#that’s my girlfriend and we discuss theoretical physics | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

coeurdastronaute · 4 years ago

Text

Essays In Existentialism: Nerd 13

Previously on Nerd

“One more time,” Lexa called out, walking backwards to the other end of the lane, her sneakers kicking up some dust as she moved and watched the playback on her phone.

“Your girlfriend is a little intense, eh?” Evan asked as he followed Clarke back to the start of their scene.

Clarke looked up and wiped a little sweat from her brow as she watched Lexa move with Luna, talking about something, watching her phone while Luna juggled a camera and a script that’d seen better days. The messy waves were tamed, tied up and hidden by a baseball hat from her sister’s university, well-tattered and sweat-lined. The sleeves on her shirt were rolled up, exposing a slight bit of bicep, her jeans were caked in dirt and mud.

“She’s hot though, right?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“I’ll allow you to answer it just this once.”

“In a weird way, yeah, I guess,” he shrugged. “Ow! What the fuck?”

“She’s super hot in a normal way,” Clarke informed him after socking his arm.

“I meant like, I never considered it. Like, weird in a way I hadn’t considered. I’d prefer not to think of her like that, but you made me.”

“Good, and you’ll never think of her like that ever again.”

“Let’s give it one more go, and this time, Evan, I want you to pause before you answer Clarke. I want her words to ring for a moment. Play it how you think your character would feel it. Just for fun.”

He nodded and Clarke smiled at how serious Lexa was, how intricately she thought about the scene. They’d been at it for three weeks and were nearly finished, toiling away after school as best they could, and Clarke found that she didn’t think she was the world’s greatest actress, but that she did enjoy seeing her girlfriend doing something she was insanely passionate about. There’s a bit of magic in seeing someone happy about something they enjoy. As silly as it might have seemed, Clarke let her imagination wonder to the idea of Lexa actually achieving her dream, of making things. She jumped twenty years, and Lexa was the exact same person, but different, but better, somehow. It was silly, but it helped.

“Notes for me, sir?” she ventured.

“You’re perfect. Keep being perfect.”

As silly as it was again, Clarke smiled proudly and ignored the eye roll Luna gave before setting up with the camera again.

In reality, it was about six more takes, two more requested by Luna, three requested by Evan, and once by Clarke. It was infectious to care and try to do better. But they were finally done with all else, and the end somehow felt so final. Though she’d been hesitant to try, now that they’d created something, Clarke felt connected to the entire thing.

“So when will I get to see the entire thing?” Clarke asked, carefully dropping a bag of equipment on Lexa’s bedroom floor.

“Oh, uh, maybe at the end of the summer? It’ll go through a ton of work with Luna and myself, and I’m not sure what we’re going to do… I will definitely show you though as soon as it is done.”

“I’d hope so.”

“Thank you for helping me with this,” Lexa offered as she ran her hand over the back of her neck. “I know you are really busy. SAT, work, school, pep squad.”

“And you’re not?”

“Well, yeah, but I chose this, and you were recruited,” she shrugged.

With a sigh, Lexa plopped onto her bed, tired and spent from the busy weekend.

“You can recruit me anytime,” Clarke promised.

In a move that was still somewhat new to Lexa, hips circled her own, and knees gripped her thighs, and that led to a lot of feelings in her body, especially in the below the belt part that she hadn’t particularly figured out in the practical sense. Theoretically she knew exactly what was happening.

Without saying anything else, Clarke removed her girlfriend’s ball cap and tossed it on the bed. Lexa held her hips, ran her hands up her thighs and squeezed there, careful not to move her eyes anywhere but Clarke’s face. But they closed on their own when hands ran along her temples, scratching the sweat and soreness away, melting her instantly.

There’d been a truce ever since the dance. There’d been a few make outs that went slightly past polite. There’d been a few time hands wandered lazily where they might not have been allowed, but didn’t care about no trespassing signs. There hadn’t been Clarke in her lap though, and Lexa knew this was different. She made it different when her hands slid around hips and toward Clarke’s ass. She squeezed and she thought she’d died.

By the time Clarke kissed her, Lexa realized she was on her back in her bed with the head cheerleader on top of her. When hips pushed against her, she realized she was going to stop. Hands went to her chest. Hands slid under her shirt. Hands slid under her bra and she pushed back against being pinned.

It all disappeared in a second, and confused at the loss of lips and contact, Lexa opened her eyes and searched. Clarke sat there, hands braced on her stomach until she lifted her own shirt and tossed it on the floor. Scrambling, Lexa lifted herself, tangling her arms in an attempt at solidarity in taking clothes off only to be aided by an amused girlfriend.

“Wow,” she whispered, taking her time to look over new skin before her. She kept her hands locked on Clarke’s hips despite wanting to move them. She let her eyes roam shamelessly. “You’re like… wow.”

“Is this okay?”

“Very okay.”

“Thank God,” Clarke nodded before leaning back down, cupping Lexa’s face, and kissing her again, fiercer this time, if it were possible.

Hips moved more this time. Breathing picked up more. Hands pulled, tugged, grasped tighter. They clawed at each other and at more, at what their bodies already knew how to do but their brains overthought and tempered. It was a battle of want and need and restraint, and in it, they both knew which was losing.

In a shaky attempt, Lexa somehow unhooked Clarke’s bra. And in an instant her girlfriend was topless on top of her, and now her lower half was absolutely made of lava. It was painfully molten.

“Oh… my…. Goodness,” she hummed.

Clarke pressed her hands harder against Lexa’s ribs and rotated her hips. Lexa slid her hands up Clarke’s chest and squeezed. She watched her hands moved and touch and feel. She was touching someone else’s nipples for the first time ever, which was a weird thing to be cognizant of, but something that she never imagined desiring. But she did. And she wanted to memorize it entirely. She earned a hum and she pushed her hips up, in an off-kilter response to Clarke’s hips.

“Hey Lex, you home, sweetheart?” a voice called out from down the hall.

The spell was broken. The frantic, hot buildup was drenched in freezing cold water. The skin on display was covered with shirts as quickly as possible and the contact of bodies was broken with as much space as humanely possible placed between them.

“Yeah, uh,” Lexa cleared her throat and tucked in her shirt for some reason as she stood, her legs wobbly and her head not much more sturdy. “Just got home.”

“Your mom is bringing home dinner. She got sandwiches from the deli.”

“Sounds good!”

“Want to work on your car?”

“Yeah, I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Sounds good, kiddo. I’m just going to go change.”

Her father’s voice faded as he moved toward his room. Lexa leaned against her door and looked back at Clarke in her room. The blonde just pushed her hair out of her face and tried to adjust her shirt, tugging her bra slightly from the quick reassembly of her parts. Her lips were puffy. Her cheeks were bright red. She was perfect, Lexa realized.

Lexa cleared her throat again and redid her pony tail.

“So that was--”

“Really good,” Clarke finished. “Maybe we should… it’s good your dad-- we should talk about this, right?”

“Um, yeah, I think.”

“Not right now though.”

“Of course, yeah,” Lexa nodded, unsure exactly what was going to be discussed and even worse when it would be. She needed more context clues because too much had just occurred, and she was a specifics type of girl.

