#suicide and drugs and abuse

[wahbegan]

The Signs As Ways to Die

Aries: Car crash. Nasty one. Smoke rising in the sky, blood and scraps of car for hundreds of yards. It was someone else's fault. But it was yours, too. Taurus: Brain bleed. A bar fight you thought you won. You tried to sleep the headache off. Gemini: Shot in the back, then again in the head. You truly believed they were your friend. Cancer: Suicide by exsanguination. In the last few minutes, you weren't sure if you really wanted to die. You hoped someone would save you. Nobody did. Leo: Drowned. Swimming pool. You were drunk. It was days before anyone came looking for you, and by then it was hard to identify you. Virgo: Carbon Monoxide poisoning. It was a freak accident, one in ten thousand chance. No way you could have known. You weren't ready to go, but at least you didn't suffer. Libra: Rare form of cancer. Not the kind you recover from. Already in its advanced stages by the time they realized. It was the one thing you didn't prepare for. Scorpio: Manual strangulation. The police report called it a "domestic dispute". Yeah. That's one way to put it. Sagittarius: Exposure. You had wandered off the trail, gotten lost. It happens more often than you'd think. They found you only a few hundred meters from safety. Capricorn: Overdose. Fentanyl. Nobody saw it coming...we should have. I'm sorry. Aquarius: Old age. You just drift off...it's peaceful. But you're alone. Pisces: Heart attack. Died of fear. They never figured out why

[neuroticboyfriend]

If you struggle with substance abuse but not addiction, you still deserve support. If you struggle with suicidality/self harm urges but don't act on it, you still deserve support. If you struggle with psychosis and paranoia but have insight, you still deserve support. If you struggle with anything but are "coping with it," you still deserve support.

You dont need to be in imminent crisis to get help - safety planning, harm reduction, resources, and accommodations. You're still struggling. You're still suffering, You're still at risk/in danger. You deserve better - you need better. Your health and wellbeing matters.

[aftgficrec]

Hii ! Any fics where Neil reacts to Wymack subconsciously like he did the first time (flinching/afraid)? Preferably post canon but can also be AUs. Thank you!!

General asks like this can be difficult to search for, but here’s what we found for you. -A

canon divergent longer fics:

‘Hope Was A Dangerous, Disquieting Thing’ here

‘Up On The Roof’ here (soulmates, updated)

‘Pebble Brain’ here

‘Yes, Coach’ here 

‘Neil Josten's No Good Terrible Luck’ here (updated)

‘Take my Kidney. Take my Life.’ here

‘Deals With Devils’ and ‘Not Yours To Bleed’ here (both updated)

short au:

‘The Rabbit Becomes the Fox’ here 

kid fics with dadmack:

‘ten children, one acquarium’ and ‘For little monsters with fragile hearts’ here ‘slow down (you crazy child)’ and ‘Make a Home’ (updated) here ‘Raised on Little Light’ here (completed)

you may also like:

Mary & Nathan's impact on Neil here

Neil goes to therapy here 

post canon:

I Wish I Were Fine, I Thought I Was by pawnofkings [Not Rated, 2509 Words, Complete, 2020]

“Ow, shit!” Wymack exclaims, retracting his arm. There's a slight burn on his skin. Neil stands, frozen, feeling like time itself has stopped. But if it had, then Wymack wouldn’t be moving in his direction and - The pan clatters to the floor, and Neil is several feet away before he realizes he’s moved at all. But suddenly, he’s half-lying on the floor. He stares at his arms, thrown up in front of him as if to protect him, and on the other side of them is Wymack, looking down at him as if he’s just seen somebody die. --- Or: a Fox family dinner goes awry, and Neil struggles to come to terms with his own instincts.

tw: violent flashbacks, tw: child abuse, tw: implied/referenced torture, tw: ptsd

How to Disappear Completely by miauhito [Rated M, 4850 Words, Complete, 2024]

“I nearly cut myself,” He cries, looking down at the floor, “I’m scared, please. I’ve been hurting myself, with cigarettes and getting bruises and fuck I don't know what to do.” He croaks out. He tries to stop himself, but he can't, not anymore. 5 times Neil Josten hurts himself + 1 time he asks for help.

tw: self harm, tw: blood, tw: implied/referenced torture, tw: ptsd, tw: hallucinations

canon divergent:

The Wonder of You by KatherineF [Rated G, (we say T), 3872 Words, Complete, 2020]

Previously recced here

Neil is in complete denial that he is struggling with panic attacks. Andrew thinks it would be a good idea to get a support animal. They figure it out together.

tw: ptsd, tw: panic attacks

You Try Until You Can't by AliceTabitha [Rated T, 3129 Words, Complete, 2018]

Previously recced here

Neil knew before he opened his eyes that this wasn’t going to be a good day. Neil Josten has survived everything thrown at him, and he has countless scars to prove it. After all that, it's not unusual for his days to turn sour, but at least he's got Andrew and his team to help pull him back together in the end. With extra support and advice from Wymack, maybe things might somehow end up alright. For today, he just needs to keep surviving.

tw: panic attacks, tw: implied/referenced abuse, tw: implied/referenced violence

piece by piece, he restored my faith (that a man can be kind and a father could stay) by kal25 [Rated T, 2337 Words, Incomplete, Updated June 2024]

Previously recced here

David Wymack did not raise kids, but he did raise his Foxes. Each one of them, whether they were past, present, or even future, will always have a place in his heart. He understood what it meant to be beaten by a man you called your father, to feel fear and hatred and another dozen emotions all at once. He understood what it felt like for guilt to eat you alive about things that never should have been wrong, and he understood what it meant to not have a place to call home. And he swore, when he became a coach, that he would create a home. He would build one from the ground up with his own two hands, and he would invite every single child who chased Exy like a beacon of hope and had no other place to call home—because that’s what he wished someone would have done for him.

tw: implied/referenced abuse, tw: implied/referenced self harm, tw: implied/referenced rape/noncon

and more than a few bleed into you by brekker [Rated T, 4475 Words, Complete, 2018]

Previously recced here

Neil doesn’t know if this is considered protection or insight because Andrew has always been the quicker of the two to know that these moments are transient and Neil will wake up half a country away and want to come back home when this fear and ache to flee settles back down; either before or after he gets himself hurt. It might be one in the same if Neil thinks about it. It reminds Neil of that thing Renee had said once: This, too, shall pass.

tw: nightmares, tw: depression, tw: implied/referenced torture

Hold Each Other by exactly13percent_OLD (hymbeaux) [Rated E, Collection, Complete, 2018]

Chapter 15: I for an Eye [Rated T, 2544 Words] Previously recced here

Neil has his bad memories. He's managed to keep most of them down, but some start slipping out. It's a good thing he's learning how to make new ones.

tw: ptsd, tw: blood, tw: panic attacks, tw: implied/referenced nonconsensual kiss

spirits of martyrdom by sagely_enchanted [Rated T, 6416 Words, Complete, AFTG Fall Exchange 2024]

Neil is pretty sure that he’s drowning, a phantom feeling of a washcloth and water rushing over his head as he stares into the never ending hazel. The blonde of his hair is so bright that it nearly blinds him when compared to the dark of the dorm. He squeezes his eyes shut tightly, willing the image to disappear when he opens his eyes next, but Andrew is still there. - Andrew gets released early from Easthaven and finds Neil at Evermore.

tw: implied/referenced abuse, tw: anxiety, tw: major character injury

till my breathing stops. by plugastwo [Rated E, 94304 Words, Incomplete, Updated Jan 2025]

Neil Josten was a psycho. Foxes knew it. Wymack knew it. Everyone knew it. He and his manic grin were the definition of psychotic. Andrew liked to think, that it was pretty amusing.  ___ where it’s Neil, who takes drugs.

