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nahimjustfeelingit-writes · 5 years ago

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Imagine

Erik talking real nasty and the reader can’t take it.

“You got some big ass titties on you. Them bitches look like they got nipples a nigga can suck on all fucking night.”

Why your friend set you up with this horny ass, hoe ass nigga was beyond you. It was a double date and your best friend and roommate from M.I.T set you up with her new boyfriends child hood friend and fellow Annapolis classmate, Erik Stevens.

Tall. Chiseled. Full pouty lips. Eyes like a hawk. Sponge curled fro atop his head. Scruffy facial hair. A real fuck boy for sure.

You weren’t with that shit especially after getting over a break up with your high school sweetheart about five months ago. You vowed to stay single for as long as you needed, and to never allow yourself to get some rebound dick.

Currently, you were all chilling at what appeared to be Erik’s off campus apartment since he was only getting his Doctorate in Engineering. He was around 30, you were only 23 years old. Your friend liked them a lot older, roughly 5 years older and she was 25. While your girl and her man sat on Erik’s balcony sharing a blunt you kept Erik company on his couch within his living room. It was only fair and you weren’t a rude person. Your head was throbbing already from the few sips of hard liquor Erik offered you since you were a light weight.

Rubbing your temples, you secretly scolded yourself for not bringing ibuprofen. His words were clean cut and to the point, throwing you off completely. No man had ever talked to you like that, not even your ex. He really just openly talked about your titties like he was about to get some of that pussy you had.

“What did you just say?” You sounded so embarrassed by his words.

“Girl, you heard what I said,” he took a sip of his drink, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “you a big titty girl. I like big titty chicks with pretty faces.”

Your eyes left his and cascaded down towards your breasts slowly. Dammit. Your nipples felt like they were jumping. Hard like stone pebbles, obviously visible through your white crop top. You couldn’t hide them things if you wanted to.

“You...you always talk like this when you’re drunk, Erik? What happened to all that science talk?” You we’re enjoying that talk better, or at least that’s the talk you preferred.

“Nah, shit ain’t even hit a nigga yet. Ain’t no way I can get faded from just once glass of Henny.” He chuckled, giving you a teasing smile.

“Well, Id appreciate it if you don’t look at my breasts.” You ask him with an even tone. His eyes were stuck on your face, watching whatever movement you made. He was dissecting you with his sharp eyes. He took in the lie you tried to convince him to believe.

“Well,” he looked at your lips then, “I could talk about how much I wanna suck on that bottom lip cuz it keep pouting like you want me to bite it.”

He leaned back on his elbow while balancing his half empty glass in hand, “Why you uptight? A nigga tryna tell you what he like and you acting like I’m bothering you.”

Closing your eyes you turn to him, fighting the way his voice grew all demanding.

“I’m sorry it’s-its my nerves. I’m...I’m not used to this it’s been a minute, Erik.”

She couldn’t look at him. It was hard to look at his sexy face she couldn’t even push herself.

“Can you at least look at me, Y/N?” His voice was softer and more pleading.

You close your eyes briefly before looking back to him. He had these low domineering eyes, mouth parted like he was thinking about fucking you, hands all warm on your exposed thigh since you wore a pleated skirt that day.

“See? Was that hard?” His voice cracked a little with his laughter, “get comfortable, ma, night ain’t over.”

“Yeah,” you look at the TV screen, some irrelevant show on.

“You wanna listen to music while I blow some trees?” He asked, sitting up fully to pour himself another drink.”

“Sure.” You fold your hands within your lap, fingers twiddling with nerves. Erik looked like he could ruin you. This night was going be a long one. Who knows how much further he planned on taking you with his sharp tongue and hungry eyes. He looked like wanted to eat you alive.

“Your last boyfriend, how he fuck that up?” Erik leaned back into his couch, legs swinging. You try not to react to the way his knees kept hitting the side of your exposed thigh.

“He fell outta love with me apparently.” You laugh to cool off the growing anger you still felt towards it.

“Fell outta love with you?” Erik scrunches his face in distain, “fuck kinda nigga falls outta love with a fine ass girl like you.”

He shook his head with laughter, eyebrows raised, “nigga wildin’ he prolly punching the air right now, prolly thinking about what other niggas want a piece of that lil thang you got.”

He said that shit so casually, rolling up his blunt and rapping to the music from his latest trap music playlist. You just studied the side profile of his sexy face,

The Damn dimples.

Jesus take the wheel.

“He’s missing me alright,” you spoke before you could stop yourself, “He’s been blowing up my phone, telling me he miss me.” Your eyes rolled to the ceiling.

“Oh yeah?” Erik leans into the couch, licking the blunt to seal it, “I bet you used to put it on him.”

You could feel your lips go tight from restraint.

“What made you come to that conclusion?” You we’re finding yourself to be curious as to what he had to say next. This Erik was something else.

“Like, you must have that real good pussy to have a nigga missing you.”

I mean, you might be shy but that didn’t mean your shit wasn’t golden.

“You didn’t deny it either,” he laughs, “I like that. I think I just found out some shit I needed to know.”

You shake your head, licking your lower lip to fight a blush. Erik caught that, sitting up straighter now. He took you by your thigh, pulling you closer to him so that you were sitting in his lap. You didn’t object but your body was so rigid.

“Damn, why you so stiff, ma?” His hand rubbed along your back all soft and soothing.

“You just- it’s nothing.” You shake it away, looking around the room timidly.

“You shy with me?”

He knew the answer to that already but he wanted to toy with you. That’s clearly his thing, toying with chicks. You didn’t want to admit that to this experienced man but damn.

“You just...I’ve never had a man talk to me like this so...”

“That’s a fucking shame. I’d talk like this to you any chance I get. I got a serious thing for letting a woman know what I want.”

His thumb stroked the side of your leg. It was so delicate but it held an edge to it. You take a chance and look at him, his eyes magnetic with yours. It was too much. You couldn’t imagine yourself underneath him while he beat into your pussy something serious. He didn’t play about that it seems.

“You like sitting in my lap, Y/N?”

You simply nod your head.

“You feel this?”

You didn’t know what he meant at first but then the solid firmness of his dick that had to be long and fat rested between your ass through your skirt. Sheesh. He was a big one. You didn’t even have to touch it to know. If things ever went far with the both of you how in the hell were you supposed to take that?

“Erik,” you close your eyes, pushing at his chest. He was giving off too much and that shit was making you feel real bold at the moment. You wanted to get on your knees with curiosity and see what he was hiding away in his jeans.

“My guess is you ain’t used to that,” he rubbed at the back of your neck with his finger tips, “if you let me get to know you I can help you out, I’m a good teacher, ma.” He made his dick jump again and you close your eyes, lower lip trembling.

“Shid, you can’t be used to all that. You look like you need to be opened up some.”

The gasp that left your mouth was loud and clear. He was straight up nasty.

“Why are you so freaky?!” You ask with pure shock. Since this never happened to you it stroked your curiosity. He had a way with words. Very persuasive.

He smiles up at you, dimples deep, “I been wanting your little ass since I saw you around campus, girl.”

You blushed deeply, biting your lip while your clit jumped in your wet panties, thighs squirming.

“I was thinking like, damn the shit I would do to her little thick ass,”

“What?” You asked with glossy eyes. You wanted him to keep talking. No matter how much you couldn’t take it he just needed to keep talking to you like that.

“Can I kiss you, Y/N?” He asked while his head was already leaning in.

“Yes, please,” you were telling him without a second thought. Damn, that was quick.

He sucked on your bottom lip, pulling moans from you before clashing his mouth to yours. The taste of the liquor on his tongue mixed with his saliva was a taste you now craved. He had the back of your head while his lips did dangerous things.

“Mmhmm, so fucking sexy. You gonna let me finger that tight pussy with these?” He held up his fingers, all fat and smooth with manicured nails. He could dig them things deep in you anytime. He asked you because he knew from the size of them they would have your ass crying.

“Yes,” you whisper, thighs rubbing to gain some kind of friction.

“You sure? I know I’m not dealing with just any pussy, Y/N. You look like you need to be opened up though. Shit prolly micro mini.” He laughs again and that only makes you blush with arousal.

“I said yes,” you speak with slight irritation. You already gave into his fine ass but he clearly wanted you to beg.

“Then open that pussy up.”

You open your legs, wet panties cooling from the air. Erik places his hand there, rubbing up and down before peeking lower, pulling your panties to the side while your wet folds slipped out.

“Damn, that shit is straight dripping. You always get this wet little mama?”

He was driving you crazy. The fact that he called you little mama or little baby because you were younger than him made you weak and fucking horny. Erik spread you open, his eyes closing.

“Fuck, Y/N.” He shook his head, biting his bounty bottom lip.

“I couldn’t wait to bring you back to my place, you wearing the fuck out this little school girl shit, tryna tease a nigga.”

You whispered softly at how gushy your pussy was at the moment. This man had a way with words. It was as if he hypnotized you.

“You ready for all this mature dick, huh? After I’m done with your pretty ass I’ll have you regretting being with that nigga in the first place. You gon’ take some good dick.”

Mature dick meant big ass dick that would have you paralyzed from the waist down. Dick that he would have to fit into your tight pussy and make open up for him. A dick that would have your walls tugging and sucking in every inch, stretching you out beautifully.

“Erik,” you looked fully aroused and your skin was covered in sweat. This shit had you hot and ready to fuck. You told yourself you wouldn’t do this but it was Erik. You couldn’t help yourself. His fingers teased your pussy lips that were swollen and sensitive. You could cum just like that and the whimpers you were making only made him keep it up.

“Easy baby, easy. I’m not going no where. We got all the time in the world, little mama.”

Erik’s dick jumped, it felt thicker and it only made you get wetter. How many stages of growth did his dick have? You shuttered.

“It’s okay, you’ll be sitting on Daddy’s dick real soon.”

#killmonger imagine #killmonger x reader #killmonger fanfiction #black panther killmonger #erik killmonger #nahimjustfeelingit-writes

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whumpmeamadeus-blog · 5 years ago

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Untouchable (Persona 5 Whump)

Non shippy fic of Iwai helpiing with Ren, who has gotten himself in a spot of trouble. From my fic ‘Vignettes of Comfort” on Ao3! (Trans-Akira, Guns, Threats, hurt, comfort, stabbing mention)

“Just stay under the radar, kid,” Iwai muttered, leaning against the cluttered desk in the back of his shop.

Ren looked him over; man, if he was 20 years older. Even 10. Damn. He banished those thoughts from his mind and tossed his hair from his eyes. “I pretty much live under the radar.”

That chuckle, more like a chainsaw revving than a laugh. “Good way to go through life, if you can. Now go on, get outta here. Ain’t got time to waste on a kid like you.”

“See you soon, then.” With a saucy salute, Ren bid Iwai farewell and left Untouchable. He was feeling pretty confident about his evening, knowing it had went well and that he was getting even more of a discount. Morgana, safely in his bag, chatted his ear off the entire way through Shibuya.

All in all, this had been a pretty good night.

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Honestly, at first Iwai had been annoyed by that skinny little nobody coming through and taking up his time with weird requests for things kids should never have been interested in. But he never heard of the kid doing anything illegal with what he bought. At least, nothing he got caught doing.

Iwai also knew, now, that the things Amamiya Ren bought from him were being used to a standard even he couldn’t complain about.

Kaoru would be jazzed to know about that.

Iwai finished up his work and went home. It was a simple night at home with Kaoru, something he didn’t get to enjoy as much as he should. But he was going to make more of an effort. He thought about seeing if maybe he couldn’t get Ren to hang out with Kaoru a little, take him to the batting cages or SOMETHING. They were only a couple years apart and Ren was a good kid; more importantly, he was a kid with a spine and a sense of justice. Kaoru was doing just fine, but maybe spending some time with a kid a few years older, who really seemed to have a handle on himself, would be good. He’d make a point to bring it up the next time Ren came by.

When a week later, he hadn’t seen the kid, he didn’t think about it. Sometimes he wouldn’t show up for weeks on end. What was Iwai gonna do about it? A kid was a kid.

A week and a half, and nothing. Iwai didn’t even pass by him on Central Street, which he had done before. Normally, he wouldn’t worry; it wasn’t any business of his what Ren got up to.

But something was gnawing at him. He tried to ignore it, and was doing a pretty steady job.

Half a week later - two in total since the last time he had seen Ren, if one was counting, which he certainly wasn’t - Iwai was doing some light dusting just to keep his mind off of things. Their shit country. That Shido guy everyone seemed to be all up in arms about (which he didn’t understand, the guy looked like a tool who collected toy skulls and made stupid sexist videos on the Internet). Kaoru was suffering in English, which Iwai was no good in either. Maybe, a little bit, he was worried about Ren.

He turned his back on the door and knelt to get something out of sight. Of course, the moment he did that, he heard the door open; always happened that way, didn’t it? “Just a minute.”

“Dad!?”

Kaoru’s concerned voice jolted him, and Iwai stood straight up. His son was still in his uniform, with his school bag, like everything was normal.

But he was also supporting Ren, who looked tired, almost gaunt, with faded, yellowing bruises under vibrantly coloured new ones running up and down his bare arms, and on his neck. Then Ren looked up and met his gaze; the blackened, swollen state of his eye was magnified through those gigantic glasses.

“How in the hell is THIS flyin’ under the radar?” Iwai grumbled, internally panicked that his old family had come after them after all.

“Well,” Ren said dryly, “I didn’t start the fight, if that helps.”

“Shut up.”

Iwai and Kaoru helped Ren get to the back room, where he all but collapsed onto the closest surface. Immediately, Iwai dragged Kaoru back out into the store. “Tell me what happened.”

Kaoru watched him go over and lock the door before clearing his throat. “I just went to the diner and he was there with like four empty coffee mugs in front of him, covered in bruises just like now. Except I only saw his face, his sleeves were rolled down.”

That was why Ren had looked especially odd to him - usually the kid was wearing a jacket, whether is was his uniform or something else. Iwai shook his head and lit a cigarette despite the look Kaoru gave him, the look that said You told me you were gonna quit months ago. “He say anything to you?”

“About what happened to him? No, I just asked if he needed help, he said no. I told him too bad and that if he didn’t come with me I was just going to call you anyways.”

“Good kid,” Iwai said. He was proud of his son for doing the right thing. “Listen, I got it from here - why don’t you get back to the diner and get started on your homework?”

Kaoru didn’t seem to like it, but listened - especially when he was given Iwai’s wallet. Iwai let him out of the store, then pulled down the grate before locking the door again. He didn’t necessarily want to send Kaoru out there again, if this kid had been hurt because of some ancient BS, but thought it might be easier to get Ren to talk if Kaoru was out of the way. He’d make it to the diner just fine; Iwai hadn’t raised an idiot, after all.

His more pressing concern was finding out what, exactly, had happened to Ren.

He got a bottle of water from under the desk, and a first aid kit, then moved into the back room. Ren was sitting exactly where they had left him, but with his eyes closed and head now leaned back against the wall. He was holding onto his phone, but it was dark. Iwai announced his presence with a sigh. Ren cracked open the eye with the least amount of damage. “Where’s Kaoru?”

“What happened to you?”

“That’s how you answer a question?” Ren asked, with that edge that Iwai liked, that reminded him of himself. “I just...got in something I shouldn’t have.”

Iwai took a drag from his cigarette and looked Ren up and down. He looked much smaller without that jacket. Maybe Iwai had been mistaken in thinking he was old for his age; this kid was hardly more than an ankle-biter. “No shit. But what?”

“It wasn’t anything like what you got into, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just got my ass handed to me last week, then again this week.”

They had what felt to Iwai like a battle of wills. With the kid so beat up, Iwai knew he was destined to throw the match and did so spectacularly, with a hefty sigh and a rolling of the eyes so hard that he thought he saw the top of his own skull. “Fine. Have your secrets.”

He leaned over to reach into a mini-fridge and pulled out a cold pack from the small tray that served as a freezer. “Put this on over your eye,” he said, pushing it into Ren’s hands. He didn’t take his eyes off of the kid until the gel pack was over the worst of the bruising. Then Iwai flipped open the first aid kit. After everything he had been through, he made sure to keep the thing pretty well stocked; not that there was much he could do for bruising. He found a cream for it, and tossed that to Ren as well.

“...I think I’m bleeding, too,” Akira said, and for the first time, Iwai thought he heard a hint of weakness in that voice.

He didn’t show that, however, and just nodded as he grabbed a package of gauze and medical tape, as well as bandaids, from the first aid kit. Iwai hoped this wasn’t bad enough that Ren would have to go to the hospital, because he would be a real hypocrite to his own ways if he dragged the kid there for this. He took a stack of napkins from some take-out meal or another and doused it in water from the bottle. “Lemme see.”

Ren hesitated, one hand playing with his dirty collar. Iwai just gave him a stern look. “Remember who I am, kid - I’ve patched up worse wounds than whatever you’ve gotten yourself into.”

With a sigh, Ren stood and turned around. Iwai swore under his breath; there was a gash in his shirt, and blood trickling through to stain the white, red. Ren slowly unbuttoned his shirt but instead of dropping it, just pulled it up to rest underneath his armpits. Iwai didn’t question it, just looked over the cut that stretched, thin but not too long, over the left side of his lower back; it was clearly a switchblade. He’d know the cut anywhere.

“Not too bad,” he said. “Surface wound, won’t need stitches.”

“I can clean it up,” Ren said, and Iwai was going to fight him on it before realizing that there were any number of reasons this kid wouldn’t want to be touched after a scrape like whatever he had gotten into. So he just gave the napkins to Ren and gave him verbal cues to wipe the cut clean. It took a little folding and maneuvering, but Ren eventually got the gauze positioned and relented, letting Iwai tape it down.

He let Ren do the bruises, too, and turned around to look through the first aid kit again, half to look for any ibuprofen and half to give Ren some semblance of privacy. There was a bottle in there, and the expiration date was still a year away. Perfect. Only when Ren said he was done did Iwai turn back to him, bottle in hand. Ren had his shirt pulled back down now, and was holding the cold pack to his neck. “...thanks.”

“Sure thing. I was an idiot kid getting into fights once, too.”

“It wasn’t a fight,” Ren said, and this time he sounded very serious. His eyes were hard, and Iwai held up a hand, palm upward, a man asking for more of an answer than that. “It wasn’t. I was jumped last week, and when I didn’t have enough cash on me, they beat me and said they’d be back.”

Anger bubbled up in Iwai’s gut; who the hell would do that to a kid? At least it didn’t sound like anything Iwai’s past had dragged them into. “And then?”

“Well I saw them all around. Think they knew where I lived. Saw them in my neighborhood. Outside of school even.” He shrugged. “Got cocky, figured they’d forget about me, or I could...persuade them otherwise.”

Iwai had wondered about that part; this kid was a Phantom Thief, after all. How’d this happen to someone like him?

“But things got away from me, and I couldn’t. They caught up to me, and...well. Here we are.. I didn’t have what they wanted, they got me, pulled a knife. Barely got out of there.”

Ren was trying to keep his cool, but Iwai could see the way his hands were shaking. Just a little. With a sigh, Iwai leaned against the table, arms folded over his chest. “You know who they were?”

“Just some low-level wannabe gang, I think. If I knew their names, I could…” Ren shook his head, then drained the rest of the water left in that bottle despite its tepid temperature. “But I don’t, so I need to figure out what to do next.”

“What you need to do is sit there and let me think,” Iwai said. He knew how to deal with up-shots who wanted more than they were worth. Because this wasn’t going to go down this way; these assholes weren’t going to harass this kid any longer. Iwai’s fingers just barely brushed the tattoo on his neck. “You wanna end this once and for all?”

Ren looked at him, then said ‘no,’ quietly. Then again. “No, you don’t have to get involved.”

“Kid,” Iwai said, leaning forward and looking him in the eye. “It’s too late for that

“I’m in.”

Ren let Iwai take him home that night, accepting a ride in the back of a surprisingly clean and sporty car with Kaoru. No one was in Leblanc, and he heard Boss in the back. Moving he quickly, he called out that he was back and darted upstairs. Morgana, asleep under the bed with just his tail poking out, didn’t stir. Good thing Futaba had him today and worn him out; she had really taken a shine to that cat.

When he sat on the bed he did so quietly, not wanting to wake Morgana. He unbuttoned his shirt and looked down over his bruised stomach. The worst of it, however, something Iwai was never going to see, was under his binder. Usually he slept with it on, but with this bruising...Ryuji would kick his ass worse than this if he knew Ren was pushing himself with that thing. Of all the people who knew - which was only about five people, in the whole world - who knew that he was trans, Ryuji took it the most seriously. He had done all of the reading, searched online, learned everything he could. For Ren.

So it was with Ryuji in mind that Ren struggled out of his binder and abandoned it on the bed. It should be washed, but he couldn’t even think about that until he was covered. His chest was covered in bruises, and once it was no longer compressed the pain blossomed outward from there. First, Ren took a shaky breath and palmed the cream Iwai had given him. Yes, he should put this on, but...well, unless he was putting the binder on, Ren didn’t let his hands near his chest. It was too much for him. Later, maybe. He pulled out his pajama shirt and yanked it on, then his grey hoodie over that. What could he say? He was feeling vulnerable. Ren climbed under the covers and pulled his phone close to him. The minute he touched it, the device buzzed. A text from Iwai.

‘Keep an eye out kid. Come by the shop if you see those dicks.’

Ren would have chuckled at the wording alone - exactly how Iwai spoke - but if he was honest with himself, he didn’t feel much like laughing.

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Two nights later, Ren was feeling shaky after a shift at the Beef Bowl Shop. All night long, he had spotted the men who were after him for something as trivial as money. Ren had money, he didn’t have to worry about that. This was the principal of the thing. He thought that, if he could get them talking he find out at least one name, he could take them down where he was stronger - Mementos. Then they wouldn’t be bothering anyone else, either.

Honestly, he wouldn’t have been worried if it was just one of them that he had spotted. One guy, he thought he could handle.

But there had been three separate guys out there through the course of the night, including the one who had cut him. Now, Ren did not consider himself a coward in any sense of the word. But this?

Well. It made him uneasy enough to send a text to Iwai. It was simple, just ‘3 @ the Beef Bowl Shop,’ because he didn’t know how else to ask for assistance other than simply telling him the facts. This would be different, he told himself, if so many people were not relying on him.

His boss had dismissed him 10 minutes before he sent the text. Only 5 minutes after he sent it did he hear a knock to the employee part of the building. One of his co-workers stuck her head in. “Uhm, Amamiya? A guy who says he’s your uncle is here?”

Then he really could have laughed. The man even came up with an excuse. He thanked his co-worker and went out to the main dining room. Sure enough, Iwai was there, leaning against the window and looking bored while a few of the customers looked on, worried.

“Thank for coming to get me, Uncle Munehisa,” he teased, his voice light despite the reason Iwai had come.

“Shut your mouth, kid,” Iwai said, but Ren saw the chuckle playing at the corners of his mouth. “Let’s get out of here.”

The moment they were outside, Iwai looked both ways down the street. “When was the last time you saw one of them?”

Ren started to move across the street, towards the alley that led to Untouchable, keeping an eye out as well. None of them seemed to be in the immediate area; maybe he had been hasty. But he did feel a little more secure with Iwai at his side. “Last two passed by maybe ten minutes ago.”

“We’ll just get to Untouchable and work from there, alright?”

“Alright.”

It was simple, really. Just get into the store and leave from there. Ren followed Iwai across the street and down the alley. He glanced at the Velvet Room; Justine did not meet his gaze. At least if things ever got too crazy, he could jump in there. Not ideal, but doable. Iwai pulled out his keys and opened the door to Untouchable. He held it open. “Get in.”

Ren moved past him, and the impending sense of danger did not come quickly enough.

A sharp pain in his back, over where he had been cut before, and he was sent reeling forward into the store. His vision swam as his head bounced with the impact of his knees on the floor. But Iwai’s grunt of pain hurt way more than that. He hoped that Iwai would stay away as Ren pushed through the pain and turned around. There were two guys on Iwai, who looked calm and collected as he slammed his fist into a jaw. Ren would have chuckled if the guy who had pushed him did not drop to the floor and push him back, to the ground, with his arm on Akira’s neck.

He had just been too distracted with Iwai to move quickly enough. With all of his might, Ren pushed against the man holding him down; the silky shirt, leopard print, slid around under his grasp. That STUPID shirt - Akira knew it well.

This was the man with the knife. Ren knew that before he even brought it out. “You think your ex-yakuza sugar daddy can save you? Too late for that - we got you.”

Ren thought about all of the bruises on him. He thought about how a group like this would never involve the police, so he shouldn’t be at any risk if he retaliated. He thought about his friends, waiting for him to lead them. And he thought about how Iwai was over there, fighting for him.

It became absolutely effortless to take his fist and drive it into that stupid leopard-spotted stomach. Ren was able to get the man off of him, but his main goal was to get the knife out of reach. Never mind that he was in a store full of replica weapons, many with blades triple the size of the knife - THAT was the one that had dug into his back, and the owner seemed pretty fond of it.

He yanked himself up using the counter, while the guy was still on the ground, and Ren made a quick decision to drive his shoe into his head. Not enough to seriously hurt him, just keep him down. Ren was still feeling winded from being knocked to the ground, and wished more than anything that he had the same skills in the real world as he did in the Metaverse - there, he could get knocked down a hundred times and get back a hundred and one. Here, he was just tired, his gun a model in his pocket, and Arsene felt a world away. But Ren was still strong, and after his arrest had a better hold on his rash behaviour. He no longer acted so quickly under stress, thought his actions out more.

Today, that action was to lower himself back to the ground and grab the man’s wrist. Ren twisted his wrist around until he had no choice but to drop the knife, then snatched it away. His instinct was to toss it across the store, but that was stupid. So he folded the thing and stored it in his pocket before jumping over leopard print, who was still moaning on the ground, and joining Iwai.

Who was doing very well. One of the guys was on the ground just outside of the shop, looking dazed, and Iwai was wrestling the other one to the ground.

