#not only does he have covid but he’s not even trying to mask or isolate

[ohello0]

Biden declares covid “over”

Studies begin to show that covid causes long term multi system damage including cognitive decline

Biden gets covid multiple times

Biden starts to decline cognitively

Dems start asking biden to drop from the race

Biden refuses

Biden gets covid again

[kisses4mizu]

BES characters when you get covid (directed to fem)

note: set in 2029-2020 when covid was quite serious!

Mizu

- her time to ✨ shine ✨ as she cooks for her beloved!! (can only heat up soup and make some instant noodles…) but honestly, she’d try her best to find some videos to practise it for you

- literally shit talks the sickness like it’s some yucky problematic guy LMAO

- “does covid not have any other bitches to go to? like why does this dumbass have to go for my girl..”

- isolation? nope never heard of that!

- she’d take every chance she could to be with you and help you recover like maybe kissing ur forehead if it feels hot asf or massaging your sore muscles etc

- because we all know damn well that this lady can never ever get sick (especially in the current!au like girl, you barely eat and constantly get stabbed, how tf aren’t you dead 😭)

- anyways, she breaks the rules just to be with you :3

Akemi

- at first, cried that u got covid :( especially with the rising cases of death

- tbh a little scared to touch you 😓

- but honestly, breaks the rules as well just as much (or if not more) but she’s way more careful compared to Mizu so she wears a mask 💪

- puts your medicine in a medicine box ensure you eat what you need to everyday + sets up those timers that alert her immediately when you need to take some extra supplements or eat!

- “have you taken your vitamin c tablets? how about the fish oil? wait, why is the magnesium pill still in the box? you didn’t take the afternoon supplements?”

- plays games between the bedroom door especially the guessing game bc of how easy it is to do without physical contact (similar to akinator) (honestly very fun, try it out sometime!)

Taigen

- knows nothing much about medicines and all so to make himself feel better, he wraps bandages around you 😭

- honestly also does it because he likes the way you laugh at his gesture <3

- compared to the two ladies, he abides to the rules very closely and stays away from you ☹️ the max he’ll go near you is probably 1m distancing bc he’s nervous abt how getting close to you might affect both u and him

- but would text or call you everyday even if he was home just to speak to you, GET ME A MAN LIKED THAT

- “heyy, you know what I heard about mary from work? apparently, her ex, that only lasted like a month, is now saying her best friend!..” (proceeds to yap and gossip 🤭)

- buys u LOADS of gifts to give after you beat cocid (he knows you’re strong enough to do so! (•̀ᴗ•́ )و)

[kontextmaschine]

Tropes of Covid-worrier Twitter:

Shibboleths

"Covid is airborne!" - that the virus is spread through exhaled aerosols, not airborne moisture droplets or surface-tainting "fomites". A point they were genuinely more right on than authorities early on that still has some application – that only N95-type masks or respirators reliably stop transmission, not fabric or paper surgical masks. However, largely an ingroup signal at this point, they seem to believe that authorities not pointedly declaring it apropos of nothing causes or constitutes failure.

Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes: a DIY air filter made of box fans and furnace filters, because above. They love these things and are always frustrated that schools and public places won't welcome wild-eyed maniacs trying to set up their own homemade science fair projects everywhere.

CO2 testing: they carry around little CO2 monitors and are always tutting about how high the readings they get are, less in their own right than because it's a clear sign of a poorly ventilated space where exhalations are not being cleared. Once again, makes them look like maniacs.

"SARS-CoV-2": they kind of performatively always call Covid this, even using more characters of a tweet. I dunno if the intention was to differentiate the syndrome from the virus, or if putting it in the SARS lineage was supposed to draw on residual associations there, but by now it mostly seems like flaunting yourself as savvy.

Something there but iffy

That danger and damage increases with multiple infections. It is true that Danger(Case1 + Case2) > Danger(Case1), which means that Case2 (and subsequents) has some nonzero risk, but they often act like Danger(Case1) < Danger(Case2), which I don't see as well established at all.

Pretty convinced

The danger of Covid now lies largely not in the initial "acute" respiratory infection, but in the chance of later "long Covid" progression to other organ systems, that may render the sufferer vulnerable to later mortality. Damaged heart muscles lead to later heart attacks; blood vessels to strokes & aneurysm; immune systems to later infection (as seems to be making this winter an atrocious pediatric respiratory infection season, or made Jair Bolsonaro an infection piñata). I myself can attest to later blood pressure swings that cause fainting. That this explains much of the increase in "all-cause mortality" above and beyond that attributed to Covid itself since the beginning of the pandemic.

Not convinced

Immunity from prior infections or immunization does not durably reduce the severity of future ones. This is out of keeping with the experience of other coronaviruses already in regular human circulation and mutating into new variants, which after caught repeatedly throughout life become trivial. My own experience has my current infection (somewhere from my 4th to 6th, producing symptom "echoes" of the "long" portions of 1 and 2) as the worst since 2, but 2 was much less harsh than 1 and 3-current was nothing. I suspect this might be a stronger case against the background of a generally decreasing trend of severity. Also it might be the case that immunity wanes so subsequent cases are easier if they occur before it wears off (and leaves new immunity of its own), in which case attempts to stop any particular case with masking, isolation, or air treatment might make population-level health worse by lengthening average time between infections past acquired immunity duration.

"Schools should have been reworking their ventilation systems for anti-viral effect!" My father was the solicitor for our school district, in which capacity one of the things he worked with was contracting. At one point the district upgraded ventilation systems in maybe a third of their secondary schools at once. From scoping through passing a bond, soliciting and evaluating bids to work completion (when the construction market was slack enough for contractors to hire labor and buy materials cheap) was 8 years. In a small subset of schools, that already had ductwork at all, in a rich school district where the bond passed on the first try. To attempt this for every school building in the US – let alone other public places – would likely exceed the national HVAC construction capacity for decades. The only precedent I can think of, the drive to rework hospital ventilation systems against Legionnaires, affected far fewer buildings and institutions that were then fairly flush with income streams atop the healthcare economy, still required extensive federal subsidy, and was ongoing decades later.

[logicheartsoul]

This day, this week has been entirely too long and it’s only half way through it and it’s going to just keep getting longer. I keep vacillating between being tired and then angry and then tired again and I am not having it

Cut for lengthy warning and details

So long story short, my dad gave my mom Covid and I live with them. The thing is, he was irresponsible about it all — not masking, not bothering to use an in home test when there was signs to make sure it wasn’t it, not trying to rest and get better, instead going about all the spaces in our house maskless and getting into personal spaces, like my mom’s, and getting her sick.

And it pisses me off so for so many reasons, but my mom’s health got a bit bad for about a year and a half now and while it’s manageable, something like this can possibly make things worse for her, we won’t know how badly until she gets through it.

And all these lectures about responsibility to family and other bullshit and yet he couldn’t even manage to put a little consideration to do something that wasn’t TOO HARD TO DO, to make sure he doesn’t make her life harder. Like. What the fuck.

And then I get fucking rage and almost red eyes because this is not the first time him not masking got him Covid — it happened back in 2020 when he and my mom were on the other side of the world to visit family (and specifically my grandma who died a month ish before the lockdown) and while everyone and their mother was smart enough to try to mask, he didn’t. He wasn’t entirely diligent about it at the time and probably has given me trauma about dealing with this being stuck on the other side of the world. The seriousness at the time was the only thing that made him be very diligent about masking when he got back. Now he’s like those others who “don’t think it’s too bad” if you get it and “respects others who want to mask but not me unless it’s mandated in an area I’m going into (like this doctor’s office)”.

And even, even having been chastised by the medical staff at the doctor’s appointment I had today (I go to the same GP as my folks, this was my first day), he still doesn’t bother to mask and walks around with no care. I mask, my mom masks, as we await my test results (coz I asked to get it done too, even though that wasn’t what my appointment is about) and what, does he NOT care about giving it to his child??? Like. Do I need to have a positive result to make him realize something? No amount of screaming it at him from me or my mom made him change his perspective and think “gee, I shouldn’t want to get my family sick”.

I’m just tired, so tired.

The test was the last thing before my appointment ended so they said they’d call if there was any news. The nurse said that if I don’t hear anything that’s a good thing, no news is good news. But taking advice from a friend and taking a home test in a couple of days to see if that’s still true.

It’s like this could’ve been prevented. The symptoms he presented weren’t entirely bad yet but he could’ve taken a home test, he could’ve isolated himself until he was sure, he could’ve actually not moved around much and get into everyone’s personal space (I tried avoiding him when he thought it was the flu coz I don’t want that either rn???) or masked indoors for a bit.

Just want this to be over with already.

[nonbinaryhatboxghost]

2:33pm. Been a minute. I am still overall doing okay. The Maine trip I mentioned back in September did successfully happen. All of the stuff that was in Maine was great. I got to experience so much New England autumn. Quality time with my dad went well. My Stephen King nerddom was very much indulged. Maybe I’ll post pictures at some point.

The RI part of the visit was not so successful. Seeing my grandparents was great, but being back in the RI house that I lived in for so long was a terrible experience. I don’t think I can ever stay in that house again. Without Jack (my late family cat, he passed away this year at age 19), there’s nothing really there to hide the sad cycle that’s happening in that house.

Work bullshit continues. That is admittedly my norm now.

Personal life stuff is generally going well. My anxiety does continue trying to find ways to ruin it, but I’m doing my best to not let that happen.

I recently did a week and a half of cat-sitting/apartment-sitting for a couple friends. The cat-sitting part went great, she was a sweetheart to me. That definitely helped with the isolation part of the gig. I really didn’t think hard enough about what staying in an apartment without a car and far from my social circle would do to my brain.

I’ve accepted that December holidays no longer make me happy due to many memories of forced interactions and pressure to Do Something & Be Happy. I instead did a couple of low-key things this year that were what I wanted.

I’m feeling a bit off today because I’m doing some mild self-isolation. A friend of mine recently tested positive for COVID and while I have tested negative, and it’s been 5 days since I last saw said friend, I felt like I should be safe and stay in. It’s also cold and I’ve been so mentally exhausted from work that I’ve been using this extended weekend mostly to catch up on sleep and recharge.

But while I have done things like go to a movie theater or sometimes out to eat over the last couple months, I feel like I’m reverting a little bit to lockdown mode. Maybe it’s the rising case numbers, maybe it’s hearing about all the airline shenanigans. Maybe it’s my whole hiding-from-everything instinct that happens when I’m low or upset.

A little while ago, I became very fixated on The Weeknd. There was a live performance of his that I found from 2020. Specifically the November 2020 American Music Awards. LA was still in lockdown. He walks up and down an empty bridge street that is lined with fireworks. At the end, the camera pulls back and up and up as the city is shown behind the bridge, and The Weeknd gets smaller and smaller. Fireworks burst outside of the bridge. I have revisited this performance more times than I can count not just because of the music, but because it captures the specific time and place and feeling of lockdown for me in 2020. The Weeknd sings over and over again “save your tears for another day” as the city behind him is quiet and empty, even though there are still people there trapped inside their homes.

I keep rewatching it. I think it may be because I still feel trapped. Again, I’ve been outside, I’ve interacted with folks. But I still wear a mask at work every day and have just accepted that I’m one of the only people in the office that does that. If I’m invited to a gathering of more than half a dozen people, it is more likely that I won’t go. I left the choir I was a part of because I didn’t feel safe singing inside with a large group of folks without masks. I made the mistake of going to the zoo with a couple friends on the 26th and was completely unprepared for the LARGE number of people and families there, most of whom were unmasked. I was masked the whole time but I still felt unsafe.

Wearing a mask isn’t a problem for me. I just know that I can’t keep cutting myself off and distracting myself with fixations long-term. I need a social or creative outlet again, but I don’t feel safe enough to look for one.

On a petty note, Avatar: The Way of Water is a bad movie. I recommend not giving it money. It has enough.

[vrisrezis]

Heyy! Can I request a yandere alphabet for post covid Butters/Viktor Chaos?<:

Affection: how do they show their love and affection? How intense would it get?

He buys you things. He’s got the money. It’s constant though and it’s overbearing how much he buys you things, to top it off he acts like buying you things is the only way to show you love someone.

Blood: How messy are they willing to get when it comes to their darling?

He doesn’t like mess, when he kills it’s planned and therefor not much of a mess. He really likes his suit after all.

Cruelty: How would they treat their darling once abducted? Would they mock them?

He wouldn’t mock them unless they tried to escape and failed, otherwise he’s really affectionate and tends to their needs. He’d have to be driven really far to abduct you though.

Darling: Aside from abduction, would they do anything against their darling’s will?

Nope. He wants to keep doing things against your will at a minimum.

Exposed: How much of their heart do they bare to their darling? How vulnerable are they when it comes to their darling?

As a yandere, he’s actually very closed off about his emotions and is afraid to open up to you. In fact, everyone believes he doesn’t care much for you.

Fight: How would they feel if their darling fought back?

He would mock them probably, and tell them there’s no point in fighting, they’re stuck here. Secretly though it’s an annoyance.

Game: Is this a game to them? How much would they enjoy watching their darling try to escape?

He doesn’t actually enjoy it or see it as a game but would claim he does, truth is he just doesn’t want his darling to see him be the slightest bit vulnerable.