“I should head home. I have to finish some physics homework and take a cold shower.”

“Right, yeah. It was hot out there today and I kept you out in the sun.”

“Okay, we definitely are going to have to have some conversations.”

“Am I in trouble?” Lexa asked, cocking her head as Clarke picked up her backpack and shouldered it, making her way to the door.

“Not at all. I just want to be able to talk about sex with you before we do it because I imagine you might need it, and to be honest I’m not sure how much longer I can survive how sexy you are.”

Sex. Clarke wanted sex. They had almost, Lexa imagined. And Clarke was talking about sex with her and wanted to talk about sex with her and wanted to have sex with her and talk about the having of sex with her and they were going to have sex. Having sex was an option that they were going to talk because they were going to have sex and they should talk about it. It was going to be a thing that was discussed between the two of them because sex was going to happen and it might have almost happened and they should talk about the sex that almost and might also in the future happen. Sex.

“I’m kidding,” Clarke assured Lexa, pressing her hand to the center of her chest and bringing her back from the place she just died and went to. “I can wait however long we need to, but I think we should talk about it so something like this doesn’t happen and we don’t have a clear line drawn or not drawn. Think about where your line is, I guess and then we can talk about it.”

“Okay.”

Clarke kissed Lexa’s cheek and then her jaw and then her neck and then her lips.

“Are you okay?”

“Mhm. Yes. Me okay. I’m okay. Always ok.”

“Did I melt your brain with the mention of sex?” Clarke smiled.

“Yeah, kind of.”

“No rush, I promise. Just like to be prepared.”

“Like a boy scout.”

“Don’t stress. I like you.”

“Mmm,” Lexa nodded and tried to make her eyes not be completely huge, tried to make her heart stop throbbing in her pants and ears, tried to make her brain not explode or melt.

“I’ll talk to you later. Have fun with your dad.”

“Mmm,” she hummed and nodded as Clarke moved past her toward the door. “See you tomorrow.”

In an instant, Clarke was gone, and Lexa looked down at her hands. They’d been on Clarke’s naked boobs. She looked at her hips. They’d been on Clarke’s thighs. She looked at her bed and how surprised she was that her body just did some of the things it did. She wasn’t sure what else it was capable of, but she decided she might need to do research.

XXXXXXXXXX

“I need to talk to you about two things.”

“Hey, I’m good, thanks for asking. Just cramming for some finals, but yeah I definitely have time to help you out.”

“Okay, good,” Lexa nodded to herself as she paced through the garage, twisting a wrench around as she moved, twirling it around her fingers. It all happened quite seriously as she surveyed the car as it was coming to life.

The house was empty, her parents out on a date. Luna was coming over shortly to work on some of their film, but Lexa had a few things she wanted to get done on her car. More than anything though, she needed to speak with her sister desperately regarding many things in her life.

“How have you been, Lex?”

“Pretty good.”

“Anything planned for the summer yet?”

“I have an internship with a film crew that’ll be in town for a few weeks. My history teacher’s old college roommate is first camera. Some movie of the week thing for the holidays.”

“Wow! Lex, that’s huge!”

“I guess. But I need to know about sex. Sex with another girl. You’re in college. Have you had sex with another girl?”

Anya choked on her sip of coffee as she stopped walking down the sidewalk. She nearly dropped part of her armload of books, but managed to get a grip at the last moment.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I haven’t.”

“I tried to ask Gus but he said he couldn’t talk to me about it, and I just need someone to tell me what to do because I’ve run out of online resources short of porn and to be honest I looked a few and I didn’t like it.”

“Lots of information to unpack in this…”

“What do I do or who do I talk to?”

“Just give me a second, okay?”

With a sign, Lexa sat the phone down on the edge of the car and went about the tough work of running some wires through the rear panel. If she was doing something with her hand, then she didn’t have to repeat the word sex nine hundred times per minute in her brain.

“You and Clarke are talking about having sex?”

“We’re talking about talking about it.”

“How long have you been dating?”

“Um since beginning of November. Almost six months.”

“Do you love her?”

“I don’t know. I mean…” Lexa paused her movements and furrowed. She hadn’t thought of it like that. It seemed almost insane to quantify her feelings into one word. She was excited to always see Clarke, and when she had a bad day, Clarke was the only person she really wanted to see, and when she did, the bad day just melted away. How was she supposed to figure out if it was love when she couldn’t compare it to anything else? She got butterflies still, when she saw her girlfriend. And Lexa felt this weird need to do things for Clarke, without being asked. She was helpful and attentive because the payoff of Clarke’s smile was worth even a few minutes of forethought. But she hadn’t considered that love, but maybe it was.

“I really don’t know. I like her a lot. I like how we are”

“That’s fair. I guess I should rephrase it. What makes you think you’re ready to have sex?”

“I really want to.”

“Okay, yeah, well everyone really wants to have sex, but what makes you think you’re ready? Can you confidently say where your boundaries are? Are you ready to have a much more intimate relationship with someone?”

“I was kind of just looking for more help in the mechanics of it.”

“That’s the easy part,” Anya smiled to herself as she took another sip of her coffee. The weather was changing, the spring breeze ruffled the trees so they loudly clamoured above as she moved with the crowd along the narrow sidewalk. “There’s a certain level of intimacy in having sex with someone, especially someone you really like. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s certainly different. Do you think you’re ready to do that?”

“I think so,” Lexa murmured after a moment of contemplation. She tapped a screwdriver against her thigh and stared at a single screw. “I really want to make her feel good and I know that sounds stupid, but I just… Sometimes it’s easier to want to kiss her than tell her exactly what I feel. I want to show her.”

“I can see how that would work. Just so long as you take a good bit of time and really consider it. And remember, even if you agree, you can change your mind at any time.”

“Ugh, not you too! Dad’s already given me a billion consent talks. I just want to go down on Clarke without making a fool of myself.”

Anya couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the outburst, but she somehow managed to hold her phone away from her mouth as she did. It took her a moment to recover.

“Just do what you like and listen to her. Ask her what she enjoys. Be receptive to how she sounds and moves. It’s really not that hard. Just give it your all.”

“This is all fine advice, but I still don’t know how to actually do it.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t like leaving it up to chance.”

“You’ll be fine, I promise. You care for Clarke and I think she’ll be able to show you a thing or two.”

“What does that mean?” Lexa paused her movements and furrowed.

“You’ll see.”

“I really don’t like the sound of that.”

“You will, I promise.”

“Are you coming home this summer?”

“I might. So, sex with your girlfriend, huh?”

“Maybe. Is it weird that I just… I want everything to keep going how it has been? It’s been so easy and nice and I didn’t think dating Clarke would be so … so… easy?”

“That’s not weird at all. It sounds like you are having a good time.”

“I’m going to ask her to go to prom.”

“Wow,” Anya smiled to herself, doing her best to sound surprised by the news, as if it wasn’t customary to take once’s girlfriend to prom. “Are you going to do a big ask?”

“Nah, I don’t think that’s me,” Lexa shrugged, even though no one would see it. “And I don’t think it’s Clarke. She’s not like… she’s not like what I would have thought. She’s better.”

“You’ve got it bad.”

“Nah.”

