#is that i would have to be on my death bed before any medical professional took notice

[sunfloralchaos]

Man it's weird to continuously grieve yourself, your own health, your ability to do things,

It's heartbreaking to go through the comics I've made about it

Im so increasingly desperate and hopeless, I need help badly but I also know there's no point because I have never once been given genuine help from a fucking doctor

The older I get and the longer I've dealt with this the more upset I am that the only "help" I have ever been offered is antidepressants, anxiety meds and telling me to get a different job or to listen to diet podcasts. I've waited over a year for an appointment to be told to be mindful about my nervous system malfunctioning

I have so many more problems than currently on paper because I know I don't have it in me anymore to do that fight again for things I know I won't get help for

[endless-summer-soldier]

dr. feelgood - chapter two

pairing: Surgeon!Bucky x SurgicalIntern!Reader

summary: Y/N has a one night stand with a handsome stranger the night before starting her new job as a surgical intern. Little does she know, the handsome stranger also happens to be her new boss

a/n: the response to this fic has been so unexpected and it's honestly amazing! thank you all so much for reading. a lot of this series is based on grey’s anatomy but I’m putting my own spin on it! all the positive feedback is motivating me to write more often so I’m going to try to post new chapters on a somewhat weekly schedule.  

warnings: must be 18+, drinking, some surgery descriptions, smut, self-pleasure, praise kink, very minor character death, unprotected sex, rough sex

Word count: 1.5k

series playlist: here

taglist: @sebsgirl71479 @ozwriterchick @notmeddy @drewsuncrustables @lokidokieokie @hextech-bros @nats-whore @m4nulup1n @arcanebabe @tanyaspartak (message me to be added!)

series masterlist

I had to drag myself out of bed the next morning. I was dreading going to the hospital. Mainly because I was nervous to see the hot doctor I’d accidentally slept with. I didn’t know what to say to him. I wasn’t sure if we should talk about it or just pretend like it never happened. And he was so damn coy it was difficult to tell what he was thinking.

Once we were changed into scrubs, we met with Palmer to go through rounds. As we visited each patient, our knowledge was tested on their diagnoses and treatment plans. Palmer would assign an intern to each of the cases to assist with patient treatment and potential surgeries. Once rounds were finished, I was the last intern left and I eyed Palmer inquisitively.

“Y/L/N, you will be working with Dr. Barnes today.”

I felt nervous butterflies in my stomach, “Oh, I just thought I’d be working with one of these patients,” I said, trying to get out of it.

“Nope, Barnes specifically requested you. He’s down in the pit.”

“Got it,” I replied. I trudged to the elevator that would take me down to the ER, wondering how I was going to handle this.

As soon as the elevator doors opened, nurses were scrambling, prepping beds and trauma rooms. 

“There’s my intern!” I heard from across the way. “Good morning Y/L/N,” he said, calling me by my last name. While this was common in the medical field, it felt oddly chummy coming from him. 

“Hi Dr. Barnes. What do we have today?” I faked a smile.

“Collision in a bicycle race, multiple injuries, a few pretty serious. The ambulance is on the way. Put on one of those gowns and follow me.” I took a yellow disposable gown and donned it over my scrubs, along with a set of surgical gloves. Then I followed Bucky to the back entrance of the ER where the ambulances would arrive.

The two of us stood there for a moment in silence, listening for the wail of sirens that were sure to arrive any minute. There was a chill in the air which gave me shivers and ultimately put me on edge. I wasn’t good with uncomfortable silence, but I bit my tongue, determined not to give in first.

I lost that imaginary contest.

“Why did you lie to me?” I asked, turning toward him.

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“You told me your name was Bucky.”

“My name is Bucky. It’s what all my friends call me. It’s a nickname from when I was growing up.”

“Then why hasn’t anyone here called you Bucky.”

He sighed, “James is more professional so it's what I use at work. Think about it, who would want a surgeon named Bucky operating on them.”

I considered his point for a moment and realized I believed him. Before I could retort he added, “You weren’t exactly honest with me. You never said you were a doctor.”

I immediately became defensive, “I was just looking for a hookup, not someone to spend the rest of my life with.”

“Oh that was very clear when you hit on me.”

My jaw dropped, “The way I remember it, you hit on me.”

“Mmm…you’re probably right. I do have a thing for gorgeous women drinking tequila by themselves.”

I ran my tongue across my teeth in an attempt to fight the smile that was attempting to spread across my face.

“Okay, you know what, I’m pretending like that night never happened. We are starting fresh today. I am your intern and that’s it. No more flirting with me.”

“Whatever you say, Y/L/N,” he said, flashing me that irresistible smile. I shifted my attention away from his handsome face as the sound of sirens came into earshot.

The gurneys flowed in with injuries ranging from concussions to flesh wounds. I quickly made a move for one of the cases that I guessed to be surgical. The patient was an attractive male in his early thirties. He had three bicycle spokes poking out of his abdomen but was speaking perfectly normally.

“What happened here?” I asked him, inspecting the wounds.

“Just another day in the life,” he replied.

I chuckled, “You make it a habit of ending up in the ER?”

“It’s the best way to meet hot doctors,” he flirted. I stopped my inspection to stare at him, finding myself oddly charmed.

“What’s your name?” I said, pulling out a clipboard to fill out some paperwork.

“Quentin Beck.”

“Well Quentin Beck, I’m going to remove these spokes and stitch up your abdomen. Then I recommend we send you to CT just to ensure there isn’t any additional damage.”

“Ooh I don’t know about that. I’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Leaving so soon?” I joked.

“Can’t miss the big afterparty. I’ll see you there right?”

“You wish,” I applied a numbing agent to his wounds before carefully removing the spokes. I pulled off his shirt and started working on his sutures. Quentin kept trying to talk and I continued to shush him, focusing on tending to his wounds.

“You really should go to CT,” I said as I finished stitching him up and admired my work.

“No can do darling. My presence is expected elsewhere.”

I shook my head in disapproval, “Well I’m going to need you to sign a form that says you’re leaving against medical advice.”

“I will sign anything you ask me to.” I handed him a clipboard and showed him where to sign. He scribbled his signature, handed the clipboard back to me and stood up to leave the room. Then he doubled back and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulled me towards him, and kissed me, taking me completely by surprise.

When he pulled away he said, “That was for good luck.” Then he turned and walked out of the room, leaving for the hospital.

At that moment, I looked through the blinds and saw Bucky standing there, having witnessed the entire exchange. He had a surprised yet smug expression on his face

“Did you just make out with a patient?” he asked, leaning on the door jamb.

I had no words for what had just happened. “He just…kissed me…” I eventually managed.

“So that’s your type, huh?”

“I don’t have a type.”

“No? You don’t like world class doctors with irresistible charm?”

“Are you jealous?” I teased.

“Maybe I am,” he added with a smile. “But I could really use your help with a patient.” 

“Of course,” I followed him out of the room and tried to shift my focus back to work. One of the patients was having difficulty breathing and needed to be intubated.

“Have you done this before?” he asked me.

“Not on a real patient,” I replied.

He smiled, “We’re going to change that.” He instructed me to get in position towards the patient's head. He handed me the necessary equipment and talked me through it. I felt my nerves increasing, not sure if I was ready to do this. 

He seemed to pick up on this because then he said, “Hey, don’t panic. You can do this. I’ll be right here if you need help.” I nodded and took a deep breath, focusing on what he instructed. I had to make sure I inserted the tube into the trachea and not the esophagus. I angled the device to where Bucky had described and carefully fed the tube downwards. I looked toward him for confirmation I had done it correctly.

“Now place your hand on his chest and see if air is filling the lungs.” I did as he instructed and felt the gentle inflation of the patient’s chest.

“Yeah, I think I can feel it.” He placed his hand next to mine, overlapping ever so slightly to confirm the intubation had been successful.

He nodded and smiled at me, “Yeah you got it. Great job Dr. Y/L/N.” I couldn’t hide the smile spreading across my face and the rush that was hitting me. This was the feeling I’d been chasing for the past few years. This was why I wanted to become a surgeon.

I watched as Bucky continued his examination to determine what the patient needed. He appeared to have a few external injuries but nothing that major.

“His abdomen is swollen, so he might have some internal injuries. Y/L/N, can you take him down to CT.”

“Absolutely,” I replied. And just like that Bucky was gone, off to the next patient. I wheeled down the John Doe we just intubated to get his scans.

Once the CT was complete, I held up his scans to study them. There was severe internal bleeding in the abdomen that would likely require surgery. I paged Bucky, knowing he would need to make the ultimate call.

It didn’t take him long to answer the page. I had the scans displayed against the backlights and was studying them. He walked into the room and said, “What do you see?”

“Internal bleeding.”

“It looks like it’s coming from the kidneys. We need to get in there, stat. Book an OR.”

“Got it,” I replied, leaving the room to complete my task.

“Oh and Y/L/N? Great work today. I’ll see you in the OR.”

“I’m scrubbing in?” I asked, astounded.

He nodded with his signature smile, “You’re scrubbing in.”

next chapter

[concreteburialplot]

Intertwined // 06

-> 06 - Like Us*

masterlist: here | crossposted: ao3 | word count: 6.7k

Summary: Following Nick & Noah’s dispute, Noah discovers that life without Nicholas is lackluster. When an emergency arises, Noah’s fling runs to Nick seeking his help. Nicholas finds Noah in a state he’s never seen him in before, and wonders if he’s enough to save him this time.

Warnings: sad lmao, mentions of porn, handjob, nonverbal noah, night terrors, mentions of past character deaths, vague mentions of serious mental/medical issues, soft?, sorry this has taken forever, 18+ MDNI

REMINDER: this is an au where everyone is around the same age, follows no actual timelines/events, and uses oc's for family members. This is completely fictional. Obviously.

DISCLAIMER: the actions depicted here surrounding night terrors are intentionally incorrect to reflect their age. do not take advice from fictional 19 year olds. seek professional advice.

-NOAH-

Having to ask your girlfriend’s sober housemate to come get you because you don’t have a car or money for an Uber is humiliating – but it’s still better than staying home with Nick after our… fight? We’ve never really fought before but it’s all we seem to do lately.

It’s probably my fault anyway, with the moving in and everything. I know Nick has never had to share his space with anyone the way we do now. Him and Stella have always had separate rooms so, this would be the first time he’s ever had to share a room with anyone. Technically I suppose, it’s my first time too. Being an only child has its perks, one of which being always having a room to yourself.

I shake the thoughts from my head as I walk up the sorority house steps to find Kassidy waiting for me at the door.

“Noah!” She exclaims excitedly and throws her arms around my neck, as much as she can, being an entire foot shorter than me.

Normally, I’d be happy to see her, but after earlier with Nick, her voice almost feels like nails on a chalkboard.

“Kass.” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster and place my hands at her sides, subtly pulling her off of me.

“I missed you.” She pouts.

It had only been a couple hours since I last saw her and oddly, the simple words feel a bit suffocating.

“Missed you too.” I offer a tight-lipped smile.

The corners of her lips tug into a huge grin while she takes my hand and drags me up the stairs to one of the various rooms in the sizable home.

“You have this entire room to yourself?” I ask while taking in the bedroom. It’s bigger than Nicholas’, filled with a bed, a dresser, a tv mounted above it, and last but not least, a couch. Her very own couch.

“Yep!” She grins widely. “Most of the other girls have to share a room but I don’t – I think it has to do with my dad paying for a building or something.” She waves off the topic and plops down on her couch across from the tv and begins scrolling through it. “What do you wanna watch?”

There are certain things I tend to catalog in my mind that I like to call, “Never Knows” – these are things that I know I will never, ever experience in my life. Like being a NASCAR driver, or a popstar, or climbing Everest, or owning a mansion. Or even smaller things, like calling home and knowing someone will always answer or having just one pleasant Thanksgiving with relatives. These are things that are just impossible and improbable for me to ever experience.

Having a parent buy an entire building so that I get special treatment is definitely one of those things. I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily spending time with her because I want to marry her but, it makes me wonder just how fulfilled someone like her would actually be with someone like me as a husband. Another Never Know is knowing that I’d never be able to buy her a building of any kind, nonetheless a home.

She pats the couch cushion next to her, “C’mon babe, sit down next to me?”

“Yeah sure, um,” I run a hand through my locks and meet her on the couch with a forced smile. “Why don’t we just search romantic comedies and see what we find?”

“Sounds good to me.” She smiles wide and begins flicking through the romance category. That’s when I begin to daze out – whether it’s the alcohol or the weed or the fatigue of the night I’m not sure, but I can’t seem to latch on to any of the words she or the TV speaks. The only thing my brain wants to stick to is the last conversation with Nick. We’ve never kept secrets from each other like that before and definitely never lied.

Is he lying to me?

Maybe it is just the room situation wearing on us – that’s the only thing that’s really changed.

Kassidy nuzzles her way into my side with a blanket and I’m grateful she doesn’t pry into my silence. I don’t realize that we’re already halfway through the movie until I see the main characters share their first kiss. It’s cinematic, slow motion, twinkling, fireworks and it settles an odd, heavy pit in my stomach. Does that feeling only exist in the movies? Or is that something I should feel with Kassidy? Does she feel it? Is she supposed to? Am I?

Or is it another Never Know – is it one of those things where everyone else seems to experience something, except me. Would that sparkly feeling dance on my lips if Kassidy knew more about me? Would she even still like me if she did?

It’s been about 3 days since I haven’t returned home after the fair. I thought it would be best to give Nicholas and I some space since the cramped room is apparently causing a rift between us. I would’ve probably gone home sooner if Nick had texted or called, but he hasn’t. He must be really enjoying his time alone.

3 days playing house with Kass and our 3rd time trying to hook up. Emphasis on try.

Everything’s so much more complicated and confusing than it’s made out to be in shows or movies or porn.

For how outwardly annoying Kassidy can sometimes be, in my time alone with her, I’ve found that she’s really kind. I’ve already made an utter fool of myself in front of her many times now and she’s been nothing but patient and understanding with me. She’s more experienced than I am so she’s been helping guide me through things, which has been both incredibly embarrassing and helpful.

Whether it was the nerves, the embarrassment or excitement, I’m not sure but it was making my dick not fucking cooperate. For three fucking days my shit hasn’t been working with me. Do you know how fucking embarrassing it is to try and hook up with a girl who is very clearly out of your league and not even be able to keep it up? Absolutely fucking humiliating.

I let out a small groan at the glimmer of hope that this might be the time I actually stay hard. I squeeze my eyes shut hard with my head hung back as she works her hand up and down my shaft. She’d already been jacking me off for over 10 minutes with me oscillating between me being hard and semi-hard. She surprisingly wasn’t taking as much offense to it as I expected, and when she posed an interesting solution, I knew this wasn’t her first rodeo with a virgin.

“It’s okay baby, just relax.” She hums and kisses my shoulder. “Why don’t you just… maybe think about whatever porn you usually like to watch.”

My eyebrows furrow with my eyes still closed and she picks up on it.

“Just focus on that and we can work on the rest later, okay?”

I give her as much of a nod as I can at the moment and try to do as she suggested. My mind tries to quickly filter and cycle to pinpoint the last video I watched and go from there. I finally remember but… I’m not alone in the memory. The last video I remember watching is the one I watched with Nick. As much as I try, the haze of my mind can’t remember much of the video itself but I can remember what he felt like in my hand – easily double my size.

My right hand suddenly feels so empty, so I reach over and find her thigh, giving it a hard squeeze.

“Fuck.” I mutter, feeling my chest rising and falling quicker now.

Then creeps in the memory of him spilling all over my hand and my mind runs with it before I can stop it. Unexpectedly, all my nerves rush to where her hand is working. It’s the furthest I’ve gotten so I just try and hold on to the feeling. The flashback continues until a part I had forgotten until now - taste of his cum on my hand. Then, a snapshot of him tasting mine. And abruptly I feel a familiar knot form in my stomach and snap just as quick as it began. My fingers curl, digging harshly into her thigh and into her sheets.

“Nick, fuck!” My entire body involuntarily flinches as my cock twitches and spills over her hand.

My eyes snap open wide at the ceiling at the realization of what fell from my lips. My inhales and exhales are rapid and staggered both from my climax and the sheer panic that washes over me.

What the FUCK?

When I finally look down at her, she’s smiling, not at all phased by what I blurted out in the moment.

“Told you we’d get it.” She gets up to wipe her hand off with a nearby towel.

As I lay there trying to gather myself, my brain can’t process the rush of thoughts that flood my mind. It must have been just a weird brain connection, right? It was a fluke, a mistake, a heat of the moment thing.

-NICHOLAS-

Noah hadn’t come home in a couple of days, which normally would’ve upset me more than it has, but I think I needed to be alone. I’ve really enjoyed the solitude but, I also miss having him next to me all the time. Even though it’s been less lately, with Folio and Kassidy and their study group, I can’t remember the last time he hadn’t slept next to me until now.

I took this time away from him to do something I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish with him around.

The long-haired worker inspects the broken guitar I brought in on the front desk.

“You said a man did this?” He questions skeptically with a heavily arched brow.

“Yes.”

“With his hands?”

“Yes. He’s scary.”

“Okay, well…” He sighs, “I mean, don’t you just want to replace the neck?”

