#sorry jason looks a lil goofy in the first pic lol

[wil-fae]

twitch streamers tim and jason !! they came to me in a vision today and i just had to draw them

[alex-guerin]

Alright, so, this is Jason. There’s been some rather confusing developments with him as of late. 

Last Saturday, for the first time in the over two months he and I have been non-stop texting and talking to each other, he and I FINALLY hung out outside of work. He invited me over to hang around and have a few drinks, he ended up fixing us dinner, and we both get very huggsy when we’re tipsy so there were lots of hugs and hanging off each other and being silly and goofy and just having a great time making each other laugh the whole night. We eventually wound up on the couch and I complained about being cold, and the next thing I knew, I had a pair of arms around me, pulling me in and we were totally cuddled up on the couch. Like, my head on his chest, arm across his stomach, and his arms around me, head resting on mine. It felt so freakin’ good to be held like that. Eventually he said we needed to go check on the pork loin that was being smoked and after I fussed for a minute about not wanting to move, we started to get up off the couch and he looked at me for a long minute before looking away quickly. I asked him “What?”, he just shook his head and said, “Nothing.” So I asked again, “No, what? What was that look about?” He stood up and shrugged and answered with, “I was just about to do something I probably shouldn’t do.” So I stood up and invaded his space a little bit and was like, “Oh yeah? Like what?” And next thing I know, his hands are on my hips pulling me in towards him and his face is pressed against my neck and he’s kissing right at the crook of my neck. I spare most of the details, but let’s just say I got 2/3rds of my Christmas Wish -- I got to be held by him like I was something special to him, and I finally got to kiss him, really kiss him. And, uh, yeah, as they say, “One thing led to another...” annnnnd yeah, the pork loin ended up a little over done cuz we took a little bit longer getting back out to it than we had planned on (...when did my life become a fanfic, by the way?)

Weirdly enough, everything was fine. Nothing got weird or awkward, and in fact later I stole his hat from him, he tried to get it back and I just smirked at him and went, “Yeah? What’cha gonna do ‘bout it, Cowboy?” He sat there for a minute, looked at me, looked back at the TV for a minute, looked back at me and went, “What am I gonna do ‘bout it, huh?” Leaned in and started kissing me again. It was a compelling argument, but he still didn’t get his hat back. LOL! I did end up staying the night though, cuz even though I knew I’d be okay driving, it was so late and I had been drinking earlier and was still a bit buzzed, and by the time we started falling asleep on the couch together, I’d been up 28hrs again. So, we slept on the couch cuddled up a bit for a while before he woke up to go pee and came back and was like, “C’mon, let’s go lay down” and into his room and bed we went, where we literally just cuddled up to each other and fell right back to sleep. No kisses, nothing inappropriate, just him pulling my arm over him so I could snuggle into his side and us zonking right back out.

Monday, because I had to be sure, I texted him and asked, “We’re still just friends, aren’t we?” ... he answered back, “Yes, we’re still just friends.” It hurt, but I accepted it and everything was fine. 

Then Wednesday happened. Corie, the co-worker who cornered him and told him to come talk to me in the first place, came up to me and asked what was going on between us, was there anything going on between us, and I honestly didn’t know how to answer her until she told me that she knew he use to mess around with one of the women in another department from 3rd shift. I asked her if it was “the purple haired chick”, and yeah, it was. This chick gave me a rather dirty look the one day she saw me wearing his ballcap after I’d stolen it and refused to give it back to him, and then just the week before or so, me and him were walking up to the front of the building together, and she was heading towards us. We stopped so he could talk to her and she gave me a look that very much said, “Keep walking, this doesn’t concern you.” She stepped in closer to him and lowered her voice so I couldn’t hear her. I kept walking, pretending to play on my phone and didn’t say anything. A few days later I saw her waiting around until he came by on his forklift so she could say something to him, dunno what, but I glanced back as i rounded a corner and saw her laughing and looking a bit smug as she and her friend started following behind me. So, yeah, I figured she was who he use to mess around with. It hurt, but not nearly as much as Corie telling me that she had just seen them standing outside together, and chick standing really, really close to him. He doesn’t even let me stand overly close to him a lot of the time. There’s a few times we stand close together, and he lets me hug his shoulders and flop over them in the mornings when he gets in and he’s at his computer, but, that’s really about it most times. So, yeah, I started getting upset and hurt. 

