#opal is giving goth from boyfriends :’)

[iwishiwasamuppet]

All my Pepper children in a line up

(Eldest to youngest)

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

taking away mc ships, what are you shipping in the our life cinematic universe?

okay so mcs are all off the table damn

hhhHHHHNNNNGHHH i had to think about this one for a minute

quick tldr:

lee/ren

derek/ren

baxter/liz

cove/baxter

opal/cliff

vianca/liz

serenity/tamarack

cove/tamarack

derek/tamarack

derek/qiu

okay so my first one might be a hear me out-er butー lee and ren. our sweet cousin lee and ren murray. LIKE CAN Y'ALL SEE MY VISION??? they would be the cutest girlfriends. like, lee is bright and forward but she's gentle and patient enough that ren's shyness wouldn't be something that grates her? and she'd gently coax ren out of her shell

lee doesn't give 'outdoorsy' girl, but she would definitely try out camping and hiking for ren because lee's the type to go out of her way like that. so yeah, definitely ship lee and ren for sure

another compatible person for ren that i can see is derek? like omg that would so fucking cute to me! both of them are sportsy, derek is literally a golden retriever in the shape of a person. he's very considerate and he takes that into account if ren comes over to hang out with his family, knowing when she needs her space

but if derek is putting too much pressure on himself, ren is there to tell him just that. she doesn't say it unkindly though. she just wants her bf to not be his biggest critic. and they love doing any outdoor activity together. when they get their families together, its suarezs versus murrays and afterwards they go to a family restaurant and talk the night away

ironically enough, even though baxter had a canonical crush on qiu when they were kids i don't see it moving past that. it's a crush fond to baxter's heart and he keeps it at that, a fond memory. definitely would never tell them ever. but if i was gonna ship him with anybody in the expansive universe of ol...

hear me out but i feel like liz and baxter would be surprisingly compatible. like, she doesn't take any bs and would get the guy to talk and open up. but if someone comes for him, she is right there in his corner ready to bat for her man. they'd have some good banter as well i think?

i think cove and baxter could also work if it's their step 4 selves. baxter is finally done running away from things and being more genuine and vulnerable and while cove is slow to warm up to people, he would see baxter is trying and slowly but surely their "we only hangout if our mutual friends invite us to the same space" turns into texting each of their own accord and eventually that becomes hanging out of their own accord

then the next thing you know, baxter is asking cove out on a date

oooh yes, i see it more clearly. cove and baxter would be a delicious slowburn for sure, it's drinking and leaving no molecules

i ship opal and yusuf together and i'm really hoping something comes from that when we get the full game however comma.... opal and cliff? i kinda see it and it kinda eats

outside of vianca's canonical gf, vianca and liz give power couple vibes. i don't think i need to expand on that, we all know i'm right and we all know it would eat

if i can't be with my autumn queen tamarack, i would want her to date serenity? they just seem like they would be the cutest cottage core gf/goth gf combination and the two friends in the group that everyone goes to for advice/drama. they gossip about it over tea and still they're the most wholesome couple you know

cove and tamarack also just seem like they'd be very cute together? summer boyfriend meets autumn girlfriend. in a childhood neighbors to friends to lovers type beat, i know they wouldn't get along as their step 1 selves. cove would be pretty put off by how loud and wild tam was at first. plus, neither of them would really like the same activities as the other

tamarack finds the beach boring and stagnant because she's a forest girlie and it isn't like cove is one to just be in the forest and forage mushrooms all day. but during one night when cove tries running away, strangely enough it's the loud girl he doesn't normally enjoy being with sticking with him the whole time and a friendship is birthed from that

step 2, cove is so there for tamarack when she is dealing with everything with her parents. and by step 3, he's telling tamarack he's been in love with with her since they were teens

chef's kiss, cove/tamarack hits different

step 1 derek sees this:

and immediately falls in love, i don't think i need to expand further on that. y'all know how derek is and i feel like everything i said about cove comforting tam can be applied here as well. he'd try to shoot his shot with making a marriage promise with tam too i see it very clearly

and, don't get mad at me for repeating myself but

step 1 derek sees this:

and immediately falls in love. but since qiu is a popular kid, good luck, my guy. at least derek can rest assured knowing that qiu's his good buddy and slightly more special than the rest. i think with qiu he might feel too nervous to do the marriage promise thing since qiu is a popular kid and who knows if he's already received a ton of those

in a scenario where they aren't close as step 1 folk though or qiu pushes derek away during their step 2 phase, derek is hurt but he still tries putting in the effort to rebuild that bridge, letting qiu know he's there regardless of what they're going through until finally... qiu reaches back

they had their ups and their downs but qiu appreciates derek not giving up on them and sticking with them through the hard times

by the time qiu is back to their normal rizzler self, derek's busy with sports and it is hard for them to meet up with each other but they stay in contact. but step 4 would be when they get together because derek let's it drop he had a crush on qiu when they were kids "haha definitely over it NOW though" (he is not)

qiu gains a crush on derek between steps 2 and 3 but never said anything because they kinda felt after being such a jerk to derek during a good chunk of high school, he doesn't deserve to pursue him but after hearing derek had a crush on him qiu decides they're gonna shoot their shot (happy ending ofc though)

i'm leaving terry and randy out of this though, they're too fucking cute for me to separate

[in-a-pynch]

Pynch! Plant! Dads! Headcanon!

adam never having house plants growing up because *obviously*

but then gansey bashfully gives adam a pothos plant as a housewarming/peacemaking gift once he moves into st. agnes

adam, who never does anything halfway, immediately checks out books from the school library on how to care for houseplants

adam realizing that he is capable of being gentle and caring through his small (but quickly growing) houseplant collection, and using this to counter his insecurities regarding becoming like his father

adam returning home late from work absolutely exhausted but still hellbent on watering and talking to every single plant before bedtime

adam eventually acquiring so many plants that he has to develop a schedule of which plants he gives attention to on different days to make sure he is being fair

ronan finding out adam talks to his plants one night when he follows adam back to the church after a fight and overhears adam muttering to his pilea about his dumbass, stubborn boyfriend who he loves but often wants to strangle

ronan absolutely melting at this, but not letting on that he knows because he doesn’t want adam to be self-conscious about it and stop

from then on, when ronan spends the night at st agnes, he often wakes up the next morning with funny little plants cupped in his hands that couldn’t be found in any of adam’s many many botany books

they put all of the unidentified plants on one table in the middle of the apartment, they call that section mini-cabeswater

ronan buying a bunch of plants for himself, figuring that if he can farm he can certainly take care of a house plant

ronan being undeniably, irrefutably wrong about this fact

adam having to rescue all of ronan’s houseplants from the Barns and Monmouth because they’re dying ro

adam bringing *all of* the plants to college (because he can’t just pick favorites, ronan) and them basically taking over his half of the dorm

the plants reminding adam of cabeswater in a way that aches a little inside his chest and behind his deaf ear

one of adam’s new friends seeing his ridiculous plant collection and forcing him to join the botany club with them

adam secretly adoring it even though he pretends he doesn’t

ronan sometimes mailing adam new little plant samples he dreamed up with ridiculous notes in latin

adam’s friends being infinitely curious about The Boyfriend: Mysterious Giver of Plants but only being able to get out of adam that he’s A Farmer™️ and they went to high school together

adam’s botanist friends asking too many questions about where adam’s boyfriend gets all these weird plants that no one can identify and adam blurting out that ronan is a “rare plant collector”

adam telling ronan this over winter break and his ears turning pink as ronan laughs until his stomach hurts

adam being thankful for all the latin he learned in high school bc it means he can make up authentic sounding scientific names for the “rare” plants on the spot

ronan coming up to visit adam at school for the first time and all of adam’s friends expecting A Farmer™️ and instead getting a goth boy with daddy issues and a bunch of religious guilt

ronan softening the blow by bringing a bunch of weird plants he had gotten from sources so secret that if i told you i would have to kill you ((lynch stop threatening my friends)) and also a raven named chainsaw??