“No.” I shake my head quickly. “No, no. It has to be all the same parts, all the original parts.”

“Why?” He tosses at me, sounding almost annoyed.

“It was gifted to my,” I hesitate for a split second though I’m not sure why, “to my friend by someone special.” I keep the explanation as vague as possible, not wanting to spill Noah’s family trauma to a stranger. “It just needs to all be the same.”

He looks over the instrument again and sighs, “I’m just not sure it’s possible dude. It’s a pretty bad break. It’s all splinters.”

My heart wants to plummet into my stomach, but I need to keep it afloat.

This isn’t for me, I remind myself.

“Can you just try?” I try to shield the desperation in my voice.

He lets out another heavy sigh looking over the damage once again. “Fine. But I can’t guarantee it’ll be fast. I have other instruments waiting for repair before yours, so it could be weeks, maybe months with how delicate of a process it’s going to be.”

“That’s fine. Just um, call me? Whenever you have an opening?”

“You got it man.” He nods.

While Jolly packs the guitar away I decide to peruse the rows of vinyl records in the shop. They’re all stored in wooden crates and alphabetized by artist. Half of the records were brand new while the other half were old and worn. My fingers flip through the thin sleeves looking for anything that catches my attention. I find a Deftones album I’d been missing, Diamond Eyes, the one with the white owl, and set it up front with Jolly to purchase before I leave.

After making it through the maze of records, I find myself in the area that was most interesting last time. I step into the sectioned off area that showcases all of the repaired and refurbished instruments available for purchase. I must’ve been more obvious with my admiration that I thought because Jolly spoke up from his nearby desk.

“You can touch them, try them out if you’d like.”

“Oh.” I reply softly and let my eyes land on the teal bass I was looking at. “Thanks.”

I precariously pick it up from its stand and sit on a stool beside it. I began just plucking a few cords, tuning the strings here and there before flowing into one of my favorite songs from the album I just set aside, CMND/CRTL.

“You’re pretty good.” Speaks Jolly from behind me, leaning on the dividing archway.

“Oh, thanks.” I feel my cheeks warm from the compliment.

“You in a band or anything?” He questions.

“Oh, no, I mean not really.” I laugh and shake my head at the idea of seriously being in a band. “Me and my two friends joke about starting a band all the time. We play all together sometimes but it’s just for fun.”

“Hm.” He hums, see-sawing his pen between his pointer and middle fingers. “Your lead singer plays guitar?”

“No – I mean, he does. He’s the one that owns the guitar.” I point back to the front desk where we spoke about the broken instrument. “But for the vocals he would want to do, it’s not really feasible for him to play guitar at the same time.”

“Well, what kind of vocals would he be doing?”

“I don’t know, screamy stuff, metal?”

“I see.” He sets the pen branded with the business’ logo down. “If you guys ever get serious and need a guitarist, let me know.”

“Noted.” I nod.

I sit with his words lingering in the back of my head. Starting a band was always something we kinda joked about but never committed to. Folio and I were down but it was always Noah who held back, not thinking he was talented enough to be a singer. He swore up and down that he didn’t want to be a frontman, never wanted the spotlight. So, we suggested finding a different singer all together, to which Noah was extremely against. Letting strangers in was never his forte - well, I guess until now, with all his new college friends.

The thought stayed with me entire drive home. If we ever gave it a shot, would it get anywhere?

I decide to tuck that pipe dream away in the back of my mind when I open my bedroom door and find it still vacant.

I can’t convince Noah to start a band if he’s not fucking here.

My eyes softly crack open to a sound my sleepy brain hasn’t processed yet. Once my ears acclimate and recognize the noise, I nearly jolt up straight from where I laid. I scramble to find the rattling that echoes from my phone resting on my nightstand. Noah’s name flashes across the screen and the panic I had just felt is quickly replaced with annoyance. I roll my eyes and slide the answer bar across the bottom of the screen.

“What do you want, Noah?” I ask with a sleepy grumble evident in my tone.

“N…Nicky?” Speaks an unsure, hesitant voice from the other end, one that isn’t Noah.

My brows furrow and my spine straightens sharply, now fully alert. “…Yes? Who is this and where is Noah?”

“It’s Kassidy.” The voice replies, and if it weren’t for the audible shake in her tone, I’d be irritated all over again. “Something um-“ Her voice cracks like she’s on the verge of tears, “Something’s happening to Noah? And I… I’m not really sure what but, I don’t know what to do.”

I let out a sigh and let my eyes close with the exhale. It’s only when both ends of our phone call are silent that I can hear familiar ear-splitting screams in the background.

“That’s him screaming?” I ask even though I know the answer. I lift my head and shake it vigorously to wake me up some more. “Okay, um.” It had been a couple weeks since Noah’s last night terror and each one has been different so, it’s difficult to navigate it without being there. “Usually, I just get on top of him and hold down his limbs as best I can so that he doesn’t hurt himself.”

I hate seeing him like that, it always looks like he’s in so much pain, like some demon’s got a hold of his soul. Hearing it is not much different.

“Okay.” She replies in a slight panic. I hear a shuffle on her end followed by an audible struggle – grunts and hisses from Kassidy who is sure as fuck not strong enough to get him down alone.

“Fuck.” I mumble to myself, pulling the skin of my forehead into a peak to relieve the stress growing behind it. I try my best to ignore the way my heart has been accelerating every minute since I answered the call.

Finally, I hear her voice on the other end, this time from further away like she put me on speaker. “Okay.” She pants, “What now?”

“I just call his name until he wakes up.” I shrug defeatedly. “But don’t cover his mouth.” I can hear that his screams have quieted a bit and hope that it wasn’t from her trying to stifle him.

The sound of her calling his name over and over in fear and desperation wasn’t something I was prepared to hear. It’s one thing to be the person doing it, but a whole other thing having to hear someone else’s attempt. While it was painful to listen to, it also settled a weird swirl in the bottom of my stomach. She’s doing my job.

Suddenly everything stopped – her calling and his screaming, he must’ve woken up.

There’s a silence on the other end that is near deafening, almost ominous. The seconds feel like hours until the phone is picked up again.

“I think you need to come get him.” Kassidy says, sounding absolutely lost and horrified.

“On my way.”

I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect when Kassidy led me to her room. Maybe I thought he’d just be sitting there, ready to go home or pacing, but that was far from what I walked into.

My eyes first land on her bed, empty and disheveled, evidently where everything had occured. My brows furrow at the discovery and it only takes a quick scan of the bedroom to find him curled up in the corner of her room.

What the fuck?

In the couple times he’s had night terrors since he’s moved in have never ended up with him like this. I carefully make my way over to him and crouch down beside him. Hesitantly, I place a hand on his shoulder from behind. “Noah?” I whisper.

A tiny sniffle comes from him but not much else. I test the waters and place both hands on him and when he doesn’t react, I use my strength to turn him around. Again, what I expected is not what I got. I anticipated him to be crying, usually after a night terror he cries but not this time, at least not anymore. His eyes look puffy as if he’d been crying but they’re mostly dry now. His arms are tucked tightly around his torso and his knees almost up to his shoulders. His dark brown eyes are blown wide and staring right past me into the darkness of the room. His eyelids barely close and his breathing is still heavy. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’d seen a ghost.

I figured that once he saw that it was me, he’d react in some way – maybe positive that I showed up, or maybe negative that I interrupted his time with Kassidy, but it was neither… it was nothing. As if he didn’t realize I was even there. When my eyes trailed back to Kassidy, I noticed that I don’t think he realized that she was there either. Or, if he was aware of our presence, it meant little importance to him in whatever weird state he was stuck in.

“Did he have anything to drink?” I ask Kassidy and it unintentionally comes out with an accusatory edge.

She chews on her thumbnail as she looks upon the scene and shakes her head.

“Smoke?” I press, bringing myself back up to my feet.

She shakes her head again, “We just watched a movie and fell asleep.” She states simply. “I-I don’t know what happened… is he okay?”

My eyes flutter to the ground then over to my shivering best friend. “I don’t know.” I breathe out truthfully. Something then crosses my mind that I hadn’t quite thought of until now. I turn my head back towards the blonde, “How did you know to call me?”

She shrugs, “You were his emergency contact.”

A train feels like it rushes through my chest at her words, blowing hot steam through my ribs. Emergency contact. Out of all people, he chose me. I guess in the grand scheme of things, it makes sense for it to be me I just… never imagined it would be. I never thought that I’d be the one he’d trust the most. At 19 being an emergency contact seems strange, unnatural. What 19 year old is at all prepared to be an emergency contact?

I want to say that he made the wrong choice, that I’m not reliable or qualified enough but, I know I’m the only one who’d show up.

I crouch back down to him. “Okay Noah, I’m gonna take you home now.” I speak to him like a child since I’m not sure exactly what he’s able to comprehend at the moment but I just need to get him out of this stupid sorority house.

“Home.” Is the only thing that leaves his mouth with his eyes still focused on something distant on the ground.

“Yeah, let’s get you home.” I nod and choose not to make a big deal out of him finally speaking.

I hook my arms beneath his shoulders and use all my strength to yank him to his feet. I hook my arm around him and help him walk out of the house. It’s slow and robotic, like maybe he is still asleep.

Kassidy looks like she wants to help, wants to do more but she doesn’t know how. She watches from the steps, gnawing on her thumbnail as I help him into the passenger seat. I snap his seatbelt into place and close the door.

“Here.” Kassidy hands me a grocery bag full of his belongings. “This is what he brought with him.”

“Thanks.” A sharp pain slices through my stomach as I take the bag from her, knowing that this is all he took in a rush from our house. A person watered down to just a bag full of clothes. “It’s a good thing you called me. I’ve never seen him like this.”

She nods, looking past me to the car, her own blue eyes red and puffy. “I’m glad you answered. I didn’t expect his emergency contact to be you, but I’m not surprised.”

My head tilts at her words slightly, “What do you mean?”

She shrugs and tucks a chunk of blonde hair behind her ear. “He talks about you a lot.” Her eyes finally trail back to meet mine. There’s something cloudy in them that feels hesitant as though she has more to say.

My eyes flicker at her statement. “He does?”

She sniffles a laugh, congestion still settled in her nose from her sobs. “Yeah, he kinda doesn’t shut up about you.” Her arms fold over each other for warmth as the night rolls in a chill. “He must really love you.”

It’s a simple statement. And not one that we’ve never said before. We’ve said I love you to each other since we were 11. He says I love you to my mom and to Stella. Love was never a question in my home when it came to Noah. But for some reason her words feel like a kitchen knife sawing through my intestines. It feels different now. After 8 years, how can the same 3 words feel so different?

I press my lips together and nod. “We’re very close, yes.”

“You’re very lucky to have his trust.” She says with a hint of sadness in her tone. He hasn’t shared much with me about his relationship with her, but it makes me wonder how much he’s letting her in; from her words, it doesn’t sound like much.

“I am.” I take a step back and thumb over my shoulder. “I should get him home now.”

She nods. “Text me when you guys get home? So I know he’s safe.”

“I will.”

When I round the car to the driver’s side, I feel something loosely moving around in the plastic bag as I walk with it. I open the bag to see a small, stuffed orange cat. It looks identical to the cat keychain he’d left me from the fair, except his was light orange with darker orange stripes. They must’ve been a pair.

A burning fills my eyes and I squeeze them tight in an attempt to halt any tears that threaten to escape. I don’t have time to cry right now, I need to get him home.

An ache swells in my chest, one that never seems to leave these days, and I can’t help but question when everything became so hard with us. Why does everything hurt so much all the fucking time now.

My fingers tap on the cracking leather of my steering wheel. The streetlights burn my irises and remind me just how heavy my under eyes are. I glance over at Noah, who’s curled up in the passenger seat turned away from me. His lanky legs are tucked tight against his chest and his thin arms keep them locked in place. His head rests on the door with his gaze set on the passing trees.

Why is this terror so different?

I’ve been battling with myself for the past 10 minutes on what to say to him, how to ask him what happened without causing any further damage.

“Noah?” I watch him for any movement, there is none. “Do you wanna…talk about anything?”

No response.

“Well, are you hungry? We could stop and get you something?”

No response.

“Do you want me to put on some music?”

No response.

I think hard about my next question because I’m not sure it’s the best choice and I don’t want to upset him any further, but it’s the only thing I can imagine that would make this time different than the rest.

“Noah,” I hesitate, “What did you see in your nightmare?”

His body tenses slightly, and while he hasn’t done or said anything yet, the energy in the car shifts. I feel a chill roll down my back and a pit in my throat that reminds me of being a child caught in a lie.

Noah never talked about his nightmares or what happened in them, and I never asked. Maybe I should’ve started asking sooner.

There’s a long pause, long enough to make me think he wasn’t going to reply and to let me focus on the road again.

Then out of nowhere, his voice cuts through the silence like a guillotine.

“Mom.”

My eyes widen and I swear I felt my heart stop beating for just a second. A deafening silence falls over the car, for a second I can’t even hear my obnoxiously loud engine.

Despite being as close as we are, I barely know anything about Noah’s family, especially his mom. I always had a vague picture of what his family structure looked like, but it was never something he spoke about, and I was rarely invited over. I knew something was wrong with his mom for a long time, something medical maybe. I remember Noah periodically canceling plans on weekends and skipping school because his mom was in the hospital for one thing or another. Maybe he mentioned something at the time, but I can’t remember specifics now.

When she passed, it was a shock. It was clear that whatever mystery illness that was landing her in hospitals wasn’t expected to kill her. The night she died was the only time I ever saw Noah grieve. He showed up to my house a disheveled, broken mess, as anyone would be after losing their mother. He sobbed in my bed until he fell asleep but when I awoke the next morning, he was gone. One week. He was gone for one week. Radio silent, not online, not answering phone calls or texts and absent from school. When he returned, it was like nothing had happened. He was perfectly normal.

I bite down hard on my bottom lip and feel regret coursing through my veins.

“I’m sorry.”

Getting Noah into my house was about as easy as getting him out of the sorority house. Though, he seemed magnetized to the bed, as if laying in it would take all of this away.

I let him collapse onto the mattress while I set my keys on my dresser drawer and support my weight on my palms against the cold wood top. I let out a deep sigh, trying to expel any heaviness weighing in my lungs.

Within minutes I hear small noises I’ve come to recognize as the sounds of Noah sleeping. Knowing that he’s asleep eases my anxiety just a tad, maybe the night will heal whatever battle he waged with his mind tonight.

I strip off my jeans and change into striped sleep pants, and crawl into my designated spot next to him. I lace my fingers over my chest and let my eyes get entranced by my ceiling fan. I watch it spin until I feel my eyelids feel heavier than my body wants to carry and curl myself away from Noah, tugging the duvet to cover my eyes.

For the second time tonight, I’m pulled out of sleep by unexpected noises. This time, they were gentle.

Soft sniffles intrude the silence of the room. I blink sleep from my eyes and rub my right one as I turn towards Noah. His sniffles halt the second he senses my movement.

“Noah?” I ask in a whisper.

No response.

“I know you’re awake.”

He lets out a quiet sigh before turning to lay flat. The moonlight shining through the window highlights the rivers of tears that had been streaming down his face. He quickly uses his arm to wipe them away, “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“Well, I wasn’t, until now.” I lay my head on both my hands in a prayer position looking over at him. I allow the quiet hang in the air for a bit before I speak again. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

He sniffles as he goes to respond but chokes and waterworks let loose, his eyes screw shut and squeeze all the salty water out. His whole body shakes and with every sharp inhale I can hear how much pain he’s in.

My hands and arms burn and I’m not sure why, but something in me screams to touch him. So, I reach out and before I even touch the hair on his arm, he rolls into me, burying his drenched face in my chest. His arms wrap around my waist tight, almost cutting off my oxygen but I stay perfectly still. I didn’t expect this, I just meant to hold his arm or something, but here he is latched onto me. It’s more than I was willing to give, but it’s clear it’s what he needs.

I follow what my body tells me to do and wrap my arms around him to pull him closer. His cheap, woodsy body spray fills my nostrils and it’s some sort of silent confirmation that I did the right thing. He feels comfortable in my arms, almost like he’s the perfect size for them. I rub the length of his back, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I reassure as if it would really do anything. “I’m here.” I whisper and rake my fingers through his hair. He seems to like this because his wails soften as I do so.

By the time his sobs taper off, my Star Wars shirt is soaked and it’s quiet, so much so that I think he might’ve fallen asleep. He finally pulls from me and wipes his pink and puffy eyes. “Thanks.” He says sheepishly.

“Of course.”

“And thanks for picking me up.” His voice is quiet and barely audible with his gaze down and away from mine.

“Always.” I reply without a second thought.

“Always?” He looks up at me with big brown eyes that somehow always make me so painfully malleable in his hands.

“Always.” I answer then realize that my fingers are still tangled in his hair, though he doesn’t seem to mind. I get an idea. I recall something that I did the first time he had a terror that seemed to soothe him. “Actually, I’ll make sure you remember.”

His brows furrow at me in confusion as I take a chunk of his hair from the nape of his neck and overlap three silky parts together. “There. Keep a braid in your hair and I’m there with you, always.”