So, after work, he and I had a rather stinted text conversation that ended with me in tears, sobbing my heart out the whole afternoon and into the evening. I flat out asked him if I needed to give up the hope I’d been holding out on with me and him. Since the times he’d told me he wasn’t ready for a relationship, I’d always tell him I was gonna hold onto a little bit of hope. When I flat out asked him if I needed to give up the hope, he said “Yes” and left it at that. I was heartbroken especially since I figured it had a lot to do with the damned purple haired chick he apparently use to mess around with and everything. He texted me later saying he was sorry, he didn’t mean to hurt my feelings or anything, but he had said right from the start that he wasn’t ready for a relationship at the moment. I refused to answer the text and just went to bed crying. 

Thursday morning when I got into work, first thing I did was walk into the managers office and tell them I had half a personal day left and I was fucking using it at lunch. 4:30 rolled around and I had one of my guys put my shit in my locker for me, put Jason’s hoodie (that I stole from him Sunday morning) on his computer and I fucking booked it outta there. I wandered WalMart for a good long while and finally got home a li’l after 6:30am, glanced at my phone and hey, what’d’ya know? There’s a text from Jason: “Took a half day? I saw you left my hoodie.” I honestly wasn’t expecting anything from him at all. I figured I’d fucked shit up, he wasn’t gonna talk to me, so I was surprised and didn’t know what to do. I was still hurting from him telling me I needed to give up my hope. So I only answered with “Yup”. He texted back right before he went back into work (he was on his first break when he started texting me) going, “Well, I can tell by your text that you’re upset. So I’m gonna let you go for now.” Which, of course, made me feel horrible! I felt like the worst version of myself! But I was hurting! And feeling so terrible that I apparently let myself have a one night stand for the first time in my life. 

Anyway, I eventually texted him back saying I just couldn’t physically, mentally, or emotionally handle being there right then. I had to leave and get away from everyone before I had a breakdown. Then I waited a little while longer before I sent him this:  “Also, I’m sorry too. I’m the one who stupidly kept trying to hold onto hope when everything inside kept screaming I was just setting myself up to be hurt again. But in all honesty, I’m not gonna take the full blame. I know you don’t like to or want to, but I think you should go back and reread a few of our convos, because whether it was intentional or not, after a while you were starting to send off a lot of mixed signals and it felt a lil like I was being led on. I should have questioned it a while ago, but that lil bit of hope had me ignoring it all. Am I hurt and upset? Yeah, of course I am, and it’s gonna take a while for the hurt to go away, but it’s not all directed at you. You’re my friend, one of my closest ones at that by this point, and nothing is gonna change that. I’m still gonna be here for you when you need to be talked off a ledge, and still do whatever I can to help, and will always have your back.” He texted me back at his lunch break with, “You’re right. I took it too far at times and for that I apologize. I’ll always have your back as well.” I waited a while again before answering him, but I told him he’d always be one of my guys and that I’d see him in the morning. 

...and of course by the time I went to bed we were texting each other, I was getting updates of how the day went once I left, and we were making each other laugh again. So, things were good. Things are good between us. 

Friday I got my usual hug from him before I left for the day and asked if it’d be okay for me to swing by Saturday to pick up what was left of my case of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, he said sure, and off I went. Well, we texted a bit once he got off work, not a whole lot cuz I was fucking exhausted and he had the kids, but Saturday he texted me in the afternoon to see how my day off was going. I told him it kind sucked and we finally agreed since the kids left at noon that me and him would just get together and hang out. We FINALLY went to the arcade -- he kicked my ass at every game except Mario Karts -- we bowled for a round -- he again kicked my ass, my pathetic 39 to his 103 -- and then went out for dinner and drinks to a bar and grill down the street. That’s where the pic was taken. 