“It make you a big man, huh? Threatenin’ kids?” Iwai growled, and Ren didn’t think he knew he was being watched. “Trash like you makes me sick.”

Then he moved his hands in a quick, expert way that Ren did not think he could ever duplicate, and the other guy dropped, too. He was still alive, coughing once he hit the ground, but looked down for the count. Ren moved over to the door, glancing behind him; leopard print was still down, too.

“Thanks,” he said, watching Iwai heave. It must have been some effort for him, and there was a pang in Ren’s heart for his own father, who would have thrown him to the wolves rather than fight for him. But then Iwai was on him, holding his face in those rough hands.

He turned Ren’s head gently every which way, then looked over the rest of his body. “They get you?”

“Not really,” he said. “I got pushed down and he came at me, but I’m alright.”

Iwai sighed and looked at the men on the ground outside. “Let’s get the other one out here and leave ‘em. They’ll wake up dazed but they should be fine.”

Ren nodded, even though at this point he didn’t care if they were fine or not. He helped Iwai move one out of the doorway, closer the first guy Iwai had taken down. That one was sporting a huge bruise to his temple. “What did you do to that guy?”

“...taught him a lesson,” Iwai said. He rolled one shoulder as they straightened up. “Listen kid, I’m gonna make sure punks like these don’t bother you again, you hear -”

A silencer on a gun does not silence it. A normal silencer takes the sound of a gunshot down 14.3-43 decibels, meaning that any shot is plenty audible. Of course, once a gun is shot, even if it is heard, there is hardly any time for a potential victim to move. That is not, usually, the main purpose of a silencer. A silencer is stop a sound from spreading, not to stop a potential victim from hearing it.

So when the man in the leopard print shirt, now on his feet, aimed his silenced gun at Ren and shot, both Ren and Iwai heard the blast. Already in the act of turning, Ren knew that the bullet was meant for him. He knew that it had left the barrel. And he knew that he could not drop to the ground or avoid it.

All of these realizations came to him in a nanosecond. One second, there was a bang; the next second there was pain shooting through his arm and he was on the ground. His ears were ringing, his arm was hot and wet.

And then, there was nothing but Iwai.

When he heard that gunshot, a million things ran through Iwai’s head. He was not going to let Kaoru be left behind again. He was not going to let everything he worked for fall to pieces. He was not going to let this punk end things for him. He was not going to let them hurt Ren ever again.

Then the kid dropped to the ground and Iwai’s world spun out of control. He wasted absolutely no time. The man in that idiot shirt aimed at him, but Iwai was quicker. Dropping low, Iwai closed the distance between them in four long steps, coat flapping out behind him. One second he was outside, across the alley; the next second he was under the guy, in front of him, and Iwai’s already bloody fist, knuckles threatening to bust open, sent his head snapping back in a powerful uppercut. The young guy went down, and he dropped the gun. Pathetic; he really was just the worst kind of guy. Before anything else, Iwai picked up the gun.

The butt of the handle against a thick cranium made sure this asshole wouldn’t be standing again for quite some time.

He dropped the gun into one of his pockets and flexed out his fingers as he stood and turned. Had it really ended so quickly? It seemed ridiculous. But that didn’t truly matter at the moment. What mattered was getting to Ren.

Thankfully, when Iwai got to the kid he was sitting up, leaning against the wall, clutching at his bloody arm. He was pale, though, rocking back and forth a little. Iwai knelt at his side and tilted his face up, bloody hand leaving a mark on Ren’s chin. His eyes were wide and the pupils were dilated, but his face was calm. His nostrils flared as he struggled to breath, though.

Luckily, Iwai was always calm under pressure. “Come on, if you’re gonna have a panic attack you’re not gonna do it out here. But before I can move you, you gotta tell me - did he get your arm?”

Ren nodded; at least he still seemed to possess enough of his senses to nod. He pulled his hand away, palm bloody, and Iwai was able to get a good look at his arm. It was an instant relief to see through the torn shirt that the bullet had not gone through him, only grazed him. The wound wasn’t deep at all, just kissing his flesh enough to bleed heavily. But Iwai was well-trained - he could tell at a glance that the bullet was long gone and had not gotten close to any arteries. “Good,” he muttered. “That’s good.”

“It’s...good I got shot?” Ren asked, and Iwai couldn’t even begin to fathom what sort of thoughts and feelings were behind the laugh that leaked from his lips.

Not what Iwai had meant, though. He gave Ren a look as he tore the rest of the sleeve away and tied it around the wound. Just temporary. “Well, it DOES mean you scared this guy enough or took a big enough gouge out of his pride that he thought he had to use a gun to get you down.”

That, of all things, made Ren smile. Cocky kid.

Iwai hid their attackers behind the old worn-out bikes in front of his shop. Once the store was cleared out and Iwai made sure that no one was coming to check out that sound of that shot, he brought Ren inside and made him sit behind the register. The kid was still a little shaky and Iwai was pretty sure that once he had time to process what just happened, he would probably be a mess. For the second time in a week, he got out the first aid kit. “Before you came along I used this thing maybe once a year. Gonna charge you for a new one if you start using up all my supplies.”

“Sorry,” Ren said, fingers prodding near the wound. “Next time I’ll get shot somewhere else.”

“Good thinking. Alright, let me see it.”

He untied the sleeve and let it drop the to the ground. The bleeding had staunched a little, which was good. But still…” You want me to take you to a hospital?”

“No,” Ren, said, suddenly on edge. “No, no...too many questions at a hospital.”

The similarity to something Iwai himself had said to a friend, a long time ago - a lifetime ago - was almost enough to knock the wind from his lungs. He turned the sound into a laugh. “How many secrets can a kid your age have?”

“One for every year, it feels like.” Ren let him clean the wound and blood around it the best he could. “If we go to a hospital, they’ll know a bullet wound, they’ll call the cops, and if the cops find out I was near real weapons...let’s just say, probation turns to jail time real quick.”

Iwai’s eyebrows shot up so quickly that they nearly disappeared under his hat. “You? Holy shit, Ren. You’re a wild ride.”

Iwai worked steadily to do what he could for the wound. The responsible adult in him screamed ‘Take the kid to a hospital!' The wild part of him, from long ago, told him that this kid was going places. But it was the yakuza part of him that took over, the part that said you never rat out a brother, you help him on his terms, you don’t break his trust. He got Ren’s arm as clean as he could, then doused the wound in something green and anti-septic. Ren hissed at that and tensed, but otherwise took it well. The wound, once it was clean, was in even better shape than he thought before. No stitches, just a jagged cut that might mean a scar later. But Iwai saw thick scars on the Ren’s arms and wrists already, and had a feeling that adding one more wasn’t going to be the end of his world.

He took care to wrap the wound gently enough to avoid pain, but tightly enough that the last of the gauze-like bandages from his kit would be able to do their job. Iwai sealed the end with an X of white medical tape then looked into his eyes. “You’re gonna be fine, kid.”

“Yeah, Akira said. “Fine.”

But Iwai saw that look in his eyes. There was a storm brewing inside that kid, and Iwai was going to keep him there until it was over. Iwai left out the back way of the store and got them dinner, called Kaoru and sent dinner home to him as well. Maybe the time alone would jump-start the freak out this kid was bound to have. It didn’t matter how tough you were, or whatever other shit you had been through in your life.

No one reacts well the first time they get shot. Iwai himself had thrown up and slept for 24 hours.

He sat with Ren as they ate, pretty quiet, meals the same shade of blue-grey in the dim lights on the shop. At first, he thought Ren was eating with his right arm at his side because of the pain. But when Iwai moved around to grab some napkins, he could see that Ren was holding something clenched in his hand.

“What ya got there?”

Ren looked down, not even seeming to realize that he was holding something. “Oh.” He gingerly put it on the counter. A folding knife. “Leopard print had it. He cut me with it last time, too.”

Iwai shook his head, and was about to respond when Ren’s hand formed a fist on the counter. “He could have killed me.”

There was no answer for that.

“He could have killed me over something as stupid as money. He could have come after you, or Kaoru, or any of my friends, for money.” Ren dropped his gaze to look at his knees. “Holy shit, I was stupid to think it would go away on it’s own. I’m usually not that fu-”

“Don’t start that,” Iwai said. “If you’re gonna freak out, if you’re gonna throw up, if you’re gonna cry, fine. But don’t start holding all that responsibility for other people’s shitty choices on your shoulders. If you start doing that, you never stop.”

He thought of Tsuda and took a breath. “So what’s it gonna be?”

Ren looked at him, then leaned back in his chair and put his hand over his eyes. “This is so stupid. I use all sorts of weapons every day as a Phantom g-goddamn Thief, and one gunshot wound gets me like this?”

His voice was thick with tears, and Iwai was honestly relieved. Better to let out whatever bullshit was going on inside then hold onto it until it destroyed him. He sat by and let Ren cry, let him hide behind his hand. That was all that there was left for Iwai to do, anyways.

But when Ren leaned forward and put his head between his knees, Iwai knew that some dam had burst and everything his kid - Phantom Thief, under probation - was holding on to was ready to come out. He didn’t want to disturb him, didn’t want Ren to think that he had to contain himself, but Iwai couldn’t let this kid suffer alone.

“Hey,” he said, sliding out of his seat. When Ren looked up, Iwai took his protective earmuffs off and slid the hat off. He placed the hat on Ren’s head, brim pulled down low over his eyes. The earmuffs, he readjusted a little bit and clamped over Ren’s ears. They blocked out all sounds and would leave Ren with some semblance of privacy.

Iwai stepped back, but suddenly a hand was holding his jacket. Ren was looking down now, but he had the hem of Iwai’s jacket in a vice grip. He pushed himself forward and the wheeled chair propelled him just a couple inches. Iwai was wary, but let the kid throw his arms around him. Iwai didn’t think he had been this close to anyone in a long time, but he wasn’t about to push him away. Ren buried his face in Iwai’s stomach, arms tight around his middle. He was crying in a way Iwai hadn’t in years, but he remembered the feeling. Helpless. Hopeless. Vulnerable.

The shittiest feeling in the world. Iwai put his hand on the back of Ren’s head and let him cry it out. Tomorrow, when it was light out, when this all seemed grey and distant, when Ren was safe in school or at home...Iwai was going to make sure that he didn’t have to worry about those thugs ever again. He hated guys like that, who had huge egos and lost it when they popped, who took on only people they thought they could beat, who took advantage of people. They deserved to be knocked down a peg, and Iwai would make sure it happened.

He still had connections, after all.

#persona 5 #whump #munehisa iwai #ren amamiya #whump fic

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daringyounggrayson · 6 years ago

Note

“You can’t stay in bed all day” or “Maybe you should sit down” for Dick and Bruce?

Great suggestion! I was able to work both in, I hope you like it :)

of happiness and guilt (AO3)

The lights go out and three noises sound across the tunnelsimultaneously: a scream, a thump, and a hiss. Dick knows the causes, too: thekid he was supposed to be rescuing, a kick to his knee that forces him to theground, and a canister full of fear toxin being released.

Dick instinctively pulls his cape over his face. Feet arepounding down the tunnel, but Dick can’t go after them, he needs to get the kidout. He presses his comm. “Batman.” He holds back a cough and wobbles as hetests out how much weight his knee can take. “Found Scarecrow. He’s gettingaway.”

“Tracking your location now,” Bruce replies calmly. “Thechild?”

“With me, getting him out now.” He clicks his comm off whenBruce gives his grunt of approval and starts limping toward where the scream hadsounded. “Travis? I’m Robin, I’m going to get you out of here.”

His throat burns and his eyes are starting to water. Thefear gas will kick in any moment.

“Get away! Get away! Get away!” the kid screams at him as hegets closer, causing him to gulp down even more gas.

“Dick.”

Dick ignores the almost-sweet hiss in his ear—a hallucination, not real, just a hallucination—andholds his hands up to show he means no harm. “I know you’re scared, buteverything is going to be okay. I promise.”

The kid is fighting against the handcuffs, and each slapagainst the bar echoes throughout the space. “No! No! No!”

“Look at me, Dickie. Don’tyou want to see Mommy?”

“I’m going to give you something,” Dick warns the kid as hepulls out his last dose of anti-toxin. “A quick pinch, and then we’re out ofhere.”

“No, Mary, he doesn’t.Why would he want to see us when he doesn’t even miss us? Look how happy he is—he’sprobably glad we’re dead.”

“Momma! Momma, help!”

“We’ll go get Momma next.” Dick grips the kid’s arm, holdingit steady so he can do the injection. “Good job,” Dick says when he’s done.“I’m just going to get these cuffs off, then I’ll take you home.”

The kid whimpers at him.

“I know you’re scared, but everything’s going to be okay.”

The kid latches on to Dick’s wrist with fierce urgency.“Don’t let it take me,” he begs in a trembling voice.

“I won’t. I promise.” Dick smiles at him and cuts the cuffswith a quick snap.

“Look at us!”

He gets the kid situated on his back and slowly stumbles outof the tunnel. His knee hurts and protests every step, but there’s nothing tobe done about it. At least the kid isn’t fighting him.

It takes too long to get to where the police are waiting,but when he gets there, Travis’s mom is with them. She plucks her boy up with ateary thank you and buries her face in his hair.

“I used to hold youlike that. Do you remember that? Do you miss that?”

“Or did you findsomeone to replace that too?”

“Hey kid, you listening?” a hand on his shoulder makes himflinch, the flinch makes him stumble.

Dick looks at the officer, tries to focus on the present insteadof the rotting faces of his dead parents and their bent necks. “I’m fine.”

“Where’s Batman?”

“I’m fine,” Dick repeats, the actual question not processinguntil after he’s already answered.

“Being replaced isn’twhat hurts the most, though, little Robin. No, of course someone else would filla needed role. It’s your preferencethat’s the problem.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and curls in on himself, slappinghis hands over his ears even though some part of his brain tells him it won’tdo anything. He feels sick, like he’s going to puke. Maybe he already did.

“If you could changethings, you wouldn’t, would you? You’d keep us dead—murdered. If you went backin time, you wouldn’t say anything. You’d watch me fall. You’d let me and yourmom fall. You’d watch with a smile and then happily run to Bruce.”

Hands are on him against—realor fake? real or fake?—and they make him feel trapped, they make him feellike he’s burning. “Maybe you should sit down. Take a few breaths, yeah? It’sbeen a long evening for everyone.”

“Robin.”

Dick snaps his head up at that voice, and for a second, hegets some clarity and the fake hands are gone. He steps toward Batman and theofficer removes his real hands.

“Would you miss him ifhe died? What about four years later? Or would you just forget him and findanother replacement?”

“I think he got some of that fear gas, Batman,” the officerwarns.

“I’ll take care of it.” Batman puts a hand on Dick’s backand Dick gasps, stepping out of his reach on shaky legs; Bruce doesn’t try totouch him again. Instead, he presses a button on his belt to call the car.“Scarecrow is subdued; tell Gordon to search the tunnels.”

“Okay, what about—”

Tires screech as the Batmobile comes to a sudden stop. Heand Batman both jump in, and then they’re racing away seconds later.

“How bad?” Bruce asks immediately.

“We always knew whensomething was wrong. We cared. We loved you. And this is how you repay us? Byreplacing us with a man who puts your life at risk every night?”

Dick is leaned forward on his knees, hands in his hair.“Fine.” Just ghosts. Just voices. Just guilt.

Bruce nods. “Did you take something?

“You’re a terribleson.”

Dick shakes his head. “I ran out.”

“Hnn. We’re not far.”

When they get back to the cave, Alfred is waiting with themed bay prepped and one of the antidotes sitting on a tray. They do theinjection first, then Alfred examines his knee. His parents sit by him thewhole time, reminding him what an awful person he is for moving on andforgetting them. Bruce just reminds him that it can take ten minutes for theantidote to fully kick in. He tells him to focus on his breathing, but Dick can’t because it’s being drowned out byhis parents’ accusations.

Normally, Dick would distract himself by talking, especiallyafter a night like tonight. Scarecrow had been on the run wreaking havoc foralmost a week, and tonight he kidnapped the son of the lawyer who helped puthim away. Dick saved the kid all by himself and he helped Bruce track downScarecrow, who is now heading back to Arkham. It should be a victory, but noneof it means anything to him.

(Lately, nothing means anything to him.)

He doesn’t talk tonight—just nods or shakes his head whenprompted—and instead chooses to focus on his knee. It screams at him with each painfulthrob, almost as loud as his parents. It doesn’t work as well as he knowstalking would, but it’s better than counting the lengths of his breaths.

Alfred forces ibuprofen into his hand and puts some ice onhis knee. All of his tendons and ligaments are in place, it’s just sprained andbadly bruised. It will be back to normal in a week or two, but he’ll have towear a knee brace for a few days and ice it until the swelling goes down. Twentyminutes later, Alfred takes the ice away and helps him into a knee brace beforesending him to bed.

“Can you make it?” Bruce asks as Dick slides off the gurney.

His knee hurts, but it’s not as unstable. He’ll test hisluck with the stairs. “I’ve got it.”

“The antidote is working?”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you need anything.” Bruce rests his hand on Dick’sshoulder, looks him in the eye.

Sometimes, after nights like this, Bruce will sit with himuntil he falls asleep. But the ghosts he’s carrying wouldn’t be happy to seehim seek comfort from the stand-in parent, and frankly, neither would Dick. Asmuch as he wants comfort, it would only make him feel worse right now.

Dick tugs away. “Night.”

oOo

He forgets to set his alarm. This happens. Alfred knows thisand there’s a system in place. His alarm not going off is not a reason for himto be late for school.

“Dick, come on, we’re going to be late.” Bruce is in here.Alfred sent him in.

“I don’t feel good,” Dick mumbles from where he’s buried in blankets.

“So Alfred tells me. He also said you didn’t have a fever.”

“I didn’t say I have a fever,” Dick says, scowl evident inhis voice, “I said I don’t feel good.”

“The fear toxin should be out of your system by now.”

“It is.” And it’s the truth. It just left him with a bittertaste, some things to think about.

“What you saw—are you still on edge?”

Dick ignores him.

Bruce sighs, and Dick can picture him scrubbing his handover his face. “You know that sometimes recovering from the effects can take aday or two. If that’s the case, you need to tell me.”

It’s not the gas. It has nothing to do with the gas and everything to do with Dick. And right now, Dick wants Brucenowhere near him.

“Go away.”

“Did something happen at school then? Is someone … is someone bullying you?”

Dick rolls his hidden eyes.

“Dick, just tell me what’s going on.”

“I told you: I don’t feel good.”

A rush of cold air hits him as Bruce loses his patience andrips Dick’s sheets away from him.

Dick flips over and glares at Bruce as he pulls his blanketsback over his head. Bruce looks mad. “I’m not going today. You can’t make me.”It’s childish, but today it’s true. Not even Dick could make himself go if hewanted to.

“We leave in five minutes. Put on some clothes; maybe Alfredwill fix you something to eat in the car.”

Dick does not end up going to school that morning. Bruce andAlfred talk in passionate, hushed tones in the hallway, but Dick can’t be botheredto pay attention to them. Bruce comes back in, calmer this time, going for whatDick expects to be a more sympathetic tactic. But there is no tactic. He justsays that Dick can stay home and that they’ll talk later. Dick doesn’t look athim, keeps his face shoved in his pillow so that Bruce can’t see the silenttears starting to spill onto his face.

Bruce sighs and runs his fingers through Dick’s hair beforeleaving. Once Dick is sure he’s out of earshot, he lets himself cry as loud andas hard as he can until he has no more tears left.

It’s ironic that’s he’s crying like this, because the thingis, Dick is happy. Really happy. Andit’s been making him guilty for a while now.

oOo

At 4:27, there’s a knock on his bedroom door.

“Hey, chum.”

The anger Dick was feeling earlier that morning is gone. Nowhe mostly just feels apathetic. He forces, “Hi.”

“Alfred says you haven’t moved or eaten anything since I left.”

That isn’t exactly true: Alfred kept coming in every sooften to insist he elevate and ice his knee, forcing Dick to flip onto his backeach time.

He tells none of this to Bruce. Had he been feeling better,he would’ve openly done so with a cheeky grin. Now, he just says one word witha tone of indifference: “So?”

“So, we’re concerned. I’m concerned.”

Dick just shrugs.

“How about we go for a walk on the grounds and talk for abit?” Bruce suggests. “Some light movement will be good for your knee.”

“Pass.”

“What about a pull-up contest then? If I remember correctly,you were wanting a rematch.”

There’s a very long pause. When it’s clear Dick isn’t goingto answer (and Bruce has thought of something to say), he tells Dick firmly,“You can’t stay in bed all day.”

Isn’t that what I’msupposed to say to you? “It’s been working so far.”

Bruce sighs, and the bed creaks as he sits down on themattress. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here, kiddo.”

Dick doesn’t know either, so he stays silent. Maybe if he’sstill and quiet enough, Bruce will leave. Maybe Dick will disappear.

“Dick, if you won’t talk to me, I can’t help you.” Bruce islosing his calm, sympathetic tone. His patience is running low, but Dick’s isrunning out faster.

“If you really wanted to help, you would leave me alone.”

“I’ll leave as soon as you tell me what’s wrong.”

Dick snaps into a sitting position, yells, “Nothing is wrong!”

Bruce’s eyes tighten as they meet Dick’s, but his tone isn’taggressive. “Clearly something iswrong, and I know whatever it is has been bothering you long before lastnight.”

“I already told you,” Dick says, and his eyes are fillingwith hot tears again. “Everything is fine. I’m happy. Don’t you get it?

Bruce reaches out, tries to grab Dick’s shoulder, but Dick putshis arms around himself and curls away. Bruce lets his hand fall back down, headmits, “I don’t follow.”

“I shouldn’t be happy!”Dick says, hands gesturing wildly to emphasize his point. “I don’t deserve it,it’s wrong.”

Bruce grabs his hands and pulls them down. “Of course youdeserve to be happy. Why would you think otherwise?”

“Because—” He debates for a second on what he should say.“Am I a bad son?”

“Where the hell is that coming from?”

“My parents are dead, Bruce, and I’m happy.” Dick tugs his hands away from Bruce’s and looks everywherebut Bruce. “Everything is great and I, I don’t miss them anymore. I mean, I do.Of course I do, but I don’t—not likeI used to. I like my life the way it is now and I don’t think I’d want it tochange.”

Bruce’s face falls as he understands what Dick is gettingat. “Dick.”

“And I’m forgetting them,” Dick continues in an almostdesperate, rambling confession. “Like, I still remember them in general, but Ican’t remember what they smelled like or what their voices sounded like or theway they moved—all the details are disappearing. And I never got to really knowthem. I only knew them as parents; I’ll never know who they actually were.”

Bruce wipes a tear from Dick’s cheek with his thumb.

“After it happened, I used to wish for them to come back,but I don’t do that anymore. It’s not that I want them dead or that I’m happy because they’re gone, it’s just—it’sjust that—"

“You’ve moved on,” Bruce finishes for him. “You went througha great loss, but you worked through it and rebuilt. That’s a good thing, Dick,and it doesn’t make you a bad son at all.”

Dick’s lip trembles as he looks up at Bruce with big eyes.“But I replaced them. I’ll have more years of you as a parent than I did withthem, you’ll make up almost all of the memories. It’s like I’m erasing theirexistence just by being here.” Here withyou.

Dick’s words hang in the air, making the room thick withtension. Dick is so lost in it that he can’t process Bruce’s voice.

“Do you think I replaced my parents with Alfred?”

“What?”

“I said: Do you think I replaced my parents with Alfred?”

“N-no.”

“Good. Because I didn’t, and neither did you. People can’tbe replaced, even if we want to replace them—which I don’t think you did. Andjust because new people come into our lives doesn’t mean we have to get rid of otherpeople to make room, dead or alive. Do you understand?”

Dick nods.

“I’ve told you that I’ve had mental health problems since I wasyoung, and they got worse during my teens.” Dick nods again. “I used to feelguilty about this kind of stuff too. Survivor’s guilt. I saw a therapist forit, and maybe it’s time to consider having you see one.”

Dick lets himself fall into Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce holdshis head there with his hand

“You can’t grieve forever,” Bruce says quietly. “Justbecause they’re gone doesn’t mean we have to force ourselves to be miserable. Theywould want us to be happy and live our lives.”

“I don’t want to forget them,” Dick says. “I love them, andforgetting is like losing them again. What am I supposed to do if I loseeverything?”

Bruce pauses for a long moment, then rests his chin onDick’s hair. “Tell me something you do remember.”

Dick thinks for a minute, eyes going to the ceiling as hetries to focus in on something tangible. “They never made their bed. I would pointit out whenever they told me to make mine, and then my dad would say that they werejust saving it for me to do.” Dick gives a small, breathy laugh. “Then he wouldlook to my bed and stage-whisper that I clearly needed practice.”

“What else?” Bruce prompts, and Dick tries to tell himeverything.

oOo

One day after school, a few weeks after Dick’s talk withBruce, he walks into his bedroom to find a giant box sitting on his bed. Hedrops his bag on the floor and goes to open it. On the top is a card thatreads, “A celebration of John and Mary Grayson.” Inside of it, he finds journals,a few VCR tapes, photo albums, and letters. He smiles and his eyes well up withhappy tears. He shakily grabs the first photo album.

There’s a sticky note on the front that reads: Photos aretreasures in themselves, but they’re even better with context –Bruce

Dick frowns a little but flips it open anyway. As expected,he finds pages full of pictures, but each one has a little notecard explainingwhat was going on and when. There are photos ranging from when his parents wereyoung all the way up until they died. As Dick reads through the notes, herealizes just how many people Bruce must have tracked down for these. They alltook place at Haley’s or during that time, so they’re probably from people whoworked with them. Haley probably gave Bruce contact information as a startingpoint, and then maybe the Bat-computer to supplement that, but still. It musthave taken a lot of time.

The videos are all labeled, but there aren’t many and nonehave notecards like the photos. One says “Dick’s first steps,” another says“Dick’s first flight (Trapeze).” Others seem to be general family videos andfilmed trapeze routines. One is a wedding video.

