#now it’s another day where most of us still have to live out lives but now we can’t get to the doctor or we

[atlas-of-andromeda]

Because I can, I'm answering all of them.

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

Alot of things, obviously, but if I had to pick, I'd say:

Being straight up bullied for expressing interest in things growing up by my brother

Being largely a social outcast for most of my life

And video games

show us a picture of your handwriting?

Yes, I know it looks like shit.

For any curious, it's the lyrics to Does The Swallow Dream Of Flying by Cosmo Sheldrake that I wrote at school a few days ago because it was stuck in my head but I was in math so I couldn't listen to it.

3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?

Wolfwalkers

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Heathers (1989)

what’s an inside joke you have with your family or friends?

Piss

(It's a long story)

what made you start your blog?

P.M. Seymour

what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?

Best? The anonymity of it.

Worse? The anonymity of it.

what scares you the most and why?

People hating me. I couldn't tell you why even if I wanted to.

any recurring dreams?

Sometimes I have this dream where I'm in a massive... sinkhole? I guess? That's covered entirely in moss, grass, trees, and miscellaneous foliage. There's also a waterfall somewhere in it. Everytime I have the dream it's dark, little light making it to where I am from the surface. I'm stood on this little cliff edge on the side of the hole, and everytime I look over the edge, and fall. And the dream ends there. I've had it at seemingly random intervals throughout the past... maybe nine-ish years?

There's also this dream I consistently have once, every four years. Where I'm awake in my bedroom at like... maybe 04:00 or something. And it's the early winter, snow just dusting the ground. I leave my room and the washroom door is open, light on, but all other lights are off. I walk over to the entranceway, and I can hear my mother screaming from the basement. I proceed to leave through the backdoor. I walk out into the front yard and my brother is there, and the lights on my family's car are on.

It gets a little fuzzy from then on, but I know that at some point I go back inside and there's a spoon - like the utensil - is important is some capacity. And at some point the dream suddenly switches into another, unrelated dream; where I'm laying on my back, on the floor of a massive almost warehouse-like building, completely empty, and except of the white and grey metal normally in warehouses, this building is made out of wooden planks. There's a giant fan on the roof blowing straight down on me. Balloons are involved at some point.

So... feel free to psychoanalyze me if you so wish!

tell a story about your childhood

One time my family and I were out visiting my grandfather, and there was a large lake near where he lived, so we went swimming. Now, I was like, five or six when this happened; I was very small (still am, but less so). And my older brother (by like four years) was walking out into the lake, and I was following him, because I did that sometimes when I was younger. And because he was (and still is) a lot bigger than me, he went out just fine. But because I was so small, the water picked me up and flipped me over, and I started drowning. My parents came to the rescue (my brother ignored me (dick)).

would you say you’re an emotional person?

I've gotten better in the last year or two, but yes.

what do you consider to be romance?

Couldn't tell you if I tried.

what’s some good advice you want to share?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

what are you doing right now?

Typing shit on Tumblr.

what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?

Come out.

what do you think of when you hear the word “home”?

A house.

if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd make myself braver and less of of a push-over

name 3 things that make you happy

Music, drawing, walking in nature

do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?

Nope. Not even kinda.

favourite thing about the day?

Being on the bus to and from school. I'm not at school or my house and I get to talk with my friend.

favourite things about the night?

Nobody bothers you. You are left alone for hours on end. It's the only time you get peace.

are you a spiritual person?

Nope.

say 3 things about someone you love

You're always making such shit comments about LGBT+ and minority people, and I can't say anything in retort. You make it easy to forget what a shit person you are, and I'm happy until you make one of those comments again. You're the only person who seems to care about me, even if I know that that if I were to be honest with you that'd change in a second.

say 3 things about someone you hate

You can't shut up for five seconds and give me peace and quiet. You've ruined my life in so many ways for so long. I can't wait for you to be gone.

what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?

Going on for this long.

fave season and why?

Autumn. Cold, but not frostbite cold. limited amounts of bugs. Pretty colours. :)

fave colour and why?

Red. No reason, just like it.

any nicknames?

Pumpkin - my father.

do you collect anything?

Yeah! Rocks and breadclips! (Random. I know)

what do you do when you’re sad?

Depends. If I'm in public, suck it up until in private. In private, cry and read fanfiction.

what’s one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?

Music.

are you messy or organized?

Pretty organized.

how many tabs do you have open right now?

...17...

any hobbies?

Drawing, writing, dancing, singing, playing guitar, playing harmonica.

any pet peeves?

People with no volume control.

do you trust easily?

Not really.

are you an open book or do you have walls up?

As many walls as possible.

share a secret

No. :)

fave song at the moment?

Vulture Culture by Fangclub

youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why?

Rendog. Idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

any bad habits?

Biting my nails.

questions I think would be fun to be asked

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?

show us a picture of your handwriting?

3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?

what’s an inside joke you have with your family or friends?

what made you start your blog?

what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?

what scares you the most and why?

any reacquiring dreams?

tell a story about your childhood

would you say you’re an emotional person?

what do you consider to be romance?

what’s some good advice you want to share?

what are you doing right now?

what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?

what do you think of when you hear the word “home”?

if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

name 3 things that make you happy

do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?

favourite thing about the day?

favourite things about the night?

are you a spiritual person?

say 3 things about someone you love

say 3 things about someone you hate

what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?

fave season and why?

fave colour and why?

any nicknames?

do you collect anything?

what do you do when you’re sad?

what’s one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?

are you messy or organised?

how many tabs do you have open right now?

any hobbies?

any pet peeves?

do you trust easily?

are you an open book or do you have walls up?

share a secret

fave song at the moment?

youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why?

any bad habits?

(this post was stolen from @teenage-mutant-ninja-freak, since it couldn't be reblogged anymore)

[thegreatstoryteller]

Female to Male Fridays!

The Great Shift: Meeting the Parents

“Are you sure you’re ok with this? We can still head home.” Jenny muttered. Clearly a bit nervous staring down at her boyfriend.

“Babe. It’s been almost a year since the Great Shift. I told you. Just because I’m unshifted, doesn’t mean I don’t want to meet your parents.” Youseff said smiling.

Jen and Youseff had met in their freshman year of college and immediately became close. They joined similar clubs, volunteered at the same food banks, and eventually friendship blossomed into romance one fateful summer night! The couple knew nothing could get between them and the love that they found… and a few years later that included the Great Shift. While Youseff remained unshifted, Jen Shale wasn’t so lucky.

They had agreed to meet at her sorority when the craziness of the Shift happened. Youseff was more than a bit surprised to find a larger older man in his 40s sitting nervously on Jen’s bed waiting for him! Since then many revelations have been shared with the couple. The first was Youseff coming out to his girlfriend as bi! He never had the courage to say it before and didn’t know how to share that part of his life with his girlfriend, but the shift offered a unique chance that worked out well with the couple. Two. Jen realized she was in a sports medicine professor who was quite in shape! He apparently was father to three student athletes on campus… and luckily her feelings for her boyfriend hadn’t wavered from the shift. A fact that they both enjoyed learning the first week of the Great Shift. Eventually the two became more comfortable with each other even buying a pair of matching pajamas!

It took quite some time for the world to get back in order. During that entire time communications were able to be set up with most families. Youseff’s family had many linear shifts, a term used by most of the world when your shift put you into someone very similar to your original body. His dad was a man his own age. His mother was a woman a few years younger than her. The only difference was his younger brother who now keeps telling Youseff to call him the bigger brother when he shifted into a former professional athlete. 

Jen’s family… was another story.

“And that brings us to today. Jen. I’m serious. I want to meet them. I know you’ve talked to them, but I haven’t. And when they invited us over for the holidays I thought it’d be the best chance to get to know them.” Youseff said hopefully, placing a hand against Jen’s cheek and training the thick salt and pepper stubble that was ever present no matter how close she shaved.

“I know- I know… but I told you before the shift that they were a bit much… and, well, now since the shift… they are still that! I guess… just… more…” Jen muttered nervously. A feat she seemed to still master despite her new commanding baritone. 

“They can’t be that bad.” Youseff said before knocking. And that’s when they heard heavy steps approaching the door.  

A handsome muscular man answered the door! He wore long pink dishwashing gloves and an apron! Aside from that he seemed to be wearing nothing else. The small potted flower he held seemed to be thriving!

“You must be Youseff! Jen has told us so much about you! Come in! Come in! I was just washing some dishes and watering the kitchen plants! We’re so glad to meet you. You can call me Margot! I’m Jen’s mother, or rather her second father!” Margot laughed. The man before them had a deep voice and almost a bro like tone. The motherly introduction he gave at odds with his gym bro form. 

“You must be hungry! I’ve been making lots of food these days. This young man I became had quite the appetite. And who could blame him. I’ve felt the urge to go to the gym almost every day of the week! Anyway, I just keep blabbering away! Have a mini quiche!” Margot led them to the living room where a small plate of appetizers awaited them.

“Wow, these are amazing Margot!” Youseff said digging in. I always wondered where Jen got her amazing cooking skills from.

“Awww! Jen! You didn’t mention your man was a little charmer.” Margot giggled as Jen blushed. 

“Mooom! Stop! You’re embarrassing me!” Jen complained burying her fuzzy face in her large hands. Her mom was always like this. If it wasn’t telling embarrassing stories about Jen, it was finding an excuse to show off her body. Ever since Margot got her new body she had been more than happy to show it off. She would say, “Well this young man clearly wanted to show off his muscles, who am I to cover them up!”. So bouncing around the house in her classic apron was just the way she dressed these days.

“Shush Jen. My little girl will never be too old for a little humor. Just because you have more grays on that head of yours than your father did pre shift, doesn’t mean you can’t laugh a little.” Margot teased.

“Speaking of where is Mr. Shale? Youseff asked.

“Well he’s always in the garage these days. When he got that 20 year old gymnast’s body, he’d become obsessed with the sport! I’ve got some biscuits to take out of the oven. You two should check on him.” Margot offered.

“Anything to get out of this conversation.” Jen groaned pulling Youseff towards the side of their home. As they opened the door to the garage they could see a handsome black man flexing in the mirror, wearing a tight singlet. The chalk on his hands implying a recent gymnastics routine.

“Jen! There’s my little girl turned big man!” Her dad said cutting his flexing short and heading towards Jen. Mr. Shale now was the shortest one in the family at 5’1. With his daughter at 6’0 and his wife at 5’10, the household tended to tower over him. However, he was more than happy with his new body.

“Hey dad, enjoying your gymnastics or whatever?” Jen half heartedly asked.

“Yes I am! I tell ya, being a few decades younger is great! Sure beats my beer belly and sore ankles. A 20 year old body like this is flexible. You can ask your mother if you don’t believe me.” Mr. Shale winked.

“Dad! Oh my gosh! NO! I brought Youseff here! Please don’t gross him out.” Jen screamed.

“Oh so this is the young man that’s caught my daughter’s eye. You can address me as Mr. Shale or sir. DO I make myself clear?”  Mr. Shale looked up at Youseff who just nodded. Despite the size difference between them Youseff was clearly intimidated by his dad-like tone. 

“Yes sir!”

“Good man. I guess I have you to thank for helping our dear Jen finally get some more manly clothes? For some reason she didn’t want my help with a new wardrobe.” Mr. Shale shook his head disappointed.