It was nice to talk to her sister. It was nice to be put at ease, even if she just heard a bunch of stuff she already knew. Lexa wasn’t sure how it came to be that she was someone who talked to her sister every few days and actually filled her in on her life. She wasn’t sure how she enjoyed spending Saturday morning with her parents going on a hike or breakfast. She wasn’t sure how it came to be that the head cheerleader was soft and quiet and warm and made her feel like she was full of helium, but it was all happening, and Lexa felt herself open up to the world again without ever realizing she had been closed.

XXXXXXXXXX

For an entire seventy-two hours, Lexa let it all rattle around in her head, the words and the ideas and the thought of it all. All at once it felt like she didn’t know what came next while also incredibly knowing and that held her stuck. She hadn’t thought to ask for more, and she wasn’t sure how to have it. She knew that it was important, and she knew that was a different step than the ones she’d already taken.

Nothing seemed to change with Clarke though.

Lexa still held her girlfriend’s hand between classes, and they still hung out and texted and kissed and no one said anything despite Lexa taking her sister’s advice to really think about what it all meant.

She didn’t know what it meant. Not truly.

“That’s it. I quit. My brain is melting out of my ears.”

With an exaggerated flourish, the body on the bed flopped over and tossed a notebook onto the floor. Eyes rolled back before a tongue hung out and Lexa smiled from her spot at her desk. The music played softly from the speaker on the bookshelf. It was already dark outside as they worked on studying, but the lights reflected so that outside didn’t exist at all.

“Your brain isn’t melting. It’s just growing and growing and will soon explode.”

“I think I prefer the melting,” Clarke sighed.

Lexa smiled to herself because there was the head cheerleader laying in her bed. And Clarke was wearing her old soccer sweatshirt and she was tired from after work, but still stopped by before heading home just for a few hours of studying.

“Would you like to go to prom with me?”

“Me?”

“Yeah you,” Lexa decided, cocking her head slightly. The corpse in her room rolled over again and lifted her head. “With me.”

“Was it the melting brain thing that really sold you?”

“I just like how you look in my bed.”

“Your bed is very comfortable.”

“I thought about the sex thing and I don’t know if I’m ready right now, or by prom or whatever, but I want to just keep doing things slowly if that’s okay?”

Clarke sat up so she was kneeling on the bed. She’d already rolled the sleeves of the sweatshirt that hung a little long on her. There was a hole over the letter on the left part of her chest. Her hair was falling out of a messy bun, and her cheeks had their dimples in them. Lexa took a moment to remember it.

“That’s fine by me.”

“It is?”

“I like how fluid everything is with you. I just wanted you to be aware of what you were feeling and what your limits were.”

“I don’t know them right now, but I’ll know them as things happen, if that’s okay.”

“Very okay.”

“Do you want to go to prom with me?”

“Didn’t I already say yes?”

“No.”

“Well then, yes.”

“Cool,” Lexa grinned, holding her chin on her palm.

Clarke relaxed slightly and smiled back.

“Cool.”

216 notes · View notes

fortunatelylori · 4 years ago

Note

Hi, loved what you wrote about 365 days! What do you say about people who claim it promotes rape culture? I personally loved the movie for what it was but I think it’s interesting to discuss possible ramifications of it... Should we be worried about what men take away from it?

Hey, nonnie!

Thank you! I’m glad people are enjoying the meta. I fully expected to have about 2 notes on it when I posted it so the response has been a very nice surprise.

Having thoughtful debates about anything is always interesting so I’m certainly not opposed to it. Also simply because you enjoy something, that doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t be aware of its flaws or negative implications.

Being a heavy metal fan, I’ve had conversations about the possible negative effects art may have on society more times than I care to count and it is ultimately very much a “the chicken or the egg” type of debate. At the end of the day, it’s really up to our own individual perception of how art and life co-exist.

Personally I believe art is a reflection of life, a cumulative, stylized expression of our experiences, our interests, passions, obsessions, desires and needs. Meaning that it is not art that influences our behavior but rather it is our behavior that shapes our art.

There is only one notable exception to this: propaganda art

This is a particularly insidious form of manipulation because it generally uses long standing conflicts that exist within a society and validate and justify them. Obviously images of the 3rd Rich and communism will come to mind here.

There is also a sort of hybrid form of art that is both made for artistic purposes but also co-opted politically, either from the beginning or as it evolves. The classic example of this is Rambo which started as an anti-war movie and developed into a pro-US empire franchise over time. (by the way Stallone brought back the franchise to its roots with the last film so very proud of him for that)

Another example of a hybrid movie is Ghostbusters 2016 which started out as a continuation of a legacy franchise and devolved into a woke piece of marketing meant to further antagonize large masses of people during a historical election.

I’d argue something like Ghostbusters 2016 is far more dangerous than 365 dni, simply because it tries to spoon-feed you an agenda you neither signed up for or would necessarily look for in a movie that’s supposedly about how to kill evil Chris Hemsworths. And it goes even further than that by attempting to draw your support for it by labeling you problematic if you refuse to take part in the manipulation.

As I’ve said in my original meta, 365 dni doesn’t have any agenda aside from getting you off. And that’s the really important aspect here: 365 dni exists to get women hot and bothered. So why are we even asking what men will get out of this film? It wasn’t made for them. It was made for our enjoyment so wouldn’t we be better served to ask what we’re getting out of it?

But let’s for the sake of argument ponder what theoretical men might get out of this movie. Does anyone truly believe that men don’t already know that kidnapping women is wrong? Will 365 dni change their minds?

Also, incidentally, are there only bad things men can get out of watching this movie? Can they perhaps not find anything positive in it? Like let’s say a deeper understanding of foreplay or why giving their partners oral sex is good? Or that it really does pay off to learn how to dance?

Honestly, I’m pretty sure most men will avoid this movie on principal and also because most of them were dragged by their girlfriends to the cinema when 50 shades came out and you know what they say: you burn me once … But if they do manage to stumble upon it, I tend to see it as a positive thing, not a negative one.

Now … to the direct accusation that this movie glorifies rape. It doesn’t. It’s explicitly anti-rape by both having Massimo state that he will wait for Laura to initiate sexual intercourse as well physically mutilate a man that tries to rape her.

In fact, if you go through this movie beat by beat, from the moment they have dinner, it’s always Laura that initiates sexual play, not Massimo. It’s Laura who takes her clothes off the next morning, it’s Laura who goes to his hotel room, it’s Laura who teases him at the club and it’s ultimately Laura that decides the time has come for them to have sex. Massimo responds and plays into the game but he isn’t actually the instigator.

The whole film is, in fact, built around Laura’s need for sexual fulfillment. It starts with her in a state of sexual and emotional frustration. Massimo appears in her life as the antidote to that. If this movie does anything is validating a woman’s desire for sex and her expectation that her needs are met by her partner.

That being said, is the kidnapping of Laura an uncomfortable aspect of this film? I’d personally say yes. I would have preferred they went about it in a different way: perhaps have Laura indebted to Massimo in some way that would force her to accept his offer to spend 365 days with him. It would have certainly spared us that back alley drugging scene.