The journals are more planners than journals, mostly filledwith show and training schedules. But every few months, there’s a real journalentry and update. They’re filled with both rants and excitement, and one pagehas scrawl all over it that slightly resembles the letters R-I-C-H-A-R-D. It’scircled with a note that says it was the first time Dick wrote his namecorrectly. Other pages have doodles on them, drawings that must have beenDick’s. They’re surrounded by better drawings, clearly drawn by one or both ofhis parents.

Then there are the letters. Some are notes that his parentsleft for each other in passing and then saved. Other letters are written forDick by people who knew them. They talk about good memories, what kind oftrouble they got into as kids, what kind of people they were, their hobbies andinterests outside of trapeze, and always how much they loved Dick.

There are a few other miscellaneous items in the box. Some ofit is merch from Haley’s back when the Flying Grayson first made their debut, andthen there are a few books. Most of them were used by Mary and/or Johnthemselves, but one or two are new copies of books they had loved. The rest areC.D.s and a few cassette tapes, all with notes saying who liked them and whenor what their favorite track on it was. There was one cassette tape from aRoger who said he had gone on a road trip with Dick’s parents back when theywere all teenagers. The attached tape had apparently gotten stuck in the playerand it was all they were able to listen to for the rest of the trip.

By the time he’s pulled everything out and flipped throughsome of it, two hours have passed and there are itchy lines on his cheeks werehis tears had dried. He packs his box back up and slides it under his bed forsafekeeping—it’s time to find Bruce.

Luckily, Bruce isn’t hard to find. He’s in the den with abasketball game on, but he’s looking down at his phone, probably at a news report.

Dick runs over to him, falling over the back of the couch tohug him as tight as he can. “Thank you, Bruce. I loved it.”

“Anytime, chum.” Bruce ruffles Dick’s hair. “Anytime.”

#dick grayson #robin #bruce wayne #batman #batfamily #fear toxin #hmmm it's almost one in the morning #elizabeth writes

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just-jordie-things · 6 years ago

Text

Sick Day - Scott McCall

word count: 2215 warnings: I don’t think any actually summary: (y/n’s) got a bad case of *dramatic music* period. but Scott McCall stops by to lift her spirits

The best part of Scott's whole day was coming to school early. As much as he hated waking up at such an unholy hour, it was worth it to see you first. You drive to school at 6 o'clock every morning to sit in the library and work or read in silence for a good hour before students came for their classes. He never told you he was coming, always surprising you, but practically every day.

You'd been best friends since the fourth grade, and being together was a natural pull. You hadn't known who Scott was when you met him on the recess playground at age 9. He had an asthma attack on the ladder to the slide, and you'd smacked him and told him to ‘suck it up and move along’. After when the teacher took him to the nurse, you'd asked him about it a lot and he even let you use his inhaler. You stuck together ever since, and Scott never let you live down how much ‘you didn't care about his asthmatic breakdown’. To which you resented. Especially now, since the wolf boy doesn't even have asthma anymore.

When he put his motorbike helmet in his locker, he headed off to the library. A paper bag with your favorite donut in one hand, and in the other, a warm cup of coffee. He was excited to see you and give you your spontaneous breakfast treat. Scott walked into the room of bookshelf after bookshelf of stories. He went off toward the table you always sat at, but the entire room was seemingly empty.

“y/n?” He called, but received no answer. His brow furrowed, you never missed school. Like..ever. No fake sick days, no real sick days. Even after long nights of fighting and restless sleep, you showed up at Beacon Hills High bright and early. Confused and concerned, Scott pulled out his phone and texted you.

to- y/n ❤️

hey you're not in the library are you at the school? text me back when you get this

He sat at the table and waited for the next hour by himself. But you never came, and you never texted back. When the bell rang, signaling the beginning of the school day, Scott went in search of someone else. As soon as he caught sight of the strawberry blonde, attached to his brother's arm, he called their names, and ran up to them.

“Hey Scotty” Stiles grinned. “Where's y/n?” Scott shrugged.

“I don't know I haven't seen her and I'm really freaking out-”

“Hey woah calm down” Lydia cut off Scott's rambling. “She stayed home today”

“Why!?” Scott's eyes were wide with fear, but Lydia just chuckled.

“Will you relax McCall? She's just having a bad period cycle today, I told her to stay home and rest” Lydia said calmly, and Scott seemed to be relieved by that.

Then he ran off.

“Scott where are you-!?” Stiles tried to tell after him, but the boy was long out of sight. “He's so in love with her” Stiles shook his head, and Lydia gave a hum of agreement.

Scott pulled out his set of keys, and unlocked your door with the spare you'd given him. He walked in quietly and locked the door again behind him. He took off his shoes and went upstairs. Your door was closed, so he politely knocked on it.

“Mom I said go to work I'm fine” You grumbled from inside, making Scott chuckle. He walked in, finding your back facing him in your bed. You were curled up in a heap of blankets there.

“It's not Mom” He said, walking around to the other side so you'd see him.

“Scott? What're you doing here?” You asked, and he set his backpack on the floor, before crawling in bed with you.

“Lydia said you're having a bad period day” He replied, sliding under your blankets with you.

“And you're not grossed out by that?” Scott purses his lips and shook his head.

“Nah” You chuckled a little. “Anyways, I brought stuff” He said, sitting up a little to lean his back on your headboard, and pulling his backpack up next to him. “Food” He proceeded to show you bars of chocolate and bags of chips. “And movies” All your favorite dvds. “And Midol, Advil, and ibuprofen”

“Midol” Your eyes lit up at the cramp relief bottle of pills, and he handed you it, along with a water bottle.

“And tampons, but I didn't know what you liked” He lifted his bag, tipping it upside down. Boxes of every kind of tampon fell onto your blankets.

“Oh my god..” You had no idea what to even say to him. “You didn't have to do that Scott… I have plenty here” He shrugged. “You probably looked insane buying all these, how much do you think I bleed?” You giggle, and he flushed a little. “Thanks Scott” You said, putting everything neatly back into his backpack. But snagging a candy bar for yourself.

“Yeah yeah no problem” He smiled crookedly. “Do you need anything? Does it hurt?” You nod with wide eyes.

“Trust me you're so lucky that you don't have to go through cramps” You laugh but it was a miserable sound.

“Oh that's easy” Scott took your hand, easily taking your pain as the veins in his arms and hand darkened to black. You sighed in relief, falling onto your pillow and smiling.

“God I love you” You mumbled, eyes closing as you drifted off to sleep. Scott smiled sadly, laying back down next to you and keeping his hand in yours.

“I love you too” He replied softly to your sleeping form.

You woke up first after a two hour nap. Your eyes blinked awake, and you were happy for the muscle contractions to be gone, but your head buzzed. When the room came to focus, you found Scott sleeping across from you, causing you to smile. It'd been awhile since you'd had a ‘sleepover’ so to speak. Your parents said you couldn't anymore when seventh grade rolled around. And you had to admit, you sure missed it. Sleeping with Scott always made you feel well rested, and as much as you'd hate to say, it made you feel safe. Sure you can protect yourself fine against the supernatural. Especially for being human. But Scott never failed to make you feel anything less than protected. You smiled, raising a few fingers to run along his uneven jaw. Then shuffled forward and leaned against his chest. Scott woke up at this, but didn't let you notice, just smiled to himself and closed his eyes.

“I know you're awake” You mumbled into his shirt, and he mentally cursed. But neither of you moved.

“How do you feel?”

“Irritable” You responded, and he chuckled.

“You want to watch a movie?” You nodded and he rolled onto his back, sliding out his phone and handing it to you to pick one out. You did, and you each shared an earbud. You moved onto your back as well, half laying on him. Your head on the front of his shoulder, arms folded against his side. Scott looked at you as you were focused on his phone screen. Your features were soft and gentle, you had a sweet expression as you'd laugh softly every once in awhile at something that would happen in the film. Thirty minutes in, you caught one of his glances towards you.

“Scott stop it I'm ugly and bloated” You groaned, rolling slightly to lean your chest in his side. Your head still lie on his shoulder.

“y/n shut up you could wear a trash bag and not shower for a week and still look beautiful” You scoffed and tried to hide your blush. “And you're not bloated. Still scrawny as ever” You rolled your eyes this time and stuck out your tongue.

“Doesn't feel like it”

“Is it hurting again?” You shook your head. And reached over him for another chocolate bar. This time when you opened it up you broke it in half for Scott to have some too. He smiled at you when he took it, and you clunked the pieces together.

“Cheers” You said with a small giggle, and Scott repeated it back too before you ate your candy. When you finished you rolled onto your stomach, planting your face in the pillow. Scott laughed at you.

“Want me to suffocate you?”

“Please?” He chuckled again, and pushed you onto your back. You groaned, grabbing the pillow and pushing it onto your face again.

“Too bad” Scott said, taking it again. You peeked over at him to find his crooked grin. “What?” He asked after a few moments of you just staring at him expressionlessly. You smiled a short, little smile.

“Hold me” You said, and wiggled back into his arms. Scott smiled down into your hair. It was quiet for a bit as you just laid comfortably against him. His heart was beating against your cheek, and breathed in his scent. It was warm, like the beach in summer. “Remember when I drank the spiked punch in freshman year” You whispered, and he moved back to look down at you slightly. Your eyes were closed, resting on his upper arm as you smiled softly. “You got sooo mad at me” Scott let out an airy laugh again, his hand came up over your head. You hummed in appreciation when his thumb brushed over your forehead, back and forth.

“No, no I wasn’t mad I was freaked out” He responded in a whisper. Your nose involuntarily nuzzled on his arm. “Really freaked out, I’d never seen you drunk before”

“And now I never get drunk without you”

“Yeah well I’m the only one who cares enough to see you when you’re drunk. It is so not a great sight to watch” You laughed with him this time, opening your eyes to see his twinkling.

“So much for me always being beautiful” You joke, and he grows quiet, features falling slightly.

“You are” He whispered, thumb still caressing your forehead. “Of course you are I’m never gonna tell you otherwise, because that’s not true” You smiled softly and nervously. Your eyes fell shut again.

“Scott” You said softly, and he hummed in response. “Why’d you come here?” He looked at you confusedly, but you still had your eyes closed.

“You weren’t in the library this morning, I waited and I texted you, but you didn’t respond so I found Lyd and she said you were here on your period and stuff” You nodded a little. “I just wanted to make sure you were all good” You smiled again, fluttering your eyes open to see him returning the expression. “What? Why’re you smiling?” Scott asked quietly, and you shook your head.

“I’m just glad you’re here with me” You responded in a whisper. Scott seemed happily satisfied with your answer, as he gave you a little grin. You could tell he was trying not to smile bigger. “Are you gonna stay the whole night?”

“Maybe. Depends if your mom checks on you”

“I’ll put a post it on the door saying I need peace and quiet. Not that you provide either of those things”

“Jerk” Scott grumbled, and you rolled your eyes.

“Anyways, if I do that will you stay?” The second half of your statement was quieter.

“Do you want me to?” He quirked a brow and you felt nerves crawl on your skin.

“Maybe”

“You totally do” Scott chuckled. “y/n’s got a crush” He sing songed and you swatted him.

“Shut up McCall”

“Make me”

“You perv. Raising the sexual tension like that” He laughed louder now, his arms encircling your waist.

“You’re into me!” You didn’t reply this time, just stared at his sheepish grin with your lips parted.

“Maybe” You finally said again, and his features changed slightly.

“Wait, really?” And suddenly you felt your heart drop to your stomach. “No no! That’s good!” He said quickly, realizing that he’d been quiet for too long.

“It is?” You asked, and he nodded rapidly.

“Yeah, finally, God you take forever” You laughed nervously, your hands wringing together. “Seriously, I mean Stiles and Lydia got together first”

“So we’re together now?” You asked, raising an eyebrow questioningly at him, and he seemed to fluster.

“W-well s-sure if th-that’s what you wanna, I mean we don’t- it can just be- we can”

“Stop. You’re making me cringe” You said, and Scott laughed a little.

“Come ‘mere” He murmured, and pulled you closer to him. You smile anxiously as his eyes glanced over your face. “You’re so beautiful”

“You’ve told me that like a hundred times today” You said with a nervous laugh.

“And I’ll tell you a hundred more so that you know it” He said, and your cheeks went pink.

“Is it gonna be like this all the time?” You asked, partially joking, but Scott could hear your racing heartbeat, and there was no hiding the blush on your cheeks.

“I hope so” He said, making you smile.

“Well. Next week, when this…” You gestured at yourself. “Is over, you’re taking me on a date then”

“Sounds like a plan”

taglist: @the-crime-fighting-spider @socially-awkward-nerd @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone @lovelynerdytraveler @writings-and-stuff @jurassicpork @black-tights-black-heart @piper-x-lee

xoxo ~ jordie

#teen wolf #teen wolf x reader #teen wolf imagine #teen wolf scenario #teen wolf fanfiction #Scott mccall #Scott McCall x reader #Scott McCall fanfiction #Scott McCall imagine #Scott McCall scenario #Tyler posey #Tyler posey x reader #Tyler posey imagine #Tyler posey fanfiction #Tyler posey scenario

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justlookfrightened · 6 years ago

Note

prompt. jack taking care of sick bittle or viceversa?

This is really fluffy. Like, cotton candy-fluffy.

Jack knew the moment he heard Bitty’s voice on message.

It would have been extremely disappointing, if not for the rasp and slight quaver Jack could hear,

“Hi there, sweetpea. I hope practice is going well today. I, um, I have some bad news. I’m not going to go to Providence today. I’m just not really feeling up to it, so I’m going to stay here and rest, and not get you sick. I’ll miss you, sweetheart. Love you.”

As it was, the message was simply worrying, because Jack was pretty sure Bitty had been looking forward to this weekend as much as he was. Six weeks into Bitty’s school year and two weeks into his season, with preseason games just starting for Jack, they were reminded once again of how hard it was to see each other regularly when Bitty was at Samwell and Jack was in Providence.

“Something wrong?”

Marty was watching Jack frown at his phone.

“Bitty’s sick,” Jack said. “He said he’s not going to come for the weekend.”

“That’s rough,” Marty said. “Can you head up there for a while? Bring him some soup or something?”

“What? Little B’s not coming to our game tomorrow?” Tater said.

“Doesn’t look that way,” Jack said. “Sorry, Tater, no pie this weekend.”

“I’m not worrying about the pie,” Tater said, looking affronted. “You go see him, make sure he’s okay. Talk to coaches if you need. They’ll let you off morning skate tomorrow.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “He’s pretty stubborn. And he called when he knew I was in practice so he wouldn’t have to talk to me.”

Which really kind of sucked, Jack thought, because he wanted to talk to Bitty. Even if all Bitty said was those four sentences.

“He probably didn’t want to worry you,” Marty said.

“It didn’t really work,” Jack said. “I think I will go down there. Maybe I can get him to come back with me if I drive him. Otherwise I can just go back and forth. It’s not that far.”

Jack stowed his gear at home and packed an overnight bag with a change of clothes and a book just in case he ended up staying. The Haus would have basic over-the-counter medicines – Jack was pretty sure Bitty maintained the medical kit – and a thermometer, and he’d left a phone charger there last year, after he and Bitty told the Samwell team that they were dating.

He did try to call Bitty, but it went straight to voicemail.

“Hey, bud, I’m sorry to hear you’re sick. Do you think you’d be more comfortable at home in Providence if I could come get you?”

Then he called Bitty’s favorite diner in Samwell and asked for them to pack up a quart of chicken noodle soup to go.

Last, he texted Lardo to get Ford’s phone number.

***************

Ford hung up the phone and shook her head.

Why anyone worried about Bitty when Jack Zimmermann was on the case was a mystery. A real, true mystery.

Well, of course she knew why. Jack couldn’t always be there, given his one-of-the-top-players-in-the-NHL work commitments. But she was pretty sure that if he could find a way, Jack would take care of Bitty as well anyone could. Even if it meant calling Bitty’s own mother and flying her here.

Jack’s call had come just at the end of Ford’s Theater as Design class, ringing as she packed her things for the trek to the dining hall, and she picked up without registering that it was from a number she hadn’t saved.

When she answered, Jack had apologized for going to Lardo for her number and then just started in without waiting for a response.

“How’s Bitty? Has he been to see a doctor? Do Hall and Murray know he’s sick? Is he taking care of himself?”

Ford spared a thought to wonder why Jack hadn’t called Chow, or Ollie or Wicks … someone he actually knew, more than having been introduced a few times. Then she remembered the way Hall and Murray had told her to make sure Bitty got to the health center after they pulled him off the ice at yesterday’s practice. He clearly wasn’t himself, and his cough was concerning. As he dressed and walked with her to the clinic, Bitty had admitted to coughing so hard he vomited before practice, and he was clearly feverish.

“The nurse practitioner said it’s an early case of the flu,” Ford said. “She gave him Tamiflu, and said that given his general health, he should recover in a few days. But he’s off the ice for at least a week. I got him excused from all his classes through next Thursday, too.”

“Fuck,” Jack said. “He just told me he was under the weather.”

“Yeah, he was pretty clear he didn’t want anyone calling you,” Ford said. “He was afraid you’d get sick if you came down. But he didn’t say I couldn’t talk if you called me.”

“I’m on my way down,” Jack said. “I’m bringing soup, but I think it would be better if I brought him home with me. If he’s that worried, I can sleep in the guest room, but we’re not on the road this week.”

“It’s probably a good idea,” Ford said. “They people who live in the Haus love him to death, but they don’t clean the way he does. And if the place turns into a sty, he’ll feel guilty. Just give me 24 hours notice before you bring him back and get them to get the place back into shape.”

“As long as you make them do it,” Jack said. “You’re the manager, not their mother.”

He paused.

“You think I should call his mother?”

“Maybe leave that up to him?” Ford said. “I mean, no one seems to think this is a really dangerous illness. At least not at this point. But she could tell you what he likes to eat when he’s sick and everything.”

*******************************

Jack let himself into the Haus, glad that he had never turned in his key, and made his way to Bitty’s bedroom as quietly as he could. He opened the door and peeked in, only to see Bitty’s head pop out of the nest of blankets on his bed like a meercat.

“Jack!’ he said, his voice now a raspy whisper. “I told you I didn’t want to get you sick!”

“I’ll take my chances, bud,” Jack said. “You’re sick. I brought you some soup.”

He saw two bottles of Gatorade next to Bitty’s bed, along with a bottle of ibuprofen and prescription bottle.

“I see you’re keeping hydrated,” he said. “That’s good. Have you eaten anything today?”

“I had some toast earlier, but I couldn’t keep it down,” Bitty said. “I mean it, stay away. I’m all gross and covered with germs.”

Jack sat at the end of the bed anyway, taking in Bitty’s greasy hair and the sweat-sheen on his face..

“How about you eat some soup and see how it goes?” he said. “Maybe take a shower if you’re up to it? That might make you feel better.”

Jack opened the soup carton and handed it over with the plastic spoon.

After the first couple of bites, Bitty’s voice was stronger. “Don’t think you’re staying here,” he said. “I see your bag, but you can’t share a twin bed with me, and I will not have you stay on the couch.”

“Then come back with me,” Jack said. “I can stay in the guest room.”

“Jack!” Bitty paused to cough, and yeah, that didn’t sound good. “I won’t put you out of your bed.”

“Then you can stay in the guest room,” Jack said reasonably. “But if you’re sick, you should be where someone can take care of you. I can get Carrie or Gabby to look in on you when I have to be away more than a couple of hours.”

“I’m not that sick!”

“Sick enough to miss a game this weekend, and a week of classes,” Jack said. “And I really don’t want to be on an air mattress for a week. I suppose I could call your mom ..”

“Jack Zimmermann!” Bitty had to cough again, “I will not have you worrying my mother!”

“Then I guess you’ll tell me which books and notebooks you need,” Jack said, already putting Bitty’s laptop and charger into his bookbag. “Do you need anything else besides Señor Bun? I think you have enough clothes in Providence.”

“Fine,” Bitty said. “I need my medicine.”

“Got it,” Jack said. “Ready for a shower? I’ll wait in the bathroom to make sure you’re alright.”

“And I should text Ford and the guys – and the coaches – to let then know,”

“I’ll do that while you’re showering,” Jack said. “Then we can go home.”

Bitty closed his eyes briefly before opening them and pushing the blankets away.

“That sounds good,” he said. “Thanks. Let’s get going so we can go home.”

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thestudyof5sos · 6 years ago

Text

When Uber Becomes Tinder (tinder!Ashton) - part 2

When Uber Meets Tinder, by @larryologymajor Read Part 1 here.

Part 2: Friday.

Ember awoke Friday morning feeling refreshed. From bed, she blindly swooshed aside the black out window curtain in her bedroom. Although Ember couldn't clearly see anything, she scrunched her eyes shut at the sudden influx of sunlight that signaled the end of the snow storm. She rolled over to grab her glasses of the night stand and climbed her way out of bed. Peeping through the window shade in her bedroom, Ember admired the sun glistening off the snow like tiny diamonds crystallized on the ground. Quietly she stepped into her fuzzy slippers and snagged her robe that was draped over the headboard of her bed. She picked up her phone and slid it into her robe pocket then made her way into the kitchen where she blindly stabbed at the power button of her Keurig. Her eyes refused to focus. Clearly Ember needed her daily boost of caffeine.

Ember grabbed her favorite coffee mug from the cabinet, not caring that the words were long faded and the rim had a weathered chip in it. Her best friend, Anna, had given it to her many birthdays ago and, although they lived states apart, drinking from that cup somehow made her feel like they were in the same room together sharing their favorite blend and laughing like old times.

After Ember sucked down her first cup of coffee, she stretched out on the couch and turned her attention to her phone. She vaguely recalled receiving that lost item text last night from Uber, so she chuckled as she again read the words her flirtatious passenger had written. Ember admired Ashton's courage to send it, but damn she was confused.

In her two years of driving Uber, that text was by far the most interesting thing that had happened to her and it was certainly her first fake "I forgot something" aka "let's hook up" message. Curiosity was on Ember's mind and she wanted to know more about this guy. Ember reached over to grab her laptop from the shelf under the coffee table and powered it on. Once it booted, Ember opened two tabs in her browser: Google and Facebook.

Ember first typed Ashton's phone number into Google but didn't really find any interesting hits. Next she typed his phone number into the Facebook search box. The results popped up and after scanning the names and tiny picture thumbnails, Ember silently cheered when she located a match to what she was looking for.

She clicked on the thumbnail of Ashton's smiling face. Her mind was a complete whirlwind of disbelief as she read through his profile. Ashton Irwin. Music/Band. 5 Seconds of Summer. Drummer. World Tour. 415,000 likes. Billboard #1.

Ember closed her eyes and shuddered from head to toe. She gently closed her laptop and reached over to pet her kitten who was curled up next to her, lightly snoring. "Who is this kid??" she asked out loud to no one, although her kitten rolled over and blinked an eye in her direction.

Ember spent the next several hours on her couch, in pajamas, surfing the internet. She was convinced that she had gone to the end of YouTube and back learning everything she could about Ashton Irwin, the hot young Australian with a quirky personality from a famous pop rock band. Ember sat on her couch grinning. How did she become so enamored? Ha, wait. She knew that answer. His performer personality was sparkling, smile wide and bursting with pride over his work and band mates, eyes bright, and laughter loud. God, she didn't really know the guy but she was in love with his laughter. She wondered if his real-life personality was anything like his stage persona.

Her head was throbbing from staring at her computer screen, so she shut it down and grabbed her phone. She opened up Spottily and queued up a 5 Seconds of Summer playlist. Ember walked to the bathroom and tossed her phone on the counter commanding her Amazon Echo Dot to take over playing the Spotify list. She gulped down a few ibuprofen to mitigate her headache and eye strain before stripping off her pajamas; then Ember jumped in the tub to take a relaxing bubble bath.

Forty-five minutes later, Ember was out of the shower and changing into clean clothes. She laughed to herself as the song "She Looks So Perfect" poured out from the Echo Dot in her bathroom. Standing there in her underwear, she settled on her favorite dark wash skinny jeans and super soft maroon Henley. Ember loved how the three delicate snaps on the front crept from her cleavage to collarbone to accentuated her breasts without flaunting them.

Ember's stomach growled and she realized it was nearly dinner time already. She skipped breakfast in favor of coffee, and she was much to occupied with her Ashton reconnaissance to eat lunch. She rifled through her freezer until she pulled out a frozen dinner.

When the dinner tray was in the oven, Ember returned her attention to her phone again, internally debating if she should message Ashton back. She reasoned with herself that she should message him back in case he was going to be cranky and report to Uber that she stole something he lost. Ember clicked open a new text message and carefully composed a message: Hi, this is Ember from Uber. Sorry you 'forgot' something in my car last night. ;) It was a pleasure chatting with you during your rides, hope you have a great day!

Less than a minute later, Ember's phone dinged with a reply. Her fingers shook nervously as she unlocked her phone.

Ashton: Hey. lol I wish I could have gotten it back last night ;) hope your day has been good!

Ember's heart raced. Was he trying to flirt with her? She quickly tapped out a reply: I put my phone on do not disturb and went straight to bed. I'm too old to stay out late haha.

Again, another reply from Ashton: Lol understandable but I wouldn't say all that.

Ember was baffled beyond belief; she quickly shot back a reply: Why's that?

Seconds later, Ashton replied: Age doesn't mean anything.

She was confused. So so confused. But she put on a brave face and silently thanked all of her friends in the undergraduate program for her keeping her young during grad school. Quickly she tapped out another reply: Definitely not. I'm a firm believer that you're only as old as you think you are.

Several long minutes went by, and Ember's oven timer sounded, letting her know that her frozen dinner was ready. She was pulling it out of the oven when she heard her phone ding, vibrating in place on the couch. She peeled away the foil cover to let it cool for a few minutes before returning to the phone. Ashton agreed with her theory.

Ashton: Exactly, that's a great belief to have.