“Yeah! We actually had a lot of fun going to the store and finding clothes that fit. The toughest part was finding shoes in her new size.” Youseff conceded.

“Youseff!” Jen blushed. She knew it was true. With her larger feet, she realized just how difficult it was to find footwear that fit. The largest most places went up to was size 15. Her now size 18 feet were tough to find anywhere!

“Sorry babe, but it’s true. Plus you said you had a great time shopping. Like old times, remember? You said that you weren’t sure we’d find a single pair, but when we went to the Big and Tall store, they had a few shoes your size! Even sandals!” Youseff explained.

Jen just shook as her dad applauded Youseff’s resourcefulness!

Before long the family was finally all together to share a meal! Jen’s parents were loving her boyfriend, though he could see that she was clearly embarrassed throughout the whole dinner.

By the time they left Youseff was driving them back to their apartment, where he asked. “Jen? Are you alright? I… I’m guessing that night wasn’t the most pleasant for you?”

Jen just nodded and hugged her boyfriend. Her broad frame embracing him with a tight squeeze. “My parents just take a lot out of me. Before the shift they were overbearing in a different way and now… well now they are always just so comfortable in their new bodies! My mom started going to the gym almost every day with her old book club. Each of them became some kind of fitness influencer. And my dad! He won’t stop telling me how proud he is to have a son now and that I need to start acting more manly. I don’t get how they can be so well adjusted to all this! I… I thought I was getting there. With you… being this kind of man feels easy. Even more exciting at times too.”

“I do love your mustache.” Youseff noted, causing Jen to giggle.

“See. It’s stuff like that. You always make me feel like your partner… and… I guess I need more time before I start feeling like a member of my own family again and not some older hairy guy.” Jen admitted.

Youseff kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry I insisted we meet them so soon. I was so ready to take our relationship further and I was so nervous to meet them. But I forgot to consider how you were feeling about your parents. From now on, we can just focus on us.”

“I like that plan.” Jen smiled kissing back.

“Good. Maybe we can start with a pedicure tomorrow. I know you’ve been itching to try that out with your big new feet.” Youseff teased.

“Ha! These big new feet would love to get a pedicure. Maybe a foot massage later too!” Jen smiled, wiggling her big toes. When she was with Youseff she realized, maybe she could get used to this big body.

[elliesglock]

Azzi go with Paige bad live!!!

some side notes before anything:

this live yalll 🚶🏼‍♀️‍➡️ unserious asf. first of all quit playing in my face kk with the my man comments you are so sick. i like how she switches from the my man comments to laughing at the baby stud comment like gurllll we know what you are 😭 don't even have to spell it out.

first of all, paige looking all fine in this live azzi i see why you were having some trouble studying in this live wooowweeeeee.

so there's gonna be some big time jumps in between everything because we don't see azzi a lot. however paige has never been subtle about her girl so we still get some lovelyyyt moments.

in the beginning of the live, amari walks in and they start laughing at her cause "her man's" over. kk leaves to go introduce the guy to the live and imo paige follows her out. she obv goes straight to her girl it sounds like and is giggling and laughing with her while kk's in amari's room. this probably why she's so irritated later in the live cause she can't know one moment of peace with paige 😭.

they come back into paige's room and kk sets down the camera. paige is so close to that camera like honey back up please i can feel that breath. she's staring HARDDDDDD at those comments and that's when a comment pops up that makes me want to shoot people. "paige with azzi real bad 🙄🙄". LIKE??? and ofc this nosey ass girl JUMPSSSS to touch the screen and read the comment. her eyes get all wide and she taps kk, she's laughing and kk starts laughing too. like they know yall. the way p's eyes LOCK DOWN when she sees azzi's name in the chat in general. it so gives who's talking about my girl? what they know about her? why are yall mentioning her? UGH PROTECTIVE P YOU ALWAYS BE FAMOUS. kk pushes paige in a joking way but you can tell she's so over them and us lololol. she's like i already have to hear them 24/7 talking about each other and now yall are giving them even more opportunities to mention one another GET OUTTTT.

skip to a little later, i think p's missing her girl a little bit and says, "get azzi on live." yall this whole live she's literally talking and wanting azzi to come in the room. she's mad because azzi's taking an exam and is so far (3 feet) away from her. kk kinda pauses and goes, "hmm?" like babe im just gonna pretend you didn't say that. i've heard you talking about this girl all day 🙄. live pauses for a second and im not sure if its kk doing it in case p says something or if it's just that uconn internet. i'm sure it's because of that toaster wifi. there's a interesting little moment next i wanted to bring up cause i find it funny. someone in the comments says, "kk should i get back with my ex?" and kk kinda hesitates and goes, "nooo..?" and paige says no as well. kk laughs at this. in a manner where it's sorta like she's saying girl you know damn well you did. she's basically calling out p subtly cause she knows she got back with azzi and she thinks she's being a hypocrite. that's just my interpretation according to my timeline. p's thinking of her freshman days oop. the comment replies back and says they were dating for 3 months and both of them say yeahhhh let it go. p confident as hell in her answer cause she knows she had azzi for so long and knew she was hella right for fighting for her back i know that's rightttttt.

someone in the comments asks where's azzi? kk reads it out and paige immediately says yeah go get her like she was waiting for the opportunity to speak or even see her girl again. THIS GIRL IS SICK IN LOVE YALL. she also has this....tone when she says it. veryyyy sensual. kk walks out of the room and goes up to azzi. also i'd like to point out HOW CRAZY it is that azzi's just posted up in paige's dorm room (that's not even a's dorm room btw) and she's just chilling doing an exam. azzi's a better soldier than me because the fact she's doing an exam with the literal LOUDEST most obnoxious woman ever near here is straight willpower. but since she's been caught doing hw before multiple times with paige i think she likes to do it in her dorm room. imo it's because if she gets a little frustrated she can go to p and have a little break and some snuggles before locking back in. and she knows p will help her and do whatever she needs to get through the assignment mentally and physically. p's her rock and that's always how it's gonna be. kk says azzi wants a cowboy hat from the live and azzi says nooooo in that cute little pouty voice she has. you can hear p GIGGLE in the back like a little school girl and i just find it so funny because she's definitely hanging over the edge of her bed watching the interaction to get some of her azzi time in. going back to what i saying earlier, i think az's a little upset because of her homework ofc but also because she's having a hard time and she can't go and cuddle like she's used to with p because kk's in there on live :(. poor azzi baby you'll make it out. kk asks if she's okay (like genuinely worried aweee) and azzi says she's taking an exam. kk goes ohhh and leaves immediately. paige obv is hanging onto every word because she pipes up and yells, "that's! don't let her- she's not taking an exam." GIRL HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?? she just wanna tease azzi every chance she gets. kk walks away and go back to p's room and as she's walking in she makes eye contact with paige. as if p was already staring at her and giggling for teasing azzi. they both start laughing. girlll leave my princess alone damnn. kk says "she is actually" and p responds and says "is she?" and i just want to point out whenever paige says something about azzi or is talking about her she gets this tone of voice. her voice goes deep and she speaks very lowly and flirty like. almost like the thought of azzi gets her feeling something and it translates into her voice. SHOOT ME IF YOU WANT TO BUT IM JUST SAYING.

later on, kk brings up wanting to see sabrina and steph in a three point shooting contest. paige not being able to help herself says, "my moneys on azzi." like when it comes to repping your girl yall are not fucking with p at alllllll. again, it's like she's bringing up az cause she misses her and her girls away from her :(. i know my friends and i do that whenever we're missing our significant others, we'll just bring them into conversation more because we're thinking about them heavily. kk sorta laughs and goes off camera for a second because she knows it's soooo goofy of paige to bring up azzi out of no where when the topic wasn't even about az. by god paige will make it about her tho. however, she comes back on screen and daps up paige almost like she's saying yeahhhh im tryna get like you in the future and rep my girl like that!! they both say "you already knowwwww!" and the first thought that came to my mind was dang p is so in love with azzi's talent and she wants everybody to know that's her girl and that's her goat. i mean she does it all the time saying azzi is the best player in the world.

kk sees a comment that says "i got my money on azzi lol" that's making fun of p. she laughs for a second and hands the phone to p to show her. p laughs with her little azzi smile reading it before repeating you already knowwwww. she's subtly hinting again that that's her girl and she WILL be her biggest fan and yall are not allowed to be at all. kk goofily says "and we're gonna end the live" at the comment and they both laugh.

they move on, but p can't stop talking about her girl for 5 minutes. again, because she's thinking about her and wants her to come homeeeeee (her room). she'd rather rip her skin off than not bring up azzi. so she says, "she's not even taking the test no more." she's so desperate it's soooo hiliarious. kk pipes in and says yeahhh she's chatting! p agrees. she needs to go mess with her again, so she brings in the big guns and both her and kk go in this time. kk goes in and says "are you okay" and I KNOWWWW az is giving her the dirtiest look and kk looks a little scared now. but fret not p knows she can mess with her and azzi will never get madddddd cause that's her girl and she loves her (at least in p's delusional head she thinks azzi won't say anything to her). so here's comes this loud ass bitch screaming " AZZIIIII!" and i know az's body immediately tenses up cause girl me too. and then paige screams, AZZI again. it's giving a little kid trying to get their moms attention fr 😭 she seems so done and defeated when she says, "no paige pls im almost done seriously." and she's truly begging for her life cause she knows p will keep annoying her. p obv gets very sassy and pouty and doesn't like this cause she goes, "WHAT THE HE....." before kk mutes her. they probs bicker for a calm little ten seconds and p ofc loses and tucks her tail between her legs. next time we see p she's sitting on the bed again playing her game, oh azzi put belt to asssssss!! she said SIT YO ASS DOWN I NEED TO FINISH THIS. and no matter how loud and sassy p is she's gonna do what her princess says.

kk leaves and goes to go to other peoples dorms. but the legend says azzi stayed and finished her final and went to paige's room and stayed the night 🤫 i just find it so funny as kk's leaving she says goodnight to both of them it just gives she's saying goodnight to her moms and leaving their room before going to sleep. it's so adorable. my kk pazzi's kid agenda IS UPPPPP rn.

that's it yall, thanks for reading!!!

(also aliyah and aubrey at the end isssssss soooo cute)

[betterinvienna]

but even though you're killing me | childe x gen!reader

chapter 2: wine

prev / masterlist / next

synopsis: Ajax is most attracted to the things that hurt him: combat, heartbreak, and you. Inspired by Chainsaw Man’s Angel, reader possesses deadly, unwanted power; to touch reader’s skin is to shorten your lifespan by an unspecified, varying amount. For this reason, reader resides in a secluded spot of Dragonspine and wears heavy, impenetrable clothing – well, up until reader’s life is impeded by a moment of weakness. Luckily for the lovestruck redhead, he’s here for a good time — not a long time.