Hell: What would be their darling’s worst experience with them?

He ended up degrading you for spending too much time with ken, he said the most vile and awful shit about you to your face with the fullest intention of making you cry.

Ideals: What kind of future do they have in mind for/with their darling?

He doesn’t have anything planned since you guys quite literally live in the future. He just wants a life with you. And also a life with you where you behave.

Jealousy: Do they get jealous? Do they lash out or find a way to cope?

Yeah, usually deals with it by telling you not to talk to the person or else he will hurt you or them.

Kisses: How do they act around or with their darling?

He’s pretty sweet and normal outside of when he’s feeling jealous or something. People just assume he does crazy shit when he’s jealous.

Love letters: How would they go about courting or approaching their darling?

He acts casual about it, probably approaches you like he just wants a hookup (because he again, doesn’t want to be vulnerable around you), it ends up becoming something more. But that was his plan all along.

Mask: Are their true colors drastically different from the way they act around everyone else?

In general he acts different around everyone. Nobody ever sees his true colors, not even you.

Nemesis: Who do they consider a rival?

Kenny. He’s a smart guy, he’d say even smarter than him. He never knows what he may do to try to win you over.

Oppression: How many rights would they take away from their darling?

None. But if they defy him he forces them to be isolated alone in their room and takes away any form of entertainment. Kinda like being grounded.

Patience: How patient are they with their darling?

He has no patience tbh lol. He acts like he has all the patience in the world but he really doesn’t .

Quit: If their darling dies, leaves, or successfully escapes, would they ever be able to move on?

Not exactly, he will convince himself he’s fine though and may even pretend they never existed and that he doesn’t know them.

Regret: Would they ever feel guilty about abducting their darling? Would they ever let their darling go?

No. He doesn’t care, as long as he has them to himself.

Stigma: What brought about this side of them (childhood, curiosity, etc)?

His shitty childhood.

Tears: How do they feel about seeing their darling scream, cry, and/or isolate themselves?

He puts on a little smile and consoles them, “D’aww dont do this hun” it’s one of the few times he seems to actually care, it feels sarcastic and mocking though.

Unique: Would they do anything different from the classic yandere?

Not really

Vice: What weakness can their darling exploit in order to escape?

Using any classic lines his parents have used on him when they were gonna ground him, it’s gonna be kinda hard to use those exact lines if you haven’t known him since childhood though. Alternative stuff that works though is claiming you’re disappointed in him.

Wit’s end: Would they ever hurt their darling?

No. He doesn’t want to hurt you.

Xoanon: How much would they revere or worship their darling? To what length would they go to win their darling over?

I think he’s a worshipper but in secret, he doesn’t want you to know that he truly thinks the world of you and that he’s just utter garbage.

Yearn: How long do they pine after their darling before they snap?

A couple years. Like three years probably.

Zenith: Would they ever break their darling?

Yes but he tells himself it’s for your own good. He would only do it if you kept fighting him and defying him.

[sergeanttomycaptain]

Just got this (in part) from a friend of mine, and I.... what???

Well, aside from these being TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES....

The amount of mental gymnastics it takes to deal with this x.x *grumbles myself into oblivion*

Personally, I couldn't care less about what the government says. I lean heavily on what frontline workers say. I worked in the medical field for over 10 years and my SIL is a respiratory therapist. I've seen a chunk of the dark underbelly that is the pandemic. Government just so happens to support (kind of... ish...) what frontline workers and experts say and pushes what it can on the state/federal level to get things done. That's why I support mandates and public health plans like masks and vaccines and social distancing. I don't blindly say "well if the government says so" to whatever comes along. There's a lot of things they did horribly, especially in the beginning. But we can't fix a public health crisis without government and global assistance and cooperation. And if I ever want to understand the reasons for a mandate or a safeguard, healthcare workers are where I go first. So just do me a solid and jot that down.

In CACW Steve was not against government regulation, he was against taking the first willy-nilly psudo-solution dropped into the Avengers' laps just to get back into the good graces of the public. The only possible correlation to Covid with this would be if we had gone with what we were first told in February 2020: "oh lol I guess there's this weird virus popping up, but they're probably going to shut down flights in and out of the country for a few weeks so it's nothing we need to worry about" and stuck with that all this time. Oh man, remember those days? Thing is, we did do what covid deniers said we should do in the beginning: nothing.

Steve wanted more time to make decisions in order to foster a better relationship between enhanced individuals and those in power who are responsible when things go south. He refused to be forced into them out of misplaced emotion and desperation. The fine print matters. His priority has always been to support public safety. It's why in every conflict you can see him actively going out of his way to limit and mitigate the damage they cause. Is he perfect at it? No. Does he care that he isn't? Yes. Steve also knew the Accords were not drawn up in a day, and there was a reason its creation was kept from them. He wanted, at the very least, to be part of any decision making, part of the solution, and even to help write that two inch thick book that got thrown at them at the last moment. He didn't even get so far as the option to. When Covid first really started to haul in, no one had a clue what was going on. People were dying, hospitals were overflowing, the chain of commerce was in shambles, and quite literally everyone was scrambling for answers. The start of Covid is not comparable to the start of CACW. At all.

Steve would have been on the ball had he felt the Accords was actually for everyone's collective good, and not just certain people who had more than a small chance of wanted the leash to a private military force to do with as they pleased. Not only that, but the Accords does not come close to addressing the sheer monumental scale of global public safety like Covid regulations do (or try to), it was about international control over enhanced individuals; when they could do things, how they could do things, why they could do things, and every personal freedom they, and they alone, would be forced to give up in order to continue saving the world (an optional career choice). A handful of people in a world of billions. It was a conflict of interest, heavily discriminatory, and a smoking gun in the wrong hands, sure, but isolated. Like a car wreck on the highway. If you're not directly involved, at most all you can do at is watch it, discuss it, meme it, and move on with little to no further thought about it.

Covid affects everyone alike, regardless of your political affiliation, religion, employment, gender, age, where you live, etc. It's killed and permanently debilitated infants, young children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. It's killed disabled people with a laundry list of health problems, and it's killed healthy 25 year olds in the prime of their lives. No one can avoid the reach of it unless they live in the mountains. If the Accords had been intended for literally every person alive and we all witnessed it's creation from first word to final draft, you can bet your life savings everything in CACW would have gone much, much differently. It is not comparable in the slightest.

And even as things were, Steve almost signed when Tony said they could amend the Accords and help Bucky. Steve picked up the pen. What stopped him was finding out that Wanda was under house arrest for no reason--No. Reason.--other than Tony felt it was a good idea to protect her by detaining her against her will. And that's exactly what Steve was afraid of. When it comes to Covid regulations, people are still subject to the rule of law, and you have your basic human rights. A right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, right to work and education, etc. But it's not a perfect system. What do you do when allowing you your right to freedom of expression/opinion infringes on someone else's right to life? It's not enough to ask everyone to just be careful and mindful of their fellow human beings. Clearly. You can tell someone "hey I'm sensitive to loud noises could you please keep your voice down" and be met with "WHY ARE YOU TONE POLICING I HAVE A RIGHT TO YELL IF I WANT TO." Giving people the "right" to decide whether they want to care or not care about their fellow man is exactly how we got here. Mandates, like laws, are in place so one person's idiocy has less of a chance of killing someone else.

The difference between the willingness to coexist--understanding there needs to be an equity in how rights and needs are met--and the insistence to personal freedoms--over and above collective freedoms--is insane. There are compromises, but the personal freedom side seems to think a mask and a vaccine mandate is an equivalent injustice to dying of a 100% preventable viral disease. And every time I hear that comparison, it makes me want to yeet myself into the sun. Wish I could feel like we left eugenics in the past but nope, it's alive and well.

The entirety of CACW gave a snapshot of the Avengers' lives. It covers the span of less than a week. Covid, as I write this in Jan 2022, has been going on for over two years. If someone has better suggestions for public safety, frontline worker support, and options for the millions upon millions of people who have died and will continue to die, I'd love to hear them. But instead we're constantly stuck listening to endless criticism of the way things are being done, while simultaneously doing nothing to help or change that. It's infuriating. When those who demand everyone value the life of a fetus refuse to extend the same value to the life of an autonomous human being, I lose my mind a little more.

The problem with comparing Covid mandates to what Team Cap was up against with the Accords is seeing Team Cap purely as an opposition to governing authority, which is entirely missing the point of what their motivations and goals were. Team Cap is about protecting the rights of everyone, and not standing by when very obviously discriminatory and exceptionally dangerous policies are made. The demand for individual rights during a global pandemic comes at the cost of ignoring every voice snuffed out after begging people to be careful and the voices of those who are doing everything they can to keep those of us who are left safe. Ignoring a public health crisis doesn't sound like Team Cap to me at all. Steve never once said "I don't understand why you're overreacting about this, only 20 people died in Lagos and they probably lied on the report anyway to make it sound worse than it is. What about the thousands we left alive?" he said "people died, and that's on me." Every death hits him hard. He did not ignore the other side of the equation. He didn't say the threat wasn't there, or that people were being unreasonable about what they rose up with concerns about how the Avengers conducted themselves. What he said was that if he were going to be held to the expectations of someone else outside the Avengers, he wanted to know what their agenda was first. The first option given doesn't, and shouldn't, have to be the only one. He refused to place blind faith in an untrusted and unproven authority, and when push came to shove, he ensured that authority could not kill anyone [just because], even when it did in the end cost him his freedom.

The thing is, nothing done will ever seem important or realistic when you don't believe bad things are happening. Team Cap could have walked away and saved themselves so much pain and suffering, but they kept going. They knew what they were risking taking action, and they knew what they were risking of they did nothing. And even with all that, nothing they did came to an even remote degree of the impact Covid has had. Team Cap's actions had a very localized reach and potential for genuine injury, but they remained on the side of protecting life and rights first and foremost. One death does not justify another. Every human has the right to due process, even if they are guilty. And the death toll in CACW did not reach into the hundreds of thousands like Covid has. It was not a threat to the health and safety of every person in every community on every continent on this planet. Every time someone dies from complications that arise in full or in part because of Covid, the chasm between the two sides of "you're infringing on my rights" and "we have to do something" gets deeper.

And seeing Covid mandates repeatedly compared to some of the worst atrocities our world has ever seen is something else... I can't even articulate the level of rage it makes me feel. And when the rage ebbs, it just makes me intensely sad.

[windfighter]

Frontier and the Pandemic

Currently rotating this in my head so I'm gonna make y'all rotate it as well :3

The moment Covid-19 starts spreading Kouichi tells everyone in the group that they need to make sure to wash their hands and wear masks. He really only manages to convince Junpei and Izumi

Tomoki catches Covid pretty soon after it starts spreading in Japan. It's not much worse than a cold and he laughs at Kouichi for being so worried about it

Takuya gets kicked off his football team because they don't want to play with the person who must have brought it to Italy. They're completely ignoring the fact that he has lived in Italy for over 10 years already because racism

Takuya doesn't handle being kicked off the team very well, but since his respons is to isolate himself in his very big house he at least manages to avoid covid.

Kouichi gets it from working at the hospital treating people with covid. He brings it home to Izumi.

Izumi gets somewhat bad from it. Colors gets weirder for her again. She's sick for about a month and even after that she's still absolutely exhausted.

Kouichi gets really bad. He has to be hospitalized and is at one point close to dying

Junpei avoids catching it from his partners, mostly because Kouichi early on told him to stay in the apartment he has closer to the opera because Kouichi knew there was a huge chance he'd bring it home.

Junpei does feel bad for not being there to take care of Kouichi and Izumi while they're sick and blames himself for Kouichi becoming that ill from it. He's obviously wrong, but it's hard to be seperated from your partners like that

Junpei sings opera on his balcony every evening to help raise the spirits of the neighbourhood in these trying times. There's an old couple nearby that sings along and another couple that dances to it. It's a wonderful thing in an otherwise terrible period

Kouji is in America when it hits, helping his friend R.A. Coon study how the urban lifestyle affects the life of racoons. He gets beaten up by a couple of idiots, but Ruki saves his ass (and then teaches him rock climbing, but that's a completely different story)

Due to his solitary lifestyle Kouji would have avoided it, except he had to go to the hospital after getting beaten up, and caught it from a person there who refused to wear their mask. He doesn't get super ill from it, but it does completely screw up his sense of smell. It's still messed up a year later and he has trouble eating because of it.

(which obviously worries Kouichi who just wants him to move to Italy so he can take care of his baby brother and make sure he's eating like he should)

Junpei does eventually catch it as well, but he gets a mild variant that's not much worse than a somewhat insistant cold. It makes him feel even worse about not being able to help Kouichi and Izumi.

Tomoki catches it a second time and while losing his sense of smell and taste for a week was meh, it still wasn't as bad as Kouichi made it sound like. He apologizes for underestimating the illness when he hears about how bad Kouichi got from it though.