That’s how I would have written it if I could have. But here’s the thing, independent of my tastes and preferences or anyone else’s:

Kink exists outside of PC culture and is non-negotiable

Like it or not, people, and that includes women, have all sorts of sexual fantasies. There are women who have kidnapping fantasies or rape fantasies. There are women who have masochistic or domination fantasies. And on and on.

Fantasy is powerful because it allows us to experience things in a safe and healthy environment. It should be celebrated and nurtured, not censored.

Simply because you don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to will it out of existence. Regulate your own viewing experience and let others do the same.

Which brings me to my last salient point:

Women can vicariously enjoy things

Women tend to be very good at pointing out the multitude of ways in which we are better than men. And, don’t get me wrong, we are. We are clearly very much the superior sex. Lol

However, one thing I believe men are far better at than women is enjoying things without worrying if their enjoyment is correct or beneficial to society at large.

How many men have you met that are worried about the negative effects the violence in John Wick might have on the youth of America? (this is not a dig at John Wick by the way. I love him and 100% support his desire to murder anyone who messes with his glorious dogs)

The truth is that one of the side effects of the patriarchy is that women are always second guessing the things they like and worrying constantly about what the potential negative impact their enjoyment might have on others.

I don’t know if anyone out there needs to hear this from me but you are allowed to like things just because you like them. You are allowed to notice problematic aspects in a story and still love it because after all nothing in life has any business being perfect. Some things, though, do come close:

#365 dni #365 days #this has been a meta

34 notes · View notes

sesamestreep · 5 years ago

Text

with a little love, a little love, a little love

(read on Ao3)

SUMMARY: Cassian can honestly say that he hadn't imagined how he and Jyn might get engaged someday. He just didn't think they were there yet. But even if he'd imagined the weirdest scenario possible, he feels pretty confident in saying he never could have predicted the proposal would involve the phrase "insider trading". [AKA Jyn and Cassian and a little bit of season 3 of The Newsroom]

A/N: Another day, another installment of The Newsroom AU. But seriously, I think the series is done after this, for sure. I actually wrote this for my dear @taxicabsandcupcakes for her birthday celebration! She’s the best and she’s my favorite person to talk about writing (and basically anything else) with. Happy birthday, my dear!

Jyn has been perusing her menu in almost complete silence—with the exception of the sound her butter knife is making as she taps it against an empty plate—for going on five minutes when Cassian finally snaps.

“Jyn,” he says, suddenly enough that she actually startles, “what is the matter?”

“Nothing,” she replies, too casually. “Have you decided what you want yet?”

“I’m still thinking it over. Am I holding you up?”

“Take your time,” she says, waving a hand at him but not quite making eye contact.

Cassian sighs and reaches across the table for her hand, which just makes her look at him in alarm, but at least she’s looking at him. “I thought we agreed not to let this ruin our entire day,” he says, quietly.

“It’s just—” Jyn starts to say, before cutting herself off with a frustrated noise. “The last time we had an emergency staff meeting was when we had to retract Scarif.”

“I know. But the bright side is, there’s no way this meeting can be worse than that one.”

“Are you sure about that?” She asks, seriously, and the truth is, he isn’t.

They’d both gotten an email from Mon this morning, addressed to the entire news division, asking them all to attend an emergency staff meeting at 1:30. This would have been concerning enough even if it hadn’t been followed by an immediate group text message from Leia to most of the senior staff, asking them to check their emails, but the text really pushed the situation into a new level of stress. Clearly, everything was not alright.

It didn’t make for an auspicious start to their Saturday, especially when he and Jyn had barely seen each other all week and were supposed to be making up for that lost time. He’d spent more time at his own apartment in Queens this week than he had in months, because they had each been working crazy hours chasing down sources for rapidly developing stories and, even though it would have been easier to crash at Jyn’s place, he didn’t want her to feel like he was just using her for her conveniently-located Midtown apartment. Barely a year ago, he would have said he couldn’t imagine living in Manhattan; he likes to think the physical distance between him and the office helps create some semblance of work-life balance. But this week—and much longer than that, if he’s being completely honest—he’s been trying to figure out how to broach the subject of their living situation with Jyn. Because he’s, quite frankly, of living without her.

Today was supposed to be their chance to finally spend time together, leave the insanity of the office behind, and maybe actually have that discussion, but Mon’s email had successfully ruined any chance of that happening. It would be a bad time to bring up a subject that might stress Jyn out even more, so Cassian is just trying to salvage any of the relaxation they had planned. They still have a few hours before the meeting, after all, but putting it out of their minds is proving more difficult than they’d hoped.

“I don’t know,” he says, once he’s thought about it. “But I know that if Mon were at liberty to tell us what’s going on, she would have done it already.”

“And that doesn’t worry you at all? That she hasn’t told us anything?”

“Of course it worries me. But I can worry and have a meal with my beautiful girlfriend who I’ve hardly seen at all this week at the same time,” he says. “I’m capable of multitasking.”

Jyn smiles at that, somewhat reluctantly. “I know you are,” she says, looking down at her menu again. “I’ve had sex with you, remember? It was, like, an hour ago?”

Cassian squeezes her hand that he’s still holding once before letting go. “Keep it PG,” he says, under his breath. “We’re in public.”

“Sorry, honey,” Jyn replies, but she laughs when she says it, so she’s clearly not that sorry.

He takes the opportunity, while she’s distracted reading her menu again, to really look at her, in the way she never allows him to when she’s paying attention. Her hair is still damp from the shower they’d taken that morning—Mon’s email had forced them to speed up their morning plans and Jyn had insisted that showering together would make things go faster, which Cassian didn’t think was true but he also wasn’t going to argue about it—and curling a little at the ends, which reach about to her chin. It’s so rare for her to wear her hair down instead of pulling it back and it’s taking a lot of self-control on Cassian’s part not to reach across and run his fingers through it, for all it would be a crazy thing to do when they’re at a restaurant. He catches himself wishing they were seated at a booth, so he could do it inconspicuously, and then realizes, with considerable horror, that he’s becoming one of those people who wants to sit on the same side of the booth as his date and when exactly did that transformation happen?

Jyn tilts her head as she’s reading and brushes a lock of hair out of her face, giving him a better look at the freckles that have appeared on the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks and forehead since she went to Leia’s bachelorette weekend in the Hamptons and got too much sun. She’d shown up at his apartment the Sunday night she got back, not even stopping at her place first in her hurry to see him, and tried to smack his hand away when, later in his bed, he’d attempted to count all the freckles she’d gotten that weekend. She didn’t stop him, though, when he kissed all the ones on her shoulders and he told her she could still taste the sun on her skin. He can see them now, too, thanks to the cut of her dress and he wants to do the same thing, but again, they’re in a restaurant.

“I can feel you staring at me,” Jyn says, without looking away from her menu.

“I’m not staring at you. I’m gazing at you. Lovingly. It’s different.”

“Idiot,” she says, shaking her head and finally looking up. There’s a faint blush on her cheeks now too, which Cassian takes as a sign of victory. “You’re supposed to be deciding what you want.”

“I know what I want.”

“I meant, to eat,” Jyn says, and then cringes. “For breakfast. I mean—you said—what happened to keeping things PG?”

“Sorry,” he says, laughing as he takes her hand again and kisses her knuckles. “You know how I get when you blush.”