His hand goes up to find the braid I had just woven and rubs it between his fingertips, and my stomach twists at the small smile that forms on his lips. As his fingers trail the length of the braid, his nose scrunches up in curiosity. “Why a braid?” He asks with his head tilted slightly.

I shrug, “I don’t know. It’s intertwined, like us.”

It was the truth. For as long as I can remember, it had always been Noah and me. Noah and I. Wherever I went, he followed, and wherever he went, I was right behind him. Every decision we made involved the other, whether it was choosing complementary Pokémon games so we could trade or picking songs to learn on the guitar so we could play together. We were a duo. A pair. A combo.

A package deal.

He silently blinks at me before reaching out and taking my own hair into his fingers. I still my body as he carefully sections three pieces of my hair and begins to cross them over each other. His actions are slow and intentional like he’s trying to make sure it’s perfect.

“There.” His arms pull back delicately, only to find my hand and guide it to the braid he just made. He presses my fingers into the woven strands. “Always. Like us.” he repeats, like reciting a secret oath, and I nod in agreement.

His eyes trail up from the braid to meet my gaze. He looks so... pretty in the moon's glow, and my eyes don't want to leave his, especially not after what he just swore to me—what we just swore to each other. It's special, no matter how silly it may seem. I brush some stray strands of hair out of his face and gently tuck them behind his ear. His mahogany eyes shift back and forth between mine, like he wants something from me, but I'm not sure what.

In a split second before I can even process what’s happening, every muscle in my body tenses and my eyes widen more than I ever thought possible. Soft, cushion-y lips press into my own and cold hands hesitantly cup my cheeks. It’s only when he pulls away that I realize I haven’t sucked in a breath for what feels like hours. He backs away slightly, his eyes analyzing me like I’m a petri dish under a microscope. His stare darts across my face, as if he’s ran some sort of experiment and is waiting for a result. My cheeks burn hot in embarrassment for what just happened and for being studied so intently. I’m ready to dismiss the encounter entirely, but he’s just staring at me with eyes as wide as saucers.

“Still always?” He asks barely audible. “Even after…?”

“Yes.” I don’t even have to think about it. “Always.” Not even a millisecond after the word leaves my mouth, he joins our lips again.

The kiss is long, slow and sweet but hesitant, fidgety and nervous. My heart races so fast in my chest that I can feel it drumming in my ears, in my throat, in fingertips. All I can think about are his lips, and his hands, and how close his body is to mine. Kissing Noah wasn’t something I ever expected to do or even ever thought about. I never imagined how his lips would feel like on mine, but it surprisingly doesn’t feel…weird. Not as weird as I would’ve probably thought beforehand.

The kiss is sparking and warm, not so much like explosions but more so a crackling fire. It’s comforting, like a physical manifestation of the feeling that comes from being around each other — like the gentle warmth of a shared space that feels safe and familiar. It just feels like an extension of us.

I mirror his position and rest my hand on his cheek which prompts him to lean into the kiss slightly. After a couple more seconds of our lips pressed together, he pulls away. He searches my face the same as he did before, just softer this time, less frantic.

My body reacts to him in ways I never expected, like the way my thumb instinctively brushes gently across his cheekbone. My heart swells the way he leans into my touch.

“I’m sorry about your dreams.” I say quietly.

“I’m sorry for bothering you.” His eyes dip down.

“You never bother me.”

The edges of his mouth curl up in the same way they do when I tell him he’s a good singer when he claims not to be. I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

“I mean it.”

His eyes flicker down to my lips again and linger there. It makes me want to kiss him again but before I even get to move towards him his focus snaps back up to me.

“We should try to sleep.” He says quietly.

I watch him and notice how fidgety he’s gotten and how he can’t look at me anymore.

I press my lips together and nod. “Yeah, it’s late.”

“We have class tomorrow.” He replies, as further cushion to his sudden reasoning to sleep.

“We have class tomorrow.” I repeat, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice.

“Yeah.” He whispers, barely audible. “Goodnight Nicky.” His chestnut eyes flicker back up at me.

“Goodnight Noah.”

He gives me a tight-lipped smile before flipping away from me. I let out a silent exhale I didn’t know I was holding and let myself return to my original sleeping position facing the window beside the bed.

A part of me – a large part of me - doesn’t want the night to be over yet. Maybe this is just a dream I don’t want to wake up from, because like in a dream – nothing makes any sense yet feels so normal, so right. Waking up means having to make sense of something that maybe we should forget… but I don’t think I want to forget.

It’s only after I settle in under the covers and am on the brink of sleep that my heart suddenly drops to my stomach. My eyes fly open only to be met with darkness.

I kissed my best friend and didn’t hate it.

I kissed my best friend and didn’t hate it.

I kissed my best friend,

And I liked it.

Shit.

Taglist; @concretenoah @kingdomof-omens @the-hell-i-overcame @blackveilomens @xxrainstorm

@bspeaks @sorrowsofsilence @wwemademegayer

A/N; Hope you guys enjoyed this one 🩷Thank you for the support on this series and on all my other works. I appreciate it more than you know. I love reading your comments and asks. I am incredibly grateful for them, thank you.

[the-possum-writes]

Can I please get some hcs of Finn, Fern, Bonnibel and Marceline (separately) with a gender!neutral human reader who gets found in some kind of stasis pod in an overgrown underground bunker from the mushroom wars, and when they wake the reader up it turns out the reader was put in stasis near the end of the mushroom wars and now has to adjust to a radically different world? And after a few months of helping them get used to things the reader asks if they want to go on a date sometime?

Waking up from Stasis Hc

❥Characters: Finn, Marceline, Princess Bubblegum

❥Tag: Mentions of war and death, SFW, Gen!neutral reader, angst & comfort, human!reader, headcanons

❥A/n: Sorry for the wait! Gonna keep this limited to Finn, Marcy and PB due to my 3 characters per request rule. Hasn't been proofread, i wanted to get this one out as soon as possible ;w;

❥Taglist: @watchingfromthefloorboards @foxpearlwilder

Intro.

It was like sleeping any other night if it wasn't for the weird dreams. They were continuous, vivid and bizarre enough to the point you forgot about the real world where you can't fly nor talk to animals, eventually the memory of raid alarms and gunfire stoped bothering you as much as they used to as you enjoyed living one dream after another like a movie marathon.

But eventually all dreams, just like movies, come to an end.

When you wake up its like you're being splashed with a bucket of cold water, you're clutching your heart while gasping for air as bright lights burn the cornea of your eyes like pepper spray.

"Are they still alive?" one voice asks.

"Just barely, we'll need to transport them to the hospital."

Is what you manage to understand before you black out for moment, this time there were no dreams keeping you company. When you woke up you finally understood the situation you were in, with your memory slowly coming back to you in short bursts. The room you're in is plain white with weird machinery connected to you through thing tubes and suction cups, beside you is a young man with bright blue clothing. "Hey, you're up." he greets you after noticing you open your eyes.

"Looks like it, yeah... does this mean the war is finally over?" you ask which gained a confused expression from the young man.

"...War?"

Bubblegum

❥Princess Bubblegum is in charge of your well being the next few days, she'd walk in and run some tests and ask you simple questions but she'd only gain "Yes" or "No" responses from you.

❥She was the first to assigned you some professional help, talking with someone to let out all your confused and emotional turmoil.

❥"Your health has been improving." PB brings up during one of your medical check ups.

"So has my mood, it's not easy moving on but I know my family would want that for me." you motivate yourself, earning an awknowlodge nod from the princess.

❥Once you're out of bed you finally have a chance to properly marvel at the Candy Kingdom, from its candy residents to its sweet smelling architecture."You built all this? And everything is made of candy?"

"Sure is, you can take a bite of anything is you like."

"Even you?" you joke.

"Ha, ha very funny." PB huffs sarcastically.

❥Bubblegum is a busy woman but you still tail coat behind her like a baby duckling, either helping her as an assistant for her science projects or joining her for royal tea ceremonies.

❥After a year has passed and you felt comfortable in your new home did you feel confident enough to ask PB an important question. "You're gonna over work yourself again Peebs, how about I invite you to dinner at a restaurant?"

"Just bring it up to my lab, having company would be nice."

"Yes boss!"

Finn

❥Turns out the young man has been keeping watch over you for almost two days, refusing to leave your side until you woke up. Maybe it's because you're the only other human (besides Susan) in Ooo who he can relate to, or he's just that nice of a guy.

❥Once you woke up he was ecstatic to learn more about the world you lived in, what kind of monsters could you slay? What games or comics were available at the time? But Finn soon realized you weren't up to reminisce about old times. "My family... They didn't make it did they...?" you'd start weeping.

❥He gave you space to sort out your feelings due to Pb's request. Whenever Finn was relaxing at his own home he often found himself thinking about you, trying to get in your shoes and understand how he would feel if he suddenly woke up and Jake wasn't with him.

❥The next time he came to visit you he brought a get well basket with a bunch of snacks and his favorite comics, however some of them were half eaten because him and Jake got hungry on the way there, his heart was in the right place but his stomach wasn't. "Hey, I'm glad you made it here though. I appreciate it." you'd tell them.

❥"How's the recovery going?" he'd ask, curious to know since there's less equipment checking your vitals compared to the previous times. "It's going steady, Princess Bonnibel says I'll be out in no time."

Finn gets close to you, making sure there wasn't a wad of gum nearby. "Between you and me, she's a great medic but she's also very serious about it. She had me swallowing horse sized pills without a second thought pfft."

"Yeah, she be like that."

❥"Do you know what you'll do when you get out?"

"I have no clue, although PB suggested I'd get used to the outdoors."

"Then I have the perfect spot."

Then Finn would proceed to take you to visit weird kingdoms, some made of fruits and others made of breakfast, it's amazing experiencing such things with Finn by your side.

❥He'd always talks about the adventures he goes on like something out of a legend, it's tempting to go on one with him but he says. "I'll have to teach ya how to use a sword."

"Well sign me the fluff up."

Marceline.

❥Seeing Marceline for the first time is kind of scary when you first woke up. Mainly it was due to so many vampire monster movies.

❥She'd ominously float near you one day, when you were still down in the dumps after learning the truth. "I was there." she says all of a sudden, dry and blunt.

"What?"

"I said I was there, when everything went down. You managed to sleep it off in one of them bunkers, you didn't have to see your loved ones leave one by one. Consider yourself lucky."

The reason you were scared of her the first few days was because of the way she looked at you, with those dark red demon eyes.

❥Marceline would keep the whole "paralysis demon" kind of approach the next week. You'd wake up in the middle of the night to see a flash of her nocturnal eyes before she vanishes. You're unsure if she's haunting you or not, when asking PB about it she says "Marcy probably wants to talk to you but isn't willing to open up yet. Just give her some time." she'd shrug it casually. You would shrug it off too if it wasn't because it feels like you'll get a heart attack everytime you see Marceline's eyes.

❥It's like treating a cat. You wait for her to come to you. Eventually once you got out of the hospital and settled up in the candy kingdom, Marceline woke you up with the music from her guitar, she didn't give you that hard look and instead floated near you in a relaxed position.

❥Despite her personality and appearance she's surprisingly the most understanding of the three. As you soon came to find out she was a witness of the early days of the war, it was almost therapeutic talking to her about it.

"The smell of plane fumes was a pain in the buns, I remember I would spread lotion under my nose just to distract me from it." you'd bring up.

She would carry her bass with her and slowly playing a few beats. "I used to tied car refreshers to my forehead." she cackled.

❥The two of you bonded over music, she'd play a melody from back in the day and you'd tell her the details. "Ah I recognize that one, it was a good single."

"Really? I've had stuck in my head since I was a kid but I never knew the rest of the song!"

"Well, consider yourself lucky" you snarky repeat the same phrase she told you when you two met, receiving a pillow to the face.

[thecat-inthehat]

7. Morsel

I swear this prompt made more sense when I was originally thinking of it. Uh. Content warnings for post EW duel injuries, medically induced miscarriage, next of kin being forced to make medical decisions, the whole shebang.

(1208 words)

--

“I can’t-- I can’t do this,” Helisent said, and feebly collapsed into a chair that was next to the two beds. The sheets were stained with blood, bandages strewn about over the bodies that lay there and across the floor, and her hands were sticky with viscera as she pulled her hair out of her sweaty face. Her fingers were shaking from the sheer amount of aether that she’d expended so far, her skin tight over her bones and her stomach cramping from spending twelve hours at the bedside. 

Her sister, Nive, lay in one of the beds. The other held Zenos. Both had shown up on the Ragnarok after the Dawn of Tomorrow bloomed, beaten and battered bloody, with their breath and heartbeats in synch. Trying to save only Nive didn’t work, until Helisent and Alphinaud had realized that the two of them were aetherically linked; one could not be saved without the other. No one knew what happened either -- Shining and Helisent had flown away on the tails of Meteion’s Dawn, and it wasn’t until they were back on the ship that they realized Nive still hadn’t returned. They had been found curled together akin to lovers under the new sun, but everything about their look had said that they had tried to fight to the death. 

“Shining will be here with food and ethers for us both soon,” Alphinaud said, his noutliths flicking around the room as he attempted to repair part of Zenos’ spine. He twitched a finger, and the devices created a screen of aether that cut off his lower body, and he started to delicately repair the spinal cord without having to worry that it would affect something up above. The medical screens of the Ragnarok held a layout of the bodies, and Alphinaud was checking it studiously as he worked. Healingway was currently synthesizing more blood for the two of them, and had left the room. It was just Helisent and Alphinaud. 

“I -- I know. But this--” Helisent said, and her voice choked on tears. “Alphinaud, Nive’s pregnant.”

Alphinaud was too well trained to let his nouliths slip from his grasp, but he went utterly still as he sucked a breath in through his teeth. His offhand clenched tightly, and he shut his eyes. He took a shuddering breath, and overwhelmed tears slipped through his lashes and down his cheeks. 

“Did you know before?” He said, and his professionalism was as fragile as spun glass and liable to break at any moment. They could not be emotional about this. (He was going to break anyways.)

Helisent staggered to her feet and her fingers trembled as she set her hands on Nive’s belly. “I suspected. Hythlodaeus had made a strange comment while we were in Elpis, and it kept ringing around in my head. But I didn’t… Twelve above, if she’s as far along as I think, it must’ve happened while we were in Garlemald.” 

Alphinaud finished with repairing the bent spinal cord on Zenos and caused his nouliths to spin around the former Prince and create a stasis shield around him. He flicked his fingers free of blood and came to stand on the opposite side of Helisent, his fingers already glowing with magic as he tried to access the damage. 

“Twelve forfend, she has four kits?” Alphinaud said, and his voice cracked. 

“Her father was a hrothgar from Bozja,” Helisent sniffled, but it didn’t stop her from joining in the diagnostics. “They’re predisposed to litters, rather than one or two like miqo’te. She already has some health issues from it, apparently two of her little siblings didn’t survive their first winters.” 

Alphinaud’s brow furrowed. “There’s… something wrong with the aether…” 

“One isn’t viable,” Helisent said thickly, and sniffled again so she could talk better. “The others, I’m not sure. I… it feels like garlean aether pa…tter…ns…” 

Helisent and Alphinaud met eyes over Nive’s form, the realization hitting them both like a sack of bricks, then looked at Zenos behind them. 

“Right. Right, okay,” Helisent said, and shook herself. When she spoke again, her voice was firmer, more the Stillglade Fen trained healer that she was. “Three viable kits, all half garlean.” 

“Can she even bear the strain of three?” Alphinaud said. 

“... No. She can’t.” Helisent said, and took a breath. “Her body’s eating itself alive trying to heal, even with everything we’ve done, and she can’t handle three.” 

“Fuck.” Alphinaud’s swear was soft, and he buried his face in his hands. It was the only time Helisent had ever heard him truly swear, and she couldn’t begrudge him for it. 

“I don’t even know if she wanted to keep one, let alone three,” Helisent said and didn’t bother to wipe the tears that were falling down her cheeks. It wasn’t even sadness at this point, just sheer exhaustion and the crash of high emotion that was getting to her. But she couldn’t stop now, or her sister would die. 

“There wasn’t exactly time, was there?” Alphinaud said, and his eyes were just as red as her own as he wiped his exhaustion back and returned to assessing the situation. “Everything happened so quickly, there was hardly any time for us to really check in with one another.” 

“No, there wasn’t,” Helisent agreed, and let out a shuddering breath. “How many can we save without risking her life-- that’s the question.” 

“Not three.” Alphinaud said, and his eyes slipped shut as he concentrated. “Two… It could be done, but I don’t… I don’t want to risk it, with how delicate her vitals are.” 

“Then we save one.” Helisent said grimly. “We save the one with the highest chance of survival, understood?” 

“Understood.” Alphinaud nodded, and did not pay attention to his trembling, nor the way his soul screamed at how unfair this all was. He was a healer, and this was, unfortunately, a decision that he had to make. There was no one else on the Ragnarok who could; not between Y’shtola caring for everyone else’s injuries and the rest of their retinue exhausted from torment that was Ultima Thule and the battle prayer against the Endsinger. 

There would be time for screams and sobs later, for now they both had a job to do. 

Helisent’s eyes slipped shut, and her head cocked to the side as she considered their predicament. She turned her hand up a little, and Alphinaud could sense the one she was pointing out. “This one, they’re tinier than the others, but the aether signature is just as strong.” 