We were waiting to pay our tab, he looked at me and just took his hat off and plopped it on my head. I was so freakin’ happy! He even let me wear it the whole rest of the night. Literally, the whoooooooooole rest of the night. But we made our way back to his place, had a couple more drinks and got to talking and...well...we had a talk about us. 

I was hugging him at the time, cuz he put his arms around my shoulders first, and he was like, “I love you, I’d do anything for you, y’know that?” I shoved my face in his chest and said I loved him too, and then we were quick to clarify it was the platonic love (okay, he clarified...I kinda went, “Uh-huh, I know...”) which led into our talking about what happened Wednesday. He started off by apologizing again, and I tried to shrug it off saying it was fine, I was use to it and he was like, “No, I don’t want you to have to be use to it! You shouldn’t have to be!” and we talked a lil more before I finally was like, “So, I should give up hope, but not give it up?” He put his arm around my shoulder and went, “No! I...see? I don’t know how to answer this! I didn’t know how to answer it when you asked the first time, either! I don’t want you to not have hope! I like you! I really do! I love spending time with you! I mean, I know there’s not gonna be anything right now, and I’m sorry! I am sorry! It’s just where I’m at! It’s not you! I don’t want you to give up hope because I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’ll happen a couple weeks from now, a month from now. So...I don’t want you to lose hope, but...” Things kinda trailed off from there and we started talking about other things. 

I’m kind of proud of us, actually. There were a couple of times we came so close to kissing. The deep, intense staring into each other’s eyes, the hitched breath just before one of us looked away and put a bit of space between us again. And at one point while we were sitting on the couch, he leaned into me and then basically flopped across my lap and I started rubbing his shoulders and back and neck (he’d been complaining the whole night about them hurting since he slept on the floor with his kids the night before) for a lil while. He turned his head to press his face against my thigh and hugged one of my knees until he finally pushing himself back upright, gave me a sort of apologetic smile, and just stayed sitting up but hunched over his lap for a little while longer. So I kept my hand on his back and just kept smoothing over it until he reached back, took my hand and leaned back into the couch and put his arm over mine and kept our hands close together. Not holding hands, but close together. 

After a while we decided it was time for bed, so we wandered into his room and just like before, we snuggled into each other and just cuddleclinged to each other the whole night. There were only a few times during the night we weren’t touching in some way. And it wasn’t inappropriate or anything. It was actual just sleeping together. In fact, when I laid down and he scooted closer to me, his actions of putting his arm across me screamed that he was almost unsure as to whether he should or not. He obviously decided he should and we just stayed cuddled for the longest time. 

I am trying not to get my hopes up again, but at the same time, he told me not to lose all hope. So, it’s kind of rekindled, I guess? I really am trying to be cautious about this, but...I dunno. It’s crazy, actually. I usually feel awkward and fidgity when I’m alone with guys. Like, I love all my boys in the freezer/cooler, but if I spent more than a few minutes one on one with them, I’d start getting awkward and feeling paranoid or self-conscious or something. It’s not like that with Jason. I feel comfortable with him, and safe. I feel like myself, I guess. Enough that I told him last night I’d spent my whole life being told I wasn’t good enough or that I was kind of an idiot and he got upset with me for saying those things (”How many times have I told you that you don’t give yourself enough credit!? Stop listening to those people! Stop believing them!”) I don’t admit that to anyone. Not out loud, not verbally. And, I keep finding myself having daydreams about finally getting to meet his kids and being great with them and him seeing that and it maybe knocking another brick away from his resolve. I almost texted him to ask what they wanted for Christmas, for crying out loud! 

I just...I dunno guys. It’s all confusing and mixed up and I am all flabbergasted that it’s even kinda happening at all. (Oh, and I’m put into his phone as “Lyssa” and he called me that two times last night which I kinda loved, and at one point he was talking and he was like, “Hey where’s the Monster (energy drink) at, girlfriend?” sooooooo yeah..........)