tw: nonconsensual medication, tw: drug addiction, tw: vomit, tw: implied/referenced child abuse, tw: implied/referenced torture, tw: nonconsensual drug use, tw: nonconsensual kissing, tw: medical abuse, tw: implied/referenced rape/noncon, tw: violence 

canon divergent a/b/o:

just tonight (i won't leave) by pyruismagician [Rated E, 116319 Words, Incomplete, Updated Oct 2024]

"I told you I don't belong to anyone." "And I told you to quit lying to me, or did you come here to explain why you're pretending to be a beta?" Or Neil just wants to play Exy before he dies but the world has other ideas.

tw: implied/referenced rape/noncon, tw: implied/referenced torture, tw: child abuse, tw: animal abuse, tw: nonconsensual drug use, tw: implied/referenced drug addiction, tw: recreational drug use, tw: homophobia, tw: medication addiction, tw: vomit, tw: violence

raven!neil au:

hoping, until the day it dies by infernalstars [Rated M, 27481 Words, Incomplete, Updated Jan 2025]

Nathaniel Wesninski ends up in the hospital with two broken legs. Cast out of the Nest, Kevin Day brings him to the Foxes to recover - emotionally and physically.

tw: self harm, tw: blood, tw: dissociation, tw: flashbacks, tw: implied/referenced rape/noncon, tw: implied/referenced abuse, tw: ptsd, tw: nightmares, tw: panic attacks, tw: vomit, tw: psychotic episode, tw: homophobia, tw: suicidal ideation

one where Andrew flinches from coach:

What Is It To Truly Lose Control? by BisexualChaosDemon [Rated M, 21281 Words, Complete, 2024]

Most of the Foxes still think Andrew is a monster, or a sociopath, but Neil knows better. He knows that Andrew cares deeply about a handful of people but struggles more than he will ever admit with that fact. The thing is, despite Andrew’s commitment to apathy and to denying that he cares about anything, he is often self-sacrificing in his efforts to protect the people he cares about. As Aaron’s trial approaches, Neil gets the sick feeling that Andrew’s self-sacrificing streak is going too far.

tw: implied/referenced rape/noncon, tw: implied/referenced csa, tw: implied/referenced murder, tw: implied/referenced self harm, tw: psychiatric abuse, tw: implied/referenced trauma reenactment, tw: ptsd

Art

THE RUNAWAY art by @coppakee

Poor boy with his precious bag art by @/tryashaa on instagram 

Neil Josten art by @estrophysics

Second Chances, vol. II: Runaways eye shadow palette edit by @mistyyed

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The family of an Inuk man who went missing in Ottawa but was found dead last week in Gatineau, Que. is criticizing the Ottawa Police Service for what they say were failures in searching for him.

Tommy Agnetsiak, 30, originally from Pond Inlet, was reported missing in Ottawa in February, his father Robert Agnetsiak told Nunatsiaq News.

On April 6 at around 11 a.m., police in Gatineau, Que., across the Ottawa River from the nation’s capital, received a call from someone who reported seeing a body on the Quebec side of the river, the department’s spokesperson Officer Patrick Kenney said in an email. [...]

“He was missing for a long time and nobody ever saw him ever since. Nobody took it seriously,” Robert Agnetsiak said.

Tragedy has hit the family hard in the last few years. Earlier this year, his daughter overdosed while lying on a couch in an Ottawa apartment and another daughter took her own life a couple of years ago. Tommy was Robert Agnetsiak’s last living child.

Robert said he wants what happened to Tommy to be a warning. Indigenous people are being killed, overdosing, and there needs to be a change. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid

Note from the poster @el-shab-hussein: Please avoid scrolling down to the comments. A lot of victim blaming going on there.

[intersexfairy]

ok ik i've posted a lot about it on my sideblog but. i cannot get over how batshit insane the past month of my life has been. like

i got dumped the day after christmas

went on a bender, as one does

decided to go to rehab, then bailed

almost went to off myself

left a cult and lost almost all my friends

found out i have nerve damage throughout my body + multilevel disc herniations, was told to do PT/lose weight with no further referrals/evaluation. i am only 23.

thought i could trust my abusive parents with the fact im planning on moving out because they supported me when i left the cult

they've been spending the past 3 days trying to manipulate me into staying, treating me like im 5 - my therapist cried when i told her about that (don't roast her she's great)

became a stoner (yay, harm reduction!), kinda hotboxed with my friends. one gave me a pack of cigs and the other half a xanax bar

in 2 weeks i'll found out if i got accepted into an apartment. this is my 4th attempt to escape from this house since i was what, 14

and im? happy? i haven't felt this empowered and confident in myself in YEARS? i LOVE myself? my life is a HOT MESS and i'm like. living for it. because i believe in myself. for once, i believe in myself.

i went from hating myself, wanting to die, and trembling with the fear of god, to just doing a complete 180, being an atheist, and loving life/myself no matter what.

2025 is my fucking year. i'm getting outta here and living my life with or without anyone or anything.

[ihat3ev3rything]

replaced the tears with drugs.

[billybigbang2024]

The Billy Big Bang (banner courtesy of @alicetallula) posting season begins on November 1st and Team #1 will be posting through November 21st! The artwork will be completed by @dirtbagdefender and the fic is by @lorifragolina / TheMadcapLaughs, and beta read by @talanashta! We're ready to tear into their collaboration pieces and hope after seeing below you are too!

Fic Title: Bite the Bullet, Billy

Rating:  Explicit

Warnings:  No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships:  Steve/Billy, Billy & Max

Characters:   Billy, Steve, Max, Billy's parents, Billy's dog, OC

Additional Tags:  Use of drugs, use of alcohol, depression, medical and hospital, cops, domestic abuse, suicidal thoughts, child neglect, searching of true love.

Length: 45k-50k

Summary:

Billy's Hargrove life had never been easy. His family was condemned since before his birth, and he had to learn how to survive alone, without support or love.

He is alone, tough and bitchy until Starcourt Battle; he sacrifices himself for the people of his life and they promise they won't let him alone in the hospital.

But they fail him: he waits and waits, alone, with no sympathy in the hospital, and when he searches for the support of his family, they push him away.

Now Billy is alone, sad, he hits the bottom... until a weird, red-head friend saves him. 

He reforms his life, trying to forget Hawkins and people who let him down, but one day, an unexpected, well-known face knocks at his door, turning his world upside-down...

[drinkinboilingcoffee]

Is this meme dead. I’m not elaborating.

@glitch-1983

[smileymxx]

Look down at me and tell me I'm worth nothing

Whisper into my ears, telling me to slit my wrists

Tell me to kill myself and I'll be yours 🥰

[paingoes]

Crash Out - Reflection

Birthday, shower thoughts, shrooms

Paris reflects on the birthday incident and his life in general

(Content: whumper turned whumpee, (ex) royal whumpee, living weapon whumpee, whumper POV, past abuse, abuse apologism, dehumanization, beating, drugs, addiction, body image, minor emeto, suicidal ideation, guilt, death mention)

It was his birthday and the same night everything was destined to be destroyed. The Castle Thales seemed to know this and did its best to look haunted. The warmth of her presence broke through all that was the cold and crystalline. She was the only one he could stand to speak to.

Everything had been fine until they’d ended up back in the main hall and that old argument started up again.

Delta knelt at the side of the throne with the golden chain around his neck. All the bruises had been painted over carefully. He looked bored more than anything else. One hand played idly with the thread of the carpet. He did not see them come in.

Lorelai went rigid just as soon as she saw him. She pulled away from Paris as harshly as if he’d hit her.

“…You really keep him there all night?” she asked in unease.

He rolled his eyes, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed. He didn’t want to go through it again now. Not on his birthday. He wanted a single fucking night where he didn’t have to think about it.

“Yeah,” he answered flatly. Obviously.

Her expression darkened, “And you make him wear a leash.”

“Who cares?”

“I’m sure he does,” she said, “Can you imagine how he feels?”

“Oh my god, are you still on about that commie shit?” He moved one hand to his hip, his irritation deepening. He was tired of explaining this. She wouldn’t understand.

“You are mean,” she said. She said it like it was a revelation, like it was something that was supposed to surprise him. Like she was finding it out now for the first time.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“You’re worse each time I see you.” 