“The one to the left has a higher weight,” Alphinaud said, as if they were not talking a difference of mere onzes. His voice barely trembled. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to save that one?” 

“Nive already lost so much weight, I’m not sure if she can handle a big child,” Helisent admitted, and her lips wobbled around her words. “With how much healing she’ll have to go through… Oscheon’s staff, I can’t-- I can’t--” 

“I’ll make the decision. Just follow my lead,” Alphinaud soothed. She’d been strong for him before, the least he could do was be strong in return. He had no choice, really. 

“Right. Your lead.” Helisent said, and wiped the tears away again. “Go.”

[francesminos-tt]

Joffy is the captain of the football team and Daeron is a serious and renowned lawyer, they hate each other.

But somehow that doesn't stop them from having sex.

optional tags: odaxelagnia, rough sex, rimming.

My bad habit is trying to build up the world even though it’s just smut.

Today was the first day Joffrey went back to the football field. He had been wrongly suspended for the rest of the season by a complete misunderstanding, but he managed to appeal his case to the National Football Committee, getting back to the field after only three months. However, three months suspension was still a long time, especially for a rising star like Joffrey.

Joffrey Velaryon was Harrenhal FC’s youngest captain in the last three decades. This record was formerly held by his biological father, Harwin Strong, who made it to the captain at the age of 23. Joffrey was made captain at 22, just one year after he had made his professional debut. He was a talented forward player, quick, agile and very skillful at free kicks. He had scored a warping 20 goals in the last season, winning himself the newcomer of the year.

However, just when everyone expected Joffrey to lead Harrenhal to the realm’s cup, he was suspended for getting into a bar fight and injuring four people. The scandal was the biggest gossip on social media for months.

Golden Boy Proved To Be A Violent Hater!

Is Joffrey Velaryon Homophobic?

The LGBTQ+ Society Cancels Joff the Jork

The Westeros Football Committee and The Riverlands League says they will not tolerate violence and hate crime

Joffrey wanted to spit on those damn reporters’ faces, but he couldn't afford to cause any more troubles now. His mother had called the crisis management team, led by none other than the person he hated the most in this world. His serious, renowned, highly competent lawyer uncle Daeron, who Joffrey hated with passion.

“Fractured ribs, concussion, broken legs and snapped fingers,” Daeron read aloud the medical reports of those who were hospitalized by Joffrey, “very impressive, nephew. Are you sure you want to continue your football career? I think you will do better in wrestling, since you prefer to speak with your fists rather than with your mouth.”

See? He had to laugh at Joffrey any chance he got. Daeron had always been like this, looking down upon Joffrey just because Joff didn't go to university. Daeron always treated Joffrey as if he was some kind of savage. Joffrey hated the blonde man for it. He might depend on his physical strength to make a living, but it didn't mean he was an imbecile.

“If you are here to mock me, just fucking leave.” Joffrey rolled his eyes and tried to turn his head away, but the slightest movement sent a sharp pain down his neck. Fuck, he nearly forgot he had a concussion too.

“No, I am here to help you, dear Joff. Mocking is just for my own entertainment.” Daeron chuckled, sitting down at the edge of Joffrey’s hospital bed, “I need your full cooperation to appeal the case. How about you stop throwing me death glares?”

“What do you want?” Joffrey asked through gritted teeth.

“Firstly, I need a complete and honest statement.” Daeron replied, pulling out a recording pen from his pocket, “Why did you beat these people up?”

“They were assholes.” Joffrey said.

“I need more details than that.” Daeron continued, not at all annoyed, “I know you don't beat people up just because they are assholes.”

“Yeah? All the media seems to believe so.” Joffrey scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“No, you are not.” Daeron said so seriously that for a moment, Joffrey was actually moved by the blonde’s words. However, any good feeling Joffrey had for Daeron quickly disappeared when the blonde added, “If so, I would be beaten to death by you a long time ago.”

“Asshole.” Joffrey spat.

“Exactly.” Daeron had the audacity to smile, “You might have put wasabi in my birthday cake before, but you never beat me. So, tell me, Joffrey, what did these people say or do that made you so angry?”

Joffrey bit his lower lip and went silent. Firstly, he didn't want to tell Daeron why he had gone to a gay bar. Secondly, he was reluctant to admit that he had beaten those people up because they insulted Joffrey’s family and called him a pervert.

“I can’t help you if you don't talk, Joff.” Daeron said, but he seemed patient. He was always composed and calm, while Joffrey was often described as a hot-tempered jork.

“What difference will it make if I tell you? I am already suspended. The damage is done. I don't want to go through the humiliation again.” Joffrey said after a long pause.

“Your mother called me, Joffrey. She doesn't believe a single word on social media. She swore that her baby boy did it for a reason. She wants to appeal your case so bad that she’s willing to beg my mother to let me help you. Do you want her effort to be all for naught?” Daeron asked after switching off the recording pen, “So let me ask you again. What made you start a fight in a gay bar? I will switch on the recording again after you are ready.”

The last thing Joffrey wanted was to hurt his mother. Hell, he started the fight to defend her name. He considered for a moment before nodding, indicating Daeron to resume recording.

“Go ahead.”

“They insulted my mother and called her a hypocrite for marrying a gay man.” Joffrey said, his anger slowly building by just recalling the words, “They called me a pervert and…”

“And?”

Joffrey reached out to switch off the recording again.

“I don't deserve their cock.” Joffrey finished, casting his eyes down. He was sure Daeron could understand the hidden meaning in his words.

Joffrey didn’t go to a gay bar to pick up fights. He went to a gay bar like anyone else, to hang out and hopefully get laid. In the sports world, sexual orientation was still a ‘don’t say, don’t ask’ topic. Joffrey hadn’t get laid since he broke up with his boyfriend, and he was desperate. He didn't want to jerk off in his flat like a miserable 14-year-old anymore, so he went out to have some fun. He should have stayed inside. See what his horny got him.

“All right.” Daeron said, “I already have some idea about appealing your case. I need some time to work things out, and in the meantime, you stay put and do not get into trouble again.”

“How could I?” Joffrey snorted, “Look. I am confined to the hospital bed. I think a prisoner has more freedom than me.”

“Be good, Joffrey.” Daeron stood up and headed for the door, “Think about how you can thank me after I get you on the field again.”

“You are just going to help me like that?” Joffrey asked to Daeron’s back, “I thought you hated me.”

“Maybe.” Daeron half-turned and flashed Joffrey a smile, “But I want to see you owe me one so bad. I look forward to your thank-you gift, nephew.”

“Get out.” Joffrey managed between ragged breaths, “My ass is going to split.”

Daeron didn’t answer, for he was busy burying his teeth in Joffrey’s shoulder, hard enough to draw blood. Joffrey hissed as a sharp pain spread from where Daeron’s teeth embedded in his flesh. Joffrey didn’t know which hurt more, his shoulder, or his hole that was stretched to the limit by Daeron’s cock.

Joffrey had no idea how they ended up like this. Today’s game ended with a draw, and Joffrey managed to give two assists, one of them resulting in a goal, which was not a bad performance for someone who hadn’t played for month. The team’s manager drove him home personally, to make sure Joffrey didn’t get into trouble again. When he came out of the sedan, Joffrey found Daeron’s sportscar on his driveway.

It seemed that Daeron was here to collect his reward, or thank-you gift, as the blonde insisted on calling it. Joffrey would never have guessed that Daeron wanted sex as a reward. They had only fucked like what, five times at most? Or ten? Maybe a dozen? Twenty?

“You should have called me.” Daeron murmured to Joffrey’s nape, licking the wound he had just inflicted on the brunette’s skin, “I will fuck you so hard that you won’t be able to sit for a whole damn week. Are you really going to let some stranger from the bar fuck you?”

Joffrey tried to answer, but Daeron took the opportunity to thrust into him, the tip of Daeron’s cock brushing against his good spot, sending a rush of pleasure up his spine. Joffrey moaned and clenched his hole unconsciously.

“Answer me!” Daeron raised his voice, one arm wrapped around Joffrey’s waist, the other pulling the brunette’s hair, “Do you crave cock so much that any one will work?”

“You weren’t here!” Joffrey retorted, his eyes glistening with tears but his tone was full of hatred, “We are just fuck buddies. Do you expect me to keep pure for you, huh? I am not some innocent chick who will wear a purity ring for you.”

Daeron pulled Joffrey’s hair harder, forcing the brunette to exposing his vulnerable neck. Joffrey hissed in pain, but Daeron gave him no time to adjust. Daeron bit hard on the thin skin of Joffrey’s neck, just beside the brunette’s arteries. Daeron tasted blood on his tongue, the sweet and metallic taste made his very being sing with euphoria. He was a vampire when it came to Joffrey. His gum would actually ache whenever he laid eyes on Joffrey. He wanted to bite into the softness of Joffrey’s inner thigh, the hard muscle of Joffrey’s stomach, the juicy flesh of Joffrey’s ass, Joffrey’s arm, neck, chest, fingers, toes, and even the brunette’s cock. He wanted to devour them all.

Joffrey hissed, grunted and moaned, but he was unable to shake Daeron off. The blonde was like a persistent alien, determined to feed on Joffrey’s flesh, blood, and bones.

“Get off me, damn it!” Joffrey cursed, “I told you not to leave a mark.”

Daeron finally lifted his head from Joffrey’s neck, his lips and teeth stained with Joffrey’s blood, the usual calm and collected lawyer replaced by a lustful beast.

“I never promised I would follow your orders.” Daeron said, sneaking his hand down to grab Joffrey’s sagging cock, “You are not hard yet. Do I not please you, nephew?”

Joffrey knew the damn bastard was calling him nephew on purpose, reminding him just how wrong the whole thing was. They were related. They were both men. They hated each other. But why couldn't they stop fucking?

Daeron began to pump Joffrey’s cock while rocking his hips forward, thrusting into Joffrey’s ass without mercy. He thrust so hard that the lube he used earlier was squeezed out of Joffrey’s hole, as the nasty sound of his balls hitting Joffrey’s ass echoed the room. Daeron felt the brunette’s cock grew harder in his hand, sticky pre-cum dripping from the pink tip to his fingers.

Joffrey let out a muffled groan, arching his back and clenching his hole as pleasure took over him. He was in pain. His cock was ready to explode at any moment, the bloody bite marks on his neck and shoulder hurt like hell, his hole sore from taking Daeron’s cock for so long, and his hair was being pulled so hard that he felt his scalp was going to peel off. Everything hurt, but the worst of all, he was so fucking aroused by the pain.

“You are squeezing my cock so hard with your lusty hole, Joff.” Daeron bit Joffrey’s earlobe before licking off the small beads of blood oozing from the teeth-shaped wound, “Are you going to come?”

Yes, yes, he was going to come. He wanted release, so fucking bad.

“Fuck yes.” Joffrey murmured.

“I need you to promise me one thing.” Daeron whispered in Joffrey’s ear, running his finger down the brunette’s shaft.

“Anything!” Joffrey was going insane by the blonde’s teasing, “Anything you say, uncle. Just let me come!”

Daeron said something, but Joffrey couldn't hear a word as a wave of pleasure overwhelmed him. His stomach tightened, his toes curling from pleasure, his skin tingling with unspoken euphoria, as he came in Daeron’s hand. Joffrey’s vision went dark for a moment before he regained his senses.

“Good boy.” Daeron was planting kisses on Joffrey’s ear when the brunette could hear again, “I expect you to keep your promises.”

Joffrey hummed. He had no idea what Daeron had made him agree, but he wasn’t going to find out. Not now, anyway. He would rather cuddle in bed and maybe have a second round after he could feel his ass again. He was sure the promise was nothing. Probably some boring rivalry stuff, or Daeron was asking him for sexual favor. Either way, Joffrey wasn’t opposed to the idea.

Joffrey closed his eyes and began to doze off, with his ass filled with hot, sticky semen.

If you decide to be a whore, be my whore instead.

[ninnosaurus]

|| "Trust your doctor" ||

What the fffffffffuck. I've had this laying almost fully finished in my Google Docs for mooooooooooonths. But I just now actually finished it. This is just a oneshot related to the "Within The Shell" moving topside AU. In said au, Donnie becomes a very famous and well renowned doctor, working with both humans and mutants and creating the new mutant school of medicine that focus solely on mutant/hybrid kind.

I haven't written anything serious in a while so please be kind 🥺🥺

Trigger warnings: Hospitals, doctors, death, small mentions of gore and light mention of emetophobia. You read this on your OWN risk.

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“Doctor?” Donnie lifts his head to look at the source of the voice calling for him. “Yes?”, he responds right before taking a sip of his coffee.

“We have a middle-aged man in room 5 who is asking to see a doctor for abdominal pain.” Donatello nods and reaches for the tablet where the patient’s chart is being stored. He reads over the important parts and thanks the nurse who hurries to their next patient. 

Knocking the door, Donnie clears his throat as he walks in to his patient.

“Hello, Mr.Derricks. I’m doc-”, before he gets to finish introducing himself, the man on the bed rudely interrupts him. “I asked for a human doctor.”, Donatello just smiles at his patient and walks up to the bed. “I can assure you, Mr.Derricks, I am fully capable of-”, once again he gets interrupted. 

“I don’t care if you’re “capable” or not. I asked for a human doctor, not one of you.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m the only doctor working today. So,” lifting his tablet from one of his pockets, the tall terrapin looks down at it before continuing; “I see that you’ve come in today for… abdominal pains, is that correct?”

All the man does is look at Donnie up and down before sighing in annoyance before confirming what it says in his chart. 

“I would like to feel around your stomach area to see if I can pinpoint where your pain is located.”. Putting the tablet back into his coat pocket he walks over to the stand on a wall right next to the door where gloves and aprons are being stored. Shortly after his work in the medical field skyrocketed the hospital he worked at made sure they customized gloves specifically for his three fingered hands. “Now,” his voice gets muffled as he covers it with the pastel blue facemask before walking up to the man, “please, let me know when it hurts.”, the patient scoffs but relents.

The poking and the prodding go on in silence for a few minutes before his patient looks at him in just pure uncensored disgust.

“You. You’re one of the first?”, he asks as Donnie jots down some information on the tablet before mumbling out a “yes.”

“How many of you were there? I forgot.”, the man’s slight change of tone didn’t go unheard for the doctor. “We’re four.”

The man just nods as a small “hm” comes from him. 

“Mr. Derricks, I’m going to help you with your pains. But to help me do that, can you tell me how you would rate your pain at the moment on a scale of one to ten. One being no pain at all and ten being the worst pain possible?”

Mr.Derricks thinks for a minute as he squirms around on the stretcher, trying to decipher. “Four.”, he sneers. Donnie nods and presses the number “4” on the pain chart. 

“What do you do for a living, sir?”

After asking that question, the atmosphere shifted.

“I’m a hunter.”, Donatello’s demeanor changed but he knows he has a reputation to uphold, so he keeps it professional and so writes “hunter” in the patient’s chart. “Is that relevant?” He looks Donnie up and down. 

The doctor hums a bit, “It is, actually. I’m going to help you with your pain, but I need to know what you do for a living so I don’t accidentally give you painkillers that will interfere with any potential chemicals you might have in your body already.”

Mr. Derricks nodded. “I hunt your kind. Mutants.”

As Donnie examines his patient for a while, asking all kinds of relevant questions, the man continues to talk about his “job”. Telling Donnie how “mutant scrambled eggs” tastes, or how he pulled the skin off a mutant child with his bare hands himself. 

The details made Donnie’s stomach turn and he worked to keep the contents down. He’d seen alot working as a doctor. But hearing how unborn children were being sold on the Black Market to be eaten was too much for him.

Donnie clears his throat to get the man to stop talking. 

“I think I have all the information I need, Mr.Derricks! Please, give me a few minutes to prepare your painkillers and you’ll soon be out of here. Thankfully, your pain isn’t anything serious or life-threatening. It’s most likely just a pulled muscle in your abdominal area.” He smiled as friendly and reassuring as he could towards his patient before continuing, “You just lay back, and I’ll go fetch your painkillers.” Tucking the tablet back into his white doctors coat, he leaves to prepare.

He returns a few minutes later with supplies.

“Now, sir, this is a really good muscle relaxant. It’s going to make you feel a little sleepy at first, but give it a few minutes and you’ll be free of your pain.”

The man watches his every move as he fills the IV bag that’s pumping him full of fluids. “I’m going to be right here with you until it takes effect, alright?”, his patient just shrugs.

They do some light small talk that Donnie is very thankful isn’t centered around Mr. Derricks job as a poacher. They talk about family, sports… Hobbies and the latest news. Mr. Derricks even cracks a few jokes until he starts nodding off. As soon as the turtle notices he does, his look changes. Donnie’s eyes turn dark as he gets up from the chair he had been seated in during this time and almost strides over to the door. 

Donatello gently pushes to exit before he bids his farewell.

“I would say it’s been a pleasure treating you, Mr.Derricks, because I do take great pride in my job, but if I’ll be honest.”, a dark grin grows on him, “It was more of a pleasure watching you die.”

Before the man gets a chance to reply to him, Donnie leaves, and blends into the bustling corridor outside.

