#like she’s so much to be around sometimes

[itneverendshere]

LOVED YOU AT YOUR WORST - r.c series - NINE

pairings: ex!sweethearts; rafe x thornton!reader; rafe x sofia. chapter warnings: mentions of leukemia; death; pregnancy; abortion.

💌MASTERLIST

Rafe had been through a ton of traumatic bullshit by the age of fourteen. 

His mom had been battling leukemia since he was ten, it started off as an infection—but it turned into one of those long, drawn-out wars that tricks you into thinking there’s hope when there isn’t.

It would go away for a bit, just enough to make everyone think the fight was over, and then it’d come slamming back worse every time.

When he was fourteen, it finally took her for good, when he’d been silly enough to believe she might pull through. 

To be fair, he was only a little kid waiting on a miracle, praying she’d wake up one day magically cured.

Now, when he looked back on it, he hated himself for being so naive. The signs had been there all along, the nurses whispering in the hallways, Ward turning into this void of a human, who looked at him like he didn’t know how to fix it anymore. The talks his mom would have with him about how “no matter what happens, you’ll be okay.”

That phrase haunted him for years.

Her death didn’t wreck him; it tore him apart and left him in tiny pieces that didn’t fit together the same way. He wasn’t the same kid afterward, not even close.

He got angrier, distant. 

He didn’t recognize who he’d been before it all—some kid who really believed in happy endings.

He didn’t believe in much after she died, people let you down, life ripped everything good out of your hands. Why bother holding on to anything at all?

It wasn’t just the grief; it was the guilt.

He’d get mad at her, sometimes, for being sick. He’d slam his door and cry into his pillow because he just wanted a normal life, a mom who wasn’t always tired or in pain or hooked up to some machine.

He hated himself for that. 

The day of her funeral, he remembered everything, even though he wished he didn’t. The church smelled like old wood and lilies, that smell that never left you once it sank in.

People kept coming up to him, patting his shoulder, saying things like, “She’s in a better place now,” or “Stay strong, buddy.” 

He wanted to yell at them, shake them, make them shut up. She wasn’t in a better place. A better place would’ve been here, alive, laughing at his dumb jokes, or rolling her eyes at him for leaving his shoes in the hallway. It wouldn’t be six feet under, locked in a box, shoved into a hole in the ground like she never existed.

He didn’t cry, not when they opened the casket for everyone to say their final goodbyes, not when his dad stood up and choked through some half-assed speech that was mostly apologies and memories, not when they lowered her into the ground, the ropes creaking as her casket disappeared into the earth. 

He just stood there, hands in his pockets, staring straight ahead, as if he wasn’t even present. Inside, though?

His his chest was on fire. 

He refused to let even a single tear fall, it felt pointless, it wasn’t going to bring her back. It wasn’t going to fix anything. And deep down, he thought he didn’t deserve to cry, if he’d been stronger if he’d prayed harder, or been a better son, she’d still be alive.

The sound he remembered the most was the thud of dirt hitting the coffin after the service. It was final, loud, the earth itself mocking him. People around him sniffled, hugged each other, wiped at their eyes, but Rafe just stood there, staring down into the hole, fists buried in his pockets until his nails dug into his palms. 

He kept thinking about how wrong this all was, this wasn’t where she was supposed to end up, and none of this was fair.

She should’ve been there.

She should’ve been standing next to him, arm around his shoulder, telling him to stop slouching, whispering something to make him laugh in the middle of all this sadness. Instead, she was in there, soon the dirt would cover it up, and that’d be it. 

Gone. Just like that.

After the service, Rafe didn’t try to stick around for the house gathering, he wasn’t going to survive that. All those people crowding the living room, balancing paper plates of casserole, acting like they gave a fuck about his mom. It was fake, all of it. 

They’d forget about her in a week.

He slipped out when no one was paying attention, cutting through the side yard and heading to the only place that felt halfway normal—the old skate park behind the rec center. It was run-down as fuck, but he and his friends used to hang out there all the time, sitting on the busted ramps, talking trash, or just doing nothing.

When he got there, it was empty, which was exactly what he wanted. He climbed up on the old half-pipe, sitting cross-legged with his elbows on his knees, staring at the cracked pavement below. 

He couldn’t stop replaying the day in his head, the casket, the dirt, the stupid better place comments. His chest felt like it was breaking in a million tiny pieces, but he still couldn’t cry, his body just wouldn’t let him. 

Instead, he just sat there, wishing the world would leave him alone for five minutes.

That’s when he heard footsteps behind him.

He thought about running—didn’t need anyone seeing him like this, especially not now. But then you spoke.

“Figured I’d find you here.”

He didn’t look at you right away, just exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah? Well, congrats. You win the prize.” 

He wasn’t in the mood to be nice, even to you.

But you didn’t flinch, you never did. That’s one of the things he liked about you—you didn’t get scared off when he got like this. You just climbed up next to him and sat down. 

You didn’t try to say all that comforting bullshit people had been feeding him all day, and he was grateful for that.

“You okay?” you asked eventually.

He snorted. “Do I look okay?”

"Sorry, stupid question."

He sighed, hating that he was being asshole to his best friend, "It's fine."

When he finally glanced at you, you were watching him, trying to figure out what to say. It made him nervous, the way you looked at him. You always did that—you cared about what was going on in his head, you saw more than what he let people see.

“I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I know what you’re feeling,” you said finally. “But you don’t have to do this alone, Rafe. You know that, right?”

If only you knew what you would be going through just three short years later.

He wanted to snap at you, tell you to leave, he was fine, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he just stared down at the pavement again, “Feels like I do.”

You didn’t say anything, just moved closer, close enough that your arm brushed against his. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make him feel…something, less alone.

Rafe didn’t know how long you both sat there, could’ve been ten minutes, could’ve been an hour. Time didn’t feel real anymore, you didn’t push him to talk, which he appreciated more than he’d ever admit, you didn’t throw out any of those awkward “it’ll get better” lines. You just sat with him. 

“You can talk to me, you know.” 

He shook his head without looking at you. “There’s nothing to say.” His voice was rough, flat. “She’s gone. That’s it.”

“You don’t have to pretend like it doesn’t suck."

He clenched his jaw, staring at the pavement like if he looked at you, everything would break.

“What’s the point?” he muttered. “Crying’s not gonna change anything. It’s not gonna—” His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard, trying to force it back.

“Rafe.” You sighed, and this time “You don’t have to hold it together for anyone, okay? It’s me.”

That broke him, actually broke him. His chest felt tight, suddenly he couldn’t keep it in.

His breath hitched, his shoulders shook, and before he knew it, tears were sliding down his face. He tried to stop it, to hide it, scrubbing his hands over his face, but it was no use.

“Shit,” he choked out, his voice cracking once more.

“Hey, hey,” you said quickly, and before he could pull away or do something stupid like tell you to leave, you scooted over.

He froze for a second, unsure what to do, but then he remembered the funeral, the whispers, the dirt hitting the casket, all the things he couldn’t stop thinking about—he just let it all out.

The first sob ripped out of him so suddenly it startled him, he hunched over, elbows on his knees, hands gripping his hair, as if he could physically stop himself from breaking. But it didn’t work.

Another sob followed, and then another, and soon they were pouring out of him—loud, messy, completely out of his control. He couldn’t stop it, and he hated it.

He leaned into you, his forehead pressing against your shoulder, and just cried. When he felt your arms instantly wrap around him, pulling him into a hug as if you’d been waiting for his permission, he shattered completely.

“She’s—” His voice caught in his throat, and he had to stop, gasping for air as the tears kept coming. “She’s gone. She’s gone, and I—” He broke off.

It was ugly and loud and nothing like how he’d pictured himself breaking down, but he didn’t care. You didn’t tell him it’d be okay or try to make him stop, just held him, your arms tight around him. 

“I miss her,” he whispered, his voice so small it barely sounded like him. “I miss her so much, and I—I don’t know what to do.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried like this, and part of him hated how exposed it made him feel. He hated crying in front of people—anyone. But right now, with you, he didn’t feel embarrassed. 

“I know,” you nodded, your hand moving in small circles on his back. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

“I—” he choked out, his voice breaking. “I can’t—this isn’t—it’s not fair.”

“It’s not,” you didn’t want to scare away the fragile pieces of him that were finally surfacing. “It’s not fair. None of it is.”

He couldn’t stop shaking or gasping for breaths that hitched in his chest. The more he tried to push it all backdown, the harder it fought to claw its way out. For years, he’d kept it buried—buried so deep he thought he’d never have to deal with it.

“I hate it,” he managed, the words tumbling out in a jagged mess. “I hate that she’s gone. I hate that I didn’t—” He stopped, gripping his hair harder. “I didn’t do enough. I should’ve been better, done something—anything.”

“Stop. You can’t do that to yourself.”

He shook his head violently, “But I did. I gave up on her. I stopped believing she’d get better, I—I got mad at her for being sick. What kind of son does that? I didn’t even say goodbye the way I should’ve. I just—I left the hospital because I couldn’t take it anymore, and then she—” His voice cracked again, and his hands dropped from his hair to his lap, clenched into fists “She’s gone, and I left. I wasn’t there when she—” His breath hitched, and he buried his face in his hands.

“You’re a kid. It’s not your fault, okay? None of this is.”

“But it feels like it is,” he shot back, “I should’ve done something, anything. I just feel so—” He stopped, letting out a shaky exhale. “Empty. Like nothing I do matters anymore.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The way you said it, so certain—He didn’t know why, but it cut through the noise in his head just enough to let him breathe again.

“I don’t know how to keep going,” he admitted, “I don’t know how t-to live without her.”

Growing up, Rafe had always been a momma’s boy. 

She was his safe place—the one person who didn’t make him feel like he had to be someone else. With her, he didn’t have to try so damn hard to be tough, or perfect, or whatever the hell his dad wanted him to be. 

Ward wasn’t the kind of dad who let his kids cry on his shoulder or told them he loved them every day. No, Ward was the kind of dad who believed in rules.

Men didn’t cry. Men didn’t show weakness. Men didn’t mess up—or, if they did, they sure as hell didn’t admit it.

He expected Rafe to follow those rules like they were gospel.

The worst part? His rules about what it meant to be a man stuck with Rafe, even when he didn’t want them to. When his mom got sick, he found himself choking back tears in the hospital bathroom, staring at his reflection and hearing Ward’s voice in his head: “Crying doesn’t solve anything. You’ve gotta be strong, for her, for your sisters.”

He had this idea in his head of what Rafe was supposed to be—strong, dependable, successful. He didn’t yell or lose his temper like some dads back then, he just made him feel like shit in this fucked up way.

Rafe tried, shit, he’d tried, but it felt impossible.

Every time he looked at his mom, pale and tired but still managing to smile at him like he was her whole world, he felt like he was dying too, then he’d feel guilty—for being so weak, for wanting to break down when she was the one fighting for her life.

It didn’t help that Ward had always had a soft spot for Sarah. Everyone could see it, even Rafe. She was the golden child, the one who could do no wrong, the one Ward went out of his way to protect. 

If Rafe screwed up, it was a lecture or a punishment, but if Sarah did? Ward would just shake his head and say, “She’s still young. She’ll learn.”

It used to piss him off more than he wanted to admit. It wasn’t that he hated her���she was his sister, and he loved her. But how could he not resent her? He felt invisible when she got all the attention and the understanding, while he was expected to man up and deal with it.

After her funeral, things changed.

Rafe became quicker to snap, to walk away from anything that felt too hard. He was only himself around you, behind closed doors, never for preying eyes. Sarah grew colder, retreating into her own world where everything was controlled and distant.

Every time they spoke, it ended in shouting matches, slamming doors, or long stretches of silence that neither of them attempted to solve.

Except when you were there.

Ward got even colder, the grief had frozen whatever part of him used to care. He threw himself into work, making sure Sarah was okay, and barely even looked at his son. When he did, it was usually to tell him to pull it together, or to stop being so “moody.”

Rafe started to wonder if he even cared that he was falling apart, if he ever noticed the nights Rafe stayed out too late or came home smelling like booze. If he saw the way he avoided talking to him, how he flinched whenever Ward brought up his mom. But if his dad noticed, he never said anything. 

He thought it was just Rafe being Rafe—angry, unpredictable, a disappointment.

Fast forward to the present, and he hadn’t felt this helpless since that day at the funeral, not even when Ward’s died four months ago. 

You weren’t in his life anymore—hadn’t been for a while and you were possibly pregnant. 

He wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it made sense, everything lined up with that possibility. He thought back to everything you’d been through together, the times you’d been there for him when no one else was, how you’d seen the pieces of him no one else cared to.

Now, you were having his kid—and he was hearing about it from Topper?

Rafe spent the first hour after Topper dropped the news pacing his bedroom like a caged animal, his heart wouldn’t stop racing and he felt like a ticking time bomb. 

The Rafe—the one who flew off the handle, yelled, broke things, and pushed people away—was begging to get out. But Topper’s voice kept replaying in his head, he had to act right, be calm, for your sake. To prove himself.

The problem was, that staying calm wasn’t his strong suit. 

He’d spent years burying every emotion he couldn’t control under layers of anger, and now he was supposed to sit with the hurricane in his chest and figure out how to make things right. 

For the first time in a long time, he realized he didn’t even know where to start.

That night, he locked himself in his room, ignoring his phone, his friends, everyone. None of it mattered anymore, the only thing he could think about was you—and the baby. 

He spent hours pacing, running his hands through his hair, trying to think of what the fuck he was going to say.

What was he gonna say after everything he’d put you through? After the fight, the distance, the way he’d shut you out when you’d been nothing but good to him until that point?

He sat down on the edge of his bed, head still in his hands, and let himself feel everything he’d been avoiding. The fear, the regret, the anger at himself. He thought about you—how you used to look at him like he wasn’t just a mess of a person, you’d stuck by him even when he’d given you every reason to leave.

You weren’t here anymore.

He’d pushed you so far away you hadn’t even told him about the situation yourself. Why would you anyway? He ghosted you and the next time you saw him he was with someone else. He could still see the look on your face when you saw him that night—arms slung casually around Sofia, while you sat in your car, eyes wild, you hadn’t tried to step outside, hadn’t yelled or made a scene, you simply drove off. 

It wasn’t until an hour later and terrible text message to you, that drunk and pissed at himself, he realized just how badly he’d screwed up. But by then, the damage was done, and he’d been too much of a coward to fix it. What followed was a sea of bad decisions and nights he couldn’t remember, trying to drown out the ache of losing you. 

He’d been drinking for Ward’s death until that point, now he did it for you.

Everything was catching up to him—the way he let his dad’s voice in his head drown out his own, making him let you slip through his fingers.

He didn’t deserve you—he knew that.

By sunrise, Rafe was still wide awake, sitting on the floor of his room surrounded by half-crumpled pieces of paper. He’d been trying to write down what he wanted to say to you, but everything sounded wrong. He’d never been good with words, not the kind that mattered.

He wasn’t a dad, wasn’t even close to being the kind of guy who could be a dad. 

What the fuck did he know about raising a kid? Changing diapers? Teaching someone right from wrong? Being patient? But the thought of you—of you carrying his kid—hit him differently.

At first, it had been pure panic. You hated him, what if you didn’t want him involved? What if he was just like Ward—cold, distant, always expecting too much? What if he screwed the kid up the same way he felt like he’d been screwed up? 

He pictured it without meaning to: you holding a tiny bundle in your arms, your face soft in a way he hadn’t seen in so long. A kid with your smile, your laugh—but his eyes. Or his messy hair. It scared the shit out of him.

What if she doesn’t even want to keep it?

Rafe hadn’t let himself go there at first, it was a lot to wrap his head around, the idea that there might not even be a child to fight for. 

The thought of you going through this, struggling to make a choice that he couldn’t help with, made him feel useless. 

Frustrated, he grabbed his keys and headed out, needing to clear his head. The island was silent this early, the kind of calm that used to make him feel trapped, but now, though, it was a relief. He drove aimlessly for a while, the salty air whipping through the open windows, until he found himself parked at the beach.

He didn’t know why he’d come here—well, you’d always bring him here when he spiraled. He sat there, watching the waves crash against the shore, feeling a weird sort of clarity that he hadn’t felt in months. 

Perhaps it was the silence, or the way the ocean didn’t care about all the fucking mess in his head, but something about it made him stop spiraling for a second.

He started to think about what Topper had said—not just about staying calm, but about proving to you that he still cared. That wasn’t something he could do with words alone, not after everything. He’d have to show you, he’d have to be the version of himself you used to believe in, the one who wasn’t ruled by his worst impulses.

Rafe knew the first step before he could even think about talking to you: he had to end things with Sofia. They weren’t official, but they might as well have been. 

People talked, made assumptions, and sure, he’d let them. It was easier that way—less explaining, less having to deal with the uncomfortable truth that he’d only been with her to fill the empty space you left behind. It was cruel, but at the time, he hadn’t cared. 