[ 1.4k words — fluff & angst — warnings: scars around wrist area ]

ac: rainsword01 on twt

taglist: @usagiarchive

author's note:

doing an overhaul of 01 because i hated how i started it so im gonna delay 03 in interest of bettering the prologue!!! quite surprised i was able to pump this one out in 2 days. tell me if u wanna be added to my taglist just found out the thing existed :-) haha hope u like it

To breathe, to speak, to think, and to perform. The perfect pillars of your self-curated world – a gorgeous mantra of survival. It’s what got you here, and what gets you there. Life is ultimately straightforward. Live and sleep today, so you can live and wake up tomorrow. There is no end goal until it comes; your life was never yours to decide. As if you were a full wine glass, the only designation you feel in this life that is solely yours is to feed other mouths – pour sweet, red wine into other beckoning glasses, and hear the monotonous rumble of a thank you and chatter about your manufactured well mannerisms.  

What do you do when you run empty, a thin red liquid left uselessly sloshing around at the bottom? Are you sure that you are the only distributive glass?

Childe – or Ajax, you learned from a couple of pastime “Are we there yet?” conversations he had with Scaramouche, another name you picked up – yanks the reins, eliciting a haughty, synchronous neigh from the two mares and pulling the carriage to a firm halt. You reach up and use the base of your palm to push into your eye cavities, leaving the area hot with irritation. You can’t fall asleep. Not now. Now, your free, around-the-clock schedule is as good as a newsboy – obsolete. Sleeping all day, whenever you want to, isn’t an option when isolation is ticked off the list. They went hand in hand, their absence simultaneously leaving you stranded, confused, and definitely –

“Tired?” Childe pops his head into the cushioned, back portion of the carriage. The seats are lined with a nice crushed velvet texture, dipping only with the flat, hard dots methodically drilled into them in measured intervals. You choose to ignore him, fiddling with the plush of the cushion and flaring your nostrils to avoid an open-mouth yawn. Already accustomed to your silence, he gives up and mumbles, “I take that as a yes.” 

The minute you step out of the body of the creaky carriage, cold air bites at your lungs, threatening to freeze the two, and the crunch of your trusty boots finally awakens you – or maybe it was the other way around. You slip your hands into the sherpa-lined pockets of your coat, picking at the lint balls and feeling for runaway wood chips. You lower your gaze to the ground. It’s… nice. It’s pure white, sparkly, and clean. You take your hands out of your homely pockets – rough palms and stubby nail beds pale blue from the subzero temperatures – and stare a hole into the infinite, long scars on both hands that circle where your wrist and palm meet.

You take the mittens out of your back pocket and tug them on, treating the snow a little kinder this time as you follow behind Childe, footsteps lighter than before. How different would have life been if you weren’t this? Would you envy the cold still?

The worst thing about being shown mercy is not the cruel thievery of your independence – no, you’d already gnawed your lip clean raw over this gripe – it was the annoying constant surveillance of your savior. Childe looks back once, twice, observing your gait and making sure you don’t book it off the mountain. 

The ephemeral atmosphere around Albedo’s open lab is slightly warmer relative to the mountain and harbors an inherent chemical, pungent smell. Both attributes lift your chin to meet Albedo’s inquisitive eyes. 

However, the silent question is utterly transient, and he autonomously answers it. “And now?” Albedo pulls off his gloves and clears a spot on his center table amongst the clutter, motioning for you to sit.

Except you don’t. Because Childe is looking at you now – prompted by Albedo’s phrase that made it appear as if perpetual injury was but commonplace for you. Quite oppositely, it wasn’t a look of disgust, and that’s what irked you the most. He’s unnatural. It was the same look people gave you when you had told them you lost the same tooth they did, back in your fleeting elementary days. When your family wasn’t yours, but it was family. All you had known.

Now, there is none, and Childe’s eyes still ask, “Are you me?”

You tell him “no” in your head, but he doesn’t hear. Nobody is like you, no matter how damaged they may be. You silently apologize for indirectly invalidating his experiences as if you were in some trauma quasi-war (if you’re being honest, the tale of his face dictates his premature victory in this case), and you hope he somehow senses that bit. His gaze is averted from its previous position by the time you pass him by, and if not for the newfound blooms of heat on your cheeks, it almost makes you think the interaction was a hallucination – a passing hologram of sorts.

You prop up on the uncomfortable wooden table, unbuckling your tattered leather boot and allowing Albedo to examine the decorated wound. Scaramouche huffs, bored, and leans on the pillar of the entrance. You allow yourself a glance – he’s short, shorter than Childe – and his eyes are intrinsically noxious. He’s undoubtedly gutsy for his build as he meets your gaze with precision and unshadowed ire. You rip your gaze from his almost instantly. Not everyone is going to like you – and it’s something you were made well aware of very early on.

“This is…” Albedo starts, thumbing the edges of the wound. You wince. “You’re sure this is from a lone trap?” Childe nods. While you were lost in your head, they’d been talking. 

You search Childe’s face, but he doesn’t want to meet your eyes any longer. Why? “That’s what we found at the tent, at least.” He motions to your foot aimlessly. Albedo puffs out a curious middle ground between a huff and a scoff, and you finally look down at your wound, having grown weary of begging for reciprocation of interaction from Childe. You decide maybe you’ve been too harsh on him. Perhaps the wolfish bite of your incessant silence finally sank deep enough to puncture something vital – something fundamental. Either way, why should you care about his emotions and what he thinks of you? You don’t care for him, his feelings, or his vestigial viewpoint on your otherwise indifferent character.

If that were true, you wouldn’t have been staring at him – no, burning a hole into his cranium – searching for answers. Searching for reasoning, a backing logic, as to why you feel that his validation trumps the greater mass of the mental and emotional training decennial isolationism had served you on an oxidized platter. Your expression soured at the thought of such vulnerability, and you returned your binary focus to the portlier momentous matter at hand. Childe still looked ahead, staring at your foot. He was silent, but you could tell he saw the ordeal through his peripheral. His eyes seemed remote – as if he were there only in person, not soul, and it’s only now that you notice what human aspect he’s missing exactly – a luminous fleck in his eye.

“It should heal in about a week,” Albedo finalized. “In your convalescence, I advise you to stay off the foot and remain well-fed and hydrated. The wound isn’t as bad as you think – but it was festering.”

You mumble a thanks, allowing Albedo to help you off the table. You capaciously hobble and waddle your way toward Childe and Scaramouche. Scaramouche turns before you hit the center mark of the lab, starting towards the carriage early and unmistakably irritated. It seems as if Childe has snapped out of his trance, and he plasters a grin on his face – but you still notice the crucial lack of light in each eye. 

You allow him to aid your journey to the carriage, desperately grabbing onto his forearm with a thickly mittened hand when he turns to shut the door of the carriage’s cabin. The touch somehow seeps through the impregnable fabric and burns your palm. You grip a little tighter as if he’s going to slip between your fingers, away from you. “You’re not normal.” You analyze, vaguely. 

Childe merely chuckles and shakes his head, ignoring your candor. “Not even a thank you?” Oh. Right.

“Yeah – thank you.” You reluctantly pull your fingers up, segment by segment, allowing the sleuth to escape with your riches. It wasn’t worth pressing him over; besides, what could you subsequent such a blunt phrase with?

You let him go, but, somehow, in some curious way, your palm still felt seared through the thick glove.

[theolliesaurus]

i'm so sorry,, op.

february this year will mark 10 years since i lost my dad - he passed away in his sleep from an aneurysm in his heart. yet i still remember when we got the phone call - it was the morning and my mum came to wake me up. the news didn't Hit until a later date. i didn't know how to cry when i first found it all out; that he'd passed 3 days prior to the call and was found face down in his bed,, that my sister was preparing to tell him the news of her then pregnancy.

i remember i got out of bed because my mum wanted me to follow her into my sister's room. my sister was sobbing buckets on the bed. and that was when my mum broke the news. i didn't outwardly react or start crying. i don't remember feeling much of anything. but my sister wanted me to come forwards when my mum left the room,, and she just pulled me in close and hugged me. but i still didn't cry.

the one thing i did was turn on my laptop and start watching a video to escape the news instead. but i still didn't yet cry.

but instead the funeral in march was where i broke.

what hurts the most is i never got to see him one last time,, nor did i ever get to say goodbye. and i still feel so guilty about not being able to communicate with him anymore because of the trauma of what he went through in past years,, with his sudden fall that lead to a triple heart bypass surgery,, to which he then would have to remain in a care home for the rest of his years as it excelled his huntington's to the point he couldn't live or care for himself anymore.

and because i no longer have him in my life,, i fear what will happen when i inevitably will lose my remaining parent or how i'll cope - my mum is my carer as i can't live independently due to disability,, there's things i can't do to take care of myself and skills i'm not able to learn.

which then sparks fears of what's going to happen to my sisters and to me,, because i'm planned to be transferred over to one if anything should happen to our mum,, and then transferred over to another if anything then happens to the sister who's first in line to care for me,, and so forth and so forth.....

but;

two or three of my favourite childhood memories that i look back on often include how my dad would take me shopping with him in the car into the next town,, and the shopping center had a little cafe next to it - the cafe had one of those coin-operated kiddie rides outside of it also (it was Scoop from "Bob the Builder"). so when we had finished shopping,, my dad then took me into the cafe and he bought me a cake to eat,, and then would let me play on that kiddie ride.

or there was a moment where we drove to the next town in the car,, and he stopped at one point to buy us a pastry each,, and we just sat in the car together eating our pastries.

or just the simplicity of being taken to the library to rent out a dvd on the weekends when he came to pick me up from my house. then we'd walk on down to his flat afterwards where i'd stay for a couple hours before bringing me back home. i'd play games on his computers,, or i'd take pictures with his photography camera out the back window.

or how when we'd make cakes down his flat,, he'd let me lick the mixture in the bowl and off the spoon. and how he'd let me help out with putting the roast chicken in the oven for dinner.

i still have a piece of his flat. a bit of his wallpaper that was ripped. and yet it's tucked away in a cupboard below my computer.

i have his photography camera that he left me. and yet i just can't bring myself to use it.

i had his computer from his care home that he wanted me to have - because i would always do drawings on it when i visited. it was the one physical thing i had left of him that felt alive. and yet i broke down when it suddenly didn't work anymore. now it sits tucked away in our storage cupboard downstairs; because i still can't part with it.

i still have some money that he inherited to me that i still haven't yet touched or done anything with.

it all still hurts.

and what hurts more is my mum offered for me to see his body in the coffin on the day of the funeral,, but i declined and said no.....

No one prepares you for how crippling grief is, last year my mom died of cancer. I watched her decline so rapidly that my brain couldn't understand who I was looking at by the time she passed. I couldn't understand who I was by the time she passed because I had to become a vessel who makes appointments, dresses, nurses, cooks and an entity who does not sleep. I did it all alone. The reality is that cancer eats away at everything, it lives on even after the patient dies. It ate away at every part of me, I couldn't get out of bed, I had sleep paralysis, I couldn't stop seeing her... like that. They asked me if she's my grandmother when they carried her out of the house. She was in her early 50s. Do you understand? In 3 months, she began to look like she was 80. Everyone wanted me to move on after a month, no one called anymore, not even a text. I thought I was alone when she was alive, but this was a new type of isolation. One that I barely survived. (thank you to my mutuals and tumblr for being an outlet)

It's been a year and 6 months, today I realized she's not the first thing I think of in the morning, or the last thing I think of before I fall asleep. I couldn't even call to do paperwork before, now I'm forgetting why it was even that difficult.

The sun's out, I think i'm going to get ice cream without feeling guilty that it's not something she can do anymore.