Something like horror was dawning in her eyes. She was the only person he cared about in the world and in that moment, he swore that he hated her.

~

One year later, in the bathroom of a rundown motel, he washed the dirt off of his hands and carefully re-bandaged all the places the skin had torn. The air was heavy with steam. It opened up the shredded membrane of his throat. It distorted his reflection.

“Can you imagine how he feels?”

The thought came to him without warning, but with the kind of day it’d been, it didn’t come as a surprise. And he couldn’t have imagined it, not really. He’d never spared Delta the time, or even the consideration.

But he was starting to. He could almost imagine it, forced down onto his knees by the barrel of a gun, the blindfold tied over his eyes. He’d treated it like it was nothing. Empire demanded sacrifice — from everyone. It was all just more of the same.

He wiped at the mirror to reveal the litany of bruises along his skin. His body was turning into a minefield of scars. It was meth thin, and tired often. He’d done such a number on it.

~

Twelve hours earlier, Lorelai’s ship had pulled down onto the clearing of the festival. For all that had happened, the partying had went on uninterrupted throughout the entire trip. She’d asked if he wanted to skip it for a little bit, since his head was fucked, and since his body was fucked, and since he’d almost died. He said no.

It didn’t take them long to disappear into the crowd, about as indistinguishable from any other pair of losers in their twenties. She could get along with anyone — and he was finding it was a lot more tolerable to talk to people when they didn’t know who he was.

They found refuge in the company of the spring-breakers. College students. They were easy to work. The fine arts student pulled a knitted pouch from within her purse.

“No. None for you. Don’t give him any,” Lorelai insisted, popping a handful of the shrooms into her mouth.

“I’m fine,” Paris said.

“No. You always freak out.”

“I’m literally fine.”

“Don’t give him any.”

They waited until her back was turned before making the handover. 

“I took it,” he said, the moment she turned back.

“Are you fucking crazy?!”

~

“You know what? Fine.” He yanked at the chain around Delta’s neck, harder than he needed to. He slid the key into the lock. The chain clattered loudly to the floor.

“Fuck both of you.”

He stormed out. It was freezing on Thales that night and he could barely feel it. He was hot. He was burning all the way through the wood path.

He stomped up the ramp of the ship and all the way to his room.

Empire demanded everything. It would erode away at any happiness he might’ve gotten, any other life he might’ve had. He would give and give and give and get nothing and still keep at it endlessly. He’d made his peace with it. 

He thought he did.

And still he thought he might have her. 

Empire would rob him of that too. It was the final intrusion, one final act of self denial.

He handled it with all the grace of someone off six different stimulants.

He tore his room apart and he took everything in it. He was in the grip of it. All the scorn and betrayal bubbled up and coiled and burned. 

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

She belonged to him. 

They both did. 

~

Through the thin walls of the motel room, he could hear her on the other side. She laughed softly, her voice indistinct as she took the call.

She could never know. He’d tell her almost anything, but this she could never know. 

He tried to imagine saying it to her now. He tried to imagine telling her what he’d done that night. The fear and the shame coursed through him like ice. He never could. 

Everything he owned fit inside of the trunk of her ship. There was so little that belonged to him anymore. 

~

The shrooms crept up on them about midway through the set. They hit her first. He saw the way her eyes dilated, the little mania that crept into her movements, and knew he did not have long to go. Sure enough, the colors shifted, and the strange vibrations through his body picked up in synch with the bass.

He thought it was fine. In the busyness and brightness of the crowd, he could almost forget that it was his destiny to freak out each time he went on psychs. It was only as the sky darkened and the music quieted that he felt it crawling.

They were in the woods. Why hadn’t he realized it until now? He stumbled back to the college kids’ little outpost and found that they were surrounded by woods on all sides. He was on the ground. He was in the dirt. Something large and tiger shaped crested in his periphery. Something dog-headed flashed behind his closed eyes — and the harder he tried to push the thought from his mind, the more it wanted to stay. He whined miserably into his crossed arms, hiding his face in the grass.

“I told you not to take it,” Lorelai sighed, combing her fingers through his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, meaning it. 

“Shh,” she said. She kissed his temple. “Just ride it out.”

~

It was so easy to blame Delta. He’d gotten into the habit of it. And Delta took it so endlessly. He never fought back. 

Paris would never be happy. He’d known it for a long time. Empire demanded sacrifice. It demanded and demanded and demanded. Paris would give to it endlessly, everything. He did everything for it.

He was so fucking sick of it.

He did not dream of a better life. He dreamed of dying. He dreamed of crashing the ship into the side of a mountain and killing everyone onboard. He dreamed of unlocking Delta’s collar at the ball and unleashing upon all of them a fury that they’d all done everything to deserve. He dreamed of death in a million different ways.

Paris hated his life. He hated Empire and that nuclear bomb they had built up in his brain, the child they’d ripped from his home and turned into a machine, the fucking symbol of all that had ever gone wrong. Real evil burns and coils and glows. It destroyed cities and cut civilians in half. It cauterized wounds and bled from the mouth. It was down there now, with one of Lorelai’s hands pressed up against its own.

Because Delta was so fucking blameless. He’d never had a choice, he heard Lorelai’s voice in falsetto.

What fucking choice had he had, either? Delta got to be blameless. And he got to be worse each time I see you. He got to be mean.

He did the last of the line off of the cracked sink.

He’d show them fucking mean.

~

He felt around in the space between his ribs. He traced careful fingers over the star-shaped scar on his chest and then again over the bandages on his palm. It still hurt nearly too much to touch. He didn’t know when it would heal again. They’d stitched it up for him at CTRL and they had not even done it painfully. He hadn’t understood why. He still didn’t understand why.

The word mercy tasted sour against his tongue. It spun sickly within his mind. 

Wasn’t he just a little bit disappointed when the gun was removed from his mouth, when his life was extended any longer than it had to be?

And wasn’t he so devastated when he learned that he was spared?

He traced the scratches along his arms. Delta’s claws had gotten in deep. It was some of the last traces of him left on the earth. All the rest was buried at the bottom of the ocean.

It wasn’t fair.

He didn’t deserve it.

~

One of the art students gave him a sketchpad just to shut him up. He took it, grateful to give any form to the horrific intrusions.

He drew wolves, mostly. Wolf heads. Lorelai laid down on the grass beside him. The others were sprawled out a bit further away. 

She wanted to share the paper with him. He held it in between the two of them. His drawings were scary, at first. All the wolves had eyes in their throat. All the lions had teeth like knives.

But she filled in the empty space with vines and flowers until it looked like a jungle you’d find in a children’s book. She said she wished they had paint. He remembered she’d been good at that. They’d have gotten a lot of mileage out of it. 

He felt his fear dwindling. He felt guilty that he let it.

He knew he freaked out whenever he took it. He did that with most things, really. Did he even like drugs? Why had he taken it?

~

Paris barely heard him. So much adrenaline coursed through his system that even seeing felt like an impossibility. He didn’t bother holding back anymore. He didn’t want to.

The impact broke the mirror open and scattered the shards all across the floor. He threw Delta roughly down on top of the broken pieces, not caring. The glass crunched beneath his boots, crystalline, iridescence.

Everything was ruined. Everything was ruined and there was no coming back. There was no hope.

He pulled his leg back and drove it straight into the side of Delta’s rib, listening for the crack that followed. He hated it. He hated all of this so much he could not stand it. He was spiraling, he knew, completely lost in the goddamn tantrum. He didn’t care. He wished they’d both just fucking die.

He yanked at Delta’s collar again, dragging him into the bathroom. He was going on about some shit that Paris didn’t understand, that he couldn’t even begin to care about. If he’d been listening, if he’d really been anywhere but inside his own head, he might’ve noticed that Delta had been crying. That he’d started begging. He didn’t notice. He took a rough handful of his hair, forcing his head back down whenever he squirmed too much.

The water reached the rim, and he’d forced his head under that, too.