Sofia wasn’t you, but she was there, and more importantly, she didn’t expect anything from him. Keeping things going with her wasn’t just a bad idea; it was disrespectful. To you, to her, to himself. He couldn’t pretend he cared about her like that—not when his heart had never really left your orbit.

When he showed up at her place that morning before work, she didn’t seem surprised—not even a little. She’d seen the writing on the wall for weeks now, but tonight, seeing him standing there, just confirmed what she already knew.

She watched him like she was waiting for him to get to the point, but not impatiently—just resigned, she already knew what he was about to say.

“Can I come in?” 

She let him in without a word, she wasn’t mad, not really. If anything, she felt sad—mostly for him, a little for herself. How the fuck was he supposed to explain this without sounding like the worst person alive?

“You okay?” she asked quietly, she wasn’t being polite—she was trying to read him, figure out where this was going.

Rafe didn’t sit, didn’t take off his jacket. He stayed standing, hands shoved deep in his pockets, trying to find the words that wouldn’t make this worse. “I—” He cleared his throat. “I need to talk to you about something. 

She raised an eyebrow, her lips pressing together in a tight line. “Be honest.”

“This...this isn’t fair to you,” he started, his words tumbling out fast, “I should’ve been real with you from the start, but I wasn't," He swallowed hard, “You deserve better than me using you to forget someone else.”

Sofia didn’t say anything at first, just crossed her arms loosely, not making it easy for him, but she wasn’t making it harder, either.

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,” he continued, forcing himself to look at her. “It feels wrong and it’s not because of you. You’re great. You’ve been...you’ve been more patient with me than I deserve.”

Her lips curved into a small, almost imperceptible smile, one that wasn’t quite happy but wasn’t cruel either. “But you’re still in love with her.”

He didn’t know why it shocked him—Sofia had always been perceptive—but hearing her say it out loud made it real in a way it hadn’t been before.

“I—” He hesitated, but there was no point in denying it. “Yeah.”

“I knew,” She nodded like she’d been waiting for that confirmation. “I figured. I told myself it didn’t matter because—because I thought maybe you’d move on. Maybe I could help you move on. But you didn’t, and I—” She pressed her lips together, shaking her head as her arms tightened around herself.

Rafe’s brows furrowed. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She shrugged, the movement almost casual. 

“Because I really like you,” she admitted, “I knew. The party? When you got blackout drunk after seeing her leave? Or the country club, when you nearly started a fight defending her? I know you drove her to the hospital too. I kept hoping—God, I kept hoping you’d see me, that you’d let me be enough.”

He’d known she cared—he wasn’t blind—but hearing her saying like that made him realize just how he fucked up. She wasn’t wrong. He had been trying to numb himself, to drown out the reality of losing you, and she had been the collateral damage.

He looked away, guilt twisting in his chest. “I didn’t mean to drag you into this. That wasn’t fair to you.”

“No,” she agreed, her tone firm but not unkind. “It wasn’t, but I don’t think you meant to hurt me either, you were trying to hurt yourself. It's still stupid of me to try, knowing you need to figure your shit out, but you don’t have to end things. I know what I signed up for, Rafe. I’m not asking you to choose me over her—I’m just asking you to try."

There was no anger in her voice, no bitterness—just exhaustion. It made him feel like a piece of shit because she deserved to feel angry, to lash out at him. But instead, she was still trying to give him a way out, a way to make this easier on himself.

“I’ll take whatever part of you I can get.”

It wasn’t desperate or pleading—it was resigned. She already knew the answer, but she couldn’t help saying it out loud.

Rafe shook his head, his jaw tightening as he fought to keep his composure. “No,” he said, his voice firm. “You deserve someone who can give you everything. That’s not me.”

“Why not?” she pressed, her tone insistent.

“Because all of me already belongs to her,” Rafe admitted, his voice breaking at the end. “It always has, it always will.”

Sofia blinked, her lips parting slightly in surprise, but she didn’t look hurt—just...sad. She nodded slowly, her shoulders dropping in defeat.

“I hope she knows what she has, and I pray you show her," She stood up and motioning toward the door. “We both deserve better than a guy who drinks himself to death after seeing her at a party. So do you.”

Rafe didn’t move right away, unsure if he should say something more, apologize again, explain himself better. 

“Thank you,” he said finally, his voice quieter than he meant it to be.

“Don’t thank me,” she replied, “Just do better.”

“I shouldn’t have let it go on this long,” he confessed, “I just—I didn’t know how to stop.”

Her expression softened just enough to show the tiniest sliver of empathy. “For what is worth, I think she still loves you too, even if she hates you more right now.” She paused, her hand resting on the doorknob, but she didn’t turn around, “Next time, please don’t do this to someone else, and don’t do it to her again, either.”

She still loves you too, even if she hates you more right now. He wanted to believe it, needed to believe it. The faint possibility, that you might still love him, it meant he had a chance but it also meant he could screw them up even worse.

He stood slowly, “Thank you,” he repeated,“For...everything.”

She didn’t look at him, but she nodded, opening the door and holding it for him. “Take care of yourself,” she said, and it wasn’t cold or angry—just sad.

By the time he got back to his car, he knew she wasn’t wrong, about any of it. 

She hadn’t screamed or cried or made him feel like the asshole he knew he was, that made it worse. If his mom was here, she would’ve smacked him across he head for hurting two amazing women at the same time. 

He hadn’t��been ready to deal with his feelings for you—not when he started whatever the fuck it was with Sofia, not when he ran into you at that party, not when he defended you at the country club.

He’d been running, hiding, trying to bury everything under distractions that only made him feel emptier.

He leaned back against the headrest, closing his eyes, and for a moment, it was like he was fourteen again, sitting on the edge of his mom’s hospital bed while his mom teased him.

“Come on, sweetheart” she’d said, her voice playful, even through the weariness. “You’ve been talking about her birthday for weeks. I think you like her more than you’re letting on.”

Rafe’s head shot up, and his ears burned red. “Mooomm,” he groaned, dragging out the word, “it’s not like that, she’s my best friend.”

“She’s your pretty best friend,” she’d corrected, smiling at him in that knowing way only she could. “You’re gonna pick out something nice for her, right?”

“I already did,” he mumbled, pulling a small velvet box from his pocket and holding it out like it was some great secret. Inside was a delicate bracelet he’d saved up for, something special, something he thought you’d like.

His mom’s smile had softened, the teasing fading into something more tender. 

“She’s lucky to have you,” she’d said, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “Even if you are a little knucklehead sometimes.”

He’d ducked away, embarrassed but secretly pleased, tucking the box back into his pocket.

“M’m not a knucklehead,” he complained, but she just laughed, and it was one of the last times he remembered hearing her laugh like that—free, unburdened, just his mom.

“She’s a good one. You’ve got good taste.” Her smile softened, and the teasing faded into something gentler. “I hope I’m still around when you get married. I’d love to see you happy like that.”

The words were a punch he hadn’t expected. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. What could he even say to that? He wanted to argue, to tell her she would be, but the look in her eyes stopped him.

She knew. She always knew.

He just nodded, biting the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. “Me too.”

She squeezed his hand. “Promise me something?”

“Anything,” he said without thinking because he meant it.

“When you find that person—really find them—don’t let them go. Not for anything.”

He nodded again.

Years later, standing in a stupid fucking car alone, those words haunted him. He’d found that person, he’d had her and he’d let her go.

“God,” he muttered, the self-loathing reaching a new high, “I’m so sorry, mom.”

As terrifying as it was to think about being a dad, to think about raising a kid when he was still trying to figure out his own life… the idea of losing this chance—of losing you, or the baby, or both, for good —scared him even more.

For the first time in a long time, Rafe Cameron felt something close to hope, but it was tainted in so much fear and uncertainty, that he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

The rest of the day, he forced himself to slow down. 

He went back home, cleaned up the disaster of a room he’d been holed up in, and tried to think like a normal guy instead of a walking disaster. He even let Topper come over, though his patience for his relentless commentary wore thin fast.

“You’ve got one shot at this, dude,” Topper said, perched on Rafe’s desk like he owned the place. “If you go in there guns blazing, she’s just gonna think you’re the same old Rafe. And honestly? You can’t blame her.”

Rafe rolled his eyes, but he didn’t argue, Topper was right, as annoying as it was to admit.

He spent the evening coming up with a plan—just enough to make sure he didn’t go in blind. He practiced what he’d say in his head, pacing the kitchen while the sun sank below the horizon. Every time he started to panic, he forced himself to breathe, to remember why he was doing this.

By the time 24 hours had passed, he didn’t feel ready, but he knew he couldn’t wait any longer. The thought of you sitting somewhere, thinking he really didn’t care or that he wouldn’t step up?

That was worse than any fear he had about facing you. So he grabbed his keys, and headed out, this time, he wasn’t running away.

Rafe stood by your door, he’d gotten in the property using the gate’s code, one he’d hoped you had changed to keep him out, but you hadn’t.

He’d never been good at patience, never needed to be—not when he could push his way into anything. But this was different, you were different, always had been.

The wood under his hand was cool, in a way that pissed him off because it reminded him that there was a barrier between you and him, again, always.

He wanted to scream, kick the fucking thing down like the old Rafe would’ve, or instead use the keys you’d given him years ago. Instead, he stood there, swallowing his pride because you were worth it, even if it was tearing himself in half.

His knuckles dragged down the frame, fist clenching as if the pressure would ground him, keep him from losing his shit. He wasn’t here to fight, wasn’t here to make your life harder, no matter how much you thought he was. 

The door rattled slightly when he pressed his forehead against it, eyes squeezing shut. “Five minutes. Please.”

Nothing.

His jaw worked, teeth grinding against the words he wanted to say but couldn’t, not if he wanted you to open the door. He couldn’t do this anymore—the back-and-forth, the lies. He wasn’t sure what broke first—your resolve or the knot in his throat. 

When you didn’t answer again, he sank to sit on the porch, back against the door like he could still feel you on the other side. You were there—close enough to touch if there wasn’t this fucking door between you.

That was his fault.

He used to be the guy you’d let in without thinking twice, shit, there was a time when he didn’t need to knock.

He was in, part of your life, part of you.

Now, you were holed up, scared of him. Yeah, that ate him alive. He’d earned that fear—every cold shoulder, the slammed door, he deserved it.

He should’ve been different, been better, been someone you didn’t have to lock out. You were scared, and it killed him because it wasn’t just fear, it was him. He was the reason you didn’t feel safe enough to let the secret out, the reason your voice cracked when you told him to leave.

He had put that look in your eyes, the one he couldn’t unsee, no matter how hard he tried.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

He could almost hear you breathing, shakily, like you were preparing yourself to outlast him.

He wanted to push. Fuck, he wanted to shove the door open, make you look at him, make you tell him everything—but that was the old Rafe, he took what he wanted, and bulldozed through whatever stood in his way.

Where had that ever gotten him? Nowhere but here: on the wrong side of a door, the wrong side of you.

He exhaled, long and slow, hand falling limp to his side.

What the hell was he doing? Forcing his way in, forcing answers—that wasn’t going to fix this. It never did. You’d push harder, build the walls higher, and he couldn’t stomach the idea of you hating him more than you already did.

“Okay,” he said quietly, his voice strained. “I get it.”

He didn’t know if you could still hear him, perhaps you were blocking him out completely. Maybe you were curled up with your hands over your ears. He hoped you weren’t crying, though the thought twisted and turned something deep in him.

“I’m not gonna push you,” he said, hating how defeated he sounded. “You don’t owe me anything.”

He ran a hand down his face, swallowing hard, trying to keep it together.

“I just... I just want you to be okay.” He hesitated, then pressed his palm flat against the door, wishing he could reach you somehow, without scaring you, “Baby or not.”

He waited, hoping for something—a sound, a movement, anything, but the silence was absolute.

His heart clenched as he pushed off the door and took a step back, his shoes scraping against the porch. He didn’t want to leave, he never wanted to leave, but this wasn’t about what he wanted. Not anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, almost to himself, "I'm so sorry. I’m sorry it took me this long, okay?”

He stopped halfway, looking back, hoping—praying—for some sign. A light flicking on, the sound of the door creaking open, your voice calling his name, anything.

But the house stayed still, it had already moved on from him. 

He didn’t remember deciding to drive to Poguelandia; he felt it in his gut, in the pit of his chest, this pounding certainty that Sarah knew something he didn’t. You wouldn’t tell him—but Sarah? You’d chosen her to drive you home from the hospital just a few days ago.

She was the only person that could lie to his face properly, he couldn’t fucking figure her out, she was always deflecting shit wherever they talked.

By the time he pulled up to the pogues’ little hideaway, the sky had darkened, the place lit only by the glow of string lights and the hum of voices inside. He sat in the truck for a second, staring at the house, willing himself to calm down.

Barging in—loud, pissed, impulsive—wasn’t going to get him what he needed. But fuck, it was hard not to.

He climbed out, slamming the door behind him with just enough force to feel better for half a second. The screen door creaked as he stepped up to the porch, and he could already hear them inside—Sarah’s laugh, JJ cracking some dumbass joke, the rest of them chiming in like they didn’t have a care in the world.

He hated this, hated how they all looked at him, as if he was some ticking time bomb ready to explode. They weren’t wrong.

Rafe knocked, hard and sharp, the laughter inside cut off instantly. Footsteps approached the door, hesitant. A second later, it swung open, and there she was, his sister, looking at him like he was the last person she wanted to see.

“Rafe,” she said, one hand still gripping the door. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “We need to talk.”

Her brows pulled together, suspicion creeping into her expression. “Now? Seriously?”

“Yeah, now,” he snapped, stepping closer, his voice low enough to keep from drawing the others’ attention. “Don’t make me say it in front of them.”

She hesitated, glancing over her shoulder toward the voices in the living room. “Rafe, I don’t think—”

“Don’t,” he cut her off, his tone sharper than he meant. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to soften, to keep it together. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

She glanced back again, then sighed, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind her. He was already pacing, hands twitching at his sides, hardly able to contain the energy inside him. 

The way she looked at him—wary, guarded—only made it worse.

“What the hell is your problem?” she asked, crossing her arms, like she was already bracing for a fight.

“My problem?” he barked out a laugh, sharp. “You really wanna play dumb right now? You’ve been keeping something from me, Sarah. I know you have.”

Her brows knit together, feigning confusion, “Dude. What’s this about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit,” he hissed, stepping closer, “Don’t lie to me. I already know, okay? I know about the baby.”

She didn’t say a word, didn’t confirm a thing, just stared at him like he was some wild animal.

“Where did you get the idea that she’s pregnant?”

His mouth opened, then closed. It felt wrong to snitch on Topper when he’d been one making him pry a little more.

“Well?” she pressed, “Answer me. How did you come up with that?”

Saying it out loud felt like admitting he’d been just as reckless and intrusive as everyone expected him to be. His hand ran over his face, trying to stall.

“I didn’t just make it up.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed, her patience waning. “No shit. So where, Rafe?”

He glanced away, then back, his voice defensive. “Topper said something, okay? He heard—he thought—” Rafe stopped, knowing how weak it sounded.

 “Topper? You’re taking life advice from Topper now?”

“He didn’t mean anything by it!” Rafe was quick to defend him, “He just... he mentioned some things, and it got me thinking. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Sarah repeated, “You barged over there because Topper mentioned ‘some things’ ? Jesus Christ.”

His hands flew up in frustration. “What was I supposed to do? Pretend I didn’t hear it? Ignore it and hope it went away? I needed to know!”

“No, you didn’t,” Sarah shot back. “You wanted to know. There’s a difference, and it’s the difference that keeps getting you into this shit.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Rafe pointed a finger in his direction, “Like I’m crazy or something. I’m not stupid.”

"You’re just not worth the energy right now."

Instead of crying like he wanted to, he let out a dry laugh, pacing back and forth in front of her.

"Right. Sure. I can see it all over you, just say it."

She shook her head, her lips pressing into a thin line. "You don’t know what you’re talking about. Neither does Topper.”

“Stop lying!” His voice rose, loud enough to echo into the dark yard. “Just stop. You know something.”

Sarah’s jaw clenched, and for a moment, Rafe thought he’d finally cracked her. Except instead of giving him what he wanted, she just let out a slow breath, meeting his eyes with a steadiness that made him feel like a child fighting for his favorite toy.

“You want to know the truth?” 

“Yes,” he bit out, his chest heaving.

She stepped forward so they were only inches apart. “The truth is, you don’t deserve to know. Not yet.”

Everyone kept telling him the same thing, couldn’t they see he was already trying?

He staggered back a step. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"It means, that whatever you’re looking for, whatever answers you think you deserve, they’re not yours to take. Not until you can handle them without breaking everything you touch."