in adam’s junior year, ronan and his obsession with weird, dead, romantic languages decides to send adam messages in victorian flower language

this is fine and sweet up until the point that adam’s friends figure it out and ronan decides to send increasingly obscene messages in larger and larger bouquets

eventually adam starts blocking ronan’s mail and he (begrudgingly) promises to stop

one summer when adam is back at the Barns he attempts to grow a small vegetable garden and fails miserably for no reason that is apparent to either him or ronan

ronan being smug about this for three (3) weeks

adam permanently moving to the Barns after graduation and ronan and him agreeing that adam will handle the inside plants and ronan will handle the outside plants

at some point ronan loses a bet to gansey and has to go to a local garden club meeting as punishment

the little old ladies in the gardening club being absolutely obsessed with ronan and not being fooled *at all* by his scowl and prickly facade

by the end of the night they had guilted ronan into coming to next week’s meeting and bringing the boyfriend with him

adam and ronan getting so into gardening club that they start hosting the weekly meetings at the Barns

the Barns just bring so full of plants inside and out that everyone wonders how they still find room

Opal being good at both indoor and outdoor gardening to both her dads’ chagrin

Opal taking a particular interest in carnivorous plants, just to be difficult

ronan and adam’s wedding having an obscene amount of floral arrangements and greenery, all home grown

the wedding also being attended by a bunch of little old ladies from the gardening club

just ronan and adam being in love with each other and opal and their many many plants

pLaNt dAdS

damn that got a bit out of hand... anyway

[petalpetal]

a list of OC’s sorta I like playing dress up games and sometimes with a certain character design I come up with a personality and backstory idk if I would ever use them anything maybe like DND or something but other then that idk anyway here there are so I can have a refrence post of them to go back to.

here is part 1

 Also i want to get this clear there are two schools that several characters go to. One is for Wizards (anyone regardless of race can to here to study to be a Witch or a Wizard) and a school for Magical beings, this school has mostly magical and mythical beings but some humans who have mixed blood in them attend as well. Both are boarding schools but the Wizard one has a uniform while the magical being one does not. the reason why most of them are in high school is because I love the highschool setting dymanic. its mainly because I kept setting them as high schoolers and then in my head i was like “DUDE WHAT IF THEY ALL WENT TO THE SAME SCHOOL”

Name: Lethe

Gender: Female

Race: Teifling

Extra: her hair is wrapped around her horns

her mother couldnt bare children but despretly wanted a child so she saught help in the form of magic idk how but some how a Demon tricked her and gave her some magic something and she ended up getting pregnate but since the contract she made with the man turned out to be a dark contract (which she didnt know at the time) her child was born a teifling and because of the child's demonic origin she and her child where ostracized from their community This is was part of the demons plan for he needed a vessel for some big scheme he had so the Demon took the mother and girl in and the girl was raised on dark magic gifted to her by her father. But once she learned that her father has been planning on using her a vessel for some dark god or something thus giving up her free will she ran away

Name: Abigail

Gender: Female 

Race: Human

Extra: she some where between the age of 11-15

A pirate captain who is somewhat respected by her crew despite her young age

Name: Amanita

Gender: Female 

Race: Human with a little something else in her

Extra: doesn’t know her parents and lives with her grandparents.

a bratty high schooler who is somewhat a bully she is has an affinity for fungus. After too to many calls from the teachers she was transfered to the school for magical beings due to her affinity to fungus

Name: Angelica 

Gender: Female

Race: Human

Extra: she goes to a school for rich kids 

A girl who cant seem to calm down around her crush

Name: Anna

Gender: Female

Race: ?????

Extra: was a adopted and raised by ghosts 

A girl who lives in a graveyard and talk to the dead goes to a school for magical beings

Name: Bliss

Gender: Female

Race: Human

Extra: only cares about one thing and that’s Money 

a Maid who so totally hates her job and wants to find a boyfriend

Name: Celeste

Gender: Nonbinary

Race: Elemental idk 

Extra: they control wind

a super chill dude goes to a school for other magical beings 

Name: Cordelia 

Gender: Female

Race: Elf

Extra: She’s afraid of bugs 

a prodigy at the wizard school she goes too and if things look like they are going south she will not hesitate to bail and save her own skin 

Name: Edge

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Extra: extremely naive 

a boy destined for great things

Name: Eva

Gender: Nonbinary

Race: Human

extra: wants to be florist

I wanted a snarky emo/goth character and thus Eva was created  

Name: Isaac

Gender: Nonbinary

Race: Human

Extra: he might go to the same school as Cordelia 

Likes to tease people

Name: Isabella 

Gender: Female 

Race: Human

Extra: she is the third child out of five

a well mannered young lady who comes from a well to do family

Name: Ivy

Gender: Female

Race:?????

Extra: when asked where shes from her response is space 

a girl who unknown origin and kind of wants to keep it that way 

Name: Lavendar

Gender: Female

Race: Bug

Extra: calls everyone a bother but in realty she holds her friends close and dear to her heart

goes to school for magical beings maybe the same one as Celeste and Anna

Name: Kotone

Gender: Trans Girl

Race: sheep person??

extra: does she have hands or hooves who knows???

despite got accepted into the school for magical beings due to her being a music prodigy. Also she plays the koto which is where her name comes from

Name: Mystery 

Gender: ?????

Race: ????

Extra: wants to be a detective 

goes to the school for magical beings what for?? no one knows not even the faculty. 

Name: Nadine 

Gender: Female

Race: Half Flower Spirit Half Demon

Extra: Her mother was cherry blossom spirit because of this she can only access her powers during cherry blossom season other then that she relies on potions and magical science  

a very studious girl who has a hard time making friends. Goes to the school for magical beings.

Name: Octavia

Gender: Female

Race: Half Human

Extra: doesn't have any friends her age 

comes from a family of demon hunters 

Name: Opal 

Gender: Female

Race: Water Spirit

Extra: her personality is similar to Mami Honda from Gals!

Goes to the school for magical beings and is kind of a shopaholic 

Name: Prudence 

Gender: Female

Race: Half demon Half angel 

Extra: some days shes on the side of good and others on the side of evil 

goes to the school for magical beings. Don’t let her goody two shoes act fool you

Name: Rosemary

Gender: Female

Race: Human

extra: works at a boutique

A friend of Bliss who is tired of her complaining 

Name: Sybella

Gender: Female

Race: Angel

Extra: A cousin of Prudence

A quite a girl and Kotones best friend goes to the school of magical beings

Name: Trip

Gender: Nonbinary 

Race: shapshifter

Extra: they can never make a complete identical copy of someone 

a trouble maker shapeshifter who goes to the school for magical beings 

Name: Whisper

Gender: Nonbinary

Race: Angel

Extra: is not related to Prudence or Sybella

An Angel who rather skip their angellic training to go goof off. goes to the school for magical beings

Name:  Twilight

Gender: Female

Race: Elf

Extra: is the youngest teacher at the Wizard academy

despite her young appearance she is over 60 

Name: Velvet 

Gender: Female

Race: Half-Elf

Extra: it takes her two hours to do her hair every morning 

goes to the wizard academy. Specializes in sowing magic  

[lids-flutter-open]

goth trans boy YA set in undisclosed PNW college town, chapter 2:

(content warning for: LGBT youth group, discussion of predatory grooming and stalking)

Chapter two

Group night was Wednesday, and that meant at seven in the evening I had to park my car by the library (because of the free parking) and walk down to Eighth Ave where the building for Compton House was. It was on the single street in downtown that was the bad part of town, or at least the bad part of town according to the Hollister set. It was just a block and a half, and it was where the homeless people and oogles liked to sit, but it was bustling with active commercial real estate, too. The gay bar was two doors down, and the same street had a show space and two Thai restaurants and a thrift store and a hair salon and a corner store. Compton House was on the fourth floor of a mixed-use building. It was accessible by elevator for people in wheelchairs as long as the elevator worked, but the elevator was the slowest in the world so anyone who could took the stairs. You had to get buzzed in the front door, because of the hate crime fears et cetera, and not even youth workers like me were supposed to know what the door code was, but I’d been going there so long I knew the code and just showed up. 