She read Ashton's latest reply and let the conversation quietly die.

The rest of her afternoon was business as usual. Homework, laundry, errands. She was in a great mood and almost ready to login to her Uber app. She grabbed her jacket and shuffled down the hallway and out to her SUV. She drove over to the gas station across the street where she needed to top off her gas tank, wash her windows, and grab her customary Diet Coke.

Within a minute of logging into her Uber app, Ember was off to her first pickup of the night. It was Friday night and business was hopping! Several hours went by but Ember didn't even notice because the back-to-back pickups kept her busy. 10:30pm rolled around and the app was quieting down. Ember took advantage of the lull and pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant open 24/7 to sneak in and use the bathroom.

As she approached her car, her phone dinged, signaling a new text. It was Ashton: Driving tonight?

Ember wasn't sure what to say, so she tapped out: Yes

Ashton: Lol I just ordered one, wish it was you.

Ember rolled to a stop at a red light and quickly replied, feeling brave: Cancel?

Ashton fired back: They just pulled up....

Ember spotted an empty parking spot and carefully swooped in so she could focus on her phone.

Ember: That's tragic...

Ashton: Wish I could see you

Ember: Where are you heading?

Ashton: Downtown

Ember was at a loss for what to say. She was thinking when her phone dinged again.

Ashton: Don't you want to see me?

Ember: Well..... maybe if I get a drop off downtown I'll message you for your location and stop by to say hello.

Ashton: Just to say hello?

Ember knew she was sliding down a slippery slope, but chatting with this boy was outside her comfort zone and it excited her.

Then without warning she got a pickup request at a bar 15 minutes away from her. Knowing the crowd who patronized that bar, she was probably heading out to the countryside at least 25 minutes from town to drive them home.

As Ember pulled up to the curb at her passengers pickup location, she clicked the button to confirm her arrival. She minimized her Uber app and shot Ashton one last message: Heading to drop someone off out in the country. It'll be at least an hour, maybe longer, until I'm back downtown.

Although it was dark, Ember expertly navigated her way through the countryside with her passengers. A sleepy, and likely inebriated, late 20-something male sat immediately behind her. His female counterpart sat beside him in the back seat. She chatted animatedly with Ember, completely convinced that she and Ember had met before. Finally, Ember pulled into her passengers driveway and put the car in park so the duo could get out safely. Once they were out the car she shifted into reverse and stepped lightly on the gas. Nothing happened. Ember was stuck; her poor SUV was billowing smoke out from the engine. She quickly popped the hood latch and jumped out of the car while her male passenger came running over and they both stared at the engine in disbelief as it spewed an unrecognizable fluid all over the driveway. It was black out and neither of them could tell what was going on with the car. Ember wanted to cry.

The wife urged her to come sit in the kitchen with her while they figured out what to do. Reluctantly, Ember followed her into the house and dialed her roadside assistance hotline. While she waited on hold, she tapped out a message to Ashton: Raincheck on seeing you. My car is acting weird and I'm stuck out in the country waiting for a tow.

Moments later, her phone dinged. It was Ashton: Do you want me to call you an Uber? Ironic, huh...

Meanwhile, Ember was patched through to towing dispatch. "What do you mean you can't get a truck out here to tow me for three hours? It's already 2am! What if I find someone local? Can I pay them myself and submit for reimbursement?" Ember pleaded to the phone. After nodding a few times, she spoke again. "I'd really like to have my Subaru towed to my apartment building until the dealership opens up on Monday morning, then on Monday I'll need to have it towed to Subaru."

Satisfied with their response, Ember promised to call back and cancel the roadside assistance tow when she found someone who could be there sooner then hung up.

Ember wanted to cry again. Tim, her male passenger, chimed in, sobering up slightly. "I'm a mechanic and my buddy lives up the road. He runs a tow company. He owes me a favor and I'd love to drag his ass out of bed. Can I call him for you?"

Grateful, Ember agreed and waited quietly while Tim made a phone call. As Tim spoke to his buddy on the phone, Ember watched Tim nod his head. "Yeah, she drives a Subaru so you'll need something that can pull all-wheel drive."

Tim turned to Ember, "My buddy Dan will be here in about 30 minutes to tow you home. Feel free to hang out downstairs until he gets here."

Ember could have hugged him. "Thank you so much for helping me out, you're a huge lifesaver."

"Ah, it's no problem. You got us home safe. I just wish I was more sober to take a better look under your car," Tim chuckled.

Ember sat back down to call her roadside assistance hotline to cancel their dispatch with the three hour wait. When she hung up, her Snapchat app notified her that she had a new friend request. Ember almost freaked out. The user who added her was @ashton5sos.

She accepted his request and sent him a selfie captioned: Worst night ever. Car is broken. Waiting to be towed home.

Within seconds she had a reply. Ashton sent a selfie back: How about that Uber? ;)

Ember immediately snapped another selfie: lol that's super ironic but I'm going to wait here with my car. I'll probably be home in a few hours.

Ashton was waiting for her snap because his response came back in rapid succession. This time, he was shirtless and the snap showed only his tanned torso and sculpted shoulders... Are you sure? I could make your night a hell of a lot better...

Ember wanted so badly to screen capture that snap, but she knew she'd look like a fool if she did so instead she tried committing it to memory. In that moment she felt too old to be having this sort of conversation with someone so young, yet alone so famous. So she sent her final snap, a shot of her shoes. Sorry buttercup, I'm going home and going to bed.

Ashton shot back another selfie, this time it was his beautiful lips posed in a pout, shadowed by the dim light. Bae? Try me when you get home. I'd love to come over and sleep. Nothing more.

Ember switched over to the chat feature, not knowing what else to snap. Bae? Oh boy, now things are getting serious. I'm much too old for that word.

She watched Ashton's emoji pop up and could see he was typing: Age is just a number, bae. *kissy face emoji*

Ember could see lights in the driveway and hear tires in the snow, so she peered out the window to see that the tow truck had arrived. She and Tim both hurried outside. When the cold winter air hit Ember's face, she clicked open the car locks and grabbed her winter jacket from the driver's seat. It was was icy cold. Why hadn't she thought to bring it in to warm up.

It took nearly 25 minutes to get the Subaru all strapped onto the tow trailer. Ember told Tim thank you, again, and said goodbye as she hopped into the passenger seat of the tow truck.

It was a few minutes past 4 am when the Subaru was unloaded into Ember's parking lot and the tow truck left. She snapped a picture of her disabled car and e-mailed a copy of her receipt to herself. Feeling depressed that she was going to lose out on time driving and she was going to spend all of her rent money to fix her car, Ember trudged her way inside. She quickly undressed, changed into pajamas and fed her kitty.

Right before she crawled into bed, she sent a text to Ashton attached to a picture of her car. Got my car towed back to my apartment okay. Thanks for try to cheer me up tonight... Goodnight!

Ember put her phone on Do Not Disturb and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

READ PART 3.

Thanks for reading! There’s more to come! If you enjoyed this chapter, I would appreciate a reblog please and thanks! <3 I’m also looking for a beta/cheerleader for furture chapters. Message me if you’re interested!

Tags: @mycollectionofnuts, @kaxseychill, @sunnysidesblog Want to be tagged? Let me know!

#5sos fic #ashton fic #ashton irwin fic #5sos #tinder!ahston #larryologyfic #larryologymajor

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veneataur · 6 years ago

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A/N: I’m not sure there’s all that much whump in here, but Treville was hard to whump. We’ll go for light emotional whump. Porthos and Athos do make an appearance, though keep in mind that they don’t know Aramis at all at this point, which influences their reactions in this story.

Prompt: Insomnia

Fandom: BBC’s The Musketeers

Title: Losing Focus

No warnings

He remembers the exact date when he stopped sleeping. March 11, 2011. The day he found out that Aramis was MIA. It was a frantic call from Aramis’ mother at two thirty-seven in the morning. He almost didn’t answer from sheer exhaustion. Ben and Tim kept him busy during the day. It was a whirlwind of events after that. His contacts gave him little information and nothing that seemed true. Insubordination, negligence, cowardice. And criminal charges looming. The words didn’t seem true.

He saw Aramis once at the base hospital after he was brought back, a few weeks after the incident. Physically he was better. Not back in good health but better. And then the man was drummed out on charges everyone but Treville could believe. After a short stay at his sister’s, Aramis was gone without a sign.

The first few weeks he searched constantly. He skipped his lunches and stayed late after work, on the gut instinct that Aramis would return to the city of his youth. Every tall, wiry, wild-haired person he glimpsed out of the corner of his eyes his heart would start and his stomach drop. But it was never him because the picture he has of Aramis now is scrawny with a buzz cut to treat a head wound and shrunken over. Not the same Aramis he knew.

The effort is more than exhausting. He stops eating a lot as his stomach can’t take it and keeps a bottle of ibuprofen nearby for near consistent headaches. There’s been the more than odd occasion that one of his men finds him sleeping off a migrant on the couch or simply given in to his body’s demand for rest. He worries about Aramis, about Sarah, about Tim and Ben, about work, about his teams of Musketeers. He spends the nights lying awake in bed so as to not worry Sarah by wandering aimlessly around the house. It was easier, he thinks, during the school year to keep up despite the lack of sleep. But it’s summer now and when he gets home from work, the boys want to play. And Sarah’s had them all day, so it’s his turn to take them to give her a break. They don’t mean for their play to worsen his aching head or drain the last of his energy. And when Ben wins at Connect 4, it’s not because Treville lets him. His focus is gone and considers himself lucky to have gotten the game piece in a slot at all.

He wakes up on the third Saturday in July to Ben jumping in their bed. Tim stands near the edge of the bed, always the more quiet child. But, he supposes, Ben has reason to be excited, after all, it isn’t just any day that you turn ‘a whole five years old.’ As much as he loves his two boys, his worry over Aramis has left him with just a couple hours of sleep. That has to stop.

“Come on, dad. You gotta get up. We gotta get ready before everyone comes,” Ben says, trying to pull his dad up. Treville groans and rubs at his eyes, trying to wake up. Sarah’s been sick lately, so it’s up to him to get up and get the boys ready.

“Alright. Both of you go get your faces washed, get dressed, and make your beds,” he tells them, hoping they’ll hurry off now that they’ve gotten him up. Ben waits a moment until Tim nudges him along and soon Treville has silence once more.

“You going to be able to get them ready,” Sarah asks voice heavy and low.

“Of course. You just focus on feeling better. Come down whenever you’re feeling up to it.”

Treville forces himself out of bed. In the bathroom, he stares at himself for a good several minutes, leaning his hands on the counter as he tries to wake up enough to complete the basics. It’s only when he hears the boys running down the hall that he sticks his head out to stop them.

“You can head downstairs and watch some cartoons until I get down there. If you want something to drink, get some water from the fridge. I’ll be down soon to get you breakfast.”

He then forces himself to move quickly with clumsy tired limbs through the morning ritual until he’s finally dressed and ready to go downstairs.

“Do you need anything, Sarah,” he asks.

“No, thanks. I’m good. I’ll be down soon.”

“Don’t rush it. Take care of yourself first and text me if you need something.”

Sarah nods and slips back under the blankets. Treville prepares himself to go downstairs. The bed and his wife’s company is almost too appealing. He could just postpone Ben’s party. The guests would understand, but that wouldn’t be fair to Ben, he reminds himself. Sarah understands his need to find Aramis but the one requirement she gave, and as much as he wars with himself about it he agrees, is that it can’t interfere with the boys’ lives. He can’t neglect them to find Aramis and he wouldn’t, he doesn’t think so. He hopes he would never.

“So, what do you want for breakfast,” he asks with a forced cheerfulness.

“Pancakes!” the boys say at once. Treville just barely holds back the sigh because he can’t let them know that is the last thing he wants to make this morning.

“Pancakes it is then.”

He starts in the kitchen by getting out the flour, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, and baking powder. He starts by getting some sausage links going and then starts on the pancake mix. Once the batter is together, he remembers the sausage, smelling it as it starts burning. In the move to get the sausage, he runs into the bowl of pancake batter, knocking it on the floor.

“Damn it,” he says. Now, he’s got a mess to clean up.

“Is everything okay, dad,” Tim asks from the edge of the kitchen.

“Yes, just a little accident. Go back and watch cartoons with your brother.” Tim waits another moment before walking off. Treville turns off the sausage first and sets about cleaning. Seconds later, two sets of small hands join him on the floor in cleaning up. He blames the lack of sleep for the blurry eyes. With their help, the floor is cleaned in short order and he can get back to the pancakes. But he can’t get himself off the floor.

“We can just have cereal, dad,” Ben says.

“Yeah, cereal’s fine,” Tim agrees.

“No, we’re making pancakes,” Treville says.

“We?”

“Yes, we.” He didn’t mean necessarily that the boys were going to help, but he’s not sure that he can get breakfast together without their help. It’s not the first time they’ve helped in the kitchen. “Tim, do you mind measuring out the ingredients. Ben, once he gets things together, you can work on stirring everything, okay?”

Unsurprisingly, there are no complaints. Treville jots down the recipe for Tim and sets the boys up with a couple of step stools so they can see above the counter they’re working on. The boys don’t always get along, but this morning, fortunately, they do. They work together, with Tim doing the measuring, as Ben hands him ingredients. Ben watches carefully as Tim explains how to measure ingredients and crack eggs. But even as he watches proudly, he thinks of Aramis wowing his fellow cadets with cookies and cakes.

Then he reminds himself. He has to be here and present, not wandering. Aramis may be like a son to him, but these are his boys and Aramis would be angry if he were neglecting them.

“Excellent job measuring, Tim.” It’s forced but not because of their effort. “You ready to start mixing, Ben?”

“Yeah.” Ben nods seriously.

“You’ve got to take it real slow,” Tim says. “And gentle. Like this.” He demonstrates with a few stirs before handing it off to Ben. “How’s the sausage looking, dad,” Tim asks with feigned absentness as he watches Ben. Treville turns it and goes to the fridge to get some fruit. He pulls out a few apples.

“I think he’s got the stirring down, Tim. You up to cutting some fruit?”

“Mom’s never let me use the knives.”

“I think you can handle them. This what we’ll do.” Treville grabs a couple cutting boards, a knife for him to use, and a knife that would easily fit in Tim’s smaller hand. He talks Tim through the process of carefully cutting as he cuts off a large wedge that will lay flat on the board. He sets the first piece flat on Tim’s board and tells him to cut it up in chunks.

“Like this, dad,” Tim asks. He’s got everything in position to cut but hasn’t made the cut yet.

“Your fingers tucked away?”

“Yep.”

“Good. The last thing we want is a trip to the ER.”

Treville watches closely as Tim slowly cuts the apples. Ben is done with the batter by the time Tim has cut half of the apples but he won’t rush the boy. It’s his first time using a knife, so he’s expected to move slowly. As he watches them, he once again nearly forgets about the sausage, but he catches them in time to turn the fire off before they burn. While he starts cooking the pancakes, he sends Ben to set the breakfast bar. He doesn’t feel like getting the dining room dirty this morning. Now in a steady rhythm, breakfast is done quickly and they can sit down to eat. The boys devour pancake after pancake but for him the nausea he feels from a lack of sleep means he nibbles, eating a pancake and some fruit before he pushes the food away and tries to ignore the smell of the food.

Afterward, he sends the boys upstairs to clean up while he cleans the kitchen. It’ll be getting dirty soon with the party at 1 pm. It’s a BBQ with all of Ben’s friends from preschool and some of Treville’s Musketeers, the ones who the boys have taken a shine to like Athos and Porthos. He wasn’t surprised to find Porthos to be good with the boys but Athos was a surprise.

He should get the preparations going. He should get the decorations out and get a start on the food. But breakfast took what little energy he has. He moves sluggishly from the kitchen to the den where the good couch is. It’s comfortable and welcoming. He lays down face first to give his body a break from standing up and it feels wonderful to stretch out. From his toes to his shoulders, he enjoys the feeling.

“Are you okay, dad,” Tim asks.

“’m ‘ine, Tim.” The pillow muffles his words.

“You don’t look it. You look like when you or mom sends us back to bed because we didn’t sleep enough and are cranky.”

Treville pushes himself up, feeling his body protest the movement. He leans against the back of the couch, closing his eyes to ease the growing ache behind them. Tim climbs up on the couch next to him.

“I’m just tired, Tim. It’s been a long week. Where’s your brother?”

“Watching cartoons. You’ve had a lot of long weeks.”

Treville shouldn’t be surprised. Tim is six going on seven and more observant than he expects.

“Yes, a lot of long weeks and little sleep.”

“Will you find him?”

“I hope so but right now, we need to get ready for a party.” Treville tries to stand but finds himself back on the couch as his head spins.

“Do you want me to get mom?”

“Um…” Treville works to gather himself. “No, mom’s sick and needs her rest.”

“You’re sick, too.”

“Just a little headache and dizziness. Do you mind grabbing me a juice bottle from the fridge? I don’t care what flavor.”

As Tim goes off to get the drink, Treville stretches out on the couch but forces himself not to lay down. He just needs a moment’s rest and something to drink. Something to sort out the dizziness. He’d like some ibuprofen for the headache, but the bottle’s put away in the cupboard and he doesn’t want Tim to go rummaging for it. He thanks Tim for the juice when he comes back with it and slowly drinks. Halfway through, he sets it aside to close his eyes. The headache is pounding and he needs to get rid of it.

Then he’s slowly opening his eyes, blinking as he comes back to awareness.

“How’re you feeling, Captain,” Porthos asks.

“Huh?” Treville tries to sit up but a firm hand keeps him stretched out on the couch.

“You fell asleep. Tim called and said you and Sarah were sick,” Athos says. He’s standing down by Treville’s feet, which are covered with a blanket.

“The party.” Treville starts again, this time succeeding in pushing off Porthos’ hand, though he overbalances in the movement and would’ve toppled over if not for Athos’ quick movement.

“Is all set up for. People should start coming in about half an hour. We thought you’d like some time to get cleaned up,” Porthos says.

Treville sighs. “Thanks. I was supposed to do it, but I was just too tired to do anything. I messed up. Failed him.”

“Ben’s been having a ball helping to set things up. He knows you’re not feeling good but he’s not upset.”

“No, you don’t understand. It’s the one rule. They have to come first, over him. Over Aramis.”

“Easier said than done,” Athos says. It’s not absolution but an understanding. “Look, Ben is happy. He was overjoyed to see us come to help set up. It’s one time and no reason to beat yourself up over it. It’s not going to do any good.”

Treville nods. He’s not ready to forgive himself but he does hear the reasoning.

“Seriously, though, Captain,” Porthos says. “You have to stop this. I don’t know who this Aramis is, but it’s clear that he means a lot to you. Everyone’s looking for him when they go out, but in this city, it’s worse than a needle in a haystack.”

“I’m going to find him.”

“You don’t even have a clue where he is. He might’ve gone elsewhere and you’re beating yourself up over nothing, running yourself ragged for a man who’s far from here.” Porthos refrains from what he feels is the truth: Aramis is dead. From what he understood, the man was in no shape to be out alone, mentally or physically. Topped off with the weight of the OTH discharge and being responsible for a massacre, which Treville flat out denied Aramis could have been, and the man probably met an untimely end but was at least out of his misery.

“I know that no one believes me. I know that,” Treville says. “But you don’t know Aramis like I do. The man is a fighter and a creature of habit. He’s around here somewhere and he needs help. My help. I promised his parents I’d look after him as though he were my own.”

Treville pauses, leaning back into the couch to gather his thoughts. He’s grateful to these two men for coming over and helping. They didn’t have to on their day off. Both, however, have become senior officers and trusted members of the task force. More than that, they’ve become good friends of his family.

“You’re right though,” he concedes finally. “I have to stop this. I don’t know how, but somehow because Ben and Tim shouldn’t have to deal with this. Tim shouldn’t have had to call you two and you two shouldn’t’ve had to come do the work I should’ve been doing. Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

“Jean?” He hears Sarah call out for him. “Where are you?”

“In the den,” he calls back.

“What are you doing in here? Hi Porthos, Athos,” she says walking through the doorway.

“I fell asleep, I guess. I wasn’t feeling good this morning. You feeling better?”

“Yes, but it’s not going to last for long.”

“Huh?”

“Ben’s going to be a big brother,” she says.

“You’re…”

She nods. “Number three. I had a hunch this morning and decided to find out. How’re you feeling about it? The timing’s not the best.”

“Perhaps not, but welcome news still. Ben’s going to be so happy to have a little brother or sister to play with and teach like Tim does with him.”

“Both of them will be but what about you, Jean? You haven’t said how you feel about it.”

“Come on, Athos. We should probably leave,” Porthos says.

“No, you two are fine.” Treville stands and goes over to hug his wife. “I’m happy, elated for another child. I’m tired though. My focus hasn’t been where it should but it will be. I promise.”

“I don’t expect you to give up on Aramis. And I believe you. Okay?”

Treville nods. “Thank you.”

“Now, you should probably go get cleaned up while Porthos, Athos, and me work on getting the last things together.”

“When do you want to tell them,” Treville asks.

“In a couple days. Let’s let Ben have his day. Now, go get ready so we can get the party started.”

#bbc the musketeers #fan fiction #treville #athos #porthos #ocs #windy city musketeers #modernAU #emotional whump #whumptober

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years ago

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try to wrap your head around this

All About Your Head! 1. How often do you get headaches? Have you ever experienced migraines? Do you take anything in order to get rid of your headaches? Are there any natural remedies that you have tried and recommend? I get a few a month. Back in high school I used to get tension headaches quite often, which was awful. No, I’ve never experienced migraines. Unfortunately, I can’t take anything for my headaches because 1. I can’t take aspirin. 2. Stuff like Ibuprofen or Aleve don’t do shit for my headaches. 3. Tylenol doesn’t either and I can’t take it anyway because it has acetaminophen, which the pain medication I take regularly also has and too much of that can be damaging for your liver. So, all I can really do is ride them out but a cold washcloth over my eyes does help. And sleep. Peppermint or chamomile tea can help a little sometimes a well. 2. Do you feel as though you have a good head on your shoulders? Not the past few years. I’ve been a complete mess. I don’t know where my head has been. 3. Are you the type of person who overthinks and overanalyzes? Ohhhh yes. 4. Are you a daydreamer? Do you often get lost in your own thoughts and zone out a lot? Yeah. Especially at night. 5. Do you feel as though you have a good memory, or are you forgetful at times? Do you feel that your short-term memory or long-term memory is better? I think my memory is pretty good. I would probably say my long-term is better. I sometimes forget what I wore or watched on TV recently, but I dwell on shit from several years ago.

6. Have you ever had a concussion or some other sort of brain injury before? Did you need to have surgery for it? No. 7. Would you say that you are more book-smart or more street-smart? Do you have a lot of common sense? Book smart, I guess. 8. Do you have any sort of mental illnesses or disorders? What do they involve? I have major depression and anxiety that I know of for sure and have been diagnosed with. 9. What color is your hair, naturally? Have you ever dyed it before? My hair is naturally dark brown, but I dye it red. 10. What’s the longest that your hair has ever been? How about the shortest? When is the last time that you got it cut? It’s currently the longest, it goes down past my butt. The shortest was when I had a “bob” cut. I got a trim last February. 11. Have you ever tried to count all of the hairs on your head before? Uh, no. 12. At what age did you start getting gray hairs, if you happen to have any? I swear it was the exact moment I turned 30. 13. Would you ever shave your head for any specific reason? Only if I had to for medical reasons. 14. What are some ways that you style your hair? Do you use any sorts of products in it? All I do is throw it up in a messy bun. I have all this hair and do absolutely nothing with it because I don’t have the motivation or energy to. It would be a lot easier to manage if I just cut it short again, but it took so long to get it this length and part of me still can’t help but think maybe one day I’ll get my shit together and I’ll want to have my long hair if it happens. Sigh. 15. What other words do you typically use in order to describe your head? (ie: brain, skull, noggin, noodle, think-boxer, etc) I usually just say “head”, but I’ve also said each of those except for “think-boxer.” 16. Do you ever experience brain freeze? If so, how long does it typically last for? I haven’t in quite a long time because I don’t drink cold drinks anymore. Whenever it has happened, though, I don’t recall it lasting very long. 17. When is the last time that you felt light-headed? Have you ever passed out before? I’ve felt that way recently. I think I may have vertigo. :/ No, I’ve never passed out before. 18. Do you feel that you are more of a right-brained person or a left-brained person? I guess left-brained. Not good with numbers, though. 19. Do you feel that you are smart? In what ways? In what ways do you feel dumb, if at all? I feel I’m just very average. 20. Are you capable of doing a headstand? For How long? Nope. 21. When’s the last time you felt like banging your head against a wall? Why? I get in irritable, frustrated moods quite often. 22. Have you ever bit someone’s head off before? When was the last time? Haha my dumbass took this literally and I was like wtf kind of question is this??? As though it’s normal to go around biting people’s head off or something lmao. I get the expression now. Anyway, I don’t lash out or yell at people. I can get short and snippy, but I don’t yell. 23. When was the last time you buried your head in the sand? The past few years, really. 24. When a coin is being flipped, do you usually pick “heads” or “tails”? Heads. 25. Have you ever fallen head over heels in love? I sure felt that way. 26. When was the last time you couldn’t make heads or tails of something? I can’t make sense of myself or some of the things I’ve been dealing with. 27. Have you ever had to drum something into someone’s head? Yeah. 28. Have you ever dressed from head to toe in only one color? Yeah. 29. Are you the type of person who likes to get a head start on things? I’m a major procrastinator, unfortunately. 30. Are you good at solving puzzles and riddles? Ehh, depends. 31. Are you capable of keeping your head above water? I’ve been drowning. 32. Have you ever given someone a head start in a race before? Has anyone ever give you a head start? Yes and yes. 33. Who was the last person that you weren’t able to get out of your head? It’s been awhile since I’ve experienced that.