Delta laid gasping within the tub, the thick strands of his hair slick and wet across his face, his wrists bound up in chains. He’d tried to speak again. He couldn’t. Paris clamped a hand over his mouth. He didn’t want him to speak, to interrupt his own spiral. He wanted to feel it all, to drown in it.

“I hate you,” he said.

And Delta’s eyes got wide, probably wondering what he’d done wrong, as if it’d ever been about him at all.

~

He tried to throw up, but nothing could come out. He hadn’t eaten in days. It’d become habit. His hands were shaking and his nose was bloody and the hot steam of the bathroom made it so that there was no coolness to the tiles. He felt no relief even as he pressed his skin against them, as badly as he wanted to lie down on the floor and never get up. He was sick.

He could still hear Lorelai through the door, the faint sound of the phone call, and of her music playing in the background. She seemed to know, always. He heard her rising up from the bed, a gentle knock at the door.

“Paris?” she called softly through it.

He winced, closed his eyes. How could he ever begin to tell her?

He was sick.

~

Did he even like drugs? He asked himself this again and again, still sprawled out on the grass, still with her beside him. The night was on in earnest now. Thousands of stars peppered the sky. The music student said there would be a meteor shower tonight. Maybe they’d get lucky.

Why had he fought so hard and so fiercely? They’d come all this way, across a hundred different planets, across an entire year. He’d dragged her from her home and across the galaxy. It was such a desperate bid.

He must have wanted to live. This was the behavior of someone who wanted to live.

And so why had he gotten drunk every night of the trip, and each night before that, ever since he turned fifteen? He’d taken the pills off the street when he could afford to pay for the real thing. He’d forgone the test kits, when it was no trouble for him to get them. He’d taken more than he should and he’d picked fights he couldn’t win. He’d spent hours prodding at Delta, at an atom bomb, just hoping for something-

He hoped the ship would crash sometimes. He hoped the stars they passed would explode without warning. He hoped for one thing, desperately, and he had for as long as he could remember.

I want to die.

It was a quiet admission. He could only say it in his head. Lorelai was tripping too hard, it would throw her in a bad way. But as it surfaced, there was no way to submerge it again. It rose up all at once.

Death evaded him. It was denied to him. Was he ever relieved afterwards? He wasn’t. He hadn’t been.

The world was cruel as it was endless — and it was out for him. He would die just as stupid and evil as everyone else had been.

But then they’d been so careful when they pulled him out of the grave. They’d bandaged his hand and stitched it without hurting him, even when they had every right to. They’d given him blood from their veins when his own had run out.

Lorelai’s hot tears had fell onto the bare skin of his clavicle. She’d clung to him when he was found. She didn’t want to see him in pain. In spite of everything.

She killed for him.

I want to die.

And as soon as he admitted it, he didn’t want it anymore.

“Lorry, I think I need to get sober,” he said.

She turned over in the grass, whining a little bit.

“Me tooooooo. Why is it lasting so long?”

“No, like, permanently.”

“Oh.” She poked her head up. “Are you serious?”

His hand rested against his chest. He could feel his heart beating beneath it, quick and painful. The same frantic rhythm it’d been honing for years. He nodded.

“I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”

Her face turned back into the grass. He looked back up into the sky, waiting for his heart to settle down, waiting for meteors. Absently, her hand reached out for his own.

~

On the morning after his birthday party, Paris woke up with sick clarity, and he knew he’d done something he could never take back.

One week later, Delta was dead and the kingdom was lost.

~

Paris stood up roughly from the bathroom floor. He pulled a clean shirt over his head and combed his hair out with his fingers. 

As he looked up into the clouded mirror, he remembered the shards that had spilled out onto the floor of Delta’s room. He’d broken the mirror.

Seven years of bad luck.