Takuya moves back to Japan when the worst is over and joins a football team there instead since he can no longer trust his old teammates. The first match between Japan and Italy after that becomes very intense

[spencerhotchner]

Alternative {spencer reid}

Chapter 1 

summary: Since quarentine was announced, Y/N decided to rewatch all seasons of Criminal Minds. On a lonely night she wished she could be in that universe instead of this. What happens when she wakes up in 2008 in Quantico?

warnings: angst, a very confused reader, regular cm stuff and my grammar (if you find anything else pls lmk

word count: 2k

a/n: i have this idea while watching a movie about parallel universes and all, so i just wanted to try this out. it will be a 10 parts series! im not really sure about this, i think i kinda hate it but im posting it anyways lmao. i hope you gonna enjoy!

series masterlist

part 1 | part 2

You woke up feeling dizzy and with a major headache. At first you thought it was because you drank a whole lot of wine last night but then you saw yourself in a room you never saw before. You stoop up quickly trying to understand where you were and how did you end up there. You were sure that you have never been in this place before, and it was scaring you that you showed up in there.

There was a mirror nailed to the wall in from of you almost forcing you to look at your own body, that made you notice that you were still wearing the same clothes from last night, but you weren’t home. Not being home was odd given by the fact you stayed there with your family and two friends you invited over, since there’s a whole freaking pandemic going on and you for sure did not want to get sick or get other people sick. 

“Did I get kidnapped?” you think out loud. “No, I just watch too much Criminal Minds.” you tell yourself, trying to calm down.

You reach for the face mask placed on the nightstand, getting ready to leave this random place and go home. You tried not to freak out when you realized your phone was gone and the only cellphone in there was probably as old as your grandmother. You dialed your moms number about five times and all of them went on voicemail, making you curse mentally. 

This can’t be happening. Not to me.

As soon as you leave the apartment you were in you realized you weren’t in your hometown, definitely not. It was crowded, like, really crowded and no one was wearing any face masks. Where did the freaking pandemic go? You wondered while you felt like a misfit for being the only one wearing it. 

“Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?” you ask an old lady walking by.

“You’re on Main Street, sweetheart.” she says.

“No, um, I mean the city.” you watched as the old lady looked at you with a funny face, as if she was calling you crazy on her mind.

“We’re in Quantico, dear.”

“Quantico?” you repeat, mostly for yourself then for her. The lady started at you like you were an alien. “Thank you so much, ma’am.”

The air started to go low on you, how did you get to Virginia, anyway? That was across the country from where you lived, Bellevue in Washington state. You started lost walking, trying to understand what the hell was going on. It felt like you were on a parallel universe, like you were in a dream but couldn't wake up and it sure felt very real. You stoped a jornal shop taking a lot at the last newspaper in there, trying to figure if something happened that you were missing. However, nothing reported there shocked you, what did, though, was the date. 

July 1st, 2008

You were about to ask someone about it when you bumped into a blonde woman, falling on the ground. As soon as you looked up, you almost chocked yourself. If the day was already weird, this was even weirder. A.J Cook was standing right in front of you with a concerned look. You couldn't really say anything, just staring at her like she wasn't real. It was weird seeing her in front of you after only seeing her through screens. 

“I’m so sorry!” she said as she offered a hand for you to get up. “Are you ok?”

“I- um, yes! I’m fine.” you san, getting the dirt out of your outfit. “I’m a big fan of yours! Wish I had my phone here to take a picture but- sorry.“ you stoped talking, realizing she probably doesn’t care.

“Big fan of me? Wow, howcome somebody’s a fan of me?” she sounds surprised.

“Well, you’re on Criminal Minds.” you say as it was obvious. 

She looked at you as if you were out of your mind. Not that you weren't thinking otherwise at the moment, anyways. 

“I’m on what now?” she asked.

Maybe you got confused and she was the wrong person, but she looked so much like her to not be her. If they were not the same person, then definitely twins. This was so weird, once again, you found yourself asking ‘what the hell’ mentally.

“You’re JJ, Jennifer Jareau, FBI Agent and all.” you say, trying one more time. “Behaviour Analysis Unit...”

“Yea, that‘s me.” she let a nervous laugh comes out of her mouth. “How do you know me?”

‘This is weird’ you thought. How does she not understand where you know her from? Literally Criminal Minds, like you said at first. ‘Maybe this is all a dream.’

“I saw you on tv” you try.

“Oh, I see! You like law enforcement?” she asks you.

“Oh yes, I’m in law-school to be a judge someday.” you answered. “The show, all of it just makes me wanna put all them bad guys in jail.” you say, laughing a bit. 

“The show...? What?” you hear her whisper, but decide to ignore it. “What’s the mask about?” JJ asks, making you look at her surprised.

“Um, covid-19?” you say like it’s obvious, because it is.

“Oh, sure...” she smiles as she says it, almost like she's only agreeing because she won't discuss it. “Great talking to you, really, but I gotta go, FBI duty calls.” she jokes.

You smile at her watching carefully as she picks up her phone from her pocket and pick up a call. That phone looked awfully old, like 2000’s old. Why would a famous actress have that kinda of phone? Then, you looked around trying to understand more about what was going on. It was all too out of place.

First, nobody wearing masks, not even a single person but you. Second, you were in a city in which is miles away from your own. Third, a famous actress acted like she’s nobody. And fourth, the date on the calendar said 2008.

If it wasn’t just impossible I would say I time travelled into Criminal Minds universe.

After standing there for literal 10 minutes trying to figure it out what you were going to do, you decide to go to the police department. After all, you may have been abducted, right? Because you didn’t have any knowledge of the place, you took quite some time to get there. As soon as you got there you sigh in relief, that has been quite a walk and damn, you were tired of this situation. 

“Excuse me, ma’am, can you help me?” you ask to the lady standing behind the counter.

“Sure, dear. What do you need?” she looks up at you, taking her glasses of her face.

“I think I might have been abducted?” you start. “I woke up in this random apartment.”

“Maybe you had a one-night stand.” she said putting back her glasses.

“No! I am sure I didn’t because first of all, there’s a pandemic going on, second of all I was in Bellevue in Washington state when I went to sleep.” you yell, involuntarily, desperate to make her believe in you. 

“Miss, I’m gonna need you to calm down or you will be escorted out of the building. You’re probably on drugs, there's nothing we can do for you.”

“Fuck you.” you say as you watch her face get all red.

Frustrated. That could define what you were feeling, scared and worried could do the work, as well. What were you going to do now? Go to the FBI to see if they could freaking understand why you simply appeared in Quantico? Didn't sound like a bad idea in your mind as you decided to just try it out. After all, you were already pretty screwed up, it would worth a shot.

You reached for your back pocket, hoping that the money you shoved in there more than a week ago would still be in there. Bingo! You pull out a 20 dollar bill out of it and the next thing you know you’re getting into a cab asking him to take you to the FBI. Now that’s something you never thought would happen. The travel was quite quick, in 20 minutos you were standing in front of that big isolated building. It looked like it was taken straight out of your favorite show, that was insane. 

The wind blew hard on you when you got out of the vehicle, making you shiver a little, that reminded you that you did not have any clothes nor money to buy more. God, you did not even have where to go. You didn't even get the chance to get into the building as a big man steps in front of you, blocking your way. 

“Miss, you're not allowed in this building.” he said without much expression. 

“But, sir-” you started, as you saw he was about to interrupt you, you go on. “Ive been abducted and I don't know where or how the hell did I get in here, I’m completely hopeless... Please.” you beg him.

He started at you for a couple of seconds, that felt like centuries for you, just to sigh at you.

“Ok, follow me.” he said. “Do not make me regret this.” 

“I-I won’t, sir.” you were quick to answer. 

The agent asked another man to cover up for him as he led me into the building. Once again you found yourself admired of how much it did look like a Criminal Minds episode in there, if you weren't totally desperate you'd be amused. Soon, you two were out of the elevator on floor 8, leading with the words Behavior Analysis Unit quite big. 

“Can you take her to Agent Jareau, please?” the man said to someone who passed by, who simply agreed. 

Now, that's a funny coincidence, there's actually an Agent Jareau in the BAU. 

You followed the woman with questioning trying to stay calm when you saw Matthew Gray Gubler sitting on a desk reading some book in Reid style, almost like he was Spencer himself. If you had any doubts you were going crazy, that was the final proof. You stoped walking, taking a stare at him and then at the Agent that stared a you like you were an alien.

“Is there something wrong?” she asks you. “Miss, are you ok?”

You were unable to answer for a few seconds when you finally opened you mouth, still trying to figure it out how to say what was on your mind without sounding completely insane.

“Is that Dr. Spencer Reid?” 

And that was all you’re able to say because as soon as you let his name out of your mouth he looked up at you, trying to somehow recognize you. You were sure, that time, that you never looked - and sounded - as insane as right now. 

“Yes, that's me.” he answers. 

His voice was the last thing you could hear before everything go black. Maybe you were finally going to wake up. Maybe. 

[beautifulletdownfics]

Terrible to Meet You - A Harry Styles One Shot - Act 4, And love blooms in hearts not fields

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Harry wants to get out of the house. Alex wants to get home.

Alex meets Harry at at crossroads. Harry meets Alex on a one way street.

A coffee shop OU fic feat. lattes, lamingtons & that Great Unfathomable Feeling.

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Story Page Here Terrible to Meet You Playlists My Masterlist Here

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7 Minutes 'It doesn't seem like long, but my whole world has changed'

Harry's insides were shaking.

He could feel it vibrating up and down his spine, circling his ribcage and then settling uncomfortably at the back of his throat. The nerves and anxiety sped around his body the closer to the Heathrow they got.

Tears threatened to pierce his eyes each time he looked over at Alex beside him. She was staring out the window saying silent goodbyes to London as they drove. 

Harry really didn't understand how this moment came so quickly. He knew that Alex's feelings were as mixed as his. Harry wanted her to go home, she'd been trying all year. Heartsick and homesick, she'd pushed through living on the other side of the world to her family as the world suffered through something horrifying.

After getting the email, her last week in London was bittersweet. It was spent packing up her room and saying goodbyes for the second, third times. Harry helped her organise herself, and then put himself in isolation with Alex for her final 48 hours. She needed to present a negative COVID test to Australian officials before she could fly. Getting tested and locking themselves away together for two days was a special kind of magic, really. They didn't have to share each other.

After Harry, Alex was saddest to say goodbye to The Daily Dose. 

She was going to miss Paul. Despite his eccentricities, he somehow managed to always keep the tone light and playful with her, and generally, the days passed quickly. Alex left Sydney for London after a gruelling university course left her feeling unmoored and unsure of herself, her time working for Paul had been an enormous time of discovery and healing for her. 

He'd been a source of comfort and support for her, especially in the last year, and he was the shoulder she'd cried on far too often. Alex loved making coffee despite how most people saw the job. There was a satisfaction in the process, even in the daily grind—the cleaning, the busyness, the dead patches—and Alex liked leaving the cafe in the afternoon with the smell of coffee seeping out of her but a clean shop locked up ready for the next day. 

She was going to miss that. But at the same time, Alex felt ready to go on and do more with her time now. The university degree hanging in her parent's study didn't feel like a straight-jacket anymore, and she was looking forward to finding work in her field. 

 London had been home for four years, though. She had many great memories here, not the least of which it was the city she flew the coup and found herself in. And the magic she thought was lost seemed to have redeemed itself in the final months of her being there.

She found herself, and then, she'd found Harry.

&&&

Saying goodbye to Harry was the hardest thing Alex had ever done. 

They'd both cried the night before, but when it was time to part at the airport Harry was steadfast in his encouragement of her leaving. (Despite himself) He'd never once said he (seriously) didn't want her to leave, or that she shouldn't. He'd never implied it would spell doom for their relationship. Harry was 100% sure that Alex going back home to Australia was just the next line in their story, and certainly not the last one. 

"You get home safely, okay?" Harry told her sternly, holding her face between his hands at the drop-off line. Both their masks were down around their chins, and Harry hated the tears he couldn't stop Alex from shedding, "This is a good thing, Al, you need to be home right now."

"I know," she nodded bravely, frowning as her chin wobbled, "But I don't want to leave—

"Shh, no," Harry shook his head and leaned closer, "You're not leaving me, you're going home.”

"When am I going to see you again though," she cried out, finally giving in to the (slightly) hysterical emotions that were bubbling just below the surface. 

Harry's heart rattled watching the wave of doubt hit her. He pressed his lips into her hairline and held her for another long moment.

"You'll see me in Dubai on your stopover," he'd said, rocking her against his chest, his words hurried against the material of her shirt, “You'll land, use the bathrooms, and then FaceTime me. That's when you'll see me next. And then, you'll see me when you get to Sydney and call me again. Okay?

"Okay," Alex parroted quietly.

"Okay … You really have to go now," Harry looked behind her to where the doors to the terminal were.

She nodded and reached up onto her tippy toes, letting Harry press his warm lips against hers once last time. Alex squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold in tears but also the feel of him. His smell, where his body began and ended, how it measured up next to hers. 

Their hearts reached out, trying to feel the other pressing through their chests from the other side. You're mine, you're mine, they said to each other.

"I love you," Harry told her, not for the first time.

Seeing the red wetness around Harry's eyes, Alex threaded her hands through his hair, "I love you, too."

He pressed a quick kiss to her lips again, "Go."

Harry's belief that they were going to be okay was unwavering. 