He flinched, her words striking something inside him, “You don’t get to decide that for me,” he said, almost desperate.

“I’m not deciding anything,” she replied, her eyes never leaving his. “You’ve spent these last few months making everything about you. Your pain, your anger, your needs.”

He glanced away, “So, what? You don’t trust me?”

Her silence was louder than anything she could have said.

“You don’t,” he murmured, the realization bitter in his mouth.

"I don’t," she agreed, “You’re still not the person she needs you to be, and until you can prove you can do that—without me, without anyone holding your hand—you’re better off not knowing.”

“I’m trying. I swear to fucking God, I’m trying. I don’t know how to fix it.”

“She’s scared you’re going to hurt her again—whether you mean to or not. You’re dating someone else, for god’s sake.”

“I ended it. This morning.”

Sarah’s eyebrows lifted slightly, “Doesn’t change the past, Rafe. And it sure as hell doesn’t make everything better overnight.”

Rafe flinched, the words sinking into him like stones. "Why the fuck do you think I’m here? I don’t want to hurt her—I can’t do anything if she won’t even talk to me."

Topper still had that number. 

You hadn’t hidden it well enough, he hadn’t done anything with it, but it was tempting. All he had to do was call, just to confirm, he told himself. Not to pry, simply to know for sure.

“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. This isn’t something you can force your way into. She would never forgive you, please be smart.”

His first instinct was to lash out, fire back some venom-laced retort that would sting as much as her tone. He nodded, swallowing hard.

“Okay,” He dragged a hand through his head, “I know that, I know. But I can’t just sit here, doing nothing. I need to... I need to show her I can do better. That I am better.”

“You need to crawl through hell to understand a fraction of what she’s going through; you need to stop thinking about what you want and start thinking about her.”

His hands fell to his sides, limp, the fight suck out of him. She was right—he hated that she was. This wasn’t about him anymore; it never had been.

 “What can I do?”

Her expression softened, not with forgiveness but something sadder—she wanted to believe he could. “You start by fixing yourself, then you wait. Until she’s ready, if she’s ready. You’ve got to mean that, Rafe, you screw this up again..."

"I won’t," he said firmly, cutting her off. "I can’t."

“Okay.”

“What if she’s not ready?”

He had no right to demand more.

“You keep going, keep trying. Not for her, not for anyone else—just for you.”

By the time he got back in his truck, the hurt in his body hadn’t lifted. His mom’s words echoed in his mind one more, “When you find that person, don’t let them go. Not for anything.”

Maybe that started with learning to be the person who deserved to hold on.

TAGLIST: @maybankslover @october-baby25 @haruvalentine4321 @hopelesslydevoted2paige

@rafebb @rafesbby @whytheylosttheirminds

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@stoned-writer @justafangirls-blog-deactivated2

@starkeygirlposts @enjoymyloves @ijustwanttoreadlols @icaqttt

[servicpop]

family trip adrien ( deliquent oc ) x bttm m reader

ⓘ established relationship au

Through the excessive amount of visiting each other's houses almost everyday of the week, it was only natural that your families would grow close.

It wasn't a surprise when you received a pretty little invitation by Adrien to come join him and his family on a small trip to the coast. Since you had nothing better to do that weekend, you gladly accepted. Adrien brought up his family's van and offered you a ride in which you also agreed.

You never thought to ask Adrien about his family, assuming it was a topic he didn't particularly like as he never talked about them anyways. So seeing two little girls and a young boy that were the splitting image of Adrien if not his parents. They were a rather rowdy bunch as Adrien's mother rounded up the little troublemakers into the 2nd row of the van while her husband was busy packing things into the trunk.

“Why didn't you tell me you had siblings? And so many,” You question, turning to Adrien who seemed to be on his last straw trying to get his siblings to calm down.

“Didn't think I seemed like an only child,” he quipped.

You stop yourself from rolling your eyes when Adrien's mother walks up to you. She's gorgeous, straight nut brown hair, short and slim like a doe. It's strikingly different from Adrien's rough appearance.

“Oh dear, it seems like there's only one chair left,” Mrs Castillo's voice is like a hydrating balm to the soul as she places a hand on her cheek.

You open your mouth to propose a solution — as the responsible person you are — but you're acutely cut off by prince charming himself.

“He can sit on my lap, no problem.” You can see the relieved expression Adrien's mother carries before she walks off into the passenger's side of the van, leaving you absolutely speechless.

“Since when did I agree to that?” You sigh, but it's ultimately the only solution you can think of on the spot.

Adrien slips into the back seat first, getting himself comfortable before patting his thighs. There's a sour expression on your face as you climb in, settling yourself on Adrien's lap. He slips on the seatbelt from behind you and slides his arms around your waist, holding you close.

“Don't worry, I'll be your seatbelt.”

“I wasn't worrying.”

The ride was anything but smooth. You were profoundly aware of every single movement Adrien made underneath you, the soft thumping of his heart rattled against his chest every time you leaned back to rest.

Not to mention his demon-like siblings turning around to ask you bizarre questions.

“Did Adrien kidnap you?” “Do you think you can do a cartwheel and then the splits because I can.” “How much money did he pay you to be here?”

You couldn't even answer one question before another was interjected. Even Adrien seemed annoyed by this constant noise.

“Stop bothering him,” His tone caught you off-guard; it was harsh and grounded like he truly meant it. It didn't seem like the kids understood the message until Adrien swatted at them to turn around.

He sighed, leaning back into the car seat, pulling you down with him.

“They can be a damn handful sometimes,” He exhaled, letting his forehead rest on your shoulder.

The soft gesture, the heat radiating off his face to your shoulder, and his forearms locked tightly around your waist made something in your heart ache ever so slightly. Your fingers hesitantly move to rest on Adrien's arm, patting it gently like you're consoling him.

A few more hours pass by and the kids have already fallen asleep, not a sign of liveliness from the three. Your own eyelids start to grow heavy until the van drives over a rather large speed bump. From the scratchy sound of tires crunching along gravel, you can pretty much assume that the road is going to be filled with dents and bumps.

A barely audible groan comes out from Adrien's throat and you freeze up. Did you hurt him? Your movements are cautious as you turn your torso to look back at him, trying not to move so much so you don't hurt him further.

“Shit, are you okay?” Your eyes narrow and your nose crinkles in concern, Adrien has his head lowered before he lifts it up to meet your gaze.

The hands planted firmly around your body tighten and he pulls you back up against him.

“Just— Stay still,” he grunts out, forehead returning back to your shoulder.

You shuffle just back to get comfortable just enough that you practically grind against the tent growing in Adrien's pants. It takes you a moment to realize what was happening. A small gasp escapes your lips as you grip the flesh on his arm, keeping your head dipped.

The van drives over another bump and you feel it now. Adrien's hand clasps around your shoulder blade and he muffles a strangled grunt again. Your body grows hotter by the second, heat pooling in your lower half.

Now you were both hard.

“Ah shit, prez, you're gonna kill me,” He lets out a dry chuckle, hips twitching from underneath you. You crave it just as bad as you're rocking your body against his in a steady pace. There were too many people in the van, it was way too dangerous to fix the little problem.

“Wait it out,” You whisper, patting his arm once more like trying to calm down a dog.

He doesn't respond, instead, he grumbles into your shoulder.

The van finally comes to a stop. The engine whirrs off and the kids are hustled out of the doors before you and Adrien climb out behind them. There's a satisfying crackle and pop of your joints as you stretch, letting the good ol' sunlight kiss your deprived skin.

Getting the bags out of the trunk wasn't much work since you packed only for 3 days so you rolled your suitcase into the lobby alongside Adrien's family. A small notification pops up on your screen, a check-in from your family which you happily reply to.

Since it was such a large gathering, the family had split into different rooms with you and Adrien sharing one.

The reception hands Adrien's mother the keycard to each room and she hands them out, passing one to Adrien.

You turn your attention to him to see the guy already racing his way towards you, grabbing your wrist and pulling you past his family. You can hear a brief exchange of words between him and his dad, picking up on the lousy excuse that you're 'tired.'

Through the lobby, past the pools, around the bar and to your shared room. Adrien smashes the key card against the reader and he slams the door open.

“Fucking finally,” he sighs, shutting the door behind himself and burying his hands into the back of your head. He's tangling his fingers in your hair, pulling it back before latching his mouth onto yours.

He's practically welding himself to you, devouring your lips in a heated kiss. He pulls back to look into your eyes before he goes in for a second serving. Adrien guides you towards the bedroom, lips never leaving yours as he gently pushes you back onto the bed.

“You know how hard it was to keep myself in line?” Adrien chuckled against your cheek, his hands beginning to descend your body, tracing all the way down to the waistband of your pants.

“That's your job baby, not mine.”

You have half the heart to complain when he's pulling off your pants, lifting your hips off the bed to help him slide your clothes off. He pulls both your legs up and over his shoulders before kneeling onto the ground beside the bed.

“Adrien,” you call out his name almost breathlessly, fingers finding purchase in his thick hair.

He responds with a small hum that causes his throat to vibrate ever so slightly. Adrien's hands are coiled around your thighs, palms laying flat on your lower stomach as he leans in to kiss your inner thigh.

His lips tickle your skin and you can't help but jerk your leg from the sensation—which you're prevented from doing so by his arms holding your legs hostage.

Warmth envelops your lower half as Adrien wraps his mouth around your cock. His breath is hot against your trembling skin and he forces the most obscene noises out his throat. Slick slurping sounds mixed with groans and sighs like he's been starved a hearty meal.

The hand on your stomach slides up, pushing your shirt further so he could feel the flat plane of your torso. Your squirms and thigh twitches are held down by his built arms—it honestly seems like he trains just for this.

“Could do this for days.” its hard to tell what he's saying since all his words and muffled and gurgled.

He pulls off for one second to fish out lubricant from the hotel drawers, applying a hefty amount to his fingers before returning back to you.

Sliding back down to his knees, he prods a finger to your winking hole, teasing and pushing past that ring of muscle and pulling it back out just to watch it shiver from the loss.

“Pervert,” You grumble under your breath.

“Who's the one who asked me out?”

You shoot Adrien an irked glare but the annoyance fades from your face the moment he wraps his mouth around your dick once more. Your eyes flutter as he finally pushes that finger in, sliding in a second to slowly scissor you loose.

He's more skilled than you with his tongue and you can't help but wonder what his past experiences were like; you dismiss that thought as quick as it came.

You look down at him from half-closed eyes, watching as he hollows his cheeks to take in more. You're practically whining and thrashing around in his grip. He's buried his face to the hilt, nose brushing against your pelvic bone. Its almost a ticklish sensation, feeling him breathe against your skin.

His fingers press and pressure your walls, pushing them apart to ready you for his cock. He's rhythmically pushing his fingers deeper, curling at the apex before pulling them back, repeating that process in a steady pace. You can feel them hit your prostate, sending jolts straight to your dick.

It's too much for you to handle; your hips are rising to meet the bob of his head, back arching off the satin white sheets.

“Wait— Adrien pull off I don't want you to—” Your words are all diced up, spoken in short gasps as you try to pry his head off from your aching cock.

You succeed—for a bit—before he's dipping all the way down again, holding your hips steady as he forces you down his throat. He's fucking loving it too, moaning with your dick in his mouth as his fingers speed up, pistioning two fingers into your hole.

Your hips raise even more and he encourages it.

His name comes spilling out of your mouth like a mantra as your muscles spasm from the intensity of your orgasm. Adrien keeps sucking like he's trying to wring every last drop from you. You feel his tongue swirl over your slit, lapping up your sweet fluids.

He slides himself off of you, letting you rest on the bed for a bit as he tilts his head back. His Adam's apple bobs while he swallows, and he lowers his head back down to smile at you.

“Don't tell me you're tired already, I haven't even taken off my pants yet,” he tsks at you, shaking his head disapprovingly while he joins you on the bed. You're still dazed from how hard you just came but a warm hand pulls you back down to earth.

Adrien's hand grazes over your cheek delicately as he hovers over you, caging you in with two arms on either side of your head.

“Just relax prez, I'll do all the work, 'kay?” He takes your little grunt as an 'okay,' rolling you onto your stomach and guiding your head to rest on the pillow. It smells so distinctly of freshly cleaned hotel sheets with a hint of citrus and bleach that you take a moment to close your eyes and enjoy the scent.

You can feel the mattress dip on either sides of your hips as he plants his knees there. He leans his head down to peek at your blissed-out face, pressing a light kiss to your cheek. You can feel his hands run down the curve of your spine, running over your lower back before he settles them on your waist.

“Are you relaxed?” He hums, leisurely rolling his hips against you. His tone is so sultry it causes your muscles to visibly relax under the siren call of his voice.

A hand moves down to where your leg meets the curve of your ass, parting the round flesh for him to comfortably slide in. He had stretched you out enough that it slipped in with ease, hugged by your warm velvet walls.

He sucks in air between his teeth while he steadily rocks his body back and forth, tuning into the wet squelching sound with each thrust.

“Feel it yet?” He chuckles, poking fun at the fact that you've been too dazed to respond to him. You nod against the pillow, your hair spilling over the silk case like spilt water. A small, shaky exhale leaves your nose as he begins to hasten his thrusts. It's almost bruising as he slams himself against your tailbone—you know you'll be whining about the soreness tomorrow morning.

Your voice gradually gets louder as he pounds you into the bed, fingers curled up in the sheets as he slams his pelvis against your ass. You can feel him throb from inside you, twitching and ready.

A particularly deep thrust has you crying out into the pillow but you can't squirm, not when Adrien is pinning you down with his body weight. He's pushing against your prostate over and over again and you can feel that familiar feeling of an orgasm creeping up on you.

“Fuck, Adrien,” You hiccup, muffled by the fluff of the pillow, eyes flickering like you're struggling to keep them open.

“Yeah baby?” You can hear the smirk in his tone as he keeps at the rough pace. He's hitting all the right spots and your dick appreciates. You feel a hand dip under your neck, cupping the curve of your throat as Adrien lifts your head up to face him.

He moves in to kiss you, soft and gentle as he wraps his arms around your whole body, holding you in a tight grip while continuously slamming himself deeper into you. Your loud cries and moans are enveloped by Adrien's mouth, swallowed up.

“You gonna cum? Feels so good you just can't hold it in?” He cooes, chuckling against your swollen lips as he feels you tremble underneath him. You swear stars enter your vision and your eyes roll back, muscles jerking and tensing as you let out a string of whimpers while your orgasm comes crashing onto you.

Adrien buries himself to the hilt before emptying out all he's worth, coating your insides with his dna. He groans as he pulls out halfway just to watch his semen flood out of your hole, still tightly clenched around his cock.

He sits up, raking his fingers through his tousled hair and sighs with satisfaction like drinking an ice cold soda in a hot summer day.

“You tired prez?” He asks, smiling down at you. His eyes narrow and concern settles in when you don't move or answer him.

“Baby?” He quickly leans back down to look at your face only to see your peaceful expression, eyes closed and mouth slightly agape. He lets out a relieved chuckle before pulling out, sliding off the bed to grab a towel.

He figured he'd get you some fruit to replenish your energy, pulling on some of his clothes after cleaning you up and getting you comfortable in the bed. He makes his way to the buffet, piling all favorite fruits and sweets onto his plate before he spots his family.

“Where's your boyfriend?” Adrien's mother asks, also holding a plate of food. Seemed like the two of you missed lunch.

“He's uh—” Adrien tenses knowing that he can't just openly admit to his mother that he fucked the daylights out of you.

“Taking a nap.”

[afterglowsainz]

positions | max verstappen

pairing: actress!reader x max verstappen

summary: your situationship from high school becomes a four time world champion and you send him a text congratulating him, opening the door to see him again

fc: zendaya

warnings: weird timeline, don’t pay attention to it

a/n: i’m finally back home so i can now post the celebration for max’s fourth championship (insane) (he deserves it so much) (i actually haven’t moved on from brazil)

—

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[caption 1: 📍monaco] [caption 2: ❤️]

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f1gossip max verstappen and actress y/n y/l/n were seen together in los angeles together on a date

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[dcxdpdabbles]

DCXDP fanfic idea: You ARE the Father.

Clark Kent gets a call from his old high school situationship. Really, he liked her well enough, but both had agreed they did not want to stay stuck in Smallville forever.

Clark wanted to go to the big city for journalism, and Maddie wanted to go into the sciences - she was unsure if she wanted to do organic chemistry or engineering. His parents supported his dream, Maddie's....not so much.

While she did come from a family of intelligent women, the Paynes believed they should stay on the family farm to support the family. They could not understand why Maddie wanted to be strong and independent woman if all that would bring her was dying alone.

According to them, no man wanted a disobent wife. She argued too much with men and often wouldn't back down from her stance.

Apparently, that made her "unlady" like.