He was sure he’d earned himself so much more than that.

~~~

tags:

@catnykit @snakebites-and-ink @scoundrelwithboba @whatwhump

@pumpkin-spice-whump @deluxewhump @fuckass1000 @fuckcapitalismasshole @defire

@micechomper @writereleaserepeat @aloafofbreadwithanxiety @whump-queen

[captainjamster]

Starry, Starry Night

Pairing(s): Kyle "Gaz" Garrick & Reader Warnings: mention and description of suicide, alcohol and medication abuse, reference to organ donation, retching, nausea, major character death Wordcount: 1.5k Summary: Kyle picks up your call. AO3 Link: Right here! <3

A/N: Please check out the tags before you read this one.

Full fic is under the cut <3

“Mmmh, hello?”

The words feel heavy on your uncoordinated tongue as the line picks up.

“Hello, my name is Kyle. What’s going on tonight?”

Your heart drops for a second, and something like guilt stirs in your inhibited rational. He sounds young, not like the older individuals who usually work the hotlines. Young, with years left to relive this conversation. You sluggishly pull the phone away, thumb hovering over the end button, but his voice trails out the small speaker again with more concern this time.

“Hello?”

Fuck it. Won’t be your problem soon.

You slur out your name for the man on the other end, and he repeats it back. “Alright, and are you under the influence of any substances right now?”

“Fuckin’ all of them,” you grin, trying to keep up with how the stars swirl into vortexes against their black canvas. “Tryna – tryin’ to get a fatal concoct – hehe, cock – uhh, concoction in me. Poison in my tummy, yum.”

The confused snort he lets out tugs at your lips, and you can’t help the giggle bubbling up from your chest. “All of them?” He echoes, and you hear the familiar click click click of keys.

“S’not all of ‘em, tricked you. Jus’ alcohol, my medication, and uh… some shit a friend left in my car. Like a bottle of spirits, an’ ‘bout a thousand ‘n four hundred milligrams? Dunno what the other shit was, tasted bad.”

There’s silence for a moment as you listen to the clacking of keys again.

“I’m going to ask something a bit bluntly, okay?”

You make an agreeable noise, waiting for the question.

“Is this a suicide attempt?”

“F’it’s just an attempt, I’m gonna be so fuckin’ mad,” you mutter, cringing at the aching pulsating through your body.

There’s a moment where you hear him murmur something, and then he’s back at the line. “Can you tell me where you are right now?”

Realisation flickers in you, prompting your eyes open. “Ahhhhh, s’why I called, yeah.” He types again rapidly as you mumble the location. “Guess someone’s gotta find me, right? Better a professional than some – some poor fuckin’ guy.”

The man – Kyle – hums in agreement. “That’s good of you. You sound like a thoughtful person, considering those things even during a time like this.”

“Yeah, thoughtful,” you scoff. You know what he’s doing. “Can we just… S’okay if we talk for a bit?”

That wasn’t the plan. It was meant to be enough to give the address and then hang up. But the chill is seeping further into you, past the now-dirty fabric you carelessly threw on, and hearing his voice makes you feel just a little bit warmer.

“I’m not going anywhere. Got a topic?” Kyle questions, and you think you can hear him settle into his chair.

“S’pretty tonight. Clear sky.” It’s hard to force your eyes to stay open, the sparkling dots spinning in and out of view behind the canvas of the trees.

“Yeah? A long trip up that road to get there.” He mulls, and your aching legs agree.

“Yep, even longer walk.”

“Walk?” He sounds incredulous, and it brings back that dopey grin to your lips.

“Yeah, well. Sold my car last week.”

“Ah…” It falls quiet for a moment. “I see.”

“Don’t be like that,” you groan, wincing at the nausea as you shift against the dirt. “Savin’ the planet or some shit, right?”

Kyle laughs again, and you think the noise could get you higher than anything else coursing through you right now. “I like your humour.”

The compliment sounds more genuine than the last one; appreciation, not just pointing at empty positives. “Consider yourself lucky to hear it, m’not usually this uh, happy.” You offer, tasting bitterness in the confession.

“What are you like usually?” The question is tentatively curious, and you’re sure he means no harm, but the words tear through you.

“Dunno.”

Crickets chirp as you listen to the static whispers of silence, flicking through blurred memories. You don’t know if it’s because your brain is slowly slipping further into deterioration, or if you never wanted to remember in the first place.

“Tired.”

Moments of happiness feel far and few, peppered so sparingly amongst everything you’ve ever struggled through. When they cut you open, will they find anything but your rotted, ugly thoughts and the circuits they’ve carved into your mind? You hope your brain is better off in the hands of whoever gets it next. Maybe you’ll get to be some cool science demonstration.

“Friend had a baby last month. Couldn’t even feel something with the little guy in my arms.”

He was so small, staring up at you with big eyes, his warm hand wrapped around your finger. A chorus of ah’s and aw’s sung around you as the baby beamed, wet and gummy, up at your watery smile. All you could feel was a cleaver digging deeper into your heart.

“Jus’ wondered if I looked so hopeful when I was that young. An’ if this’s where my life was always going to go anyway.”

Something carves a fleeting shadow above you, blinking the stars out of and back into existence with the wide span of its wings. You think what it’s like to feel so weightless, amongst the branches rustling as a breeze picks up.

“Guess I was just born wrong. Here to make people happy until it – until I – wear off.”

It’s so quiet you think Kyle has hung up, until something rustles and he clears his throat. “You remind me of someone.”

The remark catches you off-guard. “Good or bad?”

“Both. He’d make you mad in the funniest ways; couldn’t even be angry at him. But he hid behind it, tried to help himself by helping everyone else. Good guy.”

The fondness in his voice squeezes at your heart in a way that hurts more than anything else you’re feeling. Has anyone ever talked about you like that? “You sound like a thoughtful person, talkin’ ‘bout others so nice.”

He chuckles at the call-back, and you wonder what he looks like. Is he as pretty as his laugh?

“Y’sound so young.” The words slip out before you can stop them.

There’s a hesitant pause before Kyle answers. “Few years off thirty. I’m a veteran,” he sighs. “Retired.”

“Retired?” The word is slurred as you echo it back, but he understands anyway.

“Lost a mate in combat. Was uh… Was actually the someone I mentioned before. Messed me up for a couple of years.”

“M’so sorry.” The words are getting hard to articulate, but it feels important to say them.

“Don’t be. It lead to better things. Found this organisation, realised I could do this for a job. So here I am, I guess. Six months next week since I joined.”

“That’s really nice. I’m s – fuuck, shit – so happy for you, Kyle.”

There’s noise from the speaker. “You right?”

“Feel funny, s’like… Dunno, m’stomach is gonna tear apart.”

The conversational tone slips as worry peaks back into his voice. “Just keep holding on, okay? Maybe you can work here too; we’d be menaces in the office.”

You know he can hear the hollowness in your laugh. “Yeah, sure. That’d be good.”

The sky is trembling more than before when your eyes flutter open, and it takes a moment to realise it’s you shaking, not the world moving. How much longer? Was it always burning this much? You catch the last syllable of your name, pulling you back to the phone resting in the dirt next to your head.

“Mmh.. M’here. What… s’your friends name?”

“… Johnny. He liked being called that.”

You hum, feeling the word in your mouth. “Johnny. Johnny. I’ll say hi to him for you.”

“Not just yet, okay?” His answer is strained, tinging the encouragement he’s trying to convey.

You don’t respond, forcing your chest to expand and contract. Nothing wants to work; everything is heavy, uncoordinated, and you’ve never felt drowsier. But you’re pulled back to the cold night’s air again as he calls out your name again, louder.

“Huh? Sorry. Jus’… so fuckin’,” you stop, groaning as something sears in your chest, “tired.”

“No, no,” he stutters, hitting aggressively at the keyboard in those nice sounding clacks. “Help is so close, just stay awake for me, okay?”

He sounds so desperate. Emotions well up in a chaotic rush; where was this compassion when you needed it? Why didn’t you just hang up? Is he going to remember the sound of your voice by next week?

“Oh, Kyle. Waited after I took ‘em, ‘fore I called. M’sorry.” You catch inaudible curses as something jostles. “Think you’re… t’only reason m’awake.”

“That’s good, that’s good – we’re gonna keep talking, okay?”

You don’t remember how to form words properly anymore, and everything sounds a little funny, like it’s travelling through cotton. Air comes in ragged gasps; you can’t pull it into your lungs through the fire that blazes up your oesophagus, forcing you to retch. The sky doesn’t look familiar anymore through your lashes, but as everything grows fuzzier, you remember the voice next to you.

“Fuck, ugh – fuck, Kyle?”

As you tune back into the distorted noises, hearing him choke out your name, you realise he’s crying. It takes everything in you to lift your hand, as if you could wipe the tears away from here. “T-Thank you. I, really hope – ah, shit – we… hah, meet again next time.”

banners by cafekitsune

[fox-bright]

Nine years, tonight, since my rapist ex took an unmeasured or wildly mis-measured dosage of a designer drug, probably a psilocin analogue, and stabbed himself three dozen times. Technically the anniversary is about two hours and ten minutes from now, from what his neighbors said to the cops, at a bit after two in the morning.

I mentioned it to my husband, and he asked if there was anything I needed to do for the man to mark the anniversary. I would not burn incense for him, though, because that feels like an invitation, and I would put up wards to keep him out.

Thinking about nearly a decade of girlfriends he couldn't drive to suicide attempts, dates he couldn't rape, small business owners he couldn't steal from, friends he couldn't play psychic Jenga with until they fell apart in public, because he's dead and that means he can't hurt anybody.

The world is safer without him in it.

Still think it's a bitter waste.

[martyryo]

mid au idea appealing only to me

[jailedmoonshine]

this might be a long post

trigger warnings in tags

This will be the 9th year that my fiance and I have been together. We met in 2016, on Tinder, a few hours after one of the worst birthdays I have ever had. At around 2am, I messaged a boy who had messaged me first because I needed a friend, someone to talk to after losing my best friend over a stupid fight, and knowing I wasn't going to be friends with her again. To my surprise, he let me talk about my frustrations and horrible birthday and he was kind, and sweet, and messaged me in the morning. We talked for a week, at some point before and after I fucked another close friend, an ongoing agreement between the two of us. Nothing serious, just fun.