“I’m not blushing!”

“My mistake. Must be the lighting in here.”

“You know, the waitress is going to come back any minute now and you’re going to have to be that jerk who asks for another few minutes to look over the menu and then she won’t come back for another twenty minutes and we will starve to death,” Jyn says, petulantly.

“Okay, okay,” Cassian responds, consolingly. “I’m deciding, I promise.”

“Good.”

“What are you getting?”

“Oh, um,” Jyn says, sounding odd. “Uh, I was just thinking I would maybe get their fruit salad.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, just something light, you know?”

Cassian watches her suspiciously. “You’ve been wanting to try this place all week...for their fruit salad?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it’s, uh, really good,” Jyn says, looking anywhere but at him.

“Really? People everywhere are raving about this place’s fruit salad? Like it’s their big recommendation for brunch here?”

“It comes with organic yogurt,” she says, reading from the menu. “Where else are you going to get that?”

“Anywhere else,” Cassian replies, unimpressed. “We could have gotten breakfast at a bodega if that’s all you wanted. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m just not that hungry,” Jyn says, shrugging in a way that tells him immediately that she’s lying.

“You went for a six-mile run this morning, Jyn. Please eat something with actual protein in it.”

“Yogurt has protein!”

“Jyn, come on,” he says, seriously. “What’s wrong?”

She sighs dramatically and then reaches for her phone. After a few seconds of searching, she hands it over to him to read what’s on the screen. It’s an article from some trashy gossip site Cassian’s never even heard of that’s just a collection of celebrity baby bump sightings and, after he’s scrolled through a few of them in confusion, suddenly he sees what Jyn is upset about.

“This better not be your way of telling me you’re pregnant,” he says, gesturing at her with the phone.

Jyn reaches out and snatches it back. “Of course not!”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I apparently look pregnant enough that this site published that article with pictures of me in it!”

“In their defense, they did say that there had been no confirmation from your people about the matter,” Cassian says, and gets a scowl for his trouble.

“I don’t have ‘people’! It’s just me, and I’m not pregnant!”

“So what? You’re not going to eat now?”

Jyn shrugs. “I’m just trying to lose a few pounds.”

“From where?” He asks, more indignant about this than he realized. “Jyn, it’s a grainy photograph taken from a distance and at a very weird angle. You do not look pregnant and, even if you did, you don’t need to lose weight. And I’m not just saying that to placate you, as the theoretical father of your non-existent baby. Unless there’s someone else.”

Jyn laughs and rolls her eyes simultaneously, which is her trademark move when he’s successfully made her feel better about something but she’s not ready to admit it yet. “Of course not,” she says. “You’re the only person who could hypothetically impregnate me.”

“Thank God.”

“It’s just—” Jyn starts to say, but hesitates and reconsiders. “I’ve been in the gossip pages a lot lately, and it’s stressing me out.”

“That’s understandable,” Cassian says, nodding. “But maybe, in the future, just complain to me about it, and I’ll let you know that it’s all bullshit?”

“What if it isn’t bullshit?” She asks, as she puts her phone away. “What if I show you an article from one of these sites and it’s true?”

“Then I assume that there will also be pigs flying through the skies and the apocalypse will be near, so I think we’ll have bigger issues to worry about than you wearing something unflattering in a gossip column.”

Jyn scrunches up her nose. “You thought the dress was unflattering?”

“Come on!”

“I bought it that morning because I forgot to bring a change of clothes to your place! My options were limited to what I could find at Nordstrom in a hurry before work!”

“I always think you look great,” Cassian says, taking her hand again briefly.

“And that’s why you can’t be trusted,” Jyn says, pointing at him emphatically. “You’re blinded by lust!”

He laughs at that, surprised. “Is that so?”

“Yes! I bet our waitress has seen the article, and when I order waffles with a side of bacon, she’ll think it’s a pregnancy craving!”

“Or she will think, ‘this woman is at a restaurant for brunch and her order seems totally normal, under those circumstances,’” Cassian says.

“It’s too risky. It’s much safer to just order the fruit salad and suffer,” Jyn says, closing her menu as if to close the discussion.

Cassian sighs, frustrated. “Do you want me to act like a douchebag boyfriend and order for you?” He asks. “That way she’ll judge me and not your order?”

“You’d do that for me?” Jyn asks, eyes bright.

“Anything for the mother of my fictitious child,” he says, closing his menu too.

“I love you a lot.”

“Yeah, yeah. I love you too.”

Their waitress appears a moment later, as if she’s been waiting for them to put aside their menus before she approached them again. Cassian didn’t get the vibe from her that she recognized Jyn when they first sat down but she seems a little more nervous now, so it’s possible one of her co-workers said something to her while they were figuring out their orders. If she finds it weird or patronizing that Cassian orders for himself and for Jyn, she hides it well, which either means it’s not that odd, or she’s a seasoned professional who is used to hiding her true feelings about her customer’s choices. Whichever it is, she takes their order and departs without any apparent judgement of Jyn’s eating habits, for which Cassian is eternally grateful.

While they wait for their food, they talk about their week at work, catching each other up on everything that happened behind the scenes of their respective shows. Cassian would have thought one of the advantages of dating someone he works with would be seeing them as much as he wanted, but he and Jyn have whole days at ACN where they don’t actually see each other at all, not even in passing. He doesn’t really worry that they’d get sick of each other if they spent all their time at ACN together—at least, he doesn’t worry that he would get sick of Jyn—but it is nice to still be able to talk about their work when it’s just the two of them, away from everyone else. He wouldn’t know what to do if Jyn insisted on leaving their work at the office each night and he’s relieved he doesn’t have to find out. They’re both intense and passionate about their jobs in a way that not everyone would find charming or easy to deal with, and it’s nice to be with someone who gets it, who gets him.

When their food arrives, Jyn is in the middle of a story about fighting with Kay over a story from the Wednesday edition of Market Wrap-Up and Cassian is reminded of something.

“Before I forget,” he says, as their waitress departs, “I wanted to tell you I took your advice.”

“About what?”

“The Sprint stock. You were talking about it being a good buy earlier this week, and I bought a few shares.”

“You did?” Jyn asks, looking stunned.

“Yeah. You made me like two hundred dollars.”

“I wasn’t giving you advice,” Jyn says, leaning across the table and speaking to him urgently under her breath.

Cassian looks around in bewilderment, wondering what’s gotten into her. “What do you mean? You went on Market Wrap-Up that same afternoon and told your viewers it was a good stock to buy!”

“Mmm-hmm,” Jyn says, leaning back. “And when did you buy the stocks? Before my show or after?”

“Uh, before.”

“Great! So you bought the stocks with information from the early forecast that I gave you before it was public knowledge?”

“I guess so…?”

“Excellent!” Jyn picks up her glass, as though to toast him. “Congratulations, that’s called insider trading! We’re white collar criminals now!”

Cassian just blinks at her in response. “That’s not what insider trading is,” he says, without any conviction. “Is it?”

Jyn just looks at him like he’s a moron, which he might very well be. “If for some reason the SEC started looking into your trading history, they could pick up a clear pattern, tie it back to the fact that you’re in a relationship with me, a person who gets information about publicly-traded companies before the general public does, and yes, that would be considered insider trading.”

