#look at me go randomly answering an ask from weeks ago in the wee hours of the AM

[nebulousfishgills]

💔🍷💄🐞🧣🎒 for Emily please?

Random OC ask game drop because it's 1:30 AM (when I started this one) and brain doesn't wanna sleep, so here we go.

💔 - Who has your character hurt most? Physically or emotionally? How did it feel? Do they regret it?

Ooh, that's actually a hard one because, as we know, Emily is Not A Good Person and has left many broken people in her wake, literally.

I suppose the obvious answer would be Eleven since she and Henry have been tormenting her for years at this point. She bore witness to their massacre and then the seven or so years after that involved sending out Demogorgons to find her (maybe), using the Mind Flayer to infect and hurt her friends while trying to locate and snatch her, arguably it's their fault she thought Hopper died, and then doing things like taking Max away and breaking Hawkins. It's a hefty list and most of the motivation is being bitter and petty over the fact that an abused eight year old child saw all her companions slaughtered and didn't immediately run to their arms.

But somehow, some way, I think at least some part of Emily feels bad about it. The canonicity of her being their daughter is still up in the air at this point, but that doesn't even necessarily have to factor into it. They may be rivals now, but for a while, Emily was the closest thing Eleven had to a mother figure in Hawkins Lab, arguably the only other one she's had aside from Joyce. Emily's perception of her mother is extremely poor, so in my mind, there's that small part of her that feels bad for hurting this daughter/daughter figure of hers when she knows she's still haunted by what her own mother did. And abandoning Emily because she couldn't take care of her is way further down on the severity scale.

So, I think Eleven might take that spot, with Eddie being a runner up since it's Emily's fault he had to go on the run and ultimately get killed, let alone lobbing the betrayal aspect onto it. And that's including me factoring in her Twilight era since that's actively her being a better person and not hurting people like that. I suppose you could throw Aro onto that list since in the span of like, a day, she seized control of his empire and killed him because she got cockblocked one too many times.

🍷- Does your OC drink? What kind of alcohol do they enjoy? What are their drinking habits? What kind of drunk are they?

Okay, so Emily canonically avoids substances that impair her. Drugs, alcohol, the like. It's less so because she hates the tipsy/high feeling and moreso because those things scramble her brain and disconnect her from her abilities. She's very reliant on them both as a tool for defense/attack/what have you, but just as a general crutch. It's well within reason to assume that without access to her powers, she feels weak or even helpless.

Not to say she's soley dependent upon them, of course, I think being friends with Eddie Munson alone means she can land a punch and some rougher treatment, but she sees losing access to her powers as like being disarmed. She can still hold her own, but it's way easier for her to just use her abilities.

And discounting the telekinesis and crushing people's bones aspect, her powers are how she can feel Henry's presence even from dimensions away and vice versa. It's like having a waypoint, a little emotional guide, and if her brain is scrambled, she can't access that either.

But I'll bite and pose a hypothetical. Honestly, I could see Emily being multiple kinds of drunk. Angry drunk comes to mind immediately, but I could just as easily see her blubbering and slurring all of her woes on the sofa while wasted. Maybe she can be flirtatious depending on her mood. Drunk Emily would start a fight, cry about being abandoned by her mother, and then try to climb Henry like a tree in the span of about ten minutes.

💄- What does your OC think of their face? Do they have a positive or negative opinion? Do they wear makeup? Do they have a skincare routine? What traits do they like most about their face?

In all honesty I think Emily has mixed feelings about her face, especially once she gets her scars. Because on one hand, they make her stand out and look freakish, but on the other I think she likes the intimidation it brings

I honestly don't think she thinks about it all that much unless she's in public. She knows the damage could have been ten times worse since she watched Henry decay in real time. I don't think she hates her scars themselves, and moreso hates the attention they bring since she prefers to Not Be Perceived by Hawkins since she's basically being covert to spy on The Party.

But at the end of the day, she really only cares about her opinion and Henry's, and he has not a single bad thing to say about her. And honestly, I think any skincare routine she'd do would amount to just water and whatever shampoo trickles down with it. Maybe a lotion if a dry patch is bothering her. She just would not understand the need to go so far for your skin since, to her, most beauty routines and standards are bullshit and unecessary.

Emily would probably accuse you of, like, speaking in tongues if you said anything about hyaluronic acid or whatever the fuck.

Now, we kind of push against that boundary when we hit makeup because if we take Vampire Emily into account, part of her arc is accepting the fact that she can enjoy feminine things without immediately tying it to pointless social constructs and rejecting it for that.

I'm not someone who wears makeup basically at all save for costumes or just wanting to wear mascara because I think it makes my eyes look more defined, in fact I think I look weirder with it on. A lack of vanity is something I impart on all my characters because that's just not something I care about.

But the crow inside me that likes shiny things loves going into beauty stores for the bright colors. I feel like Emily would be somewhat the same way. That's how Heidi helped Emily open up a bit, like "look at all the fuzzy brushes and bright colors of the eye shadow." Also, again, Heidi telling her that makeup isn't just a conformity or for hiding who you actually are because society says women have to look a certain, perfect way. Sometimes it's just fun to do it for the hell of it.

Also, to her credit, makeup would be hard with how her scars were. Once she turns, the scars fade away and it opens up a better canvas for her.