Clark never saw it. Personally, he thought women with backbone, who wouldn't take anyone shit, was insanely attractive. That's why he had approached her at the local science fair where she was steaming by her impressive solar energy powered homemade phone.

Her mother had just finished reminding her that her first place in a small high school fair was nothing to be proud of. It was, after all, only Smallville, and really, there wasn't much competition anyway.

Clark told her that she was likely the smartest person in their entire state and he was in awe by her. Maddie kissed him behind the gym the science fair was being held.

Her family forbade her from dating, which made the kiss somehow more exciting.

They met up regularly to sneak kisses or lend a sympathetic ear. Around their last year of high school, they went a little further then kisses, and really the Kent Barn is not the most comfortable place but it was hidden well enough her family wouldn't know what she was up to and Ma wouldn't question him spending the night there.

All the years of sleeping near the cows to keep them company, since he worried they were lonely, as a child paid off. Despite the numerous times they put Kent barn to work, both knew it was nothing serious.

Maddie needed a break from her family. Clark was more than happy to be her stress relief. He did worry a aweful lot about his powers and the fact he was an alien, so he needed some stress relieving of his own around those years too.

Maddie applied secretly to a big college on the Wayne Scholarship states away, and Clark planned on going to Metropolis as soon as possible for the open intership at the Daily Planet.

They were friends with benefits, but the day graduation came around, they never spoke to each other again. Neither were bitter. They had both known what would be the ending long before it arrived. It would have never worked between them.

Clark wasn't sure what Maddie had wanted after all these years, but being presented a teenage girl- the splitting image of Maddie at that age- who was flouting five feet off the ground was not one of them.

"Jazz, meet Clark Kent, you biological father" Maddie Fenton, for she was married now to the man who had raised Jazz like his own. "Clark, this is Jasmine Fenton...you're daughter"

The man of Steel felt like he's was going to faint.

Or.......

Maddie met Jack in her first semester of college. They get alone really well, and she finds herself with a pregnancy scare before she knows what happened. Sometime between the protrype portal and Jack treating her like an equal, she had found her walls coming down long enough to have a little fun.

The worst part is she is unsure of who the father is, the loveable goof she can see herself spending her life with or the kind gentle famer boy she left behind. It's only two months apart, but it was close enough it could go either way.

She tells Jack the truth, who declares that he doesn't care and gets down on one knee right there and then. Maddie agrees to marry him over the choked tears, blooming happiness and love so strong she feels dizzy from it.

A few months later, she gives birth to her Jazz, and two years later, she has Danny. The Fentons finish school, set up Fenton Works, and raise their family. She never considers telling Clark or getting Jazz tested.

She's Jack Fenton's daughter. That's all there is to it.

Until Jazz one day starts showing signs that Jack is not her father. How does Maddie know? Simple, she recognized the man flying around calling himself Superman, and after hearing of his home planet, and all the little things Clark had been too clumsy to properly cover up back in the day, it clicks.

Her daughter is half Kryptonian and her powers were awakening. Did all Kryptonians unlock thier abilities at the teenage age? Was it a puberty thing for thier kind?

Maddie didn't know, but she couldn't afford to let her daighter go in blind. Metas had tough lives. Who knows what being part alien could do. So she picked up the phone and dialed the man who may have the answers.

Meanwhile, Danny and Jazz are desperately trying to hide the fact that Jazz may have gotten some ghost abilities due to exposure from Phantom's Ghostly Wail and have no idea it's being confused for Kryptonian blood. They were careless in training, and now, similar to that whole fiasco with Spetra and her hospital, Jazz was unable to control her temporary abilities.

Jack is just happy to be there and is unaware of any of his family members' delimas.

[evieelyzabethh]

"what dreams are made of"

⭒"sunsets or something, aren't you lovely" ⭒~ crush phase Arcane head cannons {fem reader}

cast ✧ Vi, Ekko, Jayce, Viktor, Mel

cw fem!reader, massive amounts of fluff, slightly pervy jayce, not beta read

an ☞i know this blog has been very Buffy related for a bit but i wanted to try something new. Not that Buffy is abandoned forever, i just wanted to write for more than one fandom

♞Vi ♞

♞Vi tells herself she doesn't have a crush on you, nay, she doesn't even believe in crushes. She thinks they are childish and beneath her and would never even admit she has one. That being said, she is definitely "sweet" on you as Vander would've called it. Vi when having a crush would be an absolute disaster, and this she would be more than willing to admit on her own. Her words never seem to come out right, and even when they do, they're never taken the way she means. She said it herself, when presented a set of options, she somehow always manages to chose the wrong one. For a relationship with Vi to work, you would have to be patient.

♞She certainly doesn't know when enough is enough. She will hang outside of your place of employment, be it the Last Drop or Babette's and insist you allow her to walk you home. Her fists are the one thing she's confident in because there is no nuance in fighting. She doesn't think it's possible for you to be upset with her for beating the shit out of the guy who looked at you funny and would be confused when you get mad at her for this. It's not even that she thinks you are incapable of taking care of yourself, that's just the only way she can think to protect you without it going wrong (and it sometimes still does)

♞She would be into old school chivalry. In a modern, less serious AU, I think she would be the type to stand outside your house with a boombox to apologize because she accidentally shrunk your favorite expensive sweater in the wash. Even within Arcane, I think if she was feeling soft and comfortable enough, she would be the type to carry you over puddles so your shoes didn't get wet or throw stones at your window to get your attention. Not even to go on a big adventure, just to sit on a rooftop and to listen to her hum.

♞I don't think she'd be into getting her crush flowers. She's one of those types who is already hyper exposed to death and wouldn't want to get you anything that has the potential to die. She's not above having Jinx make you some trinket and trying to lie that she made it to impress you, but you know that it's not her handiwork. She does try, though, her and her sticky fingers. Anything your gaze lingers too long on somehow finds its way into your room with a handwritten note from her (her handwriting is shit by the way)

♞As stated above, she is terrible with words yet is most romantic in the most unexpected moments. She is totally the type to hang around doorframes just to lean on them and subtly flex. Does this work? No, but it's funny to see her try and be suave. She succeeds in smaller ways. She is always watching. She notices the small changes in the ways you look at her, knowing when you're trying not to laugh or need her to rescue you from a terrible conversation. The slightly deeper baritone she puts on when she asks, "you alright, pretty?", the way she guides you by the small of your back on instinct. She one of those people who is naturally hot and doesn't realize she doesn't need to try (and don't let her find out she'll be insufferable).

♞I don't think she would confess on her own, it's far more likely you'll have to do it yourself. She would get in her head too much, and her communication skills are awful. She worries that she'll hurt you and won't know how to fix it. She knows relationships are harder work than friendships and she is not confident in her abilities to handle all the responsibility that comes with that. She's reckless with her livelihood, but never you and your wellbeing. Even after a confession, it would take a lot of reassurance that she wouldn't destroy everything.

✭Ekko✭

✭I don't think a crush phase with Ekko would last all that long, especially if it's developed after the Firelight society. I think he's far more self-assured than Vi is and wouldn't see the point in dancing around a relationship. If he wants you and you want him, why make things complicated if they don't need to be. For these reasons, I think he would crush from a far rather than it being a friends to lovers type relationship.

✭Ekko is sappy, let that be known. The first time he sees you time stops. If he's figured out his machine, he may just rewind time to stare at you for a second longer. He becomes a mini-stalker, not breaking into your house or anything, but slyly asking if anyone knows you, where you came from, why he's never seen you before, if you're single? Scar makes fun of him for this, of course, but encourages and indulges him with all he knows

✭The glimpses he sees of you make his whole week. Those short moments you pass by him in a crowd, or he sees you playing with children or passing around food, and he curses himself every time for freezing instead of taking action. And when he does take action, Scar is somewhere around the corner eavesdropping on the conversation and nearly choking on his own laughter when he hears Ekko's opening line, "Tree." Just "Tree". He had meant to say more than that, but when you looked at him, his mind went blank and all he could manage was "Tree" and died inside as you looked up at him confused. Like Vi, he too would stumble over his words at first, or even worse, fall victim to a terribly timed voice crack. He tries to cover it with a cough, but there's really no coming back from that.

✭Lucky for Ekko (who still lays awake at night because of your first interaction), you liked his tree a lot and you talked for hours under it. He walked you home like a gentleman after and shows up the next morning to give you an exclusive tour of the entire place and treats you to lunch

✭After that he pops up everywhere. You need company on an errand, he's some how at your door, checking his watch trying to look nonchalant when he is one of the most chalant people to walk the earth. You get caught in the rain, your eyes aren't deceiving you, that is indeed Ekko in the misty distance with an extra umbrella he 'found' lying around somewhere. You wanna go out one night, that's hilarious because Ekko had the exact same idea and if you're both going out might as well keep each other safe at night.

✭Don't be mistaken, he allows you space. He himself is a man who enjoys solitude, but what is the point of a commune if not community. He can do things alone, and he does, but if he's craving company and you are too, why bother with it. Being together isn't often a big ordeal anyway, sometimes its lounging around in his lab reading a book while he's tinkering away with some good music playing in the background. And sometimes, if the stars align and the moon allows, you slow dance to whatever's playing while talking about your day, even if you spent it together.

✭Ekko can certainly cook. He got quite good at making something out of nothing before his tree, but after, you try convincing him every day to open a restaurant should he ever need some cash on the side. He likes his kitchen a lot, actually, its his private sanctuary. A place where his love of the arts and science come together. In a modern AU, he would totally be on the track to have a degree in biochemistry and plan to open his own restaurant.

✭You two would hang out in his kitchen a lot, and out of the kindness of his heart, he would allow you to lick the spoon anytime he bakes something. It would also be where he confesses, a candlelit dinner for two already set up while both of you prepare what will be your first meal together as a couple.

❂Jayce❂

❂Probably the only one (and Mel) who can pull of being suave. Though he can pull it off, it is not authentic at all. He certainly woos you with it though!! He is a very classic romantic, buying you dozens of roses and wine-and-dining you with fancy champagne and furry rugs, but it's all a facade. He's a really big dork. Unlike the previous two, being suave is the defense he plays rather well. He's a bit scared that when you realize he's really pathetic deep down, you'll be disappointed. He's the man of progress and built like a brickhouse and he is slightly very insecure that's not his personality deep down

❂He enjoys walks in the gardens once you get a bit closer to him. Usually you two will talk in his lab or in your place of work and he'll drop a few cheesy pickup lines with a charming smirk and you'll both laugh it off. You think he's just a flirt for a while and he's really trying to work on you (just very unsuccessfully). It's not until he (very inorganically) tells you he's tired and wants a change of scenery and asks if you'll accompany him to the gardens. For the first time ever, you get one of his toothy smiles instead of those stupid forced smirks and you're really fond of it.

❂From then on, things start progressing much faster. He starts to tell you about Hextech and his theories about the runes and how it all works and babbles about scientific drivel until the sun goes down and, unless you're one of the sciency-types, it goes through one ear and out the other. He's ok with this, he likes having a sponge around to talk things through with, but if you can actually engage, he'd probably get a boner.

❂I feel like out of everyone, after you got close enough, he would do relationship things, creating a very vague space that can leave you questioning whether or not you're together or if you're reading into things too much. This is entirely because he wants to ask you out and he is like 90% percent sure you'll say yes but he's worried about the slim chance you won't and wants you to take the leap for him because he's too scared to.

❂He's a big physical touch guy. Like the type to leave his hands in your back pocket, not even because he's trying to grab your ass, but because he wants to touch you (and your ass). He likes hugs!! He gives such good hugs. While it's usually him leaning on you for touch, placing his head in your lap, grabbing your hands, or letting his hands linger on your hips to rub little patterns, he is beyond excited when it's you are initiating. What do you mean you want a hug from him!!! What do you mean you want to hold his hand!! He is so over the moon excited.

❂Slight side tangent, but if you went out in something low cut he would constantly be staring at your chest. Not even in a perv way (most of the time), but to make sure it doesn't fall down. He has gotten very sly at pulling it up for you in an unnoticeable way. There are a lot of similar acts with him, casual touches here and there. Unsticking your hair from your lip gloss, pulling stray leaves or flower petals out of your hair, making sure the clasp of your necklace stays in place at the back of your neck.

❂I know he smells nice. Dior Sauvage warrior right here!!! He would go slightly overboard with it on the day he confesses just because you said you liked it. He would plan everything to an absolute 't'. A walk in the gardens where you had what he considers your first date, a written speech that become illegible because his hands were sweaty while he was holding it, a specific spot to eat dinner so you got a perfect glimpse of the stars. He would even wait for the day that a specific constellation was in place to perfectly set the mood. He asks you to be his girlfriend like he's proposing, with a single rose and matching bracelets to commemorate the occasion.

☽Viktor☾

☾Viktor is another one I don't really see having a crush just because he is so busy all the time, but I don't think you'd need to work in the lab to catch his attention. I think simple things, like kindness, would really be all he needs. He appreciates someone who doesn't coddle him or look at him funny because he's from Zaun or because of his leg. Someone who is considerate to his disability while also treating him like a person, not like some porcelain doll

☾I think once he found you, he would find it slightly hard to know what to do next. He likes your banter when you come around and he knows he likes you, it's the pursuing part that gets him tripped up. He is someone who likes to have it planned out and he has no idea where he would take you on a date or what you enjoy or who you are really

☾Every hang out would eventually turn into a game of 21 questions. What's your favorite color? What do you like to do in your free time? What's your least favorite chore to do? It all seems very random you two jump from topic to topic when the conversation stills. He also just adores hearing you go on and on about things. They could be the simplest of things, like going into very heavily deep detail as to why your favorite colors purple, or something more substantive, like a full and deep analysis of your favorite book, or just gossip. This man is a D-1 gossiper!!

☾He likes having you around in general. Like Jayce, he enjoys having someone to bounce ideas off of or just being able to hear them out loud. He also feels more at ease around you. Unlike pretty much everyone else, he wouldn't freeze up around his crush. If anything, he's more prone to fault without them there. He gets too wrapped up in work, he forgets to take breaks, he forgets to eat. You're always there to remind him to do what he forgets to the point that you don't even have to say it anymore. He's gotten so good about it, sometimes he makes lunch for the both of you.

☾He absolute adores your banter. He's not as serious as people think he is. He can crack a joke or two. He's sarcastic and witty and a leader of the sassy man apocalypse. He would absolutely die without hearing your laugh at his stupid jokes.

☾On a different note, he would start using pet names so smoothly. It would start slowly with a simple nickname and then eventually progress into one of those old, classic nicknames. Dear or darling would definitely be his go-to's and he would only get bolder as you start to blush more. He's cocky too, he is very aware of the effect he has, and he likes pushing your buttons. It's like a game, the more he picks and prods, the greater his reward is.

☾I also have a feeling he'd be a slight neat freak. Like his lab is a different story, his work is chaotic, but he cannot come home to chaos. I think if you let him into your space, he wouldn't definitely tidy it up subtly. Wiping dust off books and slightly moving objects on your desk so they look more orderly. I feel like this carries over to appearance too. He has a specific way of tying his shoes and he's very meticulous about what ties he wears and knows how to do like every type of knot.

☾He also definitely smells good. You can't convince me he doesn't have like a 12-step shower routine and takes advantage of all of Piltover's fancy soups and colognes. In contrast to Jayce, however, his smelling good is him smelling super clean. Like it's not a scent out of a bottle or anything, nor does he smell exactly like soap, he smells distinctly like himself and very clean.

☾I think he would confess very simply and nonchalantly. It would be a late night in the lab by candlelight or some sort of low lighting has him feeling romantic and bold. He peppers it into conversation smoothly, something like "It's too late tonight, but tomorrow we should go on our first date." And you are taken aback, which he knew you would be. You do ask if he was officially asking you to be his girlfriend and he tells you "he doesn't really like labels", but the wide smile and kiss he gave you said otherwise.

☼Mel☼

☼Probably one of the smoothest talkers out of everyone here. She would have absolutely no problems charming anyone into a relationship. Similar to Jayce, it would be a bit superficial at first. Feeling like she would need a relationship to feel complete, not in a self-esteem way, but rather in an aesthetic way. She is always trying to look very put together and like she has everything under control, and the "complete" life looked like one with a significant other. She eventually realizes a complete life doesn't need a partner, but her complete life wouldn't be complete without you.

☼Mel would feel like she's being obvious towards her crush when she in reality is not. She has this very professional tone about her, and she eventually has to learn that even the sweetest things sound manufactured in that manner. She would talk very softly with her crush, a lot of whispers during council meetings and sweet mutterings while it's just the two of you. This reminds me, if you're shorter than her, she has the very attractive habit of leaning down to speak to you.

☼Big on eye contact. She could talk you unto circles, your pupils dilated and just nodded at anything she says. She finds this very amusing. She is aware of the effect her voice has on people, and she would be lying if she said she didn't put into hyperdrive when it came to you. It's not even a different voice she put on, it's just the way she speaks and looks you in your eyes that's so captivating. She also gives it right back when it comes to listening to you. Though she has the habit of wanting to fix your problems for you, she's gotten good at asking if you even want her advice or just want her to listen.