[malk1ns]

february 1 vs predators, 3-0 win

a shutout? for us? is that allowed?

there is an unspecified age gap in this fic—i don't know exactly how old geno is in it, but he's younger than mario (b. 1965) is. mario purchased the penguins in fall 1999, about a month before he turned 34, and geno can't have been too young to be financially involved in that, so...maybe he's around jagr's (b. 1972) age? that would make him somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years older than sid. let's go with that.

also in this world he got his hair transplant done when he was way younger and it's thrived ever since. i like picturing him as a silver fox 😋

When Zhenya went in with Mario on putting up money to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh, he never imagined a day where he’d be spending more time around the team than Lem did.

It was an easy decision at the time. The team was so badly mismanaged, and Zhenya had no desire to see the Penguins forcibly moved because their owners didn’t know how to manage a TV deal or sign sponsors. He didn’t want to move, and more importantly the fanbase didn’t deserve it. He figured he’d put up the money and let the lawyers figure out whatever they needed to to so he could keep playing, and when he retired he’d have a nice little stream of income no matter what he wanted to do.

He had no interest in the care and feeding of a professional hockey organization, not like Mario did. Mario stayed out of the GM’s day-to-day business for the most part, but whenever Zhenya met him for dinner, it was clear that the Penguins still ruled his life, the same way they had when the two of them were playing.

Zhenya stayed in Pittsburgh for Mario while he was playing. Even back when he was purchasing the team, he always assumed he’d move back to Russia, showing up for big events and (hopefully) Cup wins, but living his own life and enjoying himself.

Well, things don’t always work out the way we imagine. One knee surgery, and then another, ended his career earlier than he’d planned, and Mario talked Zhenya into sticking around and helping with player development before he could tuck tail and run back to Russia.

Almost twenty-five years later, and he’s still here. Oh, he travels plenty—there’s no point in retiring if you’re still beholden to coming into work every day, after all. Especially early on Zhenya spent probably more than his fair share of time flitting between tropical islands and enjoying the fruits of being young, athletic, and rich. But Pittsburgh had worked its way into his blood and bones, and he always comes home.

He’s been home a lot more frequently since about 2008.

Attending games as team owner is fun. He has his own box that he gets to invite whoever he wants into, and fans are still so eager to take pictures with him, starry-eyed over both the Cups he brought the town when he and Lem were still playing and his ‘team savior’ status. For years, he and Mario would sit and watch games together, waving when the cameras panned up to them and chatting.

Now, Mario barely comes anymore. Zhenya was more than happy to sell when Ron and Mario approached him about it—he’d still own some shares, he’d been assured, enough to have his opinion considered, but the brunt of decision-making would be removed from their shoulders. Zhenya was fine with that. They made a tidy profit, Zhenya still gets treated like royalty at PPG and anywhere in the league, and the responsibility of running a team that’s reaching the end of its golden age is no longer his.

He’s not clear what, exactly, went wrong between Mario and the guys with FSG. Mario won’t talk about it, and Zhenya doesn’t care to hear anyone else’s side of the story.

The result is, Zhenya’s the most consistent link to the old days that the fanbase has. In Mario’s absence, he’s found himself at more games over the last couple of seasons than probably the previous decade combined. He still watched, obviously, kept up with the team and was there for the players when necessary, but he was a more frequent presence at practice, helping out the coaching staff or chatting with the Euro scouts when they were in town than putting on a suit to sit in his box.

It’s exhausting. Zhenya’s face hurts from smiling politely some nights, and he’s sick of shaking hands with rich businessmen who want to take a picture with him but don’t actually give a shit about what he has to say.

There are perks, though.

His team is back from a long road trip, and Zhenya’s looking forward to seeing them play in person. He’s spent a lot of time with Kyle Dubas this season learning about his plan for the future, and losing is part of it, but as hard as the bad losses are there are always bright spots.

Halfway through the second period, Zhenya gets to watch one of his favorite bright spots in person for the first time in almost two weeks.

He’s always liked watching Sid score from one knee. It’s a statement goal, a fuck-you to a league that spent the first few years of Sid’s career beating the shit out of him and expecting him to say thank you and shut up. He never did.

“Damn,” Hörnqvist says with feeling as Zhenya leans back in his seat and whistles. “I forgot how that looks. How is he still so good?”

Zhenya shrugs, tracing Sid’s path across the ice to go down the fistbump line. He can make out Sid’s sharp smile from all the way up here, and his stomach flips over.

He’s missed watching the Penguins in person, yes. He’s missed Sid more. 

“Robot, maybe,” he says in answer to Horny, who laughs loud and bright.

Zhenya spent a lot of time around the team during the back-to-back years. They had so many injuries, and when Mario gave Jim the go-ahead to fire Johnston in 2015 the team had been fragile. He’d gotten to know those guys really well, and he’s always liked Horny. When he confirmed he’d be in town for his bobblehead night, Zhenya had been quick to invite him to sit up in the owner’s suite.

They’ve been having a good time. Horny’s just as exuberant as he ever was, and Zhenya’s been able to relax instead of putting on a show for whatever bigwigs FSG saddled him with that night. He’s even let himself have a few drinks, wrinkling his nose at the wine on offer but downing it anyway.

Mario’s horrendously expensive taste in wine crept up on Zhenya after all these years, even though he tried to resist it.

He’s distracted the rest of the game, chatting with Horny and leaning around the wall to take a selfie with some kid in the next box over with half his mind down on the ice, on Sid’s fantastic goal and how he looks after a good win.

The Penguins secure the shutout, and when the jumbotron flashes Zhenya and Horny on the screen, the crowd goes wild. Horny waves and flashes his megawatt smile, and Zhenya gestures to him with a flourish, applauding long and loud right in Horny’s ear until Horny’s shoving at him playfully.

It’s perhaps not dignified for an owner to get into a fake wrestling match in his suite while on camera, but the crowd loves it, and Zhenya’s done much more embarrassing things to please the people of Pittsburgh.

He wants to make his way down to the locker room, but that’s not his place anymore, no matter how much he wants to congratulate the guys. Zhenya’s far removed enough from the current roster that his presence makes a lot of the guys nervous, and that’s the last thing he wants.

It’s easy enough to wait by Sid’s car with his hat pulled low over his face instead.

“Forgot where you parked?” comes Sid’s teasing voice, and Zhenya pockets his phone and straightens, opening his arms.

Sid doesn’t even look around the parking lot before he steps into Zhenya’s embrace.

“Missed you, лапочк��,” Zhenya murmurs into Sid’s hair, running his hands over Sid’s back. “Long trip.”

Sid sighs against Zhenya’s chest. “Tell the league to not do that to us next year,” he requests with a little whine, sagging into Zhenya’s hold.

Zhenya laughs. The league doesn’t listen to him. They don’t like foreign owners.

“Good goal,” he says instead, stepping back and cupping Sid’s face in his hands. Sid looks tired, which is to be expected, but his eyes are bright. “Everyone in arena likes, Horny says to me how’s he still so good, like, maybe he’s not human.”

Sid grins at that, an echo of the same sharp smile Zhenya saw on the ice. He’s as humble as they come, but Zhenya’s praise has always gotten him to puff out his chest a little. “And what did you say?” he asks, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head.

He flirts like he did when he was 18 and desperately trying to catch Zhenya’s eye when they would stay late to practice face-offs. Almost 20 years later and with a head full of graying hair, and Zhenya’s as much of a sucker for it now as he was then.

“Mmm,” Zhenya says, grabbing at Sid and reeling him back in, taking a big exaggerated squeeze of Sid’s ass. “I tell him I know you’re real boy, I check very carefully almost every day.”

Sid makes a sweet little sound in Zhenya’s ear. “Take me home,” he requests, and Zhenya drags him over to Zhenya’s own car, installing Sid in the passenger seat and tearing out of the player’s garage.

Sid has a lot of responsibilities. He’s carried an unfair burden ever since he stepped into the league, eighteen years old and the weight of an entire league on his shoulders. He’s risen to the challenge time and again with maturity and grace, wise beyond his years and an example for kids all across North America who dream of making the show.

With Zhenya, he has a space to let them go.

It took a few years before Zhenya did more than just look. He felt like a dirty old man at first, although thankfully that feeling has waned over the years, and he refused to touch Sid until after they lost to the Red Wings in a game six heartbreaker on home ice and Sid showed up at Zhenya’s house, red-eyed and shaking and needing to get out of his head.

It’s real, Zhenya knows that. It’s not some latent perversion, although Sid’s youth and relative inexperience had been appealing. Nearly twenty years later, though, Zhenya would dare anyone to call what they have anything besides true love.

That doesn’t mean he and Sid don’t like things a certain way sometimes.

Zhenya drives with his palm high on Sid’s thigh, digging his fingers in and listening as Sid’s breath speeds up the closer Zhenya’s fingers get to his dick. He doesn’t dare look over, but he can picture Sid’s face well enough.

Sid’s hard by the time they pull into Zhenya’s driveway. He lives further back in the woods than Sid and Mario do, tucked into a large copse of trees that makes his house practically invisible from his neighbors, and Sid likes the privacy, the way he can kiss Zhenya in the front yard and nobody will see them.

When Zhenya cuts the engine, Sid practically crawls over the center console to get at him. They didn’t fit in Zhenya’s little sports cars like this even when Sid was younger and not as bulky as he is now, but it doesn’t stop Sid from trying his best.

“Baby, inside,” Zhenya urges, fumbling for his seatbelt and kicking his door open. Sid’s hot on his heels, and when they’re inside the house he pulls Zhenya down into a kiss before they can even get their shoes off.

“I missed you watching me,” he breathes against Zhenya’s mouth, and Zhenya groans, wrestling them out of their jackets and dragging Sid to his office. He knows what Sid wants when he gets like this.

There’s a leather armchair in the corner that Zhenya’s had for longer than Sid’s been a legal adult. It’s huge and broken-in and comfortable, and Zhenya has it positioned so that it has a great view of his trophy case. It’s a nice reminder of everything he’s accomplished, when he wants to relax and read a book in here.

Sid likes it for different reasons.

Zhenya sinks into the chair, loosening his tie and sprawling his legs wide, tipping his head back and groaning as he palms himself through his trousers. Sid makes a desperate little sound from where he’s standing by the desk, and Zhenya cracks an eye open and pats his thigh.

Sid crawls into his lap, straddling Zhenya’s legs and scrambling to undo Zhenya’s fly.

“Shh, shh, calm down,” Zhenya soothes, bringing his hands to Sid’s waist and drawing him down. Sid’s frantic against him, but Zhenya nips at his plush mouth and holds him in place until he calms down, letting Zhenya kiss him until their lips are tacky with spit.

“Please,” Sid gasps when Zhenya pulls back, and Zhenya untucks Sid’s shirt from his pants, undoing each button and kissing at the bare skin underneath. Sid’s skin is covered in goosebumps by the time Zhenya tosses his shirt to the side, and he bats Zhenya’s hands away in favor of getting his pants and underwear off on his own.

Zhenya stays dressed. Sid likes it that way, always has.

A lapful of naked Sidney Crosby is as much of a temptation as it was back when they first started hooking up, but Sid knows what he’s doing now, knows how best to grind against Zhenya to make him arch his back moan. He knows that Zhenya likes the press of Sid’s teeth against his neck, that if Sid scrapes along Zhenya’s sides he’ll shiver and practically beg for more.