Ultimately I think Emily's relationship with her face is just "yeah it's there, I don't need to doll it up because it doesn't matter and also my boyfriend (whichever one) still thinks I look hot either way, so suck it."

🐞 - What does a perfect day look like for your OC? What do they do? Who do they see?

The fact that this question is represented by a ladybug is perfect since that's what Henry's nickname for her is. It ties into my answer to this question, because regardless of who she's partnered up with at the time, Emily's ideal day is just a day where it's just her and Henry/Caius. Nobody else.

In Hawkins especially, she deeply dislikes people so a day where she just doesn't see them is already wonderful. If we add onto that, I think she'd also prefer a day where she doesn't feel burdened or stressed out about anything. She lays in bed with Henry and all she has to worry about is just enjoying his company. Maybe they talk, maybe he reads to her, maybe they sit by a riverbank and let their feet rest in the water. Just a genuinely unburdened day with Henry, imagining what their human free utopia would be like.

The thing you have to remember is that Emily's a bad person whose actions are rooted in wanting to be free of her pain and just live a peaceful, happy life, something she's been robbed of for nearly forty years. At this point in time, that looks like living alone and in silence with Henry and their abnormalities. She thinks the human system is stopping her from getting that, so it's gotta go.

And, honestly, I'd wager to say her perfect day with Caius looks very very similar. She's still Emily with the same nihilistic worldview, she's just more stable with a wider support system. The thriving after a life of surviving. She's an introvert who can't handle being around people all the time since it's unpredictable and overwhelming. That's a central plank in her snapping in Necrosis and overhauling the whole system. She just couldn't get a moment of peace with Caius because of other people.

So, her ideal day is just having one day of some fucking peace and quiet, but in luxury this time. Maybe a bath, sitting in the gardens, being read to by Caius (being read to is a constant, both because I love it, and also it's that childhood trauma piece, being robbed of bedtime stories, mundane may it be), maybe hunting in the woods if the mood was right... and, you know, banging.

I will omit the references from HotD we got this week.

🧣- What comforts your OC? Is it an item? An action? A person? Whatever it is, how and why does it comfort them?

Emily's unfortunately somebody who has lacked many comforts in her life. Whoever her spouse is at the time is like the one constant comfort in the form of a person. Regardless of where she is in life or who she surrounds herself with, the only true comfort and peace she knows is with her partner. Yeah, she has a certain dependency, but that's just part of her character.

Actions, I've already mentioned being read to, but I'd also say drawing is another one since in Hawkins Lab, that was like, the one thing she was allowed to do that wasn't hyper focused on her abilities, the one way she was able to express herself. I always headcanoned that she carried a sketchbook around with her sometimes that Eddie snooped through a few times. Landscapes (i.e. imagining a beautiful, human free world), the occasional manic Mind Flayer doodle, halfway decent drawings of Henry's face (to remember what it looked like pre-Vecna), and the drawing she did of the Creel House as a child when she first showed up in the lab is taped on the inside cover.

Eddie never questions her about this, of course, he shouldn't have been snooping in the first place. Even if he's unaware of her powers, he's sure she would beat his ass for looking in her stuff.

Another comfort action is playing with her hair/scratching her scalp. This is one of those me-traits that I passed on because that shit is the best feeling in the world to me. It always puts me at ease, and I wanted to give that to Emily.

As far as comfort objects, I couldn't give any that are at the same capacity of the other comforts I listed. The sketchbook, maybe her D&D dice, some clothing item of Henry's/Caius' (in fact it might be one of Caius' scarves), it could be anything. She's not really a materialistic person since she's used to having nothing. Objects don't comfort her in the same way those other things do.

🎒- What items does your OC usually carry? Do they have a bag or just keep everything in their pockets? Do they carry a lot or a little?

Again, Emily has almost nothing to her name. Day to day, she doesn't carry much since most times she's in the Upside-Down and doesn't necessarily have the *need* to carry much. But she does have a bag for her Overworld visits, I usually picture it as a dirty old black backpack with a broken zipper and a hole in one of the small front pockets.

Usually when she goes to the Overworld, she only has a few essential things:

-Sketchbook/pencils/pens

-Anything required for D&D, so like her dice, handbook, character sheet, etc.

-Possibly some kind of pocket knife both as a tool and also for self defense in case it's really not a good idea to use her powers

-Any cash/change she's gotten her hands on.

Other than that, it's just the clothes on her back, I'd say. In Volterra she has even less use for things to always have on her. Although she does feel like someone who'd have occasional stickey note notes in her pockets that she forgets about until months later.

I don't know, it's 3 am now so I'm just gonna call it there.

[pettyvxbes]

COLSON BAKER x READER - BUCKET LIST II

SIT TIGHT, HANG ON, & ENJOY THE RIDE

You hadn't slept well in almost two weeks, which was conveniently how long it had been since Colson discovered your bucket list. You didn't like talking about your past, and you were afraid that some of the items on the list would lead to questions you didn't want to answer. But when Colson hadn't even brought the list up, you were relieved. You figured it had gotten lost in the shuffles of his busy life, which was perfectly okay.