If 2020 taught him anything, the whole world could change in a matter of weeks, so why not the entire outlook of his life as well? Why couldn't his meeting Alex change the course of both their lives moving forward? Something about meeting her felt like a one-time event, like something worth risking everything for. And he would, Harry told her numerous times that last week.

And as she walked away from him and into Heathrow, and Alex believed him.

&&&

Alex cried as her flight landed at Sydney International Airport. 

She'd watched the harbour out her window as the plane circled the city, that perfect Sydney turquoise blue gleaming back up at her and it made her chest ache with relief. 

Home.

Sydney airport was a stark change from the Heathrow she left behind. Their flight was met by police, abundance and army officers. It wasn't frightening though, Alex found herself swallowing back tears this time because she was so soothed by the fact she was back in Australia. Everyone was friendly and helpful, getting the flight of returning citizens through the airport and onto buses to the quarantine hotels. Alex's drove straight into the city centre and as soon as they started going by familiar places and landmarks she wasn't the only one teary in their seat. 

"Well, here it is," Alex said to the phone screen not long after, tilting it around to show off the hotel room around her, "Home for the next fourteen days."

"Snazzy," Harry whistled as she pulled back the sheer curtains to reveal a staggering blue sky and then bright green treetops. He was sitting at his kitchen table with a cup of tea and a drizzly London morning just beginning, "And a view! Is that a balcony? Or a window?"

"A balcony but it's locked. I did get to smell the salty, beautiful harbour in the two-second walk from the bus into the hotel though." Alex settled on the bed in the middle of the room, the bedding crisp and clean underneath her, "I am literally inside this room for two weeks. No outside time. But I can see people outside walking around and having picnics in Hyde Park without masks on, so it'll be worth it."

"That seems unreal."

"It's like another world here," Alex agreed, yawning and finally feeling her body start to relax. "Anyway, how was your day yesterday? Wait, no, today?"

Harry laughed, "You've lost two days, I think. But it was good. I went and saw Paul, we had a cry together."

"Don't," she warned him, feeling the combination of over-tiredness and emotion simmering in her throat, "I've just travelled thirty-six hours, and I fucking miss you already, I'm not beyond completely losing it right now."

He smiled gently, "Have a shower and get into bed. I'm so glad you're there. Does it feel good to be home?"

"So good," Alex admitted, almost feeling like it was a dirty thing to be admitting to Harry, "Jess is going to come and wave at me from the park tomorrow with Noah. My mum's already sent a bunch of food to my room."

"You're exactly where you need to be," Harry told her. 

Alex couldn't hold back her tears any longer, the guilt she felt—the pain of leaving Harry—wasn't any match to finally being where she'd wanted to be all year, "Yeah, I am."

&&&

Figure 8 'Lovers hold on to everything'

Four days into her quarantine, Alex started training herself to do headstands.

"It's harder than it looks! But I'm getting there now," She laughed, propping her phone up against the leg of the bed and crawling to the wall opposite. She was now on Day 11, and Harry had been getting an update daily.

"Please don't injure yourself," Harry moaned, getting a great view of her bum as she crouched down facing the wall and then rose up, kicking her legs up with her palms flat on the floor.

"See?" The blood all rushed to her head, and Alex's hair fell down over her face at the same time her t-shirt moved, revelling her belly and bra to Harry. 

"Much better than yesterday," he told her, "Maybe tomorrow we could lose the bra?"

Alex laughed, her arms shaking as she came crashing to the ground. She was still working on the landing. 

Just as she was about to reply, she heard a knock on the door, "Oh!" 

"Dinner?" Harry guessed, watching her leap to her feet and disappear from view. A moment later, her legs walked across the screen, and Harry rolled over in bed to try to rid his phone screen of the glare coming from his windows open to the new London morning. "Oi!"

"Calm your farm," Alex tutted, retrieving her phone and grinning at Harry, "You'll never guess what I've got today."

"Hmm," Harry hummed in mock thought, "Let me guess, chicken and rice. A cookie and a ridiculous allotment of fruit?"

"Two bananas, an apple and four apricots."

"S'practically a fruit basket!"

"Tomorrow I get a glass of wine," Alex was already chewing, "Friday night drinks!"

"Friday date night?" Harry suggested, his fingers twitching with the want to be feeling her body between his sheets again, "You're fun when you're a little tipsy."

"Excuse me, I'm always fun!"

Harry laughed, "I can't believe you're so upbeat still. I'd been expecting a dip at some point. I would think a lot of people don't do so well in isolation for two weeks."

"I've got Australian daytime TV and a boyfriend who sends fun gifts,” she eyed the collection of books and puzzles Harry had organised, “I am looking forward to Sunday though."

Harry couldn't imagine how much Alex was looking forward to getting to see her family and friends when her time in quarantine ended, "Did you get tested today?"

"Yes," Alex screwed up her face, the memory of the swab up her nose still fresh, "Fucking hurt."

"Last one," he encouraged. "What's the first thing you're going to do with your brother when he picks you up?"

She halted before putting the next mouthful of warm, lacklustre dinner in her mouth, "It's supposed to be sunny and warm on Sunday, but I don't get released until the evening. So I think we'll just go to mum and dads for tea. Jess and Matt are going to be there."

"A large gathering in the home!" Harry looked scandalised, but he was smiling. 

"I know, it's all very 2019," Alex joked. 

Harry let out a long sigh from his chest, "I'm so happy you're there, but I miss you."

"You too," she said quietly.

"Hey," Harry called out, not having meant to dampen the mood, "Three sleeps until you get to meet Noah."

The mention of her nephew made Alex smile, "I'm gonna squeeze him so hard."

"Will you FaceTime me there?"

"O'course," her mouth was full, but she nodded emphatically. "My mum asked if we were going to have live music at all family events now."

Harry's laugh exploded out of him, he liked Alex's family very much already, "Happy to oblige."

"Because of you she's also back on Nathan about giving up the trombone in Year 8." Alex told him, "He was previously the musical hope for the family, but he stopped when the girl he liked at fourteen said she would only date a rugby player … Consequently, that girl is also responsible for how Nathan broke his nose."

Harry could sympathise with Alex's older brother, "We do crazy things for love."

&&&

"Could you say that again?"

"Were you not listening?"

"No I was, I just like hearing it in your accent."

"Harry," Alex complained, "I'm already shit at this."

"You're not!" He insisted, trying desperately to keep the grin at bay. 

Alex frowned at him and pulled the hotel duvet up to her chin, crossing her legs and slipping her free arm across her chest. Harry's heart was racing, hearing her talk about how his words were making her feel was incredible. Almost as good as physically having her. Almost.

"Al," Harry stilled at the defeated look on her face. His smile disappeared, "Sorry, I wasn't teasing."

"I'm no good a phone sex, it feels weird."

"I know it does at first," he tentatively reassured her, hoping not to draw attention to the fact that over the years Harry had become sort of good at phone sex. By virtue of necessity, such was his regular travel schedule. "I promise it can be great, and we can only get better at it. You're not no good. On the contrary, I'm enjoying myself very much."

She was finding it difficult. And even more so, trying to learn Harry and what he liked—how his body responded—without actually having his body physically there felt impossible. Phone sex was awkward and difficult, and Alex was more self-conscious then she'd ever been, trying to navigate intimacy with Harry through a phone screen. There was a divide there. He was right though, the undercurrent to what he said was that they'd have to get better, there was no other choice. It was all they had.

"Show me what you were doing," Harry beckoned gently, sensing Alex relaxing back into the moment. "And just imagine I'm there, don't apologise for angles or lighting. I don't care."

It was her last day in the hotel, and Alex had woken up with an ache between her thighs. Harry Facetimed her the instant he got the photo of her lying in the sheets, her torso exposed and wishing for his touch. He'd been sitting at home on his Saturday night, watching the first five minutes of half a dozen things on Netflix yet not finding his mind was able to focus on any. 

Alex he could focus on though. 

Her five seconds of bravery felt far away now, but Alex slowly pushed down the bedding again, "I was thinking about you going down on me."

Harry smiled, "Go on."

&&&

Nineteen 'I felt you in my life before I ever thought to'

Three months passed. 

The dreaded milestone ticked over which meant Harry and Alex had been separated the same amount of time they'd spent together in London.

It hadn't ever felt like this for Harry before.

He'd never known what this kind of missing someone was. Previously, he'd missed people, but not with a yearning or a longing that made his chest ache. Not with the kind of force that had him lying in bed at night unable to switch off the channel tuned to Alex.

What time was it in Sydney? Had he already sent her that link? Did she say she was spending the day with her dad? What could he say to get her back in that bikini from the day before? 

Missing Alex felt like having an itch inside his mind he couldn't scratch.

But in a sense, how much he wanted to be with her only made his consequent decisions easier. 

"You're hopeless!" His manager laughed him from LA, the whole team on the weekly check-in Zoom call. Generally there wasn't a lot to report between them, projects were on hold or cancelled. Harry had decided not to go back to the States to work on a few smaller things—a fashion shoot, a TV guest appearance and a small role in a film—giving his legal team some work in getting him out of contracts, but that was mostly sorted now. 

If he was going anywhere, it sure as hell wasn't across the Atlantic. 

"Not hopeless," Harry replied diplomatically, "It's something else … But it's not hopeless. It almost feels like having the answer and being the little kid jumping up and down on the spot, dying for the teacher to hurry up and ask the question."

A series of blank looks came back at him. Harry sighed. He'd never been bad at explaining his personal life before. It was always so rational, the relationships made sense or happened in a usual way. He just couldn’t shake the notion that all along, people had been right. 

When you know you know. 

He'd found Alex. 

That was as simple as it was to him. But it didn't settle everyone else the way it settled Harry. 

Alex. 

Did the name not tick a checkbox in their heads too? 

"So, you're going to Australia?"

"I just want to know what it could look like," Harry amended the assumption, but yes, he was going to end up wherever Alex did, and if that was Australia then that was that. 

"Who's in Australia?" 

The question wasn't to Harry, it wasn't about who he was going to Australia for., they all knew who Alex was. The question was about the industry—about Harry's career. It was who was in Australia for him to work with? Frankly, he didn’t see why the same people he worked with now couldn’t also be the people he continued working with either remotely, or with short trips abroad when travel allowed. 

"Obviously, it's not like everything can be done there," Harry offered diplomatically, "But at least for the foreseeable future, with the world how it is … Music as the primary focus, I want to write the next album there. Spend some time seeing the country too, I've always wanted to."

He got a collection of nods, and a few spoken agreements, assurances that it could work.

"This isn't a temporary thing," he said of Alex, looking at the faces who helped him run his life, "We're going to be navigating this for the rest of my career. So everyone's going to need to add Sydney time to their Clock app."

&&&

When he met Alex, Harry knew. 

When he landed in Sydney, Harry knew again. 

It was the right choice, it was the right place for him to be. All he wanted was to be moving in her direction; in the same direction as her. 

It was warm despite the late hour, the air was fragrant with it, in stark contrast to the London he left behind. 

He tried to think back to the last time he’d been in Australia, to what it felt like back then. 

If only he’d know then …

Harry opted not to apply for any special considerations or circumstances. He didn't want anything to jeopardise him being able to enter what was likely the world's most difficult country to get into now—especially seeing as Harry wasn't a resident, much less a citizen. Harry didn't want to hit the news. And despite evidence of people he knew in the industry being able to dictate where they quarantined on arrival, Harry requested nothing. He just wanted to fly in, go to whatever hotel they told him to, do his two weeks quarantine and then be with her. 

"Have you landed?" Alex's voice was urgent and tinged with excitement. 

Harry laughed, "Yes, how do you think I'm calling."

She squeaked, "You're here!"

"I'm here," he smiled under his mask, following the flow of fellow travellers walking through the empty airport, "Who ever heard of an International Airport having a curfew though? The pilot made the joke that if we were projected to land even a minute after 11pm, he'd have to turn around and go back to London. Which was like, a joke, but also not funny?"

Alex chortled, "You'll have to get used to the sense of humour here."

"Hang on," Harry saw a checkpoint of sorts ahead of him, "I have to go. I'll call you back."

"Call me from the hotel," she said, "I love you."

"I love you, too."

&&&

"Go to the window."

“Hi. What?" Harry could barely move his head off the pillow as his eyes struggled to open.

"Go to your window," Alex repeated, "Were you asleep?"

He sat up, heart thrumming quickly at the possibility of what he was going to see. A second before his mind had only barely been able to scramble together the cognitive function to swipe to answer the call. 

When he got to the window, Harry pulled back the curtains—he'd ended up at the same hotel Alex had been in too—his room looked out over Sydney's Hyde Park, the fountain and cathedral framing his window. Although his top floor room with a (locked) balcony was a little bigger than hers had been he still felt as if he was living in their FaceTime calls. He was sure he'd become more acquainted with the trees and greenery out his window as the days passed. 

"What am I looking for?" He asked, but Harry knew.

"I'm down here, can you see me? Blue jeans shorts … Yellow top? I've got a sign!"

Harry's eyes scanned the footpath opposite the hotel, there was a main road between him and the park. He'd been in the room less than 12 hours though, so he wasn't familiar with the foot traffic. 

"I can't… Wait, I see you," his mouth opened in a huge smile, "Hi!"