Zhenya knows a few things too now, though.

Once upon a time, he liked to have Sid facing the other way. He’d make Sid look at Zhenya’s wall of trophies, everything he did for the city while he was on the team, and whisper dirty promises in Sid’s ear of what he’d do if Sid accomplished the same. Sid used to come like a rocket when he did that, young and squirming in his owner’s lap, desperate to prove himself on the ice and in the bedroom.

Sid’s done everything Zhenya’s ever asked of him. Now, he likes to look Sid in the eyes instead.

There’s a little table with a drawer on one side of the chair, and Sid fishes the lube out and pours some into his hand without breaking away from where he’s sucking on Zhenya’s neck. Zhenya unzips himself, pulling his pants aside enough to draw his dick out from his briefs.

It takes Zhenya longer to get hard now than it used to. He has a bottle of little blue pills in the bathroom upstairs just in case; Sid tried to tell him not to worry about it, but Zhenya wants Sid all the time, and he’ll be damned if he lets his body deny him something that he wants. It’s not a problem tonight, though—he’s hard and wet at the tip already.

Zhenya thinks Sid doesn’t realize that he licks his lips every time he looks at Zhenya’s erection. Zhenya’s certainly never going to tell him.

The first stroke of Sid’s hand makes Zhenya moan, and he has to close his eyes and breathe deep to focus. He only has one per night in him these days, and he wants to make sure he can give Sid what he needs.

Zhenya knows that a lot of what Sid likes in bed is because Zhenya taught him to. It’s a little heady, knowing he’s shaped Sid’s sexual preferences that permanently. It means that when Sid lifts up and lowers himself onto Zhenya’s dick without so much as a finger for prep, Zhenya knows he can take it.

Sid’s always liked a challenge. His nostrils flare and his face screws up as he sinks down until Zhenya’s fully in him the same way they do when he’s shooting the puck from a difficult angle. Zhenya likes watching him like this, working for something, pushing himself to his limits to get what he wants.

When he starts to move, Sid’s thighs shake. He was on the ice for over 20 minutes tonight, after all. Normally Zhenya likes to make Sid do all the work, enjoying the view of Sid riding him in the middle of his office, but tonight he takes pity on him, fucking his hips up to meet Sid halfway, making him gasp when Zhenya gets him just right.

Sid never lasts long after games like tonight’s. He gets so worked up from hockey still, especially when he’s had a dominant game. Zhenya would tease him, but he’s the same.

“Look so good out there,” he praises, sliding a hand up Sid’s thigh and closing it around his dick. “So strong, nobody stops you when you’re play like this. You get to your knee, everyone knows it’s a goal.”

“You like me on my knees,” Sid says through gritted teeth, moving faster. He’s so tight around Zhenya’s dick, and hot, and he’s staring greedily over Zhenya’s body, at the hint of bare throat where Zhenya loosened his tie, his forearms where he’d rolled up his sleeves. “You’d put me there all the time if you could.”

“Fuck,” Zhenya swears, squeezing the head of Sid’s dick and making him gasp. “Yes, I would. You want? Sit under my desk while I do work, suck my dick until I say you make me come.”

“Oh my god,” Sid moans, curling forward and bracing himself on Zhenya’s shoulders as he comes into Zhenya’s palm.

Zhenya’s so close that it almost hurts, but he works Sid’s dick through his orgasm, smearing the come back onto his skin until Sid pushes his hand away and starts moving again.

When they were both younger, Sid used to ride Zhenya until he was hard again, agonizingly slow until Zhenya was sweating and begging underneath him. Now, though, they’re both tired, and too old for extended edging sessions, so Sid grits his teeth and doubles down until Zhenya pulls him down and grinds up into him, coming with a grunt.

Neither of them move for a few minutes, breathing hard as they come down. Zhenya rubs his hands between Sid’s shoulder blades and lets his mind drift.

Sid has two years after this season, probably. The team will want him to stick around; he’ll want that too, to have a hand in mentoring the next crop of players hoping to bring the Cup back to Pittsburgh, to stabilize the franchise through the transition. 

Times are different now. When Zhenya was a player, what he’s thinking about right now was so impossible it would be laughable to even think about.

Now, though, he lets himself imagine Sid sitting in the owner’s suite with him, tucked in the chair next to his with Zhenya’s hand on his knee. He thinks of them waving to the crowd, and the way a tasteful gold ring might glint in the arena lights from Sid’s left hand.

They haven’t talked about it, not really. But Zhenya thinks Sid’s probably a sure thing.

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

🐕‍🦺1k 💜💜💜💜💙💙💙💙 ooo excited to see Eddie's POV in a cranberry story!

WOO! Let's go.

1k for the girlie (dog):

---

But the thing is, Cranberry is potentially one of the most perfect creatures in all of existence. He can’t say that out loud. Buck already says he babies her too much. As if she isn’t an eternal baby? She’s just easy to exist around. Happy, quiet, sweet. He doesn’t have to be anything around her, because she’s sort of obsessed with him for no reason, as is. So, yeah. As much as he’s grateful for Pepa and Carla, he’s sort of eager to see his dog. Buck’s dog. Whatever. 

“In the crate,” Chris grumbles, looking sour about it. “I knew you’d want to see her.”

“Christopher,” Pepa scolds. 

“We didn’t want her to jump or knock into you,” Carla explains. “We know she gets a little over excited about you.”

“Training goes out the window every time Eddie gets home from work,” Buck admits. 

“I want to see her,” Eddie says, feeling snappish. “Let her out.”

Pepa and Carla look surprised. 

He’s not usually… Well he knows he’s being short. He knows they did what they thought was right. But still. He wants the damn dog. Why is no one getting her? Does Eddie have to go get her? He will.

“Okay, uh… I’ll go get Cran,” Buck says, upon reading that Eddie is dead serious. “Eddie, why don’t you go sit down, okay? Or, if you need to go to bed…”

“I don’t,” Eddie says. “I’m just… Yeah, I’ll sit down.”

‘

Pepa looks at him nervously. “Can I get you anything, Edmundo? Water?”

Eddie shakes his head. He just wants the damn dog.

“I’m good.”

🦮🦮🦮

Cranberry comes tearing through the house towards him, squealing with excitement that he’s home. But right before she crashes into where he sits on the couch, she stops. She looks at him blankly for a moment. Eddie tenses. Chris is sitting beside him, watching both of them. Eddie doesn’t want to react to the dog acting differently, so he keeps very still. But why? Why did she stop? Can she sense that something is missing about him?

Cranberry takes a tentative step forward and starts to sniff his legs. 

“It’s okay, Cran,” Chris says. “Dad is okay. He missed you.”

Eddie keeps still. His throat feels very tight. He feels like he might cry. 

But then Cranberry wags her tail, licks Eddie’s knee, and hops up onto the couch.

“Careful!” Carla calls across the room. “Oh, be careful.”

Eddie ignores it. He uses his good arm to stroke Cranberry’s head as she lies across his lap. She stays very still, presses her head into his stomach. 

“Good girl,” Eddie whispers. “Thank you, good girl.”

Buck walks into the living room, pausing in the entryway. He watches them. Eddie pretends he doesn’t see. 

iii.

Buck takes even more time off work. 

He’s already been gone for a week to be beside Eddie in the hospital. He takes another week.

Eddie feels guilty about it. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Shameful. How many days did he take off when Buck lost his leg? None. How many days did he take when Shannon died? Three shifts. Three. What kind of fucking person is he?

Buck is such a good caretaker, too. Astounding really. Eddie has everything he needs, all the time. Never misses wound care or medication doses. He does it all while caring for Chris, the dog, and minding Eddie’s shitty mood. He’s a miracle. A force of nature. Eddie loves him. He appreciates him. He wishes he’d remember to say that more now. For some reason, the words are stuck on his tongue. Thank you. I love you. What would I do without you? Why can’t he just say it?

He just has to hope Buck knows while he tries to shake his brain free of cobwebs. 

Eventually, though, Buck does have to return to work. He does have to leave Eddie. Eddie dreads it. Quietly. He doesn’t say he’s terrified about being alone with his thoughts today. He doesn’t say he’s sore and miserable. He doesn’t say knowing Buck is in the other room, doing dishes, while Eddie sleeps, makes Eddie feel safer. 

On the morning Buck is due back at Emergency Ops, Eddie wakes up to Cranberry laying her head on his chest. He’s been having trouble getting up in the morning. The meds make him sluggish. Eddie insisted Buck wake him up before he goes, but when he opens his eyes, Buck is dressed and ready, trying to sneak out of the bedroom. Which doesn’t make sense. Because Cranberry is in bed. 

“Buck,” Eddie rasps, pinned in place by the dog. 

Buck pauses, then turns to Eddie.

“Hey, hon,” Buck smiles. “I’m just about to go. You need anything?”

“Uh, no… But, why aren’t you taking Cran?”

Buck frowns. “Um… Well… I put pull tabs on the fridge and some drawers. I put your meds in a velcro bag she knows to target. She can do other basic retrievals.”

“Buck…”

“She won’t be any work!” Buck interjects. “She’s been fed, done her business, and has enough water to get through the day. She’ll be fine if you can’t let her out until I’m home. She doesn’t need anything, but she can help you.”

Eddie sighs. “I know she’s not any work, but Buck… She’s yours. You need her.”

“Yeah, and today she can help both of us,” Buck says. “Because… Because I think you need her more than me. And knowing she’s here with you will put my mind at ease, okay? If you need me, drop your phone but can’t… She could get it for you, you know?”

And how the hell is Eddie supposed to say no to that? Because, honestly? He’d feel better with her here, too. 

“Okay,” he says. “Thank you, Buck.”

He manages to say it that time.

[unknownogre]

( I got a little inspired from Facebook...and was just able to sit down today to write it. I approached it not exactly from the prompt's direction too but that is the scene that popped in my head.)

“Well…I have to ask, am I dead?”

Moments ago I was just sitting at my desk sipping a cup of coffee playing a lovely game of slaughter the Nazi when I found myself suddenly not there. Still had my coffee in had though, Deadpool pajama pants for the whole damn world to see no shoes and, I’m sorry to those that had to see me, no shirt. Someone was standing in front of me too, lithe build with a very baggy hoodie and baggy pants on wearing some kind of sneaker and a face that was obscured by shadows that were impossibly dark for the time of day and location.

“No, finish your coffee and let’s go.”

Fuck…people were walking around us like they didn’t notice me or them. The voice of the person was androgynous and a touch echoey. I knew one thing in this moment, without introduction and without me even having to ask the question, in my bones I knew this was Death. THE Death the primordial force that will exist until the end of the universe.  So weird, I wonder if they developed that power just to make it easier.

“Alright, fuck it. Not like I have a choice do I…?”

I already hate this. I’ve got body issues, most fat guys do no matter the praise they get. Fuck, I hope I don’t have to fight anything. I have no idea how I’ll do. I don’t fight, no one wants to fight me so I’ve never had to.

“No you don’t have to fight. Maybe, I’m not sure. People handle the situation differently. I’m just Death, I don’t know the future or the past. Think there is a time you’re supposed to die? Absolutely not. Chaos my friend. Complete Chaos.”