☼She would love matching with her crush. Once again, someone who visuals are very important to, she likes the idea that you look together, even if you aren't. This also applies to her finding any way for you to be together at public events. Inviting you as her date to a gala or not wanting to do a grocery run alone, she would ask you to come with. She loves looking like you two are dating.

☼Gossip sessions would go insane. It's definitely a scheduled weekend event with face masks and nails, she'll braid your hair and in return you'll pick out new charms and styles for her to put hers in. Part of it is because she likes being well informed about what everyone is up to and part of it is bonding over despising the same people in the council (this is directed at Salo). Her favorite part of it is being around you; it's a very intimate activity that she can't get enough of.

☼I feel it in my bones that she's the type to open doors for you. Car doors, carriage doors, your hand will not grace a single doorknob or handle around her. She would also be on top of the weather, festivals and fun events happening, and things concerning to your interests. You will never regret not wearing your rainboots because she would've told you the forecast the morning. Your favorite music artists are coming soon, good thing she told you like a month ago so you could get tickets before everyone else.

☼She is another chef, but of the comfort food variety. Her food just tastes like a warm hug, and she is the first you go to when feeling under the weather. She takes great pride in this. She doesn't cook often and she doesn't even enjoy the activity that much, preferring to eat out or have a private chef, but she likes that she has something that she can do for you.

☼I don't think it would take her very long to ask you out, especially if she felt like the feelings were reciprocated. To her, there's no point in prolonging the inevitable and she really likes the way your names sound together. I think she is also sappy; she is just incredibly well at hiding it. All of the acts of service mentioned above are usually done casually. She wins the nonchalant Olympics even when she's not trying to. She thinks it's incredibly clear, but the way she comes across doesn't convey that. Thus, her sappy moments are few and far between and she gets very bashful when they're mentioned.

☼Definitely has a scrapbook of your times together as well as a diary where she talks about you for pages on end. The discovery of this would lead to the confession. It would be uncomfortable for her just because it would be so impromptu and that is not how she likes to do things. She would be very vulnerable and honest about her feelings and would call this your "unofficial" confession. She would later go all out as she had always intended during her confession

[weirdlet]

@biggest-gaudiest-patronuses

I’d need to dig deep into the closet and the Mass of Family History to find the print-out of the story as my mother remembered it and wrote it down, and that is not happening tonight- but long long story short, great-great grandma sent her husband off to do the shopping while she tended to other things that had her busy around the farm. Great great grandpa took the list, went into town, and proceeded to apply his impeccable logic. He was used to buying in bulk, you know, ten pounds of flour, twenty pounds of potatoes, etc etc. The saffron on the list didn’t have a listed amount, so he defaulted to what seemed like a reasonable amount for when the wife wanted just a little bit of something extra.

He asked for a pound of saffron.

The shopkeeper stared at him, and asked him again, and he said the same thing. Much whispering ensued between the shopkeeper and his assistants. They start measuring out their supply of saffron, while great great grandpa stands firm, waiting for them to complete his order. Surely it can’t be that difficult! He made big orders all the time, and usually the grocer could fulfill them in good time! And without having to send out to the other shops for *their* whole supply too!

The saffron was assembled. The requested amount was measured out. And with much bitching and complaining about prices these days (sometime in the late 1800s) great great grandpa (might be light a few ‘greats’ in there) paid his bill, continued with his shopping, and took it all home.

Great great grandma proceeded to have an absolute fit in his general direction, because what IDIOT would- HOW could you possibly think- WHY?? But the money was spent, and for reasons I would need to dig into the archives for they could somehow soak that expense, and for YEARS afterward everyone in the family/neighborhood/extended family would get a little bag of saffron at every birth, wedding, graduation, bar mitzvah, business opening, everything.

woke up and someone spilled vanilla extract all over my dash, so as punishment you strange little beasties are getting all the VANILLA FACTS i know:

vanilla is the 2nd most expensive spice in the world (2nd to saffron)

which is why more than 99% of what we call "vanilla extract" is actually vanillin (vanilla's dominant flavor compound) and is not extracted from real vanilla.

luckily, even professionals struggle to tell the difference when it comes to things like baked goods. but there is a distinct difference in non-heat treated products like vanilla ice cream. real vanilla has a more complex, individualized flavor profile.

why is vanilla so expensive? because it is a ridiculously delicate & demanding crop. complete primadonna.

vanilla beans come from vanilla orchids. these crazy flowers bloom for A SINGLE DAY and have to be HAND-POLLINATED in a process that is exhausting, delicate, and requires specialist knowledge passed down over generations.

then, if you're lucky, you get vanilla beans.

which then require months of further specialized treatment.

the entire process takes about a year and can go wrong at any stage

vanilla has been cultivated for over 800 years (possibly much longer). the first known cultivators are the Totonac, an indigenous people of Mexico.

the Aztecs used it as a sweetener to balance out the bitter taste of cocoa. it was popular in a drink called xocolatl--the precursor to modern hot chocolate!

it is only pollinated by a very specific orchid bee!!!

which is why no fruit could be grown outside of Mexico until the 1800s

Edmond Albius, born into slavery, invented the pollination method we still use today--launching a global industry when he was just 12 years old.

today, the majority of the world's vanilla is grown in Madagascar

if you want real vanilla, read the labels carefully--it's harder to find than you think!

in conclusion, those tiny black specks you see in fancy vanilla ice cream? those are vanilla bean seeds! itty bitty orchid seeds!!! they are delicious and also a PRISSY BITCH!

(src)

[trappolia]

caitvi with a girlfriend who loves shopping a little too much.

even disregarding vi's upbringing, her personality and priorities don't exactly call for her to fawn over the latest fashion trends. dolls and trinkets and other collectible items are something she can't grasp either. she has her emotional support bunny, what else could she want?

caitlyn may be of a more prestigious upbringing than either of you, but her status as a piltovian scion has also granted her the privilege of realising that not all fineries are exactly comfortable, or even necessary. she has more clothes in her closet that she knows what to do with, some of the styles are which are just a bit too… much for her. she has her own style and preferences, and she very much prefers to stick to them.

you, on the other hand, are completely different from your two lovers. raised in that space between the "best" of the undercity and the "worst" of topside, you were that little girl all bright-eyed and dreaming of wearing princess gowns, satiated only by your parent's promises of "we'll get you those pretty dresses when we have some extra money, my love."

you never did, really— get that extra money, you mean. it was never your family's fault, of course. even when you lived so close to the bridge, you were still considered to be citizens of the undercity, and life was hard. you learned to put your craving for designer clothes on the backburner, learned your way around a needle and a thread to fashion your own image of your wardrobe— and, later when you meet vi, to patch up the tears on her clothes.

vi is a darling girlfriend, who rebuffs your attempts to dress her up with gifts of fabric bought with the coin from her own pockets. she wants to give you more, she truly does, but prices for proper rolls of fabric are steep and hard to come by down in the undercity. it's not until caitlyn comes along, with the extra money to fund an entire wardrobe for you and then some, that your dreams as a child are finally come true, with not just one, but two generous girlfriends to boot.

caitlyn may not know the ins and outs of the fashion district of piltover, but her family has a private tailor that caitlyn commissions much more often when you and vi finally move into the kiramman estate. the two women are often content enough to sit back and watch as you fawn over the designs offered to you, occasionally giving input to the designer; cait sometimes recommends certain fabrics that she thinks will move about your frame much more smoothly, and vi learns to give in her five cents whenever she has something she'd like to see you in.

they even indulge you when you huff and puff about "window shopping being a part of the experience!" the fashion district becomes a common part of your dates together, and the three of you make quite a sight: the leader of house kiramman looking fond as she points out her mother's favourite shop to you, while vi balances an absurd amount of shopping bags in one hand, the other wrapped firmly around your waist.

it's never actually acknowledged, but watching you show off your pretty little outfits becomes the staple of caitlyn and vi's day. whether you've returned from an impromptu shopping trip and want to show them your latest purchases or they've just woken up and you want them to give their five cents on your outfit choices for the day, it brings them so much joy to watch you twirl around like a little princess— just like your dream come true.

[lastoneout]

This is actually part of why I think dignity of risk and informed consent absolutely needs to include what I like to call the right to give up.

I've spent the better part of my entire 20s trying as hard as I can to "get better" and you know what happened? I expanded my mobility a bit, I have slightly more energy, I feel calmer and happier because I enjoy what little exercise I can actually do. But I didn't "get better" in the way I needed to. I cannot go to school, I can't work, I have to choose between chores and errands most days, if I push myself too hard I crash sometimes for days at a time, and I'm never, NEVER lower than a 4 on the pain scale.

And like, I've met so many doctors who, when I explained that I needed more help with my condition because despite spending literally ALL OF MY FREE TIME on taking care of myself and working on "getting better" I legit cannot do anything fun or social or get a job or go to school due to my pain, fully acted like I have some sort of moral obligation to continue to focus all of my time and energy on "getting better" and so long as I'm doing that it doesn't actually matter that my life is nearly completely devoid of things that make it worth living. I would bring up mobility aids and they would balk, insisting it would make me "worse"(whatever the fuck that means at this point), and continue to push me to go to physical therapy 3 times a week and keep trying different meds and meditation and acupuncture and acupressure and mindfulness and just pushing myself harder and and a ton of other things that for various reasons don't work or would have too many downsides to be worth it to lower my pain. It didn't matter that I swore up and down I would keep going to PT and only use the wheelchair when I really needed it, the slight possibility of maybe having my mobility restricted just a bit more is enough for them to tell me I should not have a life outside of managing my illnesses.

What's even worse is that what's causing my pain, hEDS and fibromyalgia, are both life-long degenerative conditions that have no cure. I will never "get better". No amount of pain meds and PT is ever going to give me back the mobility I had before things got bad. But EVEN THEN, apparently managing my condition is all that matters, not getting to spend what time I have doing things that make me happy.

I did finally get approved for a wheelchair thanks to my new primary who used to work at an hEDS clinic and was fully sympathetic to me being allowed to live my fucking life, and after that I was talking to my mom who's been in a wheelchair since she was 13 and she said "You know, my range of motion and ability to walk did get a little worse after I got my chair, but what I could do in the chair was so much more than I could ever do without it, and that I think if you want to sacrifice a bit of mobility for being able to do things that make you happy, you should be trusted to make that choice." and she's fucking right!! I don't care if it's a little harder for me to walk around inside my house if I can finally go to school and hang out with my family and run errands and go on walks with my fiance!! Trying to "get better" is fucking exhausting and I truly, 100% believe that people who are disabled should be allowed to give up if we want, especially if it will make it easier for us to do things that are fun and fulfilling.

So yeah, tbh if "getting better" is too hard, if you're sacrificing all the things that make you happy for minuscule returns, if you're just fucking tired and want things to be a little easier, then you should have that option. I never should have had to wait this long for a wheelchair, doctor's should have fucking listened when I broke down sobbing in their offices about how I can't even go clothes shopping or get coffee with my mom and physical therapy isn't helping and I don't care about being healthy if it means I have to give up my entire life for the rest of my life for the slim chance of maybe getting like halfway there. I am a grown ass adult and I should be allowed to decide on my own when enough is fucking enough. (Also, it's kinda hard to want to get better when you like. Don't get to see your family or do fun things. Kinda inhumane to withhold basic human needs like community and entertainment until someone "tries to get better" like fuck off with that.)

We deserve informed consent, dignity of risk, and the right to fucking give up when we decide the cost of "getting better" is too high. Health =/= morality, there is no nobility in suffering, if you're tired of toiling you're not lazy or ungrateful, you're just tired. And you should be allowed to rest, even if it means getting worse or needing more help.

You know what? It’s fucking hard trying to get better. It’s exhausting managing doctors appointments, doing daily PT exercises, eating better, trying to exercise, trying to meditate, and doing ADL’s. I have had a bad crash per week trying to juggle and do all of the above.

It’s easier and less acutely painful to just coast and not actively work on ‘getting better’. Is the work worth it? I don’t know yet.

But to people who’ve tried and given up, to those who don’t even bother - you still deserve care and compassion.

[a-sociopath-do-your-research]

Grian had done all the right things, pulled all the right strings.

One goal in mind.

Bring them back.

The watchers, the Gods already disliked him.

This would mean nothing, it's his server, his rules!

It took a bit of fiddling.

Cleo had the power, and Cleo did not like him, but Gem did! And she let him talk to Mumbo and Skizz.

They looked rotten. It hurt.

But it's ok. They were back. It was them.

« I loved you guys so much I concocted this whole scheme just to have you back! »

He said that with the biggest smile he could manage.

They were back. They were his again.

He couldn't let them go.

He had them for five minutes.

Five minutes he could look at their faces again.

Five minutes they smiled at him again.

Five minutes they were his, for no one to take away.

It hurt when the time was up. When they died- when he killed them (again. Because it had been all his fault. It had always been his fault. They'd said so themselves. The tower he built for them had only brought them despair.)

It hurt when they had to go back to their master.

Minions, they'd become.

It was the best he could do for them.

« Cleo said I could be your zombie again! »

When Mumbo said that, Grian was ecstatic.

He didn't believe it- not really. He knew better than to think Cleo would let him have Mumbo back.

But Mumbo wouldn't lie to him, would he?

He got to hold his face again.

Mangled. Dirty.

But his mustache was still there. His blue eyes were there, glassy and pale but Mumbo's.

They were the last thing he saw, as he sank into the river, a wound caused by Mumbo's axe in his back.

He heard a faint « I lied, I'm sorry! »

But it didn't matter.

« That traitor…! »

Grian had done all the right things, pulled all the right strings.

With only one goal in mind.

And they'd betrayed him. Turned their backs on him.

But they'd forgotten something.

He was the one who held the strings.

He was the one who brought them back, the one who could send them away again.

Messages flooded the chat.

Many, many messages- achievements, deaths…

One repeated over and over

[Mumbo was slain by Grian]

[Mumbo was slain by Grian]

[Mumbo was slain by Grian]

Sometimes with little differences.

[Mumbo was shot by Grian]

He didn't know what was happening to his mind.

« I WILL SLAUGHTER EVERY ONE OF YOU! »

The ringmaster had snapped.

The ringmaster was gone.

« End of the session for you. »

Purple hues floated around his arrow as it sank into the other's chest.

The feathers, his feathers were the last thing Mumbo saw.

Once a bright red, now taken over by a deep purple.

[archangeldyke-all]

sorry I JUST sent you an ask but I just thought of Silco and Reader being like two catty old ladies- absolute besties that will catch up over a glass of wine and gossip like in that one clip where Wendy Williams says “Guess who’s jealous of Adele? BEYONCÉ.” And Silco just GASPS

GOD AS:DFKSD

men and minors dni

okay 'cause here's the thing, as much as sevika LOVES gossiping and gossip in general, she's terrible at it.she can keep a secret to her grave, and she's incredibly intuitive and good at reading people, but she refuses to prod into people's business.

so it's no wonder that the two people she's closest to in the world are huge gossips.

there are a lot of upsides to it. you, silco, and sevika can almost always be found bitching after a hard week together, trading little bits of gossip about the people around town and cackling together as you joke and unwind.

sevika loves that you and silco are close outside of her. it makes her feel like she's got her own little family.

and it's surprisingly helpful in her line of work to always be up to date on who's fucking, and who's fighting.

but, then again... being close with two expert gossipers means sevika's never able to keep a secret from one of you for long.

she'll be having a rough period, think she's hiding it well, then silco will approach her by the end of the day with a grimace and a cigar. "your wife told me about your condition this week. i apologize for making you work so hard today, i wasn't aware."

if she and silco get in an argument that lasts longer than two days, you're always sure to stick your nose in their business and sort it out for them.

"sevika, you've got dinner with silco tonight. he's taking you to an apology steak night. he's got his statement all written out, i'm sure you'll accecpt." you tell her on her way out of the door in the morning.

sevika sputters. "what makes you so sure?!"

"i helped him write it! i know you-- i know how to patch things up with 'ya." you tease, pinching her cheek.

sevika just scowls and takes off for work, your giggle replaying like music in her head for the rest of the day.

and sometimes, really, all sevika wants to do is spend time with you, but you're too busy talking shit with silco.

"so... guess who's jealous of ran?" silco asks slowly as he lights up a cigarello.

sevika watches with a mixture of exhaustion and adoration as you lean forward in your chair, gasping an excited, "who!?"

"theiram!"

you burst into applause and laughter, and sevika groans and rolls her eyes, joining you on the couch for a night of gossip she's certain to fall asleep half way through.

taglist!

