

“Hey,” Lexa greets Clarke in their first class of the day. “How was the … uh, the treatment?”

Raising a single eyebrow at Lexa, Clarke replies, “You can call it chemo. That’s what it is.”

“Sorry,” apologises Lexa, feeling the mild burn along her cheekbones that is no doubt accompanied by a pinkening of the skin there. “I’m just new to all of this.”

She regrets the words the very second that they leave her mouth. The way that Clarke’s face falls, disappointment filling her blue eyes as her brow knits into a furrowed frown, is enough to inform Lexa that what she has just said was insensitive on every level.

“You’re new to this?” Clarke asks, her voice soft but laced with bitterness.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Lexa says dejectedly. “That was insensitive of me.”

Lexa is more disappointed in herself that she would care to admit. She’s spent more than a little bit of time this weekend on her laptop, googling questions like what to say to a friend with cancer and the overwhelming number one piece of advice she could find was to not make it about herself and how she feels about Clarke’s diagnosis. And yet, all that research is for nothing as she lets herself down within the first thirty seconds.

“It’s fine,” Clarke assures her, though Lexa can’t help but feel that this isn’t fine at all, nor will it ever be until Clarke’s treatment finishes and she gets the all clear in however many months’ time. “I get it, you want help but don’t know how. The best thing you can do is to just act normal.” Lexa nods along earnestly as Clarke reaches out a hand and rests it tenderly on Lexa’s forearm, before continuing. “And Lexa, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. You’re treating me like a human, not like a time bomb. That’s more than I can say for most of the rest of the assholes in this school.”

“I’m sorry,” Lexa attempts to apologise a final time, but the arrival of the teacher for the start of the lesson means that she isn’t given the chance to take her apology any further.

“By all means, come on in,” Clarke says to Raven, pushing open her bedroom door as she leads her best friend inside. “But fair warning, it looks and smells like a hospital.”

Clarke wrinkles her own nose as she steps into her bedroom, the nasty smell of cleaning product invading her nostrils. Her bedroom doesn’t really feel like home much at the moment, the various medications prescribed to her for combatting the side effects of chemo scattered haphazardly across all available surfaces in the room. The smell, despite her desperate pleas, comes from her mother’s insistence of giving the room a thorough disinfect almost every other day so that Clarke doesn’t catch anything while her immune system is reduced.

“Jesus Christ,” Raven blanches as she follows Clarke into the room, lifting her hand up to her face to cover her nose and mouth. “Do you not have any air freshener?”

“I’ve asked my mom to get me some,” Clarke answers. “She insists on keeping this place spotless. I’m already sick, a few germs isn’t going to do any harm.”

Raven’s hand reaches out to Clarke’s, her fingers clasping around Clarke’s wrist to get her full attention.

“Hey. No. Mama G is a medical professional, you listen to what she has to say, okay?”

“Jesus, Raven,” Clarke whines, dropping onto the bed with a plop that rumples the freshly washed sheets. “Are you my mom now?”

Raven launches herself belly first onto the mattress next to Clarke, propping her head up with one elbow as she sends a wicked smile in Clarke’s direction.

“Shut up,” says Raven, rolling over onto her back, where she steals half of the pillows and cushions that decorate Clarke’s double bed and sets them up against the headboard behind her. “Are we gonna watch a movie or what? It’s so awesome that you’ve finally got a TV in your room.”

Shrugging and reaching for the remote control that sits on top of a pile of untouched pamphlets from the hospital, Clarke points it at the brand new television that sits on top of the dresser against the opposite wall and says, “Cancer perks.”

The end of the school year and the start of the summer break between Clarke’s junior and senior years of high school comes around two weeks later, shortly after her second chemotherapy appointment, and Clarke has never been more grateful to have a couple of months off school.

She can already feel some of the changes in her body – most notable is just how lethargic she’s starting to feel. Clarke has always been the number one advocate for power naps but since starting the treatment, she’s found herself passing out pretty much everywhere, including in class, though two hours of calculus on a Monday morning is probably enough to send anybody to sleep.

The other thing is her hair. It hasn’t started to fall out yet, not properly, but Clarke has started to notice a bit of thinning. Each pull of her hairbrush through the newly-dyed pink hair tugs strands out from her scalp that get caught around the bristles of the brush and when she showers, there is slightly more hair than usual to pull out of the drain at the end. It isn’t noticeable in the mirror yet, but Clarke knows that the worst part – when actual clumps of her hair start falling out in uneven patches across her scalp – is almost imminent, and she’s grateful that she won’t have to go to school during this in-between stage.

Lexa is thankful for the arrival of the summer break. Junior year has been a lot of work and she knows that her final year at high school will be even more tiring. As much as she’s looking forward to throwing herself headfirst into another year of challenging schoolwork and college applications, the two months she has before that to mentally and physically rest is exactly what she needs right now.

And yet, three days after the last day of school, she finds herself already missing the crowded corridors and the uncomfortable plastic chairs.

Well, maybe not those, per se.

She finds herself missing Clarke.

Their friendship is by no means rekindled to the level that it was at before they started drifting apart in middle school, but Lexa likes to think that they’ve reached the point once more where they can text each other and make social plans without it being weird.

Clarke, on the other hand, seems to disagree.

Lexa Are you free today? We could catch a movie or get lunch if you like! Or something else, I’m open to suggestions.

Clarke I’m pretty tired actually. Think I’m just gonna stay at home.

Not yet disheartened, Lexa is already prepared with another suggestion that might suit Clarke a little better.

Lexa I could come over and we could watch something at yours?

Clarke I think I just want to sleep tbh

Lexa tries to think of something to say, anything to let Clarke know that she’s always going to be welcome to hang out with Lexa later, but everything she tries typing out just falls flat. She doesn’t want to seem needy, doesn’t want to force Clarke to exert herself any more than she’s physically capable of doing right now, doesn’t want to make Clarke feel guilty for the way that the side effects of the chemotherapy are inhibiting their social interactions.

She just wants Clarke to know that she isn’t alone.

Lexa No problem!

Clarke stands in front of the mirror and adjusts the beanie on her head for what is probably the hundredth time in the last ten minutes.

“You look good,” Raven says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Except that Clarke is worried. Because Octavia is throwing a party tonight and Clarke has been coerced (by Octavia, by Raven, even by her own mother) into attending and it’s the first time she’s left the house for anything other than a hospital visit in the three weeks since school finished. And the first time in almost as long that Clarke has worn anything except for pyjamas.

Not to mention the fact that it’s the debut of her new hairstyle. If you can even call a patchy buzzcut a hairstyle. Hence the beanie.

“Are you sure people aren’t going to notice?” asks Clarke, turning to look at Raven, who is sprawled across Clarke’s bed, playing on her phone as Clarke gets ready.

Pushing herself up into a seated position, Raven grins up at Clarke and answers, “The only thing people are going to notice is how hot you look. Because damn girl.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not,” Raven insists, shaking her head. “Everybody is going to wish they were you.”

Clarke arches an eyebrow, because she’s pretty certain that there is not a single person in the world who would want to be a kid with cancer.

Raven doesn’t miss the look that Clarke shoots her and she jumps up to her feet, crossing the room to stand beside Clarke as they both look at Clarke’s reflection in the mirror.

“You’re hot,” Raven tells Clarke again. “The colours really suit you, your tits look great in that shirt, and you’re totally rocking that beanie. Fuck the cancer, you’re awesome!”

And for just a moment, Clarke believes it.

Parties aren’t always Lexa’s thing. She not a huge drinker, nor does she like big crowds of people, not to mention the fact that she doesn’t fall into the right social circles to get invited to most of the parties thrown by the kids in her year at school.