Hm… Coffee sounds nice. He thinks to himself as he marches towards his office to prepare for the news that Mr.Derricks has died of acute cardiac arrest.

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Tags: (let me know if I've missed anyone...) @thelaundrybitch @turtle-babe83 @s-s-ironnie @mysticboombox

[commanderfreddy]

the man I am now

(a very long look back at the year)

2022 marks my 10th year on tumblr, my 25th year of life, and the ending of a strange, dark, 33-month winter that I entered too young and emerge from feeling entirely too old.

At the beginning of this year, my dad noticed that he was having some cognitive problems, assuming they were side-effects of the medication he took to manage his oesophageal cancer, and he asked me to move back home to be his carer, since my brother worked and studied full-time and I had just quit my job.

Only now, in retrospect, do I know that there is no world, anywhere in all of possibility, where I said no. It wasn't a choice, no matter how I agonised over it. I got to work and to complaining right away. I handled it about as gracelessly as any human being can do anything.

The week before I dragged all my crap across the city back to my family home, dad had a fall, and went to the emergency room. There, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

I think I gave up on my father more times than I can count. So many nights, waiting in an empty house, imagining his hospital bed growing cold.

Because no matter how much good news he wrung from his test results, no matter the optimism his doctors showed, no matter the plans we so doggedly laid, we had been here before.

My mother died on March 25th, 2020, only three months after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

When dad passed, we knew what crematorium to use, where his ashes would join hers in the memorial garden. All of that had been sealed in stone from the moment of his diagnosis. Because no matter how many medical professionals tried to reassure us that my mother's death had been an anomaly, a tragedy, a hideous confluence of malignance - this was our story. We knew every line, every movement, every futile rise and fall, and we played our parts as precisely as ever.

Everyone feels guilty when someone they love dies. I was sure of my role in his death before he even stopped breathing. I can play the innocent, say I was fumbling blindly through a period of life no one ever wants to imagine, let alone live through, but I know better. I knew what I was doing, when I suggested he try a week in the hospice to see how he found it, and so did he. No matter how I phrased it as a temporary stay, an introduction to the facility, he knew what was happening. When we loaded him into the patient transport to the palliative care hospice, he told me he was beginning the first day of the last stage of his life. I told him not to think like that. As though I didn't know. As though there was ever any other path.

Never once this year did I want him to die. Never once this year did I doubt he would.

I remember thinking that if he died before mid-November, my brother could still go on his Europe holiday. And he did, and he did. I remember thinking if I applied for a course in the US, I'd have something to do next year. And I did and I do.

It's not that I feel like I manifested his death personally. Perhaps, if I had gone a different kind of mad, if I had thrown myself at the bounds of this story with all my strength, I might have lucked into something. Stumbled across some clinical trial that might have done something, anything, even if only alleviate the mystery pain in his left hand that remained until he died. But I didn't. I knew, with the same certainty that I was alive, that he was going to die. And so he did.

Do I feel guilty for capitulating to that certainty? For challenging it only superficially, in a useless and often insulting attempt to cheer my dad up? Do I feel guilty for my inability to imagine another story, not even another ending, just a different middle, a final year of life where I didn't set my house on fucking fire, where we didn't snap at each other as the walls closed in, where he made that stupid train, where I did something, anything, except sit in my room and grow less and less solid, until the only ghost left in the house was me?

I don't know what I feel.

Something was my fault. A lot of things were - arguments, oversleeping, buying the wrong brand of rice, the fire (my god my god. All my furniture was thrown out. I live in a room of strange new things, objects that had never been breathed on by my mother. One bedroom in a four room house. Full and empty and full and empty). But something else was my fault, too. Something More.

I think I'll spend my life looking for it, this thing that burdens me, that overweighs my mind and crushes memories beneath its inscrutable mass.

If I knew what it was, I would understand, then. I'd understand it all, who I am, where I came from, where I'm going, what happened to me, who my parents were - everything, all of it will become clear as soon as I realise what it is I did wrong.

What I could have done differently.

I remember, perhaps a day or two before he went into hospice, waking him up from a fitful and unpleasant nap so he could have dinner. He spoke of an argument with me, and I don't even know what he accused me of saying, just that it was so awful, so directly drawn from the very worst parts of my psyche, that I could focus on nothing but reassuring him that it had just been a dream. But the other conversation he recalled, he could not be convinced was a dream. I wasn't there for his last meeting with his oncologist, doing my best to "give him privacy" (slack off) ((hide from reality)), but it was a month or two before he passed. And my dad felt then, with his transfer from oncology to palliative care, that his doctor had given up on him.

I hated to hear him say that, the bitterness and fear in his voice. I hated to hear him say that, knowing I had given up on him first.

But these are the people we are. We are crushed by the weight of life to the shape it has taken so far, anticipating it to continue in much the same way.

Dad had a few genuine high moments of optimism last year, when it was just oesophageal cancer, when it was one foe, as yet asymptomatic, that could be grappled with, one-on-one. But after the brain cancer diagnosis, we couldn't keep the darkness at bay.

My father wasn't a religious man. His mind was his soul. This was the one death he couldn't bear to die.

And so it was the only death that could take him.

He stayed, right until the very end. It was him that I saw, behind eyes he struggled to move, trying to force breath past lips that could not move.

He was so afraid of being Mum. Mum, who, for the last two? - three? - days of her existence, could not respond. Who could be woken, but not to a world she could see or interact with. Whose eyes darted, vague and furious, as she failed to meet mine. She frightened me then, the wild, lost look on her face. And she frightened Dad, who begged me, in his last week of life, to reassure him that he did not look like that. That he was not leaving me in such an ugly procession.

That he could ask was proof enough. And then his voice deserted him, and it was only with his careful, pleading eyes that he could beg.

What a relief it was when I showed him the pictures I took of the lunar eclipse of the night before and he could respond, in genuine, true reaction, surprise and wonder in his raising eyebrows, the widening of his eyelids.

That night they called me in to say goodbye.

I ran 3 kilometres uphill in the dark, wearing a jacket that seemed to float around me, like I weighed nothing, like I was nothing, like I was flying, furling out into the night, moving at last without the burden of breath or need for fuel, simply going as fast as possibly could.

Not fast enough.

When my mother died I was eating a bowl of spaghetti.

When my father died I was waiting for the lights to change across from the train station.

Life ends in much the same manner in which it is lived.

Weeks in the hospital, watching, wondering, knowing, and still I couldn't be there to say goodbye.

Perhaps that's it, the source of the guilt. Perhaps it's just another thing, another instant of existence to regret. Something you can't change.

A choice that isn't a choice at all.

I died this year.

We all die every year: a hundred tiny deaths as strangers forget our faces, as someone stops ordering their tea the way you first recommended it, as you ignore a text from someone for the last time, and your lives forever diverge. No doubt I died this way as many times as usual. But I have, I feel, become something else, too.

Something I don't particularly like, with so many of the same old flaws and failings - oversleeping, failing to think of others, walking in that hunched way that hurts my shoulders, but something new all the same.

When I first started this blog, I was fourteen years old. I was so loud, and I took up all the wrong space, moving in an awkward, unintentionally exaggerated manner, and annoying everyone for it.

Now I go days without speaking. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth and takes effort to dislodge. Something about my body language makes me hard to see, and I'll stand at a shop counter for eons, always surprising the cashier when they turn around, no inkling that anyone was there. There are few other situations beyond shopping where I will interact with someone.

On Christmas Eve I delivered a box of chocolates to my neighbours, and with their combined six extroverted bodies, was shepherded inside to sit in their sunroom and share a platter of fruit with them. It was such a strange and alien bliss, cold grapes in summer, the gentle licks from their dog, the awkward bend of my legs upon the floorboards as I asked my neighbour what she was studying, only to be overcome with an inexplicable gratitude when she said nursing.

But some of this is old, too. You can go back, dig through my archives, my personal posts, my plaintive adolescent agonies that persist, no matter how I try to articulate them better, that feel just as wretched as when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, eternal, undying.

I've always felt other, separate. It scares me to have proof of it. What then, what now? How do I tether myself to the belief that I am human, that I must be, if only because there is nothing else I could be? I'm no longer anyone's child.

I talked about this with my mother once, saying it was funny that we still call people's offspring their "children" even when they're grown, when they're old, and she said that I'd always be her baby, even when I was old and she was even older. Well I'm young and she's gone and I'll never be anyone's baby again.

I feel the need to disclaim that I'm never gonna kill myself. For a variety of reasons, but lately, most of all, because dying is so fucking difficult. I don't really trust anyone to get it right for me. And that's the scariest part about death. No one dies alone. No matter how long it takes to run up that steepest of hills. It's a process, a long drawn out one, even when the death is sudden and an anomaly to oncologists everywhere. The death begins at a point I can't find, and never really ends. Not even when you're forgotten - you're still dead then and you're still dying, as the universe dies around you. Beyond nights in hospitals and days in legal offices, you die over and over, constantly, in everyone's minds, in everyone's lives, as they become people you can't know, needing help you will never be able to provide, and still and still they carry you with them, your dusk-tossed dust long gone while the spectre of the person you once were to them hammers away in their heart.

I'm not gonna kill myself. I don't think I'm qualified to die.

But I'm not sure I can figure out how to be born again, either.

"Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muss eine Welt zerstören" [The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world]. I don't know what world I have left to destroy.

I have become strange to myself, to the lonely teenager that first settled into this digital space, even as I have failed to ease any of his pains. I never was cut out to be a carer. I'm forgetting how to care at all. I'm becoming thin (my doctor's worried about my diet but I can't remember to eat) and thinner (sometimes I feel like you can see the world through me, transparent and just as frangible as a window, too). I won't let myself die. But that's all I have. I can no longer think in future tense, not specifically, not beyond the pretentious, sweeping eternalisms I declare in an attempt to hitch myself to something bigger than myself.

Nothing is big enough. Multiplying by zero always gets you to the same place.

I set out to write a summary of the year, to try and get my head around this epicentre of my existence. I'm not sure what I ended up with, or where I am. Certainly not how to finish.

My bad.

When I write fiction, I've had the most success by starting with an ending, and building the most satisfying leadup I can to make it worthwhile. Probably should have done that here.

Then again, this year has shown me all too well what happens when you decide on the ending before your story is done.

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

Oh look more unveiling my deep trauma because people don't get the fucking problem with how human beings are treated.

Now I never fell asleep in class, as I'm a severe insomniac with trauma that requires specific conditions.

Except once.

I was 14, living with my horribly irresponsible 26 year old sister and her 5 year old. She'd come home from work at 7:30, put him to bed then go spend the night at her bf's every night who she'd been dating for less than 4 months. The rest of the time he was my responsibility.

I did not know how to cook, I didn't not have groceries to try, and I had spent no time around children in my life. But I loved my nephew so I fucking scrambled for ways.

I was suicidally depressed for years before that so I don't want to put that on her. But the situation had pushed me to the point of action when I found a bottle of pills she had hidden that said to take before bed, which I figured meant they'd have some sedative effect, enough to stop breathing. Which was accurate as I learned later in the ER.

But my sister was gone all the time. I had a 5 year old to take care of. I couldn't leave him alone with a corpse until she came home.

So I concocted my genius plan. She came home at 6 to get me up for school. I'd take the whole bottle 45 minutes before so my nephew would be unattended for the shortest possible window considering they'd take time to take effect.

Except 6 am rolled around and she was still able to wake me. And sent my ass to school, not knowing what I'd done, and figuring me groggy was just a bad night's sleep.

But AT SCHOOL, they started really hitting. I don't remember my first two periods -- being in charge of a 5 year old all the time meant I had no social life so I didn't have friends or anything in those periods to notice anything unusual bc they didn't know I DO NOT FALL ASLEEL like that.

Third period, halfway through my day roles around. Here I have friends. One of whom was as unlike to accept bullshit as she is now. And she demanded I be sent to the nurse because by this point, "falling asleep" included not being able to be roused easily and non responsive to most things.

The teacher agreed, most to shut her up bc she was shutting down class. But denied her the right to walk me down two flights of stairs to the nurse and answer questions for my barely conscious ass.

I see the nurse (this bitch was terrible at her job, we'd had run ins before where she had almost killed me.) She took a look at my pupils, asked if I took anything -- I'm quite sure they were blown out as well as my heart and respiratory rate bottomed out -- and because I was still hoping for death or if not, for no one to know so they wouldn't stop me trying again.

She sent me back to class. No calls to my guardian, nothing. The teacher accepted this and moved on. So did my next period teacher.

I was surrounded by adults including one who was a medical professional all day and literally no one even stopped to consider it except another 14 year old girl who was blown off as I was literary dying with every sign of a drug overdose in front of them.

I got home, passed out and missed pick up for my nephew and two kids my sister forced me to babysit for. They called their mom who called my sister bc the kids knew I NEVER missed pick up. The child, oldest 9, knew that I loved them even if I wasn't good at caring for them and was there when the bus pulled in, even in the rain or the cold, so they never had to even wait.

My sister came home, took about 45 seconds to stir me enough to go "what did you take?" bc it was clear. I flatlined twice before they got my stomach pumped and charcoal in me and I slept off the rest.

My dying temporarily could have easily been prevented by literally any adult in that school calling an ambulance at the signs of an overdose instead of chalking it up to me falling asleep because I was lazy.

Maybe pro lifers should worry about that, instead of trying to kill me themselves.

[brokenmusicboxwolfe]

Venting time. Apologies.

Gah, what a week.

I discovered I had not one, but two tires with problems. So now I am trying to drive as little as possible while I figure out how I can afford to buy new ones. Guess I’m even more trapped than usual.

The mice I start trying to poison a week and a half ago aren’t dying. Instead there are more, who have decided to throw nightly parties next to my bed. I have had to start moving my books** to Mom’s house, but I am still worried about what they are gnawing on.

I had a mysterious and terrifying medical problem one night. It was the sort of thing where IF I didn’t have a blinding phobia of health care professionals (traumatic valid reasons) and IF I had health insurance and IF I had money at all and IF I had any sort of an emotional or practical support structure to help me I’d have been at an ER. Instead I was lying awake all night, afraid I might not wake up and wondering if I should write something to beg people not to throw out my sculpting and journals when I die…just in case***.

I felt okay the next day and ever since, but suddenly dropping dead lingers in my mind.

I dropped my camera in the swamp!

I can’t really explain why, but for the last couple of months I have taken to going out to the swamp and and just lying on the ground to watch the beavers and ducks do their thing. All my life I have spent so much time in the woods, but lying down out there was an absolute no. There are simply too many bitey things around here, and it has gotten so you can run into ticks year round. The only time I ever actually lay on the ground was during a near suicidal bout I had. I’m not that depressed yet.

Anyway, lying there right next to the swamp, trying to take a photo without scaring a beaver nearby, had my camera balanced on my thigh. And then it got unbalanced, and down it went, rolling into the water (admittedly only a couple feet away) with a PLOP. At least it still works, mostly.

BUT my phone has decided to stop working! Well, some of the time it works. Some of the time it’s like listening to the inside of a tornado, and you can’t hear a damn thing. Other times it won’t dial. And others it cuts off in the middle of a call. It took seven tries today before I could get Mom. It worked fine then, but it’s been so unreliable this week I have no idea if it will work.

I wish I could say next week will be better, BUT I have a very, very, very long list of things I didn’t get done last week, including at least three extremely urgent problems that got lost with new urgent things to deal with.

I dunno, lying under that tree next to the swamp until I rot away sounds kinda appealing right now….

Or not. Enduring mosquito swarms **** would be a fate even worse than death!!

** I don’t get other folks and books. I saw someone on here saying you should pack books in shoeboxes and I howled with laughter. My family are books people with thousands of books. As a child I would pack a small suitcase of just books when we went on trips. I had moved most of mine when the floor first collapsed, BUT I did keep a few. Few hundred actually.

***My brother once said he intends to throw out all my stuff when I die, and I have no one else to leave my things to. Besides, the way my cousins’ belongings disappeared when they died, likely junked before we even knew they were dead, I have little confidence that he will even get the chance to decide the fate if my things.

**** Winter ended WAY too soon this year, and I am already sick to death of the damn mosquitoes. Not a good sign when it’s still fuckin’ February!!!!

[starfleet-jelly]

Some Vulcan Headcanons

They have like no base in canon just things I thought about Vulcans most of them don’t have evidence either. Most of my Vulcan fanfics will probably be based off these headcanons, I’ll be adding and editing this post whenever I feel differently or think of new things~ 💕

* Vulcans can outrun humans with speed, however humans can outrun Vulcans by distance.

* Vulcans are better climbers

* Vulcans have death grips. Once they have you, it’s gonna be difficult to get away.

* They have slightly longer fingers, better for climbing!

* Vulcans can’t jump as high as a human can, however, it isn’t by much, a couple inches at most.

* Vulcans eat a lot more than they are shown. Even though they have slow metabolisms they have dense muscles that need lots of protein, luckily there are lots of high protein grains and vegetables on Vulcan.

* Ancient Vulcans were cave dwellers. The caves provided protections of predators and kept them cooler in the extreme heat of Vulcan.

* Due to the fact that the seas are small and in few numbers on Vulcan, most Vulcans cannot swim, however, in coastal towns, more of them have the knowledge on how to swim, but it seems most Vulcans still prefer to not to go for a dip. There is always the odd duck who loves to swim though.