@fyeahnix @lavendersgirl @half-of-a-gay @thesevi0lentdelights @sexysapphicshopowner

@kissyslut @chuucanchuucan @badbye666 @femme-historian @lia-winther

@sevikaspillowprincess @emiliabby @sevikasbeloved @hellorai @my-taintedheart

@glass-apothecary @macaroni676 @artinvain @k3n-dyll @sevsdollette

@ellieslob @xayn-xd @keikuahh @maneskinwh0re @raphaellearp

@iamastar @sevikitty @mascdom @nhaaauyen @annesunshiner

@mirconreadzztuff22 @veoomvroom @lushh-s3vik4s @katyawooga @lesbodietcoke

@strawberrykidneystone @sevikasfan @fict1onallyobsessed @greenhazes

[nsharks]

bleeding blue | part twenty-two preview

Five days. They're still here. You realize what's taking them so long; they're collecting food, drying meat into jerky and simmering wild strawberries into jams that Nereida cans. They have quite a lot of supplies with them. One of Kyle's backpack's is filled with ammo and another is stuffed with medicine. 

Kyle is easy to talk to. Nereida, too. Price—however—seems like he doesn't know what to think of you. Or maybe you're too insignificant to have crossed his mind much. 

That's fair. You don't need to all be friends.

Blue seems to like Ari. He's thirteen, two years older than her, which is evident in the way her head reaches his shoulders. She doesn't even say hi to you in the morning. Instead she shows him all her magazines and even the rabbits. He decides to name one Rocky, a friend for Grim. You can't be bothered; she needs another friend. Ghost isn't keen about them alone together, though. You heard him mutter to Kyle—keep an eye on him, Gaz.

The threat of summer starts to invite more and more sweat down your neck. Your hair has gotten so long. After tossing and turning on Ghost's bedroom floor, it became a nest of tangles. When Nereida, Ari, and Blue go for a dip in the pond, you go with them and soak it, then let the water settle so you can stare at your reflection. Blade sharpened, you saw a few inches off. Better. More practical. 

"I thought you were going to cut more," Blue comments.

"I don't want it that short, or else it's harder to braid."

As the two kids keep swimming, Nereida finds bunches of rosemary and seems more excited than you'd be about it. 

"It helps fight off odors," she explains when you ask. "Like when I have my period, so the Greys can't smell it as much."

When she puts it that way, you grab some, too. Then you start wondering about her and John. Do they have sex? They must. You've seen the way they are. Kisses to their shoulder and neck, arms around each other's waist. You've stared a few times only to catch yourself and quickly look away. How do they avoid pregnancy? You highly doubt either of them want to bring a new child into the world. You wouldn't.

Ari and Blue lay in the sun together. You scoot away to give them space, but overhear some of their conversation, anyway.

"Your dad is so cool."

Blue plays with a piece of her hair. "Oh? You think so?"

"Have you seen him? He's a beast. My uncle told me he got his name because no one could see him coming before he killed them."

"He can be a pain in my ass sometimes," Blue mutters. Her nose scrunches. "But he's taught me a lot of things. I'm pretty good with knives."

"Damn, I gotta see that."

She is beaming. "I'll show you when we get back."

Then, she leans over and whispers something in his ear. Whatever it is, he smiles and shakes his head in response.

She pulls away, sighing. "I wish you guys could just stay here."

Or maybe your dad will make us go with them, you think to yourself. In a way, it's comforting, that he is secretive with her, too. He still hasn't brought up the topic again. Either he hasn't decided, or he doesn't actually plan on keeping you updated. You try your best not to ruminate, but it's hard not to, especially when you have a hard time falling asleep on floorboards and are left with your thoughts in the dark. 

Which is why you're not feeling thrilled by the time you go into his room. He's already lying in bed, one hand bent behind his head while the other props open a book. He looks comfortable. Almost normal, even.

"How do you sleep with the mask on?" you remark, kicking off your shoes. 

His eyes lift from the page briefly. "Like a baby."

"How come Kyle has seen you without it and not me?"

His jaw flexes. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Twix."

"And mental sanity doesn't suit you."

A light huff. Then, "Nice haircut."

When the room is dark, Ghost must get tired of hearing you toss and turn. He flicks on the small lamp, and you squint from the sudden light, stuffing the pillow over your head. There's shuffling before a hand rips the pillow from your face and tosses it onto the bed.

"Just get in the fucking bed. I won't bite." The sight of him standing above you, sweatpants low on his hips, consumes your vision. His voice is low but demanding.

"What, together?"

"I want good sleep. M'not going to get it on the floor, or listening to you up all night, so get in." His eyes peer down at you, half-lidded, before he lowly adds, "I'll be a gentleman, if you're worried."

You lift up and ignore the offer of his hand. "I'm not worried."

To protest would be embarrassingly juvenile when both him and you know you want to sleep there. Yet—your heart thickens. He watches as you crawl into the bed where the ceiling slants, tucking yourself under the quilt and curling against the very edge so that your knees float over it. The springs groan to your left and then heady warmth spills over you. Ghost keeps to his side, flat on his back, with his hands lying on his chest. His elbow pokes into your back no matter how carefully you try to inch away, and his thigh just barely brushes against your backside. 

The bastard doesn't say a word, nor does he make an effort to give you more space so you screw your eyes shut and fall asleep to the sound of his breathing. 

[missroserose]

The link is back to being paywalled, so here’s the article text:

Sharon Maxwell spent much of her life trying to make herself small. Her family put her on her first diet when she was 10. Early on Saturday mornings, she and her mother would drive through the empty suburban streets of Hammond, Ind., to attend Weight Watchers meetings. Maxwell did her best at that age to track her meals and log her points, but the scale wasn’t going down fast enough. So she decided to barely eat anything on Fridays and take laxatives that she found in the medicine cabinet.

Food had long been a fraught subject in the Maxwell household. Her parents were also bigger-bodied and dieted frequently. They belonged to a fundamentalist Baptist megachurch where gluttony was seen as a sin. To eat at home was to navigate a labyrinth of rules and restrictions. Maxwell watched one time as her mother lost 74 pounds in six months by consuming little more than carrot juice (her skin temporarily turned orange). Sometimes her father, seized with a new diet idea, abruptly ransacked shelves in the kitchen, sweeping newly forbidden foods into the trash. Maxwell was constantly worried about eating too much. She started to eat alone and in secret. She took to chewing morsels and spitting them out. She hid food behind books, in her pockets, under mattresses and between clothes folded neatly in drawers.

Through Maxwell’s teenage years and early 20s, eating became even more stressful. Her thoughts constantly orbited around food: what she was eating or not eating, the calories she was burning or not burning, the size of her body and, especially, what people thought of it. Her appearance was often a topic of public interest. When she went grocery shopping for her family, other customers commented on the items in her cart. “Honey, are you sure you want to eat that?” one person said. Other shoppers offered unsolicited advice about diets. Strangers congratulated her when her cart was filled with vegetables.

As she grew older, people at the gym clapped and cheered for her while she worked out. “People would say: ‘Go! You can lose the weight!’” she says. While eating in public, other diners offered feedback — and still do to this day — on her choices, a few even asking if she wanted to join their gym. Some would call her names: Pig, Fatty. Sometimes people told her she was brave for wearing shorts, while others said she should cover up. She was always aware, whether she wanted to be or not, of how others viewed her body.

Maxwell tried just about every diet she could find: juice cleanses, Atkins, SlimFast, South Beach, Mediterranean, Whole30 and Ezekiel, a regimen based on biblical references. She tried being vegetarian and vegan and paleo. She tried consuming less than 500 calories a day and taking HCG, a fertility hormone rumored to suppress appetite but flagged by the F.D.A. as risky and unproven for weight loss. During periods of religious fasting at her church, she would take the practice to an extreme, consuming nothing but water for days (and on one occasion, two weeks). “I passed out a few times, but I did it,” she says. Sometimes she exercised more than three hours a day in high-intensity interval-training sessions and kickboxing classes. Eventually, she started vomiting up her food.

Every day, Maxwell stepped on the scale and internalized the number as a reflection of her self-worth. Often, the number on the scale went down. But if she let up on her rigid food rules even briefly, the number shot back up like a coiled spring. “I just cycled through that,” she says, “but it became harder and harder each time to get the weight off.”

During the many years of dieting and deprivation, Maxwell experienced mysterious health problems. For a decade, starting when she was 16, she almost never had her period. She was always cold. She often had dizzy spells and occasionally passed out in class. When she was in college, she fainted three times in one day and was taken to the emergency room. For an appointment with an endocrinologist one year, Maxwell took a purse full of small plastic bags. Each one contained a day’s worth of hair, clumps that accumulated in her brush or had fallen in the shower drain. Her head was pocked with bald spots. The doctor was pleased with her weight loss and, to her memory, didn’t seem too concerned about her other symptoms. “Anything that made the scale go down,” Maxwell says, “I was given a pat on the back.”

Four years ago, at the age of 25, Maxwell walked into her primary-care doctor’s office near Scottsdale, Ariz., where she lived and worked as a middle school teacher. She was there for an annual physical, and she was prepared to be told to lose weight, as she had almost always been instructed. But this time, the doctor, an osteopath, started asking unusual questions. Maxwell’s blood work showed abnormally low iron and electrolyte levels. The doctor asked Maxwell what she was eating and what she was doing in relationship to food. Was she starving herself? Was she vomiting on purpose? Maxwell was surprised by this line of questioning. “These are things I had hidden my whole life from my family, my friends, doctors,” she says.

The osteopath told her she thought Maxwell had an eating disorder and suggested arranging treatment right away. Maxwell would later be diagnosed with atypical anorexia nervosa, an increasingly common yet little known eating disorder that shares all the same symptoms as anorexia nervosa, except for extreme thinness. Just as many people, and possibly many more, suffer from atypical anorexia.

At the physical, Maxwell stared at her doctor in disbelief. She always thought that eating disorders were for skinny people. “I laughed,” she says. “I don’t use language like this any longer, but I told her she was crazy. I told her, ‘No, I have a self-control problem.’”

For centuries, the eating disorder that would become known as anorexia nervosa mystified the medical community, which struggled to understand, or even define, an illness that caused people to deliberately deprive themselves of food. As cases rose over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, anorexia was considered a purely psychological disorder akin to hysteria. Sir William Withey Gull, an English physician who coined the term “anorexia nervosa” in the late 1800s, called it a perversion of the ego. In 1919, after an autopsy revealed an atrophied pituitary gland, anorexia was thought to be an endocrinological disease. That theory was later debunked, and in the mid-20th century, psychoanalytic explanations arose, pointing to sexual and developmental dysfunction and, later, unhealthy family dynamics. More recently, the medical field has come to believe that anorexia can be the product of a constellation of psychological, social, genetic, neurological and biological factors.

Since anorexia nervosa became the first eating-related disorder listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1952, its criteria have shifted as well. Initially, anorexia had no weight criteria and was classified as a psychophysiological disorder. In a 1972 paper, a team led by the prominent psychiatrist John Feighner suggested using a weight loss of at least 25 percent as a standard for research purposes, and in 1980, the D.S.M. introduced that figure in its definition (along with a criterion that patients weigh well below “normal” for their age and height, although normal was not defined). Doctors who relied on that number soon found that patients who had lost at least 25 percent of their body weight were already severely sick, so in 1987, the diagnosis was revised to include those who weighed less than 85 percent of their “normal” body weight (what qualified as normal was left to physicians to decide). In the 2013 D.S.M., the criteria shifted again, characterizing those who suffer from anorexia as having a “significantly low weight,” a description that would also appear in the 2022 edition.

In that 2013 edition, a new diagnosis appeared — atypical anorexia nervosa — after health care providers noticed more patients showing up for treatment with all the symptoms of anorexia nervosa except one: a significantly low weight. Those with atypical anorexia, doctors observed, suffer the same mental and physical symptoms as people with anorexia nervosa, even life-threatening heart issues and electrolyte imbalances. They restrict calories intensively; obsess about food, eating and body image; and view their weight as inextricably linked to their value. They often skip meals, eat in secret, adhere to intricate rules about what foods they allow themselves to consume and create unusual habits like chewing and spitting out food. Others exercise to the point of exhaustion, abuse laxatives or purge their meals. But unlike those diagnosed with anorexia, people with atypical anorexia can lose significant amounts of weight but still have a medium or large body size. Others, because of their body’s metabolism, hardly lose any weight at all. To the outside world, they appear “overweight.”

Starting in the mid-2000s, the number of people seeking treatment for the disorder rose sharply. Whether more people are developing atypical anorexia or seeking treatment — or more doctors are recognizing it — is unknown, but this group now comprises up to half of all patients hospitalized in eating-disorder programs. Studies suggest that the same number of people, even as many as three times as many, will develop atypical anorexia as traditional anorexia in their lifetimes. One high estimate suggests that as much as 4.9 percent of the female population will have the disorder. For boys, the number is lower — one estimate was 1.2 percent. For men, it is likely even lower, though little research exists. For nonbinary people, the number jumps to as high as 7.5 percent.

Across the board, the pandemic exacerbated eating disorders, including typical and atypical anorexia, through increased isolation, heightened anxiety and disrupted routines. Hospitals and outpatient clinics in the United States and abroad reported the number of consultations and admissions doubling and tripling during Covid lockdowns, and many providers are still overbooked. “Almost all of my colleagues, we’re at capacity,” says Shira Rosenbluth, an eating-disorder therapist who specializes in size- and gender-diverse clients. They are seeing clients who practice more extreme food restriction and experience more intense distress around body image and eating habits. “The demand has increased, the level of severity has increased,” Rosenbluth says. “We’ve never seen waiting lists like this for treatment centers.”

Despite its prevalence, atypical anorexia is still considered widely underdiagnosed and under-researched, and many primary-care doctors have never heard of it. “Some people being at a standard body weight or overweight can be perplexing to the untrained eye,” says Karlee McGlone, senior manager of admissions and outreach for U.C. San Diego Health Eating Disorders Center. “It is still a surprise for nonspecialized clinicians.”

Patients, too, are in the dark about atypical anorexia. “Most people in higher-weight bodies are shocked to hear that they have anorexia,” says Rachel Millner, a psychologist based in Pennsylvania who specializes in eating disorders among people with larger bodies. “Nobody ever told them that you can be in a higher-weight body and have anorexia, and they’re convinced that their problem is their weight.”

In 2020, Erin Harrop, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Denver, completed a survey of 39 people with atypical anorexia, most of whom were obese, and found that participants endured the disorder for an average of 11.6 years before seeking help. They lost an average of 64 pounds, and a quarter of the group had yet to receive treatment. (By comparison, the treatment delays for anorexia are, on average, 2.5 years; for bulimia, 4.4 years; and for binge-eating disorder, 5.6 years, according to a 2021 review.)

To make it easier for people with atypical anorexia to be screened, treated and insured, there’s a growing movement in the field to collapse the categories of anorexia and atypical anorexia into one — to no longer see them as separate illnesses, to decouple anorexia from its virtually synonymous association with thinness. “For years, we have thought about anorexia nervosa in one way,” says Carolyn Costin, an eating-disorder therapist who founded an eating-disorder treatment center and is a co-author of “8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder.” “But the way people think about it and how they want to define it is changing. It would be a paradigm shift within the field.”

Many, however, are fiercely resistant to letting go of the metric of weight. It would require altering the organizing principle by which the public and the greater medical field conceive of the condition. It would also require recognizing that anyone, in any body, can starve themselves into poor health — and you’d never know it by looking at them.

It took Maxwell a long time to process that she had an eating disorder. She had been so steeped in the gospel of dieting that it was hard to accept that restricting her food was not unequivocally healthy. But as her doctor instructed, she began making visits to the hospital for intravenous fluids and started taking iron supplements. At night, she began attending outpatient sessions at Liberation Center, a now-shuttered facility in Phoenix, where she ate dinner with other clients and attended group therapy. The staff at Liberation told her she needed more intensive treatment and recommended attending a residential program.

In the summer of 2018, after teaching through the rest of the school year, Maxwell agreed to go to a center in Monterey, Calif., that was covered by her insurance. A day after she arrived, however, her insurance rescinded approval: Because of her weight, the company didn’t believe she was sick enough to meet the criteria for residential care for eating disorders. She was at once ashamed and incensed. Her aunt drove five hours to pick her up, and she spent much of the next 10 days on the phone with the insurance company.

Her insurance eventually authorized her to go to another facility, the Center for Discovery Rancho Palos Verdes, which sits on the Southern California coast. Maxwell’s three-month stay would consist of group meals, outings to restaurants to practice dining in public settings, yoga and therapy. “I went with the expectation that as soon as I walked in the door, they would be the people who would help me finally become thin once and for all,” she says. Instead, on her first day, a dietitian at the center explained that she would need to eat three balanced meals and three snacks a day to recover. Her treatment plan also required that she abstain from almost all forms of exercise so her system could recalibrate. Maxwell panicked. She had never consistently eaten that much in her entire adult life, and she still felt that her body was a problem to be fixed.