But for some reason Octavia Blake, who has never taken the time to talk to Lexa much off the soccer pitch that they share during training for the women’s varsity team, personally insisted that Lexa just had to come along to the party that she’s throwing tonight.

It’s not Lexa’s scene at all. Music thumps from two loudspeakers positioned on either side of the living room, questionable drinks are being poured into cups from a large keg being manned by Octavia’s college-aged brother, and sweaty bodies are crammed into every corner of the Blakes’ small house. But Lexa doesn’t get invited to parties often and she’s determined to at least try to enjoy this one.

(Her attendance has absolutely nothing to do with the possibility that tonight might be the first time she sees Clarke since school finished for the summer. Nothing.)

There’s a big shout from the already quite tipsy Octavia when Raven arrives at the party, and Lexa’s eyes desperately squint towards the door for Clarke.

And there she is.

Oh boy.

Lexa doesn’t know if it’s the jungle juice catching up with her or if the sight of Clarke entering the room behind Raven is really that mesmerising, but her head starts to swim a little bit. Clarke looks a little thinner than before, a little more tired, but Lexa hardly notices that because Clarke is still just as beautiful as ever. There’s a dark gray beanie pulled over her head, hiding her hair (or lack of it, as Lexa quickly realises may be the case), but it just emphasises everything else. The sharp plane of Clarke’s jaw. The blue in Clarke’s haggard eyes. The dip of the neckline on Clarke’s rather revealing tank top.

Jesus Christ, when did Lexa become so fucking gay.

Lexa’s heart is racing, and the only thing that stops her from passing out, or from locking herself in a quiet and soundproof room for the duration of the party, is that Clarke has an expression on her face that matches the same startled-slash-terrified feeling that Lexa has too.

And so Lexa pushes her own anxiety aside and makes it her main aim to make Clarke feel as comfortable as possible in this scary new environment. Lexa takes a sip from her drink for courage, then plasters a smile on her face as she pushes through the crowd to cross the room and welcome Clarke.

“Clarke!” Lexa beams, her smile genuine as she throws her arms around Clarke’s neck in a greeting. “I didn’t know if you’d be here tonight.”

Lexa didn’t know, but she hoped.

“Yeah, Raven came to my house and basically dragged me out of bed,” Clarke shrugs. “Also, my mom threatened to cut off the wifi at home if I didn’t leave the house. She’s worried I’m becoming a recluse. I swear parents are supposed to worry about kids going to wild parties and getting involved in underage drinking and sex, but apparently when you get cancer they actively encourage it.”

“Then why are you complaining?” Lexa teases Clarke. She gestures towards the kitchen, then asks, “Do you want something to drink?”

Clarke squints at the plastic cup in Lexa’s hand, inspecting its contents with a wary gaze, before she answers, “Sure. Why not?”

Clarke’s hand seeks her own so that they don’t get separated as they slowly navigate their way through the mass of drunk teenagers, and Lexa tries to ignore the erratic pounding of her heart in her chest and the feeling of Clarke’s warm palm against her own. It’s stupid to get so worked up about such meaningless platonic intimacy, but this is Clarke, who gets Lexa’s pulse racing by just looking at her. Lexa knows that being with Clarke in that way is beyond her wildest dreams, but even an act as simple as having Clarke’s hand squeezing her own as she leads Lexa towards the kitchen, is more than Lexa thinks she deserves.

“Are you having another?” Clarke asks, when they make it to the keg where Bellamy is pouring his homemade concoction into plastic cups and distributing it to the teenagers that surround him.

Lexa glances down at the cup in her hand and takes a moment to think, before knocking bag the dregs at the bottom and nodding as she passes it across to Bellamy for a refill.

“So,” says Clarke, when they both have their drinks, leading the way out of the kitchen and through the glass doors into the back yard, where the music is quieter and the air much cooler than the warmth indoors that feels heavy with the scent of cheap alcohol and teenage sweat. “You seemed surprised to see me here tonight, but I’ve never seen you at a party before.”

“Yeah, parties aren’t usually my thing.”

They reach the far side of the yard, where a rusty swing set stands under the branches of a tall oak tree, and Clarke sits on the seat, looping one of her arms around the chain to keep herself steady, while Lexa stands nearby.

“What’s different about tonight?” asks Clarke.

“Octavia was very persuasive,” replies Lexa. She takes a quick swig of her drink for courage, and then continues, “And I was hoping you’d be here. I wanted to see you. To know that you’re doing okay.”

The cover of the darkness, lit only by the crescent moon ad a few twinkling stars in the sky, does a good job of hiding the blush that rises to Lexa’s cheeks when she confesses that seeing Clarke was a motivator for pushing herself beyond her usual comfort zone.

“I’ve been bad at replying to your messages,” says Clarke. “And I’m sorry for that. Sometimes I just don’t have any energy and then I forget and…”

“No!” Lexa protests quickly, holding up a hand to stop Clarke before she can apologise any further. “You don’t have to say sorry. I probably text you way too much.”

“I like that you message me,” Clarke says in a soft voice. “It’s nice that you think of me.”

“Of course I think about you,” says Lexa, laughing softly under her breath, because there is hardly a moment that goes by where Lexa isn’t thinking about Clarke, even subconsciously. “You’re … I mean, you’re you.”

“What do you mean by that?” Clarke asks, an inquisitive smile on her face.

Lexa’s cheeks burn in embarrassment and she’s grateful that it’s late enough that the shroud of darkness hides her red-tinged cheeks.

“You’ve always been special,” Lexa shrugs as she answers, avoiding eye contact with Clarke out of fear that she’ll fluster and stumble over her words. “You were my first friend in Kindergarten. Do you remember that?”

“I do,” replies Clarke, and when Lexa finally looks up, it is to find Clarke grinning fondly at the memory. “Murphy pushed you over and I kicked him in the balls.”

“My hero,” says Lexa, mockingly fluttering her lashes in Clarke’s direction.

“God, even back then you were an adorable nerd,” Clarke teases, taking a swig from the plastic cup in her hand.

“Wait, you think I’m adorable?”

“I don’t think I said that,” Clarke denies resolutely, though Lexa can see that she’s trying to fight a smile that gives away the truth.

“You definitely said that,” insists Lexa.

“I also called you a nerd,” Clarke reminds Lexa matter-of-factly.

“Yes, but that’s old news.”

They fall into silence, and as Clarke gently pushes herself back and forth on the swing with her feet against the lawn, all Lexa can see are flashes of memories from years past, of two small girls chasing each other around the nearby playground and seeing who can fly the highest on the swings before losing their nerve.

“I’ve missed this,” says Lexa, smiling to herself at the memory. “Missed us.”

“So have I,” agrees Clarke, scraping her feet against the grass to bring herself to a standstill. “We should do this more often. Hang out, I mean. If you’d like to.”

Lexa’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Yeah, I … I’d love to!”

Lexa can’t remember why she was ever so worried about coming to this party in the first place.

The thing about promises is that they are easy to make and even easier to break. So when Clarke and Lexa promise to spend more time together, to rekindle a friendship that has been not much more than a pile of ashes since middle school, it’s far too easy to just let things continue how they did before the party.

It’s not that Lexa doesn’t try. Because she does. She sends Clarke occasional messages, links to things she’s seen online that she’s found funny, photos of the mundane happenings in her day to day life, little anecdotes that she thinks Clarke might enjoy. And Clarke replies most of the time, but it’s very rarely more than a one word answer or a laughing face emoji. When it is something more, the conversation fades out within the two or three messages after that.