When we met, he got too drunk at his place. He kept trying to kiss me and I didn't want to kiss him for the first time while he was using me as a brace to keep himself upright as I waited for my bus back to campus. A day later, he asked to come by my campus because he had a hard day. Just wanted to spend some time with me. He laid on my bed and drank all of my whiskey, sneaking a kiss before he got too drunk. He fell asleep in his binder and I considered waking him up but I had never dated a trans person before, and I didn't know if it would be too far to ask him to take it off for his own safety. I let him sleep in it, halfway through the night he half awoke and knew something was off, taking his t-shirt off instead and throwing it across my room, falling back asleep in my arms.

The next morning I walked him to the bus stop and he realized he left his shirt on my floor, half joking that he really didn't do that on purpose. We smoked a couple cigarettes and I was texting my ex, a common occurrence as we tried to stay friends after breaking up, as most exes say they'll try. I told him I was walking a friend to the bus stop and he got mad because he knew it was 9am my time and he knew I was walking the friend home from my unit. We didn't talk much past that point.

It almost feels irrelevant, the next 6 months. We started a relationship like a normal couple and had some miscommunications, but for the most part we had a good time together. I always forget the $2,000 I spent in 2 months on Next Red Regular cigarettes and a 26 of Skyy vodka, my new boyfriend ending up without a job for 2 months and I covered our vices. I say our because I wasn't a heavy vice user until he came around, a tattooed man covered in self harm scars worse than mine with a heavy nicotine and drinking problem. Somehow 9 years later, he's still a tattooed man covered in self harm scars worse than mine with a heavy nicotine and drinking problem.

We ended up as that couple that each smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes a day, one while waiting for the bus and one once you get off the bus, a cigarette immediately after waking up and as many cigarettes as you could stomach while you got drunk the night before. Every night in fact, as we sat on his bed and watched YouTube, drinking and chatting. I wasn't quite of age to go out, so we just sat instead. Sometimes we hung out with the occasional friend, but somehow those didn't end well either. Less than 6 months into our relationship I watched him try to kiss an old friend of his the way he tried to kiss me the first day we met, either ignoring or not noticing her very clear intent on avoiding him. I watched the entire thing happen. He kept touching her thigh.

She was the first person who ever used my pronouns properly. I didn't ask her to, she said any pronouns were too confusing for her and if I said I was non-binary, as I recently came out as, I would use they/them pronouns. 8 years later, I'm who I am because of her. We never talked again after that night. She might have accused us of sexual assault. Never quite got closure on that one.

Because I didn't have a choice, I had to spend the summer with my family across the country. The plans were already in place and no one expected me to have a new partner already (which I don't understand, I had been in one relationship or another for 6 consecutive years before that) and so I moved back home for 4 months, and he started a new job at a grocery store where he met Avery.

Avery was a concert punk who told him he could be happier, took him to concerts and gave him alcohol. She was a couple years older than him, meaning they could go out and hang out with their friends who could legally get into bars and concerts. They got black out drunk together and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and slept in the same bed, and for some reason he couldn't understand why I didn't like it. Imagine, me, upset with my boyfriend of less than a year getting black out drunk and sleeping in the same bed as a girl I didn't know. This fight lasted 2 months, where I told him I wasn't comfortable and he told me he was sad and lonely because I was across the country and because I loved him, I let it go. He relapsed while I was out of town, apparently completely separate from her. I always told him hard drugs was my limit in a relationship and that he could never relapse if he cared about our relationship. And he apologized and promised not to do it again.

In a way, he maintains they never did anything until that day in December. They never fucked, they never kissed, never cuddled, just two buddies who got drunk together and slept in the same bed. I don't know if I believe him because I don't know if this ever would have come out had it not been for my Angel.

The day I moved back for school, he left his apartment at 11:56pm in her car. I actually didn't have anywhere else to go, the plan had always been that I would spend the last week of August at his place until my place was ready. It didn't feel like it would be a problem, I had spend nearly every night at his place the semester before and we never had an issue. And then suddenly, he left. I laid awake for a few awake crying quietly completely flabbergasted. It had been 4 months since I had seen my boyfriend of nearly a year, I was so excited for the reunion, and instead he was leaving me alone in his apartment for another girl. When he got back, I was still awake but I pretended to be asleep. He was drunk. Nearly fell over getting to his side of the bed. I asked him if he was drunk and he shushed me, saying yes, but she wasn't drinking because she was driving. She. He hardly said her name. He knew I didn't like her. It didn't matter.

By this point, they already weren't working together anymore. In a way it made their friendship closer, and I don't remember what she did for a bit. I genuinely don't care. I tried so hard to be her friend. I wanted her to like me, I wanted to be friends and see what my fiance saw in her, and we did hang out a couple times alone. I never spent time with the two of them before they took off together, but I went to the movies with her while I had a fever once and once we sat in our school's library and chatted for 4 hours. I thought she was great. Yet I couldn't figure out why she would pick my boyfriend up in the middle of the night and give him so much free alcohol he could barely make it to bed, dropping him off and leaving without even showing her face.

We fought a lot over the next couple of months. Every time he saw her and every time he got drunk and every time he would choose to spend the night at her place rather than spend it with me. I kept busy, found a job, hung out with my roommate (the one with the fuck agreement from earlier, it ended about as bad as one would expect), and all the while my fiance and I fell further and further apart. A week before my birthday, we broke up.

He came over to my house after another fight, determined to end the fight once and for all. If that meant we were no longer going to see each other, so be it. And so, we broke up. He walked home, and I cried. I was single, and I hated it. I didn't want to break up, I wanted my partner back. Imagine my surprise when two days later, on my way home from work, I see him get on my bus. Of course, he lived within a walking distance of my house, he worked around the corner from me. We worked the same shift, took the same bus home. He tried to sit across from me and I texted him saying it was silly to sit so far away, to come chat. It was nice to catch up, even if it had only been two days. We talked about work and school and I refrained from asking about Avery. Instead, I invited him to my birthday. A friend from my hometown surprised me with a visit and we got drunk and I nearly kissed a cute bartender who recently started at my job, because I was single, but we all know that never really sticks. We didn't kiss that night, and my fiance and I decided to hang back for a bit of a breather. It felt like the good old times, the two of us against the world in any context and it was the man I fell in love with, and I told him so that night. We talked, we climbed out of windows, we kissed, and we cried. We knew there was still so much love for each other, but neither of us knew where to put it.

A few days before our supposed anniversary that we weren't planning on celebrating, I got drunk with the cute bartender from work. We watched a movie on my roommates laptop and the two of them bickered slightly, neither a big fan of the either. I kissed them both to shut them up and my roommate went to bed shortly after. My roommate and I didn't kiss often, sharing a brief Halloween kiss shortly after my birthday and agreeing not to continue with that again. After she went to bed, the bartender pulled me back onto his lap, continuing his kiss from earlier. For a few seconds I considered it, letting his hands near my skin before I stopped him, telling him I couldn't, I was still in love with my fiance. He said he understood, and we watched a bit more of the movie. Then the snow started. In a city where it rarely snowed, in a city without any snowplows, the bartender was snowed in at my house, and my partner was snowed in at Avery's house. He was supposed to meet up with us before the snow started, but he didn't want to get his boots dirty. I'll never forget that text message. I tried so so hard to push the blame away from anyone but the bartender, because in the end it was the bartenders fault. And mine.

After it happened, I stood on the couch and opened the window, allowing the snow to blizzard in and land on my bare chest. I wrote a story about this moment, and I forget it more than anything. The bartender stood naked behind me and hugged me, seemingly unafraid of what might happen if my roommate decided to use the washroom and saw us, naked on the couch. I smoked 2 cigarettes to see if I could numb the sensation and even the snow couldn't break the barrier, pain radiating through my body. He went back to my room to find his underwear, and I went into my roommates room and cried. She held me in her arms after she barricaded the door, promising me he wouldn't get in and that we wouldn't leave until he was gone. I have joked that the windows weren't too hard to jump out if we needed to and she didn't laugh. I had a concert to go to with my ex the next day and I needed to get some sleep.

My roommate and I got coffee the next morning and she told me I had to tell him. My ex. We still weren't really officially back together but we were basically right back to normal, my birthday seeming to be a hard reset on how we saw each other. I knew he had experience with this, but I didn't want to tell him. I just wanted it to go away. She only convinced me to tell him just before we parted ways. He hugged me when I told him. He told me he was so sorry that happened to me, that he should've been there, and I had to refrain from agreeing. His boots were more important.