You were woken up around 5 am by Colson crawling into your bed. It wasn't abnormal for him to randomly show up at your house in the wee hours of the early morning. Especially not since his recent split from Megan. They had called it quits a little over 4 months ago, and although he'd never admit it, he hated sleeping alone.

"Cols, you okay?" You whispered to the tattooed man under your covers.

He laid on his back, arms folded across his chest, acting as though he had never slept in the same bed as you. Colson was always mindful of your space, not wanting to cross any boundaries or make you uncomfortable in your own bed.

"Mhmm," He responded, clearing his throat. "Go back to sleep."

You didn't say a word, repositioning yourself to find a comfier spot. You made sure that your leg was touching his. He had told you years ago that the slightest amount of physical contact helped him sleep because it was a way for him to confirm that he wasn't alone. You didn't mind it because it was comforting to you too.

"Thank you." He whispered before you both dozed off into a peaceful sleep.

You woke up around 8 am to Colson's face nuzzled into your neck. You were tangled in his limbs. It was hard to tell where he ended, and you began. Colson was a cuddler, another thing he'd never admit, but you two always ended up wrapped up in each other.

You tried moving slowly out from under him, causing him to grumble in his sleep, pulling you closer to him, a contented sigh passing his lips. You chuckled quietly at him. You didn't have it in you to wake the sleeping man. You knew what it was like to struggle with sleep. You never slept past 8 am regardless of the amount of sleep you received. You knew you wouldn't be able to fall back asleep, so you carefully reached for your phone on the nightstand. Scanning the hundreds of emails all interested in booking Colson or scheduling him for an interview.

You hadn't even realized how quickly the time passed until Colson shifted from on top of you. He groaned as he stretched himself across your bed.

"Do you ever stop working?" His voice was sleepy, and his hair was disheveled.

"I just booked you for SNL next month. You're welcome." You articulated. A look of excitement gracing his face.

"Shut the fuck up." He chuckled. "I guess I can cross that off my bucket list!" He screamed before hysterically jumping on top of you, causing a groan to escape your lips.

"Okay, can we get up now?" You grumbled, trying to push his heavy body off of yours.

"What time is it?" He questioned. You looked at the clock on your phone.

"10:58."

"Not yet." He replied, remaining situated on top of you. You sighed loudly. A few minutes later, Colson removed himself from you to speak with you face to face. "So for your bucket list, should we just start at the top and work our way down or randomly pick what we want to do?" He asked, catching you off guard.

"You're really not going to drop this, are you?" You rolled your eyes at him.

"Not a chance," he replied, reaching into his back pocket to remove the folded sheet of paper. "Which do you want to cross off first?" He asked, passing it off to you.

"I don't know, you tell me, boss man." You said, ripping the list from his hands.

"Well, for starters, we can cross off number 23 'cause I made you stay in bed until 11 am this morning." He bragged, drawing a checkmark next to the number.

"Sneaky." You smirked.

"Thank you, thank you," He repeated himself, pretending to bow for an audience. "I'm gonna have you crossing stuff off left and right, baby!" His voice became more theatrical with every word. "Please fasten your seat belt, and keep all hands, feet, arms, and legs inside the ride at all times!" He bantered loudly, pretending to talk into an overhead pager like you were boarding a rollercoaster.

"I can't stand you." You giggled. The silence grew between you as you carefully looked over the list. You had created it so long ago you needed to refresh your memory. "Obviously, we don't have to do all of these." You said after a few moments, gesturing towards the sheet in your hands.

"What do you mean?" He questioned, flabbergasted at your suggestion. "I'm helping you cross off every single one of these before your 30th birthday." He declared.

"Colson, have you even read through the entire list?!?" You queried. "Some of those are pretty unreasonable."

"Which ones?"

"Well, number seven for starters." You elaborated. Colson grabbed the list from your hands to see what you were talking about. . . Get married in Las Vegas. . .

"Fuck it, I'm all in." He assured you, casually handing the list back. "You're my assistant. You're basically my wife anyway. Besides, we can just get an annulment afterward or just have a fake wedding." He shrugged before swinging his long legs over the side of your bed.

"Are you serious?" You sputtered.

"As a heart attack," he went on, "it works out great actually because the media won't stop talking about how I'm never going to move on from Megan." He explained, leaning down to slip his sneakers on. "Also, we'll already be in Vegas crossing off number eight." He looked back at you with a devilish grin.

The only thing left for you to do was sit tight, hang on, and enjoy the ride.

I << 💀 >> III

TAG LIST @prettydreamboy @classyunknownlover

[lachalaine]

HOW I RUN MY BLOG

SPEED: my god i am slow. i am the slowest of the slow - the slowest slow to ever BE slow. i have threads in here from two months ago and asks from three months ago and it’s not that i don’t have the will nor the muse to answer any of it tbh. it’s more so that i just don’t have time. between juggling work, friends, family and the additional need of trying to make up my overtime hours for the dates i’ll be overseas in august and october, it’s been more than a little difficult to try to keep everything afloat. that’s one of my issues. 

my second issue is that i... tend to try to write in depth threads and responses, as much as possible; and i’m a perfectionist of my work to the worst degree. to the point that if i don’t have the right idea or the right flow of words at the time - my work is not getting posted. at all. in fact, i’d likely rather delete something i spent two hours working on rather than take the risk of posting it only to hate it for the rest of my life. it feels like shame for some reason i don’t ??? get it ???

like i want to try to create variety, but also i want to try to build an actual story. something that will be fun for both me and my partner, that will be a thread that will have some possible semblance of weight to future interactions. and sometimes the ideas don’t come as quickly as i would like. or they do, and then my brain runs out of vocabulary. and throttles a pillow i hate it, i hate that my standards for myself are like this, but my god - it’s the only way i can be confident about my work and know that i’m not wasting mine or anyone else’s time and it just has to be my own standard of perfect or i run myself into the ground with my anxiety and have a minor breakdown and that’s the worst thing i can do to myself, honestly asdbhsabdha !!!