Lexa tries her best not to push Clarke, because as much as she wants Clarke’s friendship to be the same permanent fixture in her life that it used to be, she also knows that Clarke is having a difficult enough time right now without having to fend off the unwanted attention of a former best friend who has a massive fucking crush on her.

When three weeks have passed since the party, three weeks since they promised to spend a little bit of time together, three weeks in which virtually nothing has changed since before their conversation at the party, Lexa decides to attempt to initiate a face-to-face meeting.

Lexa Woods Do you want to hang out later? We could have a movie night? You wouldn’t even have to leave your bed!

She doesn’t have to wait long for Clarke’s reply.

Clarke Griffin Yeah, might be fun

Lexa Woods Cool! I’ll bring popcorn! What time do you want me to come over?

And that’s it. There isn’t a reply to that message. Lexa checks her phone over and over again, just in case she has accidentally missed the ping of her text tone, but there’s still nothing. She assumes that Clarke has fallen asleep, that her message goes unanswered for a completely legitimate reason, but Lexa soon starts to second guess herself and doubt begins to creep into her mind.

Maybe Clarke doesn’t want to hang out with her.

Maybe Lexa is being too pushy.

No, Lexa tells herself. Clarke likes you. Clarke wants to spend time with you. It’s not her that’s pushing you away, it’s the cancer.

With that in mind, Lexa slips into her shoes, grabs a jacket, and decides to head over to Clarke’s house.

When Lexa arrives at the Griffin house, she is nervous.

Nervous that Clarke won’t be in the mood for socialising and that she’ll be turned away at the door.

Nervous that she’s going to be invited inside and will have to somehow find a way to cope with spending two hours watching a movie with a girl that she’s basically in love with.

The fluttering of her heart is almost enough to make Lexa go home of her own accord before she can enter the house.

Lexa musters all of her courage and raises her hand, tapping on the front door sharply with her knuckles. While she waits for somebody to answer the door, Lexa’s heart pounds so hard that she can hear the blood rushing through her ears.

It feels like an eternity that Lexa is waiting on that doorstep, but the door finally swings open and Abby Griffin peers inquisitively at her.

“Hello, can I-?” Abby stops mid-question to peer closer, and recognition seeps across her face as she realises who is on her doorstep. “Lexa?”

“Mrs Griffin,” Lexa nods, smiling politely.

It’s been years since Lexa has been to the Griffin house, years since she’s seen Abby, and though things have changed – there are different cars on the drive, a new rug in the hallway just behind Abby, more gray in Abby’s hair and more crinkled lines around her eyes and mouth – Lexa feels like no time has passed, like she’s still a bright-eyed middle-schooler visiting for a slumber party with stolen candy and whispered secrets beneath the sheets long after the rest of the house has fallen silent.

“Please, call me Abby. And come in!” Abby steps aside, welcoming Lexa into her home and closing the front door behind her, before she continues, “It’s good to see you. It’s been far too long since we had you in this house.”

Lexa nods in agreement, and then asks, “Is Clarke around? We said we’d have a movie night.”

“I haven’t seen her for a while,” Abby answers with a frown, pausing to think before she speaks again. “She came down and made herself some toast just after two but it’s been quiet since then. She’s probably been sleeping.”

“Oh, okay,” says Lexa, trying to mask her disappointment.

“You can go up and see her if you like,” suggests Abby. Abby’s eyes widen as she has an idea, and she explains to Lexa, “I tell you what, I haven’t planned any dinner tonight so we could order pizza for your movie night. How does that sound? Why don’t you go and wake Clarke and ask her what she wants on her pizza? You remember where Clarke’s room is, don’t you?”

“That sounds great,” says Lexa, the anxiety from earlier starting to be replaced with comfort as Abby makes her feel welcome in the place that used to feel like a second home.

She can only hope that Clarke does the same.

Leaving Abby alone downstairs, Lexa ascends the staircase to the upper floor of the house and makes her way to the door that she knows leads to Clarke’s bedroom. And yet again, she hesitates outside the door as nerves begin to rise within her gut at what she might find inside.

After two deep breaths, Lexa knocks lightly on the door and then, when there is no response, she pushes it open and peers inside.

Clarke is asleep. That much is apparent straight away. Her eyes are closed, her mouth slightly agape, and she snores softly. One of her arms is flung casually above her head on the pillow, while Lexa can just see a few toes decorated with chipped red nail polish peeking out from beneath the covers at the foot of the bed.

The most glaringly obvious thing in the room, and Lexa tries her best not to stare at it for too long, is that Clarke has no hair.

Lexa always knew that Clarke was going to end up losing her hair at some point, but she immediately regrets not preparing herself for the sight. Clarke’s scalp is stubbly, like the hair has been shaven close to her scalp at some point in the last few weeks, but the little hair that remains is thin and wispy, like that of a newborn baby before their proper hair starts to grow in thick. It only adds to the childlike image that Lexa gets of Clarke, sprawled out on her bed like an infant taking a nap, and Lexa wants nothing more than to wrap Clarke up in bundles of blanket as she presses soft kisses to her forehead and whispers promises to keep her safe.

Grateful that Clarke is asleep and therefore unable to witness Lexa staring at her almost-hairless head, Lexa forcibly drags her eyes away from the sleeping girl and takes in the rest of the room. Though it’s still the same room that Lexa remembers from her childhood visits, it’s much different. The room feels smaller and less inviting, is Lexa’s first impression. It smells clinical in here, but that’s not it. Across the dresser, there are an assortment of medicines in bottles and boxes, labelled with names that are just as terrifying as they are long. Lexa had no idea that cancer treatment required so much medication.

A giant corkboard leans against Clarke’s closet door, upon which Lexa can see various information pamphlets from the hospital pinned up with brightly coloured pins. Most of the corkboard is dominated by a huge yearly wall planner, which Clarke has decorated with coloured stickers to denote which medicines she needs to take on which days, as well as written in all of her hospital appointments. At the bottom of the board, there’s a handwritten sign that says 12 days to next treatment, with a homemade flip chart to change the numbers as she counts down. Around the edge of the board, Clarke has pinned up a few inspirational quotes, and Lexa smiles to herself as she reads one in particular - scars are like tattoos but with cooler stories.

It’s all very strange to Lexa, seeing the evidence of Clarke’s cancer all over the same bedroom that she used to have playdates and slumber parties with Clarke in, but the reality of it sinks in a little more that it has before. Lexa feels a tinge of sadness at the realisation that this is what Clarke’s life has become now, but also a huge swell of admiration for how Clarke is refusing to let the cancer take her down without a fight.

When Lexa glances back at the girl still soundly asleep in the bed, she feels as though she’s looking at her in a different light.

“Clarke?” Lexa says in a hushed voice, crossing the room and sitting down gently on the edge of Clarke’s bed, trying not to cause the mattress to jolt suddenly under her weight as she takes a seat. Lexa is torn between wanting to wake Clarke up to spend time with her or leaving her to continue her peaceful slumber, but it is the selfish part of her brain that wins out in the end. “Clarke, it’s me. Lexa.”

Clarke stirs ever so slightly and Lexa reaches out with one hand to brush the back of her fingers against Clarke’s warm cheek, stroking the soft skin tenderly. Clarke leans into the touch, and her bleary eyes flicker open just a fraction.

“Your mom is going to order pizza for dinner,” explains Lexa. “Does that sound okay?”

Clarke lets out a little grunt that Lexa assumes is an affirmative, and so she continues her line of questioning.

“Great, what do you want on yours?”