* Before sonic showers, Vulcan use small bucks of water with a rag, or more commonly sand to bathe with

* Because of their muscles and flexibility, Vulcans don’t take a lot of fall damage, even a Vulcan child could fall from the a height that would easily kill a human and walk away with minor injuries

* Vulcan have very strong leg bones and muscles because of the slightly higher gravity than Earth

* Vulcans in the north prefer spicier food while people in the south prefer food with little, if any, spice. Humans to try the food are often stuck with something that seems boring to them, or just downright painful from the spice

* Because of their telepathic abilities, Vulcan babies need a lot of skin contact in their first few months after birth. It is not uncommon for a Vulcan mother or father to carry their infant child to their bare chest, even in public, usually tucked into their robes

* Because Vulcans are touch telepaths children get a sense of calm from their parents when they are in contact but also form familiar bonds, lack of touch can lead to malformation and damage to new neural networks in the infants brain

* Vulcan toddlers are volatile, they have yet to master their emotions and tend to throw fits over many things. Skin contact, such as hugging, holding and cuddling, from their parents usually calms them down. It’s common for children from ages 0-5 to sleep in their parent’s bed as they need near constant contact. During this time Vulcan parents begin to tech meditative practices such as hymns and monturas. As Vulcan children grow older, parents will begin to slowly step away from skin contact in exchange for led meditations

* On Vulcan, it is common practice for one of the parents to stay home and raise the child or children, however, if one of the parent die, close family such as grandparents or aunts and uncles will also help take care of the child or children.

* Young Vulcan children (5-12) do not completely suppress their emotions, they do however learn not to express them. Bullying, fighting, and rebellious behavior is not uncommon for this age group.

* For older Vulcan children (between 13-25) who have difficulty controlling their emotions, even with led meditations, the child is usually sent to a monastery for education.

* Vulcans aren’t fully mature until after the age of 30.

* Vulcans usually don’t experience Pon Farr until after the age of 30, usually between 30-35, but there has been some outliers. Some Vulcans can go through Pon Farr as early as 26 and as old as 40, but this is uncommon and usually means there is a health problem.

* Both male and female Vulcans go through Pon Farr.

* I don’t care what anyone tells me, Vulcans do and will have sex outside of Pon Farr.

* Vulcan ear shape is hereditary. The more curved ears you see on Spock, Sarek, Taurik are less common than the flat ears you see on T’Pol and Tuvok

* Vulcans with light colored eyes tend to have bad vision and worsens with age. They tend to spend more time inside because the sun can be unbearable at times. But Vulcans with light colored eyes can see in the dark better than Vulcans with dark colored eyes. Light colored eyes was a mutation that only accrued after urbanization of Vulcan.

* Vulcans are cold to the touch, like someone who has been outside without a coat in winter. Because they’re naturally cooler Vulcans don’t need to sweat to keep cool. If ancient Vulcans got too hot they could move into caves to cool down.

* Young Vulcans (under the age of 10) and old Vulcans (over the age of 130) have a difficult time keeping warm. On modern Vulcan it is fixed with indoor heating and cooling.

* Vulcan has many hot springs, most of which are underground, and are popular. However most tourists, such a humans, cannot use them as most are too hot.

* Vulcans have two different types of robes. Robes they wear during the day that keep them cool, and robes for night to keep them warm.

* The silk that Vulcans robes are made of are actually from a plant. The plant produces a silk like substance that is sticky to prevent animals from eating it. It’s very strong and ancient Vulcans scrapped the silk from the plants and ate them. Modern day Vulcans grow these plants near the seas in the north and far south near the pole.

* Other Vulcan clothing is made from wool from an animal that is similar to sheep and alpaca. Their wool is usually use to make evening wear. The wool also used in the making of blankets, pillows, and rugs

* The soles of Vulcans shoes are usually made from a hard woody root, which were better for walking on rock. Vulcan shoes can also be made from a type grass that is common on Vulcan, which are better for walking in sand. Shoes for military are made from rubber.

* The reason why Vulcans in tos have all kind of different hair styles is because at that time period Vulcan youth wanted to rebel against common standers, it’s also why T’Pring did not wear a traditional Vulcan wedding dress.

* It’s common for Vulcan women to cover their hair, whether it be long or short. Not only does it keep their hair clean from sand but it also protects their head from the sun.

* There is actually a wide variety of fashion on Vulcan, differing types of robes, dresses, and suits. Most common colors are usually neutrals but silvers, blues, purples, and greens are common in the south while golds, reds, oranges, and yellows are more common in the north.

* The common Vulcan bowlcut, humans call it, is more common in the government and military of Vulcan. The short hair is easy to maintain and keep care of. Many Vulcan citizens has varying hairstyles and most depend on what region they live in. It is not uncommon for Vulcan men and women to have long hair, especially if they do not work in manual labor.

* Most Vulcan men shave their faces. There are many reasons for it, such as, it’s cleaner, easier to maintain, keeps them cooler, and it looks more professional.

* When it comes to body hair, it is 50/50 on who shaves. The area around the reproductive organs are usually maintained but not shaved, as for legs, arms, and under arms, some areas it is more common to save than others. Young Vulcan men usually shave their chest, but as they get older is more uncommon.

* Vulcan women have on occasion worn makeup. Buying makeup on Vulcan is uncommon, many women on Vulcan grow plants that can be use for make up such as flowers that can be ground for lipstick or a crushed leaf for rouge. These plants usually have other uses such as medical or as food.

* Sehlats are not the only pets Vulcans keep. They also keep small rodents and occasionally a ferret like animal too.

* Vulcan pet names are usually old Vulcan names no one uses anymore or names of monsters or animals from ancient Vulcan literature.

* Sehlats aren’t fed meat, but instead high protein grain and vegetables and eggs. Sehlats are naturally omnivores but the need for meat was bred out of thousands of years.

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes.

ATLA

Candles and Boring Games by AlexiHollis

“You dare suggest that I betray Iroh?” Fire Lord Azulon did not shout. “My first born? After the demise of his only beloved son?” The old man leaned back in his throne shaking his head, “You have made an irrevocable error here, today, Ozai. What man of honor, what brother, what Uncle, would use this tragedy, a death towards furthering our family’s sacred mission as you call it, for his own political,” He practically spat the word, “gain. No, no, Iroh has suffered enough, but you, my son, have been far too coddled.” Zuko felt Father’s tension, but his stomach truly dropped when he saw Azula’s own worry, clear as day on her perfect actress face. “You need to be taught a lesson,” Fire Lord Azulon decided. “You must, too, suffer the pain of losing your first born.”

OR

Fire Lord Azulon, to punish Ozai, gives Zuko to Iroh

what can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around? by itsbrutalouthere

It starts like this: Zuko’s head is fucking pounding like it’s the morning after the Sun Festival, except he doesn’t open his eyes to find his friends in various piles around him, as tragically hungover as him. Instead, his eyelashes unstick slowly and painfully, and with the sunlight and the shock of green above him before he snaps his eyes shut again comes a young, mournful voice. “—we knew each other back then,” Aang is saying, from somewhere high and to Zuko’s left, “do you think we could’ve been friends?” or, Zuko stages a coup, finds his soulmates, goes to the past, and discovers that happiness isn’t unattainable— not necessarily in that order.

The Umbrella Academy

And We're Back to Square One by kindness_to_the_rejects

Just as the Hargreeves are about to start over in the fixed timeline, Five sacrifices his memories for his family and suddenly he's actually the thirteen-year-old he appears to be. Now the siblings need to figure out custody, school, a traumatized teenager, a super-powered murderer on the loose, and remnants of Five's past that just won't piss off. Because, of course.

Star Wars

the life of luke skywalker as told by the holonet by hyperdrive (metaphoriclee)

Post ROTJ, the Holonet speculates on the life of Luke Skywalker.

all about holos by starsomething

“You picked this holofilm why, exactly?” Ahsoka asks skeptically. “They’ve already gotten, like, everything about the Order wrong.”

or: 5 holofilms the Jedi watched (and 1 they didn't)

Clone Wars

Jedi Babysitting for Professionals by Nihes

The war is over, Palpatine is dead, and everything should be fine. Except, of course, that Cody's general still manages to need babysitting, Skywalker causes trouble, the Senate is a collection of idiots, and Cody has to deal with the nightmare that is Republican bureaucracy.

Oh, and Cody also needs to find a new job.

(Arguable) Flirting by willowcrowned (+ podfic)

“Why does he do that with her?” Ahsoka asks, staring at Obi-Wan's body.

“Do what with who?” Anakin replies after a moment.

They’re both in the medbay watching Obi-Wan, who is stretched out on a bed and pumped full of enough drugs to knock out a gundark, which means that he’ll be asleep for maybe another hour, max. (Obi-Wan, as all the medics had quickly learned, burns through sedatives like wildfire, and doesn’t react well when you tell him that he can either lie still and heal or be strapped down and heal.)

“Y’know,” Ahsoka says, wearing an expression of disgust, “flirt. With Ventress.”

Anakin looks up, frowning. “Obi-Wan doesn’t flirt with Ventress.”

And I’ll Catch You When You Fall by Nation_Ustria

The Jedi were never meant to fight in war. They still aren’t meant to. But that’s what they’re doing, and that results in almost every single Jedi reaching for the Dark Side unintentionally at one point or another, results in every Jedi Falling, losing the parts of themselves that are kind and good.

Except for the vod’e noticed when they started to Fall, and decided that they weren’t going to let it happen—and it turns out, you can’t really Fall if you have people to Catch you. Force-null or not, the vod’e figure out how to pull their Jetiise back into the Light, and do so as many times as is needed.

General Kenobi is one of the last to start Falling for their first time.

[voidze]

normally i don't comment directly on other folks' posts but i felt the need to here.

my dad was also very much like that. back in the day, they called it "locked-in syndrome". 'cause you understand and process everything coming in just fine, but in his case as well, he became quadriplegic, so he essentially had no way to communicate back. couldn't move his limbs or hands or nothin.

now to put a long and complicated story short, my dad had some major strokes and it rendered several portions of his brain pretty much... dead? like, back then everything about what happened to him was incredible, but even up to his death ~2 years ago doctors would marvel at his condition. they'd show us scans of his brain where there were big black portions. those were the parts that didn't work anymore.

but the other parts of his brain took over and he was able to keep on living! and oh my god i could write a book about the way my dad was infantilized and straight-up abused by medical professionals over the years. not an exaggeration in the slightest btw. 30 years of that shit.

now when this first all went down, my mom had to fucking fight to keep him alive and convince the doctors he's still in there. mom started with making him blink once, twice, not at all in order to answer questions. doctors dismissed this as reflexes at first. but she kept fighting, and showing them, until they listened.

fun fact: one of these doctors literally told my mom it would be too expensive to keep my dad alive and to just let him die. dad outlived this doctor :)

my mom was his uncompensated primary caregiver for those 30 years btw. we had people come in and help, absolutely, but mom did most of it, and she did it all without pay. and my siblings and i also did it too of course, but when we old enough, we each were employed through a company so we could scrape together a little bit of money.

furthermore, the reason why mom was an uncompensated caregiver and my siblings were not, is because my mom is a nurse. and where we live, there is a law that if you are a registered nurse, you're literally not allowed to receive any kind of compensation for doing what my mom did.

another fun fact: in the usa disabled people are kept poor. you're literally not allowed to make a certain (paltry) amount of money, you're legally allowed to be paid less than minimum wage, oh and also we don't have marriage equality. i can't marry either of my partners or i may never get (again, paltry) benefits from the government.

when i was like 12 mom had to sit me down and have a talk with how her and dad might have to get divorced so that we can keep living with dad and taking care of him. she told me it's not because they didn't love each other, but because of the way things out of their hands worked, they might have to do that. they thankfully never had to divorce, and dad actually died litrally like 2 weeks before their 50th anniversary. (ask mom, she has it down to the second. not even joking. she also felt his last heartbeat. but that's another story.)

anyway. so for all those 30 years, literally my entire life, it was like this. folks would go up to dad and bend down and talk to him real loud and slow, or ignore him and talk about him to my mom/etc. right in front of him. it's fucking bullshit. it's ableist bullshit. and i want you to know that. it's bullshit and you got every right to put people in their place and tell them to knock that shit off.

like i said i could write a book about dad's experiences in just those 30 years of his life. they would lay him flat on beds in the hospital with no guardrail - positioning that was extremely bad for him, plus if he coughed he could fall out of bed. ask us how we know!!! one time a nurse roughly grabbed his stomach and stabbed it with a needle. he didn't say anything. my sister witnessed it and was like "dad, did that hurt?" and he said it did. then the nurse freaked out like "i didn't know he could feel!"

on his deathbed a terrible doctor told us that he never understood any of us and that every conversation we ever had with him in those 30 years were just reflexes (even when he spoke in full clear sentences) and he was just a vegetable. and she proceeded to do a few procedures on him without consent that we also specifically told her not to do beforehand, and he aspirated, he got sicker, it hastened his death. god help her if she ever is unlucky enough to cross my path.

i'm sorry this is lengthy and all over the place but it struck a chord with me immediately. i know how hard it is to be in that kind of position, and how little help you get from anyone else. i want you to know that your family's got every right to tell doctors and shit to fucking listen, and it's terrible that any of us have to do that to begin with, but god, i want people to know. i want people to know no matter their age or disability no one else has the right to tell them their life is worth less than anyone else's, or that they don't deserve care, or don't deserve to be treated like a fucking person.

uhh also op if you wanna talk more about this kinda thing or something, my inbox is open.

My grandfather has a brain thing right now that makes it hard for him to talk in more than one word sentences but he can understand people just fine and lately it’s been kinda pissing me off how many healthcare providers talk to him like he’s five years old. Like he can understand you. He can answer yes or no questions. We just told you that. You don’t have to talk about him to me like he’s not here.

[tofumedic]

Brothers + Diavolo w/ a selectively mute GN!MC

summary: how well the brothers would be able to deal with you being selectively mute and how they respond to you talking to them !

Lucifer

Other than Diavolo, he may be the only one to know beforehand as helping in the organization of the RAD program, however it may only be overlooked if it is not present in any kind of record like schooling or medical.

When you first come into Devildom, your D.D.D. may be used as a sort of translation object between you and those present.

He is a little peeved in the beginning before you are able to explain it, he would regain his calm but would see it as a small setback to how he expected orientation to go.

Other than that he quickly learns about you and how you work so that he can work with you while trying not to dote on you!

The one that would gift you small portable whiteboards and markers if you had a preference over it for typing, professional though only dark blue and black inked markers <//3

Your first words to him are probably about answering a question or a summons, he does a lot of both but don't call him out for being clingy okay

Anyways

If this man is standing or getting up to greet you expect him to stumble, just slightly catching himself on the edge of his office desk or resting a hand against the wall

When he meets your eyes you can see there's a pinch of panic of "you did not just see that please tell no one" that melts back into "oh my god???????"

He's quick to relax back into what he wanted to talk to you about, not wanting you too feel anxious or guilty for however long it took for you guys to have a mutual trust and safety net.

For the rest of the day his face remains in this pleasant smile and everyone except Asmo and Beel are suspicious, Mammon being especially on edge.

If they call him out on what has him so happy today he will brush them off for being nosy about what isn't their worries but the small blush that rises to his face as he crosses his arms does not help his case.

Mammon

He is all of your noise

He gets forgetful and will try to have conversations across the house by yelling at you only to barge into your room in his petty fake anger just to see your face either amused at him or completely deadpan and he just ....🧍‍♂️

He gets anxious about leaving anywhere without his D.D.D. now what if his human needs him while he's not "bothering" you

Takes extreme pride in helping you order food when you go out places whether with his brothers or just alone, he loves it. Not only does he get an excuse to sit by your side and lean into your shoulder to see what menu item you're pointing at but it means he also has less worry about, he likes being close by to help you just in general.

Your first words are probably involving some drama he was mourning over earlier that day, probably with Lucifer or being the butt of the joke with another brother.

If Lucifer would stumble, expect this man to fully fall. God forbid you two are walking down the stairs instead of him rolling off the edge of your bed or just plopping on the carpet.

He would be so excited, his cheeks are burning even though you may have not even complimented him those words are gonna be ingrained to his memory maybe even written down in his notes app.

But he will downplay how happy he is that out of all of them he was the first you talked to, because of course it would be him the great Mammon and your first man it just made sense.

He's over the moon he won't flex it unless you start being verbal with more of his brothers he doesn't want them to pressure you into speaking no matter how much the urge bubbles up while Asmo is talking about how you would rather match outfits with him that others

Leviathan

He doesn't mind that much, at the beginning of your relationship he is very shy and doesn't really start talking unless something reminded him of one of his shows or games

Will gain a habit of just texting you instead of asking you a question outloud, just because he thinks its more polite and understands as in sometimes it's too much energy to open his mouth to speak

Teaches you phrases from his games, basically call outs, as an extra layer of code to let you know if you're camping out in his room that he is gonna leave for a package (going to spawn camp) or food (healing) etc

He does get jealous saying it's unfair about Mammon helping you order stuff in the "irl" while absolutely being too nervous to do it for himself as well

You two have your own codes for entering each others room, knocking to the tune of a popular sound effect from a game you play together for the ease but he enjoys when you try to do the beginning of an ost or girl group song and he tries to guess it

Your first words for him are probably you entering his room with some snacks or having picked up a package for him from his door, his response to you entering would be asking you to hold on this match or episode was almost done

So when you give out hum and either let him know you're staying or you're signing off (leaving) it's an insta-death, his attention is caught so fast

His posture extremely straight from his hunched focus as he speedquits his match closing every tab back to desktop before standing up on his wobbly legs and giving you the most affection he can handle of having that without warning

He gives you a small headbutt, pushing his forehead into your shoulder as he controls his breathing. He can't handle it that's like finale love interest marrying the protag and you hit him with it so lightly.