I've never said this either out loud or on paper before, because in a way it was a fault I had accepted. Accepted blame for. Unable to place blame on. This wasn't my first experience with feeling as if my boundaries weren't respected during sex. A few months in our relationship, my fiance got too drunk. We were having sex, and I decided I was just sort of tired and done. And my fiance didn't. No matter how hard I tried to convince him, he didn't hear me, and I gave up, and laid there quietly crying until he gave up. He passed out shortly after and never realized what he did. I never told him. I don't know how. I know he would never forgive himself. The night of our concert, we had sex again. This time sex I wanted, sex I enjoyed, sex he initiated. It was a beautiful night and I remembered why I loved him. For a month, we sat in limbo. Not quite sure what our relationship was, not quite together but not alone by any means. I had him, and he had Avery. While things got better, I had to move back home for Christmas again. And the night I left, he stayed the night at her house.

I felt like I had been thrown back in time, it felt like the two months we had together that felt beautiful meant nothing, because he still wasn't hearing me. I couldn't reach him. Only this time, I got the truth. Pulling out of the driveway in the passenger's seat of my mom's car on the way to Old Navy, he texts me. Telling me about how him and Avery kissed the night before. I regret telling my mom the exact words that came out of my mouth, but in a way it's how I felt. My partner cheated on me.

When I didn't think it couldn't get any worse, my roommate texted me asking if I had heard from my partner. I told her what happened and she replied with an incredibly ominous message that made it seem like she already knew. Turns out, we had a mutual friend that lived near Avery, and on her way home she noticed someone who looked an awful lot like my partner, leaning on the shoulder of someone who looked an awful lot like Avery, and then she saw them kiss. I really don't remember much about what she said about the actual situation, the rest of the month was filled with tears and fog and anger and tattoos. Well, a tattoo.

We talked it out. We didn't talk for a bit, we went about a week talking on Tumblr (the posts are actually still on here, if you dig hard enough) and then I decided that it was stupid, so we talked. I told him he needed to change and I couldn't coddle him through him. And over the month, he began to change. I knew it wasn't going to be instantaneous, but for the most part, he did his best. He contacted his old therapist, and told Avery he couldn't be her friend anymore, coming to the realization that it probably wasn't good to blackout every night anyway. He apologized and he started to change. So I agreed to meet him.

When I came back for school, we talked about everything. How our futures made so much sense together and how well we worked together, and how we needed each other in a way. We could survive without each other, but we wanted to be together. So we worked it out. We had date night on our days off and had a bit more time alone, with and without each other. We went out with friends and even though he ended up unemployed for about a year, it didn't affect our relationship. I worked at the restaurant so I was able to bring leftover rice home and cook for us, and he made enough on assistance that he could cover rent and necessities. We weren't lavish but we were happy.

Avery never really left my life. The semester after the Christmas where my fiance told her he wasn't going to be her friend anymore, we ended up in the same class. We spent 4 months glaring at each other across the room, and she hated me because the professor always knew I was high so he liked to bring me up in front of the class to do quick math and arbitrate games. In a way, that was my favourite class.

Less than a year later when I decided I needed a new job, I was contacted by a manager at a liquor store, asking me to come in for an interview. I was desperate, albiet knowing nothing about alcohol other than Skyy vodka, but desperate for a job. So I waited until my fiance woke from his nap and told him I had an interview at a liquor store with a weird name, and his face went pale. It had just about been a year since the two of them had talked, and we knew because she had blocked him. When I went in for my interview, I noticed a schedule on a piece of paper, tacked to an old corkboard. Sure enough, Avery and her friend. She still hated me, throwing a hissy fit about me being employed there, so much so that my manager decided to gently yet strongly encourage her to "find employment elsewhere". In a way, I won again. Her friend stuck around for about a year, and she ended up actually being pretty cool. Once she stopped being friends with Avery and chose to stop disliking me, we got along fine. I only saw Avery a couple more times after that, she became a rep for a liquor company and would come into the store sometimes. She never made eye contact, and moved away a few years ago somewhere else. I don't know where. I don't remember her username.

Meanwhile my fiance. We laughed. We drank. We had a beautiful year together. He met my family and we looked for apartments together and found the perfect one bedroom apartment unit, downtown, 30 seconds away from everything. We had 4 gatherings and went to a bar and he had a surgery, and we were there for each other. We made out with pretty girls and decided to see if we could do an open relationship, and we did. And we thrived. Then the pandemic hit.

I worked at a liquor store, it was considered essential service because the truth is, if a genuinely alcohol does not have access to alcohol they will begin to experience withdrawal symptoms, filling the ER with patients that don't necessarily need emergent help and taking the doctors away from pandemic patients, so we stayed open. Both assistant managers quit. Most of my friends quit. Everyone too scared of the virus. And my fiance lost his job. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't afford to take time off. I was a new supervisor and I wanted to be impressive, so I stayed. I served thousands of people in a day without any barriers, masks, coverings, anything. I worked 12 hour days 6 days a week for 2 weeks before people finally started coming back. I can go on forever about my experience in it, and I might one day. I am so traumatized that I can't work a customer facing job anymore, or I get stricken with such severe panic attacks that I can't control. I can't drive, I can't move, I just want to die.

I tried to get my fiance to work at my job, and he came in for about a week before I got into a fight with a thief. He was a kid we had problems with for over a year, and he stole something right in front of my fiance. He didn't come back after that. I don't blame him for that, the job was at its most intense and it was not for everyone. Instead he collected government income and waited for his job to return. Thankfully, it did before the summer.

At this point we were both working, finding ourselves settling back into a pattern. I had school online, he worked online, I went to work in a mask and I tried not to bring home a virus. At some point, he started asking me to bring him home alcohol. Rather than him hauling out to a highly restricted level of rules based waiting system, I could just buy the alcohol and take it home to him. And I did. He didn't get blackout drunk every night, but he would say he couldn't sleep otherwise. I don't blame him for that either, I do believe him. He's had insomnia every since he was young and tried everything, yet apparently nothing else works. (Spoiler alert: He has not tried everything)

We were debt free. We bought a car. My job allowed us to collect tips from the debit machine for being the only non grocery store open in the city while the pandemic raged toilet paper war around us. We couldn't really see our friends, but we tried. I had to cancel a trip home, but I rescheduled for later in the summer. I had to see my sibling off to university, which didn't feel real because when I moved away, he was 13. When I got back from my trip, the Reddit post happened.

The Reddit post is a whole other story that still makes me want to blow my brains out for completely separate reasons but I'll write that one out one day too. We lost our tips. People complained. The extra source of income that allowed me to finally get ahead in life was gone without any comparable replacement, and life kept going. I had to pay for car replacements and I decided to book a trip home with my fiance to see a concert for a band he loved, and it was so worth it. But I lost that income. My debts started getting paid off slower and slower and then another issue with my car. And then the move I had planned months earlier came up, my fiance and I finding a bigger two bedroom apartment so he could work from home and we could adopt a pet, with the extra income I was making from my job. The move was still happening, and I didn't have the income.

In less than a year, we were already 5 figures in debt. The money that needed to be spent on rent was going towards rent, which meant everything else was going on the credit cards. My fiance was slowly making his way up the company at his job but the raises were within the cents, and I had a surgery coming up. The surgery was supposed to happen shortly after we moved, and instead I got a call saying they had to postpone it due to rising covid cases. This was less than a couple days before my surgery was supposed to happen, forcing me to beg my manager for shifts. Thankfully, there were shifts to be given. The second time, I wasn't so lucky.

It was close to new years eve, my surgery was rescheduled for January 2nd, 2022. I was slowly churning through my 5 figures of debt and nearly done cutting it back down to 4 figures, when I got another call from the hospital. My surgery was postponed due to rising covid cases. Once again, forcing me to beg my manager for shifts that would've been filled in while I was on medical leave. And this time, he didn't have the shifts to give me. It almost seemed like he was mad at me for it, as if it was my fault that this happened again, that this happened in January, that this happened with no notice. That wasn't much like him, and I still don't know why he was mad at me for this. But I couldn't afford to not work, rent was too high that my fiance's paycheck wouldn't cover it so I needed to work. Instead, a coworker who already had another job offered me her part time shifts, and for 2 months I worked 2 days a week and picked up shifts where I could, spending every cent I made on rent and adding to my growing mountain of debt. And then my surgery came around.