REPLIES: i write long replies, unfortunately. though i never expect people to match ( and honestly it fluctuates; sometimes it’ll be long, sometimes short, so there’s no pressure or requirement at all really ) , and all i care about at this point is i’m given something to work with and it’s not the kind of thing where it’s a reply for the sake of a reply. i also would prefer to have threads where people add stuff to the threads, and like... i don’t really have to run the show by myself to keep things interesting? that would be nice tbh. in terms of length however, i will likely do at least two or three paragraphs, because one paragraph threads don’t quite encompass everything my muse tends to feel, and sometimes it can get longer - meaning like... two word document pages long. though that type of novella is usually reserved for people i know can match it, otherwise, i try my best to keep it as succinct as possible. 

my brain sorta has this.... organization thing going tbh? where its like i can only do ask replies today, or i can only do threads today, or i can only do headcannon or ooc stuff today. sometimes it even goes by verse, where it decides if it can manage pokemon threads, or main threads, or fate threads, etc. which i understand isn’t quite the... best way to go about things, and it’s weird. very, very weird. but that’s also really the only way i’m able to sort of figure out where to put my attention nowadays. so everything gets replied to in truth, it just. it takes a while. :c :c :c please be patient with me, i’m trying my best!! 

STARTERS: i hold starter calls a lot. sometimes it can be every two months or it can be ( most likely ) when i get a new influx of followers and i want to interact with them. though it can tend to take a while for me to get them out, even if i have them on a list. usually its because i want to try to create starters that will be interesting enough to keep going ( which is sorta my overall theme with everything on here, if you’ll notice ) and sometimes the ideas don’t quite click. or, like with the organization thing, my brain needs to be able to conjure up starters in particular for anything to work. 

more often, i will do inbox calls instead, and those i do personalize according to the muse i’m sending it to. that way if the other mun replies with a response i like, i can continue it into a thread, so that’s sorta like a reverse starter call in that way, i guess. i always clear out my starters owed though, i promise. it just takes me a good while. 

INBOX: sucks in sharp breath 

i’m gonna be way honest here - once upon a time, i didn’t get that many asks at all, so i thought like, if i got like 20 of them, that already was a heck ton and i had to get the number lower. and then somehow i got an influx in asks a few weeks ago and that number jumped to thirty. and then it kept going until forty. and then i thought ‘okay you know what, so long as its not 50, you can still get it down, you’re good!!’  

let me tell you - i am at 76 right now and i am confused as all fuck as to how it got to this point. BUT I HONESTLY DON’T MIND. i love getting asks !! even if i take a while to answer them, because like the starters, i try to give it an actual moment and not a quick snip of an interaction that doesn’t matter in the long run. so asks? same length - two or three paragraphs and more, nothing less. and i tend to do anons first because i know whoever sent it might check back and i don’t want them scrolling through the whole blog thinking they missed it, but tbh, i try to do my older asks first overall. and sometimes there are some asks that require a lot of emotion on jackie’s part, so those get long and take a wee bit longer than most, but i always try to make the wait worth it. luckily, things appear to be going kinda well on that end tbh. i have a good pace set up so i don’t feel like i’m drowning in stuff, and if i could just have ONE DAY WHERE I CAN WORK, I CAN CUT BACK THAT NUMBER EASY, I SWEAR TO GOD. 

i just. i need that day dashdhabdha

but on that note, please. feel free to send me anything you like at any time, i’ll get to it asap, even if i have six asks for you in my inbox still from past memes. and tbh, i’d rather i always have the option available to answer that particular interaction rather than leave it so it never happens no matter what. so always remember, as always - 

FEEL FREE. 

SELECTIVITY: severely selective. to the nth degree. i follow about less than 180 rp blogs because the rest are aesthetics at the moment, though i’m always looking for more. i try to find blogs with muns that i feel really care about their muse as a whole, and blogs that have a pretty good grasp on writing. i decide whether or not i can make jackie work with them somehow, and then i sorta check the writing itself to make sure i can jive with it, and then that’s when i decide to follow. 

i have. a very particular standards with other blogs that need to be checked off tbh? because i want these interactions to actually matter. so besides the writing, honestly the thing that rings out the most for me would be their passion and their ideas. like, i want to make sure i can create something new with this mun so i just try to see if they will match what i give them with their own ideas, because coming up with a majority of the plots on my own is the most exhausting thing, and i can’t do that consistently. if i can get that sense from them that they’re willing to try to push their own ideas forth, that’s really what makes me follow them back asap !! on the other hand, i also check the mun - make sure they’re not the type i’ll likely have trouble with down the line. i check tags, i check ooc posts, i check everything. i am a self proclaimed blog stalker and tbh, its the only way i keep my dash in check. and so far its worked out very well so it’s all good on my end, even if that means less people to interact with.

quality over quantity, always. 