He wouldn't change his preference of texting you questions as it's something he's still comfortable with and you speaking to him makes him feel like he's reached masters rank without losing any matches

Satan

He is your best bet for knowing sign language, he finds it interesting that there are so many regional variations has tucked his knowledge of them into his big ol head

His movements would be hesitant as he's mentally dusting off the memory of practice but he is very good at it, though he wouldn't be more than only a pinch disappointed if you didn't prefer that way.

He be more interested in you in the beginning before learning about your magical presence and the pact hunt, it's unusual to him and he likes the study

Picks up small things that are unnoticeable to everyone but you about small habits and things that barely make it easier, like remembering to rebuke Mammon when he goes to order but forgets you don't like a certain ingredient and asks for it to be removed himself.

Would ask if you would like to learn Devildom's concept of sign language, maybe just quick easy signs for going about RAD tasks and classes

Your first words are probably said to him in the safety of his study, surrounded by books or even your homework while he reads

MC i love you very much but i feel like it would be something really stupid or cursed along the lines of

"I'm tired of people making Frankenstein's creature ugly he's literally written to be sexy" or "Why are people so attracted to Dracula he's supposed to ugly af >:/"

He would be.. very nonchalant about the fact it was you speaking to him and acting like he was talking to one of his brothers and going against you in the argument until he picks up those books to prove his side to be like "oh."

He needs a moment after such a not so public embarrassment so it would be later while you're both laying in your respective rooms and he's going over it in his head and then it hits him. It also hits that it was perhaps the most unromantic way it could have gone but it makes him smile into his pillow.

He has it as a secret weapon against Lucifer but he likes knowing something his brother doesn't

He can't look at you for too long the next day but will use the two figures of your mock argument to lightly bully you being soft on you in the comfort he wanted you to know was returned

"In case of argument, you would make a very good creation made in such a pleasing image"

Asmodeus

He is willing to fill up space for conversations for you also, he has a lot to say but will still ask you questions and for your input so you're included

He thinks the whiteboard concept is very cute! He would be the one to get you little accessories like a bag just for that and your markers or a strap for it. He would also be the one to get you more marker colors, you having just black and dark blue is unforgivable

Enjoys asking you how you're feeling, in a way that's easier if you didn't want to write or type it all out is giving him a number between 1-10. 10 is for your absolute worst like if you are having a day that you can't get out of bed or 1 where you're feeling really good like nothing can hurt you.

Doesn't force you to go out and party with him in case it's bad for your nerves or there's a worry demons will rude about "their advances being ignored."

Likes being close to you, so you can write in a notes app or use some other alternative other than texting where he might not see it getting buried by other messages.

Asmo would enjoy either holding hands or wrapping his arm around yours of your non dominant side, he makes good by staying on that side when he's going for affection or just to be in your bubble.

You talking to him for the first time would probably being during an outfit review or ordering new face masks off of Akuzon.

And he would melt, pelting you with kisses smothering every empty inch of your forehead, your cheeks, the bridge of your nose he's so happy

Whatever you were doing or looking at becomes his favorite, a fit he wears when he feels down to keep him happy, or using a specific brand of nail polish or face mask specifically due to the memory

Would find any lisp or rasp overwhelmingly adorable, of course it fits his angel you sound undeniably perfect. Loves how conversations sound with your two voices mixing together.

Beelzebub

He wouldn't completely understand but he isn't rude about it, his actions remaining normal to how he usually acts

If you wanted to learn their version of sign language he would try with you no matter if it was a struggle to fit into his schedule between the gym and spending time with Belphie and RAD and anything else but wouldn't want you to do it alone

He would keep you safe from anyone who had a problem with it, he's used to Belphie not wanting to talk to people other than him so he would be able to handle it especially if you two had similar gestures you used

Beel is also quite quiet in his own other from rumblings or dislike about being yelled at, he's good at still talking and holding his ground in arguments too but affection with him would be extra quiet compared to extra brothers

Your silence other than shuffles or small laughs, it's comforting like a sense of calm. It makes him think of your human dream catchers always quiet yet supposedly helpful and healing

You may verbally ask for a treat or some of his snack he brought for you two instead of a small gesture if your arms are trapped in the cuddle position you've been stuck in and any food he was eating would pause. Giving him a second he would easily give you all that was left

"Not hungry anymore" he would say his eyes warm before closing with his warm smile, he melts more into you like a jacket to let you feel how warm his heart was.

You were always special even if as an agent of chaos with some of the phrases you would drop, and he would adopt into his vocabulary and even further speaking for you in situations you couldn't

Belphegor

Belphie when you first met would give you a different gaze, in a slight squint almost breaking his image of being a helpless human but he would override it, continuing on like normal

At the beginning he may have even less belief in you getting pacts with his brothers but you still prove you're capable and things are normal for how he would treat you, not really changing just like Beel.

For a man (demon) to say actions are stronger than words, he certainly strains his ears just in case you answer his question in that way not that you would know and i certainly did not let you know ok??? cool cool

Other than that he really doesn't mind!!! You and Beel are really his top two people he has interest in being with and you being mute wouldn't change anything ! He may seek you more for naps outside of his room or the attic you don't move as much as Beel does as long as he doesn't curl up over your arms

In the privacy of one of your rooms- whether Asmo and Mammon are out on the town or in his while Beel is at the gym or somewhere else- is your first words spoken as softly as you can to him

Him laying across you with his head resting with his mouth close to your collarbone and ear resting almost on your neck he can feel the vibration in your vocal cords, you were probably asking him to move

Which you probably thought he was doing but any movement was so he could be closer to that feeling of your words if you spoke again, his knees tucking up while his toes curl

You wouldn't be able to fully process just how important that action was to him, you trusted him and felt safe and could let words out to him, after everything that was real forgiveness.

Diavolo

Him just looking over and encouraging you being chosen by Lucifer, he probably would not know unless again it was strongly present in your transcripts

He would find it interesting, it was your first surprise to him and filled him with mirth at the concept of seeing Lucifer tense in confusion his feathers absolutely ruffled

Though while you were already human which meant your interactions were sure to be interesting to him, the way you interacted was also completely different from Solomon, he would love giving you his time no matter how Barbatos would sigh already seeing it before it went into motion

It may mean a little extra work for Lucifer but he wouldn't complain he did a good job picking you for Diavolo to enjoy your company so much even if he was slightly worried on your influence on him

For doting only predict help with fixing the RAD program and making your class experience more accessible, if he tries to help too much someone would certainly have a word with him

He's known being compassionate, he just wants it to be easy for you as it is probably hard enough on you between the brothers, school, and being selectively mute

He barely uses his D.D.D. but if you prefer using that it's no problem though do give him awhile to type out his long messaged questions instead of asking them on call

First words with him may be said on a trip out to explore or in his castle during a private moment in the retreat or in his office

No matter the context it would be a mood booster, he would compliment you you're voice is perfect to him it matches the image you've shown so far

It's a delight, you never fail to surprise him he may repeat your words in his own voice laugh resting on his breath. He'd ask you to stay a little longer if he can get away with it, and if he can't he surely will try

[heauxplesslydevoted]

Everybody Talks (Ethan x MC)

Summary: At a conference hosted by the American Medical Association, Ethan stumbles upon an unpleasant conversation about his girlfriend.

Warnings: None

~v~

Ethan watches as his girlfriend owns the room. At the American Medical Association conference in their own city of Boston, in the large ballroom of The Ritz Carlton, he quietly observes from the corner as she excitedly chats with a Dr. Catherine Stanley, a renowned surgeon from Columbia, while everyone within an arm's reach of her is drawn in by the sheer magnetism of her presence. He’ll never get tired of watching her like this. Naomi is completely in her element. Whenever she’s in a deep conversation about medicine, her posture loosens, her nose crinkles, and her voice takes on a pitchy breathiness the more and more excited she gets.

So caught up in thinking about her, Ethan doesn’t even notice that she’s walking up to him until she’s within a few feet. She smiles brightly as she leans against the bar. “You’re not mingling.”

“You’ve known me for over three years now. I’m not one to mingle.”

“Come on, there has to be someone here you want to talk to.”

“You.”

Naomi rolls her eyes. “Mhm-hmm, you’re so charming, Dr. Ramsey.”

“I’m being very serious. Why wouldn’t I want to talk to the keynote speaker?”

When Naomi found out they wanted her to speak at the conference, she was almost certain they meant to speak to Ethan and that she accidentally answered a phone call meant for him. But they in fact wanted her, the newest and youngest head of the diagnostics team. Her meteoric rise up the ranks of Edenbrook had made quite the splash in the medical community, where everyone knew everyone. Whether she realized it or not, Naomi had become a wunderkind and everyone wanted a piece of her.

And while she was nervous, Ethan couldn’t be more proud of her. Naomi is brilliant, and it’s about time more people were rewarded with being in her presence long enough to see it.

Naomi groans and runs a hand along her midsection. “Don’t remind me that I’m giving a speech soon, my stomach is already in knots.”

Ethan holds up his tumbler of whiskey, angling the glass towards her. “Want some liquid courage?”

“No, eating or drinking might make it worse. I won’t feel better until I’m on the other side of it.”

“In the three years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen a shy bone in your body. Where are the nerves coming from?”

“I’ve never done something like this,” Naomi responds. “I’ve never given a speech in front of hundreds of people–maybe even more, this place is packed. Public Speaking is the only class I ever got a B in in college.”

Ethan gasps teasingly. “The horror.” He chuckles softly as Naomi pokes him in the rib. Moving closer, Ethan clasps a warm hand around Naomi’s shoulder, massaging gently. “You’re going to do just fine. Better than fine, even, you’re going to be amazing. You’re smart, charming, funny, and eloquent, and the directors knew what they were doing when they chose you to speak. And besides, nearly all of Edenbrook is here to support you. Lahela might’ve even snuck in a camcorder.”

It's a slight exaggeration, but a lot of physicians practicing at Edenbrook belong to the prestigious association, and did not want to miss the chance to see one of their own speak.

“Ugh don’t remind me. It’s easier speaking to a crowd of nameless, faceless people. What if I forget my speech? What if my accent becomes super obnoxious and no one can understand me? What if I trip on stage?”

“You could always picture everyone naked, I’ve been told that it helps.”

Naomi blanches at the suggestion. “No, I don’t want to picture all of these people naked.”

“Good, because that was a trick suggestion,” Ethan murmurs. He rests his forehead against Naomi’s, his lips hovering mere centimeters from hers. “The only person you should ever be visualizing sans clothing is me.”

“Lucky for me, I get to do a lot more than just visualize.”

The happy couple share a kiss before Ethan nuzzles his face into the crook of his girlfriend’s neck, whispering quiet words of encouragement and affirmation.

On the other side of the bar, a group of women watch the jarring public display of affection play out. Ethan Ramsey was notorious for hating medical conferences, never engaging or interacting with people. He was also known for being perpetually single, so to see him so open with another person felt like foreign.

“I still can’t believe the two of them are together,” Dr. Nicole Harrington whispers to her group of friends as they gawk at the pair. While she works in New York, it’s hard to not be aware of the story behind Dr. Ethan Ramsey and his young protege Dr. Valentine, especially since she’s in touch with so many Boston-based doctors. “I can’t believe Ramsey is so open with her.”

“I think they’re cute,” Nicole’s friend, Monica coos. “I’m a hopeless romantic.”

The third member of the party, Greta stays silent. She’s one of the two people within their group with actual ties to Edenbrook, her husband having been attending there for almost 8 years now. Her husband Ashland keeps her up to date on all the ins-and-outs of hospital gossip, and she knows all about Ethan’s messy entanglement with his former resident.

“He wasn’t even like this when he dated Harper Emery,” their last friend Angelica whispers. As a neurologist herself, she’s worked alongside both Ethan and Harper for a long time, and while the hospital knew of their relationship, if you weren’t looking for the extremely subtle signs, you’d never know they used to be together. For years, at that. But for some reason, Ethan can’t seem to go 5 seconds without being near Dr. Valentine. Within the walls of Edenbrook, it's becoming harder and harder to see one without the other. “And she’s Harper freaking Emery for Christ’s sake.”

The conversation pauses as someone on stage taps the mic, gathering everyone’s attention. Out of the corner of her eye, Greta watches as Ethan plants another kiss on his lover’s forehead and she disappears in the crowd before she’s introduced as the evening’s guest speaker.

Ethan doesn’t know why his girlfriend was ever so nervous because as soon as she accepts the microphone and starts to speak, he’s transfixed.

His tunnel vision is split when he hears an aggressive whisper from a few feet away. Frowning, he turns around, fully prepared to demand that whoever has the gall to interrupt Naomi’s speech should shut the hell up, but he stops when he realizes that they’re talking about her.

“She’s been a member of the AMA for what, 3 seconds and she’s already giving speeches? Are we in the freaking Twilight Zone?”

“I guess it pays to keep Ethan Ramsey’s bed warm.”

Greta scoffs, finally acknowledging the conversation. “Ashland tells me everything about the two of them, and it’s all so messy. She’s been leading him around like she’s dangling an apple in front of a horse since she got to Edenbrook. He gave her preferential treatment her intern year, and miraculously she gets the coveted fellowship on the Dr. Banerji’s team. He gets promoted, and surprise, surprise, he gives her the team, wrapped up in a neat little bow. Never mind the fact that she should be nowhere near leading a team, she killed a patient her intern year. So for him to be...parading that young girl around is tawdry and disrespectful to the hospital.”

If this was a cartoon, Ethan is almost positive his face would be very red and steam would be wafting out of his ears because that’s how angry he is. The audacity of these women to stand a mere 8 feet away from him and trash talk the woman he loves is disrespectful on so many levels.

Obnoxiously, he clears his throat, garnering their attention. The only one with the decency to look slightly embarrassed is Monica, as Ethan catches her cheeks flushing under his harsh attention.

Angelica stands up straighter, “Chief Ramsey, we were just–”

“Participating in a misogynistic diatribe against a fellow doctor,” Ethan finishes. “Question, did any of you graduate at the top of your classes from a top 10 ranked medical school?” No one dares respond. “Out of the 4 of you, did you guys save Naveen Banerji’s life while he was dying of sepsis? Have you spent your after hours holed up in the NICU with your patient’s newborn baby? Any of you face a near death experience and come back to the scene of the crime in order to help more people?”

Ethan’s eyes narrow at Angelica and Greta in particular. “When Edenbrook nearly shut down, I don’t remember seeing your face as we worked tirelessly in the free clinic Dr. Banks, nor do I recall seeing your husband Mrs. Park. I don’t remember him lobbying to politicians or attempting to secure funds during fundraisers, but I do recall seeing him show up at parties without you to flirt with nurses.”

Greta balks at Ethan’s words, clearly not expecting him to unleash such anger. “Dr. Ramsey, I’ll have you know that my husband–”

“Is spreading vicious gossip and lies about a doctor with higher ranking than him. Dr. Valentine got her spot on the diagnostics team fair and square. She was the number 1 intern so Naveen picked her. When I left the team, she was the last tenured member at the time, with the most experience in how a team of such magnitude ran. She was the best pick for the job.”

“Over the course of her time at Edenbrook, she has more than proved that she earned her seat at the table, and to suggest anything else is an insult to her strengths and talents as a doctor, as well as my judgement. To suggest that I do not know to remain professional while I’m at work and the only reason she’s in the position that she’s in is because of our private relationship isn’t just a lie, but a dangerous and slanderous one as well. And if someone so much as ever implies it again, I will slap them with a lawsuit so fast their head will spin, and the closest they’ll ever get to practicing medicine again is slapping Band-Aids on kindergarteners.”

The group of women receive a threat loud and clear And they remain silent not wanting to be at the receiving end of anymore of his wrath.

Ethan sighs heavily. “Well, now that this pesky conversation has come to an end, I’m going to continue to listen to Naomi’s speech. The one that she was hand selected to deliver, while the rest of you are in a position to do nothing more than watch from the crowds.”

With the catty group of women stunned into silence, Ethan smiles, his work complete. “Enjoy the rest of your evening, ladies.”

They watch as he downs the rest of his drink before sauntering off. Once he’s gone, Monica huffs out a shaky breath. “Well...I’ve always said there’s nothing more attractive than a man defending the woman he loves.”