That…honestly that made me feel a lot better about a lot of things. Though to delve into that right now would completely pull my focus away from whatever this is.

“Why me?”

I had to ask as we walked another block. If Death was powerful enough to just pull me out of my living room I figured we could at least get closer, though…my feet don’t hurt even though they are bare so that is good at least.

“In a two-thousand-mile radius of my current problem your soul was the only one that matched what I needed…what ever that is. I don’t know have exact details. I just know when I problem arises and I need help I concentrate and the one who is best able to help just appears to me like a blip on a radar.”

Well…it is nice to be needed right. I mean I doubt that is the case, I’m not that special. I’m just me. I took another sip of my coffee.

“What do I get out of this?”

I don’t work for free. I’m completely convinced when given any modicum of power I’d go full on super villain. I know at my core I’m evil, just the kind of evil that still wants to protect those that love and cherish. Touch my wife and I’ll burn the whole damn world down, same for my kid. So again, I wonder why I was the blip.

“A favor.”

That was all Death needed to say. I get a favor from Death, I mean I bet there are rules and what not attached to it, but who wouldn’t want a favor from Death. That was enough for me.

“And lunch. A favor and lunch and you have yourself a deal.”

Death stopped and turned around to look at me, I could feel the weight of their gaze too but I just stood there and stared at where I thought their eyes would be crossing my arms across my chest with a smirk…Never take fully what is offered. Ask for just a little more.

“You got it. Cause I know what you want…hell I want it too. A favor and lunch.”

That was good enough for me. Almost made me forget I was shirtless and barefoot in a large city. We approached a hospital and headed right in. We passed the nurses station, and I was able to grab a scrub top much to their confusion. I felt better with a shirt on at least. We went up to the morgue…and there…holy crap.

It was some kind of creature, twisted with pitch flesh and blood ooze from various places, like self-inflicted wounds. It was just roaring and trying to smash through things it couldn’t fully interact with. There were some forms in the corner cowering in fear…ghosts? I don’t have time to question everything.

“Calm them down.”

…wait…what?!..

It was just a roaring beast that was at least six feet tall. I think it was meant to be bi-pedal but it was only that way sometimes. Like how some movies show werewolves, like they can walk a few steps until they want to run and then it is down on all fours.

“Well…fuck. Okay. Hey.”

I started waving slightly. The creature made a swipe for me but It was slow I was able to step back to avoid it. The ‘mission’ was to calm them down. Calm, not hurt, not subdue but calm.

“HEY!”

I said again, but this time with the power of dad voice. I didn’t like using it much, unless we were outside and my kid was about to run into a parking lot or something just as dangerous. I have NO information to go off of. Death wasn’t a planner were they? The creature’s attention was fully on me now. Good, that is what I needed…not what I wanted though. I knew I wasn’t dead now because my heart was hammering in my chest.

“Knock it the fuck off okay. You are scaring the shit out of these other people. What the hell is going on anyway? I’m sure being dead sucks but this…this can’t be good for you, can it?”

The creature seemed to understand my words if only for a moment before it roared at me. Its mouth…chilling. Elongated like a wolf but the teeth…they were human. I could make money on this if I could get into practical effects and recreate the look.

What to do. I had to use a chair to keep it back and out of swiping range. I don’t think I can actually die here…but maybe no risk no reward.

“This can’t kill you, but if it manages to hurt you too bad I am SOL and will have to destroy it completely. I don’t want to do that so I brought you.”

So it was a soul, something twisted and probably not evil. Otherwise there would be no sympathy. I need more compassion. The  creatures attention was still on me and all those cowering in the corner were watching with rapt attention. There is a lot of rage here, so much anger, and where there is anger there is sadness. Okay…okay…got it.

“Hey, we are just gonna talk alright. I won’t yell anymore. Just calm, just calm and cool. Listen I can’t help you right now. Not with all this rage and aggression. Trust me. I want to help you. I get nothing out of the situation if you are harmed. What happened? Why are you so angry?”

It took another swipe at me. Fuck…this thing is strong, almost knocked the chair out of my hands. It was hurt, even it was just by itself. When I met its gaze I could see such sadness. Rage and sadness. I got you.

“Hey. Listen, I am here for you, okay? I am here for you. Not Death, not these people in the corner, you and just you. Fuck any reward…fuck anything else okay. Just me and you here. I am your friend. No one touches you unless they step over my literal dead body, which isn’t even HERE so they are screwed trying to find it. You don’t deserve this, what ever this is. So talk to me. Let me help you, that is all I want right now.”

That caused the creature to pause and look at me. Tears welling up in its eyes. I see why I was called. Most people wouldn’t look in its eyes, they couldn’t see the pain there. They’d see the twisted muscle, the claws…they’d be hostile. Monsters were fantasy for me until I was brought here.

“I…they…momma…MOMMA!”

It cried and looked around panicked. This is a child. THIS IS A CHILD! Thank gods I didn’t hit it, and now I know why the dad voice caused it to pause. I wonder if these souls were trying to help before or where they just trying to leave after they died? Hard to say.

“Hey kid…calm down. Shhhh I got you okay. You want to see your Mom once more. We got you okay. Did they take you and here away at the same time?”

The kid seemed calmer now, just tears streaming from its eyes. They nodded and seemed to wrap their twisted arms around themselves, rocking a little bit. Certainly a kid. I sighed for a moment.

“Would you like a hug? I can give you a hug if you’d allow. Sometimes its nice to just get grounded. I’m a dad, so I can only imagine how it is being separated from your mom. I give the best hugs too, I’m like a teddy bear.”

That is why my daughter said when she was younger anyway. Daddy bear hugs. The child looked to me hesitantly and then nodded slowly. I got up from the chair and I moved slowly. I had no weapons, I’m a big dude but people say they aren’t scared of me. I like to think I’m not scary normally anyway. When I got close enough I just wrapped my arms around them. Sure some of their spikes went into my skin, hurt like a bitch too, the blood smelled terrible as well…still though. Sometimes a hug is what the doctor called for. The kid just started to cry. Its massive head put on my shoulder and nestled into the crook of my neck like my daughter did plenty of times when she was little. I felt they shift, the sound of…gods I don’t know, snapping bone and such was heard all around. I just closed my eyes and held the kid for as long as they squeezed me back.

Soon, I was holding a five year old boy who was finally calming down from all the crying. The holes from the wounds and claws were still there on my body but he looked alright. Oddly I wasn’t bleeding…wonder if that was Death’s doing? Or do I not bleed if I’m not solid? Too many questions I’ll leave for another day.

“Can you take us to his mom?”

Death just nodded as I held the kid in my arms. We left the morgue and went to a hospital room where the kids mother was. She was alive, but badly hurt. Apparently there was a car accident, they got hit by a drunk driver. The kid was dead just after arriving. Freaked out when he couldn’t find his mom. I held him for a while.

“Momma will be okay?”

He asked me and I looked to Death who nodded with a touch of a shrug. I know, chaos on all that stuff, suddenly I was a little less reassured.

“She’ll be okay little one. Best thing you can do is let Death take you to the next world, be as happy as you can. Your mom will cross over eventually, and then you two can play. Just be happy and play as much as you can in the meantime okay?”

The little boy nodded and I set him down, he walked to his mom and gave her a kiss on the cheek before turning to go hold hands with Death. Sudden I was back in front of my desk…wearing the scrubs top my coffee cup filled to my liking.

“Get dressed. Lunch is gonna be in an hour.”

I heard Death’s voice in my mind. I could only grinned. I was about to get my favorite sandwich on the planet, that alone was worth it. Still, I would have done it for free if there was nothing Death could give me. That kid needed the guidance. I wonder how many have crossed over and looked to reunite with someone but couldn’t due to held back rage and depression. That…that breaks my heart.

“Also thank you. You were certainly the best pick.”

I smiled at that, again…feeling useful was nice. Well time to get dressed, I wonder how Death will get me half-way across the country to that sandwich place? I don’t care…number 15 here I come.

[ghostcracker]

I’ve been on a roll!

I actually posted a drawing of her as I think my first post ever. It was her character sheet. Let’s chat about my OC’s backstory!

In the world she’s in, almost the whole world is inhabitable because of dangerous monsters so it’s shrouded in mystery. Still, humans managed to live because they live in domes(working on names) made of a very strong, see through material. These domes are scattered, and since it’s so dangerous to do anything outside including building almost no dome is connected to another.

Now, where does my OC come in? She’s an experiment. Despite the dangers of the outside, the government of some domes still make buildings outside for secret projects and such. It’s not like they’re risking they’re life. One such facility was a lab for people born with inhuman characteristics such as my OC which they called 004, among other creatures. Her number is printed on her hip. She doesn’t know where she’s from, and the scientists sewed her mouth shut with metal to avoid the noise she would make during experiments.

She has really good regenerative abilities, so the experiments got brutal. She has a missing finger because at one point it was cut off so much that her regeneration simply failed her. That same reason is the reason she’s littered in unhealed scars. The thing the scientists were most intrigued by was her blood. It’s golden and glows but they couldn’t identify the property her blood is made from. All of this lead to severe and crippling anxiety on her part.

Then one day, as they where doing a blood extraction, she got stressed out and her blood exploded everywhere. Not just the blood being currently extracted, but all of it that was being stored. It all hardened into spikes, destroying the lab and killing almost everyone and everything inside. Turns out, she can control her own blood, and the ability unlocked at the worst possible time. She has unusual amounts of blood in her, so she has a lot to use.

In the rubble, she found another experiment who had suffered life threatening injuries. They became friends, but the friend only lasted a day before she died too with all the others. This will probably haunt her the rest of her life, but can you really call it an OC without severely traumatizing them?

After being chased by monsters, she found a dome. On rare occasions the domes get holes from the monsters, but they’re almost immediately fixed and dealt with. 004 stumbled upon a recent hole as she was being chased. Inside is a criminal gang, that after some decision making, promises, and fighting, take her in. In the picture I drew she’s playing with her blood while the gang is chilling out off screen.

The agreement to keep her was that she would help out with their work at times. They renamed her Jericho. The dome she’s in is basically a surveillance state. Everywhere has cameras, almost everyone has detailed documentation on them, and there’s constant patrol among other things. That’s why a few of them felt it would be wrong to let her fend for herself, and basically sentence her to death by patrols. A lot of outlaws are disabled people who were shunned due to people thinking they look like monsters from the outside. The government quickly becomes aware of her presence in the dome and she’s being hunted. She wears a radio mask on her head when out in the open to hide herself.

I haven’t rlly figured out too much about what she would be doing inside the dome, but that’s the general info on her. Hope it wasn’t too long! Have a good morning, day, or night! 😊♥️

P.s. here’s the reference from Pinterest that I used:

[witchygagirlwrites]

Greg "Mouse" Gerwitz x Reader

Part 2 of Dynasty

Can a broken heart still beat?

Warnings: Character death, depression, drug use, suicide, reading of a suicide note, true love not letting death get in the way? Idk where this came from, no wait I do! blame @desimarie12

Mouse sat in the chair next to your bed, eyes never leaving your face. The solid sound of the machine helping your lungs push air through your body was the only sound in the room. Every moment that ticked by and you clung to life was a moment he managed to draw a breath. Twenty four hours, that was what the doctor told them. You were closing in on eighteen hours and still holding on. 