Maxwell already harbored a deep mistrust of the mental-health profession. When she was growing up, she remembers a pastor at her church preaching that psychiatry was the work of the devil. The message seemed to be that anxiety was sinful, a sign of faithlessness. Maxwell had left her church two years earlier, but its lessons were still lodged deeply in her mind. She couldn’t abandon her long-held belief, one that her doctors reinforced for much of her life, that thinness was the primary measure of health.

Maxwell forced herself to go along with each step of the treatment program. She tried to eat three meals and three snacks a day, even though it caused her excruciating fear. For years, her thinking had revolved tightly around food and exercise; and during twice-weekly individual therapy sessions and daily group therapy, she tried to learn how to redirect these thoughts. She started to talk about the self-judgment, shame and childhood trauma that led to rigid behaviors and an overreliance on control, both central features of restrictive eating disorders.

About five or six weeks into treatment, it dawned on her just how much damage she had done to herself. Her esophagus burned from years of purging. She experienced heart palpitations and was often dizzy from orthostatic hypotension (a type of low blood pressure that leads to dizziness and fainting), and her hair and nails were thin and brittle from malnutrition. “I started to realize, holy shit, this is real,” she says. “I started to see what it had done to my body, the magnitude of it.”

Over the ensuing weeks, Maxwell began eating enough food that the staff allowed her to go on walks and swim, not to burn calories but as a part of learning how to live a balanced life. Her physical symptoms started to ease. Her vital signs and blood work improved. She felt less dizzy, her heartbeat more regular. She got her period back for the first time in a decade. And perhaps most surprising, she was not gaining weight despite eating more food.

To help her overcome her self-judgment, a nurse suggested that she look in the mirror and express what she liked about her body. At first, Maxwell couldn’t think of what to say. She could hardly make eye contact with her own reflection. But eventually she thought of something. “I’m grateful for my curly hair,” she said, looking at the nurse in the mirror.

When a human body is starved for long enough, it undergoes a complex series of biological, metabolic and hormonal changes to ensure its own survival. Every system moves to conserve energy, and the body begins to mine muscle and fat for glucose to keep the heart running and the brain functioning. The metabolism slows, which is why some people can eat very little and hardly lose any weight. Digestion simmers down, sometimes causing gastrointestinal trouble, and body temperature plummets while blood flow decreases. Many people who chronically undereat shiver with cold, their hands and feet feeling especially icy. If malnutrition worsens, their hair becomes fragile and falls out and muscle mass dwindles, including within the heart.

People with severe anorexia of any kind can have orthostatic hypotension, heart rates lower than 60 beats per minute and electrolyte imbalances that may cause arrhythmias or even lead to cardiac arrest. Eventually a malnourished body can shut down the production of sex hormones. From what little research on atypical anorexia exists, the medical complications appear to be the same as anorexia and occur in similar rates across body sizes, with the exceptions of bone density loss and low blood sugar, which are worse in those who are emaciated. Recent research has found that body size is a less relevant indicator of the severity of both eating disorders than other factors, including the percentage of body mass lost, the speed of that loss and the duration of the malnourished state.

Among scientists, there is consensus that atypical anorexia and anorexia share the same medical and nutritional issues, but one of the big remaining questions is whether the psychopathology is the same (some clinicians believe that it is, but minimal research exists to confirm this). In the slim populations they have studied, psychologists have observed a grim momentum to the illness: Sufferers lose just a few pounds and then, all of the sudden, they compulsively want to lose more, as if a mental switch flips. Genetic predispositions may explain why some people lose weight and their minds tip into disordered eating while others do not. Immediate female family members of a patient with anorexia nervosa are 11 times as likely to develop it as females in the general population, according to one study.

In the short term, resisting hunger pangs can make people feel powerful and even euphoric. But soon the effects of starvation on the brain set in: mental fog, difficulty concentrating, memory issues. People become secretive, irritable and inflexible in their thinking. The gray matter of the brain shrinks, and it appears that the neural pathways related to rewards can be reversed. (It’s not clear if that’s a pre-existing trait or an effect of the illness.) Food that typically results in a dopamine hit now inspires dread. The crippling fear of weight gain begins to outcompete the biological urge to eat, spiraling downward into more weight loss and distorted thinking.

In a famed 1944 study known as the Starvation Experiment, Prof. Ancel Keys of the University of Minnesota and his team observed the impact of food deprivation on people’s relationship to eating. They persuaded 36 young, healthy men to undergo six months of semi-starvation and five months of resumed feeding to determine the best means for treating people who suffered famine and forced starvation in World War II. The men lost 25 percent of their body weight. And over the course of the study, these otherwise mentally fit young participants developed many of the symptoms of anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating disorder, including obsession with eating, cutting food into small pieces, bingeing and purging, excruciatingly slow eating and, even five months after they regained weight, body-image issues. More recent research suggests that losing just 5 percent of one’s body weight can be associated with a clinically significant eating disorder.

Because of the complex interplay between the physical and mental symptoms of starvation, the first steps to recovery for people with malnutrition are to eat more and to gain weight, a process called refeeding or renourishment, before working on the behavioral and cognitive aspects of the disease. But for people who are acutely ill, eating too much too fast increases the risk of potentially fatal fluid and electrolyte imbalances that can develop in malnourished bodies. Specific protocols govern how people with anorexia are refed, and research is still emerging on how to renourish people with atypical anorexia.

A 2019 study led by Andrea K. Garber, a professor of pediatrics and chief nutritionist for the Eating Disorder Program at U.C. San Francisco, found that when atypical anorexia patients were given the same high-calorie foods in the same portions as anorexia patients, they did not recover as well. “It might sound like a no-brainer,” Garber says. “They have a larger body size, and so we believe they need more nutrition to recover.”

But clinicians, many of whom have been trained to focus on weight as a predominant health measure, have to navigate how best to advise patients who face both the perils of a potentially fatal restrictive eating disorder and the health risks associated with larger body sizes. In one case study, for example, a 15-year-old girl with atypical anorexia had stopped having her period and was hospitalized for severe malnutrition and bradycardia, a dangerously slow heart rate. Refeeding helped her recover from her eating disorder, but then she lost her period again because of polycystic ovarian syndrome, a condition that occurs in people of all sizes but is more common and often more severe in people who have higher percentages of body fat.

Some psychologists report that atypical anorexia is harder to treat than anorexia nervosa because the fear of weight gain is even greater in people who have been bullied and shamed for their size. The biggest difference in the two conditions, some psychologists believe, may be how they are perceived by the outside world, biases that persist even in places where patients go to seek help.

After she left the Center for Discovery Rancho Palos Verdes and moved to South Carolina, Maxwell started a partial hospitalization program at the Eating Recovery Center in Greenville. She immediately began noticing how her size was affecting the quality of her treatment. When she arrived, a staff member put her in a room and told her to wait, while the people with “normal” eating disorders gathered next door. Her words felt like a gut punch. At lunch, she was told to sit by herself at the back of the dining room, while the other clients sat together with their backs to her. “I was like, I can’t sit with them?” she says. The center had mistaken her diagnosis for binge-eating disorder and had a policy of separating those clients from the others.

Sometimes staff members singled her out and had her eat less than small-bodied patients. At a group-therapy session in which she was the only large person in the room, another patient shared that she would rather die than be fat. “Her literally expressing that while I’m in that room — that to be me, to live in this body that I have to recover in, would be worse than anything — it’s just ostracizing,” Maxwell says. (The Eating Recovery Center does not comment on individual patient experiences, but since 2021, it says, it has made efforts to counteract weight stigma in its treatment centers.)

Erin Harrop, the social-work professor, who uses they/them pronouns, has experienced both ends of the treatment spectrum for eating disorders. They attended treatment for anorexia in their early 20s with a small body; then, several years later, they returned for treatment for atypical anorexia. Harrop was shocked by the differences. Even though they had been diagnosed with atypical anorexia, had lost nearly 20 percent of their body weight and were experiencing orthostatic blood pressure, the therapist at the treatment center did not believe their diagnosis and even encouraged them to compare themselves to “sicker” residents — those with smaller bodies. Comments about their body from doctors, dietitians and other professionals exacerbated their disordered thinking. They were bullied by peers for their weight, and the kitchen staff limited their food intake: When their peers ate bagels, they received a bite-size one.

In their 2020 survey of people with atypical anorexia, Harrop discovered that every participant had also been overlooked, misdiagnosed or excluded. Almost everyone had approached medical providers with symptoms of malnutrition, like hair loss, dropped periods, fainting, vomiting blood or dry or bleeding skin. But it took years, and sometimes decades, for anyone to screen them for an eating disorder. As a teenager, one participant, Eli, believed she had an eating issue and approached her doctor about it. The physician disagreed, instead telling her that she “could actually probably lose a little bit of weight,” she said. It took eight more years before Eli began treatment for atypical anorexia. Another participant, Lexi, remembered a physician telling her: “You don’t look anorexic. You don’t look underweight.”

Tori, also a participant, was diagnosed by her therapist but was then denied treatment referrals by her physician, who said she was too overweight. Layla, who consumed nothing but bone broth and lost 22 percent of their body weight, was diagnosed with “compulsive eating.” Two participants had been hospitalized for being suicidal and for their eating-disorder symptoms but were barred from joining an eating-disorder support group because, they were told, they were too large. One participant, while seeking treatment at a center for eating disorders, was given a diet book.

Shira Rosenbluth, the eating-disorder therapist, has struggled with atypical anorexia and says treatment actually made her sicker. At one center, a nurse insisted that she had a food addiction and continually commented on her meals, which were dictated by the dietitian. The nurse recommended Overeaters Anonymous and the controversial GreySheet diet, a low-carb, no-sugar, no-alcohol regimen for people who compulsively overeat, even though Rosenbluth had lost significant weight. At various points, she experienced orthostatic blood pressure and abnormally low phosphorus, which can cause bone pain, irregular breathing, numbness or heart failure. Blood work showed that her pancreas wasn’t functioning properly. Still, she was given less food than smaller-bodied patients. At another center, when patients had ice cream cones, she got a kid-size one.

For two years, she went from treatment center to treatment center, hoping that each one would be better than the last. Finally, she gave up altogether and stayed with a friend, a psychologist in the field, who oversaw her meals and helped her become more stable. “For the first time,” she says, “I was getting care without a stigma attached.”

In recognition of the inconsistent care that people with atypical anorexia sometimes receive, a small vanguard of professionals in the field are experimenting with ways to improve treatment for people with larger bodies. Erin Harrop runs weight-stigma training sessions for treatment centers, hospitals and social-work graduate students. Lisa Brownstone, an assistant professor at the University of Denver, is piloting psychotherapy groups for eating-disorder patients who have been traumatized by weight stigma. Centers like Opal: Food and Body Wisdom in Seattle have hired body-diverse staff members, created physical spaces that accommodate a range of bodies and trained therapists on size inclusivity. But there’s only so much they can do before butting up against systemic challenges, and the biggest one is discriminatory insurance coverage.

Some atypical anorexia patients are authorized for treatment for only two or three weeks before they are cut off — an almost impossibly short period of time to recover. Certain insurance companies outright deny coverage for people with larger bodies. Lexi Giblin, Opal’s executive director, has seen some patients with atypical anorexia not receive authorization for treatment even though they have the same symptoms as someone with a smaller body. “The invalidation of the insurance company can certainly contribute to the symptoms themselves,” Giblin says. “They can become part of the eating disorder. We’ve had folks who are denied authorization then come back later, and their eating disorder has escalated since the last time we saw them. That’s pretty common.”

The issue stems not only from a lack of knowledge about a relatively new diagnosis; it’s also a product of how the diagnosis is named and coded. Because it is labeled “atypical” and filed under the murky “other specified feeding or eating disorder” category, it is often seen as less dangerous. “It’s an absurd diagnosis,” says Jennifer L. Gaudiani, an internist who specializes in eating disorders in Denver and the author of “Sick Enough: A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders.” “There’s nothing atypical about it. If there’s anything atypical, it’s the people who get underweight.”

To make it easier for people to secure care, some therapists, social workers and researchers have been advocating combining atypical anorexia and anorexia by removing the requirement to have a “significantly low weight” from the standard anorexia diagnosis. But the idea of merging the categories has ignited strong feelings within the field, with fierce support by people with larger bodies who have suffered from weight discrimination, and incredulous opposition (largely behind closed doors) among some researchers who have devoted their careers to the illness as it is currently described.

Opponents argue that such a change would be premature; much remains unknown about atypical anorexia, including its brain biology, genetics and psychopathology, all of which could help inform treatment and the development of drugs. (To date, there are no pharmacological treatments for anorexia.) Distinguishing between the two, they say, is crucial to studying them effectively. “It is not helpful to us if we put the atypical anorexia nervosa folks in exactly the same bucket as the typical anorexia nervosa,” says Guido Frank, a psychiatry professor at U.C. San Diego who specializes in the brain biology of eating disorders. “I’m not saying they’re any less ill — that’s the last thing I want to say. To define and devise the right treatments for each of the subgroups, we’re best advised that we also study them in a way separately or along a trajectory.”

But proponents of the change say that the weight requirement for anorexia causes those with medium and larger bodies to be excluded from many studies. They also point out that the line between the two diagnoses is not particularly scientific and has harmful effects on patients’ ability to secure care. “From my personal patient experience,” Harrop says, “at no point was there a magic switch where it was like, oh, now I’m atypical. I notice such a difference in my thoughts than I did when I was 10 pounds lighter. To draw this line in the sand of this is when it crosses over and becomes more important and more insurable and more lethal — that line is not a very good line. It always means there’s an out group, and it always means that there’s somebody who’s not able to get treatment. So thinking about how we draw those lines is really important in terms of health equity.”

Harrop argues that the anorexia diagnosis could be structured as a spectrum, with weight as one component but not the predominant one. Physicians could look at a wider set of factors when screening, diagnosing and treating eating disorders. Eating-disorder diagnoses have overlapping symptoms anyway, Harrop says, and patients often cross over between illnesses. About 36 percent of people with anorexia develop bulimia at some point, and 27 percent of people with bulimia develop anorexia, according to one study.

Diagnoses affect not only how doctors and insurance companies categorize patients but also how people understand their own illnesses. Maxwell always bristles when she thinks about her own diagnosis, her mind snagging on the term “atypical.” She sometimes flashes to a moment in junior high school when her teacher showed the class a photo of a fat man with a shirt that read, “I beat anorexia.” It was meant to be a joke, and everyone laughed. She even laughed. But after a lifetime of bullying, Maxwell didn’t want to be a punchline. Being labeled “atypical” added another layer of awkwardness and marginalization. The diagnosis seems to live in a no man’s land of categorization. Many people who suffer from eating disorders say the differentiation further perpetuates a social hierarchy. Just as living in a thin body comes with certain privileges, anorexia itself lives at the top of a kind of disordered-eating class system.

According to Mimi Cole, a therapist who had atypical anorexia and hosts “The Lovely Becoming,” a mental-health podcast, “A common belief among people with atypical anorexia — and I shared this too — is: I need to lose more weight so that I have anorexia, so that I can be sicker. I can meet criteria. I can have a real eating disorder.”

In late 2018, Maxwell decided to be more open about her eating disorder with friends and family and started posting about it on Instagram. Over the years, she included photographs of her younger self and shared memories of her decades-long journey. Sometimes it felt brazen and edgy, but also good. “I am fat and I have anorexia,” she wrote in a 2020 post. “And I don’t have to explain my body to you.”

These days, Maxwell’s inner landscape is very different than it once was. On a sunny Saturday afternoon in May, not far from where she lives in San Diego, she did something that would have brought her waves of anxiety in past years. She went to the beach. Amid the tinny jangle of an ice cream truck, she unfurled her towel and sat down. Before she started her recovery, she would have spent her time at the beach worried about what she was wearing or not wearing, what she had eaten or would eat later and what other people were thinking or not thinking about her body. Fogged by this tangle of thoughts, she would miss the experience. Now she doesn’t give those things much thought. On that Saturday, she watched her dog zoom around the sand and laughed with a couple of friends. Her mind was not floating above her body, dissociated.

Maxwell is choosing to recover as fully as she can, but it is not easy. After 19 years of going undiagnosed, she still suffers from some of the physical, mental and social costs of anorexia. Doctors are monitoring her recovery from long QT syndrome, an electrical issue with the heart that can turn into potentially fatal arrhythmias. (Long QT syndrome is a rare side effect of anorexia.) She also has an annual endoscopy to assess the slow healing of her damaged esophagus from years of vomiting. She has incurred mountains of debt from months of treatment.