“Cheese,” mumbles Clarke sleepily.

“Just cheese?” Lexa asks for clarification. “No other toppings?”

“No.”

Clarke rolls onto her side towards Lexa, tucking her legs up to her chest as she curls up and pulls the covers over her shoulder. Her eyes are closed once more, as if she never stirred at all.

“Do you want me to leave you to sleep?” asks Lexa, her voice just a whisper as she tries not to startle the sleepy girl beside her.

Clarke lets out a low hum that Lexa interprets as an affirmative, and Lexa slowly gets to her feet, careful not to disturb Clarke as she crosses the room and backs out into the hallway, closing the bedroom door with a soft click.

Once she is back downstairs, Lexa relays Clarke’s pizza order to Abby, as well as her own, then takes a seat on the couch in the Griffin’s living room.

“She’s fast asleep,” Lexa says, once Abby has phoned the pizza restaurant and placed their order. “It was almost like she was talking to me in her sleep.”

“She does that,” nods Abby. “Sometimes I can go into her room and have an entire conversation with her and she’ll have no recollection of it when we speak later in the day.”

“Wow,” gasps Lexa. “She must be really out of it. Does she spend a lot of time asleep, then?”

“You could say that,” Abby laughs softly under her breath. “Now, Clarke has always enjoyed her sleep. It’s difficult enough to get her out of bed in the morning at the best of times, but since she started the treatment, she spends most of the day in bed. She’ll surface a couple of times a day for a snack, but it’s rare to see her awake for more than a few hours at a time.”

“I…” Lexa starts, but then trails off, wondering if the way her thoughts are going aren’t appropriate for a conversation with the mother of a cancer patient. But Abby looks at her with warmth in her eyes and an encouraging smile on her face, and it makes Lexa feel a little like there isn’t a wrong thing that she can say, and so she continues, “This is probably going to sound really ignorant, but I’ve never known anybody with cancer before, and seeing somebody go through all of this is so different to how I imagined it to be. I don’t mean that to sound so…”

“No, Lexa, there’s no need to say sorry!” Abby is quick to shut Lexa down for she can start apologising. “I’m a doctor – I deal with people suffering from all sorts of things on a daily basis, and I even did a placement in an oncology ward when I was a student doctor – and there are things about Clarke’s treatment and the side effects that surprise me.”

Lexa smiles gratefully at Abby’s words, and then continues, “It’s just, media makes it seem like cancer is about your hair falling out and being connected to a machine by a tube.”

“And there is an element of that to it,” Abby interjects.

Nodding, Lexa adds, “But it seems like it’s so much more than that.”

“There is,” agrees Abby. “You also have to remember that not everybody experiences cancer in the same way, so the way that Clarke’s body responds to the chemicals fighting off the disease is not necessarily the same way that mine would, or yours.”

“Clarke is … I know it’s stupid for me to be saying this when it’s mostly my fault that we aren’t as close as we used to be.”

“Lexa,” says Abby, reaching across the space between them on the couch and resting a comforting hand on Lexa’s arm. “You and Clarke have been an important part of each other’s lives. It’s perfectly natural for you to be affected by what she’s going through.”

Lexa smiles gratefully, Abby’s words doing a little to quell the guilt that Lexa feels for finding it difficult to talk or even think about Clarke’s health.

“Clarke is special,” Lexa confesses to Abby. “Clarke has always been there for me. She’s been looking out for me since the day that we met, and it feels like it’s my turn to repay that favour, to look out for her.” Lexa pauses, before she admits, “And I’m worried about her. She doesn’t seem the same as she used to be.”

Lexa wonders for a moment if she has said the wrong thing, when Abby’s brows furrows and her eyes fill with sadness at the changes she’s seeing in her only daughter.

“She’s not,” agrees Abby. “And she may never be. But whatever she may seem like now, she’s going to be a much stronger person when it’s all over.”

Lexa is reminded of another one of the quotes she saw pinned to Clarke’s corkboard up in her bedroom - Cancer is always going to lose, because though it tries to make you weaker it only ends up making you stronger.

“To quote Kelly Clarkson; what doesn't kill you makes you stronger,” says Lexa, and Abby laughs softly at her words.

“Mom?”

They both startle at the sound of Clarke’s voice, having not heard her descend the stairs, and look up to find Clarke rubbing her tired eyes as she enters the room,  wearing pyjama pants and an oversized hoodie.

“Who are you talking to? I thought Dad was away toni-” Clarke stops mid-sentence when she notices Lexa. “Lexa?”

Lexa gives a meek little wave. Clarke looks completely surprised to see Lexa in her living room, as if she doesn’t remember either inviting Lexa over or even the short conversation that they shared in her room earlier. Lexa remembers what Abby said about Clarke often having entire conversations that she’s too tired to remember later and realises that must be the case.

“Told you she wouldn’t remember,” Abby's says, quiet enough that only Lexa can hear her.

“I came up to your room earlier to ask you what you wanted on your pizza,” Lexa explains to Clarke, smiling kindly in an attempt to reassure Clarke that it’s completely fine if she doesn’t remember. “We had a conversation.”

“We did?”

“Pizza is on its way,” says Abby. “Probably about half an hour.”

“I don’t know if I’m hungry,” Clarke protest, her voice feeble. She drops into one of the armchairs and curls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them to keep them close to her body as her head drops back against the cushion behind her.

“That’s fine,” Abby tells her. “But it’s there for you if you want it. Lexa says you two are having a movie night.”

“Oh shit, I totally forgot about that!” sighs Clarke, eyes widening as she remembers inviting Lexa over.

“Language, Clarke!” Abby scolds Clarke, though there isn’t actually any trace of anger in her voice.

“Sorry,” mumbles Clarke.

“I can go if you want me to,” says Lexa, trying to mask the disappointment as she makes to get up onto her feet.

“No!” says Clarke quickly, leaning forward in her seat slightly and letting her feet slide onto the floor as if preparing to chase Lexa if she tries to leave. “Stay! Please?”

Lexa drops back into her seat perhaps a little too eagerly, just pleased that she’s finally going to be able to make true of the promise they made at Octavia’s party and spend some time with Clarke. If her heart picks up its pace in her chest, then Lexa vehemently ignores it.

“Let’s use the den,” says Clarke. The Griffins have a room at the back of their house that they call the ‘den’, a small-ish room with a couch, a television, and several towering bookshelves along one wall, and Lexa remembers the room well from her childhood visits here, she remembers eating chips in front of cartoons, and making a fort to hide from the grown-ups. “My bedroom is too much like a prison.”

Lexa nods, her only concern being Clarke’s comfort at all times. If Clarke would rather host their movie night in the den, rather than the bedroom that has become almost like her own private hospital ward at home, then Lexa isn’t going to put forward any complaints.

“That sounds like a great idea,” says Abby. “Why don’t you girls go and set up in there? There’s some spare blankets and pillows up in the spare bedroom if you want to make it more comfy in there. I can bring the pizza to you when it arrives.”

“Thank you, Mrs Griffin,” says Lexa.

“It’s Abby,” replied Abby, a twinkle in her eyes, “and you know that, Lexa!”

They build what can only be described as a nest on the couch in the den, cocooning themselves in a warm bundle of blankets and cushions while they choose a movie from Netflix. When the pizza arrives, Abby brings it through to them and smiles at the sight of their heads peering out from under all the blankets.

The pizza box sits between them on the couch, resting on a small cushion, and they help themselves to cheesy slices while the movie plays in the background. Despite her earlier protests that she wouldn’t be hungry, Clarke’s stomach gives a traitorous growl when they lift the lid, and she manages almost two slices before she gives in and says that her appetite has gone.