“Well, I didn’t know I couldn’t use the information until after you told everyone else about it,” Cassian says, putting his head in his hands. “How was I supposed to know that?!”

“Because it’s fucking obvious!”

“Maybe to you,” he says, miserably. “I thought you were telling me for a reason.”

“Not so you could make extra money on the stock market,” Jyn shouts, and then makes a face when she realizes how loud it was. “I was just having a casual conversation with my boyfriend about work.”

“I’m sorry, okay? From now on, I won’t listen when you talk,” Cassian says, and Jyn glares at him. “That came out wrong. I just won’t buy any more stocks on your advice.”

“Are you sure this is the first time you’ve done this?” She asks. In thinking it over, he clearly takes too long to respond, because Jyn curses under her breath.

“It’s not like I’m making billions here, Jyn,” he finally says. “Why would the SEC investigate me?”

“I don’t know! Maybe because you’re dating one of the most prominent financial journalists in the country!”

“Okay, relax,” he says, holding out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “We have to go to ACN this afternoon for this meeting anyway. While we’re there, we can just ask legal if we’re in violation of any laws. It’ll be no big deal.”

“We should get married,” Jyn says, suddenly, suggesting she hasn’t been listening to his speech at all.

Cassian is almost certain it takes him a full minute to respond, which he mostly blames on the rushing noise in his ears making it hard to think. “I’m sorry, what?” He asks, weakly.

“We should get married,” she repeats, as if he’s terribly slow. “So we can’t be forced to testify against each other in court.”

“I—that’s why you want to get married?”

“Well, if it’s a choice between that and going to prison, then yes.”

Cassian runs a hand over his face, as if that will magically clear his head of all of the thoughts warring for his attention at the moment. How did they even get here?

“I’m glad that on a list of things you might have to do someday,” he says, carefully, “marrying me outranks going to prison, if only just barely.”

Jyn blinks at him for a moment before realization dawns on her face. “That’s not what I meant,” she says. “Besides, you’re the one who hasn’t said anything.”

“What?!”

“I asked you to marry me and all you’ve done is ask me questions,” Jyn says, leaning back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. “So, if anyone here doesn’t want to get married, it’s you.”

“I never said that,” Cassian fires back, but Jyn remains unimpressed. “I just—are you actually proposing?”

“No! Not now that I know how you’ll react!”

Cassian can feel tension pooling in his forehead and he’s surely going to have a headache in a matter of moments. “I’m going to get the check,” he says, rising out of his seat, but Jyn catches him by the arm before he can get anywhere.

“No,” she says, pulling him back to the table. “I’m starving and I know this is meeting is going to suck, so I’m going to sit here and eat my feelings in preparation for it. And I’m not doing it alone.”

“Fine,” Cassian says, dropping back into his seat dramatically. “What do we—?”

Jyn holds up her knife to silence him. “We don’t have to talk,” she says, and proceeds to eat her waffles without so much as looking at him.

They finish the rest of their meal in silence, waiting until they’ve paid their tab and left the restaurant before they say anything more to each other. They’re standing on the sidewalk out front, and Cassian can tell Jyn feels just as unsure as he does in this moment.

“So, what are we doing?” He finally asks, when the awkwardness becomes unbearable. “Should we—?”

“Are you serious right now?!” Jyn shouts. “You want to have this out in public? Where anyone could hear us?”

Cassian turns, mid-way through Jyn’s tirade, and heads for the side of the road.

“You’re not seriously walking away from me while we’re having a fight, are you?” She asks, and she still sounds furious but her eyes betray the worry underneath it.

Cassian holds an arm out in the direction of the road. “I’m hailing a cab,” he says, calmly. “I was going to ask if you wanted to walk to ACN but you seem upset, so I thought we’d just take a cab there.”

“Oh,” Jyn says, softly. “Well, fine.”

A cab pulls up at that moment, and Cassian opens the door, gesturing for Jyn to get in and then following her inside. He gives the driver the address and settles in. It’s only a five minute ride at the most, but Jyn spends it squished into her corner of the backseat, resolutely ignoring him. Cassian would be more upset about it if the alternative didn’t involve them having a screaming fight in front of a cab driver, which he definitely doesn’t want, so he tolerates the silent treatment until they get to the ACN building.

He gets out first and goes to the front passenger door to pay the driver, while Jyn gets out too. Cassian turns around when he’s finished paying, only to find Jyn already several feet ahead of him, making a beeline for the front entrance of the building. He jogs to catch up with her—she can really move when she’s angry—but he resists the impulse to take her hand in his own. It’s a bad idea not only because they’re going into the office right now—and they do normally try to be discreet at work—but also because Jyn usually needs space when she’s upset. It’s almost like she can’t process her feelings if he’s trying to comfort her by touching her. He wants nothing more in the world than to pull her close and be reassured himself that this is just some silly argument, but it’s not just about him and what he needs right now. So he settles for walking into the lobby of the building by her side and sneaking glances at her, trying to ascertain her mood at the moment.

After a second, she turns to glare at him. “What did I say about staring at me?” she asks, sharply.

“I’m not. I’m just—”

“Gazing?” She suggests, and there's no missing the sarcasm in her tone. “Lovingly?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, Jyn,” he says, ignoring the jab at him.

“Nothing is going on,” she says, as she swipes her card to let them past security. “We’re just two pals, having a casual, fun time together.”

“Oh, is that what we are?”

“Yep,” Jyn replies, stretching the word out to ridiculous proportions.

She then presses the button to call the elevator with more force than is probably necessary. The doors open immediately, and they both get on and stand in opposite corners, not looking at each other.

“Just two buddies, who have casual sex and share stock tips and who aren’t getting married,” she continues, almost to herself.

Cassian looks at the ceiling, trying to rein in his frustration. “I thought you said I couldn’t use the stock tips!”

“Well, how about the sex?!”

The elevator doors, which were in the process of closing, jerk to a stop as someone sticks an arm into the elevator. The doors part all the way to reveal Bodhi, waiting to board and looking extremely uncomfortable. He clears his throat awkwardly and steps onto the elevator, taking the only spot that is available to him, standing between Cassian and Jyn. He leans forward to press the button for the fifth floor.

“You know you’ve got to hit the button for it to go anywhere, right?” He asks, looking back and forth between the two of them. Jyn looks resolutely ahead of her, refusing to make eye contact and leaving Cassian to respond.

“I always forget to do that,” he says, trying to sound conversational and pleasant.

Bodhi nods in response but says nothing. The elevator starts to move, even as its occupants remain silent.

“I don’t know what you heard—” Cassian starts to say, but Bodhi cuts him off with a wave of his hand.

“Nothing,” he says, not looking at Cassian. “I heard absolutely nothing.”

“Okay,” Cassian agrees, nodding. They don’t have to talk about it. That’s fine. That’s perfect. “Because whatever you might have heard—”

“Cassian,” Jyn snaps, from Bodhi’s other side. “He said he didn’t hear anything.”

“I know,” he says. “I understand.”

“Good,” she says, going back to staring into the distance.

A moment passes in silence, but Cassian can’t stop himself from saying, “I’m just trying to say that, if he did hear anything just now, well, it would be great to keep it between us, you know?”