Harry waved and pressed his hand to the window as his heart waved down at Alex's. He felt like his insides were being swapped around inside him as he took his first look at her in the flesh in nearly thirteen weeks. She had sunglasses sitting up on top of her head and a The New Yorker tote bag over her shoulder. He bit his lip at all the exposed skin he was looking at, feeling it a cruel injustice in the fact he would be touching his girlfriend for a fortnight.

Alex was squinting up at the hotel, one hand to her forehead, blocking the sun while the other held her phone to her ear, "How high up at you?"

"Next to the yellow and red flag," he said, looking for a distinguishing feature. He'd fallen asleep to the sound of the rope flapping against the building.

Alex's voice took a teasing tone, "Oh, who's that sexy man with his shirt off in the hotel window?" 

"I can't read your sign."

"I only had a Biro," she lamented, shoving the makeshift sign under her arm, "It just says Hi."

"Hi," Harry leant his forehead into the window, "You look beautiful."

"So do you."

"You going to stand out there for the next two weeks?"

"Would you like me to?"

"Yes, please."

Harry watched her take a step back and lean against the wall to the park behind her, "I'd better get comfy then."

&&&

There was a couple in the room next door to Harry.

"I'm telling you, it's relentless," he implored Alex with his eyes, pausing for a second to listen to the sound of their bed hitting the wall, "They're at it constantly."

"Embrace it, some people are into that," Alex giggled from her parent's kitchen. She was making dinner for the whole family, with her AirPods in and Harry chatting to her as she chopped vegetables. "Let it get you in the mood, Harry. Is that voyeurism, or exhibitionism? I can never—"

"—Okay," He rolled his eyes, "Thank you, Comedian."

"You're just jealous you're not getting any."

"I really am," Harry said seriously, "If I have to wait, so should they."

Alex's laugh filled his ears, "It's alright, less than a week to go now."

"I cannot wait to be holding you," he said, longing in his voice. 

Harry had mixed feelings leaving London. He didn't know when he'd be back, but at the very least he was going to miss his first Christmas with his family. With England in lockdown, it was unlikely that even if he had stayed, he would be able to spend it with them anyway, but Harry would miss them. He already missed them. 

It wasn't like he missed Alex, though. And in all the conversations he'd had with his mum, or his sister, or anyone else, they'd all told him to go for her. They saw it in his eyes and heard it in his voice when he spoke about her. Or maybe their hearts knew as well, as though Harry meeting Alex had been locked away in them all and now the light to that room was switched on. 

So there he was, in Australia. To be with his love.

&&&

Ten Days 'Time has changed nothing at all, you're still the only one that feels like home'

Harry asked the nurse who took his last COVID swab to help him.

He hadn't requested anything up until that point, but he knew, even behind her protective gear, she was a friendly face. And he also knew that there were rumblings online that he was in Sydney. (All those spare and jet lag hours, he'd tried to stay off the internet, he really had) 

The good news was it was just rumblings, because why on earth would Harry Styles be in Sydney.

All it would take was one photo to confirm it though, which in a sense, was fine, he didn't care.

But Harry didn't want that photo to be of any of his first moments back with Alex.

Let someone snap a picture in a couple of weeks, on a random beach or coming out of a cafe somewhere. Just not his first day. Not when he hadn't seen her since the beginning of September almost three months ago.

He asked if the nurse could help him arrange Alex for access to the hotel car park because the discharge information pack he'd received directed him to organise pick up on the street. 

The next two days went slowly, those final 48 hours, waiting for a negative result and trying like anything to bat away fears that it wouldn't be the same. That somehow Harry and Alex would've lost the something that lit the spark in London. 

He hated that feeling—the doubt—and when he confessed it to his sister, she batted it away as nerves. She said life was always full of uncertainty and risks, the idea was to choose the ones you thought were worth taking. 

&&&

Alex stared at her legs as she sat, waiting for Harry in her dad's car.

It hadn't taken long to get the colour back to them, although mostly she was fixated on how she should have dressed a little nicer for the first time seeing Harry in months. She didn't even have proper shoes on, just the thongs that she'd kicked off the night before after coming back from the park with the dogs. 

Harry hadn't seen this side of her. This casual, probably more Australian sounding Alex. The one with bare feet and sunglasses holding her hair back. He'd met her family over video calls, but what would Harry think when he was in a room full of them? They were loud and could have distasteful senses of humour. There were family jokes that Alex had never thought twice about before but now worried Harry wouldn't appreciate. 

She'd slipped back into the comforting hum of life in Sydney so easily. Her friends, her family, her city. When she left Sydney hadn't felt like home, but as soon as she stepped back into it something in Alex let out a sigh of return. It was strange, leaving London just at the end of the summer months and falling straight into the beginning of a new summer here. 

In front of her, Alex sensed movement. The door she'd been instructed to park in front of opened, and a very tall man in an army uniform stepped into the underground car park, propping open the door with his foot. He pointed to Alex in the front seat and said something to Harry, who was the next person to appear, followed by a nurse in full PPE.

Alex felt an explosion in her chest, an electric shock or a bolt of lightning. Two hearts jumping up and down in excitement. 

She cracked the car door open and heard Harry thanking the two people escorting him, his hands moved as though they were itching to add a handshake to the gesture.

As soon as Alex was in his eyesight though Harry didn't think about anyone else. 

She emerged and hovered by the front of the car, waiting for Harry to approach her, as if unsure what she was allowed to do. The sight of her in an oversized hoodie and small athletic shorts warmed him instantly. She looked perfect, with a tan that evaded her in London and a brightness behind her eyes Harry was addicted to already. He liked the thought that he was an errand, that picking up her boyfriend was on a list of things for her to do that day. The word 'normal' flashed in Harry's mind, and any worry he'd had about her or him or them together being different from how he remembered it disappeared.

"Hi," he smiled wide as he tugged down the mask covering his face and stepped right into her personal space, his bag and suitcase abandoned behind him. 

Speechless, Alex breathed Harry in deeply through tears as she was tightly wrapped up in his arms. She couldn't bring any words to the surface, and so they just stood in silence, holding each other. 

After a moment Harry turned his face into her neck and pressed a slow, warm kiss below her ear, "Hello, hello, hello," he said between kisses. 

It only made Alex's crying increase, and she squeezed him tighter while leveraging herself higher up his body, not yet willing or able to step away. 

"Alex," Harry said her name gently, "Let me see you, please."

She leant back but covered her cheeks with her sleeves, peering over at Harry through blurry eyes, "Wait a sec."

He smiled and pulled her hands away by her wrists, "Give me a kiss."

&&&

"You're such a tourist," Alex laughed as she drove, watching Harry lean forward in the passenger seat and try to take a photo through the windscreen of the Sydney Harbour Bridge above them. 

"You know bridges are my passion," he said dryly. 

She smiled as he sat back and slipped his hand back into hers. 

"I quite like you driving," Harry said, eyeing her in the drivers' seat, "Look at you knowing your way around."

Alex grinned under her sunglasses, "We're in my city now, baby."

&&&

Harry's mouth hovered hotly over the skin below Alex's breasts. 

"Harry," she ran her fingers through his hair, hating the anticipation. 

His lips upturned at the impatience behind her saying his name. He pressed a kiss to the skin there, then another half an inch further down her tummy, "M'not in a hurry."

"I am," Alex urged.

"Oh?" Harry stopped and looked up at her, his elbows on either side of her hips as he held himself over her, "You are?"

"Yes."

"Going somewhere after this?"

She whined, whined, "No, Harry."

Alex hadn't taken him home to her family. Not yet. 

She drove an hour out of the city to a beach suburb with what Alex had deemed the nicest Airbnb. It was private, and without Sydney's usual cohort of international tourists, the area was deserted except for locals. They could hear the ocean from the bedroom and see if from the kitchen. She'd booked them two nights; two nights to reconnect and just live in the presence of each other without her family stepping in and inevitably stealing Harry's heart.

(Except, of course, it was Alex's heart who has his, all this time)

"Look at you, fuck," Harry said, tilting back up to take her lips in his, pressing his torso, his thighs, his stomach, his hardened crotch into her. "Fucking gorgeous."

"We can do slow later," she all but begged, her fingers digging into his exposed back, "Please. Just … Just please, Harry."

Alex felt his hand brush over her thigh, deliciously trailing over the sensitive skin just below her hip bone and down between them. His eyes dipped down between them only briefly before Alex was feeling the tip of him pressing into her exactly where she needed it. 

"Yes," her body relaxed into the feeling, remembering the London nights, the mornings and that first time in his living room. 

"Alex," Harry said her name like he could hardly believe it, and at the same time as wanting to savour the moment he was thinking of their first, hurried time as well. His hips snapped forward, remembering that time the rush came from wanting to taste, to experience something new and to have Alex's body for his own the first time. 

The urgency behind Harry's movements this time were for want of something had and sorely missed, something already claimed but given up for a time.

Alex's head was stretched back onto the pillow underneath him while she felt her body shift and squeeze around him. She wrapped her arms around his chest to feel him closer, wanting to hold onto him as he pumped in and out, sighing against her neck, trying to regulate himself.

"God, Al."

"Harry."

&&&

Four nights later, tucked into the spare room at her parent's house, Harry rolled over and took her hand. 

"I think we should get a place here."

"A what?"

"A flat, a house, we should rent something in Sydney." 

"Sydney?" Alex's tone elevated, almost touching the spinning ceiling fan above them.

"Yes, Sydney," Harry repeated, "You mentioned a job you liked the look of a few weeks ago, did you apply for it? "

"But what about London? That's where you live, God, what about your work, Harry."

"I want to be here, I'm not in any hurry to go back to what normal was. Normal didn't have you," Harry said, throwing out the script he'd built in his head the last month. His heart was doing the talking, extempore, "I've watched you this week, Alex, it's like you're a whole different person here. You're so happy and settled and joyful, which, by the way, I already thought you were but here … Do you really want to go again? Could you leave your family again?"

Alex felt her chest going into overdrive like everything was whirring around too quickly. She felt had to be honest, though, despite the way it made the fear climb further up her throat, "No. I don't want to leave."

Harry brought her knuckles up to kiss, "I don't want you to leave, either. So, what if we stayed? For as long as it's where you need to be?"

"But your family—

"—Doing this means one of us is always going to be away from someone," Harry told her, "I can handle missing my family, Al, I can't handle missing you. You're it."

"It just seems like too much to ask you to do, Harry."

"You're not asking," he insisted. "I can figure out how to work from here. London was my home base, I spent a lot of the year away anyway. And it's not that much further to LA for stuff, I … I'm saying I can make it work here, Alex. I want to make it work with you."

Alex's heart did a cartwheel, "You want to stay in Sydney?"

Harry's somersaulted, "I want to stay with you, yes."

The End.  &&&

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Thanks for reading, everyone! x Kate

Tag list: @afterhoursharry​ @beautifuleclipses​ @bumbershots​ @coffee-doodle-doo​ @decadentdonkeyflowerzonk​ @elemayox​ @ficsthatmakemeswoon @finelinesupremacy @greatestview​ @hatnightin2008 @ifiwereaboy2323 @ihearthemcallingforyou​ @just-damn-bored​ @kakaym​ @kara-246​ @lifeandsomethingelse​ @luminescencefics​ @micurq27​ @miorni​ @monpetitchouchou16​ @morethanamelodyy​ @piawhat @rubytersteege @staceystoleyourheart​ @stepping-into-the-light​ @steppingonoranges​ @stylesfics-xx​ @stylishmuser​ @toalltheboyswhowastedmytime​ @tpwkhoney​ @ursamajor603​ @veryplatoniccircunstances @wanderlustiing​​ @whatevarandomlygoes

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[earnestly-endlessly]

Testing Positive for Covid 19: My Thoughts on What to Expect

So, I’ve been seeing a ton of posts floating around the internet about the symptoms of Covid-19, what people might expect, what to do and what not to do and how best to behave in the reality most of us are living today. People are understandably afraid about getting sick, but I feel that the stories about the virus are always concerning the drastic cases and the number of deaths in each country. 

I have tested positive for Covid-19 and have been in self-isolation since last Sunday (15.03.20) and have been in quarantine since Tuesday (10.03.20). This means ten days staying inside, avoiding touching anything and more or less staying in my bedroom watching Netflix. I am in my late 20s and am healthy, have no underlying illnesses or health concerns. Therefore, I am not among those who are in the greatest danger of needing intensive care. It’s actually rather surreal to read posts where people are talking about the virus but don’t have it or don’t know anyone who has it. 

We are four in total who are sick and all of us have similar symptoms. My father was the first one to get sick. then I got sick and the following days my two sisters got sick as well. When my father got sick he went into self-isolation. He wore a mask, gloves and sanitised every surface he touched. We kept our distance; he slept in a different room, ate at a different table and was careful to stay far away from the rest of the family. Despite taking these measures, I still got sick. This does not mean that it’s time to freak out, however, the virus is highly contagious. So, this means that you could still get sick even though you are careful. That does not mean that the world is going to end. Why? Because, thankfully, the symptoms are not necessarily serious. 

So, you might be asking: “What are your symptoms?” Everyone has different immune systems and get milder or more severe cases of the virus. However, I think that by sharing some of my symptoms might bring you some relief in knowing what to look out for. 