Tonight the adult facilitator was Spruce, who was nice and like, an old punk, but who I hated because she gave bad advice to tweens. I got ready to mentor the shit out of the thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old set. Ostensibly I was a youth like everyone else and this was my group therapy session, but sometime last year the formula changed and I realized that the shit I was having problems with was no longer anything that anyone in the group could help me with, even the facilitator. My pen pal who I’d had since I was fourteen had disappeared off the face of the planet and deleted his blog and then he resurfaced and it turned out he was schizophrenic and had a heroin addiction, and then he went AWOL again somewhere in Kansas. I didn’t have a way to contact him and his mom, who he had told me beat him, was messaging me on social media and I didn’t know what to tell her. What do you tell a sixteen year old to do about that? Or when Opal lost housing. Nobody was ready to deal with all of that shit and it just scared the thirteen-year-olds when I talked about it, so I stopped sharing the heavy stuff at group and just tried to take care of them. It was exhausting, but also good in a way that I knew would never help me on a college application but was somehow good for the community. Not that I could tell if I was giving good advice or not, but at least I was there, or something.

There were six kids in there when I got in, sitting on the orange couch and three folding chairs and single pink beanbag. One was my age, this lesbian named Gabby that I knew was fucking some dumb college student, or had been, and had issues with compulsive shoplifting that she brought up every time she was in group. Then there was this baby looking trans girl and three baby looking lesbians and/or theythems and/or transmascs, and one scared looking little gay boy. All of the latter set were somewhere between thirteen and sixteen, and none of them had been at the group very long. I couldn’t remember their names or pronouns. 

I got out the snacks, which Spruce had forgotten to do, and checked the coffee pot. It was grimy and I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cleaned it, so I just hid it behind the snack cart in the corner and brought out the water heater and the tea and plugged the water heater in. 

“Hey all, have some chips,” I said. “Or tea.”

“Ooh, the tea, miss vanjie,” said the shy gay boy, very quietly. I laughed, to show him that he could in fact say that. He smiled. 

“I’m James,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I saw you before a few weeks ago at group,” the shy boy said. “I’m Don.”

“Sorry, Don, I’m like almost faceblind,” I said. “I can’t remember people very well. I’ll remember you now.”

We went over the rules of the group before people started sharing. Step up step back had been changed last year to move up, move up, because of the ableism inherent in talking about stepping like it was universal and also the need to emphasize that listening was an active skill and not equivalent to nonparticipation. The rule basically meant that if you were talking a lot, shut up and listen, and if you were listening a lot, you should talk. The other rules were, don’t yuck my yum, which meant don’t say you hated a neutral thing someone else liked, and confidentiality, which meant don’t gossip about this shit or name people by name if you were talking shit about them in your sharing, and “this is a racism/sexism/etc free space”, which was a rule that kept expanding forever and needed to be elaborated on but in general meant respect pronouns and don’t say anything racist or say anything shitty about fat people. There was oops ouch snap, which meant that you snapped your fingers to agree with something someone said and said “ouch” when you wanted to start calling someone out. You were supposed to say “oops” when called out and move on, though that never happened. Then there was the rule that was about mandatory reporting, which meant that if the people who worked at Compton knew your name, they had to tell someone if you were being abused. That meant that people could use aliases if they wanted. There were other rules, too, which got brought up as they came up but were too obscure for our rule poster in the corner. 

We always divided the time up based on how many people were in the room and then apportioned everyone blocks of time based on that. If there were a lot of people, time was always crunched. Some people shared for five minutes and got feedback for five minutes and were good, while others prattled for thirty minutes. One time when I was first coming to group a girl had read her diary for thirty minutes while a neutralized facilitator watched in paralyzed awe, unable to intervene. We were better at regulating tempo now, if only because people like me were there. Long timers. 

The first girl, who was like, thirteen, talked about how she had come out to her parents and they told her that she was imagining it, and then took her to a therapist that asked her to think very hard about whether she was actually gay. The parents didn’t know she was at the group. She had come with her friend, who was wearing a rainbow bracelet. Spruce knew what to do with that kind of share, and in general told the girl that people were here for her and we cared about her. I echoed Spruce, and the other kids in the circle said their bit about how there were other gay people in the world and things were real and we cared about her. The girl, whose name was Eve, cried. 

The other kids were pretty boring too, though the little shy gay boy was apparently having sex with his boyfriend, who was his age. Spruce forgot to do the safe sex talk in her feedback so I told Don about places he could find condoms and told him about the books and zines in Compton’s library that he should read about sex and STD prevention and consent. I also had him write down the times he could go get free STD testing. He was so young that there was no way he’d get on PrEP, and I couldn’t imagine he was actually able to get downtown to access testing, but at least he’d know it was a thing and think about correct condom use during sex and he’d think to get tested if he noticed anything off about his partner’s dick or got any cold sores. 

Gabby talked about shoplifting. She’d stolen six hundred dollars worth of stuff from Nordstrom Rack and was worried her mom would notice it in her closet, so she was giving it away to friends. She always talked about how she was guilty about it, but I knew really this was the only place she could come to brag. I didn’t really see a problem with shoplifting luxury items for yourself and your friends, though I wouldn’t have chosen Nordstrom Rack. Gabby didn’t mention the college student, which I hoped meant they had broken up. I’d met the girl one time and hated her. Probably because she seemed like she actually shopped and spent money at Nordstrom Rack.

The trans girl, whose name was Venus, was fifteen, and hers was the first situation where I had to actually get intense with feedback. She started out with talking about how her mom wouldn’t let her get a piercing, which seemed reasonable to me, but of course devastating to a girl who really needs snakebites right now. Venus was on puberty blockers, so she had a cooler mom than most kids who needed snakebites, but even trans kids whose parents try to be supportive in the hormone and medical treatment department miss some stuff. Venus’s mom, for example, was unaware of Venus’s romantic extracurricular activities.

“It sucks,” Venus said, “that I can’t talk about my shitty relationship with a boy with my mom because she’s so paranoid that I’m sneaking around doing drugs or getting piercings or whatever and would totally flip her lid if she knew I was dating this older dude. Like I want to ask her advice about it and because I can’t get it the whole thing just keeps getting pent up and I explode at her about stuff that doesn’t matter.” She twisted her head around the room and looked at all of us without making eye contact, gauging our reactions.

Don, the gay boy, snapped his fingers. I knew Spruce appreciated that he was respecting the rule about using finger-snapping to affirm someone’s statement.

There was a long silence while Venus rearranged herself on the orange couch. It went on for so long that Spruce finally said, in the littlest little annoying breathy soft lesbian not-taking-up-space voice, 

“You still have ten minutes in your share, if you want to say anything more, Venus.”

Venus nodded.

“This guy Alex is my boyfriend,” Venus said, ignoring the alias rule for talking about people, “and I love him, or I did, but I think I have to break up with him. Maybe not right away, but eventually. And it sucks because I’ve been hiding it from my mom because at first I thought it was going to last a really long time. But we’ve been dating two months and I feel like he’s only using me for sex.” 

Venus paused again. Some people did that, looking for affirmation like they would in a conversation with a friend. Compton’s group doesn’t work so great for that kind of affirmation because nobody is supposed to say anything during someone else’s share.

“Yuck,” one of the small lesbians said, nevertheless. She was quiet, so nobody called her out for talking.