The door cracked open and he didn’t have to look up to know it was Erin and Jay. They hadn’t left the hospital either but they’d stayed in the waiting room throughout the night until visiting hours rolled back into effect or well until Sergeant Benson called in a favor and suddenly it didn’t matter if the three of them were all in your room or not as long as they stayed out of the way. “She’s still holding on man” Jay spoke softly, putting a hand on his shoulder. 

He nodded slowly “Holding on is a lot different than waking up Jay. She’s strong, she’s so damn strong but what if her body can’t handle this?” even simply giving voice to the thought was enough to force another round of tears from his eyes, they slid silently down his face. Erin stepped up next to him, slipping her hand down in his and squeezing it gently “If there’s any way for her to find her way back to you she will. She loves you so much” 

He squeezed her hand back, wishing he could offer her some word of comfort. You would want him to, that was your best friend but any word fell flat on his lips. He didn’t blame her by no means, he would never do that simply because he knew you. If an innocent person was in danger around you, especially a kid? Nothing would’ve stopped you from saving them. Even at the expense of yourself.  “This isn’t your fault Erin” he whispered, his voice shaking slightly and he could hear her inhale sharply before she said “I called her to this task force Mouse” 

He cut his eyes up at her and saw tears sliding down her face “Don’t mourn her yet Erin, please. I can’t…I can’t handle that” she nodded, wiping at her eyes “I’m sorry” and turned to walk out. Jay looked back at him then at the door “I’ll go check on her. If you need anything man, just yell.I’ll be right outside” 

Mouse listened to Jay leave and thought to himself, how would Jay ever give him what he needed? What he needed was for you to wake up. For those beautiful eyes to be looking back at him, that smile you had anytime you were hurt and trying to hide it plastered on your face and you joking about the fact that you wanted a vacation to New York City but maybe not like this. That was what he needed.  

He leaned up to let his hand brush against yours, fingers curling around yours “Baby, I don’t know if you can hear me but I’m here. Jay’s here too and Erin. The moment Erin called me and Jay got on a plane. I haven’t left your side. I’m not leaving your side. You are everything to me, you hear me? Everything. So I really need you to wake up. Whatever you want is yours. Every argument the rest of our lives you’ve now won before they ever start. You want to steal my coffee every day? It’s yours. Hog the blankets? Please take em. Have the water so hot in the shower I swear it’s gonna scald us both? It’ll be fine, we know plenty of good doctors. I just need you to wake up..Please baby wake up” he could feel the tears flowing down his face but he didn’t care you were still holding on for something, he was praying for the first time in his life that the something was him.He was praying that you were fighting to come back to him. He couldn’t do this without you. He didn’t want to.

When the twenty four hour mark hit, doctors swarmed your room. It seemed like you shocked most of the hospital by making it that long. Mouse stood back with Erin and Jay watching as the doctors went over your injuries with each other, talking about running more tests and further treatments.

“What now?” Jay asked, breaking their conversation because so far he’d been the one out the three of them to talk to the medical team the most. He had no choice but to hold it together, for Mouse and Erin both. “Detective Halstead, we’re doing everything we can for her” the doctor assured them but about that time your hand twitched.

“She moved,” Mouse whispered and stepped forward. The doctors all turned towards you but to Mouse’s horror you started to seize, he could see red stains start to seep through the bandages covering your body and something started coming out of the tube down your throat “Get them out of here” the doctor told Jay nodded towards Mouse and Erin. 

“Fuck you, I’m not leaving her” Mouse fought, struggling against Jay who was trying to grab his arm. He’d promised you he wouldn’t leave your side. “Officer Gerwitz you don’t want to see this” a nurse assured him, grabbing his other arm he turned to look at her and saw the tears in her eyes and this time when his legs went out from under him no one was there to catch him. His knees buckled and he hit the floor on them, watching as the doctors and nurses moved around your bed.

He was helpless to move, hell he couldn’t form a thought as he watched them shock your body, it jolting off the bed. “Greg, come on man. Don’t be in here for this” Jay tried, choking back a sob as his wide eyes landed on the bed as well. “I’m not leaving her” he whispered, even as the movements of the medical team ceased and they called the words that stopped his own heart beating in his chest “Time of death one eleven p.m.”

Mouse sat on the front pew of the church in his dress uniform, staring at your casket that was covered in the CPD flag. The unit was sitting around him, Erin was on his left side and Jay was on his right. He could’ve cared less. He was alone. You were gone.

He gripped his dogtags in his hand, the ring he’d never given you now rested on the chain. He had planned to slip it on your finger the moment you got home from New York. He’d never dreamt you getting home would’ve been in a body bag. The little girl you’d saved, Clarissa. She’d gotten her parents to fly her out for the funeral. She’d spoken with his blessing. 

She’d hugged him and told him she was so sorry you were gone. He’d tried to act like anything she said mattered, Erin had given him a small nod so maybe it had seemed like it did to him. He was glad the little girl was safe, that much was true. These niceties, the apologies they wouldn’t bring you back. They wouldn’t fix the gaping hole in his chest. They wouldn’t give him a reason to get up every day.

Hank stood at the front of the church and nodded to the unit. They would carry you out to the hearse then carry you to your grave. The last time Mouse would have you in his arms in any way would be helping to carry you to your grave. They’d wanted him to not help but what kind of man would he be if he couldn’t carry the woman he loved to the end? 

He stood with his team, positioning his cover on his head, tears streaming down his face as they all took their positions on your casket. Him and Erin were in front. They lifted you up and walked as one out of the church. Nothing had ever felt heavier than the weight of that casket, knowing it carried you inside.

_________________

At the cemetery they spoke of you. How you lived, how you loved. How you died being a hero. Mouse stood to the side, blue eyes glued to the light grey casket. One by one those of your unit were allowed to place a photo or something inside. Erin placed a photo of you, her and Nadia. Jay put his lucky keychain, Adam put a coin Makayla had asked him to give you, Kim had a stuffed animal from their niece. Kevin had three red roses. One from him, one from his brother and one from his sister.

When Hank looked over at him he walked over to the casket, footsteps slowing when he got near it. The dress Erin and your aunt picked looked exactly like something you’d wear and the funeral home had done a good job. You almost looked like you were asleep. Almost. He laid the dogtags across your chest “I’m sorry you never got this ring. I’m sorry I never made you my wife. I love you and always will” he whispered then slowly closed the casket, staring at your face until the last moment possible.

Mouse sat on the bed, photos of you scattered around him. Your smiling face looking back at him from every one. Your pillow still vaguely smelled of your shampoo, your coffee mug was still in the strainer, the last load of laundry you’d asked him to get out of the dryer and he’d forgotten still sat in the machine. The candle you loved sat half burnt next to the bed, the movie you and him planned to finish when you got home was still saved on the dvr.

He tried. He tried for weeks, he tried. The pain was ripping him apart more and more every day. He found a new dealer, it was fairly easy.  He was high more days than sober now. The very thing you’d always feared, he’d gone back to his old ways but who was there to care? He’d lost the only reason he had for breathing, the very air in his lungs. He clicked his laptop, watching the video of you and him Jay had taken at the halloween party a few months before. You were laughing, arms around his waist and looking at him like he was the most important thing “Forever and a day Gerwitz?”  just hearing your voice over the video made tears hit his eyes as he heard his own voice reply “Forever and a day love”

He stared at the bottle in his hand. It was enough, he’d made sure of it. He couldn’t do this anymore. He had to be with you. The pain was too much. He’d considered just using his gun but he knew Jay would find him and he couldn’t do that to him. This way he’d just go to sleep and wouldn’t wake up. A lot less for Jay to find.

He sat the envelope with Jay’s name on the laptop and opened the bottle along with the bourbon. He’d see you again and the pain would stop. That was all that mattered.

Jay walked slowly into the apartment, calling Mouse’s name out. He knew something was wrong but he hadn’t expected what awaited him either.

______________________

Jay and Erin sat together between yours and Mouse’s graves. Hank had pulled some strings, his death had been ruled a heart attack so he’d gotten a proper CPD burial and they’d made sure it was right next to you where he belonged. Hank had even footed the bill for your headstones to read “Loving Husband” and “Loving Wife” ; it was only suitable. Not even death stopped the love you two had for each other.

“Have you read his letter yet?” she asked and he shook his head and fished it out then held it out to her “Here, you do it” she took it then cleared her throat: 

Jay, I’m sorry that I know you’ll be the one to find me. I wished there was someone else but we both know with her gone there isn’t. I’ve tried man, I really have. I can’t continue to live in a world she’s not in. She was always the air in my lungs and every day without her I suffocate more and more.When I met her I found my reason to keep going and the day I lost her I lost that reason. If there’s a life after this I will find her in it and love her it it, if there isn’t at least the pain will stop. Please don’t hold onto guilt over me and don’t let Erin hold onto guilt over her. We both knew our best friends loved us. Be happy man, if you find love don’t wait for anything. See you in the next life brother, Mouse

They were both crying by the time Erin was through reading. Jay slipped an arm around her and pulled her over onto his shoulder “I just hope they’re together” she whispered. “Me too” he replied, the wind catching their words as it blew past your graves maybe carrying that message on.

One moment Mouse was swallowing a handful of pills and not fighting against the urge to close his eyes, the next he was laying on a patch of grass. Grass? How did he get outside? “Wake up Greg” he heard your voice and felt your hand on his face and for a moment thought he was hallucinating, the pills hadn’t worked. They’d just caused this.

He felt the air move around him then your other hand went to the opposite side of his face and he heard your light laughter “I swear if you don’t open those gorgeous blue eyes Gerwitz” he slowly opened his eyes and you were kneeled in front of him, real as day. Your hair was in a braid like you always wore it during summer, you were wearing a light blue shirt with cut off shorts and sneakers. You looked happy and healthy.

“Sweetheart? Is that really you?”  you nodded, tears shining in your eyes “It’s really me Greg” he pulled you into his arms and you laughed, letting him wrap both arms around you. “How? Baby, where are we? What happened?” when he rolled so he was holding his weight on his arms and you were under him in the grass you smiled sadly up at him, running your fingers up into his hair and he closed his eyes, feeling tears threaten at feeling your touch “Why are you here so soon? You had so much life left” you whispered and he opened his eyes, looking down at you. 

His girl. Whole and here with him. Wherever here was, it didn’t matter. He had you in his arms. “No I didn’t love. My life ended the day you left” you smiled “I love you Greg” then pulled him down to you. The moment your lips met his both of you let tears slip free. When you pulled away from his lips he leaned his forehead against yours “I love you so much” you grinned “Forever and a day Gerwitz?” he nodded “Forever and a day baby” 

[howling-medic]

I read this yesterday (2 days ago? Time is confusing and a construct), and I had to step away and pick my jaw up off the floor. I queued the post and intended to return before it actually posted and add commentary. I have lost my original queued post that has long since been posted now, so I'm starting over with a fresh post. I would apologize for the essay length commentary and general praise I'm about to write... but I do not beg your forgiveness. It's not often that I read something that impacts me this much, so I will simply do this and continue on my merry way:

I have now had sufficient time to process and go back and reread this masterpiece. Zara, my friend, you have reduced me to tears twice with this piece, and I now have a very concerned 70 pound dog curled on my lap who refuses to accept that I'm okay.