She checks in with a doctor and a therapist regularly and texts photos of her meals to her dietitian as proof that she’s eating three meals a day, a standard in recovery. She attends an eating-disorder support group, even though she has rarely seen another larger-bodied person there. She has also started to cook for herself. But to be a larger person in this world is to be constantly reminded of how other people view your body.

Often when she posts about recovery and fat positivity on Instagram or TikTok, whether it’s theatrically smashing her scale with a baseball bat or performing slam poetry in her car, a flurry of trolls rise from the backwaters of the internet to riddle her feed with insults and death threats. “You need a sign that says ‘beware of pig,’” one commenter wrote. “Moo moo goes the cow,” wrote another who created a handle (@sharon_maxwell_hater) expressly to bully her. “Society pities you because you’re eating yourself to an early grave,” another wrote.

But Maxwell has also received direct messages from people who have struggled in similar ways — they have never admitted to themselves, let alone their families or friends, how much they are suffering. “I just wanted to say that I am a fat person with an eating disorder who isn’t yet in recovery but trying,” one wrote. “Every day I have these crazy disordered thoughts and get into a spiral of how I’m not valid enough for recovery … your content has been absolutely pivotal for me and I am so happy you exist.”

Many people with anorexia describe the illness as a battle between two selves. One is a maniacal superego, hellbent on control at all costs in a misguided attempt to find safety. It imposes perfectionistic rules and restrictions in Sisyphean pursuit of an unreachable ideal. Some feel it is intent on self-destruction. This self, which Maxwell calls the conceptualized self, enforces all the expectations of one’s upbringing and the culture at large and sees the world in lifeless tones of black and white, like an old TV.

The second is what Maxwell calls the authentic self. For her, it’s the self that spontaneously breaks into impromptu dance moves and wears T-shirts that read, “Don’t be a butthole to yourself” and “Therapy is cool.” This self has a penchant for gold glitter and animal print and signs up for a rec basketball team on a whim, something she would never have allowed herself to do before. She can eat strawberries or a sandwich or an ice cream cone in public. This self is no longer concerned with being quiet and obedient or apologizing for her existence. And, perhaps most important, she has no interest in making herself small.

Diet companies won’t tell you this but starving yourself is a lot worse for your health than overeating

[deathbxnny]

Hi I just wanted to say I loved the arcane adhd headcannons u wrote, the viktor one made me cry bc I want to be seen like that sooo bad. Do u think u could do some more characters? No pressure tho ur an amazing writer

Arcane characters with an S/o who has ADHD. | Caitlyn, Jinx, Ekko x Gn!Reader

(Previous part)

Aww, I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed the last part, anon! I hope this is to your liking as well!<33

Content: Fluff, ADHD, established romantic relationships, sfw

Reader has no mentioned pronouns.

((Not proofread))

》CAITLYN

She noticed from the start that you were a little different from everyone else. Not that she necessarily cared much about it. You were still you after all, and your diagnosis is just a part of you she considers endearing.

With that said, Caitlyn always listens to your needs very closely and does everything in her power to help you out with them. She'll get you anything you ask for in hopes of making life easier for you. Whether it's medical help or just something to help with your fidgeting in general, you'll have it in no time with her.

Cait can, therefore, come off as kind of overbearing or overprotective at first. She wants you to lead a smooth and successful life, so she'll always be around to make any task doable for you. Procrastination does not exist when she's there, to say the least.

Her patience is an important part of your relationship that's practically invaluable. Your fidgety and unfocused nature took a moment for her to get used to, but she never makes a big deal out of it. Instead, she simply adapts to your needs and learns to cherish them as well.

》JINX

Probably the most understanding out of everyone, albeit in the most chaotic way possible. You two are a rather troubling duo, as she herself isn't in the best position to help you out properly. Her ideas are always outlandish yet somehow still work out in the end anyways, which is rather impressive.

You're both very fidgety, but she makes up for it with her hyper awareness. Procrastination is never a thing with her, considering how focused she always is on every project she has and so it becomes somewhat of a normal thing for you to simply work in the same space together, even if it's with just music playing in the background in-between you two.

She's the last person to ever treat you any differently for your diagnosis and doesn't ever let you feel bad for it either. You accept her, and she accepts you. Anyone that tries shaming you for it is as good as dead anyway.

You two learn how to take care of each other better than anyone else ever could. Jinx may not be able to help you out like a professional doctor could, but she'll do anything to help you out no matter what forever.

》EKKO

He doesn't entirely get it at first, mainly as he was always surrounded by people who were rather unique in their own way. But as always with anything, he still does his best to learn everything he needs to about your diagnosis and how he can help you with the resources he has. Which aren't many, but his creativity truly shines at times when it comes to you.

You're not treated any differently from everyone else, and he sure as hell doesn't allow anyone to do that either. You are normal, just with more needs that he tends to carefully. So whether it's your inability to focus well or stay still for a long time, he'll find a way to make things easier. He understands your procrastination and doesn't really push you to do things unless it's very important. But he'll work with you on any projects or missions you may have.

His patience is endless for you and his kindness even more so. He understands if you feel frustrated sometimes and tries his best to soothe you when your emotions are a little harder to process. He'll let you fidget and be yourself as much as you want to, never the type to stop you. You should be yourself around him, and he appreciates how vulnerable you are with that.

Ekko loves you no matter how hard things can get with your diagnosis. He takes every challenge on with ease and never judges you for it either.

[shouyuus]

okay so what about vi as a parent…

send me vi thirsts and i'll give u my hand in marriage

OKAYYYYYYYY LOOK. we are tryna hURT today huh. no alright tho like it would depend on the kid. i deeply believe that vi as a girl!mom vs a boy!mom would be SO dif. (girl!mom vi under the cut)

bc like consider. boy!mom vi - always down to toss a ball around, always down to play wrestle and get down and dirty, gets too carried away playing all the time, youve DEF come home to the house just like an absolute WRECK of feathers and cut up paper and like the bedsheets stripped and flung over the dining chairs, ur son standing on top of the dining table as vi pretends to be "breaching the fortress" and they both freeze when you clear ur throat like "uhm... what's this now?"

vi looks at you with those big athena eyes of hers like "oH! welcome back baby! uh this is --" and ur son leaps down and throws himself at ur waist like, "momma said that if we take the bedsheets we can make a castle and a mote!" and vi glares but withers a little when you hitch an eyebrow in her direction "she DID, did she?"

"she also said that REAL knights definitely use rolling pins as -"

"OKAY kiddo -- ahaha, what did i say about spilling national secrets hm?"

ur son just looks confused for a second, swinging off your arm, "but -- but you said mummy's the princess and all this is for her!"

vi sputters for a solid three seconds before sighing and you laugh, picking up your son and pressing a kiss to his cheek, "aww, so this is all for me?" he giggles, nodding, throwing his arms around your neck.

vi chuckles, looking sheepish and rubbing the back of her neck.

"yep!" your son pulls back with a bright grin, "momma said that because we both love you most, we have to protect you with all our mights!"

you laugh, softening as you put your son down. "she said that, did she?" he nods fervently even as vi groans, running a hand over her face, her cheeks a deep maroon.

"well, since you both love me so much -- you wouldn't mind helping clean up the castle before the evening feast, would you?"

"feast?" they both look up, eyes bright.

you hold up the large bag of takeout and they both whoop, vi tugging you in for a long kiss, laughing when she pulls away.

"y'know. you really are... everything."

---

BUT NOW CONSIDER. girl!mom vi. who would be sweetest, most protective, bc you've seen her as a big sister to basically all the kids in zaun, and her own daughter???? she'd do anything for her. to the point where you sometimes have to remind her not to be too much, to let your daughter stumble sometimes, to make mistakes bc that's how you learn.

"but -- god. i'm just so terrified --"

"yeah, welcome to being a parent," you say, nosing into her cheek one night as you watch your daughter sleep, curled up on the bed between the pair of you, snoring slightly as she sleeps.

vi reaches down to run a hand through her hair, curling a strand around a finger, her eyes so soft it almost breaks your heart.

"yeah i know but..." vi's voice is tender, " thought having a little sister was bad..."

you laugh softly, pressing a kiss to vi's cheek.

"let's not jinx this."

vi's lips twitch, but her gaze stays warm. she pulls you into her side.

"you're gonna have to tie me up in the basement once she starts dating."

you snort, "tie you up? please. i'll have to call in favors with both jayce and mel -- maybe they've got something stocked up that'll keep you restrained but i know ropes aren't gonna do jack shit."

vi chuckles before her expression changes.

"promise me... things will be okay."

"hey -- look at me." you cup her cheek; she turns, her eyes a thunder-struck sea, the edge of the world on a rainy day.

"it'll be okay," you say, pressing your foreheads.

"thanks, cupcake. i love you."

you smile, tugging vi in for a kiss.

"yeah. i know. i love you too."

[marzipanandminutiae]

would you have any reading suggestions to learn more about the earrings are evil era??? I've never heard of that aspect of fashion history and I am curious

Oh man, it was wild

you saw the first stirrings of it in the 1890s, when you started to get (mostly white and middle-to-upper-class) proto-feminists arguing that ear piercing was barbaric- keep an eye on the racist undertones there; they will come up again-and forcing women to suffer for fashion. I cannot emphasize enough that, until that point, ear piercing had been pretty much normal for this race/class/gender group. For centuries. You see criticism of the practice here and there, but nothing that really stuck.

The objections slowly increased until roughly the mid-1920s, when everything reached a tipping point and pierced ears became largely taboo for most white Americans and Brits of northern/western European descent. If that sounds HIGHLY specific, it is- communities from southern and sometimes eastern Europe retained cultural practices of ear piercing, to the point where it was often used as a point against them by mainstream society. It was also associated with Latino people, Black people, and the Romani, which. Yeah. I don't need to tell you how that went down.

It also developed associations with sexual immorality and/or backwards thinking. One newspaper letter I read came from a teen girl in the 1940s, wondering why she shouldn't pierce her ears if her very respectable grandmother had piercings. The response was something like "well, they did all sorts of things in the Bad Old Days that we shouldn't do now." True in many ways, or course, but...piercing your ears? That's the hill culture decided to die on as far as antiquated behavior that we should leave behind? Apparently yes.

Earrings themselves never went out of style, which led to the birth of clip-ons and screwbacks. Ironic that the "don't surfer for fashion" crowd was so eager to embrace screwing tiny vices onto your ears, but there we are. My own mother (born 1953) remembers her mother (born 1926) always taking off her screwback earrings immediately after getting home from a party, literally in the foyer of their house the second the door shut. There had been adaptations for unpierced ears before- Little Women, published in 1868, describes Meg March hanging earrings from a flesh-colored silk ribbon tied around the base of her ear -but they'd never caught on like this before.

However, the pendulum was soon to swing back. After just 40 years of Piercing Panic, in the 1960s, girls began piercing their ears again in droves. As piercing moved from the slumber party or summer camp back to the professional jewelers whose families had been early professional piercers in the 19th century- and to befuddled doctors who had no idea what they were doing yet still received piercing requests -cultural commentators had no idea what to make of it. Some decried the new trend while most took an air of bemused neutrality. My personal favorite article expressed surprise that "Space Age misses" were adopting these "Victorian traditions."

(In 1965, my grandmother took Mom to the anesthesiologist down the street who was offering to pierce his young daughter's friends gratis, and got it done. My grandfather had strongly disapproved of the idea, but in the end it took him a week to notice the new earrings.)

As to sources...honestly, I've just gone to Google Books, specified a time frame, and typed in "ear piercing," "pierced ears," "pierce ears," etc. Tons of primary sources at your fingertips, though I'm not always great about documenting or saving what I find. There's not much written about it formally, I've found- no books or scholarly studies. It may just be too close in history to attract much academic attention, though I find it fascinating.

This little blip where something that's been normal for most of western history suddenly became taboo for a hot second.

Also my ear piercings just turned 20 five days ago, commemorating the date that I was taken with much ceremony to Piercing Pagoda (and that horrible gun; it's a wonder I didn't get keloids) to get me out from underfoot while the Thanksgiving feast was being made. Grandma got hers pierced on the same day, at age 78. Happy Birthday, Marzi's ear piercings!

[ifyouhavetoast]

It's been a few years, but I think my best friend since kindergarten. I could be so wrong though

this always changes depending what i'm fixated on but rn i'd say ford pines

it depends what time and like what age i am, but yeah, very fuzzy and light. sometimes i struggle with speech, but not all the time

yes!! it just depends what i'm fixated on atm, like right now.....i think u can take a good gander

too young or preschool (0-4)

i'm an only child

somehow both, i'm technically still growing up, and i get told i'm both an old soul and childish

my first piece of agere gear was this baby paci, it's pink and yellow and i found it from my baby stuff and i saw it was still in the package and unused, so me being me...i took it (and i was praying my mom wouldn't notice) (spoiler alert she didn't)

idk...haven't really thought about that. probably just the same as my usual aesthetic (metalhead), just a little more childish

i've been lurking inconsistently, but if you count that, then since early 2021

planes and cars.......rhuifhruifh i lvoe planes and cars the thought of them makes me wanna curl up and regress i need to wacth cars RIGHT NOW

both :D

YES i didn't think i would

yeah, but when i do, i usually don't mean to or i'm just discreetly regressing for a sec since i don't have a caregiver or whatever + i'm just not used to regressing around others, makes me nervous even if they're okay with it

i don't know what this one means......

a real adult paci, or maybe diapers

yeah, but usually regressing makes me feel better and i'm just chilling

i'd like to say i am, maybe not around others, but when it's just myself i'm pretty comfortable with it. i mean, i've been regressing for almost 4 years (oh my god it's been almost 4 years.), so it's pretty much normal stuff to me and i'm very used to it

an escape and a way to cope. i'm super busy with school and extracurriculars and other stuff and it stresses me out, so being able to just go little and not need to think about any big stuff for a while really refreshes my mind.

no idea, haven't been back here in a second

PROBABLYYYY i just don't remember the exact scenario but i most likely have...i swear everything happens in my dreams, i have the weirdest dreams ever

i'm not really into cookie run as much as i used to be, but i've been willing to die on the hill that pure vanilla cookie is a caregiver since 2022

not too sure, like i said, i haven't really been back in an online agere space in a while. from what i remember, i remember seeing an awesome fic and reading it and they say something like "baby girl" and i died inside a little but yk it could be different now lolol

not sure...maybe a kitty since i usually fall asleep when i'm little

very, i've never had a caregiver and i'm very nervous to look for one...i'd rather my caregiver be someone i already know and trust, but i don't think anyone would do that. i've tried looking online to connect with others, but they never got back to me

ehhhhh sometimes. like i said, i regress young but then catch me playing roblox or something

i don't really play pretend a lot...probably because i struggle with it

vampire!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!

holding my stuffie i've had since i was like 2 or 3

naptime and cuddles :,(

🌙 Agere Ask Game!!! ⭐

🖍 Who is the first person you told/would tell about your headspace?

❤ If you had a fictional caregiver/little who would it be?

🩹 What do you experience when you regress? (i.e fuzzy feelings, motor skill or speech struggle, etc.)

🧡 How often do you regress or try to regress?

🍬 Do you read agere fanfiction and if so, about who?

💛 What school grade (if any) would you be in according to your headspace?

🧸 Are you an older sibling who regresses/caregives or a younger sibling who regresses/caregives?

💚 Were you considered an "old soul" growing up or were you more "childish"?

🧩 What was your first piece of agere gear or what would you want as your first?

💙 What's your regression/caregiving aesthetic? (kidcore, babycore, altcore, etc)

🍭 How long have you been apart of agere tumblr?

💜 What are you obsessed with right now in your headspace? (sanrio, sharks, bluey, etc)

🍼 Do you include your personal nostalgia in your regression/caregiving or are you creating new memories?

🖤 Have you met any other regressors/caregivers in real life?

🪀 Have you ever regressed in front of someone or has someone ever regressed around you?

🪁 Is your headspace affected more through traditional or alternative regression? (bottles & cartoons or horror & thrill)

🎨 What's a piece of agere gear that you really want to have/try?

🍬 Have you ever experienced vent regression?

🦋 Are you comfortable with your regression/headspace?

🧚‍♀️ What is age regression/caregiving to you?

🧦 What's something you like & don't like about the agere community?

🦇 Have you ever regressed in a dream?

🌸 Who do you headcanon as a regressor or caregiver? (fictional or real)

🐈‍⬛ Do you think you're represented enough in the agere community? (poc, boys, under 20/over 30 yrs)

🧃Which animal best represents your headspace?

🐇 Has it been or was it hard for you to find a little/caregiver?

🎀 Does your headspace match the gear you use/want? (i.e. regresses to 10 years but loves pacifiers)

🎮 Do you struggle to play pretend or are you super imaginative?

🌈 What mythical creature would you rather be? (Hybrid, Fairy, Dragon, etc)

👾 What's the quickest way to get you in your headspace?

💭 What's one thing you often daydream about doing with your little/caregiver?