“And he never listens to me when I talk about what’s going on in my school, or how I feel about my bisexuality or my podcast. He’s in community college, and he’s twenty-one, so he isn’t that much older, but my Tumblr friend Koko said it’s creepy we’re dating. I think partly as a joke and partly not. But like, he sees me as a girl. He says he really likes me. So there’s that. I guess that’s why I don’t want to end it, because I like that.” She paused, and twirled her dyed bright red hair around her finger. “He bought me a choker necklace, which is like, a horrible stereotype about trans girls is that we’re all goth and otakus, but I am, so like, I appreciated it. And I can talk to him about kink, which I couldn’t do if I was dating like a high schooler. We’re trying daddy/little girl stuff, and I kind of like it. Because I never got to be a little girl and talk to my dad. But also sometimes I feel really pressured into stuff, in a bad way, so it’s like, so fucking conflicted. And he showed me this blog that’s like, trans girls getting dommed, like, porn, and it made me feel weird. I don’t know if he sees me like that, like I’m a porn star? I’m more than that. Like, I don’t know. I play video games. I want to be a video game designer. I like sports cars. I really like comics, I like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel. I’m a teen slut, haha, but there’s more to me than being someone’s little girl and doing roleplay. And he doesn’t seem to see that a lot. He says he values me but I don’t see it. Like. I don’t know what I want to ask. How do I talk to him about that?” She sighed and ate a corn chip from the bowl in the middle of the table.

I couldn’t wait for the designated share back time, even though that was the rule of support group you were never supposed to break. 

“Sorry, but is this Alex who does civil war reenactments? His blog is unholyspacemachina?”

“Hey, hey, confidentiality,” Spruce said, snapping out of whatever trance she’d been in for the last dozen minutes. I had to hold myself back from glaring at her. Spruce and her fucking knuckle tattoos reading TEND and HEAL. 

“Yeah,” Venus said, looking uncertainly at Spruce and then at me.

“I gotta say this, Venus. Break up with him ASAP. Dude is bad news.”

“James, I need you to respect confidentiality,” Spruce said. “We don’t use this space for gossip. If you have something to say about Venus’s boyfriend, you need to take it out of this room.”

“Wait, I want to hear this,” Venus said. “If that’s chill. I kind of hate Alex right now. I wanna hear the dirt. I can’t believe you know him. Like, what?”

“Alex hit on me a ton when I was fifteen,” I told Venus, knowing Spruce wouldn’t have the chutzpah to kick me out of group or interrupt me if I talked loud and fast enough. “He was in this group. He was three years older than me. He would like touch my knee in group here and try to get me in the corner in the hall and touch me. One time he cornered me in the bathroom and stuck his hand in my pants. He asked me out a ton and I told him no. He’s really into sexually dominating young trans people. All kinds, but the people that look fem are his main thing. Before I went on hormones he stalked me for three months. Online and real life. He got banned from Compton for it. He kept sending me emails with weird poems about how I was a hermaphroditic goddess. He sent me a link to a password locked blog that was like six months of him journaling about how he wanted to fuck me. Before me it was this girl Katie who I was friends with, who was a trans girl who was also younger than him and who was really in a bad foster care situation. He told her he’d save her. I think some of it is like genuinely coming from a place of admiration and like, white knight sympathy, but it’s really weird and creepy and he acts like a Hannibal Lecter type stalker creep when you tell him no. Super rapey vibes. I can’t believe he’s still pulling that shit.”

Spruce didn’t seem to know how to respond to this information. “Oh shit,” she said. “That’s bad.”

“I didn’t know that,” Venus said. “Shit. Any of that. I didn’t know he went to this group. He told me that I was the first girl he’d ever fallen in love with. What a line, right?” She paused. “I guess I’ve been ignoring a lot of stuff he does.”

“It’s easy to ignore shit and pretend it’s not bad when it’s bad.”

“Shit. I’m stupid.”

“No,” I said. “Not stupid. Just, you know, it’s like the Taylor Swift song. You’re fifteen. By definition you don’t have a lot to compare this to and don’t have a ton of framework for this shit. I didn’t either. I considered going out with him a lot just because he clearly wanted me to so much.”

“I guess that was sort of what I did too,” Venus said. “He found my blog after we met in person and started sending me a lot of messages, and I was like, oh, I guess this is what feeling wanted is like.”

“Yeah. No. It’s him being a stalker freak. Which isn’t to say you’re not cool. I’m not saying you won’t ever have sex appeal or anything. But this isn’t about him being into you as a person, I can one hundred percent guarantee it’s about his weird fetish stuff. He’s not a good dude.”

Spruce was leaning forward with this dumbass concerned expression. 

“What should I do?” Venus asked me. “He seemed so nice. God. I can’t believe this. We met at the bookstore, near the manga. Like in June.”

“Yeah you did,” I said. This group needs a fucking new rule: warn every trans kid in town about Alex. Especially the under-sixteen, is-a-girl set. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, but I would consider telling your mom about this. She seems relatively cool, even if she won’t let you get a piercing. She might be freaked out, or mad, or be like, you betrayed my trust, but just know that it really isn’t your fault, okay, this dude is like a serial predator and knows how young trans people’s minds work now enough that he’s reasonably good at manipulating people enough to get laid. If you tell your mom, she’ll probably have a handle on how to get this dude away from you.”

“Oh jeez. I don’t know. She’d totally ground my ass. This isn’t something I want to talk about to her.”

“I can’t promise she won’t ground you, but like, she clearly cares about your wellbeing, since she brings you to this group and is trying to get you care and medical transition stuff. And like, you said you wished you could talk to her. That tells me she’s cooler than my parents. You can think about how you want to proceed on this stuff, but my advice is to drop Alex like a hot potato and block him on everything and have your mom tell him you’re going to call the police on him over statutory rape. Which you literally could, he’s like six years older than you and you’re under sixteen.”

“I don’t want to call the cops,” Venus said. “I think I’m kind of anti-cop.”

“You don’t have to actually call them,” I said. “Just say you will. I said that. He backed off. Or if you don’t wanna use the threat of state violence say James Goldman still knows where he fucking lives and I’ll beat him up with a baseball bat if he pulls any shit.”

“What if he hurts me?” Venus asked. “He knows where my house is. He’s been driving to my house at night so we can make out. He shows up just randomly.”

I could see that Spruce was gradually registering that this might be a mandated reporter situation. Her gears were spinning. 

“Look,” Spruce said, and I took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair as her automated response started rolling. “Let’s talk more about this after group, okay? We can connect you with some resources. The main thing is that you’re feeling unsafe, and that’s not an okay thing to feel in a relationship with someone. That isn’t how you’re supposed to feel. You can absolutely find people who won’t make you feel scared that someone is going to hurt you. But look, come to the office after we’re done with group and we’ll go over your options for what to do. We want you to feel safe.” The options are a lot of pamphlets about the sexual violence shelter and recovery network in town, plus a referral to a therapist, plus the information that, since we probably have Venus’s last name and mother’s phone number, we have to tell her mom that she’s being groomed by a repeat sexual predator who’s been banned from Compton House and whose full legal name we also know. I knew that Spruce was probably not going to be the one to actually go over the options with Venus. That would probably be Natalie, who has been here longest and, whatever other issues she has as a person, is at least relatively good at having that conversation with kids in bad situations. 

I was kind of shaking. That happened sometimes. I couldn’t sit there for the rest of group without a break to pause and drink some water, so I went to the bathroom for a minute. Sitting on the toilet, I remembered when Alex had pushed me into a stall in the same bathroom and tried to kiss me and shoved his hand down my pants. I hadn’t had my bottle opener knife back then, and he got his lips on my face before I screamed at him and he jumped back. I was a acne-covered kid who wasn’t on hormones and had a bowl cut and bad glasses, and nobody had hit on me before. Before that moment, even with Alex’s rapey vibes and my utter lack of sexual attraction to him, I remembered seriously considering fucking him, just because I thought I wouldn’t ever have sex with anyone and because it would have been easy. I had realized that was bad after talking to Katie and hearing about her time with Alex and realizing that coerced, bad sex is in fact worse than no sex.

Shit like this is why I’m going to be a social worker. Compton House has historically also been pretty bad at dealing with abusers. They don’t train staff well on this stuff. Alex wasn’t the first and probably won’t be the last. One time a boy’s abusive dad showed up and tried to break down the front door and then tried to grab the boy by his hair and slam his head against the door frame when the kid went downstairs to try to talk to him down. Staff didn’t stop him or try to mediate until it was too late. We had to call the cops that time. It takes something like that or a sexual assault on the property to get someone formally permanently banned from Compton. The whole formula is pretty much, wait until shit already has gone down, then process it. But at least there’s a formula. It also isn’t like the nonprofit itself attracts specifically predators, or at least not more than any other gay youth nonprofit would. It’s just that wherever there’s LGBT teenagers, there’s gonna be someone around who really wants to rape us or hurt us or whatever, and that person is sometimes also an LGBT teenager, and whoever they are they usually get as close to raping us or hurting us as they can until someone stops them. Safety policies like doors with buzzers don’t get you absolute protection. You need people who are on top of keeping kids safe and actually care about them and get the training they need to know what to do.