WISHLIST: FIGHT THREADS. POTENTIAL ROMANCE THREADS. FWB THREADS??? though i am selective on that one. SMUT THREADS FOR ROMANCE PEEPS. PLATONIC THREADS. ADVENTURE THREADS. HARD TO GET THREADS. CRIME THREADS. JACKIE FUCKING UP YOUR MUSES LIFE THREADS. ANGST. MURDER. HEARTBREAK. INJURY. ROAD TRIPS. NAPS. LATE NIGHTS IN THE CITY. JAIL. HAUNTED HOUSES. MUSIC FESTIVALS. MUSIC COLLABORATIONS. FATE VERSE THREADS. POKEMON THREADS. PERSONA THREADS. I DON’T CARE, I LOVE IT ALL, JUST GIVE IT TO ME, AND IF YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR THING YOU WANNA TRY, LEMME KNOW AND I’LL MAKE A VERSE FOR IT NO PROBLEM !!! 

but also i have a wishlist here :”> and i will love you if you boop me for it, thank you !!

HONEST NOTE: i love all my mutuals. i love all my non mutuals. i love people that like my posts. i love people that reblog my posts. i love when people feel comfortable enough to plot with me. when they’re comfortable enough to send me stuff randomly. when they’re patient with my sloth like tendencies and still they find the muse to respond to my threads even if a whole month has passed. i love people that are understanding and don’t mind the wait, because i do promise that i don’t delete anything. it’s there, and its waiting, and its only taking a while because i want to provide you with something good. something that will make you smile, and make you want to pursue the interactions with my muse. i want all this to mean something, and its never because i’m bored of you or your muse or our thread.

my brain just has a filing cabinet i never asked for. 

but honestly, come plot with me, just boop me randomly, send me all the things no matter what it is. i promise you i will LOVE IT and in truth, NOTHING at all makes me HAPPIER than that. and though fair warning i am exhausted a lot which impacts my response speed ooc - it’s honestly never because i don’t want to reply. my timezone as a whole is shitty and my energy levels doubly so, and i want to be sure that once we start talking or plotting, i can give you as much energy as i can spare, as much energy as you deserve. not five minutes of conversation and then i pass out. so if that means taking some time to respond, please understand that i’m trying my best. 

please be patient with me, that’s all i ask. and i promise you, i will make it up to you. as best as i can. as fast as i can. no matter what. 

thank you, i love you, have a amazing day xx 

TAGGED BY: S T O L E N

TAGGING: anyone who actually went through and read this as a whole heckie !! I JUST NEEDED TO GET THIS OUT IN CASE ANYONE WAS CONCERNED BECAUSE I SLOW, PLEASE UNDERSTAND. I’M TRYING MY BEST I LOVE EVERYONE WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL AND ENERGY I PROMISE T.T

[hysteric-for-sterek]

It’s Destiny

 After seeing the Dylan-less trailer for 6B and hearing the rumor of Colton Haynes coming back for 6B but not Tyler Hoechlin, my mind starts up with my now-perfected coping mechanism of inventing happy-fanon reasoning to explain away all the bad thoughts.

For example, Stiles is too busy kicking ass in college, training up to be an amazing FBI agent one day to get tangled up in the goings-on in Beacon Hills nowadays. He’s left the town in the capable (*cough* positive thinking Stiles *cough*) hands of Scott and Liam, who only call him like, once a week now to use and abuse his superior brain and laptop full of supernatural knowledge.

Plus, Lydia’s still in Beacon Hills for another few months too before she starts at MIT, and lets be honest, Lydia’s brain has always been the most superior, she’s just never been as much of a sucker as Stiles to spend all her free time voluntarily jumping into the thick of the drama to save Scott all the time like Stiles was. From what Stiles can gather from all the calls and texts from back home, Lydia’s getting much more involved in the pack lately, much as she always claimed she wouldn’t.

They talk every day, Stiles and Lydia. Ever since that rom-com worthy love confession and movie-star kiss before he’d left for college, Stiles constantly has to keep pinching himself that this is his real life now. He may even have researched all the possible supernatural elements that could have potentially taken over Stiles’ brain and meant this was all a supernatural long-con of his sanity. Because evil curses, magical pixie dust or alternate realities all seem more plausible than Stiles actually leaving his Dad and Scott behind to attend an amazing college in another whole state on a full scholarship, with the goal of one day becoming a legitimate bad-ass FBI agent, while somehow also keeping a long-distance (but totally not imaginary) relationship with the Lydia Martin. These things do not happen to Stiles Stilinski. His life can never be this good.