Clarke falls asleep about halfway through the movie, and with her stomach full and the nest of blankets keeping her cosy, Lexa can feel her own eyes drooping with the onset of drowsiness not too long afterwards. She tries to fight it, to stay away and watch the movie, but her eyelids are heavy and she quickly succumbs.

When Clarke wakes up, she is uncomfortable.

Which is weird because she’s bundled up in blankets on the soft couch cushions in the den, with Lexa fast asleep against her side. She should be the epitome of comfort.

There’s an unsettled feeling in Clarke’s stomach, and it takes her a few sleepy moments to realise that she feels nauseous. The need to be sick is not an urgent one, but it is there, but as soon as she realises that she’s feeling queasy, it takes over her entire body and she can’t think of anything else.

Clarke tries to extract herself from the blankets without disturbing Lexa, but with the other girl asleep against her side, her head resting on Clarke’s shoulder, it’s a harder task that it seems. The blankets are tangled around their limbs and as she tries to remove herself from their warmth, Lexa stirs against her and her eyes blink open.

“Are you okay?” Lexa asks, her voice raspy in her newly awakened state.

“Just gonna go to the bathroom,” Clarke says, trying not to let her discomfort show. The last thing she wants is for Lexa to worry about her.

Lexa looks on in concern, but she nods silently and lets Clarke leave, helping to remove the blankets so that she can make her escape.

Clarke knows the drill by now. She reaches for a hair tie and pushes her hair back into a loose bun, then sits on the edge of the bathtub within reach of the toilet basin. She takes deep breaths, trying to stop the bile from rising in her throat, but by this point she knows it’s going to happen.

When she can’t fight it anymore, Clarke leans over the basin and retches, emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl. When she doesn’t think she can be sick any longer, when there is nothing left to throw up, Clarke scrabbles with one hand for the flush, while the other reaches for a square of toilet paper to wipe the disgusting dribble from her chin and lips.

“Clarke?”

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Clarke glances up from where she is huddled on the bathroom floor to find Lexa leaning against the doorway with concern on her face. The very reason that Clarke rarely has friends over at her house is because she doesn’t want them to see her like this, but the illusion that she’s dealing with cancer with her dignity still in tact is lost the moment that Lexa lays eyes on the way that Clarke is clinging to the toilet seat with her own drool coating her lips.

“Go away, Lexa,”

“Can I do anything to help? Do you need anything? Water?”

Clarke is loathe to ask for help, but her throat burns and there’s an acidic taste in her mouth and water sounds like heaven.

“There’s a bottle of water that I left in the den,” Clarke reluctantly says to Lexa.

“I’ll go get it.”

Lexa hurries out of the bathroom obediently like a dog rushing to fetch a ball, and Clarke is only left alone for a moment because the commotion brings her mom along in Lexa’s absence. Abby enters the bathroom and takes a seat on the edge of the bathtub, rubbing a soothing hand up and down Clarke’s back.

“Clarke, are you okay honey?” she asks.

Clarke glances up and puts on a forced smile, as she replies sarcastically, “Peachy.”

Lexa returns with the water bottle, filled with fresh water, and gives it to Clarke with a worried expression still on her face. Clarke accepts the bottle with a grateful nod of her head and takes a huge gulp, swilling the water around her mouth to wash away the taste of her own vomit, before she spits the water into the toilet basin and takes another sip to actually drink.

“Lexa, I don’t want you to see me like this,” says Clarke, now that her throat isn’t quite so dry and scratchy.

Though Lexa looks as though she wants to say something, she remains silent.

Pushing herself up into a standing position, it is Abby who comes up with a solution, leaving Clarke on the bathroom floor beside the toilet as she says to Lexa, “Lexa, how about I make up the spare room for you and you can sleep there tonight?”

Lexa keeps staring at Clarke with a frown on her face, eyes full of pity and something else, before she finally glances up at Abby and nods silently. Abby ushers Lexa out of the bathroom, leading her down the hallway, and it is only when Clarke has been left alone in the bathroom that she lets herself break down, tears cascading down her cheeks and her chest heaving with sobs as she collapses on the bathroom floor and just cries.

School starts up again at the end of the summer and so begins Lexa’s senior year.

Clarke doesn’t show up on the first day, nor on the second, and when she does finally show her face on the third day, she looks wearier than Lexa remembers, and her words are much more negative.

“I just don’t want to be here,” complains Clarke, when Lexa meets with her during morning break to give her a copy of Lexa’s notes from the two days she’s missed. “I don’t see the point.”

“Of course there’s a point!” Lexa tries to assure her. “This is senior year, your last year!”

“And what?” shrugs Clarke dejectedly, slumping against her locker. “I have to miss school for appointments but what about the days like yesterday where I physically couldn’t get out of bed? I’m tired all the fucking time!”

“I’m sure the teachers will be able to help you catch up on the work you’ve missed,” Lexa suggests.

“The teachers don’t give a shit,” replies Clarke. “I’m not in school enough for them to care. They’ve already written me off as a hopeless case. I’m just a kid they’ll talk about in a few years, like ‘remember when we taught that girl with cancer, such a sad story’. That’s all I am to them, a story.”

“Then I’ll help you!” promises Lexa. She hates seeing Clarke like this, hates how the cancer seems to have drained all of Clarke’s positivity. “I can come over to yours and help with the stuff that you miss and it’ll even help with my own revision.”

“I can’t ask you do so that.”

“I want to,” Lexa shrugs, her voice soft.

Clarke looks at Lexa in confusion, her eyebrows furrowed into a frown, like she’s trying to work out why Lexa hasn’t written her off in the same way that nearly every other person in the school has.

“But why? There’s no point. My life lost all its worth the moment they did the scan and found a tumour.”

Clarke chokes on her words towards the end, and Lexa catches her reaching up to rub at her eyes, as if wiping away tears. Within a few seconds, Clarke’s chest is heaving with sobs and her cheeks are damp.

“Come on,” says Lexa, putting an arm around Clarke’s shoulder and guiding her into the nearby girls’ bathroom.

There are two girls in there when they enter, standing at the mirrors touching up their eyeliner, but upon seeing Clarke in tears, they seem to sense the need for privacy and quickly gather their belongings, vacating the bathroom to leave Lexa and Clarke alone.

“It’s okay,” Lexa soothes Clarke. “Let it out.”

“Why me?” sobs Clarke. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“Nothing” says Lexa, as she pulls Clarke in for a hugs and wraps her arms around Clarke’s shoulders. Clarke’s own arms circle loosely around Lexa’s waist and her head falls on Lexa’s shoulder, her tears soaking the sleeve of Lexa’s t-shirt. “You did nothing. You don’t deserve any of this and it makes me so mad that it’s happening to you.”

“I had it all planned out,” says Clarke, another sob tearing through her body as she trembles in Lexa’s arms. “I was going to get a good GPA and go to med school and become a paediatrician but none of that is going to happen anymore.”

“It can still happen if you want it to,” Lexa tries to reassure Clarke.

Clarke pulls herself out of Lexa’s embrace and walks into one of the toilet stalls, emerging a few seconds later with some toilet paper scrunched up in her hand, which she uses to dab at her eyes and then blow her nose.

“That’s the other thing,” Clarke says to Lexa, tossing the used tissue in the nearby trash can. “I’m not sure I even want to be a doctor anymore. Why would I want to spend the rest of my life working in a place that reminds me of what I’m going through now?”