34. When was the last time that someone went over your head? There’s stuff that goes over my head sometimes, at least initially and then I’m like, “Ohhh I got it.” 35. When was the last time you headed someone off? I don’t recall. 36. Have you ever given head before? How about received? No and no. 37. Has anyone ever told you that you “hit the nail right on the head”? Yes. 38. When was the last time that you felt like you were in over your head? I’ve felt that way for a long time. 39. Do you feel like your life is headed in the right direction? If not, what can you do to change all of that? No. I’ve felt really lost and unsure these past few years. 40. What was the last thing that you lost your head about? Upset and frustrated about stuff I was dealing with. 41. Do you wear any headbands or bandanas on your head? No. 42. What are your favorite types of hats to wear, if any? Beanies or baseball style caps. 43. Has anyone ever accused you of having a big head before? No. I’m not arrogant or cocky or anything of that sort. I’m certainly not full of myself. 44. Have you ever had to take a head count of people before? For what reason? Yeah, different reasons. 45. Have you ever been headbutted before? I’ve bumped heads (literally) and yeah it’s not fun. Ow. 46. Have you ever had head lice before? When I was a kid. 47. Do you think that it would be interesting be able to read the thoughts of others? Yeah, sometimes. I’d want the ability to be able to turn it on and off, though. 48. Do you ever act on impulse, without thinking? How often? I’m more hesitant and think about stuff first. 49. When was the last time that you experienced a head cold? It’s been a long time. 50. Who is the head of your household? My parents? 51. Have you ever gone down a slide or a flight of stairs head first before? No. 52. Can you be pig-headed or bull-headed at times? I am very stubborn. 53. Do you have an attached or flexible showerhead? I do. 54. Do you often wake up with a bad case of bed head? It’s not too bad. 55. Are you capable of giving answers off the top of your head? I’m the worst. I know I’d absolutely freeze up if I were ever on a game show. I’d suddenly forget everything I ever knew. I’m not good with being put on the spot. 56. When was the last time you experienced a head rush of some sort? I’m not sure. 57. Do you own any bobbleheads? Of who? Yeah, a Chewbacca one. 58. Are you the type of person who plays head games? No. Ugh, I can’t stand that. I’ve known people who do that. 59. Are you an emotional headcase? Yes. 60. When was the last time you laughed your head off? It’s been a long time since I’ve had a really good laugh like that. 61. What was the last thing you had to try to wrap your head around? 2020 was pretty difficult. 62. Do you believe the saying that “two heads are better than one”? Yeah. It can certainly be helpful to have two people thinking and working together to come up with ideas and whatnot. 63. When was the last time you tried to keep your head down? Whenever I go out, I guess. I’m just like ew don’t look at me. 64. What was the last thing that you gave someone a heads up about? I don’t remember. 65. When was the last time you believed something but in reality, it was all just in your head? Hmm. 66. Who is the last person you butted heads with, and why? My dad. We’re a lot alike and we sometimes end up butting heads. 67. Have you ever been called a bonehead before? By who? I don’t think so. 68. Do you have a few screws loose up there in your head? Is there a light in the window but nobody’s home? It sure feels that way. 69. Do you make decisions more with your head or your heart? It depends, but my emotions definitely get the best of me a lot of the time. 70. What are some techniques that you use in order to clear your head? I’m definitely not the one to ask about that. I could use some tips. 71. Do you know anyone who’s a real hot head? Who? Yes. 72. Have you ever had a gun held t your head before, or felt that way? I’ve felt that way, but no I’ve never actually been held at gunpoint. 73. Have you ever had your head examined/scanned by a medical professional before? If so, what sorts of tests were done? No. 74. How often do you walk around with your head in the clouds? My mind does drift and wander a lot. 75. Is your head just filled with all sorts of useless knowledge? My mind is a jumbled mess. 76. Do you worry a lot or have anxiety at all? Yeppp. 77. Have you ever had suicidal thoughts before? Have you ever acted on them before? Yes, but no I’ve never acted on them. 78. Have you eyes ever felt like they were going to pop out of your head? I don’t think so. 79. Who’s head would you like to see on a platter? Uhh, I’m good. 80. When was the last time a lightbulb went off in your head? What was the realization about? Hmm. 81. Is there anything you feel like you could do, standing on your head? No. 82. When’s the last time you put your head in the lion’s mouth? I don’t tend to deliberately place myself in dangerous situations. 83. Where are you headed off to now? I should probably finally drag myself outta bed now... it’s almost 5PM.

[ohsh1t2wksl8]

#personal #text #survey #surveys #head survey

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allenmendezsr · 4 years ago

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New! Proven Lupus Treatment By Dr Gary Levin M.d

New Post has been published on https://autotraffixpro.app/allenmendezsr/new-proven-lupus-treatment-by-dr-gary-levin-m-d/

New! Proven Lupus Treatment By Dr Gary Levin M.d

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The inside story on Dr. Gary M. Levin’s remarkable Lupus Total Symptom Elimination. There is Hope! “Read on to discover what really causes your Lupus!”

Lupus is one of the most debilitating and discouraging conditions anyone can have. Waking up day after day with joint sores, knowing you are stricken with Lupus that may gradually drag you, a healthy young person, towards chronic illness like rheumatoid arthritis. Suddenly you no longer expect to enjoy many of life’s greatest experiences.

You probably don’t remember that day, the day you had your first joint pain and chose to ignore it thinking it would just go away. But later on, more joints started to feel sore and swelling and a rash began to appear. You felt fatigued and knew things were starting to get out of control. Then the day came when you heard your doctor speak the word “Lupus.”

You may have felt sadness, desperation, even panic… knowing full well your life would never be the same again. That time can be almost as difficult for your family and close friends as it is for you. I know, you suffer month after month and find you are losing hope of ever getting better.

That’s a very sad place for anyone to be. I know. I’ve been seeing patients for over 40 years.

My name is Dr. Gary M. Levin and I’m a retired M.D. and Surgeon in the U.S. For more than forty years, I took great pride in running my own clinic, as well as teaching and supervising resident doctors at a facility at Loma Linda Univ School of Medicine. I completely understand how incredibly scary, painful and discouraging Lupus symptoms are for millions of people just like you.

I have felt the pain of so many patients and their families. You take medications that may reduce asymptomatic acute attacks but they just don’t work when it comes to fully treating your Lupus condition.

It’s like your body is fighting an all-out war with a dangerous intruder that doesn’t exist. Your doctor may be putting on a brave face, but the truth is many physicians are just as frustrated as you are. They try every known cure, treatment and medically accepted idea — yet NOTHING really works because the real symptoms of Lupus are not treated!

How Dr. Gary M. Levin, M.D. Discovered a Natural EFFECTIVE Treatment for Lupus

In 1998, I had a heart ailment which required surgical intervention. While recovering in cardiac rehabilitation, I had the unexpected opportunity to work with a colleague who practiced allopathic and alternative medicine. I was very impressed with what I saw.

Having been trained in the sciences, I decided to dive deep into this approach, serve a two-year preceptorship and actually test natural remedies and alternative treatments for diseases.

It was here that I discovered powerful breakthroughs that would have profound impacts for Lupus patients. Here was the highly effective KEY to slowing deterioration, preventing attacks, and promoting regeneration.

The access that the public has to study archives and the ability to learn, understand and draw conclusions out of them is VERY limited (mainly because of the medical talk) not to mention getting updated with new ones and to know how to distinguish them. I can tell you there’s a lot of misinformation out there, which is the reason I use and teach ONLY TESTED and PROVEN methods based on serious, long term CLINICAL studies that I was able to verify myself. I wouldn’t risk doing anything else.

The healing process is carried out through a simple step-by-step method that rehabilitates your immune system and boosts your supporting body systems to rid it of all Lupus symptoms, the joint pains and swelling etc. PLUS re-energizes and purifies your body for maximum health.

To make a long story short – I have a natural method for reversing Lupus!

It is all natural which means it cannot be registered as a patent thus it cannot be marketed using the regular channels (drug industry-pharmacies etc.).

So, I am giving you the result of my own research, trial and error in one handy place with step-by-step instructions to help you reverse your lupus.

What are the results of my method?

Patient after patient left their years of Multiple Sclerosis symptoms behind, saying they are completely symptom-free. Others show a dramatic improvement. Even more exciting, to see how they are getting their old lives back. These FORMER Multiple Sclerosis patients have bright smiles, upbeat energy and even brighter futures — this time without having to worry and stress about the scary symptoms reoccurring because they followed the instructions I gave them.

You will see my patients’ video stories all over this page. They ARE actors because I understand people’s feelings and feel uncomfortable asking them to reveal their details in public. but what they say is coming from what REAL people are saying. These people from all over and from many different backgrounds tell — in their own words — exactly how my Treatment System eliminated the symptoms of their Lupus. Rather than resigning themselves to a shortened life of misery and pain, and little to look forward to, my patients now feel younger, have more energy and suddenly feel confident in setting exciting and ambitious goals for a long life.

Please keep in mind I will NEVER promote a fly-by-night miracle cure. I am a medical doctor with a lifetime of work in a traditional medical practice. I am not about to hang my reputation on magic pills or whatever else you see promoted on the Internet these days.

Download YOUR copy of the Lupus Step-By-Step Treatment System TODAY. This will include a Quick Start Guide PLUS an audio version of the Treatment System for JUST $47.99

Click Here, for limited time only $99.97 $47.99 My 100% No-Risk Guarantee to YOU: I realize you just met me and you may be a little hesitant to order. I don’t want anyone to continue suffering because they don’t feel comfortable ordering and that is why we chose Clickbank.com for handling the payments.

Buying online securely: They provide the highest level of online payment encryption and security and they are the #1 payment processor for downloadable products worldwide. In addition, Clickbank’s order form is secured, and constantly monitored, by McAfee & VeriSign. Payment can be done using PayPal or credit card. The order form is compatible with all mobile systems.

100% iron-clad, 2 month, No questions asked refund guarantee: Clickbank also takes the matter of customer refunds totally out of our hands. We don’t even get the money before the refund period ends. This means that for ANY reason, you can go directly to Clickbank.com to get a full refund. You won’t even need to contact us.

You literally have no risk. Let’s see a pharmacy or doctor top that! So please give my proven method a try. You’ll feel better for it. Yes, I want to finally get rid of my Lupus. Let me in!

What REALLY Causes Lupus?

We all know that Lupus is a chronic, autoimmune disease that can damage any part of the body (skin, joints, and/or organs inside the body). Normally our immune system should produce antibodies that protect the body from “invaders” (viruses, bacteria, and germs). “Autoimmune” means your immune system cannot tell the difference between foreign invaders and your body’s healthy tissues and creates antibodies that attack and destroy those healthy tissues in your body. These antibodies cause inflammation, pain and damage in various parts of your body.

Well, this may sound unusual, but if you think about it again you will come to the same conclusion as I did: “Lupus is just another symptom of the REAL disease you have”

So what is the real disease you suffer from?

Well, the simple answer is that you have an overactive immune system disease. Your immune system “freaks out” when it meets your joints and other healthy tissues and attacks them. The fact that you are diagnosed with Lupus is just because your immune system reacts in such a way as to create the Lupus symptoms. But you DON’T actually having the “Lupus” disease. You have an overactive or blinded immune system disease! What does this mean? This means you should be dealing with the REAL problem: Your “overactive immune system” is the problem we need to deal with. Taking drugs to kill the symptoms may temporarily help but they are NOT the real solution.

I used to give my patients Aspirin, Acetaminophen, known to most people as Tylenol®, NSAIDs like Ibuprofen (Motrin®), Naproxen (Naprosyn®), Indomethacin (Indocin®), Courses of steroid injections and Antimalarials, etc. but they offered no REAL help. They may have eased the symptoms but this is not the real solution and nobody claims it is.

The sad truth is that the strong toxic effect of all these drugs gradually poisons the whole body, which at the end of the day, only makes Lupus attacks and permanent damage worse!

How can we heal an overactive immune system?

The healing process is done by using a simple step-by-step method that rehabilitates your immune system and boosts supporting body systems to get rid of all symptoms (and types) of Lupus PLUS it re-energizes and purifies your body for maximum health.

In my step-by-step Treatment System, you’ll learn how my Directed Nutrition™ method plus a special vitamin regimen will significantly reduce your symptoms and eventually completely rid you of your current condition.

A lot of regular medications are based on medical herbs and combinations of extracted foods we eat everyday (I know of more then a 100) like the diuretic medications “Theobromine” & “Theophylline” that are made from cacao or the capillary fragility medications “Hesperidin” & “Rutin” that are made from a combination of citrus species and the famous medication “Codeine” (for general pain, cough and diarrhea relief) that is made from papaver and the list goes on and on… so there is no real reason that using my method will not do a great job healing you from your Lupus.

I followed this basic principle of pharmacology to find life-giving plants and herbs that could be the basis for reversing Lupus. This would not only give patients comfort and new hope, but give their bodies a way to build strength and coordination and promote a far stronger immune system.

How long will it take to achieve noticeable results?

It depends. The treatment protocol is built on layers of strategies for creating the healing process in your body. Each layer is aimed at one angle of the disease and since not everyone’s body is made the same and Lupus is a disease caused by several factors, some people respond quickly to the first strategies and some to the later ones. Therefore, it may take a few short weeks to several months to see major improvement.

What type of Lupus do you have?

MY method treats ALL types including: systemic lupus erythematosus, discoid lupus erythematosus and drug-induced lupus erythematosus.

Can I promise this method will cure your Lupus 100%?

Of course not. Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. I KNOW my findings will help a lot of Lupus sufferers but I still cannot claim a 100% success rate. Why? In spite of the fact that natural medicine has a huge success rate as a whole and can solve problems that some conventional medicine cannot, it is not an exact science by medical definition.

Natural and alternative medicine works on the WHOLE body. It deals with “system healing”– not specific disease healing, which is why you can never find one exact formula fit to heal each and every person.

You have to understand that every human being has a different body, different blood type, different blood flow and different metabolism. Because each and every one of us eats different foods, we have different rates of digestion. Even our souls and spirits are different. All these variables influence the way the systems in our body work so the way we react to alternative methods cannot be predicted with the same accuracy as with conventional medicine. This is why alternative methods cannot be proven and tested at the same EXACT level as conventional treatments are tested.

This is true for each and EVERY alternative treatment on earth.

BUT…

When you find an alternative method that actually helps you, it will work better than any other conventional treatment.

Why?

You have to understand that we are not made of a combination of separate chemical “dots.” We are made out of a variety of different organic living systems that work in a marvelous synergy and that’s exactly what my methods are aimed at. We heal systems and don’t just try to silence symptoms by taking drugs to make chemical changes in the specific “dots” that trigger the symptoms. Since they deal with systems, dangerous side effects can occur when you change something in a complex system.

If someone led you to believe that side effects are “just side effects,” please note that they KILL more than 106,000 people in the US alone every year. Not to mention the 2 million that get sick enough to be forced to go to the hospital every year (RE1,RE2) (9% have been seriously harmed plus 54% need intervention(RE3) in the US alone every year.) Then there are all the people who just feel bad as a result of taking drugs but whose new symptoms are never identified or recorded.

Let’s look at the figures another way.

What is more likely – that you would die in a traffic accident or as the result of a visit to your doctor?

This would be funny if it wasn’t true. The correct answer is visiting your doctor! Traffic accidents cause 43,354 deaths every year in the US (RE4) as opposed to 106,000 that die from ADRs (adverse drug reaction) every year. (RE1,RE2)

Hard to believe? That’s right, I myself can’t comprehend it but numbers don’t lie. Today ADRs are the third leading cause of death!

The danger of passive smoking or illegal drugs is frequently aired in heath campaigns and outraged newspaper editorials, but ADRs – which exact a far greater toll of misery – very rarely trigger the same level of indignation.

If you were to ask most doctors about ADRs, they would give you one of the answers I used to give: The risks of any one person having a problem is pretty small or if a medication doesn’t have any side effect, it’s almost certainly not effective. Some would even say that thanks to a system of proper scientific trials and regulations, modern medicine by and large successfully balances the risks of drugs against undoubted benefits they offer.

Since I (and all my colleagues) were trained by the pharmaceutical model, I truly believed in it, despite the fact I just felt that most of my skills come from juggling a range of drugs for a particular problem so the patients suffer the fewest side effects, or knowing which drugs best alleviate the ADRs caused by the first drug…

With that approach, no wonder some of us, as doctors, feel as frustrated as our patients.

Just watch commercials on TV for mainstream drugs and you’ll see long, terrifying disclaimers about side effects. There is hardly a drug out there that doesn’t lead to shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing and sometimes death… and that’s just scraping the surface.

The beauty of ALL NATURAL treatments is that there are NO Side Effects. You won’t see a side effect disclaimer associated with my Lupus treatment because it WILL NOT make anyone sick. All Natural means you save money on costly prescription drugs and you avoid harsh side effects, all while receiving improved benefits fighting Lupus.

Remember this; alternative methods listen to your body and help heal itself from inside. They don’t have side effects because they deal with system healing and they use the original materials the body is built from.

With that said, I can say with confidence that you can have a future WITHOUT Lupus. A Lupus-free life is not an impossible dream. It can happen. My patients are living proof and so are the thousands of people who bought my ebook and successfully used this method!

Too good to be true? That’s what a few people who have visited my site have told me. I realize that it sounds a lot like the “get your body in sync with the universe” cures that are all over the Net. But before we throw the baby out with the bath water, please realize that there is a grain of truth here. Many chronic conditions can be cured or greatly improved with correct nutrition (which can VARY tremendously from one person to the next.)

As I said a lot of regular medications are based on medical herbs and combinations of extracted foods we eat everyday (I know of more then a 100) like the diuretic medications “Theobromine” & “Theophylline” that are made from cacao or the capillary fragility medications “Hesperidin” & “Rutin” that are made from a combination of citrus species and the famous medication “Codeine” (for general pain, cough and diarrhea relief) that is made from papaver and the list goes on and on… so there is no real reason that using my method will not do a great job healing you from your Lupus.

It’s not as simple as adding carrots and berries to your diet. I use a step-by-step Treatment System that is based on a deep knowledge of the human body and my personal research. Although I’ve retired and closed my clinic, my method for treating Lupus will go on just as strong as ever. I no longer meet with patients personally, but I am determined to continue to enable Lupus patients all over the world to play a successful, proactive role in their own Lupus treatment and symptom elimination by guiding them in the proper implementation of the practices that have proven successful time and time again for so many patients.

So I’ve written down my complete Method for Treating and Eliminating the Symptoms of Lupus in an EASY TO UNDERSTAND E-Book. You will never need to buy anything else from me to make this method work. You can download it and be reading within seconds.

There is no medical speak in my e-book. I keep it simple and easy-to-grasp just like I’m talking with one of my patients. You will learn how to pull your body’s chemical processes in line with a simple vitamin regimen and a nutrition method I found that works better than all the Lupus medicines combined and is available everywhere.

No more worrying about taking pills and/or injections on a daily basis or using other costly chemicals to take your Lupus away.

Download YOUR copy of my Lupus Step-By-Step Treatment System TODAY & I will include My Quick Start Guide and an audio version of my Treatment System for JUST $47.99 Download your copy NOW and let me help YOU on your way to recovery. You owe it to your family and your future. But mostly you owe a Lupus-FREE life to yourself. You deserve it.

You literally have no risk. Let’s see a pharmacy or doctor top that! So please give my proven method a try. You’ll feel better for it. Yes, I want to finally get rid of my Lupus. Let me in!

Hey, you don’t have to listen to me. Just read and watch the testimonials for yourself. As I said above, since I don’t feel comfortable asking people to reveal their details in public, I used actors. What they say is coming from what REAL people are saying.

Download YOUR copy of my Lupus Step-By-Step Treatment System TODAY & I will include My Quick Start Guide and an audio version of my Treatment System for JUST $47.99

Download your copy NOW and let me help YOU on your way to recovery. You owe it to your family and your future. But mostly you owe a Lupus-FREE life to yourself. You deserve it.

You literally have no risk. Let’s see a pharmacy or doctor top that! So please give my proven method a try. You’ll feel better for it. Yes, I want to finally get rid of my Lupus. Let me in!

Bonus 1

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Everything you need to know about guided relaxation is included in this special ebook ($27.99 value.):

Tools for relaxation. How guided relaxation can help you. How stress affects you. Yoga guide! Restful sleeping with guided relaxation. Imagery guided relaxation.

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How worried you, as a parent, should be about your teen’s weight.

How your teen’s self esteem is affected and how you can help.

You’ll also receive an audio recording of the entire guide. Because you’re busy, I know you might not have time to sit down and read this guide all at once. To make it easier on you, you can now listen to this recording in your car, on the way to work or on your iPod to take wherever you go.

Bonus 4

Your Guide to Healthy Eating

This is the ebook that will end the yo-yo diet nightmare once and for all and turn your weight loss and fitness dreaLupus into reality! You’ll learn how to: · Lose weight. · Improve your health. · Send your energy skyrocketing. · Stop your junk food cravings. · Think more clearly. · Sleep better. · Be far more productive in life! · Actual value $27.99.

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Explains:

What metabolism really is and how to program it to help you lose weight fast.

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The secret to burning more calories while sitting around doing nothing!

Why most people are wrong about calories.

The secret to eating more and losing weight.

Why getting just the right amount of sleep can help your metabolism grow strong, plus 6 tricks for getting to sleep on time!

The truth about carbohydrates.

Download YOUR copy of my Lupus Step-By-Step Treatment System TODAY & I will include My Quick Start Guide and an audio version of my Treatment System for JUST $47.99

Download your copy NOW and let me help YOU on your way to recovery. You owe it to your family and your future. But mostly you owe a Lupus-FREE life to yourself. You deserve it. Yes, I want to finally get rid of my Lupus. Let me in! Click Here, for limited time only $99.97 $47.99

Yours,

Dr. Gary M Levin M.D.

10686-B Hazelhurst Dr. # 7693 Houston, TX 77043 USA Phone number: 1-713-866-4099

P.S.

Just a reminder:

This method is fully natural, simple and risk free. Anyone can use it.

I am here to help and support you until you succeed and completely get rid of your Lupus.

The download is instant and you can start putting my treatment system to work for you in just 5 minutes.

Your purchase is fully protected for 60 days by both Clickbank and myself.

Yes, I want to finally get rid of my Lupus condition. Let me in!

0 notes

weirdo-with-a-nametag · 5 years ago

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1. Who was the last person you held hands with? Me. Just now, to spite you.

2. Are you outgoing or shy? I’m loud, and friendly, but terrified. Sometimes I go out of my way to socialize with a lot of people, and sometimes I try to be as unnoticeable as possible. It takes a lot out of me, but it seems necessary to be social.

3. Who are you looking forward to seeing? My best friend, my sisters, my dad

4. Are you easy to get along with? I’ve been told I am by reputable sources

5. If you were drunk would the person you like take care of you? I have a pact that my best friend and I are to get drunk together one of these days, and he’s nice so he would care, but knowing myself I’ll probably be the one taking care of him, or I’d just pass out on the floor and he’d go sleep

6. What kind of people are you attracted to? nah

7. Do you think you’ll be in a relationship two months from now? nah

8. Who from the opposite gender is on your mind? what opposite?

9. Does talking about sex make you uncomfortable? not really? I mean, wait, my approach to talking about sex is somewhat clinical. If other people talk about it in other ways, I can get really uncomfortable really fast. That’s part of what I mean by “sex-averse.” If someone’s talking about sex including me, I freak a little.

10. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? mm, probably my dad. We talked things out a few days after I moved out, which was recent.

11. What does the most recent text that you sent say? it says, “Who?”

12. What are your 5 favorite songs right now? I am So Bad at favorites. No, thank you, today.

13. Do you like it when people play with your hair? Some people, if I know they’re going to, for sure.

14. Do you believe in luck and miracles? Yeah. The world would be less interesting to me without luck.

15. What good thing happened this summer? I got an Infinity Cube (and proceeded to mess with it nonstop fr so long that I had to hide it for the next week until my hand stopped hurting), and I made several thousand dollars for my savings.

16. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again? The last person would be my little sister’s goodbye kiss. Absolutely, I love her.

17. Do you think there is life on other planets? Of course.

18. Do you still talk to your first crush? who?

19. Do you like bubble baths? bubble baths are nice in concept. I always end up hurting my back by lying in bathtubs, though.

20. Do you like your neighbors? My neighbors hate my family. But me, personally... I’ve never been anything but nice to them, and I think we’re on okay terms. We don’t interact much.

21. What are you bad habits? I bite my nails, ignore my “eat food” alarms, stay up until after sunrise for NO REASON I cannot go to sleep, I get kinda snippy if my mom starts a conversation we’ve already had, use wrappers as coasters instead of throwing my trash away, and rarely stick with something long enough to make anything of it. I have a 95% assembled 3D printer sitting in my room. It’s been at that point for 8 months at least.

22. Where would you like to travel? Oh, yes, I want to learn languages and see the wildlife and touch the water and lay in snow outside of Oregon. Please.

23. Do you have trust issues? Doesn’t everyone? I recently figured out another level to mine, though. Fun!

24. Favorite part of your daily routine? putting on tea water and music while I do the dishes

25. What part of your body are you most uncomfortable with? Check the dysphoria for that one. But runner-ups: it’s really uncomfortable to feel my skin-on-skin when I bend my torso too far, fat rolls are a bad sensory experience for me. Amy oily or overly dry skin is distracting, and my ears always feel like they need to be popped.

26. What do you do when you wake up? During quarantine it’s been go back to sleep, eventually turn on some tv, wait for my housemate to get up .

28. Who are you most comfortable around? mm, my two closest friends, or my housemate.

29. Have any of your ex’s told you they regret breaking up? Have one ex, who asked me something that smelled like it was leading toward “do you want to get back together?” recently. But I don’t think either of us regret breaking up, when we did. It was the right choice.

30. Do you ever want to get married? Eh, how are the tax benefits? I wouldn’t mind, but I have a hard time believing it’d be because we fell in love, and it’s also terribly restricting. I’d honestly rather have a household of 4, a big poly qpr specifically, so I’m not lonely and I can put my love somewhere, and we can support each other. That sounds great.