SYMPTOMS 

- Headaches: The first days I had headaches and felt achy all over. This stopped after the first couple of days and my head has been fine. 

-Fatigue: I have been feeling fatigue since I started to feel the symptoms. This is similar to fatigue you get with other illnesses and, in my case, is not any different than what you might expect from your common flu or cold.  

-Aches: The most prominent symptoms are the muscle and bone aches. In fact, they have been quite different than I have experienced with the flu. For example, the first night I felt any symptoms I felt as if my arms were really heavy. Some have been talking about joint aches or muscle aches. So, they are not your typical aches you associate with flu symptoms. 

- Sore throat: I have had minor soar throat and runny nose. Nothing drastic. 

- Dry cough: I have been experiencing dry coughs. Some people complain about wet coughs but that’s not in my case. If you are coughing it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re sick of the virus. It might just be a common cold. 

- Chest aches: One of my earlier symptoms were chest aches that were soon followed by the dry cough. The feeling isn’t intense, but it feels like something’s compressing on my chest. Those who have severe symptoms or trouble breathing should seek immediate medical help. 

- Shortness of breath: Shortness of breath is also a very common symptom. This probably relates to the chest aches. I have been trying some light exercises at home and can feel huge difference in my breathing. I get out of breath almost instantly. 

- Change in taste and smell: This one came as a surprise, but this seems to be fairly common. I can’t smell or taste anything. I have never experienced such a thing before. I have experienced the seasonal cold or flu and felt that my senses are not as sharp as they are normally. However, this is entirely different. I feel NO smell or taste at all. Nothing. Nada, it’s gone. I hope that it will come back eventually, but on the plus side I can’t smell the cigarette smoke from my neighbours and my dad’s deadly farts. I’m trying to think of the good things. 

SYMPTOMS I DON´T HAVE BUT SOME PEOPLE HAVE

- Fever: I have had no fever at all. This seems to be the most common symptom for the virus, but this is by no means universally true. No one who has been tested positive in my family has had any fever. Honestly, I think that the other symptoms are far more telling of whether you might or might not have the flu. For example, the chest pains and the muscle/bone aches. But, that’s my non-professional opinion. 

- Stomach aches: I haven’t had any stomach problems. Some people with Covid have complained about stomach aches. One of my family members has experienced this, but the symptoms are mild. 

-Lack of appetite: This also seems to be a common symptom. I haven’t personally experienced this but I can imagine that if you are having stomach issues that the lack of appetite is a side effect of that. 

-Nausea/vomiting: Again, some people have been experiencing nausea and vomiting.  

- Odd or Bad Taste: Another symptom that I have heard about from people who are positive, but hasn’t been talked about extensively in the news or media, is the change of taste. One person I know of feels drastic change in their taste, and even feel bad taste of food and beverages. Be careful if you’re having those kinds of symptoms. It’s very necessary to drink tons of water and try to keep a healthy, balanced diet. 

Again, this is only my experience of having tested positive for Covid 19. My family and I are in relatively good health and haven’t shown any serious symptoms. I hope that some of this information has helped. At least, this is information from someone who is currently experiencing the virus and has first hand experience of it. 

Please stay safe and don’t panic. If you’re showing some of these symptoms then don’t be afraid, you’re not necessarily positive. If you are positive I hope that you stay healthy and don’t encounter any further complications. Everything will be all right. 

[lady-divine-writes]

ACITW AU one-shot - “Draining Pipes” (Rated M)

Summary: After Sebastian is accidentally exposed to Covid, Kurt convinces him to quarantine. While the rest of the city is slowly opening up, Kurt is returning to a life that resembles normal. But for Sebastian, home alone without his boyfriend, isolation is changing him. And Kurt has some concerns... (2063 words)

Notes: Yes, this is a pandemic fic, but I promise, it's funny XD

Read on AO3.

"Hi, honey! I'm home!"

"Nope. Try again."

Kurt's head snaps up so quickly he stutters a step, nearly tripping over his feet even though he'd already stopped walking. He glares at Sebastian from across the room as if the man had gotten up from his seat, strolled over, and, without a word, vomited rancid sushi all over his Manolo Blahniks. "What?"

In a tone reminiscent of one his NYADA dance teacher, Cassie July, used that made Kurt prickle from head to toe, Sebastian says, "Try. again."

"Try what again?"

"Walking through the door."

Kurt spins around to examine the doorway, searching for clues about what he could have possibly done incorrectly. "And what, pray tell, is wrong with the way I walk through the door!?"

"Every time you come home, you say, 'Hi, honey! I'm home!'"

"Yeah, and... ?"

"It's boring. Unoriginal. It harkens back to an era of television situation comedy that had no hand in influencing our generation and, frankly, regurgitating it is beneath you and your dramatic talents."

Kurt plants his hands on his hips and gawks. What the hell happened to his boyfriend while he was away? He was only gone four hours! "Have you been rifling through my old schoolbooks again? I told you, there was no Illuminati conspiracy going on at NYADA!"

"Why don't you try something different?" Sebastian counters, neither confirming nor denying Kurt's accusation. "Something a bit more, dare I say, exotic?"

"Exotic?" Kurt scrunches his nose with distaste when he says it. Of all the words in the English language, that's one of his least favorite. "What constitutes exotic in your twisted opinion?"

"I don't know. Think of something. You're the creative, not me."

"What? I... " A dozen arguments about how he's just gotten home, how exhausted he is, how travel between here and the theater was a pain in the ass because some people still don't seem to understand what 'over the mouth AND nose' means so navigating his way through the subway was like playing a game of human Tetris with potentially infected pieces and that he's never been all that good at Tetris anyway! die on his lips. 

It would be a waste of breath.

Still, Kurt doesn't know why he indulges him, but he turns on his heel and walks back out the door. After a few seconds of deep breathing in the hall to keep from screaming bloody murder, he storms back in and brightly declares, "Buenos dias, motherfucker! Como what's up?"

Seeing as the two of them speak fluent French, Spanglish is the most exotic thing he could come up with.

Sebastian nods in stoic approval. "Better. How goes life on the apocalyptic landscape?"

"I'm not selling my body for Cocoa Krispies if that's what you're asking," Kurt quips, wondering if this is how Sebastian acts at work and how no one has put the man through a window yet, partner or not.

"So what I'm hearing is you didn't bring home Cocoa Krispies."

"Nope. Sorry."

"Bitch."

"Yeah, well... " Kurt removes his shoes and socks, then sheds his coat, his messenger bag, his slacks, and his dress shirt, carefully piling them on a chair by the front door - their staging area for decontamination. While he undresses, he eyes Sebastian, not paying him an inch of mind, sitting on what has been dubbed the convalescence corner of the sofa, dressed in a soft white tee and flannel lounge pants, his laptop open on legs covered by a quilt his mother made for him when he was ten. Sebastian knows for a fact that Kurt is undressing and yet he's not leering at him, wolf-whistling under his breath or licking his lips like he's watching an Outback Steakhouse commercial. He's simply sitting in his spot, eyes glued to his laptop screen.

And Kurt loathes it.

Sebastian's attentions have been waning more and more lately, and even though it's savagely bruising Kurt's ego, he can't blame him.

Depending on how they choose to look at things, this situation could kind of, slightly, sort of be deemed Kurt's fault.

"Thank you again for doing this," Kurt says, extending an olive branch. He's been doing this so often over the past few months, he's started buying in bulk. "I can't tell you how much you keeping your distance and staying home has put my mind at ease."

Sebastian doesn't look at him when he replies: "No sweat, babe."

"I know it was just one small cough... and the kid was wearing two masks... and a face shield... "

"Hey, like you said, no need taking any chances. Right?"

"Right," Kurt agrees. And he believes it. He believed it then and he believes it now. Had the roles been reversed, Kurt would make the sacrifice, more than willing to lock himself away for the sake of curbing this disease and keeping Sebastian healthy.

But it isn't him. 

And he feels like dirt going to work three days a week, returning to something that resembles normal knowing what Sebastian is missing out on.

"It's his mother's fault for not mentioning that her little plague rat has covid before I got stuck on the elevator with them," Sebastian says, possibly trying to make Kurt feel better even though his gaze hasn't shifted.

"But quarantining for six days longer than necessary? That's above and beyond! I mean it. You deserve a medal." 

Sebastian tosses him a wink over his shoulder but he doesn't linger, giving half-naked Kurt only a brief once over. "I got you, fam. Besides, time's up tomorrow. Then... " He thousand-yard stares in the direction of the flat screen "... it's rat-hunting season."

"It hasn't been all bad, has it?" Kurt asks guiltily as Sebastian's eyes return to his laptop. He'll admit that maybe he did go a tad overboard when he'd found out Sebastian had been exposed, banishing him to one end of the penthouse and the guest bedroom, keeping him at broom handle length for the past nineteen days. 

But they were almost in the clear! And that's the part that pisses Kurt off most. 

The disease hasn't been eradicated, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The theater started allowing small groups to return for socially distanced practices. That's a huge win for Kurt. Being away from Broadway and rehearsals and opening nights and curtain calls... it was becoming difficult for him to breathe.

Sebastian was on the brink of going back to the office a few days a week, too. It wasn't so much not being at the office that bothered him, but the peripherals - eating lunch at his favorite deli or hitting the gym before dinner. 

Sebastian had taken three tests after that fateful elevator incident, all of which came back negative, so he was confident everything would be alright. He was in the midst of planning his first in-person meeting, but Kurt balked, pointing out that there has been so much controversy over the accuracy of those tests. Sebastian offered to take three more if necessary, but regardless of the outcome, Kurt didn't feel it safe. And even though they had access to the vaccine (because money), being exposed, even minorly, pushed Sebastian's timetable for receiving his first dose back two weeks.

Kurt's father and stepmother have both received theirs, and Kurt was so looking forward to taking a trip to Ohio for a first hug in over a year. He's going to be damned if a four-foot-tall Petri dish ruins that for him!

But because of his paranoia, Kurt and Sebastian haven't touched, haven't kissed in two weeks. They tried the whole Skype sex thing from different rooms of the penthouse, aiming to recapture old college day thrills to boot, but it didn't work out the way they'd hoped. And even though they see each other every day, talk to one another, aggravate each other, throw popcorn and other food items at each other, Kurt misses Sebastian like the dickens. He misses his hugs, his warmth, his smell.

And yes, he misses the sex.

"Since I've been back to work, you've had the peace and privacy to watch those wacky pornos that your brother sends you."

"Yup," Sebastian says, typing something into his search bar that Kurt can't quite make out. "The wackiest."

"Didn't he say something about them being illegal in the contiguous 49 states?"

"Forty-eight. Tennessee turned itself around."

"It would be Tennessee."

"Always is."

"You probably haven't given your fleshjack a rest in two weeks," Kurt prods, worried over these short responses. 

"Mmph... mmm-hmm... "

Kurt starts circling the sofa when all he gets is a chuckle in response, curious if Sebastian is even listening to him. He comes up behind him, standing on a piece of painter's tape they'd put down to mark six feet so Kurt can peek over his shoulder.

And what he sees on Sebastian's screen makes absolutely no sense.

"What are you watching?"

"Drain clearing videos."

Kurt's eyes go wide. "Drain clearing? Wh-what does that mean?"

"This guy drives all over, and when he finds a street that's flooded, he takes out a rake, drags it through the water, and tries to find the blocked drain."

"Does he work for the city?"

"Nah. He's just some guy."

"And he's made a whole channel about... clearing drains."

"Yes, sir."

"And you're watching it?"

"It came up in my recommendations so I clicked one." Sebastian shakes his head, chuckling when stagnant grey water, punctuated by speckles of rain, turns into a whirlpool, rushing through thick iron bars embedded in the concrete and disappearing from view. "It's so satisfying."

"What on Earth were you watching before this that YouTube recommended it?"

"Car cleaning videos."

Kurt's left eyebrow slowly climbs up his forehead. "A-ha."

"Yup. I never realized how relaxing it is to watch a handsome guy Bissell Kool-Aid stains out of carpet. But now... it's my jam."

Kurt huffs, offended on behalf of himself and his own vigorous cleaning regimen. "It wasn't your jam when I was steam cleaning our throw rugs! And the curtains!"

"Yeah, well, things hit different when you're forced into isolation."

Kurt storms forward a step. But then he remembers. And he stops, foot hovering an inch past the sacred boundary that keeps him from venturing too close to infection. He teeters, determination creasing his brow while anxiety wrestles his shoulders back. All the while, a war wages inside his tired brain:

"Get him! You've been vaccinated!"

"It's only one dose!"

"He's not even sick!"

"You don't know that!"

"Yes, I do!"

"It's not worth the risk!"

"Yes... it... IS!"

"Come on!" Kurt demands, throwing himself bodily at the sofa. He grabs Sebastian's hand, a small voice screaming inside his head as if his tiny naysayer is being burned at the stake. "Come with me... NOW!"

"Where are we going?" Sebastian asks, rushing to move his computer to the side before he gets dragged off the sofa by his surprisingly strong boyfriend.

"This is an intervention."

"But you shouldn't be touching me! Or breathing my air! I have one day left!"

"You're fine! If you haven't gotten sick by now, you probably aren't going to! This is an emergency!"

"What emergency?"