Both Bodhi and Jyn turn to look at him as if he’s lost his mind, but he can’t help it. He keeps talking, leaning over to get closer to Bodhi.

“We try to keep this—our personal lives—out of the office. You understand that, right?”

Bodhi nods patronizingly at him. “Sure,” he says. “I mean, literally everyone knows, but—”

“Sorry, what?” Jyn asks.

“Everyone knows,” Bodhi says, calmly. “About you two. It’s not a secret.”

“There’s no way that everyone knows,” Cassian says, feeling somewhat horrified.

“I mean, I guess there’s maybe, theoretically speaking, somebody who doesn’t. One of the janitors, maybe,” Bodhi says, with a shrug. “But pretty much everyone knows, yeah.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I mean...you two are not subtle,” Bodhi replies, easily. “Kay texts me to complain about it all the time.”

“He does?” Jyn asks, annoyed.

“Uh, yeah.”

“And what do you say?”

“Nothing,” Bodhi says, too quickly, holding up his hands defensively in a way that makes it obvious he’s lying. “I think you two are great together. I just don’t want to get involved.”

Luckily for Bodhi, the elevator reaches their floor at that moment and he ducks out as soon as the doors open. Jyn goes to follow him but Cassian stops her with a hand on her elbow before she can leave the elevator bay. She turns around to look at him, but her expression is still closed off, as if she doesn’t really want to have this conversation.

“Just listen to me for one minute,” he says, when he’s sure Bodhi is gone. “I’m sorry for the way I reacted at the restaurant, okay? I understand why you’re upset.” He takes a deep breath, to keep his voice steady. “But I just couldn’t imagine us getting engaged without you meeting my mother first.”

Jyn’s eyes widen in alarm, but she doesn’t say anything in response, so Cassian continues. “It’s just that she’d be so upset if she didn’t meet the woman I was going to marry with enough time before the wedding to really get to know you, and I just didn’t know how to say that, in the moment.”

He watches her carefully, trying to keep a straight face while Jyn visibly starts to panic. He manages well enough for about twenty seconds, but he can feel the corners of his mouth turning up even as he tries not to smile, and then Jyn’s face clears as she realizes what’s happening.

“You asshole!” She shouts, looking away from him.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Jyn,” he says, feigning sincerity. “Did I just throw something extremely intimidating at you without warning? Are you maybe not ready to meet my mother right now, at this stage of our relationship?”

“That sucked,” Jyn says, pointing a finger at him. “I can’t believe you just did that to me.”

“How was that any different than that little test you gave me at the restaurant?” Cassian asks.

“Because mine wasn’t supposed to be a test! I was just—”

“Genuinely asking me to marry you?”

“No! Of course not! I was just—“

Cassian doesn’t get to find out, then, what Jyn was just doing, because Bodhi comes back around the corner into the elevator bay from the ACN offices in a hurry.

“You both need to come to the conference room, right away,” he says, and there’s no levity or friendliness whatsoever in his tone. He looks terrified. “Like, right now!”

Jyn looks back at Cassian, a million questions written over her face, and he inclines his head in the direction of Bodhi and their offices and whatever the hell is going on. They can figure their shit out later, he thinks, hoping she somehow gets that just from his expression. She nods, in comprehension, and even in the middle of a fight, he’s relieved at how well they can read each other. As they follow Bodhi and head afor the conference room, Cassian puts his hand on Jyn’s back, to guide her and to steady himself, and she doesn’t pull away.

————

Something like six hours and an attempted FBI raid of the newsroom later, Cassian walks out of a meeting with Draven and Mon with a mercifully receding headache and some papers he needs to put on his desk for Monday before he can go home. He’s not sure how he’s going to relax and take his mind off of work for the evening once he leaves—it’s not every day that one of the junior staffers violates the Espionage Act and has to flee the country—but that’s what he was told to do by Mon. She claims she and Leia and Han, along with their legal department, are dealing with it and that the rest of the staff should get some rest and prepare themselves for next week, which is sure to be a shitshow—his wording, not hers.

As he walks through the bullpen towards his office, he reminds himself to text Jyn. Hopefully, she’s already gone home, but he hasn’t seen her for a few hours. When he last saw her, she was in a corner with Kay, their heads put together over something, which is the real sign things are bad, if those two are getting along. Then the almost-raid of the newsroom almost happened and in the aftermath, everyone had gone off to put out separate fires and he’d lost track of her. He doesn’t know if she’ll want to see him right now, since he’s fairly certain that, in spite of the work crisis, they’re still fighting, but he figures a text just to check in and see if she’s alright would probably be okay.

As he pushes the door to his office open, he realizes that texting her won’t be necessary because she’s already waiting for him. She’d been looking at her phone when he came in, but she turns her attention to him immediately, and even in the semi-darkness of the room, he can see the worry and exhaustion in her features.

“Hey,” he says, and it comes out like an exhale. He didn’t realize how badly he needed to see her until she was right in front of him.

“Hi,” she says, offering him a weak smile.

“Are you waiting for me?”

That sort of obvious question would normally get him an eye roll and a sarcastic response, but it’s been a weird day and everyone is a little off their game, so Jyn just nods, looking nervous.

“Yeah, Leia told me to go home for the night, so I thought I’d see what was going on with you before I left.”

“I’m heading out, as well,” he says, and it feels like they’ve never had a conversation before. It’s not their style to be this careful around each other, and it never has been, not even when they first met. It just doesn’t feel right. “Mon’s orders,” he adds, trying for a joking tone to get them back to normal.

Jyn nods, distracted, but doesn’t laugh or otherwise indicate that his attempt to lighten the mood worked at all. He’s about to try again, to say anything that will make this conversation more natural and easy, like things almost always are with them, when Jyn sighs, loudly, startling him.

“What are we supposed to do now?” She asks, despondently.

Cassian clears his throat, not sure if she’s talking about everything that’s happened at ACN today or if she’s talking about them and their relationship. It seems safer to focus on work, at the moment, though, so that’s what he does.

“I think we’re supposed to go home and get some rest and hope for the best,” he says, not sounding fully convinced himself. When Jyn just gives him an unimpressed look, he adds, more seriously, “We have to trust that the people we work with know what they’re doing, and that they’ll take care of it for us.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” Jyn says, bitterly.

“I meant the collective ‘us.’ Not just you and me.”

Jyn looks at him, then, watching him carefully. “And what about you and me?” She asks, quietly, her tone guarded. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Like I said, we go home and—”

“But are we—?” She asks, and then stops herself. She gestures at him, frustrated by her inability to articulate her question. “Do we go—?”

“I’m not going to Queens tonight unless you expressly ask me to, Jyn,” he says, saving her the trouble of finding the right way to phrase it. “I don’t want to be alone. I want to be with you.”

She wrings her hands, not quite looking at him. “Even after everything that happened today?” She asks tentatively.

Cassian just barely suppresses a laugh at that. It would be the wrong thing to do right now, to laugh at her, but the idea she’s presenting is absurd. “Especially after everything that happened today,” he says.

“But I—”

He holds up a hand to stop her. “Not here,” he says.

“We have to talk, Cassian.”