“Then that’s fine,” Lexa answers without hesitation. “There’s still so many other things you can so. You can still go to college without deciding what you want to major in yet, or you don’t have to go to college at all if you don’t want to.”

Clarke’s eyes narrow and she looks at Lexa with an expression on her face like she doesn’t understand why Lexa is so insistent that Clarke’s life isn’t as bad as she thinks it is.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” asks Lexa.

“Being so nice to me.”

Clarke still looks at Lexa with incredulity in her eyes, like the very idea of somebody showing her kindness is one that she can’t begin to fathom.

“Do you remember in Kindergarten when you helped me up after Murphy pushed me over and then kicked him in the balls?” asks Lexa, and Clarke’s glistening blue eyes soften with traces of amusement as she nods through her tears. “You’ve always had my back and now that things aren’t so great for you, I want to have yours.”

Lexa omits the part where she’s basically in love with Clarke and would do anything to ensure her happiness.

“I mean, Murphy hasn’t done anything but if you want to kick him in the balls anyway, it would really cheer me up.”

“Noted,” smiles Lexa.

Though her cheeks are blotchy and there are red rings around her eyes as evidence of her tears, Clarke is no longer crying and Lexa is grateful that she seems to have cheered up a little. She thinks that seeing Clarke like that, seeing the emotional impact that the cancer is having on her, is far worse than it is to see all of the physical changes on Clarke’s body. Even seeing Clarke hunched over a toilet bowl emptying her stomach that time Lexa went over for a movie night was more bearable than this, because at least Lexa knew that the nausea would pass. Seeing Clarke so upset and feeling like there is nothing she can do to help only leaves Lexa feeling completely helpless, and she wishes that there could be steps for her to take to ensure that Clarke doesn’t have to feel like her life isn’t worth anything now that she’s sick.

“Seriously, though,” Lexa tells Clarke, who has now turned to the sink and is splashing water over her face from the faucet. “I’m here for you. I know that things aren’t going your way at the moment, but I don’t want you to ever feel like you’re alone, because you’re not.”

Clarke’s eyes are still red and the skin around them puffy from her tears, but there’s something much deeper in them as she looks at Lexa, like maybe she might be finally starting to believe that what Lexa is saying is true.

Something changes in Clarke.

Lexa hardly notices it at first, because in many ways nothing changes at all. Clarke still misses a lot of school and when she does show up, she is still just as weary and down about her situation as she was at the start of the school year, keeping her head down on her desk for often entire lessons and secluding herself from most of her peers during break and lunchtimes.

But there’s definitely something different too. Something in the way that Clarke’s eyes seek out Lexa’s in the school canteen and her tense shoulders relax visibly as she comes to sit at Lexa’s table. Something in the way that Clarke will always choose to sit next to Lexa in the classes that they share, even if she ends up sleeping on her desk for the entire lesson. Something in the way that Clarke has started inviting Lexa over to hers after school every now and then so that Lexa can help her with the work she’s missed, even though their ‘study sessions’ usually end up with them binge-watching TV and reminiscing about memories from years past until their cheeks hurt from smiling too much.

Lexa likes it. Well, she doesn’t like that Clarke is still struggling, but she likes the way that even though Clarke is having a tough time, she’s giving Lexa the chance to try and make it a little less difficult.

Clarke has her last treatment in early-November and Lexa spends the entire day glued to her phone. Or at least as glued to her phone as she can be at school without the teachers noticing it and confiscating it from her. She checks it as often as she can, waiting for a message from Clarke to say that she’s out of the hospital so that she can congratulate Clarke on making it to the end of a gruelling six months of chemotherapy.

There isn’t a message, but when Lexa checks Facebook during her lunch break, there’s a post from Clarke at the top of her feed, dominated by a goofy selfie of Clarke at the hospital with a dumb filter that distorts her face and gives her a pair of animal ears.

Lexa taps the ‘like’ button instantly, then scrolls down to read the caption that Clarke has posted below.

Clarke Griffin 34 minutes ago Last ever chemo today! It’s been a difficult six months but I’m coming out the other side stronger and I couldn’t have done it without the most incredible support from the best friends and family I could ask for. Thank you to each and every one of you for sticking by my side during these tricky months. I love you all! All there’s left to do is to wait for the scan to confirm that the cancer is gone and then I can start growing my eyebrows back!

Lexa’s eyes prickle with tears and she wipes them away immediately, before anybody else can see her crying in the middle of the school canteen, but Lexa can’t stop the smile that spreads across her face with the growing pride that she feels for Clarke and the struggle that she has overcome as she types out a comment on Clarke’s post.

Lexa Woods So proud of you and the strength that you’ve shown! <3

It doesn’t come close to expressing what Lexa is really feeling, but when the notification pops up a few seconds later telling her that Clarke has replied with a heart emoji of her own, Lexa hopes that maybe it’s just about enough.

On the day that Clarke goes for her final scan and gets the all-clear from the doctors, who tell her that the chemotherapy has been successful and that she’s in complete remission, they go for milkshakes and donuts to celebrate.

“To you,” says Lexa, holding up her milkshake glass when the waitress brings them their drinks, and Clarke meets it with a soft clink of her own against Lexa’s, “for being the strongest and bravest person I know and kicking cancer’s butt.”

“To you,” adds Clarke, keeping her glass raised even after Lexa lowers her own, “for sticking by my side when so many others turned their backs.”

Lexa wraps her lips around the straw and sucks up some of her milkshake, sighing at how refreshing the drink is, before she puts the glass down on the table.

“Of course I stuck by you,” Lexa shrugs. “I just didn’t want you to feel alone.”

“I appreciate it,” smiles Clarke. “As long as we’re still going to be friends now that I’m healthy again?”

Clarke has genuine concern in her eyes, like she actually thinks that Lexa might stop being her friend now that she no longer has the excuse of wanting to help Clarke through her difficult times.

“Of course we are,” Lexa promises Clarke. “I’ll always be your friend, even when you have hair again!”

Clarke’s face cracks open into a grin and Lexa flushes with delight at having made Clarke smile, a sight that has been so rare over the last few months. It’s nice to see Clarke relaxed for once, instead of exhausted and void of hope, and Lexa can’t tell if Clarke is actually more radiant than before or if it’s just Lexa imagining things. Either way, Clarke looks beautiful as she sips on her milkshake, even more so when she smiles, and Lexa is reminded of all the un-friendlike feelings she has for Clarke as her heart stirs in her chest and makes its presence known by thumping rhythmically against her ribcage.

To distract herself from her racing heart, and to stop herself from doing anything stupid like telling Clarke that she looks beautiful and accidentally confessing her love, Lexa gestures to the box of donuts on the table between them and asks, “Powdered sugar or chocolate sprinkles?”

“Like you even have to ask,” grins Clarke, reaching for the donut decorated with chocolate icing and multi-coloured sprinkles.

The cancer might have gone, but Clarke’s social anxiety definitely has not, and the nerves that she feels upon entering the party that Octavia is throwing at her house for half their year is almost overwhelming. Her hair, barely starting to grow back and still a closely shaven fuzz on her head, is hidden beneath a comfortable gray beanie, and even though it has been months since she had long hair, Clarke still feels self-conscious about her current look.

The other partygoers greet her as if nothing has changed, as if she hasn’t spent months going in and out of hospital appointments and barely showing up to school. There’s the people who have always been her friends, even through it all - Raven wraps Clarke in a tipsy hug when she first sees her, Jasper greets Clarke with a fist bump and offers to pour her a drink from a suspicious-looking homemade concoction stored in an old plastic water bottle, Octavia drags Clarke straight into the middle of a makeshift dance floor in the living room and starts grinding up against her instead of Lincoln - but there’s others, people who have barely acknowledged Clarke during the last six months, who greet her and smile as she passes as if she has never had cancer at all.