"Quarantine has turned you into someone I don't recognize! Car cleaning videos? Who are you right now?"

"They're educational. It's good to learn a new skill."

Kurt barks a laugh that could shatter crystal. "Right. Like you'd ever. You'd pay highway robbery to have your ten-speed detailed!"

"Nope, because you'd do it for free."

 Kurt rolls his eyes, unwilling to entertain his boyfriend's mocking of him to ask whether or not that's code. "If you're going to ogle a man wielding a Bissell, Goddammit, it's going to be me!"

"So... are we going to clean some carpets?"

"We're going to take a shower and then have sex. A lot of sex. You're getting fucked and sucked until you're back to normal."

Sebastian snorts, delighted by his incredibly good fortune. "If you insist. But are you absolutely sure about this?"

Kurt stops short and faces Sebastian. He looks him over, making certain he doesn't seem particularly sick, and shrugs.

"We'll wear masks. Or three. I don't need to kiss you to make you cum." Kurt continues to drag Sebastian towards the bathroom as his grin grows to epic proportions.

"Kinky."

[rae-arts777]

Sickness

Notes: so..this is me coping.

Summary: Makoto gets Covid.

Despite their efforts, a member of their team still caught ill.

Makoto laid in bed, isolated in the furthest room away from the rest for two weeks.

He felt like he was dying.

He was scared.

Everything was bland.

Coffee no longer brought a soothing aroma to his nose or mouth.

Food felt stale, even with no flavor, it still hurt his stomach.

It was lonely.

He had a window, fresh air was good, but still it was taunting.

His breathing started to decline. It felt hard to breathe sometimes. Like it was a struggle. Luckily it wasn't bad enough for him to get admitted into a hospital.

That was scary

What if he did go to the hospital?

Would he even ever come back?

Would he be one of many patients without a bed?

He just wanted someone to hold him and tell him it was going to be ok.

He cried

He cried so much

He wanted his mom.

Some nights the others would hear Makoto sobbing for hours on end, it broke their hearts.

Makoto cried for his mom, cried wanting to be ok, he even started to cry for his dad.

It was fucking scary.

Laurent felt responsible. He could have done so much more to prevent this. They should have just had their food airdropped in. They shouldn’t go inland. They shouldn’t have met with some other members of TC about pulling out of the con they were in. They should have sanitized their things more. It should have been him. Not Makoto. It should have been him.

Laurent spent his days trying to stay busy. He kept his phone on for any request Makoto would ask of him.

He brought Makoto everything he asked for.

Blankets.

Food.

Drinks.

Books.

Medicine.

The one request he could not fulfill was a hug.

Everytime before he went towards Makoto’s room, he would mask up, and wear gloves. It broke his heart, sometimes he would pretend to leave to peek around the corner, just to see Makoto open the door to grab the supplies Laurent would leave him.

The amount of times Laurent got in trouble by Cythina and Abby, sitting against Makoto’s door, or in the hall.

One time he fell asleep against Makoto’s door after wanting to be close to him from the cries.

Maybe part of Laurent was hoping he caught it. As punishment he guessed. He just wanted to hold his soybean close and never let him go again.

He was scared.

He didn’t want to lose makoto

He can’t lose makoto.

Dear lord, please don’t let him lose his makoto.

Cythina felt stressed. She didn’t want anyone else to catch it. She wanted Makoto to be ok.

She took over sanitizing anything Makoto used. Any dishes, or clothes that needed to be washed.

She would even sanitize things she used to clean with. All the bleach started to affect her smell.

She constantly got retested to get reassurance she had not catch it as well.

She would try to send Makoto things to cheer him up. Stuff animals, a show to keep his mind off of things, blasting classical music, for everyone, hoping the calm music would ease them all.

The nights Makoto would cry, Cythina would cry too. It broke her heart. She cried wishing she could have done something to prevent it. Praying for Makoto to be ok. Praying that Laurent or Abby would not catch it either.

Some nights were so hard, she would stay the night with Abby, clinging to the other tightly knowing the smaller one was affected too, just refusing to say.

Abby wanted to be strong.

Laurent and Cythina were a wreck. They wanted to be rational one. Someone had to be strong.

They would calmly do what they were asked. Take over with any task if Laurent or Cythina became overwhelm.

Sometimes they would go to Makoto’s window, keeping a good distance, but enough for them to talk. If Makoto wanted to talk.

They knew he was depressed, and it was hard.

It was hard for them.

Their only friend

Their best friend

Abby didn’t sleep much.

They would stare at the ceiling, anxious.

What if he gets worse?

What if he had to go to the hospital?

What if he never gets better.

The only nights they really slept was when Cythina slept with them.

Sometimes they would go and just stand by the water, watching the ocean waves. They would imagine Makoto next to them, with that goofy smile….

Abby barely cries but…it hurts being so strong.

So sometimes they would go to the beach, to cry alone.

A month later, things slowly started to shift back to normal.

Makoto feels more at ease as his senses slowly start to come back.

Laurent does not leave his side, constantly holding him and wanting to cuddle.

Cythina takes a while to finally be at ease after sanitizing daily since Makoto’s isolation was up. She still constantly is rechecking Makoto and everyone for any symptoms.

Abby became warmer towards him. Almost losing him, the thought of it was scary. They constantly tell him “I love you dude…” wanting Makoto to know how much they do see him as a friend.

Makoto feels..loved. It’s still hard, things about his body was still a bit messed up since the sickness. But he’s just happy he finally gets to be around everyone.

He’s okay.

They’re okay.

They’re all going to be okay.

[captain-aralias]

Life stuff

this feels kind of weird, because i’ve never used my tumblr like this, but i would have written something on my livejournal, and i want people to know - i just dont want to have to tell people about it, or really talk about it at all. 

but i also wanted to write this, idk. 

(TW: impending death of a parent)

my mum has cancer. 

it’s a rare form of cancer, called peritoneal cancer, which is similar to but different from ovarian cancer - i think it mostly gets diagnosed (like my mum’s) when it’s too late to do anything about it. all the treatment has been palliative only i.e. letting her live as long and as comfortably as possible.

she was diagnosed in september last year - about a year ago, a few months after running the ‘virtual’ london marathon on the isle of wight, where she lives, and obviously deep in lockdown. 

as someone undergoing chemo, she was deemed extremely vulnerable to covid, and so she spent most of the early pandemic isolating. she also said she didn’t see any point in my brother and i visitng her, particularly given the risks, because we could talk via facetime - which is fair enough - all of which meant my brother and i didn’t go to visit her until May this year, after she’d done the first lot of chemo and was already doing much better again. 

a few months after that, we found out that while she’d responded really well to the chemo, her cancer wasn’t responding at all to the maintenance drugs that were suposed to stop it coming back, so she came off the drugs completely. medical advice was basically chemo is as effective whenever you do it, so you might as well enjoy your life for a while, we’ll monitor it every month, and when things start to get too bad, we’ll put you back in chemo. 

it’s friday tomorrow - so two fridays ago, i saw my mum in london after she’d just seen hamilton with her partner, graham. both of them loved hamilton. her hair had grown back, she seemed pretty normal. about a week later, she was in A&E - and she’s been in the hospital all week. she’s got a total bowel obstruction, which means she can’t eat and hasn’t eaten since last week.

now in a weird situation where there are a few tricky, difficult options (including being moved off the island back onto the mainland to a bigger hospital) that will mean that she stays alive long enough to get the chemo, which will probably get her back to hamilton-watching strength, or ... she could die really soon. like, in a few days. 

we can’t visit. her partner can’t visit because covid - there’s this really sad-making photo of him looking happy on the phone through a window to my mum, also on the phone, inside the hospital. 

i feel...

???? :( :( :( ....

i guess this is the main point of the post. i’m not writing this crying, i’m writing it pretty neutrally - because my brain isn’t really processing it right now, and mostly doesn’t process it. 

i did cry earlier today while on the phone to various people, and then i went back to work. i hate crying, i hate being sad, and i dont like people comforting me, because it makes me realise that i have something to be sad about. 

i’ve known she had cancer for a year. i haven’t been able to hang out with her most of that time. i would say, we are fairly close, although not nearly as close as some families. we don’t talk every week, but we talk regularly, and have seen each other regularly. 

i’m so incredibly privileged that nothing that bad has ever happened to me, even though i’m 35. i’ve never been to a funeral, which seemed like a major life win and now i think was a mistake, i should have gone to funerals for people i card about less to help get used to it. 

the literal only comparison i have to how i feel is when my cat Anton died suddenly  about 3 years ago - i handled it with a mix of not thinking about it, being intensely sad for as brief a period as i could, and probably by thinking about how sad my girlfriend was about it, and sort of sidestepping my own feelings in comparison. 

i remember when my last remaining grandparent died - and i was about 14 or something - i wasn’t sad for myself, i was only sad for her my dad being sad. for ages, i worried that i was not going to be sad enough about this - and i still sort of am. 

but i also passionately hate the idea of being sad and i know i’ll look to avoid it as much as possible, and try and get on with my life. 

i know my mum dying isn’t about me - when people write after death it’s about the person who died, obviously. that makes sense. but this post isn’t about my mum, who is a very cool person, much cooler than me - it’s about me. because i am self-obsessed and this is going to wreck my life for a while.

it’s weird, because i can see it on the horizon but it’s not happening yet. and i dont know whether that’s good or bad - i feel like it’s good, in a way. someone ages ago told me that the grieving period starts when you get the news. that seems very true to me - but also, i know that it’s going to ramp up, and so i’m like in the expectation of true grief right now. 

it’s sort of like she died, but also is still going to die, but also i can magically still talk to her. which is really nice, in a way, it’s like a second chance, because i know i didn’t reach out enough before she had cancer. and i’m aware enough of my own actions that i know this is what’s been going on in my head the past year - i should reach out more, because she has cancer, but i dont want to make it seem like i’m reaching out because she has cancer, even though she knows i know she has cancer....... and also, i’m busy writing this fic. /o\

the fact that she seemed to recover (even though my mum insisted on saying ‘i am not recovered, i’m going to die soon’ like several time as a day as a disclaimer) also totally messed with my head, because i knew logically - ok, it’s happening. but also, things seemed so normal when we speak. even when i called her today, and she hasn’t eaten for a week, it seemed normal. 

btw - i realised this week i had no idea how cancer killed people. my mum is a scientist and has looked up all kinds of things about what’s killing her; i’m clearly a simon snow and didn’t want to think about things i can’t help. if you’d asked me, i’d have said like... it poisons you or something, or blocks bloodflow to your brain. not what i think will actually do it which is.... starvation. or being too weak to survive being pumped full of the poison that is intended to kill the cancer. (that one i guess i could have predicted.) man - cancer sucks. i mean, we all knew it. 

(i failed to get into cambridge university at interview stage, many years ago. the man who interviewed me gave me some extremely memorable feedback, which is that i needed to dial back the ‘defensive irony’ - which i thnk in that context meant i put myself down and tried to make a joke of everything. i remember when i got the phonecall to say Anton, my cat, was dead, i literally did not know what to do with my voice - because my instinct was to try and make the vet feel better, and also to present myself as bright and capable, and yet this unexpected and devasting news had just come through. rainbow wrote something sort of similar because she’s a good writer, for shepard as he tells penny about his curse. i feel like that.) 

what else did i want to say? 

i thought i had more time. ‘hamilton’ will probably always be tied to this moment in my mind, because of how much i’ve spoken to my mum about it in the past few weeks (i sent her the remix - she liked it, she listened to it in hospital while trying to drink more than 100ml of fluids) but yeah - this is basically a line from hamilton here. whatever. don’t make me feel my own feelings, let me just quote things. i dont like my own feelings. (no, i dont want to go to therapy - they’d make me talk about my feelings all the time, i’m british for god’s sake.) 

i’m 35 - my mum is 68. i didn’t think she’d die this early or that i’d have to deal with this yet. but then i also don’t think bad things are ever going to happen to me - because mostly they haven’t, see above. i wear a mask and am double vaccinated because i’m not an asshole, but i dont really believe i’ll get covid because bad things don’t happen to me. i didn’t think my mum would die - maybe ever, but definitely not yet. she’s been retired a decade after teaching (science) and has enjoyed it. 

i thought i had time to not have kids yet - which is the other thing (like hamilton) that this moment is really tied up with for me. i feel like 35 is getting quite old, but also not that old to still not have kids, but intend to maybe have them. my feelings about kids were basically like - up until like 25, i thought, yes, definitely. i mean, before i had a realtiosnhip (22-ish), i just assumed i would probably have a het marriage and have kids etc, like people do, but after that we were still talking, yes, children at some point. 

didn’t prioritise it for a few reasons - none of my close friends had children until quite recently, so it just didn’t seem like an urgent thing in the way that it probably does for people with different friendship groups. waiting to be settled enough in a job to be able to take maternity leave without it feeling like a rip off for my employer. waiting for a good time in erin’s PhD writing cycle. and then pandemic. and then a few years ago, maybe as i turned 30, i thought - maybe we won’ have kids, because we still haven’t - and i vocalised that to erin. 