I really hoped Venus would be okay. I knew I would end up giving her my number, even though I knew that meant learning about the new Homestuck or whatever slightly younger weird nerdy trans kids were into these days. I had to be her friend here, or she might get stuck with someone like Alex over and over again. Or like, maybe not, after this. She seemed smart and like she was on her way to figuring things out without me. But she still needed friends. And even though I didn’t really feel like starting yet another friendship with a potentially volatile trans kid who I knew was just getting started on probably the worst time of her life, who might potentially get raped or get addicted to drugs or die at any time, I also knew I didn’t really have a choice. We had both gotten fucked with the same way. 

I didn’t share anything important about my life when I got back to group and it was my turn. I talked about wanting to go to college, and I mentioned seeing a cute boy I was into. The shy gay boy, who had been absorbing lesbian and bi trans girl trauma narratives and shoplifting stories the whole night, looked heartened by this anecdote confirming that there were other gay men in the world who had sexual desire. I didn’t mention my friend Aaron, who was on heroin somewhere in the midwest, or dead, and I didn’t mention the fact that I knew some of my friends (Opal, but I wouldn’t have said their name) still cut themselves sometimes. Don’t lay that shit on people when they don’t have a way to deal with it. 

When group was over, I gave Venus my email and phone number, and told her to text or call me, and that if she had her phone taken away, she could email me on a library computer. She thanked me, and typed the number into her phone. 

“Thanks for telling me about Alex,” she said. “I think this is probably gonna be a shit hitting the fan situation with my mom, but whatever, I needed to hear that and know that. That’s the most useful information I’ve gotten on what to do about all this. I was just googling ‘wikihow fix a shitty boyfriend’ all the time.”

“It’ll blow over,” I said. “With your mom, I mean. Your safety is the main shit. I’m not a great influence personally and don’t tend to impress parents, but if you want me to talk to your mom about Alex I can do that too to try and speak on your behalf and explain what kind of person he is.”

“I’ll give my mom your number too,” Venus said. Then she went into the office to have the resources conversation with Natalie and Spruce.

I didn’t actually know if Venus’s mom would be cool, but I hoped she would.

When I got out of the building after group I smoked a stress cigarette and walked over to King David’s Diner to see if Goober was there. Her shift ends at nine thirty on Wednesdays. Sometimes I just wait by the bus stop for her to avoid stressing her out during closing, but I wanted to see her as quick as I could, to regain some kind of balance and remember that I was just a dumb teenager. Also to shit talk Compton. The twilight was setting in on Eighth Avenue, and the thrift store was closed, meaning the people who slept in the doorway there were already tucked into the tiny backpacking tent they put up every night. Overhead, the sky was plastered with peach-colored fluffy clouds. Goober was still working, thank fuck. She was just getting ready to go, wiping down counters and cleaning under the mats before the night shift people got there. 

“Hey James,” she said. She looked tired. “What’s kicking?”

“Not much,” I said. “Just talked to some teens at Compton for a while. Spruce is no fucking good at facilitating, as usual. Can I help with anything?”

“You don’t work here, buddy. Just stand there.” She used a paper towel to get the coffee grounds from under the machine. “And tell me about it. I was so happy when I realized my social circle wasn’t all Compton people anymore. It’s suffocating.”

“It’s all I’ve got until I’m twenty-one,” I shrugged. “And good practice if I ever become like someone’s case manager.”

“I could spill some shit on Spruce,” Goober offered, pushing some flyaway hair out of her eyes with the wrist of one hand. “Just petty dyke drama, but I don’t love the girl.”

Goober’s coworker Morwen emerged from the back freezer, taking off her apron. She’s a thirtysomething butch with prematurely grey hair. She’s the day shift lead at King David’s. “Dyke drama? In my establishment?” She asked. “Say it isn’t so. I’m gonna count tips, Goober, okay? It’s nine twenty and I am out. Rafi and Miguel are already here in the back anyway.”

“Morwen, can we give James some like, pie?” Goober asked, digging in the back of the display case. “This isn’t gonna look good tomorrow and I’m pretty sure we’re not gonna sell it all tonight.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Morwen shrugged, giving me a fist bump as she walked over to the cash register and started counting her tips. Morwen isn’t the real boss—he leaves at seven, or earlier if he feels like it—so she doesn’t care that a lot of the kids who come to eat at the diner don’t pay. Goober gave me a plastic container with some kind of key lime goop in it. I put it in my canvas tote bag without saying anything. Don’t ask too many questions when you get free food. I didn’t have any more cash to put in the tip jar, either.

“Her hand tattoos always make me fucking hurl,” I said to Goober. I wanted to get back to shit talking Spruce. “I guess you only get knuckle tats that say TEND and HEAL if you’re bad at doing both.”

“What does that say about people with KILL COPS knuckle tats?” Morwen asked. She handed Goober one of the two stacks of one dollar bills she had made. 

“God, are you talking about that guy Chris?” Goober asked Morwen, taking the cash. 

“He doesn’t fucking tip. He was in earlier and had a twenty dollar tab and gave me two bucks. I was like thanks, bro. You remember when he peed on the empty cop car at the station at two in the morning when nobody was around and took an Instagram video and was like ohhhh I’m such a sick anarchist. I was like man, you’re twenty-nine and a white kid with a trust fund back East. His fucking friends are always partying at the goat skull place down behind me and Betty’s house. Keep me up all night. I fucking hate punks sometimes.” 

Morwen’s house is really close to Goat Mansion. I’m definitely one of the punks she hates sometimes.  I grinned sheepishly at Goober. 

“Chris like, pushed a dumpster into the road one time on the Fourth of July and set it on fire and said it was anarchist praxis protest against the state,” Goober offered. “Which like, it might have been if he had coordinated with anyone and anyone knew what the fuck he was doing or why. But people thought it was just like, fourth of July frat boy whatever.”

“I kind of want to learn more about what effective anarchism looks like,” I said. “I feel like I’ve never seen it here. I don’t think I’ve ever known what’s actually going on. Besides the organization that runs the needle exchange and the food not bombs people.” I also didn’t know very much about those, but I knew they existed. I’d volunteered at the food bank last year every week and we’d save stuff like produce for the food not bombs people to take and make free hot meals with. They’d give them to people out of a food truck by the bus station. It’s a pretty good thing. I knew that some of those punks volunteered at the winter shelter down at the church by the library, too.

“Dude, real anarchism is just like, helping people,” Goober said. “I mean, and fighting Nazis and cops.”

“I guess I know that,” I said. “Which also, like, speaking of helping, thanks for pie.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Goober said. “Let’s split, I wanna leave this restaurant now.”

We walked to the bus stop together. There’s no predictable bus schedule or transit app, so you just have to stand there and have faith. The sun had set a while ago, and the streetlamp in front of the bus stop was broken. The world was totally dark. Me and Goober stood there a while and talked about how cool Morwen looked and what we wanted our ideal looks to be when we were Morwen’s age, or older. Goober said that when she turned thirty-five she was going to change her name to Rebecca and open a bed and breakfast in Connecticut and figure out how to get Michelle Tea and her wife to come stay there so she could break up their marriage and then marry Michelle Tea and then write a memoir about it. I couldn’t think of what I would be like when I was thirty-five. I tried to picture myself as a social worker with an actual facial hair beard. A purple beard? No, ick. A mustache? Would I dye it black?