It’s weird and Clarke doesn’t like it.

When Clarke has finally managed to escape from Octavia’s inappropriate dancing, using an excuse of needing to go somewhere a little cooler, Clarke makes her way to the slightly quieter kitchen and pours herself a drink.

“So the cancer is gone, huh?”

Clarke glances up, bottle of soda in one hand and a red plastic cup in the other, to find Finn smirking across at her. Finn, who was definitely flirting with her before the diagnosis, but who hasn’t even looked her way since, let alone spoken to her.

“Well,” says Clarke, trying not to let her disinterest in conversing with Finn creep into her voice. “I’m in complete remission, so…”

“So you’re basically cured.”

Clarke knows that she used to be attracted to Finn, though in this moment she can’t possibly remember why. Perhaps the chemotherapy has killed all traces of the former attraction along with the cancer.

“Finn, it…”

“When is your hair going to grow back?” asks Finn.

He must think that he’s flirting, because he wears a smirk on his face and leans closer to Clarke. Clarke decides that they must be living in alternate universes, because Finn clearly thinks that his advances are wanted, while Clarke is struggling to think of anywhere she would rather be less than here with Finn.

Except for perhaps the oncology ward with a tube pumping chemicals into the port on her chest, but it’s an incredibly close call.

“What if I like it short?” Clarke replies haughtily, folding her arms indignantly across her chest.

Still undeterred, Finn says, “I think you look really pretty with long hair. You know, how it was before.”

“Well, if you like it short then I guess I have to grow back.”

Finn completely misses the sarcasm in her voice because instead of getting the idea that Clarke doesn’t care about what he has to say and backing off, he instead leans yet closer and says, “How about we go and talk somewhere a little more private?”

It takes all of Clarke’s self-restraint to stop herself from rolling her eyes.

“And by ‘talk’, you mean hook-up?” she asks him, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.

“Well, I guess. If you like.”

Clarke loses it.

“No, Finn,” she snaps, spitting his name out like it’s a nasty taste on her tongue that she can’t wait to be rid of, “I don’t like. I don’t like the way that you think you can ignore me for six months and then as soon as I finish my treatment, you decide that it’s okay to start flirting with me again because you no longer have to deal with a girl who has cancer.”

“Clarke,” whines Finn, “I only meant that…”

“Well, guess what, Finn?” continues Clarke, barely allowing herself time to take a breath before she launches off again, not giving Finn the chance to try to wriggle his way out of this one. “I’m always going to be the girl who had cancer! You don’t go through something like this and just forget about it. This experience has changed me and I’m not the same girl who had a crush on you last summer. And if you didn’t want to be around for that change then that’s on you.”

“Clarke…” protests Finn.

“Finn, I don’t care,” Clarke tells him bluntly. “If you didn’t want to be my friend when I had cancer, then you don’t get to be my friend now that I don’t.”

Clarke is pretty proud of herself for that one, but she becomes aware that her rant at Finn has drawn a little bit of attention from the handful of other people in the kitchen. They watch her with mild fear on their faces, as if worried that she’s going to turn on them next and give them the same kind of treatment that she’s given Finn.

But Clarke is done ranting, and from the way that Finn is finally silent, Clarke thinks that maybe she might have got through to him.

Clarke decides that she has to make a quick exit to escape the judgement of the other people in the kitchen, but when she looks up at the door out of the kitchen, she notices that Lexa is standing there watching her, and Clarke realises that she must have seen the entire exchange with Finn.

With her conversation with Finn fresh in her mind, Clarke realises that Lexa is the only person outside of her tight-knit friendship group who has even looked Clarke’s way during the last few months, let alone tried to support her through the biggest challenge of her entire life, and the realisation has everything clicking into place.

Clarke pushes past Finn and walks towards Lexa, grabbing Lexa’s hand with her own on her way out of the kitchen and pulling Lexa with her.

“Come on, Lexa. We need to talk.”

We need to talk.

Put together in that order, they are probably four of the most ominous-sounding words in the English language, but Lexa has no time to process what they might mean or what Clarke wants to talk about. Clarke’s hand grips her own and Lexa is being dragged down the hallway of Octavia’s house, past a few other kids in their year, until Clarke opens up the front door and leads Lexa outside into the chilly December air.

“Clarke, what…?”

Clarke kisses her. Like actually kisses her, lips gently moving against Lexa’s while one of her hands comes up to tangle itself in Lexa’s hair.

It’s not at all what Lexa imagined their first kiss to be like - and Lexa has probably imagined and re-imagined a thousand different scenarios in which she and Clarke share a first kiss. Lexa has pictured it being tentative and clumsy, she’s pictured it being fiery and fuelled by lust, she’s pictured it taking place right after Lexa has delivered a smooth line to knock Clarke off her feet, and she’s pictured it happening in the darkness of her own bedroom late at night during a slumber party. In fact, had you asked Lexa just thirty seconds ago, she probably would have said that there is not a single version of their first kiss that she hasn’t already imagined.

But she never once imagined it to be like this, never thought that it would happen on Octavia Blake’s front step while a party rages on behind the closed front door, never expected that Clarke’s lips would be so soft or that her hand would caress Lexa’s scalp in the way that it does, never once predicted that Clarke kissing her would make Lexa’s heart beat in her chest like it’s having its very own high school house party in her chest.

Lexa tries to be as present as she can be, a task which is a lot harder than it seems when her entire body feels like it’s floating off the ground and soaring into space. She tries to kiss Clarke back, and she lifts her own hand to cup Clarke’s jaw, where her fingertips dip just beneath the soft material of the beanie that Clarke wears and her thumb traces patterns along the bone of Clarke’s gaunt cheek.

The kiss is a bit of a surprise - as far as Lexa is aware, her feelings for Clarke have been entirely one-sided until now - and Lexa can’t help but wonder what has changed in Clarke’s mind to bring them to this point. When Clarke draws back from the kiss to change the angle, Lexa pulls back from the kiss, though she keeps her hands on Clarke to hold her close, trying to let Clarke know that this is just a temporary pause, not a permanent halt on their kissing.

“Clarke, what…?

“Finn was hitting on me and it made me realise that there’s only one person I want to be doing that,” explains Clarke. When Lexa stares at her dumbfoundedly for a few seconds, not quite believing what she’s hearing, Clarke elaborates by saying, “You.”

Lexa’s jaw drops open like she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing, even though she already has the physical evidence that Clarke wants her from the way that her lips are still tingling from the recent pressure of Clarke’s mouth sliding against her own.

“Listen, this isn’t going to be easy,” says Clarke, dropping the hand that is buried in Lexa’s hair so that it’s draped around her neck and bringing the other one up to match it. “I still have to go to the hospital for tests every few months and there’s always a chance that the cancer could come back. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but mentally I’m a bit of a fuck up right now.”

“Clarke…” protests Lexa, shaking her head.

“What?” shrugs Clarke. “It’s true! I’ve still got a difficult journey ahead of me but I want to make that journey with you. I want you to still be by my side, because I can deal with the cancer - not very well, I admit - but I can deal with it. I don’t think I could handle not having you in my life.”

There’s a question in Clarke’s eyes, as if she’s waiting for Lexa to promise that she’s never going to leave. Lexa can’t find the words to do justice to the way that she’s feeling, so she decides to do it with actions instead. Her hands tighten on Clarke’s waist, pulling her closer as she leans down for a second kiss that feels like Lexa is arriving home.