Which is also probably why he’s constantly battling the niggling feeling inside him that something isn’t quite right. Before he’d left, Scott had asked him how he was going to be able to leave Lydia behind now that he finally had her after all the pining. Stiles had simply responded with “I was willing to wait ten years for my Get-Lydia-Martin plan to work Scott, but I managed to whittle it down to just 4. I think I can manage the long-distance thing for a while.” Scott had given him a look that said he just could not believe Stiles right now, but Stiles hadn’t taken it too seriously because he knew how Scott could be. Just because Scott develops a severe case of tunnel-vision and infatuated obsession as soon as he gets a girlfriend, doesn’t mean Stiles is the same. It didn’t happen with Malia, and it isn’t happening with Lydia. That is fine, it doesn’t mean anything. Right? Of course not. Sure he’d been infatuated with Lydia for years, but he is still able to function as a human being without spending every minute of every day in her presence. He’s pretty sure that’s normal. Unlike Scott who completely ignored everything and everyone else as soon as Allison or Kira were within heartbeat-listening distance, or their names were even mentioned. He’s pretty sure that’s more of a Scott downfall than a Stiles downfall.

Anyway, this is why Stiles didn’t immediately start panicking when he started getting less texts from Lydia throughout the week. She was still sending them regularly enough that Stiles didn’t need to worry that she’d been abducted by goblins or anything, but they just weren’t coming as frequently as they had been when he’d first left. And then yesterday she hadn’t called him at 7. It’s not like they’d specifically made plans to talk at 7, but it had become habit. Lydia always called at 7. Sure, Stiles initiated the majority of their text message conversations, randomly sending her things as they popped into his head throughout the day - when he overheard someone say something funny, when one of his professors said something interesting, when he saw a cute dog - but they both knew his brain was too scattered and easily-distracted to remember to call every evening. Plus, he was often up studying until the wee hours of the morning and had no clue what time it even was. Lydia did NOT appreciate calls at 2am because that’s when Stiles had finally finished his assignment and decided to call her before bed.

So, following this logic, it’s 1am before Stiles looks up from his computer screen and registers the time and the fact that Lydia hadn’t called. He sits there frowning at his computer screen for a few minutes, debating calling her at this hour or waiting until tomorrow and finally decides on going to sleep and waiting until morning. If anything was wrong, he’d have heard about it through one of the others by now. And he doesn’t really want to admit to Lydia that it’s taken him this long to realise she’d never called and to start worrying. I mean, it doesn’t really sound too good, does it?

When Stiles wakes the next morning it’s to way too much sunlight streaming through his window and his eyes blink blearily open to see his roommate sprawled out on his bed on the opposite side of the room. Stiles is confused because his roommate is practically nocturnal. Stiles NEVER sees him in the mornings. Stiles normally leaves for class before the other guy even makes it back to the dorm. And that’s when Stiles realises he’s slept through his alarm and he is late. Very late. So he jumps up, rushes around to get dressed and runs out the door as fast as he can, completely forgetting about checking in with Lydia. Momentarily forgetting about Lydia completely to be honest.

He remembers again around lunchtime and shoots her a hurried message between classes as he shoves a sandwich down his throat and rushes across campus. All it says is a simple “Do I need to send a search party? Missed hearing from you last night.” and there’s a reply by the time he’s sliding into his seat in his next class. “Search party not necessary.”

The weird thing is that when Lydia calls at 7 that evening, they don’t even address it. Stiles feels too guilty about not even realising she hadn’t called to be the one to bring it up and Lydia just starts into a thought about string theory, which leads to 25 minutes of debating various physics laws before Lydia starts yawning and Stiles says goodnight.

It’s 5 days later when Stiles is sprawled out on his bed with his phone pressed to his ear, listening to Scott complaining about Liam not listening to him in favour of making googly eyes at Hayden and Stiles is holding in the call of hypocritical foul, when Stiles gets slammed with a harsh slap of reality. Because Scott just said… what?

“Wait, hold up. What did you just say?”

“That Liam-”

“No after that, about Jackson.”

“Uh, that Jackson actually sided with me and thought we should start training 3 days a week instead of 1.”

“Jackson’s… back… in Beacon Hills…”

“Um, yeah… You didn’t know that? He flew back about a week ago. Something about selling his parents property or something? Didn’t Lydia tell you?” Stiles doesn’t answer and Scott clears his throat awkwardly before continuing. “Must have slipped her mind. I don’t think he’ll be in town for long. Once the houses sell, he’ll be off back to London…”

“Uh huh. Right.”

“Stiles.”

“No, it’s all good dude. It’s fine. I do have to go though. I have a paper to finish,” he lies.

After Stiles hangs up, he lays there staring at the ceiling for a long time. Lydia had missed calling him again two nights ago and neither of them mentioned it again. And the conversations they had had were mostly about classes and assignments and politics. The text messages had been getting few and far between too. Normally, when uncomfortable and unpleasant thoughts like these started infiltrating his brain, Stiles shut-down, dived headfirst into something else to keep his mind occupied and refused to think about it. But tonight he’s letting himself really hash this out in his head. He’s looking at it like he would a particularly difficult math problem. And it’s another hour before he realizes that that itself is a giant clue. He should be feeling more things about this right? Not intellectually debating it like a brain-puzzle to solve. And all their interactions since he started college had been like this too, hadn’t they? Stiles had always been in love with Lydia Martins brain but there… there was nothing romantic about his relationship with Lydia right now, was there? And there hadn’t been in weeks… months even. Stiles had forgotten to call Lydia. Lydia. His girlfriend Lydia.