also, i know a lot of people are gay and have children, so it’s not like it’s a thing that is impossible at all, but it’s much much harder if you have to leave your home and your relationship in order to get a child. it has to be a very very conscious decisions. i have friend who are men who have good genes, but we’re not so close i want to ask them for their sperm/to be involved however remotely in making a child - and (i was surprised to discover) (what a lot of things i dont know anything about) you an’t really just buy sperm, it’s not truly legal except through a clinic. and it’s extremely expensive to get inseminated in a clinic, and the NHS don’t really do that, so you do have to pay it. i thought kids would be expensive after they were born, but not before. and i REALLY wanted a house, much much more than - i think even today - i’ve ever wanted a child. i REALLY wanted a house - and now we have a house, and it’s pretty good. but - that’s where the money went, until the pandemic - thanks pandemic - so now we do have some disposable cash at last, because i didn’t commute. 

but now erin is worried about climate change - and wheher it’s right to bring more children into the world, and other things. and.... i think i do want to be pregnant, it’s what i’m planning for - don’t leave this job (which admittedly i also really like, and pays me well - i dont thin i need to leave) because next stop maternity leave, but..... 

i don’t know whether i am thinking, time ot have kids because my best friend just had a baby (the baby’s name is horatio - for real, i actually love this name) (i also haven’t seen her or the baby except over skype, because anna - my friend - is, like my mother, also scared of pandemic) and my brain is like - ok, well, if anna is doing it, i guess the time is here 

AND - i know there’s a large part of me that was like, gotta be pregnant and ideally have the baby before my mum dies so she gets to see that she had a grandchild. my brother and i are both queer, btw, in case you were wondering - he’s considering whether he wants to transition right now (but is still happy with he/him pronouns) and - you may find this astonishing, but i genuinely don’t know whether he’d consider himself ace, or has been in relationships. he’s very private, he has OCD and is in therapy - but anyway, he’s probably not having kids anytime soon (i think!) and graham - my mum’s boyfriend/partner of 10+ years. -has grandchildren, but my extremely middleclass white (but definitely not conservative voters, always 100% not-tory) parents ended up with me and my brother.... and i don’t know, as i say, i don’t know whether my brain is saying ‘have kids before it’s too late’ - although i know by now that it will be too late. even if my mum recovers from this, this time, i don’t think i can produce a child before she dies - and she isn’t asking me too, she’s not like that, but i would have liked her to be there. i thought she would be. 

so - i’m thinking about that. also, about getting a dog. i really want a dog - although i don’t want to upset the three cats (one we’ve had for eight years or so, the other two we got after Anton died). it’s ALSO really hard and expensive to get a dog. you’d think with all these ‘a dog isn’t just for the pandemic, a dog is for life’ type adverts around, that it would be easy to adcidentally get a dog - i’ve looked! you ccan’t get a dog unless you have no cats and you’re super experienced and can take a dog with lots of trauma or medical problems, or you’re willing to pay thousands of pounds. like - even for a regular not even pedigree dog - at least a thousand. pedigree dog - several thousand. i dont want a puppy either - i want a dog. 

and - this is embarrassing to admit, but i’ve alrady told erin - i genuinely had a phase of being super annoyed when i’d read fics where someone just ‘got a dog’. it’s not that simple!!! it’s fiction, it doesn’t matter - chill out. the baby thing too - although weirdly not fics where magic meant it was possible to get a baby, weirdly it was smut. i had a brief week or so of crazy (and i don’t think i am that crazy) where i’d read about fictional semen and just be like - wtf, it’s so hard to get hold of that shit. (it’s not real, this isn’t real semen being wasted, calm down - and i dont even really know if i want kids, i might just think i do.) 

the other thing about the bad thing being soon but not yet (but also being all the time, but not if you dnt think about it) is that i’m thinking - should i prioritise writing my remix now, in case my mum dies and i’m too sad to do it, and then i didn’t do my remix? i was definitely thinking this while writing classroom politics (i hope my mum doesn’t die becaue i dont want to be too sad to miss the deadline) and in the run up to AWTWB .....

today i wrote a list of things for work that would need to be picked up if i have to unexpectedly stop working, either because i’m too sad, or because i have to do funeral stuff, or .... i guess legal stuff about settling the estate. (i guess this happens to a lot of people, too, but it’s also a bit of a mindfuck that my brother and i will inherit her house and a bunch of cash when she dies - i’m pretty well off, my brotehr does virtual reality theatre stuff so really isn’t - we’ve talked about how much easier both of our lives will be with a huge injection of cash, and how we dont know what to feel about that) (great news, dogs and kids are really expensive! time to find out whether i really wanted to spend my money on those.) told people i like at work that it’s coming, and that i dont want to talk about it. and mostly just... carrying on with life, really. until it happens. 

it’s so weird how easy it is to carry on most of the time.i know my mum’s partner is not doing nearly so well - he has to cope with an empty house and he’s retired. i’ve had periods - including right now - where i wake up every morning and check my phone to see whehter someone called me or texted me to tell me it’s over. but most of the day i’m actually really fine. i even had an ok day today. and i don’t know whether i want that to be the case, or whether i shouldn’t let myself do that. i dont know what i should prepare for in terms of where i’ll be - will i want lots of stuff to distract me (this is my guess) and work is very good for that, or i will want to clear time and space because i can’t operate and dont want people to offer me comfort. (FYI - this post isn’t written to make people say anything to me, i definitely dont want to talk about it, so please don’t feel you either have to comment or check in on me - i don’t really want you to. it’s enough to have written it, in my own time, in my own space.)

i think i wanted to write this post in a way because i thought i probably wouldnt want to write it after my mum died - because i probably wouldn’t want to say anything about it at all, for a few years. 

my mum keeps telling me about the show ‘jane the virgin’ - which she’s half way through. shhe asked me to give it a try, so i did (she often tells me about shows on radio 4, which i rarely listen to. i thouht i had more time.) i’ve watched an episode (because she has cancer, i should listen to her recommendations)(but i dont want her to know that’s why i did it) and i do quite like - it’s light and frothy and well cut together (although about kids and artificial insemination, of course). i guess in a worse case scenario where i’m too sad to work or write, i will probably watch a lot of this show - which is incredibly not sad - and feel sad about how my mum never finished it. 

BUT ALSO SHE MIGHT BE OK. for a while. 

i dont know how i feel, blargh. anyway. this was a long post. i think i wrote it mostly for me. feelings are weird. covid really sucks and so does cancer. 

going to order some chicken and watch inuyasha.

[whumpity--whump--whump]

Whump Prompt #116

A whole bunch of covid prompts without anyone actually getting covid!

~Whumper makes a muzzle that looks like a normal cloth mask so that they can take Whumpee around and no one would suspect anything

~Whumpee gets sick (not covid) and thinks they have covid and panic over it

~In a place where there are really high infection rates and the city is in total lockdown, Whumpee can’t even try to escape because they will be sent back to the Whumper by the authorities, because the Whumper is their spouse/forged documents to look like they’re family/etc.

~Whumpee has to stay at home because putting on a mask makes them go through a PTSD induced panic because of the Whumper’s muzzle.

~Whumpee has to stay home because they are still recovering after being tortured by the Whumper and they don’t want to get covid since they are more at risk, so lots of fluff between them and Caretaker, who is staying with them until they get better.

~Whumpee is dying for physical contact but they can’t get it.

~Whumpee’s camera and mic are always off on Zoom meetings. That way no one can see what Whumper does to Whumpee, and they can just say that their camera is broken and the mic is sketchy.

~Whumper breaks Whumpee’s hands, making them helpless during the pandemic since everything is online.

~Whumper confiscating Whumpee’s devices.

~Whumper has to get devices for Whumpee so that it doesn’t look like that they are in trouble, but the devices they give Whumpee have all these restrictions on them from apps and whatnot, so Whumpee can basically only use Zoom and anything specific to their field.

~Whumper isolates themselves from Whumpee, not wanting to give Whumpee covid, who would get really sick if they got it since their immune system is worthless at this point. No one wants to kill their own pet. Whumpee doesn’t know why Whumper shut them in their room, they don’t even know about covid. So they think that they are being punished for something, but they can’t think of anything they did wrong. When Whumper comes back after a while, (they hadn’t left the house at all in 3 weeks, and didn’t have a single symptom, so they figured it would be safe now, they just would have to order everything online until everything blew over), Whumpee begs for forgiveness, assuming they did something wrong. Whumper explains that Whumpee didn’t do anything wrong, and tells them about covid and how they didn’t want Whumpee to get sick, so they stayed away until they were certain they didn’t have covid. So now Whumpee idolizes Whumper even more because they are convinced Whumper saved their life.

~Whumper does get covid, so he has someone give a laptop to Whumpee so that Whumper can still talk to their pet while they quarantine.

~Caretaker is quarantined because of contact tracing, and they panic because that means they can’t go out looking for Whumpee for another few weeks.

~Whumper convincing Caretaker that it’s too late to save Whumpee, Whumpee died recently of covid. Whumper puts up a good act, as if they were mourning their Whumpee. Caretaker completely breaks down when they hear this, surrendering to Whumper, who then kills Caretaker (since they can’t put them in the same place as Whumpee now)

~Whumper that won’t let Caretaker (who doesn’t know Whumper whumping Whumpee) in, claiming it’s because of covid. Really, Whumper is abusing Whumpee.

~Whumpee has to get the covid test involving the nose swab (which sounds utterly terrifying and I refuse to take that type of test). 

[thessalian]

Thess vs Changing the Rules

Some UK news hilarity of the “You have to laugh or else you start screaming and never stop, at least if you have to fucking live here” variety:

So, “Freedom Day” (yes, government is calling it this) is coming up on Monday. This being when all the COVID restrictions are being lifted in this godsforsaken country. This at the same time when we have one of the highest, if not the highest number of new cases globally, largely due to the Delta variant (which people here are calling the Johnson variant because it’s our Prime Minister’s stupid fault it got here in the first place). Johnson is stating that masks and social distancing would henceforth be a matter of “personal responsibility” and that he’s “sure people will do the right thing”.

(Side note: Transport for London intends on still enforcing masks in its buses and Tube trains, but Overground trains aren’t following the same restrictions and without legal backing, TfL is expecting a serious fight over this. Also, the shops that are also asking for masks after Freedom Day? Same thing. They know that they’re going to get a whole bunch of people shouting about “PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!” and “IT’S MY CHOICE NOW!” and that kind of shit. So from Monday, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare for the poor sods.)

Now we get to the funny part. See, we have a new Minister for Health: Sajid Javid, who took over after our last one, Matt Hancock, got sacked recently - effectively for violating COVID social distancing rules but given that this took the form of him being caught on video with his tongue down the throat of (and his hand on the ass of) one of his aides, the very married Health Minister was probably thrown under the bus earlier than Johnson wanted to. But that’s a little beside the point.

Anyway, Javid tested positive for COVID on Saturday. He’s milidly symptomatic (and if he wasn’t double-vaccinated, I will eat my favourite coffee mug, so that says some things about what the Delta variant does in a fully vaccinated patient, yay). This immediately after a meeting with Rishi Sunak, our Finance Minister ... and the Prime Minister himself, Mr Boris Johnson.

According to rules that will still be in effect even after ‘Freedom Day’, Sunak and Johnson are both supposed to self-isolate for ten days.

Johnson said he and Sunak had no intention of doing so, stating that they were part of a “pilot scheme” to take lateral flow tests instead of self-isolating.

Consider that in the face of not only his statement about “personal responsibility”, but the “one rule for the plebs and one rule for the ‘ruling class’“ bullshit that started with Dominic Cummings and his trip to his elderly relatives and the “drove to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight” thing when he had COVID (and when the vaccine wasn’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye yet). People. Were. Piiiiiiiiiissed.

Immediate U-turn. Johnson and Sunak are now self-isolating. Good. Fine. Johnson can feel shame.

Except maybe not, because now he’s trying to cover his arse with, “Oh, I was only considering not isolating because of the pilot scheme, but that was never really my intention”. Except that every news outlet in the country was briefed that it wasn’t “under consideration” but his actual stated intent. I know he’s counting on ‘the plebs’ not having significant memory capacity but most people can remember what he said literally yesterday.

This is the country that I have to live in. Less than 60% of people have had both vaccinations in this country; single vaccinations - just under 70% so far. Uptake’s plummeting (I like to hope that’s because people are already vaccinated but I can’t say for sure given the number of people who’ve had them or not) ... oh gods, and looking at the numbers across the country? The lowest uptake so far is fucking London, with on average 40% of people with both doses and maybe 55% with the first. And we have the highest population density in the country. Does no one else see a problem with this?

Tomorrow will mark the start of something messy in this country, and our Prime Minister wants to put the upcoming mess onto the shoulders of the populace because he lacks the political fortitude to do anything but lie, lie, cheat, lie, lean on three-word “feel-good” slogans, and lie some more. Holy. Fucking. Fuck.

Worst part is I have to start leaving the house properly come Wednesay. At least there’ll be a couple of days for things to settle down before I do, and I won’t be travelling at peak commuter hours anymore. I’m also grateful that, after the constant fight that everyone had with my workplace ot make working from home possible, my stubborn insistence on leaving that option on the table because of my fibromyalgia means that I’ll be able to actually do so soon enough. I am not a person who needs an office, and I sure as hell don’t need a three-hour commute.