31. If your hair long enough for a pony tail? mhm

33. Spell your name with your chin. l,kianaz --I did that twice and it’s identical

34. Do you play sports? What sports? Nah. If you count climbing, then yes, but not competitively. I played ultimate frizbee for a bit? And I like playing hockey.

35. Would you rather live without TV or music? TV. No question. Music is the foundation of the machine that pulls me through my day-to-day. That sounds dramatic, but a more precise explanation would be annoyingly long. Someone gets it.

36. Have you ever liked someone and never told them? mm, I “like” my best friend in some kinda way, but I’m sure he knows my feeling as well as I do. (still not very well, but the point here is that I’m an open book and we’re close)

37. What do you say during awkward silences? I either don’t register them at all, or I do and immediately divert to some mental or physical activity. Usually blurt out a random thing on my mind, change the subject, or... throw something. Sometimes I throw things at people I want to talk to. Not sure how to explain that one.

38. Describe your dream girl/guy? ?

39. What are your favorite stores to shop in? Clothes shopping is exhausting, what with the endless textures and noises and flourescent lights and linoleum floors and I come out of it with one (1) acceptable shirt and a feeling like I’ve been sanding the edges off of my brain with a belt sander for the hours I spent in the store. Grocery shopping can be fun, but it’s usually more pain than the food is worth, and I like looking for art supplies - SCRAP here in portland is fun. Oh, and lumber stores or carpet warehouses, if I can get away with climbing.

40. What do you want to do after high school? I want to go to college for physics, graduate and move out of the country for grad school, and end up on a research grant teaching somewhere. On my current trajectory, I’ll probably flunk out next year and go to the Job Corps for Forestry training. Look for a job as a ranger, maybe. Volunteer with rescue crews. Not a bad life at all, but I love learning and I’d feel a bit cut off, I think.

41. Do you believe everyone deserves a second chance? Yeah. People deserve second chances in life, but we need to answer for our actions. And no one has the right to demand a second chance from a person. You don’t “deserve” that. You might get a second chance, if you’re lucky. But it’s luck and kindness and trust, not deserved, that you are responsible for taking care not to break.

42. If your being extremely quiet what does it mean? Probably I’m just thinking, in some way or another. Sometimes I’m keeping myself from running out of the room, sometimes I’m focused on my music, sometimes I’m coming up with something to say

43. Do you smile at strangers? Usually. I try to smile when I make eye contact with people, try and be nice, if I feel safe

44. Trip to outer space or bottom of the ocean? Space is attractive but I think I’d see/discover more with a physical deep sea trip than a physical deep space trip. Faster, certainly.

45. What makes you get out of bed in the morning? Music, usually, or someone yelling, or I need to pee.

46. What are you paranoid about? my actions having a “butterfly effect” and hurting people, every person, every time I interact with them, but the effects seem so small that no one notices. It’s already too late.

47. Have you ever been high? no? I get a weird loopy reaction to Ibuprofen sometimes, but I’ve never been intentionally intoxicated

48. Have you ever been drunk? see above

49. Have you done anything recently that you hope nobody finds out about? I stole some pez? But people know about that. Oh. the answer is yes.

50. What was the colour of the last hoodie you wore? black

51. Ever wished you were someone else? mm, not really. I’ve wished I didn’t exist, but not to be another person who does exist

52. One thing you wish you could change about yourself? If I could trust my sense of right and wrong, that would be nice. But physically? I want wings, big enough to fly with.

54. Favourite store? my favorite tea shop was Townshend’s, but they changed. There’s a kombucha place under my kung fu place that’s good, though.

56. Favourite colour? I usually say cobalt.

57. Favourite food? no idea

58. Last thing you ate? 5-am-midnight-dinner-tacos

59. First thing you ate this morning? I am denying the fact that it is morning.

60. Ever won a competition? For what? I won multiple boat races in my 8th grade shop class. Oh and my robotics team went to state two years in a row

61. Been suspended/expelled? For what? nah. Got detention for something in middle school, and a lot of trouble in elementary school, but no suspensions.

62. Been arrested? For what? .....no

63. Ever been in love? questionable

64. Tell us the story of your first kiss? my what

65. Are you hungry right now? I’m very rarely hungry. Also just ate. No.

66. Do you like your tumblr friends more than your real friends? I have 1 1/2 tumblr friends, none of which I know better than my real-life friends, so my bonds with them are not as strong, no

67. Facebook or Twitter? neither

68. Twitter or Tumblr? tumblr

69. Are you watching tv right now? no

70. Names of your bestfriends? I refuse

71. Craving something? What? sleep

72. What colour are your towels? whatever color is cheapest

72. How many pillows do you sleep with? right now there are five pillows on my bed. Not a personal choice. If given the option, one, maybe two.

73. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? not really

74. How many stuffed animals do you think you have? probably 12, including in storage and display-only

75. Favourite animal? there are too many cool animals. It was the wolverine for a while though

76. What colour is your underwear? blue today

77. Chocolate or Vanilla? usually chocolate. Been on a vanilla kick lately though

78. Favourite ice cream flavour? used to go for mint chocolate chip whenever it was available, but I like cherry, moose tracks, I like most things without marshmallows or cake batter, unless you get really weird.

79. What colour shirt are you wearing? blue.

80. What colour pants? orange, with white dotted plaid striping

81. Favourite tv show? how to pick. I’m rewatching Leverage this week, and the Magicians is visually appealing

82. Favourite movie? uh? It was Treasure planet for several months when I was 7, and I have a deep appreciation for the movie adaptation of Holes, but I don’t know abou favorites right now. The Usual Suspects is good though

83. Mean Girls or Mean Girls 2? I don’t think I’ve watched either

84. Mean Girls or 21 Jump Street? again, no clue

85. Favourite character from Mean Girls? I

86. Favourite character from Finding Nemo? Dory, or the manta ray, or the baby sea turtle

87. First person you talked to today?... my mom? I think

88. Last person you talked to today? my mom

89. Name a person you hate? no

90. Name a person you love? my sisters. both of them.

91. Is there anyone you want to punch in the face right now? god. Let me sleep.

92. In a fight with someone? kind of in a fight with my mom over cleaning? Not much of a fight though.

93. How many sweatpants do you have? three? Maybe more if you expand the definition

94. How many sweaters/hoodies do you have? 3 sweaters, 4-5 hoodies

95. Last movie you watched? Holes

98. Do you tan a lot? I burn in 10 minutes or less, guaranteed, and I don’t really tan no matter what

99. Have any pets? yes! Lots! 4 cats, 3 dogs, 2 snakes. Lovely sweet creatures

100. How are you feeling? vibrate-y

101. Do you type fast? no, I cheated in typing class and now I type with three fingers and a braille keyboard

102. Do you regret anything from your past? most of it

103. Can you spell well? I think so

104. Do you miss anyone from your past? I miss my best (and only) friend from elementary school. We haven’t talked since the summer after 5th grade.

105. Ever been to a bonfire party? I have thrown many bonfire parties, and been to those of others

106. Ever broken someone’s heart? I have no idea. Oh. Maybe a little? But we’re still friends, so I think it’s ok

107. Have you ever been on a horse? yeah, horses are fun

108. What should you be doing? sleeping!

109. Is something irritating you right now? my hip

110. Have you ever liked someone so much it hurt? “liked”? probably not

111. Do you have trust issues? isn’t this on here twice? Yes, I have trust issues.

112. Who was the last person you cried in front of? mm, my dad and a psychologist

113. What was your childhood nickname? I didn’t have one until middle school, and then it was “Lemur” for about a year. Now it’s Murphy

114. Have you ever been out of your province/state? I’ve been everywhere between Oregon and Virginia (drove across to move here), Idaho, California, Indiana, DC, Washington, Texas, Vegas specifically, Florida, Canada, and China.

115. Do you play the Wii? Used to play mariokart with my dad

116. Are you listening to music right now? yeah, right at this moment it’s “Tribulation” by Matt Maeson

117. Do you like chicken noodle soup? I guess. Usually the noodles are disgusting, usually it’s canned, and that’s not good

118. Do you like Chinese food? there are definitely dishes in amaricanized Chinese food that I like, and for sure dishes in authentic Chinese food that I love, so I guess so?

119. Favourite book? Ah. No comment.

120. Are you afraid of the dark? I don’t think so.

121. Are you mean? I think I can be, but everyone outside my family seems to think I’m an angel, so

122. Is cheating ever okay? Listen, if you can’t tell your SO you’re interested in another person and talk through what that means with them, I think you have more important things to do? That said, I have no experience here. From other people talking about it and my general idea of the fallout and trust, no. Don’t.

123. Can you keep white shoes clean? Highly unlikely. I have never tried, or wanted to

124. Do you believe in love at first sight? I don’t even know what love feels like

125. Do you believe in true love? I’m sure whatever it is can be as “true” as you believe it to be

126. Are you currently bored? always

127. What makes you happy? making things, making people happy, seeing beautiful things, and music

128. Would you change your name? I might

129. What your zodiac sign? Cancer

130. Do you like subway? no

131. Your bestfriend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? I ask “what are you looking for in our relationship that is not currently there,” and we move from there. Communication and understanding. This is what happened with me and my (now) ex. We’re closer for having talked through our relationship and breakup, honestly.

132. Who’s the last person you had a deep conversation with? Another repeat? My dad and a psychologist.

133. Favourite lyrics right now? mm, “I want my answers to be questioned” from “Take Me Back” by Kongos because reasons I can’t explain right now. Also a bunch of Lake Ponchartrain by Ludo because I like that song and a bunch of The Mountain Goats but I can’t think sorry

134. Can you count to one million? If I dedicated the time, but why

135. Dumbest lie you ever told? Convinced my neighbor my name was “oop” or something like that? And that my real name was actually my middle name. Completely on impulse. I did convince her, though. 3rd grade me did know what was up, apparently.

136. Do you sleep with your doors open or closed? closed. Windows open, though, it gets way too hot in here

137. How tall are you? 5′5″ish

138. Curly or Straight hair? straight

139. Brunette or Blonde? n/a. Red.

140. Summer or Winter? winter. I overheat and I love snow and ice skating

141. Night or Day? night. Stars and no sunburn or sunlight-headaches

142. Favourite month? no idea

143. Are you a vegetarian? nah

144. Dark, milk or white chocolate? dark

145. Tea or Coffee? tea

146. Was today a good day? today was long

147. Mars or Snickers? snickers, I suppose. I don’t like either of these

148. What’s your favourite quote? I’ve come across several quotes I thought were terribly clever and I wanted to remember, and I remember none of them. Although recently “anything worth doing is worth doing halfway” has been good to me

149. Do you believe in ghosts? can’t think of a reason not to

150. Get the closest book next to you, open it to page 42, what’s the first line on that page? (via catscuddlingandyou) I’ll level. It’s 7:39am, I haven’t slept, and everything hurts, I don’t really want to get out of bed and look for a book for this. I’ll pull up the book I have on my phone, though. “so unnerved was he at the sight that he leaned against the wall with his hand to his throat to stifle his inclination to call out.”

#Good Night.#mine #ask game

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gizmo1022 · 7 years ago

Text

So this is REALLY LONG and PERSONAL and FULL of possible Triggers so read at your own discretion. I just needed to write this out because I’ve been dealing with it for years and...yeah.

My first boyfriend was 24 and I had just turned 18. I was a virgin with stereotypical ideas about a “first time” and was very nervous. He was experienced and pestered me until I gave in, which I did because I thought he wouldn’t want to wait for me and this was my first relationship. I hated it. It was awful, painful, and humiliating. I regretted saying ok the second my clothes were off but I thought I was stuck and couldn't renege because I had no idea how any of this worked. I avoided a second time as much as possible, never saying yes or initiating, but just kinda going with it if he wanted to. I still hated it every time and began to feel incredible self-loathing and disgust. Then I drank alcohol/got drunk for the first time ever at a party. I only remember flashes of that night, but I DO remember he initiated nonconsensual sex with me, HE RAPED ME!, in the back seat of his car. I was under 21 and drunk for the first time, not coherent or responsive at all, and yet that didn’t stop him. Then he bragged about it to all my friends for a week! He kept showing everyone the condom wrapper he kept in the cup holder like it was a trophy and acting like I was ok with all of it. I hated him! Even though I hated him, I felt like I was partially to blame for what happened and I directed a lot of the hate and disgust at myself. I thought I had nobody to talk to because I didn’t understand that I I wasn’t at fault. I thought because he was my boyfriend and because I got drunk, people would say I was at fault. I was also ashamed and couldn’t even tell my parents or brothers etc. I still have never told them. And the most fucked up thing is, I also felt like I couldn’t escape the guy who did this to me because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I HATED him and felt absolute DISGUST every time he touched me or spoke to me, but my fear of confrontation and having someone mad at me kept me from leaving him. Eventually, I did, but it took me outright refusing to be alone with him and acting like a barely functioning zombie before HE realized we had issues and asked me if I wanted to break up. That was MONTHS! It took me months of being miserable and depressed and terrified of being with him until I finally broke up with him and it was only because HE figured out that I wanted out and asked me. I didn't even have the guts to say yes...I just cried and shook my head yes and then waited a half an hour for him to calm down enough to drive me home since I was stranded at his house.

My second boyfriend was worse. It was years before I even thought about dating again and I was so sure that by that point there had to be something wrong with me because no guys seemed to want to talk to me. Of course I was an extreme loner and never bothered to socialize so that probably didn’t help. So when two guys in my campus cafeteria started flirting with me I thought maybe there was hope for me to be normal after all. Maybe my first relationship aside, I would be able to have a healthy bond with someone. But the fear of intimacy remained and I thought maybe what I needed was to stop taking it so seriously. So one of the guys messaged me that night and it was fine at first until he started getting very forward and sexual. Sending me links to weird sexual positions and asking creepy questions. I was uncomfortable and tried to change the subject or stick to one-word answers in the hopes that he’d realize I wasn’t invested in that type of conversation. But I didn’t stop talking to him. I should’ve, and looking back now, I realize it would’ve been so easy and saved me a lot of grief had I just spoke up or told him to fuck off. But I hadn’t had a real friend or anyone to talk to since high school two years ago and I thought maybe this was just how college guys talked. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings because this was the first person that showed even just friendly interest in me, let alone anything else, in a LONG time. So I kept responding albeit halfheartedly.

That’s when he told me all the sex talk, which he was 100% guilty of, was giving him blue balls and I would be a slut and a bitch if I didn’t take responsibility and have sex with him the next day. I was terrified. I was sick to my stomach and so anxious I thought I might just throw up. But I believed him because I didn’t know that wasn’t a real thing. He made it sound like he was gonna get sick if I didn’t take care of his problem. He made me feel dirty and awful and like I owed him just for being his sounding board for a few hours while he went off on a tangent. I thought about just not going to school. Telling my dad I was sick and skipping classes that day. I thought about NEVER going back to the cafeteria and blocking him so I never saw him again. I thought about a lot of things that I should’ve done but didn’t. I was on the verge of tears when my dad dropped me off at school and was so close to saying something to him. In my head, I was begging him to take me back home and hug me and never let me meet with stupid boys again.But in the end, I went.Because I thought of how much I wanted people to like me and be my friends. I was lonely and still fucked up after my first boyfriend. Is spent the whole morning trying to convince myself it was ok, just part of the college experience, lots of people hook up and maybe that’s what I needed to be more normal and accepting of intimacy. People who treated sex more like a casual/fun activity seemed to be happier, right? SO I met him with my mind in panic mode, feeling conflicted and disgusted by myself. He then had a friend, a guy I had never met, drive the two of us to that guy’s apartment. I was so scared and really wanted to back out but by that point, it was impossible because I was stranded in a strange man’s apartment and I had no idea where I even was. And calling my dada at that point was out of the question because I was too ashamed to even admit what was happening. And so started the most awkward, awful sex ever. I once again HATED it. I thought maybe I hated it with my first boyfriend because I wasn’t ready yet or it wasn't what I had imagined, or he wasn’t any good at it. Now I wasn’t sure if I just hated sex in general or if the first time ruined it for me forever. All I knew was I wanted it to end so I can go home and cry myself into oblivion. ANd the whole time, the friend was right outside listening in like a creep. Afterwards, without even discussing it with me, the blueballs douchebag insists we’re dating now, and I just went with it. I CANT BELIEVE I SAID SURE WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME I NEVER WANTED TO SEE HIM AGAIN AND I HATED HIM WHY WOULD I AGREE TP DATE HIM AM I STUPID DO I JUST LIKE PUNISHING MYSELF I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH!!! I agreed because I’m a fuckup that can’t even disappoint people I don’t like, and I was desperate for someone to talk to/friends at school and because I was so disgusted with the idea of having a one-night stand I thought dating him would at least make that better. WORST DECISION OF MY LIFE! OR CLOSE TO IT BECAUSE I FUCKUP A LOT AND WITH EXTREME RESULTS!

My second boyfriend NEVER stopped ever. I was always afraid of being alone with him. I only went to his house if I knew his parents would be there and even then he’d sneak around every chance he got to touch me or make me touch him. I NEVER initiated it. I NEVER asked for it, I NEVER SAID YES!, I NEVER EVER EVER like it or wanted it. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was weird and just would never enjoy or look forward to or want sex at all and that when he started on me, I had to take it because that’s what girlfriends do and I was fucked up in the head and he was the normal one. I THOUGHT ALL OF THAT!! But it wasn’t just once in a while. He was obsessed. He’d drag me into the woods, he’d make us sit in the back of the theater when all I wanted was to watch a damn movie, he sneaks into the bathroom with me, he’d put his hands on me even when I was home in my living room with my brothers (including two small children) running around. He NEVER STOPPED AND I HATED IT! But I didn’t know how to say no or get away from him. ALL I knew was to bear with it and try to keep distance between us as much as possible. The worst was on a school field trip to six flags. I took a blanket because I like to sleep on long rides and it was gonna be chilly at night. He took it as an opportunity to put his fingers in my panties the whole ride and I was TERRIFIED AND MORTIFIED. SO scared someone would notice, that we’d get in HUGE trouble, that my parents would know, that people KNEW what he was doing. I was so scared but I couldn’t do anything to stop him without bringing attention to myself. I wanted to cry. I wanted TO DIE! I would've rather take a BULLET TO THE FACE than have his hands on me especially when others could see. I HATED HIM SO MUCH! Eventually, I tried to kill myself, badly...I had no idea ibuprofen wasn’t exactly deadly...took SO many and it did nothing but make me nauseous...And mister asshole boyfriend broke his promise 5 minutes after making it by telling everyone including his parents some crazy abridged story about how I was clinging to life and he found me, he didn't, and heroically rescued me. I overheard it all becaus eth estuff they gave me made me unable to move enought to even open my eyes or speak but I was fully aware of my surroundings. That was finally enough for me to break up with him...albeit I had help from some new friends who hated him and my family...who HATED him.

My last boyfriend was a “niceguy” who helped me leave boyfriend2 because he liked me and then pestered me to date him for a year. I finally did thinking he helped me so much I guess I owe him and maybe the first two were just awful and this wholesome guy will be exactly what I need. BIG MISTAKE NICE GUYS ARE ONLY NICE BECAUSE THEY WANT THINGs. THAT IS GENERALIZING IM AWARE AND I KNOW It's NOT TRUE ASSHOLES I HAVE % BROTHERS I KNOW ALL MEN ARENT BAD SO SHUT UP I JUST APPARENTLY ONLY ATTRACT BAD GUYS EVEN WHEN THEY'RE POSING AS GOOD GUYS! I thought I could trust him and be open and honest with him. I thought he was different! He knew what bf2 did and that I didn’t want sex. He KNEW and went into our relationship knowing that but still bothered me about it. He said he was willing to wait but he was a desperate virgin and his patience would only go so far. I gave him a really far away option...when/if we move in together, thinking it would either long ways away or never happen. I was upfront about it all and he SAID IT WAS OK. but still bothered me about it, trying to get me to make it happen sooner. And I AM AN IDIOT I SAID FINE MAYBE IF WERE JUST NOT AT EITHER OF OUR HOUSES OR A FRIENDS BUT A NEUTRAL PLACE. IM SO DUMB OF COURSE HE’D CONVINCE ME TO GIVE HIM A LOOPHOLE BECAUSE I HATE PEOPLE BEING UPSET WITH ME AND I GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT EVEN IF IT DESTROYS ME! So after months of buttering me up with expensive gifts, that I didn’t need nor want... I HATE JEWELRY JUST CUZ MOST GIRLS LIKE IT AND ITS EXPENSIVE DOESNT MAKE IT A UNIVERSAL PERFECT GIFT AND IF HE HAD NO IDEA I’D SAY THANKS BUT I KNEW HE’D WANT TO GET ME JEWELRY AND I HATE IT/THINK IT’S A WASTE OF MONEY SO I TOLD HIM NEVER TO BUY ME ANY BUT HE DID BECAUSE HE LIKES TO LOOK GOOD AND GENEROUS TO FRIENDS AND HAVING HIS GF WEARING JEWELRY MAKE HIM HAPPY BUT HE GODDAMN KNEW I DIDNT WANT ANY UCKING ASSHOLE JUST TRYING TO MAKE HIMSELF LOOK GOOD AND ME UNGRATEFUL IN CASE WE EVER GOT IN A FIGHT OR BROKE UP FUCKING GUILT TRIPPING M WHO GUIT TRIPS HERSELF WORSE THAN ANYONE I HATE HIM!...He plans an expensive trip to Boston, basically trying to guilt/bribe me for sex using the hotel as his loophole. I KNEW that’s what he was doing but he already spent the money and I felt bad. And a little part of me thought...naw “niceguy” wouldn’t do that so it’s gotta be a misunderstanding and he’s just trying to give me an early bday present before the semester started.

NOPE! We had fun, he spent money, then we went into a convenience store and started showing me condoms and asking me about them. I shut down. I couldn't even function enough to smile anymore. I stared at him in disbelief and walked away without saying a word. I KNOW he knows I was avoiding/running away from the question. Like who just walks away with a bitchface and doesn’t answer a question if they don’t want to talk about it. I should’ve said no right there and then. He may have even listened to me. He would’ve been grumpy and bitchy...might have even tried laying on the guilt, but an outright NO probably would’ve been enough. But what if it wasn’t? I was stuck there far from home with no money and he was spending so much that I felt guilty LIKE HE WANTED ME TO FEEL GULIT-TRIPPINGSEX FROM AN UNWILLING PERSON!!! I didn’t want to, I felt like there must be something wrong with me for not wanting to, that maybe it was unfair to him because I wasn't sure I'd EVER want to and does that mean I was leading him ON? But he knew why?! He knew I had been traumatized!?? I didn’t want to but I thought I was being unfair for not wanting to and I was afraid to vocalize my feelings, afraid to upset him or let him down. I didn’t know how to say no with my words so I tried with my body language and GOD ALL I WANTED WAS FOR HIM TO NOTICE! Why the hell did he not notice if he was so in love with me?! How could he not tell by my complete mood shift, inability to make eye contact, absolute refusal to respond to the subject, my stiff frightened body language and the simple fact that he KNEW I was afraid of sex and he never stated that this trip was all an expensive/elaborate ploy for me to give in and get him laid.

So night came, the room had a jacuzzi, I wore a GODDAMN BATHING SUIT IN IT HOPING HE’D GET THE HINT I DIDN’T WANT THIS, and when he went to shower I put PJS on and turned the lights out and PRAYED I would fall asleep and he’d give up. He didn’t. He woke me up. He didn’t ask...just started stripping us. I was so broken. I just cried. I cried...SOBBED...the whole time and kept trying to pull away from him. He tried to get me on top and I just kept rolling away and crying until he gave that up. He took what he wanted and I didn’t participate at all. Then I had to sleep next to him all night...ride home with him and act like everything was fine. He knew he fucked up too. I don’t think he understood how bad....if I accused him of rape HE ABSOLUTELY DID RAPE ME!! he’d probably be confused and deny it because he’s a “niceguy” and an idiot and he deserved it for waiting a few months and buying me things. I completely turned off. I was so depressed and so angry and so ashamed and conflicted that I barely responded to him at all and I could tell he knew I was pissed. He tried to buy me off again HE BOUGHT ME A GODDAMN LAPTOP, and of course our families and friends only saw that...him being generous and me being cold so it was all my fault and when we broke up I lost ALMOST ALL the friends I had made BECAUSE THEY DIDN”T KNOW I NEVER TOLD ANYONE! AND HELL NOBODY WOULD BELIEVE ME ANYWAY CUZ HE’s SO NICE AND BUYS ME THINGS!!! After a few months f being angry/afraid/short-tempered of him and cold-shouldering him he realized it was pretty much over and broke up with me THANK GOD I AM SO BAD AT DOING THE BREAKING UP I WAS HOPING HE’D DO IT. Although he had the nerve to act like I was the one that hurt him with my depression and disdain...like poor him...I was bad for his mental state and made him stressed.

I wish that was it but there’s more. This guy who I was friends with and wasn’t mutually connected to bf3 started showing interest in me when I was finally single...but in a bad way. I used to love hanging out with him and our friend Angie. But I was single and Angie wasn’t and he started being creepy. Insisting on being my ride everywhere even though my dad was fine with driving me or Angie would’ve been more convenient. Then when I was alone with him he would talk nonstop about my body in sexual ways... asks me if he could give me a massage and asking me for favors. I declined but he was persistent and handsy and even whipped out his dick in the car and tried to push my head onto it before I pulled away and said no. I don’t know where the strength to say no was coming from in this case....maybe his laidback attitude made it easier. But it’s not like that ever stopped him completely. He never got his feelings hurt about it and never stopped asking. So I went to great lengths to avoid rides with him. Not going to fun things if I had no ride, making up lies and excuses, hiding in the bushes after Angie’s baby shower so he thought I’d been picked up since my ride was gonna be late. I even lied about my phone being lost as the reason I couldn’t return his calls. One time I got stuck accepting a ride from him from the mall to my house only for him to immediately pull into a corner of the mall garage and say he was too tired to drive but giving me a massage would relax him.I was panicking and very uncomfortable with the things he’d been saying and doing so I faked a phone call from my dad and that convinced him to drive me home. The WHOLE ride...20+ minutes...he spent talking about my boobs. The final straw was him trying to get me to pose in skimpy outfits in a hotel for him...I just knew that was a dumb disaster waiting to happen. SO I stopped hanging out with him AND Angie because I needed to cut ties with him completely and she kinda went her own way with the baby and her asshole fiance.