~v~

Tags: @mvalentine @choicesaddict5 @professorkingslay @maurine07 @aka-calliope @bluebellot @whimsicallywayward15 @blossomanarchy @takemyopenheart @jamespotterthefirst @fanmantrashcan @whatchique @ao719 @x-kyne-x @colourmeshy @paulfwesley @the-pale-goddess @writinghereandthere @ramseyandrys @perriewinklenerdie @aworldoffandoms @thatcatlady0716 @drakewalker04 @canknot @hatescapsicum @lapisreviewsstuff @senseofduties @badchoicesposts @ethandaddyramseyx @chasingrobbie @zodiacsign1 @choices-lurker @my-heart-beats-for-ya @adrian-motherfucking-raines @riverrune @edith-eggs1 @thatysn @bellcat2010 @blainehellyes @cecilecontrera @junehiratas @choices-love-affair @openheart12 @caseyvalentineramsey @desmaranj @nazario-sayeed @aestheticartsx @ruinedbypixels @nooruleman @rookie-ramsey @uneravine @choicest

[hello-im-not-a-possum]

Never they pounder whether electric, c̵͖͐ā̴͉l̷͔̽m̸̰̒i̵͚͌ṉ̸̾g̸̞͊ ̷̡̌i̵̢̔f̴̝̕ ̸̺͠y̸̥͊ò̶̬u̶̲̽ ̵̝̐l̶̯̄o̶̖͋o̵̖̎k̷̝͒ ̸̖́a̶͎͠t̸̗̋ ̵̘͑i̶̫̔t̴͍͌ ̷̥̎ŗ̴̈́ḯ̷͉g̴̱͘h̵̋͜ṯ̴͋.̶͓̏

There were few things on the patient's mind other than how much pain he was in, how horrible this hospital was, and how much he hated his so called 'best friend' who hadn't even shown his face ever since he ruined his with that impulsive decision. But as angry as he was, he was also lonely, the doctors and nurses were cold and stayed away from him as much as they could, fearing his strange unknown disease could be contagious. As much as he would hate it if Jack walked through that door with some sloppily-made 'I'm sorry' gift, he also would've cried with happiness at this point. He just needed human interaction, ANY human interaction...

"Mr. Masters, you have a visitor."

Vlad sat up and looked to where he had heard the doctor's voice, the medical professional already leaving him alone with the circus ringleader that he had never seen before in his life.

The patient's excitement turned to confusion at the sight of him, he's pretty sure he's never once expressed any interest in clowns or a circus or anything like that, so what was he doing here?

"Hello there young man!" the ringleader took off his top hat and bowed deeply while addressing him. "My name is Frederich Isak Showenhower, but you may call me 'Freakshow'. I've heard you've come under a rare and unusual disease of sorts-"

"I'm sorry Mr. ...Freakshow but I'm not exactly interested in becoming a circus performer even if I do manage to recover enough to do that..."

"Well it's a good thing that's not what I came here for!" The man laughed like he was told a hilarious joke. "Oh no, I came here to..." He looked around exaggeratedly, making it clear that he didn't want anyone else to overhear before getting close to the patient's bed and whispering in his ear. "-Give you the cure to your nasty condition that those quacks are keeping from you."

Vlad covered his mouth to keep his surprised gasp from being heard. "...Do you really have it..?"

He looked up at the red-eyed man, still unsure, but with a glimmer of hope in his eyes, a glimmer that Frederich was more than happy to indulge.

"Why of course! And don't worry a single thing about any 'costs' or whatnot..." The ringleader smiled at him as he patted his shoulder. "I'm just a charitable guy who would do anything to help a bright young man like yourself get back on the path of a bright, successful future! ...Now, not to alarm you, but I have seen your case before, your... condition is rather lethal if left untreated." The clown's face fell into a somber expression as he held his top hat to his chest. "And it's not a pretty sight either, a long, slow, agonizingly painful death..."

Freakshow took a few seconds to let the patient's fears sink in before putting the bag on his bed.

"Thankfully, you're in luck, kid! It might not be the most comfortable method, but I've devised a fool-proof treatment for your case, riiiight here!" he patted the bag and the patient lunged for it as if he was stuck in the sweltering desert for weeks and the bag was the only source of water for miles, only for Frederich to snatch the bag away from him last second, tsking him. "Now, now, you just need to be a little bit more patient, Vladimir..."

"I'm sorry, but it's hard to stay calm and be patient when my life is on the line, Freakshow!"

"And I understand that completely! Trust me, I do." The ringleader took what looked like a gauntlet with claws and wires built into it and put it on his arm. "After you wake up, this will all be nothing but a bad dream you'll forget over time..."

"After I wake u-AAAAAAAAAGGGHH!!!"

Vlad screamed in agony as the circus ringleader plunged the claws into his skull and electricity pulsed through his entire being. His body felt like it was on fire and freezing solid at the same time and it felt as if the red-eyed man was trying to tear the patient's soul out of his very body through his eye sockets while shattering it. The only saving graces were that the treatment had was that it made him pass out from the pain shortly after it began...

...And hours later, he woke up feeling better than he had in days.

Not only was he not in pain, but he felt lighter, like a huge weight had been taken off his shoulders. He put his hand to his face and didn't feel the angry red, possibly radioactive bumps that ruined his face, just smooth skin underneath the bandages.

He jolted out of bed and ran to the nearest mirror despite the nurses' protests and tore off the bandages himself.

His reflection looked as if he had never even been infected with the horrible disease in the first place, even his hair was back to black aside from a single white streak. If it wasn't for the newly made scar across his face, he would've assumed that the disease and the encounter with the doctor-ringleader was all just some horrible nightmare.

"It... worked... I... I'm cured..." he whispered softly as he touched the mirror to confirm it to himself. Tears prickled in his eyes and the corners of his mouth curled into a relieved smile as he stared at his reflection.

"I'm cured!" He repeated, louder this time as laughter escaped his lips. He was fully alive and he felt like it!

"I'M CURED!" He practically shouted at the top of his lungs, no longer would he need to be confined to that bed and poked and pronged with needles, treated like some kind of monster or plague, he was free and he wasn't going to take this second chance of life for granted!

___

Twenty years later, outside an ordinary white and green house in a calm, everyday suburb in Madison, Wisconsin, sixteen-year-old David 'Davey' Masters rummaged through the family mailbox, finding the typical bills, a sea monkey kit that most likely belonged to his sister, some weird letter from Fentonworks... Aha! There's the red contacts he ordered online!

...He should probably bring in the other stuff too, no reason to let the monkeys stay in the mail.

As he went back inside and set the non-interesting mail in the key bowl on the table next to the front door, his phone rang.

"Hey Dad, did you make Resident Evil real yet?" David smirked at his own dumb joke. "Or did something else blow up at the labs?"

"No, Davey-Jones, humanity's still safe from my ambitions and delusions of grandeur for now." His dad snorted in mild amusement over the line. "It's Friday, so I called to ask what you and your sister wanted me to pick up for dinner."

"Oh right, I'll go ask her." David picked the box of sea monkeys out of the key bowl and went to his sister's room, covering the phone's speaker. "Dani!" He knocked on the door. "I got your Innsmouth for ants population, also it's Friday, so what do you want to eat?"

"Thanks Dave!" She opened the door and took the box from him. "Can you tell dad to pick up something from Nastyburger for me?"

"Sure" he nodded and got back on the phone. "Dan is gross and wants Nastyburger-"

"Hey!"

"-I'm more in a Taco Bell mood. Also, you got something in the mail about a... Fentonworks? Is that like, one of your fancy cheese of the month things..?"

"Huh... I'll be sure to check that out when I get home. Also, before I forget, two things: One, did one of you feed Marmalade yet? Two: do you two want anything specific from those places or do you just want me to surprise you?"

"Yes I fed the cow." Danielle answered before David could ask. "And a number 7 with extra sauce please."

David gagged because he thought the sauce was the nastiest thing Nastyburger had to offer, but relayed the information to his father, adding that he himself could be surprised.

The letter was left forgotten as the family of three talked about their days over dinner. Discussing much more interesting topics than an envelope that was probably just some weird spam.

"Anyway, that's how cultural osmosis has failed me and the emotional roller coaster I've been on since actually reading the book, only partly caused by the book itself."

"I did warn you that the book the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde isn't anything like the musical we saw, Davey-Jones."

"Yeah, but I thought it was like a 'There's a lot of things in the book that are cut from the musical to not make it go on for too long.' warning, not a 'Everything I thought I knew about the book was wrong' warning!"

"If you hate the book, can I rip it up and use it to make a paper-mache earth so that my space monkeys have a planet to invade?" Dani gave David one of her fries to 'bribe' him "I finished the UFO themed tank and they love it, but I don't think it's enough..."

"Hey! I said it was different, not that I hated it! Sure, I wasn't expecting Jekyll and Hyde's dynamic to actually be that Hyde is just Jekyll living honestly, but behind a mask made out of a weird chemical reaction, but that doesn't mean I think that it's bad." The older teen put down his taco salad, crossed his arms and huffed. "...Plus, I still need it for my book report."

"Okay, then do you have any books I can rip up for my space monkeys?"

"Rip up your own books!"

"But I only read comic books, I can't make a paper-mache earth with comics, the colors will bleed through the paint!"

"Kids, if this escalates to a screaming match, I'm going to drive both of you into the woods so you can scream all night without bugging the neighbors." Their father stated flatly yet firmly.

"...So Dad, did you bring back anything cool from work?" Danielle wisely tried to change the subject.

"Yes, actually." He rummaged through his bag and took out what looked like a strip of human skin. "While the bloodstream nanobots have their... issues, these skin-grafting nanobots will revolutionize the medical field! unlike its predecessor, these little guys will stay outside the circulatory system and help speed up the body's natural healing process by aiding cells. This 'skin' is actually made up of trillions of tiny bots working to replicate a given sample."

"Wow, Axion really knows how to make both the coolest and creepiest inventions ever." David gawked at the prototype his dad brought home. "I think there's a horror movie that's missing it's living skin prop."

"I think it looks cool!" Dani chimed in. "So far it's like a... flesh worm that attaches itself to your lost skin and feeds off your blood!"

"...That is certainly a way to describe it." He chuckled.

"Great... Can we agree to put the flesh-worm away so we don't have to see it while we're eating?"

Vlad shrugged and put the nanobots back in the bag before returning to his calzone. "Don't forget, you two have to return your library books tomorrow."

"Got it."

"Hey dad, if we're going to be running errands tomorrow, can we also pick up some paint and newspaper?"

"Sure thing, Little Shark."

The letter remained untouched and unremarked on all Saturday, left forgotten in the key bowl while the family spent the day outside carrying out various chores and errands.

___

The halfa ringleader smirked and made the visions in the fun house mirrors dissipate as he was certain that he made his point crystal clear to the orange and teal clad ghost hunters.

They didn't know if their adversary intentionally made his ghost form mirror normal Plasmius's appearance or if bluish tinted skin, fangs, and pupiless and irisless red eyes were just default characteristics of Vlad's strain of half-ghostness. The white cape and suit implied the former, but at the same time, Freakshow already enjoyed vampire characteristics as his staff and circus showed, so it could just be a coincidence.

Maddie still struggled against her restraints, her eyes still shined with cold determination, in an ideal world, she would've loved this fate for Vlad too, for him to build a life and family of his own instead of trying to steal it from the others he had hurt...

However, she knew it didn't matter what this clown showed her, it didn't matter to her whether Vlad became the kindest most generous man alive or the most miserable wretched beast in the world without his ghost powers, at the end of the day, no amount of good OR evil Vlad without his powers could do could ever be enough to match or outdo the sheer amount of evil Freakshow was and is doing right now with the powers he stole from him.

Jack's expression on the other hand was that of somber guilt, this version of his best friend had nowhere near the amount of wealth and power his Vlad had, he led a far simpler life by comparison, but despite that he was so much happier and well, livelier for lack of a better term. He had a job that was something he was genuinely passionate about, a pet cow with an adorably silly name, and two beautiful children that he could tell he loved with all his heart. A family that, while it didn't have a wife and mother, this Vlad didn't seem to want one, he was perfectly content as a single father.

His Vlad spent who knows how many years resenting him for the accident, hated him and wanted to kill him, but Jack only now fully realized why; something like this was what his Vlad wanted all along, not the fame, not the fortune, not the power, he didn't pursue those out of greed (for the most part) but gluttony, mindless overindulgence in those things to distract him from his true desires that he couldn't achieve despite all of it, distracting him from the fact that being half ghost- that being himself prevented him from getting what he truly wanted in one way or another...

He prevented his best friend from getting this life, Freakshow knew this. It had to be why he was showing him everything, he was asking him 'Are you sure you want to ruin his life and leave him as a broken bitter man all over again?'

The ghostly ringleader closely studied Maddie's face, he knew he broke Jack like a twig, in spite of everything he remembered he still had a soft spot for the weird little Wisconsin man for some reason that Frederich could not understand himself.

Maddie on the other hand proved to be a tougher nut to crack, and why wouldn't she be? She hated the Vlad she knew, that Vlad was a complete stranger to her, and (especially right now) she hated HIM more than Vlad so ruining both their lives by 'giving Vlad his ghost half back' would really be killing two birds with one stone.

So he had to find something else to discourage her with... Oh! What a lucky coincidence...

___

On Sunday, the letter skimmed through and Vlad realized why the name 'Fenton' in Fentonworks was so familiar.

Something something engineering, That was familiar, he himself was a bio-engineer who occasionally dabbled in machinery.

Something something ghost portal, That... ugh, just the idea gave him goosebumps and made him queasy...

Something something Jack Fenton-!

Jack Fenton, engineering, ghost portal... He got it! Jack Fenton was the crazy roommate he had back in college!

His memory of that time was pretty fuzzy, but from what he could recall they built a portal, and something went wrong, of course it went wrong, it was a ghost portal! They shouldn't have been messing with that stuff in the first place! He can't believe he was so nonchalant about things as terrifying as ghosts at the time! ...But hindsight is 20/20. Regardless, he (they?) was hospitalized for a while, and then...

Again, he couldn't remember twenty years ago very well and the head injury he got back then probably didn't help. But come to think of it, they didn't really stay in touch after the incident. Maybe he said something or Jack did, or they just drifted apart because it was hard to stay in touch after Jack moved... He knew he *did* move away, just not when.

Vlad reread the letter with a bit more interest now that he knew that it wasn't spam or a scam letter (to his knowledge).

"Oh! Apparently Mr. Fenton started his own business, good for him!"

"Who's Mr. Fenton?" Dani cocked her head to the side in confusion.

"Someone I was roommates with way back in college, he was obsessed with ghosts... It was basically all he ever talked about, ghost biology, ghost hunting, some place called the 'ghost zone'.." He shivered a bit at the thought of the specters his old roommate coveted. "Oh wait, he talked about two things: ghosts and fudge."

"Oh yeah? And how did that work out?" David rested his arms on the back of the couch. "I can't see the world's biggest phasmophobe getting along too well with the world's biggest phasmophile."

"Well, before the incident I was actually pretty indifferent to ghosts instead of being afraid of them, so we got along well enough." His smile looked a little forced as he read a certain part of the letter. "...He opened up a ghost hunting business... That's very... ...him." Vlad set the letter back down in the bowl and held his hands together. "I'm happy for him, I'm glad he's living his best life, I'm happy to hear he's doing well, I would've preferred if he continued to live his best and absolutely horrifying life without informing me about it or trying to involve me..."

"Deep breaths, dad, the letter can't hurt you." The teenager rolled his eyes and picked up the discarded paper to read it himself, his intrigue turning to bewilderment and his bewilderment turning to horrified awe. "I really hope this is just some weird joke or somebody's writing assignment sent to the wrong place and that people like this don't actually exist..."

"C'mon you two! They can't be that weird or scary!" Dani took the letter herself. "Ghost stuff aside, They work in engineering ...I think, *you* work in engineering, they're a family of four, we're a family of three, they have a gh- dog, we have a cow..."

"Marmalade has yet to ruin anybody's life."

"She could if she really wanted to."

___

"NOW do you get it? Even if by some miracle you manage to convince this middle-aged stranger with no fortunes, powerful artifacts, vast labs of his own, or experience in a single real fight that all of that 'crazy ghost stuff' is real and that he has to leave his precious family to take me down, you'll still lose!" Freakshow cackled in delight. "He gets the chills, jitters, and the heebie-jeebies just from the word 'ghost'! He'll die of sheer fright if I so much as sneak up behind him and shout 'boo'. In fact..."

The ringleader turned the Fentons' restraints into ghostly vapor that quickly disappeared, then struck the mirror that still showed the family scene with his staff, shattering it, taking the shards and melting them to a beautiful yet ominous liquid that became infused with both green and magenta ectoplasm, reforming it to a seemingly normal yet gothic full-length mirror attached to an elegant stand.

"Seeing is believing isn't it? Take this mirror to them and it will show them their true, ghostly forms. Get them to touch it, and they'll gain those forms and a fraction of their power back. It's going to be HILARIOUS to watch you two kill him with fright yourselves! Or to watch him overcome his fears *just* long enough to kill you for hurting his precious children, whichever comes first..."

The circus Halfa let out a loud, boisterous laugh as he disappeared from the hall of mirrors.

"This isn't over!" Maddie called out to the fading laugh. "He's not as weak as you think he is!"

Freakshow laughed louder while leaving the Fentons to their devices with the gifted mirror.

Vlad Masters is not, and has never been, significantly wealthy