“Just to be clear,” Lexa mumbles against Clarke’s lips, “are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”

Clarke lets out a little noise, something that Lexa decides must be the audible version of an eye roll, before she answers, “Yes, idiot. Be my girlfriend?”

Lexa doesn’t know how she manages to keep kissing Clarke when her mouth is threatening to crack into a huge grin, but she manages it, only pulling back for long enough to say, “Yes.”

[lifepros]

#9658

When i was young i saw a need to change my life. So i compiles 16 rules to live by. I would read them every day and try to apply them and work on them. I had copies in places i could see them many times a day. On my fridge, locker, binder and bedroom door.

Accept everything the way it is This is law one. Before you can continue with the other fifteen laws you must accept everything the way it currently is, in your life. Accept your job, accept your relationship - just accept everything the way it is. The only way you can evolve as a human being is to firstly accept that you need to evolve. Accept there are things in your life that are not going to plan, things you feel you deserve more of. When you accept all these things you are in control. To be in control of your life is to have the ultimate power over your destiny and overall purpose here on this planet. Take a moment to think about the way your life currently is, think about your financial situation and think about your social situation and everything else you have going on. Once you've done this, move on to law two.

Take Responsibility You need to take complete 100% responsibility for everything in your life that you thought of in law one. Everything you are today is because of you. You are your own doing. After you've accepted what you are and you've taken responsibility for the entire course of your life you can begin the process of improving areas you are not happy with. Work on yourself, not others Think of a person you are just getting to know. How do they make you feel? Do they make you feel nervous? Is their opinion important to you? Do they make you feel that you've got to impress them at every step? No. They don’t make you feel anything. You make yourself feel this way. There is no need for you to work on them by impressing them, since the issues of you thinking you need to impress them are all internal. It's yourself that is the issue. You've taken responsibility for who you are. Now you can start unwinding the negative parts of your situation. If you spend the majority of your time ‘working' when you're interacting with a people, you're doing it wrong. It should flow. Stop making identity meaning from external events, things or people You are not your car. You are not your house. You are not your money. You are nothing external, (external will be everything that is outside of you), so there is no need to think you are. You need to severe the connection you have with associating yourself as anything external. When you are called a name, let's pick ‘loser', that does not mean you are a loser. This is an external event and therefore has no impact on your inner identity. These things should be shrugged off as mere childish behaviour from the person providing it. If you are struggling with inner identity issues then most likely you are accepting external events as being true and you question yourself. Questioning yourself will allow the external event to grow inside of you like a cancer until you start believing it's an internal identity that you carry. Let go of all external events and issues that you currently carry and from this second onwards, deny all further external events, things or people that judge you in anyway shape or form. You make your inner identity decisions, no-one else. Failure is great; it's the best learning process Without failure you wouldn't be half the person you are now. When you successfully complete something you gain what you want. When you fail something you don't gain what you want. There is only one major difference with success and failure and that when you fail, you learn a great lesson. Learning that lesson in most cases is more important than what you gained for succeeding. This means you should go for that new job, you should do it because whatever happens you will gain something. Compare your progress only with yourself Everyone is different and there will always be people better than you and worse than you, this is just a fact with the amount of people running around today. When you achieve something you should only compare it to your previous achievements and see how far you've come personally. Comparing to other people will put your achievements in the hands of the external and as we covered earlier, you need to stop making internal meaning from external events. If you don't measure up success wise to one of your friends, this doesn't mean you're a failure. It means you are on a different race track and you're running a different pace. You may have a friend who scores 95% on tests. This is not something to beat or challenge and you shouldn't be reading posts such as this to do such a thing, because it will almost always end in failure and as we talked about earlier, failure leads to a great learning. So I'm saving you time by telling you now that the great learning you will learn is that you don't need to compare yourself against other people, only yourself. Evolve constantly Do you read? If you don't, you should. If you do, you should read more. I'm not being mean by saying that to you, I'm just saying that you should evolve constantly. Always move forward towards what you want. Always improve yourself with new ideas and information developed by other people. Always develop yourself with new experience by doing new things. Ever climbed a mountain? Go for it! Evolving constantly should be something you do for yourself. Make sure you remember that you are not evolving for your wife, your boss, your friends or that girl you want. You are evolving for yourself, which brings us to the next law. Stop seeking approval You do not need approval for anything you do. You especially do not need approval from strangers in the sense that you approach them and basically ask for it by feeding them something like "Can I ask your name?" Approval seeking is bad because it shows your inner confidence and how much you lack it. The only person that should give you approval is yourself. When you've done a good job, you should congratulate yourself and pat yourself on the back. Don't do things to achieve approval from others because in the long run you will be disappointed. Make yourself the centre Do you hold any beliefs such as extremely good looking or successful people are above you? Or are not equal to you in any way shape or form? If so, you need to delete that belief. You need to make yourself the centre. This basically means that you are in charge of you. There is no-one above you that has the ability to dictate to you your way of life. Being the centre, everything revolves around you. Most people assume when I say that I'm asking you to be selfish and arrogant. Believe me I'm not saying that. I'm merely saying that you should hold yourself in high regard instead of holding people above you. Everyone else is your equal. When someone looks up at you and thinks you are above them, help them. Show them how they can be the centre too. Do not get an ego around this law. Aim for long term gratification This means that you should completely stop your short term thinking. Short term thinking involves you doing something to gain here and now. For example, did you think this post would have gave you 16 perfectly good laws that'll change your life in 5 minutes as you read? I bet some of you did. Instead of thinking about things short term, think long term. This means you need to plan the next year, 5 years, 10 years or whatever, instead of just planning tomorrow. By planning long term you put yourself in the frame of mind of a successful person and you will enjoy long it more. Short term is easy to plan, easy to get and easy to lose. Long term plans are the plans that last the rest of your life. Never whine or complain The first ten laws were very universal in their use. The last 6 laws will focus more on what you should do in order get what you really want. Never whine or complain. Whining or complaining is the trademark of low status individuals who are not worth much. By whining or complaining you are basically telling everyone who sees you do it, that you have no control over your life and you are completely lost. Eliminating all whining and complaining is the way forward. Control your emotions I don't mean become a robot. I simply mean for you to control your emotions that show weaknesses. To a certain extent, weakness can be helpful but for now I'd just like for you to limit the weak emotions you may show. This goes hand-in-hand with the previous law on no whining or complaining. Be honest and direct This is one of my favourite laws by far. By changing this simple thing about you can change so much in your life. Being honest and direct gives you so much status with people that it's unbelievable. I assume it's because it's not so common these days to find a person who will speak their mind and be completely blunt, honest and direct about anything. This shows complete self-confidence and strength as a man or women to be able to speak your mind without fear of repercussion. Lead As a strong person you are bound by certain traits that you are born with. These traits include dominance, strength and leadership. People are hardwired to notice people who are leaders, they find them very commanding. Being a leader is a massive advantage in the real world since you have the power to command. If you aren't the leader of your social group now, maybe you should create another where you are the leader to test this out. I assure you that leadership is one of the gold coins of life. Don't be boring or predictable Being boring or predictable will leave people wanting more. People want the excitement and uncertainty of you being unpredictable. They find it very thrilling. If you find yourself repeating the same routine day in day out, change, because you are boring. Turn everything into an adventure This again is one of my favourite laws. Being a person of adventure is a tough thing to do, but the rewards are endless. If you treat everything as an adventure not only will the masses notice but they will queue up to go on the adventure with you. This is an extremely important trait to show and this is the final law of the 16 that you need to be successful. Be that person of adventure.