Jesus Christ. He’s completely lost it, hasn’t he? He’s lost his damn mind. Being with Lydia has been his ultimate endgame plan for longer than he can even remember. And he had her for all of a few months before completely screwing it up. And he doesn’t know how to fix it.

He doesn’t even know if he wants to fix it.

What the hell?!

After another hour of consideration, Stiles proves even more that he’s lost his damn mind and calls Jackson.

“Stilinski?”

“Jackson.” There’s an awkward pause of silence before Stiles starts up again. “Have you changed at all since leaving?”

“Excuse me?”

“All bullshit aside Jackson, I’m not trying to start shit, I’m just- I just want to have an honest conversation with you, OK? All honesty, 5 minutes of your time, then you don’t have to speak to me again.”

Stiles takes Jackson’s silence as an acceptance.

“Do you realize what you did wrong the first time around? Can you admit you were a total asshole and that you’ve changed now?”

“I- Yeah. Yes. I had a lot of… stuff… on my plate. I wasn’t in a good place and moving has helped me sort through things and get… better.”

Stiles figures the fact that Jackson admitted that at all makes the statement believable.

“Did you… do you…” Stiles clears his throat, annoyed that he’s struggling to say what he wants to say.

“I’ve always loved her Stiles. I miss her every day.”

Stiles nods to himself and blinks back the sudden tears in his eyes.

“OK,” he finally manages.

Time seems to move quickly after that. Stiles has what he knows is going to go down as one of the hardest conversations of his entire life with Lydia the day after calling Jackson. He tells her he’s always loved her and always will love her, but that he thinks the kind of love changed over time as he grew up and he just hadn’t seen it happen. She sobs into the phone and tells him she’s so sorry for not telling him about Jackson being back in town and that she wanted to be that person for Stiles but that she couldn’t help still being in love with Jackson even though she still didn’t think he deserved it or that they could ever even make it work.

It took a long few hours of crying and laughing and talking and listening, but eventually both Stiles and Lydia were able to reach the agreement of being the best of friends and Stiles knew it would be a true and life-long friendship with every fibre of his being. He’s lucky. So god-damn lucky. For so many things in his life.

His new-found clarity on this subject has him spontaneously taking a couple of days off school to fly home for the weekend and see his Dad and his pack and give himself a bit of a wake-up call to make sure he remembers to truly appreciate these people in his life. They have a bonfire on the beach with everyone and Stiles has never felt more like he belonged to a big family. When he’s packing his bags back up on Sunday afternoon and getting ready to leave, his heart is filled with gratitude and happiness and he can’t remember feeling this healthy in a long time.

His Dad drops him off at the airport in the cruiser and Stiles is brimming with positivism as he lounges in an uncomfortable airport chair, waiting to board. He has a crossword magazine open on his lap, and he’s humming along to a random song while he chews on his pen and considers a 7 letter word for “Unavoidable End”. And that’s the moment someone who smells quite nice sinks down in the chair right next to him. Stiles frowns slightly because he’s pretty sure the last time he looked up the airport lounge was relatively empty and there were rows and rows of empty chairs that weren’t right next to Stiles so this dude is being pretty creepy, but he doesn’t look up for fear of engaging the creeper in a creepy conversation. Still, Stiles tries his best to ignore the stranger and keeps his head down, focused on his crossword until the man speaks.

“Destiny,” says a very familiar voice and Stiles is startled, snapping his gaze up immediately, finding himself face-to-face with Derek. Stiles’ eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open, his pen falling to his lap. He doesn’t need werewolf hearing to know his heart is beating dub-step right now. Derek just smirks at him and Stiles feels it in his bones. It’s like someone just disconnected a signal-jammer in his body and Stiles’ veins are suddenly pulsing with ‘I MISSED HIM, I MISSED HIM, I MISSED HIM’.

“The answer to 21 down,” Derek continues. “It’s ‘destiny’.”

[8livescatrescue]

I returned from taking Jango on his final journey, to see if Henderson had managed to produce a urine sample for me.  He hadn’t but must have realised how stressed and upset I was because when I said “please Hendo just do me a wee” he popped straight in the litter tray and obliged.   Thus, after several weeks of not driving at all, I made two trips to the vet in the space of a couple of hours.  

Sat outside the vets for an hour in the car whilst they tested the sample to see if there was protein in it so that I could then take relevant medication home with me.  What they found in his urine though wasn’t protein, but sugar! … lots of it!  Henderson had added another diagnosis to his list – now he had hyperthyroid, chronic kidney disease, high blood pressure AND diabetes!  And It was serious enough to need admission.  Lockdown hours meant that the vets were closing soon and we agreed it was best to wait and admit him first thing the following morning.

Thus on Tuesday morning we repeated the nightmare journey to the vets that we’d had with Jango on Monday morning.  Another very tearful car park handover with another lovely lovely vet nurse.  Henderson, unlike Jango, was alive but I feared I’d never see him again.  Conversations with vets had been kind and practical, planning what to do next …. but I’d noted the comments: “he is a very old cat”  “this isn’t a good diagnosis to have”.   Normally I’d have spent time visiting him whilst he was an in patient, and certainly would have been there if it came to him being put to sleep … but it seemed none of this could be possible.   I tentatively asked what would happen if it came to the worst but couldn’t quite bear to hear the answer … so may have misunderstood ….  it might be possible to do it on the car park.  This is in no way a criticism of the vet practice who I believe are doing their absolute best to make a terribly difficult situation as human and bearable as possible.  It’s more an acknowledgement of how agonising it’s been for all of us in these circumstances …. both with poorly animals and poorly humans.