ONE MORE THING! When I was dating bf2 we got in a fight WHY DIDN’T I BREAK UP WITH HIM THEN AND THERE!? and I ran off campus into the city and got lost. I only had my dad’s and his # and wasn’t willing to call either of them for help (my dad cuz I would’ve had some explaining to do). SO I’m lost, kinda scared, wandering the streets with a backpack on and in Ninja Turtle PJ bottoms. An older guy stops and asks me if I need a ride and I said no...cuz you know hitchhiking is dangerous, stupid, and illegal. I said no 3 times but the guy didn’t speak very good English ALTHOUGH NO IS PRETTY FUCKING UNIVERSAL!, so I gave in awkwardly and explained I just was lost and needed a ride to campus. He said ok and started driving...and asked me how old I was...If I like alcohol and wanted a drink...offered me a lollipop from his glove compartment I AM NOT SHITTING YOU OR EXAGGERATING THIS 100% HAPPENED IT WAS SO CREEPY! And then I’m getting really nervous cuz we’re getting to like suburbs which is NOT where school is and he pulls into a cul-de-sac and I’m so scared at this point. Then he asks me how much for a BJ. THE FUCK I’M EARLY TWENTIES IN MY PJS WITH MY BACKPACK AND I TOLD HIM I JUST WANTED TO GET BACK TO SCHOOL AND WHAT HE THINKS I’M A PROSTITUTE OR SOMETHING? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a prostitute but that’s definitely NOT ME. SO I’m telling him No and fumbling for the door and he’s mad now but more worried I’m gonna report him and says he doesn’t want trouble so he drives back to the main road and tells me to get out. I’m even more hopelessly lost than before and so much for random old man’s act of kindness, he wasn’t gonna help me unless I gave him a BJ wth?! SO I ended up having to call my bf that I was mad at and get directions back to campus and when I showed everyone the lollipop OF COURSE I TOOK IT I’M NOT RUDE BUT I WASN’T GONNA EAT IT They were all blown away and making fun of me etc. SO don’t hitchhike ever is the moral of this story. Also, even kind looking old men can be creeps. Also, don’t get lost in anger in cities.

The final thing to say is. I don't know if I’m asexual and that’s why I never liked sex or if I don’t like it because I had bad experiences or both. I don't know if I’ll ever be able to be intimate and like it. But I WANT TO because I WANT kids more than anything! I want kids so bad and I’m getting close to thirty now and every time I have somebody that might be interested in me...I sabotage it because I start panicking and it’s like...once I get what I want I don’t want it anymore. I need a man to have kids (I could never adopt with my history of self-harm etc.) but I think I’m so screwed up it’s never gonna happen and time is running out and I don’t wanna even live if I can’t have kids. Like I get it...some women are happy without them. That’s awesome. That’s NOT me. I want my own children so much I feel like my life is meaningless without them. And I’m starting to give up on the idea because not only can I not do relationships anymore because of all this trauma, but what guys would WANT to be with someone like me anyway. And if I’m so fucked up maybe it’s better I DON’T have kids because I’ll probably just fuck them up too! SO why am I even trying? Why am I still living? Kids are the only thing in this world that I want and without them, I feel like I have nothing...no future and so no reason to live. I just wanna die. And I’m SO ANGRY that these men contributed to all this. If I can never be fixed...if this is really all that there is...if they ruined me forever then what’s even the point?!

But I can’t die because I have ittle brothers...they’re just kids....and me dying would be so selfish and painful for them. I’m trapped. Trapped in a life I don’t want that’s never gonna be worthwhile, feeling depressed and like shit and dwelling on trauma from the past....stuck with all this pain because I have to live for other people’s happiness. I’ll never find happiness. and Living means misery. But My misery is not as important as their happiness...I’m living...barely...just for my brothers and I don’t know if I can keep it up forever. I feel like I’m gonna break permanantly one day and I’m gonna hurt them. Is it only amatter of time. I’ve been hospitalized 4 times in the last decade for hurting myself....maybe there’s a limit to this. I’m just SO conflicted. Why does everything have to be so goddamn diffiult? My financial situation, lack of career, fear of driving, awful intimacy/trauma issues and just overall depression anxiety and self loathing make life so hard. But I LOVE my brothers. I just wish they did’t love me back. If they didn’t I could die without guilt. There’s just no easy way out is there.

#Personal #tw: sucide mention #tw: rape #etc. this is like word vomit so idek how much is in there just don't read or read carefully #god im so messed up i need help #somebody help me i don't know how to deal

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icanhearyouglaring · 7 years ago

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pt.4: the one with the arrows

title: this is the why pairing: spitfire (main), supermartian, +more summary: It has to be a trick of the mind, or indigestion from last night’s Big Belly Burger, because there is absolutely no way Wally West could have that kind of effect on her. Ever. [pt.1] [pt.2] [pt.3] [Ao3] [ffnet] a/n: here’s a mighty long chapter for everyone who has been waiting a mighty long time for it! you guys should send @oochihas thank you messages for basically ensuring this fic will be finished in this century. Also leave feedback in the tags because when the writing gets tough, I look at your tags and find the will to continue! Only one more chapter to go after this! :) Enjoy!

“So, is that your boyfriend?”

Jade’s voice cuts through the silent house like an arrow through the wind, her question striking Artemis between the ribs and knocking the breath from her lungs. Artemis jumps away from the peephole and races to flip the nearest light switch on the wall. With the living room lit, Artemis can glare at her sister properly.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Artemis snaps, holding her sore hand to her chest. “What the heck are you doing hiding in the dark?”

“Not so loud,” Jade hisses from the living room couch. “Turn the lights off. Mom doesn’t know I’m home.”

“Mom isn’t home,” Artemis scoffs as she pulls off her boots and places them by the door. “You would know that if you ever called her.”

“Oh, really? Her light was on.” Jade perks up and rests her dirty sneakers on the coffee table. “Where is she?”

“She leaves it on so the house doesn’t look empty. It’s girl’s night at Veronica’s place and Mrs. Hall is dropping her off later,” Artemis explains, moving into the kitchen and speaking louder so Jade can hear her as she rifles through the cabinets and gathers what she needs.

“That’s perfect,” Jade replies smugly, sinking deeper into the couch.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Artemis reminds her as she returns to the living room with a bottle of water, an ice pack, a paper towel, and a pill in hand.

“And you haven’t answered mine”–Jade raises a brow as Artemis takes a seat on the floor on the other side of the coffee table–“though maybe I didn’t ask the right one. What happened to you?”

Artemis doesn’t mean to do it, but as soon as she finishes wiping the dried egg flakes off of her shirt, pressing the ice pack to her hand, and downing an ibuprofen, she unleashes the whole story (sans The Wally Problem) on her sister. Later, she’ll claim absence made her heart grow fonder and that’s why she poured out her feelings to Jade of all people, but the fact remains that Jade is the only person who could possibly understand where she is coming from right now. Plus, Jade is more likely than their mother to condone physical violence as a problem solving method.

“You should’ve kicked him,” Jade eventually reprimands her, breaking the familiar tension that flares up every time they bring up their father. “I mean, I’m sure you pack a good punch, but those boots would’ve done more damage.”

“Next time,” Artemis sighs, rolling her eyes.

“And eggs?” Jade scoffs. “Amateurs. My first Morse party ended in a paintball war. Took out three windows and a birdhouse.”

“You’re joking.”

Jade shakes her head and quickly adds, “It was before Michelle forgot how to have fun.”

“Wow,” Artemis breathes out slowly, unable to imagine Megan’s uptight older sister having anything to do with Jade or her old friends. She makes a note to ask Megan if Michelle ever mentioned Jade.

“Listen up, kid,”–Jade calls for her attention in a tone reminiscent of their mother’s when they’re in trouble–“when we moved here, I played along with the happy, little family front for your sake, but it’s past time to end this charade. Mom might think otherwise, but I couldn’t care less what the people in this town think of us. So your loser friends know about our deadbeat dad– who cares? If they’re really worth keeping around, they sure won’t.”

“They won’t,” Artemis says quietly, trying hard not to imagine the looks on their faces when they realize (if they haven’t already) exactly who Crusher Crock is.

After her outburst at the party, who could resist the temptation of digging deeper? Everyone being one search engine click away from finding the Gotham Gazette’s three page spread on her father’s unprecedented six month string of heists along the East Coast during her childhood was anxiety-inducing enough without having his name thrown out like a bad party favor. The paper never calls Artemis or Jade by name, but the media circus surrounding Crusher Crock’s nationally televised standoff, which only came to an end when two little girls dragged their own mother out of a burning hideout and begged for it all to stop, went on for weeks. Who could forget that?

The tight expression on Jade’s face says she never will.

Jade examines her nails with feigned interest as she goes on to say, “As much as I hate to admit it, Lawrence is always going to be part of our stories, but God, Artemis, sometimes you let him be the whole damn book. You’ve got to stop. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”

A bright light shines through the half-open blinds and illuminates Jade’s sudden smirk.

“That’s my ride,” Jade says before she stands and searches for something in the couch cushion. “If you see Mom, tell her I’ll be home in time for breakfast.”

Artemis reminds her, “You could always call and tell her yourself.”

“Nope,” Jade says, popping the ‘p’ as she pulls her phone from the couch victoriously.

Artemis nods, rolls her eyes, and asks, “Of course not. Why bother having a phone if you never use it?”

“The camera, duh,” Jade replies easily, stuffing her phone into her jacket pocket.

“Of course,” Artemis repeats.

“So,” Jade begins innocently (which is to say in a not-at-all-innocent manner), “was that your boyfriend? He looked familiar.”

Artemis looks out the window, simply to not look at Jade. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Jade says, and Artemis doesn’t even need to be looking at her sister to know that there’s a grin on her face, “so he’s your boy toy, then? Looks like I have taught you something. I am so proud.”

“Jade,” Artemis groans, but her next words are overpowered by a car horn outside.

“So impatient,” Jade tuts as she puts on her jacket. She takes a step towards the door before giving Artemis a second glance. The horn outside honks again. Jade sighs shortly.

“A word of warning, Sis. Redheads in this town? Clingy as hell. Think about what I said”–Jade pauses to reach over the coffee table, pluck a piece of eggshell out of her sister’s hair, and flick it onto the rug–“and take a shower. Eggshell in your hair? Kind of pathetic.”

Jade may not be the kindest, most attentive sister, but when she walks out the door and gives Artemis one last look before she leaves, Artemis has to admit it.

Jade has her moments.

-o-

After a hot mug of tea and a hotter shower, Artemis crawls into bed and counts the glowing stars on the ceiling in an unsuccessful attempt to drag her mind out of the contemplative place Jade’s words put it in. It’s easy enough for Jade to say her friends won’t care (Jade’s friends didn’t care about anything). Artemis takes her input with a grain of salt, seeing as the friend department is the one area where Artemis has always had an advantage over her sister (that advantage being that Artemis is nice). Plus, Jade doesn’t even know Artemis’s friends. Not taking into account their brief overlap at school, Artemis could count on her fingers the number of times Megan has interacted with Jade.

A knock at her window cuts her star count off at 23.

At first, she thinks she imagined it, but then the knock turns into another, and another, and another, until it falls into a familiar rhythm and she knows it’s real.

Artemis’s brow furrows as she slips out of bed. She slowly makes her way to the window and pulls the curtains apart to reveal Megan, standing on the other side of the glass with a sheepish smile. When her best friend waves, Artemis can’t help but give Jade a little more credit. Redheads in this town really are clingy.

“What are you doing here?” Artemis asks as soon as she opens the window, making sure to keep a hand on the old frame so it doesn’t slip down between them.

“Well, you left your phone and your bag and your bike at my house,” Megan explains, shrugging off the messenger bag and passing it to Artemis through the window. “I brought these, but your bike’s still in the shed.”

“Oh, thanks,” Artemis says, tossing the bag onto the floor and accidentally sending her phone sliding out of its pocket. “You didn’t have to do that. I was going to come back in the morning.”

“It’s not a big deal, trust me. Michelle and Melissa are being...” Megan waves a shaking fist at the air and huffs. “I had to get out of there, and Conner offered to drop me off on his way home, so here I am.”

It’s then that Artemis spots the tattered Hello Kitty backpack hanging off of Megan’s shoulder.

“They booted you?” Artemis asks, even though she already knows the answer.

There exists a cruel and unusual punishment between the Morse sisters within their household, a punishment Mr. and Mrs. Morse have yet to discover even after the nearly eleven years of its existence. Megan has never divulged the full story of its origin, but Artemis has heard enough to know that the three eldest Morse sisters–Morgan, Mabel, and Minnie–are not to be trifled with in any capacity.

Legend says Mabel was the first to be booted, unanimously, by all five of her sisters (though perhaps five year old Melissa and four year old Megan’s votes should not have been counted) after refusing to tell their parents that she was the one who backed the car into the playhouse. Back then, Booting meant sleeping on the musty couch next to the spooky, drafty window in the basement. Over time, Booting only got worse, moving from a sleeping bag in the treehouse to full blown property banishment with only Hello Kitty as a companion.

“Yup. With the Iron Boot, too. Can I...?” Megan trails off, tentatively placing her hands on the window sill.

Artemis doesn’t hesitate. “Of course you can.”

Megan climbs through the window with practiced ease and Artemis closes it behind her. They stand and consider each other for a few seconds before Megan cracks first.

“You left,” she says, not accusingly per se, but Artemis hears the why in Megan’s words.

“I couldn’t stay,” Artemis starts. “I felt like a one woman freak show. I mean, people were watching through the windows, from the fence– I even saw a couple of people in your hedges. There was egg goop in my hair and my bra. I had to get out of there. I’m really sorry for disappearing and I know I should’ve said something, and, I mean, I definitely thought about it once I passed Fir Street and I was going to text you but–” Artemis cuts off her own rambling with a steep breath and a wave of her hand towards the ground where her (most likely dead) cell phone lies.

“It’s alright that you left. I was just worried.” Megan shrugs and drops her backpack onto the floor. “I am worried. I’ve never seen you so upset.”

“Well, I’m okay now,” Artemis assures her as she walks to her dresser and opens a drawer.

Megan takes a seat on Artemis’s bed and shakes her head. “I know that’s a lie.”

Not the worst one.

“Do you need pajamas?” Artemis asks abruptly, pulling an old band t-shirt from the drawer.

Megan nods. “Yes, please. I barely had time to throw on non-egg covered clothes before they kicked me out.”

Artemis tosses Megan the top and raises a brow. “It took you that long to get here?”

“Well, they waited until I helped get everyone else out before they booted me,” Megan explains, stripping off her sweater and replacing it with Artemis’s top.

“Convenient,” Artemis notes, as she digs deeper into the drawer.

“Pfft, yeah, for them. And then I had to finish talking to Conner. We were making up for awhile.”

Artemis pauses for a second and smirks. “Sure you weren’t making out?”

“Making up,” Megan emphasizes with a slight whine, letting Artemis know that she is one hundred percent on target about them making out.

At least that went right, Artemis muses, pulling a pair of bunny-print shorts from the drawer and handing them to Megan. “Here, you left these here the last time you spent the night.”

Megan smiles as she examines the shorts. “Oh, sweet, I thought Melissa stole them. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Artemis says as she moves from the dresser to reach underneath her bed. “Oh, and I’ve got a surprise for you– if I can– just–”

The tip of Artemis’s fingers brush against a battered box and she has to stretch to grab it and pull it out into the open.

“We don’t have to sleep back to back anymore,” she says, opening the box to reveal a mass of plastic. “My mom got an air mattress at the Lanes’ yard sale. You can take the real bed.”

“Ooo, fancy,” Megan notes, and she joins Artemis on the floor to help spread out the plastic. “And no, I call dibs on this one. It reminds me of camping. It’s nice.”

“Yeah, fact check: it was five bucks and has no holes. And they even threw in the hand pump for a quarter extra,” Artemis adds, shaking the box to get the tightly-wedged hand pump out and into Megan’s hands.

They sit on the floor as Megan holds the nozzle in place, and Artemis sends air into the mattress with steady pumps of the handle. As the mattress rises, so does Megan’s curiosity. Artemis catches a glimpse of the question in her best friend’s eyes and makes it a point to concentrate on the pump. Her arms begin to ache as she pumps a little too fast. When the air mattress is full and covered in some spare blankets, Artemis practically races to get under the covers of her own bed and say goodnight.

Not even a minute later, Megan breaks the silence.

“So,” she starts, in a sleepover–, we aren’t sleeping tonight– kind of way, “are we going to talk about it or are we acting like it never happened?”

Artemis sighs at the glowing stars above her, as though they’ll hear and grant her unspoken wish for another distraction.

“Is that a talk sigh or a go-to-sleep sigh?” Megan asks.

The stars aren’t on Artemis’s side tonight.

Artemis rolls over, looks over the edge of the bed, and finds Megan smiling up at her innocently.

“It’s a talk sigh,” Artemis relents, moving herself into a seated position.

“Oh my god, yes,” Megan says, before she bounces off of the air mattress and climbs up onto the bed with Artemis.

As soon as she looks into Megan’s sparkling, hope-filled eyes, Artemis freezes. A thought, one more horrifying and familiar than any other, strikes her. Bad Dad was one thing, but what if Megan doesn’t get it, it being the foundation of lies Artemis laid back when they first met? Until today, Megan had never had a reason to question the cover story Artemis threw together the day they became real friends.

What if knowing the whole truth, that not only is her best friend’s father a pretty notorious criminal, but that said best friend also lied to her face about it for so long, hurts her?

She’s had enough of hurting people today (including herself).

“Actually, forget that.” Artemis turns away from Megan, lays back down, and begins to pull on the covers. “It was definitely a go-to-sleep sigh.”

She’s almost there with the covers over her head and her face a few inches from the pillow, but Megan promptly rips away the comforters and says, “You said you wanted to talk. So talk. Please.”

“I change my mind.” Artemis tries to pull the blanket back, but Megan’s grip is strong.

“Artemis,” Megan whines softly, yanking the covers so hard she pulls Artemis up into a seated position. “No take backs. Not this time.”

Artemis wrings the edge of the blanket in her hand, tries to swallow down her panic, and stumbles over her words. “If I tell you, you can’t– you can’t freak out, okay? Because what Cam said, it’s– I’ve done enough freaking out over it, okay? I’m so sorry. Just–please don’t look at me differently.”

Megan clasps both of Artemis’s hands in hers, gently untangling them from the blanket before she says, “Artemis, I look at you and I see my best friend– no, my sister. My favorite sister, and that’s saying something. Nothing anyone does or says is going to change that.”

Artemis bites the inside of her cheek before she softly admits, “I lied to you.”

Megan tilts her head, and Artemis takes that as a cue to continue.

“I lied a lot, to everyone. I told you my dad was living in another state and he’s a total douchebag, and that’s so true, but I never told you the real reason we moved here. I haven’t told anyone.”

“Well, why not?” Megan presses.

“Because it’s hard,” Artemis says quickly, not giving her voice a chance to break, and she pulls her hands out of Megan’s in order to tug at the end of the blanket, “I mean, how do you even have that conversation? Hey, nice to meet you, my dad’s a high profile thief and nearly got my whole family killed because of it, isn’t the weather nice today? That’s an icebreaker if there ever was one.”

“Well, don’t stop now,” Megan says, gently nudging Artemis’s arm.

“And it’s not like I want it following me for the rest of my life,” Artemis continues. “My childhood wasn’t normal in the slightest and when people find out all the details, I can’t get past it because that’s all they can see. I lived in Gotham for, what, maybe three months after my dad got busted? One person figured out who we were and after that, no matter where I went, all I heard was, Poor little Artemis, her dad’s a thief. Hope the apple falls far from that tree. Better hold onto my wallet a little tighter, just in case. Or Really? Paula is that woman? I’m surprised they didn’t take those girls away from her after all of that. Or Hey, Bill, did you hear? Those Crock girls just moved in downstairs. Guess the neighborhood really is going to the dogs, isn’t it? Everywhere, all the time. And those were just the adults. The kids were worse. And as much as I wish it didn’t bother me, it did. Jade and I got into so much trouble telling those people to mind their freakin’ own. So my mom moved us out here, for a fresh start in a new place where we didn’t have to live under a microscope.”

Artemis sighs and looks down at her hands as she continues, “When I met you at the park, I couldn’t get over how nice it was to have a conversation where I didn’t have to defend myself to a complete stranger. And I– I didn’t want that to go away, so as soon as I got home I made Jade and my mom swear to leave our past in the past.”

And they had done just that, with an apparent ease Artemis envied greatly.

“And that was it. After that, it was easy. A little lie here and there wasn’t going to hurt anyone. At least it wasn’t supposed to.” Artemis looks up and winces. “Sorry for ruining your party.”

“Woah,” Megan says, a wrinkle forming between her brows as she holds Artemis’s gaze, “you did not ruin the party. Cameron and his groupies did that, and then he had his meltdown.”

“Still,” Artemis says, shrugging, “it was a lot. This is a lot.”

“Yeah, it is,” Megan agrees with an understanding nod, “but I get it. I mean, when we met, I gave you directions to 7/11; you didn’t owe me your life story.”

This draws a laugh out of the both of them, but it burns out as quickly as it came.

Megan sighs slowly before she says, “You know, you still don’t owe me anything, right? You don’t have to tell me anything else if you don’t want to.”

“What happened to don’t stop?” Artemis half-jokes through a weak smile.

“Well, we all have our secrets.” Megan shrugs and smiles back. “Also, it’s late and I only do one big reveal a day.”

“So,” Artemis starts slowly, “we’re good?”

Megan nods. “We were never not good, dummy.”

Artemis smiles. “Good.”

Megan waits half a second before pouncing and giving Artemis a tight hug, a hug which she hastily returns with just as much feeling. When they release each other, Megan lies back on the bed, rolls off the side, and lands on the air mattress with a short laugh.

“Having fun?” Artemis asks, looking over the edge of the bed.

“Oodles.”

Artemis gives Megan time to get tucked in before she leans over and asks, “Hey, how’d you know I went home and not to the park?”

“I have my ways,” Megan says slyly.

Artemis snorts. “You went to the park and then came here.”

“No,” Megan laughs, “Wally told me when he came back.”

“Oh.” Artemis stills in confusion. “He went all the way back there?”

“Yeah, his bike was in the shed, and he tried to help clean up but I sent him home.”

“Hm,” Artemis murmurs before posing a question as nonchalantly as she can (which is to say not at all), “does he seem different to you?”

“Different how?” Megan asks, rising to her elbows.

“I dunno. Different. Like, less.. Wally?” Artemis says his name like it means something, and that’s not even her first mistake.

“Ohhhh,” Megan gasps, quickly dropping back into the mattress and hiding her traitorous grin behind her hands, “you do like him.”

Even in the dark, Megan’s brown eyes sparkle with uncontained glee, and Artemis is torn between hiding under her pillow or tossing it in her so-called-friend’s face.

“I do not– Wait, what do you mean do?”

“Well, I’ve had my suspicions but–”

“Suspicions from where?” Artemis’s voice cracks.

“Um, everywhere? You two were looking pret-ty close at my party.”

Artemis flops back into her bed, looks to the stars, and asks, “How’d you see that past Conner’s steely blue eyes?”

Megan presses on, unfazed. “And he walked you home.”

“He walked behind me, in the same direction. It was totally separate walking,” Artemis clarifies.

“You did talk a lot over the summer.”

“I talked to the mailman a lot, too,” Artemis says snarkily, leaning over the edge of the bed again. “Doesn’t mean I want to bone him.”

It’s the wrong thing to say; Artemis knows this the moment it leaves her mouth.

“Oh my god, you want to bone Wally.”

“What?” Artemis shrieks. “I didn’t say that!”

“You sound ready to smother me so I know I’m right. Aw, Artemis,” Megan presses her hands against her cheeks to soften her grin, “tell me I’m right. I want to be right so bad. This night’s been such a mess; let me have this.”

“Shut up,” Artemis whines, rising and turning in bed to face the window. “Aren’t you tired yet, Grandma?”

Megan props herself up, grinning from ear to ear. “I won’t be until you admit that you like him. Seriously, you two would be so cute together.”

Artemis feigns shutting her eyes and clips, “Sleep. Please.” To her surprise, this seems to do the trick, as there isn’t any immediate reply. Artemis settles into her bed and tries to follow her own orders, but curiosity and anxiety get the best of her only a minute later, and she makes the mistake of peering over the bed to see if Megan is still awake, which, obviously, she is.

The redhead quirks her eyebrow and holds Artemis’s gaze for a moment, as if determined to pry the truth out of her this very instant. It’s a good staring game, and she almost wins, but Artemis has had too much practice at this with Jade (even if she’s rarely won) and eventually, Megan flops back down to the air mattress with a dramatic sigh.

After a while, Artemis adds, “Even if I did like him–and I’m not saying I do– but if I did, I just couldn’t, you know?”

Megan doesn’t hesitate. “Couldn’t bone him?”

“No– God– Your mom is right. I’ve been a terrible influence on you. I just–” Artemis exhales loudly and flips onto her back as the words do backflips in her brain. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“The beginning, maybe?” Megan suggests before laughing shortly. “Remember when you threw an apple core at his head in middle school?”

Artemis snorts fondly. “I got lunch detention for it, so yeah.”

“You’ve come so far. I’m so proud,” says Megan, as she wipes a fake tear from her cheek.