“You’re gonna totally have like a cool co-op and a garden,” Goober said. “If the bees don’t die and we still have agriculture. But like a put-together co-op where everyone’s past their Saturn return. You’ll have like Le Creuset dishware and a well-maintained compost pile with the correct mishmash of alkaline whatever. And a bunch of very clean band t-shirts in one drawer and all your like, jam jars downstairs and a neurotic dog. I can envision exactly how you’ll be when you’re thirty-five.”

“Or I’ll be like, an emotional wreck who wears leopard print to work and tries to take care of druggy thirteen year olds and only gives them terrible patronizing advice because I’m so over it,” I said.

“Just don’t manifest that.” Goober shrugged. “Anyway, that’s not you. You’re way more likely to keep being super invested to an unhealthy extent in everyone else’s crises and give yourself cluster headaches from thinking too hard about other people’s problems.”

“Thanks.”

We watched a large black cat cross the empty street and disappear into the bushes.

“Did you hear that someone’s been killing and mutilating housecats on the West Side?” Goober asked. 

“What?” I asked. “What?”

“Like, there’s been five people within six blocks that have had their cats killed in five months. It’s a serial cat killer. The cats turn up near the owners’ houses with their hair singed off their heads on one side and like, these weird marks like they’ve been stuck with some kind of needle. And their spines removed. All the same. My friends are talking about organizing a community cat protection thing where we walk around at night and try to catch whoever it is. And also protect stray cats. I’m worried about Ozma getting out and someone killing her.” Ozma was Goober’s white cat.

“That’s so crazy,” I said. “That’s scary.”

“I bet it’s some druggy sociopath college kid from the state uni. Next it’ll be people.”

“Yuck,” I said. “Don’t say that. We had the Oyster House Arsonist just like, two years ago. I don’t want any more shit to go down here.”

“It’s a small town,” Goober said. “We have a lot of secrets and dark shit. Just natural.”

When Goober caught her bus, I walked back to the library and got my car to head home. The roads that late were pretty empty. Going anywhere outside after dark on a weeknight is like that. As I drove back I listened to a new release from this artist Nightspace who I like. It got me in the right mood—it’s kind of like Grimes, but from someone who isn’t a wacky capitalist shill and whose voice sounds like Robert Smith from the Cure. Nightspace has been around a few years but is just getting big. They used to live in Seattle. As I drove past the lake, I rolled the windows down so that the kids who were drinking on the dock could get a little flash of goth culture passing through the night.

My dad’s house is fifteen minutes outside of downtown, in a newer suburban development a lot closer to the farms and the cow shit stink. My mom lives a little closer in, but this week she was at a conference for work, so I was at Dad’s. He lives with his wife Kaylin, who he married when I was twelve. Both of them are okay people. Just okay. I don’t have anything personal against Kaylin, though I hate that she keeps the house looking like a Martha Stewart magazine. Houses aren’t meant to look like that. I also feel like a really smart, good person would not have married my dad, so I’m still trying to figure out what is wrong with her.

When I pulled into the driveway I shoved all my weed gear in my overnight duffel bag before getting out of the car. The lights were on so I knew they were both awake. Kaylin was in the kitchen when I got inside, looking at her phone. She smiled at me. I nodded at her. 

“Hey James,” she said. “How was group?”

“Same old,” I said. “I’m the one giving the advice these days. I think I’m probably too old for it.”

“That experience with planning workshops and stuff will be very good on college applications,” she said. She was drinking her Bedtime Sleepy Blend tea. It’s from the hippie mom yoga herb shop downtown. Catnip and meadowsweet and stuff. 

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure tooting my own horn about it on all the essays.”

“Did you eat dinner?”

“I had a snack.”

“There’s stuff in the fridge if you’re hungry. Oh, and I’m making some crepes tomorrow morning, if you’ll be around before school,” Kaylin said. 

“School starts early,” I said. “Seven thirty in the morning, remember?”

“I’m going to be up early to jog.” 

“Oh, cool.” I shrugged. “Yeah, if I’m up I can help with your crepes.”

“I like that collar,” Kaylin said, in a tone that let me know it distressed her.

“Well, first week of school, gotta come on strong,” I said.

My dad came into the kitchen, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt advertising the fact that he likes the band The Shins. 

“Oh,” he said. “You’re home. How was your day?”

“Just fine,” I said. “I’m applying to Berkley, so did some research on that after school before Compton and group.” 

My dad and Kaylin looked at each other in surprise. “Oh wow,” my dad said. “Well, that’s a big challenge. Good luck. Do you have any friends applying there?”

I shrugged noncommittally. I was not actually counting on applying to Berkeley. It was one of those things I said to my dad to shut him up from asking about why I smelled like weed. I was actually applying to a number of institutions I knew he would approve of, so it didn’t really matter. 

“Remember,” my dad said, “Make sure to emphasize all the different facets of your personality. Don’t focus on just one thing.”

“Totally,” I said. 

“Why do you want to go to Berkeley?” Kaylin asked me.

“I’d like to stay on the west coast but go to a prestigious university,” I said, “and I haven’t ruled out law school, so it might be nice to get a sense of the atmosphere there and to make friends on that track.” I went to the fridge and unloaded the key lime slime container Goober had given me onto the shelf next to the organic milk. 

“Good reasons,” my dad said. He was rummaging in the pantry. I heard the pop that signaled he had managed to pry open Kaylin’s Tupperware of carob energy cubes. 

“Yeah,” I said. 

“You need good grades for that,” my dad said through a mouthful of carob, agave and hemp seed. 

“It’s a good thing I get good grades,” I said. 

“I worry about that a little with your smoking, you know,” Kaylin said, though nobody had asked her. “You’re so smart. Do you feel like pot impacts your studying? I know the times I’ve gotten high I haven’t felt very…” she gesticulated primly. “Together.” Kaylin is the kind of person who wears gray linen and tidy Banana Republic ensembles to the beach. I doubt she has ever been untogether. 

“I have a 3.95,” I said. “As of now. And I do theater and used to do jazz band and I helped plan Gay Pride last year and was the only person under 18 on the task force. Frankly, I was the only person under 30. And I plan workshops on gay rights for nonprofits and do sex ed and canvas for local Democratic candidates and volunteered at the food bank for two years. I think I’m okay.” I filled a glass of water at the sink and drank it. “Speaking of, though, I have to do some homework before bed. I gotta go work on some chemistry. See you in the morning.”

“Nobody’s saying you’re doing bad, sport,” my dad said in that weird dry tone he has.

“Sure,” I said. “I know. Just practicing my shpiel.”

“See you,” Kaylin said brightly. “Remember, crepes!"

“Goodnight, kiddo,” my dad said. He replaced the carob Tupperware in the pantry and came over to me for a hug. I reciprocated awkwardly. “Love you.”

“Love you,” I said, leaving the room with my weed duffel. 

I don’t love my dad anymore—not since I was about thirteen, and came out, and he freaked out more than I expected and said a bunch of totally ugly shit and then kicked me out of the house to live with just Mom for a year while he “figured out what he was feeling” about my gender. He says he has figured out what he’s feeling and I know he read at least one of the articles my mom sends him, because he doesn’t say ugly shit any more and signed off on my top surgery with my mom, but he is still an emotionally incompetent moron who only cares about material success and shiny titanium kitchenware and gardening and like, Bjork. He has done nothing to repair our parent-child relationship. I resent him for things I would not resent a normal man for, like wearing a T-shirt for The Shins or eating carob cubes.  

Upstairs, I locked the door to my room and turned on the lava lamp my dad bought me when I was eleven. It’s orange and red and I still think it’s sick as hell. Between the lava lamp and the pink rock salt lamp Kaylin gave me for my birthday this year, my room at my dad’s house practically radiates the color pink. It’s good that it has such a comfortable glow, because besides the lighting situation it’s intensely impersonal. Just a big bed and a blank Ikea desk with some pens on it and a dresser filled with clothes I don’t actively hate but don’t like enough to keep at Mom’s. No books, no personal effects. It’s a guest bedroom. I don’t actually belong in my dad’s house. 