My gods, woman. This is impeccable. It was soul crushing and healing all in one. The imagery and connections drawn across multiple mediums and genres? Brilliant.

I know you were worried about using too much jargon or leaning too far towards essay style writing vs scholarly writing, and I think you found the middle ground perfectly. Of note: I'm also a nerd who reads journal articles for fun, so I would happily read either end of that spectrum; however, this balance suits your message and the interplay of prose and analysis incredibly well.

You wove in your own narrative thread to the analysis brilliantly. Each section exponentiated the impact of the others, and it flowed perfectly.

I have to take a second, and probably multiple hundred words, to pull some quotes and try to dissect this piece of perfection, or at least highlight some of its most impactful ones. Maybe draw on some personal reasons they stuck out. Who knows. It's 0451 at the time I am writing this, and I'm uncaffeinated. We're operating on vibes alone.

I am not only Elrond's wife, I tell her. And I am not only the taking.

This was the first place I cried. There are a lot of reasons I had to stop and walk away from my computer when I read this line. "I am not only Elrond's wife," hits home in a way that I will talk about more in a piece I'm writing, but I have lived perpetually as Medic, daughter of [redacted] and Medic, sister of [redacted] (daughter and sister being their own issues to comment on another day). Oh so rarely am I my own person. To see that refutation set down in black and white so simply, to see someone say it so definitively, brought me to a screeching halt. Suddenly, I was Celebrían while also being back in that motel room where I first found her footnote - running for my life.

"And I am not only the taking." I knew what I might remember when I read this series. I knew what I would likely feel. The soul crushing feeling of helplessness this dragged up in me made me nauseous. The rawness of that line evokes is incomparable. The sheer defiance in it. The refusal to be reduced down to one moment. It set up everything to come perfectly. At the time I didn't necessarily know that was where we were headed because your narrative wandered and allowed a gradual build, but once the destination became clear, I had to return to that line as a whole and read it several times over.

In these timeless interruptions, despair is not dark and silent but “dazzling green”, dancing across the screen.

[In a time and place where I wonder when it will be illegal to be myself, I will strive to remember to keep despair "dazzling green" and keep "dancing across the screen.] However, outside the personal, and in the context of the essay, the tie back to the Elessar and the way this sentence began to pull everything into focus for me. The parallels between Celebrían and queerness was unexpected and worked seamlessly. I still don't have adequate words to describe the moment I first read that paragraph as a whole, actually.

[I could probably pull out something from every paragraph because this entire piece was a hyper-concentrated emotional and intellectual gut punch of the best kind, so I'm going to force myself to choose like one or two more lines I want to talk about for the sake of brevity. lol. Ain't that cute of me to say now? Brevity came and went a few hundred words ago.]

Put simply, the cinematic courtesan frames death, failure and grief as an aesthetic performance, one full of joy and decadence. Her dances and laments, aesthetically pleasing events within a self-professed arena of death, performed by dying women, are a re-capacitation of destroyed bodies: sexually and societally persecuted, yet capable of creating beauty.  A society that allows a group of people to live in a state of perpetual dying is a failed society; hence the courtesan’s embrace of death and embodying of corpses evidences the difficulty of queer survival in a heteronormative world. In this domain, immortality is nothing but a death scene drawn out for eternity.

I - ma'am - I couldn't even choose one part of this to pull out. I tried, and I couldn't. Remember when I said this was deeply healing? This. This. This was the first time I felt a piece of myself put back in place. I could analyze this, sure. I could, but I don't feel like it needs anything else said.

The texture of it is familiar, yes, but the shape remains strange. The bees have formed their comb around an irregular thing, one which turns the whole hive into a glowing, radiant, discoloured thing. The octagons of the comb wrap around over and over the object, another second skin I am meant to peel off, and it is harder than I thought it might be, as if the strange object belonged in the comb.

The perfect echo back to the chrysalis, the perfect echo back to the first mention of the beehive while sitting with Elrond, which seemed like such an odd and lovely little note at the time. I am in awe. The comb being harder to pull off than she expects? How indescribably perfect, and so true. So incredibly true. It was the perfect payoff from small moments scattered throughout. That moment of realization for Cel, for the reader....for one's soul.

Gods, I've waxed poetic for long enough. I can't thin it out, though, and I could write something about nearly every line.

TLDR: This was a triumph, and I am bookmarking it to turn back to on dark days.

Fun stuff from Dr. Balls — an essay collection published on the Silmarillion Writers Guild across the upcoming year that intertwines fanfiction and nonfiction in the pursuit of Celebrían + most women in the legendarium turn up at some point ✨

Head over here or click ‘Read More’ below for a brief introduction to and overview of the essays in the collection, which can all be read independently. Fans of Crablor and Mr. Balls, you will enjoy Chapter 5 & 6, which should be out in the summer.

—————

“But there is also something deeply strategic in the act of spectacle. To make a ‘lost woman’ like Celebrían into a vast, operatic, hyper-visible character is to place her where she cannot be ignored… no longer dependent on the fragile benevolence of the archive. She becomes impossible to overlook. Across this collection, Celebrían will be written, rewritten, and repeated, until her absence is not only rectified but reversed — until she looms larger than the moment of violence that defines her. To put it bluntly, she takes her story back, and does whatever the hell she wants with it.”

The introductory essay, ‘Dazzling Despair: Life, Death and a Spectacularly Lost Woman’ considers the radical potential of performing one’s own ‘death’. On the fictional front: Celebrían’s search for the Elessar transforms loss into an act of deliberately poetic spectacle.

Read ‘Dazzling Despair’ here.

Would honestly love to hear what you think of this so far — feel free to comment here or DM me as well. I really want to make sure my tone isn’t too jargon-y and that it flows well: combining fanfiction and nonfiction is something I haven’t done before.

Introduction and Overview

An Elopement with Life is a 9-part essay collection that intertwines literary fanfiction with the nonfiction essay form, exploring the idea of a Celebrían who stays in Middle Earth.

The fictional narrative follows a year in the life of Celebrían who, across conversations with various 'lost women' of the legendarium, makes the deliberate choice to not-sail to Valinor. The essays use Celebrían and “courtesan laments” as a general framework but traverse a wider thematic landscape, engaging with historiography, investigative environmental journalism, and critical queer/disability theory to unpack how mythic and literary narratives shape our understanding of loss, resilience, and reclamation.

The introductory essay Dazzling Despair considers the radical potential of performing one’s own ‘death’, as Celebrían’s search for the Elessar transforms loss into an act of deliberately poetic spectacle. The Art of Dying Twice deconstructs Lúthien’s legendary defiance, revealing how even the most celebrated figures of resistance may be vexing in their contradictions. Sea-cure is an intertextual meditation on the sea’s ambivalence—both vessel of liberation and instrument of dispossession—as Elrond attempts to communicate with the Valar across an unfathomable divide. The Poster Child examines the distortions of historical memory, positioning Celebrían as an uneasy object of mythmaking who must navigate her own commodification into a cautionary tale, paralleling a “poster child” in narratives of disability.

The collection then shifts toward a mode of speculative investigative journalism with The Crab-Eaters and The Crab-Saviours, in which Celebrían, Arwen, and the elusive Fëanorian wives cross paths with an eccentric cryptid who runs a farm of extinct-yet-not-extinct shellfish, mirroring the author and their partner’s real-world pursuit of brutalised waterfowl in the United Kingdom. Does Your Mother Know? takes on the ethics of retribution, as Celebrían and Elrond are at odds after she demands to see her sons' orc hunt, raising fraught questions about complicity, cycles of violence, and the power of bearing witness.

The collection concludes with the two-part essay The Bravest Girl in Arda, where Celebrían, alongside her father Celeborn, constructs a living reconstruction of Taur-im-Duinath, a sunken forest in Beleriand. This final couplet articulates restoration as a quiet, persistent act: the renewal of the self through reconnection with the nonhuman world, the submerged histories that whisper beneath dominant narratives, and the “little revolutions” that exist under the weight of the great ones — resonating with Tolkien’s own attentiveness to the dignity of small acts and overlooked labours. Across the collection, An Elopement with Life engages with resilience as both concept and praxis, unfolding through a dialectic of rupture and repair, disappearance and re-emergence, myth and materiality, and the histories we choose—or refuse—to inherit.

Zara is an essayist and novelist who works broadly across queer world literatures and ecocriticism. She holds degrees from SOAS, St. Andrews and Oxford.

The work will update every 6-8 weeks, hosted exclusively on the SWG, and each essay in the collection can be read standalone.

Go to Collection.

[ricky-mortis]

Hatchetfield @femslashfortnight Day 1: Make It Sapphic AU

[funeralshawls]

i still miss when juneteenth was just between black americans ho hummmmm

[theflyingfeeling]

how dare stores not sell the exact kind of products I'm looking for

[orcelito]

Having lost my cat, my uncle, my great grandmother, my grandma's best friend (& one of the people who helped raise me), AND my dad all within the span of 9 months,

I have little sympathy for people who use deaths as an excuse to be an asshole. I get it, it sucks. Get the fuck over it. Your grief is not an excuse to treat others like shit. What the fuck.

[ma7moudgaza2]

I am one of the sons of Al Shati refugee camp, and a survivor of Al Shifa hospital massacre. Does anybody care to hear my story?

I live in Gaza city, where my youth was taken from me.

On 7-10-2023 I was asleep, my biggest concern was waking up in time for the 8am lecture at my university.

I'm in Al-Shati camp, south of Gaza. I'm sure you've heard of it. Today is 26-11-2024, it's been more than a year, and I'm still living outside my house. I don't understand why this happened, or why I'm still not in my house.

About two weeks ago was the anniversary of our displacement from northern Gaza to the south and since that day we've known nothing but hardship.

The tent where we live is inhabitable and cannot support any form of life in this cold and this rain and this flooding.

Of all these terrors, the memory of our displacement is the bleakest of them all.

On 10-11-2023, we experienced two days of siege on Al Shifaa hospital, without food nor drink nor even light to see around us, feeling our way like we're blind in order to move around, because even our phones had run out of battery, not even knowing whether the occupation has invaded the hospital yet or not, all we hear is the sound of ceaseless bombardment within the hospital's perimeter.

We lost a lot of people that day. Those who were detained, those who were murdered, and those whose fates are unknown to this day.

We couldn't believe it when the morning finally came, and we finally fled the hospital, to walk 20 kilometers on our feet through Al Halabat path after two days with no food or drink.

This is the story of one of Gaza's sons. My story is not singular, but one of many stories that strengthen our conviction in our right to this land. Most of us here have died for this land.

Our condition today is horrible. This war is picking us off one by one. I am not willing to lose another member of my family. Causes of death are compounding, the latest of which is the cold and storms that the weather has brought.

With only 5 dollars, you can save me and my family's lives. If you can't donate, share this post so it can reach someone who can help us.

Today, with a significant drop in temperatures and a sharp rise in food prices, the price of a bag of flour has reached $600. Please help me so that I can feed my family.

Our current goal is 25k we now have only 22,6k .

@appsa @tsaricides @schoolhater @buttercuparry @feluka

@el-shab-hussein @wherethatoldtraingoes2 @nabulsi @sayruq @sar-soor

@tiredguyswag @gothhabiba @slydiddledeedee @kingskrazzyart @a-shade-of-blue