“It’s so weird. I still can’t believe it. I don’t even know what happened. He has the nerve to stop being such a geek all the time and actually be nice and his hair freaking wooshes every chance it gets and it’s like, who the fuck gave Wally West permission to get hot? I have some choice words for them.”

“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank’ and ‘you’,” Megan giggles.

“And my words for you are ‘shut’ and ‘up’.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” Megan huffs goodnaturedly. “You’re never like this about a guy. I have to get my teasing in while I can. You tease me about Conner all the time. It’s only fair.”

“So this is, what, karma?”

“Justice,” Megan answers. “You have to tell him. Oh, oh, can I please be there? Not there there, obviously, but you’ll tell me when you tell him, right?”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Artemis says flatly. She rolls on her side and turns her face into the pillow, so the words she says next are only loud enough for herself to hear.

“Have fun waiting forever.”

-o-

For all the doomsday prepping they’ve done in the dead of night at countless sleepovers in the past, Artemis and Megan have no intricate survival strategy ready for what awaits them within the walls of Happy Harbor High on Monday morning.

Artemis takes it as a true sign of the end of times when they walk into Carr’s class and the room goes silent. She lingers in the doorway to watch her classmates avoid her eyes. Megan gently guides (pushes) her into the room just as the second bell rings. They sit in their usual seats and the chatter that usually fills the room before Carr snaps his fingers to start the day is noticeably absent.

Perfect, Artemis thinks, holding her pencil so tightly it’s a miracle it doesn’t snap in half. The tip doesn’t hold up half as well, as it breaks as soon as she presses it against her notebook.

The rest of the day is full of the same stares and whispers, and had there been any other reason for people to be talking about her, Artemis would have been just fine, and Megan (and by extension Conner) would not be sticking to her like glue whenever possible despite her (quite vocal) protests. They’re part bulldozers, part brick walls; no one gets through to Artemis without their approval. And as much as Artemis would love for things to be a little more normal, she appreciates their enthusiasm.

Come lunch, she almost feels like a celebrity.

Megan keeps the conversation at the lunch table strictly about the party and the upcoming dance and Artemis could not be more grateful. Apparently, Megan’s party had been filled to the brim with dramatic moments even before Cameron showed up. Halfway through Bette’s story about catching some freshmen in a coat closet, Artemis loses interest and rests her head on her folded arms on the table. From her position at the edge of the table, she can see most of the quad, including the table where Wally and his friends usually congregate.

Artemis taps her feet against the ground as she contemplates her next move and watches Wally furiously write something at his table. She already knows it’s the history packet that’s due next period, but there’s a voice egging her on in her head (the one that sounds suspiciously like Megan) saying, Go tell him.

“Hurry, lunch is almost over. I want to watch,” Megan whispers into her ear, a little louder.

Artemis raises her head and gives Megan a withering look. Megan just smiles back.

“Absolutely not,” Artemis says, turning back to look at Wally.

“Please,” Megan quietly begs.

“Nope.”

Artemis watches Wally flip the pages of his homework back and forth and back and forth before he places his pencil and highlighter down and smiles victoriously to himself. It is only by chance that when he glances up he catches her staring. The smile slips off of his face faster than she can look away, so she’s forced to watch his expression flatline before he quickly looks away. Ouch.

“I am going”–Artemis abruptly addresses half of the table as she stands and picks up her backpack–“to the bathroom.”

“Boo,” Megan says next to her, pouting childishly as she starts to pick up her own backpack.

Artemis shakes her head and starts walking. “No entourage. I think I can handle this myself. I’ll see you guys in the locker room later.”

A chorus of ‘later’s send her off before they return to their regularly scheduled post-party debrief. Artemis can feel Megan’s disappointed gaze on her back as she walks out of the quad towards the classrooms. As much as she’d love to rip the bandaid off and get out of the limbo of not knowing, Artemis knows that confessing in the middle of the quad in front of half of the cross country team is not ideal. Things like this need to be done more discreetly. Megan will have to hear what happens secondhand.

Artemis walks straight past the bathrooms and enters Ms. Lance’s classroom with one thought in mind:

Today’s the day.

-o-

Wally walks into history class just before the late bell rings and sits down behind her without giving her a single glance.

The note folded up underneath Artemis’s hand is covered in shitty eraser marks and more than a few scribbles, but it’s sincere and that’s really all she has to offer. A series of what ifs creep into her mind as she prepares to pass it back when Ms. Lance tells them to pass up their homework. What if she’s wrong? What if it sounds too weird? What if the everything Megan had been talking about had been something else entirely?

As Ms. Lance sets up the documentary they're scheduled to watch on the projector, Artemis unfolds her note and reads it three times. As soon as she reads the last line for the last time, she panics, crumbles the note up, and stuffs it into her backpack.

This is so stupid, she yells internally.

After Ms. Lance passes each row a question sheet to go along with the documentary, Artemis peels a sticky note out of her binder, scribbles a quick Thanks for walking me home. I owe you one. -A on it, and posts it on Wally’s question sheet before she passes the paper to him.

She spends the rest of class waiting for a note that never comes.

No matter how many times the opportunity arises for him to successfully pass a message along, not one piece of paper with even a short No problem written on it makes it to her. Each passing moment makes Artemis more nervous. Her pencil taps against her desk in time with her foot tapping against the floor. She manages to fill in most of the question sheet even as her focus keeps flipping from the material on the screen to the figurative radio silence from the boy behind her.

It feels like an eternity before Ms. Lance turns on the lights and the bell rings. People turn in their papers to her as they file out of the room.

Artemis is the last to hand in her question sheet and she walks out of the room in a slight daze, wondering how on Earth she just got ghosted in person.

-o-

There’s something soothingly satisfying about the sound Artemis’s arrow makes when it hits the center of a practice target. It’s too bad she hasn’t been able to hit one all goddamn day.

Artemis’s eyes flit from her target to the tarp roof and walls of their temporary shooting range. Maybe it’s the new range that’s getting to her. She just needs time to adjust. That’s all it is.

To her left, Roy releases an arrow and Artemis watches it fly straight into the center of the practice target.

“Money,” Roy fake-whispers to himself, as he oh-so-unfortunately often does.

After making a mental note to see if Jade knows about that, Artemis takes a deep breath and roughly releases it through her nose.

Just one damn shot, she thinks, setting her shoulders back and narrowing her gaze at the target. Please.

But the tension in her shoulders, bruises on her knuckles, and mess in her mind keep Artemis from landing a single, spot-on shot and it sucks.

A bunch of teens talking about her is one thing, but that doesn’t bother her has as much as Wally completely blowing her off. Maybe “Maybe” wasn’t a good mindset to hold onto after all. She should have been more realistic. Wally probably searched “Who is Crusher Crock” over the weekend and decided she was more trouble than she was worth. Artemis sighs heavily as another arrow hits the dirt underneath the target.

There has to be a better explanation than that. Maybe he feels bad for her and doesn’t know how to treat her anymore. The look of pity he gave her back at the party flashes through her mind just as she releases another arrow. This one hits the top of the tarp and falls to the ground at the end of her lane.

“Okay, enough,” Roy says, quickly stepping forward to stop her from yanking another arrow out of their shared bucket.

“What gives?” Artemis asks with a huff, holding her bow closer to her before he can take that too.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you’re out here shooting worse than that human disaster,” Roy jerks his thumb towards where Coach Queen is currently confiscating the bow from Lori Lemaris’s panicked hands, “I feel like I have a moral obligation to make sure you don’t hurt somebody.”

Artemis blows a piece of loose hair away from her face and sardonically asks, “Haven’t you heard? I already have. You’re a little late.”

Roy scoffs. “Of course I’ve heard. Even if Jade hadn’t filled me in, the whole school has been talking about it all day– and you want to know what I think?”

“Not really,” Artemis deadpans.

“You should’ve kicked him,” Roy continues, pretending not to hear her. “Why the hell are you risking your hand when we have a qualifier next week? With Lori on deck, we need all the points we can get.”

“Aw, Roy, I didn’t know you cared,” Artemis says, rolling her eyes as she takes a seat on a bench near the edge of the shooting range and pretends to pick away invisible fibers from her bowstring.

Roy takes her lead and sits down beside her, but before he can say a word, Artemis silences him with her sharp eyes.

“You’re in a good mood,” she says accusingly, pointing the tip of her bow towards him.

“It happens,” Roy says flippantly, using a finger to push the bow away from him.

Artemis warily asks, “Is this a Jade thing?”

“I thought you said we were done talking about Jade,” Roy retorts, picking up a water bottle from underneath the bench.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“It is not a Jade thing, or an any thing. Who are you? The mood police?”

“No, it’s just that Jade was weirdly nice at breakfast this morning and that usually means one of two things. She won a fight or she got–”

“O-kay,” Roy interrupts her quickly, harmlessly thwacking Artemis’s arm with his nearly empty water bottle, “no more talking about Jade. If you want to talk, let’s talk about what’s turning your shots to shit.”

“That’s personal. We don’t go there,” Artemis reminds him.

Roy shakes his head. “Oh, trust me, I’ve been there longer than you think.”

“Wait, what?” Artemis asks, turning to face Roy fully. “You already knew? About my dad?”

“Well, yeah,” Roy says, shrugging. “After I found out you and Jade were sisters, I had some questions and, surprisingly enough, Jade gave me more answers than I expected.”

Artemis waits a few seconds before she asks, “And?”

Roy rolls his eyes at her. “And what? She’s my girlfriend and you’re the little blackmailer who keeps trying to break my records. It is what it is.”

“Yeah.” Artemis nods slowly, appreciating Roy's indifference.

“I can’t believe she just up and told you,” she admits after a moment, a bit miffed that Jade would spill the beans so easily.

Roy sucks his teeth before he says, “Oh, don’t bring this up with her. She said if I ever told you she told me, she’d tell Dinah we let Sin watch The Bride of Chucky.”

“You did?”

“Of course not, but Jade would still tell her that.”

Artemis wrinkles her nose. “Ugh, why do you like her again?”

“Well,” Roy’s brow creases for a moment before he shrugs and says, “I don’t know. She gets me? Also, I think if I didn’t love her, I’d probably hate her.”

“That’s kind of fucked up,” Artemis says dryly.

“That’s life sometimes,” Roy says, clapping his hand against the bench and nodding towards the stadium bleachers in the distance. “I meant what I said about taking it easy on that hand. You need to let off some steam, constructively, and since you’re banned from using any more projectiles for today– hey, it’s for the greater good– you can go run. I’ll tell Oliver you’re conditioning.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Artemis says, smartly saluting him as she rises from the bench.

Roy raises his hand for her to stop. “Hold up. One request. Can we go back to doing that thing where I pretend not to care and you pretend to hate my guts? This was nice and all, but I have a reputation to uphold.” A small grin edges its way up his lips.

Artemis waves him off as she picks up her backpack and sports bag on her way out of the shooting range. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, you big softie.”

“Get out of here, Blondie,” he calls out after her.

“Stuff it, Archie.”

Artemis jogs all the way to the stadium bleachers with her backpack and sports bag in hand. She drops them at the bottom of the bleachers before she picks a set of stairs and starts running. With each step, her mind goes over the gameplan to solve The Wally Problem (this in addition to her usual bleacher mantra of ‘Don’t trip, don’t trip, don’t trip’).

She comes to the conclusion that living between knowing and not knowing is no way to live. She should’ve just given him the original note in history and been done with it. Her cards would be on the table, plain as day, and if things went wrong, she’d get over it (though she’d really like it if things went right this time). Anything is better than being ignored (and if he is going to ignore her, he could at least have the decency to give her a reason why).

Halfway through her set, she decides to trash the note in her backpack and just talk to him face-to-face. No more hiding behind pieces of paper. While it would be a hell of a lot easier to write it out and chuck it in his general direction, she knows this needs to be done a certain way. She is going to tell him about her Big Feelings, and he is going to listen.

Artemis spends the rest of her run thinking of ways to talk about said feelings without sounding like a complete weirdo. It takes a concerningly long amount of time for her to settle on something, and her aching feet and burning lungs thank her when she reaches the bottom stair. She plucks her water bottle out of her bag before climbing back up at a walk to cool down.

A few rows from the top, she stops, lies down on her back on the bleacher, and laments not wearing a hat before flipping over onto her stomach. Through the gaps between the rows, she spots a small pile of backpacks surrounding one of the support beams. The collection remains undisturbed for only a while, though, as two familiar figures– one raven haired and the other red– jog into view. What kind of luck.

“Jay really ran us ragged out there today,” Wally says, taking a seat on the grass near the backpacks and stretching out his legs. “Become one with my feet, my shoes have.”

“At least you didn’t have to deal with Tommy trying to tackle you halfway across the field,” Conner says, sitting beside Wally and rolling his shoulders back. “I’m telling you, if Artemis hadn’t already met our violence quota...”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. You saw what went on with their freakin’ leader in Cross’ class.” Wally snorts. “Chucking my backpack at his head would’ve been worth the detention, by the way.”

Conner shakes his head and pulls his backpack closer to himself. “That was my backpack and no, it wouldn’t have been. They really don’t know when to quit, do they? I’d bet an entire pizza they were the ones who put tuna in Kaldur’s locker this morning.”

Artemis narrows her eyes and adds that bit of information to her list of Things Deserving of Retribution.

“Definitely,” Wally agrees pensively, and there’s a slight pause before he moans. “Dude, we’ve talked about this. No more food talk right after practice. It’s painful. Plus, I can’t believe you’d risk a whole pizza. Go half, at most. If you bet half of a whole pizza and lose, you still have the other half.”

“What if you’re buying by the slice?” Conner asks, pulling a water bottle out of his backpack.

“That wasn’t what you said.”

“But what if?”

“Fine,” Wally relents. “If you’re buying by the slice, then you must not be confident in whatever it is you’re betting on. At that point, you shouldn’t even make the bet. Go big or go home.”

“Hm... Speaking of going big,” Conner segues, rubbing the back of his neck, “Megan asked me to ask her to the dance by the end of the week.”

Artemis, intrigued, dares to peek further and get a better look through the stands. Megan had told her she’d been dropping hints, but since the girl is about as subtle as an Independence Day fireworks show, Artemis doesn’t doubt Megan said something to that effect.

Wally winces, not totally sympathetic but definitely trying to be. “Oof, tight deadline this time around, dude. She gave you a month for the Swing Dance last year.”

“Yeah, and I think she wants it to be some sort of– I don’t know,”–Conner waves his hand in the air–“grand gesture? She made it seem like it should be a big deal.”

“Oh, it has to be a big deal. It’s Homecoming, not Spring Fling,” Wally explains matter-of-factly, pointing the end of his sports drink at Conner.

Conner sighs, and Artemis can practically feel him rolling his eyes as he says, “It’s going to be just like the last one.”

“You know, this kind of attitude is exactly why Megs has to give you a timeline,” Wally says, raising an accusatory brow at his friend as he takes a sip of his sports drink.

Artemis takes her own swig to that.

Conner bristles. “Yeah, well, what about you? Have you asked Artemis yet?”

What?

Artemis nearly chokes on the last of her water and stiffens to stay hidden on the bleacher as she muffles her coughs. Luckily, Wally is too busy choking on his own drink to notice her.

“What?” Wally asks once the worst of the fit subsides, voicing Artemis’s own train of thought (though her What sounds more like a flatlining heart monitor).

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Conner says, giving the still-coughing Wally a hard pat on the back for good measure.

Wally takes a long, dramatic breath before he says, “I am not dramatic. You just surprised me. What makes you think I want to ask Artemis to the dance?”

There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, one strangely opposite to what she’s become used to feeling when he says her name. It’s different this time, as if asking her of all people to the dance would be as terrible an idea as asking Medusa to be your optometrist.

“Um,” Conner starts with an air of sarcasm, “I don’t know, maybe it’s the everything about you two.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wally laughs him off.

Conner doesn’t buy it. “Sure, you don’t.”

“Look, after everything that happened this weekend...” Wally trails off, shaking his head. “I just– I don’t–”

“If you’re that scared, ask her to go just as friends,” Conner advises (with an air of authority Artemis is pretty sure he doesn’t have on this matter).

Or, you know, he could just talk to her, Artemis thinks, hanging on every word.

“Ugh, dude, you don’t get it,” Wally says after a moment, and he continues with all the certainty in the world, “I don’t want to be her friend.”

Artemis, de-statuified, flinches hard enough to send her now-empty water bottle careening off the side of the bleacher bench and straight through the gap right above Wally. The plastic cracks against the top of his head and he yelps in pain.

Conner, quite dexterously, catches the bottle mid-air, looks up, and regrets (if the curse he mouths is any indication).

“What the heck?” Wally asks, one hand on his head.

He tilts his head upwards and scans the stands above him, and Artemis pinpoints the moment he realizes exactly who she is.

“Whoops,” she says flatly, loudly, as she fights the urge to take off her shoe and drop it down, too, because the bottle couldn’t have hurt Wally as much as his words hurt her, which she would personally liken to a Buffy-style stake to the heart (talk about flatlining). It was one thing for her to think he might feel that way, but to actually hear him say the words sends all of her plans straight into the garbage.

“Artemis?” Wally asks with a gasp, still rubbing at the spot the bottle hit his head. “Hey–I–”

Artemis doesn’t bother listening, not that she’s able to hear him as she makes her way down the bleachers at a record pace with thundering steps and remarkable grace. She plucks her backpack out from under the bottom row of seats, puts it on, and makes a beeline for her bike in the parking lot at the other end of the stadium. The signs and posters about the upcoming dance and class elections tied to the fences blur as she she rushes away, and her feet slam against the pavement, filled with every pushed down emotion she refuses to set free.

Not here. Not here.

Her theory had been wrong. Knowing was worse than not knowing. Knowing unleashed a whole new flood of questions.

What had she been thinking? Had Wally played her, or had she played herself? Had it been the fucking woosh, putting thoughts into her head, making her see things that were obviously not there? If only it was that easy.

But what if it had been there? What if everything had been real and good until the party? What if Wally couldn’t just say ‘It is what it is’ like Roy did and that be that? That thought alone makes her walk faster. He couldn’t handle it. That was it. She doesn’t even has to ask why because he said it himself.

After everything that happened...

She passes the shooting range, narrowly avoids bumping into Roy, and doesn’t look back when he calls out her name. For a split second, she thinks he calls her again, but upon closer listening, she hears that it’s another person calling out her name (and it’s a bit dangerous for him to do so considering she wants to put Jade and Roy’s advice to use and punt him across the football field for making her feel this way).

By the time she reaches the bike racks in the parking lot, Artemis decides she’s had enough for one day. She makes a run for her bike and rushes to unlock it from the rack, but when she moves to pull it out, the front tire detaches from the frame.

“What the fuck?!” Artemis shouts, her eyes blazing as she holds up her bike frame. “Who the fuck–”

Stupid question.

Artemis grits her teeth as she picks up her detached and undeniably flat tire. “Go to fucking hell, Cam.”

She quickly scans the ground for the missing pieces of her bike, but her chances of finding them are slim to none, considering Cameron probably took them and Wally’s getting closer. With her options limited, Artemis carries her bike frame in one hand and her tire in the other and starts walking.

“Artemis, hold on!”

“Go away! You walk me home, you act like my friend, and what?” The bite in her words increases even as her voice breaks. “You didn’t talk to me all day and now you have something to say?”

Artemis swings around, placing half of her bike between them. For a moment his face lights up with hope, but then he looks her in the eye and that quickly changes. Jade’s words flash through her mind and slip through her lips with a venom just as Jade.

“You know what?” she asks slowly, inconcealable anguish dulling the edges of her words. “I’ve heard enough. I’m done. Whatever problem you have with me, it’s your problem. Not mine. You don’t want to be friends? That’s your loss, Wallman. If I needed friends like you, I’d go hang out with the jerk who did this.” She raises the wheel in her hand and uses it to (rather restrainedly) push Wally further away.

Wally cringes and holds a piece of the tire as he quickly says, “Look, Artemis, that’s not what I–”

The screeching of brakes overpowers Wally’s words.

Artemis never thought she’d see salvation in the form of Roy’s ancient pickup truck waiting at the curb, but there it is.

“Are you bothering her, Wally?” Roy asks, as he steps out of the truck with a menacing glare on his face. He glances at Artemis’s broken bike, and his glare gets worse. “Did he do that?”

“What? No!” Wally shouts, frustratedly releasing the tire and taking a step back.

“This,” Artemis says, slightly lifting up her bike frame, “was Cameron and his stupid friends.”

“Yeah, Roy,” Wally interjects crossly. “Why on Earth would you think I’d do–”

“That,” Artemis interrupts, nodding her head towards Wally, “is really bothering me.”

Roy nods his head a few times before taking hold of the bike frame.

“You, get in the truck,” he says to Artemis, “I’ll put this in the back and drive you home.” Then he turns to Wally. “You, leave her alone.”

Artemis wastes no time sliding into the truck’s passenger seat. She places her tire at her feet and puts her backpack and bag over it. Through the rear view mirror, Artemis watches Roy load her bike into the bed of the truck and tell Wally to scram (at least, that’s what it looks like. Reading lips in a mirror is hard, okay?).

“What a freakin’ day,” Artemis mutters to herself as she tries to calm down.

Roy doesn’t say a word when he enters the truck, buckles his seatbelt, and pulls out of the parking lot going well above the 15 miles per hour speed limit. Artemis watches Wally disappear in the side view mirror and it’s then, when she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, that she realizes she’s crying. She swipes the few tear tracks on her face out of existence with the back of her hand and wonders just how long she’s been doing that.

“Glove compartment, left side,” Roy instructs her, not taking his eyes off the road.

Artemis opens the compartment in front of her and pulls out a small packet of tissues.

“Thanks,” Artemis says, and she knows Roy knows it’s for more than just the tissues.

“No biggie,” Roy says nonchalantly. “I owed you one.”

He turns up the radio and the hits of the 2000s drown out the sound of her sniffling. The eight minute drive to her house gives Artemis’s just enough time to pull herself together before she sees her mother. When Roy slows to a stop in front of her house, Artemis gathers her bags, tire, and used tissues and gets out of the truck.

“Leave the tire.” Roy sticks his arm out of the open driver’s side window and plucks the tire from her hands. “Oliver and I will put your bike back together this weekend. Do you need rides until then?”

“I- uh- thanks, Roy,” Artemis says, slowly walking backwards towards her front door. “I’ll catch a ride with Conner, though, he lives just down the street. You don’t have to go out of your way.”

“Alright, then,” Roy says, nodding. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

Artemis nods gratefully as Roy closes his window and pulls out into the street to make a U-turn. When he’s out of sight, she unlocks the front door and rushes inside. She makes it about three steps in before her mother looks over from the couch and stops her.

“Artemis,” Paula says, surprised, “you’re home early.”

“I have a lot of homework,” Artemis says quickly, avoiding her mother’s eyes as she slowly walks towards her room. “Super important project. Gotta get it done.”

Paula smiles and nods. “There’s chicken and rice in the kitchen if you’re hungry, but don’t take it to your room.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll eat later,” Artemis says, sending her mother a small smile before booking it to her bedroom.

Artemis closes the door to her room behind her and immediately tosses her bag and backpack to the floor. The thin smile she'd given her mother crumbles into a pained grimace as she balls her fists and mentally screams. A new flood of tears blurs her vision and this time she doesn’t bother trying to stop them from falling.

Why did I do this? What was I thinking? Stupid freaking boys and their stupid freaking stupid heads.

She crouches down, opens her backpack, and pulls out the crumpled up note she never passed during history class. She crumples it up some more for good measure before tossing it into the trash can in the corner of the room. It feels really good.

So why stop there?

Artemis reaches deep underneath her bed and pulls her shoebox full of letters into the light. Just looking at the pile of envelopes sends waves of frustration through her bones. She pulls out a thick stack from the box and nearly tears them all in half, but she stops herself just before the edges can rip.

“Fuck– nope, what am I doing?” she says, huffing before she throws the letters back into the box and runs her hands over her face. “Get a grip.”

Sitting on the floor crying in the middle of her room over a boy. What a way to spend the afternoon. Artemis kicks the shoebox away from her. It topples over, spins out, and sends envelopes sliding across the floor. Perfect.

Her cell phone buzzes from inside the front pocket of her backpack, and she doesn’t have to look to know it’s Megan (the Kim Possible theme song vibration pattern is telling enough).

This doesn’t feel right, Artemis thinks to herself, staring at the mess of envelopes in front of her. Her phone keeps buzzing.

Each envelope holds a letter and each letter contains a mixture of digs, jokes, and the occasional sentiment. It isn’t until she sees them scattered on the ground that Artemis realizes that the reason she can’t just tear them to shreds is because they mean something to her. They mean a summer’s worth of waiting for the mailman, a book of stamps, and a friendship she can’t just throw away, no matter how upset she is. Maybe it’s easy enough for Wally to say he doesn’t want to be her friend, but the pile of letters he wrote make it hard for her to just sit down and accept that.

So she won’t. Not like this, sniffling on her bedroom floor. Nope.

Artemis rises and takes a seat on her bed. She takes a deep breath, wipes away the traces of her tears, and decides to return to Plan A.

In the next minute, she gathers all the envelopes, shoves them into the shoebox, walks towards the door, and ignores her still-buzzing phone.

Sorry, Megan, you’re going to have to wait.

Artemis has her hand on the doorknob when a rapid rapping at her window turns her around.

Or not.

“How’d she get here so fast?” Artemis mutters to herself, moving across the room to the window. “I’m coming.”

She sets the box of letters on her bed before she pulls back the curtain and freezes.

The wrong redhead stands before her, flushed and jumpy, holding a piece of paper against the window. Artemis skims the top line–

Your mom wouldn’t let me in so you’re going to have to read this.

– and immediately drops the curtain closed.

Artemis looks back at her backpack, where her phone is still ringing, and thinks she probably should have answered that.

Wally knocks at the window again.

Oh, fuck it.

Artemis exhales softly, shoves open the curtain, and lifts the window up in one motion.

“The window opens, dumbass.”

#young justice #artemis crock #wally west #spitfire #my writing #titw

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