I could have used my vape to do my pre-chemistry smoke, since it’s less smelly, but the carob eating had annoyed me and I felt like reminding Kaylin and my father that I hated them in a subtle way, so I toked up and just opened the window into the September night. Most of the smoke left the room, so the fire alarm wouldn’t go off, but the funk would linger a while. I imagined Kaylin burning sage or nag champa incense or spritzing natural essential-oil cedar-scented air freshener when I left. 

It was early enough in the year that the stuff I had to do for my AP chem class was pretty limited, just ten problems, but I hadn’t been lying about the homework. When I finally got to bed it was past midnight. I had forgotten to check my phone for three hours. I had a text from Ian and another from Opal. 

Ian’s text read:

Should I break up with closet case? At the end of my damn rope.

Opal’s text read:

Just had a WEIRD convo with the trans man my roommate is fucking. He’s like a social work dude and he’s in law school. He said he’s maybe applying for the executive director position for Compton???? Because apparently NATALIE IS LEAVING??????? LIKE TO MOVE TO PHILADELPHIA?? DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS?? 

[canadas-googlesearchhistory]

Elysia Angélo Melina(just saying now trigger warnings)(nightmaretyrantvantas)

Female Age: 14-15 Height: barely 5"0 Daughter of Hades Born in upper new york state Birthday : October 21 Star sign: Libra♎ Favorite colors: dark purple, black, red violet, copper Elysia is rather anti-social and shy, she doesnt interract with many people outside her half siblings and their friends (Tw)Elysia came from a abusive household, with a neglectful and verbally abusive mother and her mother’s verbally and physically abusive boyfriend (Tw)she was also bullied through every school she went to(and got kicked out of) because she accidently told someone she saw a monster in the classroom She doesnt have alot of control over her powers yet, shes got fairly decent control over shadow travel but she cant summon full skeletons. She can create large cracks in the earth and sense&see the dead, but she cant summon ghosts Her favorite gem is opal Her favorite crystal/mineral is obsidion and rose quartz Shes a bit of a witch fan and likes to make her own little spell bottles which she keeps around her part of the hades cabin She loves instrumental music, especiallu italian and fantasy and waltzes Shes a self taught artist but she rarely draws because of her insecurites; she is good at drawing landscapes and animals and monsters (TW) elysia struggles with long time depression, and can easily fall into depressive episodes for long periods of time (TW)Elysia self harms and has scars going up to the inside of her elbows on both arms, however she is trying to stay clean after promising her half-siblings nico and hazel to stop cutting[bonus fact storyline wise presently shes been clean from self harming for almost four months] She loves oversized clothing Shes very skinny from lack of eating and lack of food but she does not have an eating disorder(tw) She likes to steal nico’s hoodies and wear them when hes not around. They give her an immense sense of comfort Shes a chronic insomniac, but since living in the hades cabin shes been able to sleep more than she used to She DOES have bullies at camp, but shes slowly learning to stand up to them (having nico there willing to kick their asses helps) When the satyr that brought her to camp found her she was technically a runaway because she left home the night before. After a lot of discussing she wanted to go to school and elysia ended up staying with percy and his mother while she went to school 10 blocks away from percy’s home. Shes semi-decent at swordfighting. Shes not the best yet, but shes gotten a good grip on how to fight Shes met hades once before going to camp. She was really young and ran away for the first time. She met hades at a nearby playground and he pushed her on the swings for a little bit then led her back home, slipping the ring she wears around her neck into her pocket as a parting gift She almost always wears long sleeves and elbow length fingerless gloves to hide her scars She (understandably) has really low self esteem Animals normally avoid her except for one stray black cat with two different colored eyes (one amber one blue). The cat seemed to attatch itself to Elysia(much to her shock and utter happiness) the cat stays with her wherever she lives and has become basically her therapy cat. She loves wild cats, especially panthers and snow lepoards. She has a bad habit of biting her nails when shes nervous She loves horror stories(even though they worsen her insomnia) She has a little bit of a sweet tooth But she really loves sour candies She tugs on locks of her hair when shes anxious She actually enjoys going down to the underworld and helping Hades and nico, she enjoys helping out and learning how to control her powers better Her favorite flowers are spider lilies She has a dimples when she really smiles

Aaaaaand that is elysia melina daughter of hades! Tada! My goth baby (Nightmaretyrantvantas)

[beapositiveimpact]

Lights And Shadows (pt 3)