The week before my surgery, and third time had better be the charm, my manager and I got into a fight. I ended up quitting. I decided it was time to move on, see some new sights, and finally ask the new girl on a date in a way where it wouldn't be weird as her supervisor. I had my surgery, and it went great. I recovered, I rested, I played video games and the same manager who hired me at the liquor store sent me a job listing for a new job, exactly up the alley of jobs I wanted to work at. I applied, we got along like a house on fire and I had a new job, starting sometime in the summer. The building wasn't actually built yet see, and they were more pre-hiring, so I had to wait a few months.

Then, the issue. The complication. The date with the new girl that went so so well that I had to get my fiance to take me to the hospital with a prolapse the next morning, the two of us both quite genuinely afraid I was going to bleed out. I can't blame the surgeon, I waited 10 weeks to the minute and probably could've done with another week, but either way. I got stitched up, and I healed. And in all of this, my partner and I had sex less and less. See, the thing about our kind of sex is that it's not quick and easy, usually needing to involve something to assist us one way or another, or taking turns. Thing is, he doesn't take turns.

For nearly our entire relationship, we designated ourselves as "top/bottom" in a way that made sense, comfy for us. I would go down on him, and if he had the energy he'd return the favour. After my assault, he stopped returning the favour. I tried to convince him in every way I could but for two months he would come up with excuses that didn't make sense, and I thought I was dirty. I felt horrible about myself, and I didn't know what to do. He eventually told me that he was worried about the bartender, and wanted me to get tested. Why it took him two months to tell me, I don't know. I wish he had just told me sooner so I could've just known it wasn't a me issue, but for some reason he didn't, and I still don't know why.

As time went on, he defaulted back to not returning the favour. His idea of a good time changed, and so has mine. I'm not into the things he's into, he's not into mine. And I feel like that should be fine. We're open. We both have full and proper consent to date and fuck outside our relationship and yet he doesn't take advantage of it. He wants me. Yet after all this, I don't want him. At least, I don't want to have sex with him, not the way he wants to have sex. And he doesn't want to have sex with me the way I want.

Then there's the leg. Jesus. The leg. Pin this for another story part 47. 3 years ago his knee dislocated and never healed properly, after a lifetime of ongoing issues. He can't walk further than a few feet without searing pain and he doesn't have the energy to be out of the house for longer than a couple hours. He can't have his leg brushed in bed without wincing and if his leg hurts, he is a right off for the day. He's been paying to see a physiotherapist for over a year who keeps telling him he has to do his exercises at home and he has not done a single exercise at home. He complains that he doesn't understand why it feels like his teeth keep cracking and chipping and decaying yet he vapes more than he ever used to smoke, and drinks exactly 4 servings of alcohol a night every single night. He's proud of himself when he goes the night without drinking and expects me to be proud of him too.

And atop of my high horse, with my own nicotine and weed addiction, I can't help but pity him. He spends $200 a month on alcohol and complains about money, orders food delivery without even stopping to try and think about what could possibly become dinner. I have become the decider, the thinker, the fucking brains of the operation and I can't help but wonder what would happen if I did just blown the brains out. Blow the brains of the operation, I mean. He would die without me. He hasn't taken a bus without me being involved since 2016 and he doesn't want to keep his wheelchair in the shed because he thinks someone is going to sneak past 3 security cameras and a security light and manage to steal it before someone would notice, yet he doesn't want to bring it in the house. He doesn't want to go back to school to get a better job yet he complains about his job as if the issues they have with him aren't 100% his fault. He plays video games 99% of the his workday and gets paid nearly $50k a year to do so, yet complains about how it's not exactly $50k. I cook for him, I clean after him, I move for him and I try so hard for him. And what do I get?

Before I told him I didn't want to anymore, he would expect me to spend his lunch breaks with him. The lunch breaks usually consisted of him making himself something to eat (never offering me a serving) and sitting next to me on his phone while he scrolled Reddit, or watched TikTok on his hearing aids so I couldn't hear it. So I couldn't watch with him. In some cases, considerate. In a way, pushing me out. If I tried to talk, it was met with disinterest. We're on opposite ends of the spectrum at all times and we can't sync back up.

Anyways, that's genuinely where we are now. Like, right now. I'm stuck. He has no friends, we moved back to my hometown so we could try and get a hold of our finances and somehow we're even further in debt. He's traumatized from living with my mom's shitty boyfriend and frankly so am I, and it just feels like we just keep getting the shit kicked out of us. We currently live with my best friend and I finally felt like things could improve, and instead he has a new complaint every day. He makes it so difficult to settle in because he refuses to settle and I can't get through to him anymore, he doesn't trust me for some reason. He's only listening to the illogical part of his brain that tells him no one loves him, and it's making him act in an unlovable way, and it's breaking my heart.

I love my fiance. I want to spend the rest of our lives together. I want to see eye to eye and understand each other again. I just need him to come back.

[hopetune]

✧ dead reckoning: finding yourself bothered by somebody's death more than you would have expected, even if they were only an abstract presence in your life.

mentions of: suicide, drug abuse

"The festival's canceled. Once you finish eating, we're going to check out of the hotel and hop on the next flight back to Epsilon."

Alice had said this so frankly that I almost didn't register it. She didn't even look up from her phone. Suppose she always had a knack for delivering bad news like bullet wounds. I set my fork down on my plate, the half-bitten piece of french toast still glistening with syrup. I tilted my head.

"What do you mean canceled? Why?"

Alice raised a brow. "You didn't hear? One of the performers died last night."

I felt my wings raise in an instant. My heart raced, though I wasn't exactly sure why. "What? How?"

Alice swiped on her phone a few times, her polished nails tapping against the screen like small scatterings of rain. A strange sorrow twisted itself into my stomach, and the sweet residue of the syrup that lingered in my mouth became a taste most foul. I quickly searched my mind for the list of performers, as though grasping at a name would give me more clarity. The attempt was futile. My unease served to sever the memory of dress rehearsal, of the times I looked at the posters and promos.

 It felt like a century had passed before Alice handed her phone to me.

I scanned the headline eagerly, like some hungry beast. I felt beat of my heart growing louder with each word I read.

"...She overdosed?" I gasped, thrusting the phone back towards Alice. She put a finger to her red lips.

"Shhh, don't be so loud. This article hasn't been published yet," she sighed, "but, yes, that's what the police are saying. There's also the chance that she killed herself."

"Killed herself?" I echoed, as if repeating it would give it more sense. It did not.

I fell back into my chair, sinking into the peeling cushions. I looked around at the diner we were in—so full of life, so full of people, so difficult to pick an individual out from the crowd. I wondered, vaguely, if I had already seen this girl before. The other artists lingered by this diner often, as it was walking distance from the festival grounds. Could she have been that girl I greeted last night, on my way back to the hotel? Or the girl I helped tie the corset of during dress rehearsals? Vainly, I tried to remember if I had shared any moment with her. But I came up blank.

"...This is horrible." I managed to finally say. Alice shrugged.

"It's show business. People die all the time."

I wrapped my arms around my chest. My palms ran up and down my forearms, desperate to conjure up some warmth against this deep cold that had slithered up my body. My wings folded in on themselves. Alice took a deep breath, then reached out from across the table to place a hand on my elbow.

"Hey, kid. Listen. You're new to the industry, and stuff like this is going to seem really shocking at first. But trust me when I say that this won't be the last dead starlet you'll know of. So you'd better get used to it now, alright?"

I nodded slowly, but I couldn't really hear her words. All I could hear was the ringing in my ears, and the distant sound of sirens. But that seemed a good enough answer for her. Alice continued.

"Okay. Well, I'll be headed back to the hotel, but I'll give you… until 10:30 to finish your food. Check out is at 12, so pack your bags by then. Venue staff have already egressed our set, so all we need to do is just get your costume from the dressing room and we can take get back home."

I nodded once more, and Alice stood up from her seat and left. She didn't turn back.

...

I couldn't sleep that night. Against better judgment, I took out my phone and searched up her name: Ophelia. She was just around my age, 21, and they found her dead in her hotel room surrounded by emptied bottles and emptied syringes. I listened to one of her songs. She liked to sing the blues. Whenever she performed, she did a little wink with her left eye. I wondered if I should do that in my next performance as a tribute—then wondered again if people would scrutinize that. In the end, I chose to anonymously order two vinyls from her. I would keep one for myself, and send the other to my brother.

Then, wriggling into my sheets, I went back to sleep. I didn't dream.

[borderline-culture-is]

tw: vent, dr*g abuse, sh, sui attempts, ana

bpd culture is overdosing 5 times, having more than 300 scars on your body, losing 20kgs in a few months because you starve yourself

and still no one gives a shit

no one gives a flying fuck

fuck you for thinking somebody would be concerned, or somebody would care about you

maybe you should just stfu and ky$

- 🖋🩸🧷

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