I came home and wept … and waited.  We now had two fewer cats in the house than we’d had a couple of days previously.   The four “teenagers” continued to play out in the garden oblivious (I hope) to all the stress.  Amber our semi feral does her own thing, and I’m guessing dealt with it in her own way.  However Honey and to a slightly lesser extent Flipper were seriously distressed.  Flipper, a vocal cat at any time,  went around the house calling for her lost friends.   Honey paced the house and the garden for several hours – round and round the same circuits.   I’ve not quite seen anything like it before.  It wasn’t randomly roaming around, she was on a route march, feet stomping on the floor …. in through the cat flap, through the kitchen, round the lounge, back through the kitchen, into the conservatory, round the conservatory, back into the kitchen, out the cat flap, into the garden, along the wall, back the other way on the wall, up the garden, back down the garden, in through the cat flap … and repeat, and again … exactly the same circuit … and again …. and again …. and again.   To my horror I found myself feeling quite annoyed with her … I was exhausted, stressed and heartbroken and to watch her in her own way expressing similar (I think) sort of feelings but be completely unable to comfort her was almost more than I could bear.  

Wednesday was Flipper’s birthday … our kitten was 8!  We’ve always made a big deal of her birthday because she’s the only one of the residents who’s exact birthday we know.   She was born here on 6 May 2012 early in the morning.   With the “teenagers” here we at least know the year they were born and the younger ones we can pinpoint within about 2 weeks.  The other older cats though we don’t even know which years they were born.   Jango had been guessed to be 5 years old by the vet when he arrived here 10 years ago – but he could have been anything between about 3 and 9.  Henderson was guessed at 14 three years ago but again there’s a decent margin of error in these things.   This is why we try to make some sort of treat every day …. because you never know when it might be someone’s birthday x

2012

2020

Anyway … Flipper … we’d managed to get some boiled ham … one of her (and Henderson’s) favourites, a few new toys and some cat nip seeds to plant.  I’d looked forward to it … well what else is there during lockdown?   On the day it just wasn’t right though.  How on earth could we celebrate with Jango on his way to the crem and Henderson hooked up to a drip at the vets.  So we put it on hold.

Thursday arrived.  “We need to see what happens in the next 48 hours” were words I dwelled on after Hendo was admitted.  Here we were 48 hours later, each day bracing myself for a death sentence.  And the verdict? … “He can come home later this afternoon”.   Whilst it had been desperately painful to be away from Henderson,  once the prospect of his return was on the horizon my feelings did a double shuffle …. there was delight obviously, but also panic and a realisation of the extent to which him being in someone else’s care had been a relief.   Now it was going to be down to me again to watch him and make day to day, hour to hour decisions.  And of course it had to be a bank holiday the following day.  Can someone explain why when I’m exhausted with work and desperate for a break there isn’t a bank holiday in sight … but the minute we have a poorly cat they are always plentiful and imminent 😦  

Anyway, we arrived home with a slightly better looking Henderson, insulin, syringes, sharps box … and a jar of honey (thanks Aunty Jenny) in case of hypos.  We had a glucometer on order … which arrived Saturday … and were plunged into a world where sticking needles into cats several times a day had to become the new normal.   

All the cats seemed pleased to see him home, and we celebrated Flipper’s birthday just one day late.   

henderson with belated birthday ham

We had to be careful with the “teenagers” who were a little over enthusiastic with the head bumps and nearly knocked him off his feet.  At one point I think he only stayed upright through Dasher’s head bump because Kevin was doing the same on the other side …. equal and opposite forces and all that.  Everyone was pleased to have him home … he’s a very popular cat.

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In typical Henderson fashion, he’s been pretty much impervious to the insulin, as he is to the other meds he’s taking.  Despite being tiny and frail he seems to need a dose large enough to floor a rhinoceros to have any impact on him.  We’ve spend the last 6 weeks returning to the vet every couple of weeks for more blood tests and having his insulin dose increased based on the results.

It’s all been pretty daunting and scary, especially while the grief of losing Jango is still so terribly raw.  However he’s still here, he’s enjoying life and is a good patient in terms of tolerating the needles.   I’ve reached the point where I don’t feel stressed at all about doing his injections … it’s something I can do whilst the kettle is boiling in a morning and whilst tea is cooking at night.  I still get anxious about doing the blood tests … it’s not nice trying to make him bleed, even though thankfully it’s a only a very tiny drop of blood that’s needed. 

Enjoying the sun

It’s been hard working from home since we lost Jango … our main office manager and sun tracker.  However it’s been a relief to still be home and be able to check on Henderson multiple times during the day.  There has been a big shake up in the office of course.   We’ve had to advertise for some of the key posts.  There have been applications, appointments, redeployments … some promotions and disappointments.   Catch up on all the office gossip in our next post 😉

  A tail I don’t quite know how to tell (2) I returned from taking Jango on his final journey, to see if Henderson had managed to produce a urine sample for me.