In a small dark apartment just down the peninsula from the city, a woman is rolling over onto her side under her pale blue blanket. She silently looks toward the foot of the bed where there is an older man, in his 60s, getting dressed. After he puts his shoes on, he reaches into his pocket and pulls a wad of twenty dollar bills out and puts them on the dresser. "As usual, that was real nice, Shauna. Don't sleep the day away. I don't know if I can see you next week as my wife's nosey mother will be visiting with us for a few days. But I'll get ahold of you before the holidays start up." And he walks out the door, back to his boring suburban life, leaving Shauna to her very different life, full of self discovery and frustrating johns. Shauna sits up and looks towards the door for a moment and then at the cash for services rendered. She wraps the blanket around her and gets up to make a fresh pot of coffee on the electric burner that substitutes for a stove. "Not if I get money for airfare to get out of this town first." She counts the cash to herself, "Damn, barely enough for rent for this little cave and a lunch special at the burger joint." She let's out a low sigh while glancing out the window, "Looks like more rain." She wipes a tear, trades the blanket for her pink terry cloth robe then pours herself a cup of strong black coffee and starts her day. Another day, another dollar or less. It's a good thing that Jimmy is a natural at sales, his commissions more than make up for lack of hours on the sales floor. It doesn't hurt that even on his worse days, he can put aside the pain in his personal life and turn on the charm. When he was in school, his aspirations were to be a famous jazz musician. His room was always cluttered with keyboards, guitars, percussion instruments, whatever he could get his hands on that made music. During his senior year in college, money was really tight and he had to slowly sell each instrument and a month before graduation he was offered a sales position in a higher end shoe department at a clothing store near Union Square. It was only a matter of time before he was talked into working at Macy's on Union Square. He always enjoyed talking about fashion to women. Most of his friends growing up have been the girls of the neighborhood. Plus, he was tired of living on macaroni and cheese and tuna. Since then, he's become one of the top sellers in the department. The floor of the store is mostly designer and trendy women's clothing and his department is on the opposite end of purses so he can easily watch the women who come in from their tourist busses or over from downtown, or Pacific Heights, to shop for a specific outfit or two. Well, a girl has to have the right shoes for the occasion and Jimmy is just the one to sell the ideal pair and then point them in the direction of the perfect accessories. This encourages his coworkers in nearby departments to send him customers just as often. One of the salesmen in an adjoining department, selling the higher end trendy, is Blake. Jimmy and Blake never talk much. They're cordial and often send a customer to the other to get something that matches perfectly. Blake is maybe a year or two younger than Jimmy. He has wavy hair like Jimmy's but lighter, a dirty blonde, and cut very short on the sides. The single big wave he keeps long in front swoops down to almost touch his round tortoise shell glasses. They frame pale greenish-gray eyes that are complimented by his round boyish cheeks and big, bright smile that always has a hint of mischief. As Jimmy is bagging up some of the more expensive pairs of pumps, in three colors, for a stylish woman in her 50s, Blake quietly walks into Jimmy's department. She's dressed in a navy pinstriped blazer and skirt with an ivory colored silk dress shirt and a modest length pearl necklace with a tear-shaped opal hanging from it. Her shoulder length hair that has just a hint of gray is styled reminiscent of Mary Tyler Moore. The woman is clearly an executive from the financial district. Blake overhears the conversation between Jimmy and his appreciative customer. "Thanks for visiting us again and I know you're going to love those. The heel might look a little high but the shoe is so well made you won't feel any bit uneasy. And if you need any stretching to soften the leather on the red pair before your event don't hesitate to bring them by." "Oh Jimmy, you're such a dear. What would us old socialites do without you? Are you sure you can't meet my niece when she's in town in December? I just know the two of you would get along fine. Maybe you can take her to one of those AIDS dance-athons that you've told me about in the past. You do still go to those?" "Well, it's been a while since I've been to one. I've been taking a little break from things lately. Besides Mrs. Masden, you know I can't date a customer. Macy's wouldn't approve. But thank you so much." " I understand how we have to all dance to the tune of our employees. Mine definitely do. Even when it's a silly policy. And as for taking a break from things, don't take too long. The world needs your kind heart and big smile. Anyways, thank you again and I'll let you know how the burgundy ones work for the reception next week. I'm sure I'll be in at least one more time before the holiday madness starts. Till next we meet darling boy." "Yes, let me know, thank you. And don't behave yourself." As Blake comes up from behind, "Oh, Blake, you're off already? It's only 9." "I won a bet with a coworker so he's covering my last hour. I was watching you work that last one. Boy, am I glad you like it in shoes." "That's Mrs. Masden. She's a regular. By day, she runs a job agency downtown. By night, she's a busy Pacific Heights socialite. I think she holds two dinner parties a week, and always for some big cause or another." "What was that about her niece?" "Apparently, her niece, who is studying to be a doctor in the east coast, is coming to visit and Mrs. Masden is trying to fix us up." "For what? I mean, you're not nearly as nelly as most of the queens around here but she can tell you're queer, right?" "No idea. And thanks for reaffirming my masculinity." "Sure, anytime Mister. So, what are you doing tonight after your shift? I was going to Tower Records for the new Cocteau Twins compilation. Maybe you can join me at Cafe Flor for some wine and check it out together." "Umm..." "Come on, how long have we been working practically right next to each other and never hung out?" "I appreciate the offer, I do. But times are a little tough for me right now. And, besides, shouldn't you be going home to your boyfriend?" "He's the one that suggested I should get to know you. And, besides, he is busy with work this weekend." "Oh, I didn't know you guys were in an open relationship." "Yes, it's something we do so we don't get too needy with each other." " I guess that makes sense. If it works for you two." "So, see you around 10:00? Its not anything serious that I'm asking you out to. Let's just hang out, have a few drinks, talk music..." "Well, I did promise someone that I'd get out more. Okay. I'll try to finish up and get out of here a little early. It's been a little slow with the rain so that shouldn't be too hard." "It's never too hard for me." "What?" "Nothing. See you at the Cafe. If you do get there before 10, poke into Tower. I might still be in either the Goth section or the Classical section if I lose track of time. And I usually do." "I know how that is. I do it all the time in music stores and bookstores. Sure, I'll see you around that time." Jimmy gives a little wave to Blake as he walks towards the door and a group of trendy teenaged girls wander into his department. "Well, this will take up the next hour," he mumbles to himself before he turns back around, smiles and approaches them. An hour later, Jimmy is in the Castro and rushing in the rain over to Tower Records. Just as he's about to pass the entrance to Cafe Flor, Blake jumps out in front of him. Jimmy, who hates being late and is rushing, doesn't even notice him until he bumps into him. "Oops, sorry sir. Oh, it's you." Blake gives him a quick hug. "That's okay. You can bump into me anytime you like." "Haha. Were you waiting long? I got busy right after you left and could barely get them to leave to close up on time." "I've just been here long enough to get a glass of their merlot. It's not the greatest but it's not horrible. Want to try a glass? Or are you a beer and pretzels kind of guy?" Blake leads Jimmy over to one of the tables on the side of the cafe that is covered but away from the more crowded tables. "This is my favorite spot in the the city for people watching. Let me buy this round." "Thanks, they have a nice sangria. I tried it when Drew and I came here once," as he's setting his backpack down on the wooden bench alongside the glass front of the cafe and takes off his wet jacket and baseball cap. "And, if we get to a second round, it's on me." Sitting in that narrow section with the little row of white marble cafe tables between two windows overlooking Market Street, Blake and Jimmy start to talk about the day at work and the customers and coworkers. Then, Blake reaches into his leather shoulder bag and takes out his Walkman and the new cd he just purchased. He waves it in front of Jimmy's face a little, unwraps it eagerly and pops it into the player. "You must hear this," as he hands a pair of small headphones, that are little more than a flat curved wire between two round foam cushions, to Jimmy. "I give you the honors of hearing this first." "Don't you want to hear it too?" "It's a compilation of their imports and I have most of it. Besides I want to hear what you think of them. You have heard of the Cocteau Twins, right?" Jimmy puts on the small headphones as Blake presses the play button. The music starts with a drum machine and a guitar strumming very simple chords. A voice starts singing and Jimmy doesn't know what to make of this ethereal singer. The woman is singing in a soprano that floats over the instruments. And he doesn't have the vaguest idea what language she's singing in. But it's as if her voice is one more instrument in this new wave-ish space waltz. "I don't want to sound stupid but what language is she singing in?" "Who knows. I think she makes it up as she goes. What do you think?" "It's like nothing I've ever heard before. But I like it. There's something otherworldly and all so romantic about it." Nice description. People either love them obsessively or hate them. My partner hates that he can't understand what she's singing about. He wants words that he can sing along to. I think it's all of that Motown and r&b that he grew up listening to. He prefers that I play them on my headphones or when he's not home." "Really? It sounds like great music to make out to." "Think so? Maybe we can try that out later?" "Wow, you're incorrigible." "And you're irresistible." "Blake, it's only been a few months since I lost Drew. I'm not ready for anything heavy. I don't even know if I'll ever be." "Jimmy, you sweet boy, I'm not looking for anything more than a new friend and maybe a little action once in a while. I love my partner and I'd never leave him, not even for someone as adorable as you. But we rarely have sex so I'm free to get my needs met with other people. I hope that's not weird for you." "No. It's different. But it's not weird." They sit silently for a moment. Then Blake puts the earplugs back on Jimmy's head. "You keep listening and I'll go get you that sangria." "Thanks," Jimmy says as Blake gets up and starts walking toward the entrance. Jimmy hits play and thinks to himself as the singer starts up in her strange non-language, "Well, this is very different and maybe that's what I need. Something very different." When Blake returns with the sangria and another merlot for himself, they share the earplugs and listen to the rest of the Cocteau Twins. They also listen to a few bits and pieces from other CDs that Blake pulls out of his shoulder bag. "Want one of my designer cigarettes?" Blake asks as he pulls a silver antique cigarette case out. "They're very smooth." "I rarely smoke but sure, I'll try one." For another hour they sit under the awning, protected from the steady heavy downpour of rain that rarely happens in San Francisco, huddled together smoking, trying each other's drinks and listening to music. "So," Blake finally says, " tell me about yourself. Where did you grow up? What brought you to this wonderful city? How old were you when you came out?" "I'm from here. Grew up in the Mission." "Darling, no one is from here." I am. I grew up in the Mission with an aunt and about seven other kids that she raised. I guess I came out when I was twelve but I don't know if I was ever in the closet. There were so many people in the house that no one really noticed me or cared. I usually did what I wanted to as long as I got good grades and was home in time for dinner." "Lucky you. I'm an only child from an overly-protective fundamentalist mom. I moved here from Denver as soon as I was old enough to get away, the day after my eighteenth birthday. I had my first gay experience on the back of that bus that brought me here. Dear old Mother still doesn't know, or want to know, I'm not sure which is more accurate." "You never told her?" "I have tried. I've brought up the subject a few times but each time she changes the topic of conversation. I mention Gary and she will only refer to him as my roommate. I think she's decided to go the grave thinking that her boy will someday meet a nice Christian girl and make lots of green-eyed masculine babies. Hey, want to go back to your place and fuck?" Jimmy chokes on the sip of sangria he just took, "What? Wow. Uh, well, I don't know." "Come on. I'm not talking about a lifetime commitment. We won't have to pick out matching drapes in the morning. Just a nice night of escaping in sweaty passion between two horny young men." "It's a really nice offer and I do think you're attractive but..." "But nothing. You look like you haven't gotten laid in ages." "Feels like years. But...I'm not sure about this." "Why you're practically a virgin again. We won't do anything you won't enjoy." "It would be nice to cuddle with someone a little but maybe next time." "Okay, I'll let you off this time. But not forever. I've watched you from my department too long."