“I know,” he agrees. “Let’s talk about it on our way home. I just...I need to get out of here.”

Jyn makes a face as if she’s considering arguing with him about this, but she apparently reconsiders. Why she would want to spend any more time at the office on a Saturday they were supposed to have off is beyond him, but he can also admit that the prospect of actually talking through everything that’s happened today and figuring out what it means for them, as a couple, is pretty daunting. That’s why, when she finally nods her acquiescence, he holds out a hand to her and breathes a sigh of relief when she takes it. Things always work out so much better when they’re on the same side.

Walking out through the bullpen, most of the staff has already gone home, thankfully. There’s not much else they can do right now, anyways. In one of the conference rooms, Mon and Leia are having an intense discussion, which is only possible to see because whoever designed this building made the inexplicable decision to only use glass walls and doors. There are very few secrets at ACN, Cassian thinks, and squeezes Jyn’s hand. She gives him a small smile back, before waving goodbye with her free hand to Bodhi and Poe, who are talking in hushed tones at their desks while Bodhi also clicks around furiously on his computer, eyebrows drawn together in either concern, or concentration, or both.

“What are they—?” Jyn starts to ask.

“Some twitter fiasco created by another junior staffer,” Cassian answers before she can finish. Jyn gives him an alarmed look, so he continues his explanation. “They sent out some insensitive tweet in the middle of the night and then had the good sense to delete it, but apparently not quickly enough. Somebody screenshotted it, they got fired, and now Bodhi and Poe are cleaning up the whole mess.”

“How did I not hear about this?” She asks, astonished.

“In terms of disasters happening at ACN today, I don’t even think this one even qualified for the top three, so it didn’t make the rounds. And you know how Bodhi hates firing people. He probably didn’t want to talk about it.”

Jyn tsks in understanding. “Poor Bodhi.”

“Not exactly a banner day for the network in general,” Cassian says, as they arrive at the elevators.

That makes Jyn laugh, for whatever reason. “No, not exactly.”

They take the elevator down to the lobby in silence, in sharp contrast with their elevator ride earlier, back when they’d been arguing in front of Bodhi and had no idea what sort of drama awaited them in that meeting. Cassian knows that the things they were arguing about matter in the long run, but they don’t feel particularly important right now. Not compared to everything else that they’re dealing with at work. Not compared to how nice it is to be holding Jyn’s hand and going home with her after a long day.

They pause when they finally exit the building, standing on the sidewalk, trying to decide what to do next. It’s been one of those rare, wonderful summer days, where it was hot and humid earlier, but everything cooled off when the sun set. There’s even a nice breeze blowing and Jyn lets go of his hand so she can put on her jacket. When she’s finished, instead of taking her hand again, Cassian puts his arm around her shoulders and she happily leans into his embrace.

“Should we walk back to your place?” He asks, after pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“Sure. It’s a nice night for it,” Jyn says, and after the day they’ve had, there’s no room for exuberance, but she seems content enough by his side.

They start making their way back to Jyn’s apartment without saying anything else. For all they love to talk, it’s nice that they can also be quiet together and not feel like anything is missing, Cassian thinks to himself as they walk. It would be a lot more enjoyable, though, if he wasn't worried about what happened between them earlier and trying to talk about it without everything going to hell all over again. Then, suddenly, what he wants to say becomes perfectly clear to him. He can’t believe he didn’t realize it sooner.

“Jyn,” he says, without looking at her, not wanting to break the spell, “if you really want to get married, we can go to City Hall tomorrow.”

Jyn is quiet for a long moment, processing what he’s said. “Tomorrow is Sunday, Cassian,” she finally says. “City Hall isn’t open.”

“Monday morning, then. Whatever,” he says, and when he glances over at her, she looks like she’s going to argue with him, so he keeps going. “‘Tomorrow’ was just supposed to mean, ‘whenever you want.’”

“I don’t want to strong arm you into it,” she says, giving him a searching look.

“You’re not. You couldn’t.”

“I couldn’t?”

“You can’t ‘strong arm’ me into doing something that I want to do,” he says, pulling her closer into his side. “I want to marry you someday. I just didn’t think it was going to be eight months into our relationship, that’s all.”

“Because you want me to meet your family first?” Jyn asks, cautiously.

“I was actually just trying to trip you up with that—”

“So, you don’t want me to meet your family?”

“I’d prefer to marry you first, honestly,” Cassian replies. “That way, when you see how crazy my family is, you’ll already be stuck with me.”

Jyn smiles at that, a small, hesitant thing. “I’m already stuck with you,” she says, softly, and his heart honestly skips a beat.

“Spoken like someone who’s never met my family,” he jokes, rather than addressing what she just said.

“They can’t be that bad,” she says.

“I have these two cousins—they’re twin brothers—and they have all these ideas for weird businesses they want to start and they will ask you to invest.”

“Cassian—”

“My abuela is definitely going to call you by my high school girlfriend’s name,” he continues, ignoring her interruption.

“Is that the last time you had a serious girlfriend?” Jyn asks, caught somewhere between concerned and amused.

“The last one she remembers, at least,” Cassian says. “She’s pretty senile. And my mom—well, she’s going to love you.”

Jyn laughs, burying her face in his shirt. “No, she’s not,” she says, once she’s recovered.

“She will,” he says. “Eventually.”

“I have been told that I grow on people. Like a fungus.”

“Or a vine, maybe?”

“Vines don’t grow on people, Cassian,” Jyn points out, needlessly.

“That’s why you have the PhDs in this relationship,” he says, kissing her hair. “And my family will love you, because I love you. I’m not worried.”

“You should be,” she says. “If I have to meet your family, you have to meet mine and my family is Saw.”

“I’ve met Saw before.”

“Asking him a single question at a press conference one time seven years ago is not the same as meeting him, especially when you’re sleeping with his goddaughter now.”

“I’m doing a lot more than sleeping with his goddaughter,” Cassian interrupts, petulantly.

“Don’t say that when you meet him!” Jyn cries, swatting his arm.

“I just meant…we’re serious! We’re not friends with benefits, or something casual like that. I’m not just sleeping with you. I’m in love with you.”

“That won’t impress Saw.”

“From what I can tell, nothing impresses Saw,” he says. “He’s terrifying.”

“Yeah but he’s family,” Jyn says, with a shrug that jostles Cassian’s arm.

“I notice you’re not reassuring me that Saw will love me eventually, the way I did for you with my family.”

“I want you to meet him, because he’s important to me. But he doesn’t get a vote when it comes to my love life. If he doesn’t love you, too bad. I do. You’re permanent. He can get used to it.”

Cassian makes a big show of looking at his watch. “Where was that romantic speech eight hours ago when you first proposed?” He asks, and Jyn bumps him with her shoulder in retaliation.

“Shut up,” she says, looking at her feet. “I wasn’t actually proposing.”

“Did we not just agree to get married?”

“Yeah, someday.”

“But not soon?” He asks, confused.

“Whenever we feel like it,” Jyn says, shrugging again but there’s nothing feigned about it. “We have the rest of our lives, after all.”

Cassian stops them on the sidewalk, and turns Jyn to look at him. “I think that still technically makes me your fiancé,” he says, sliding his hands up to frame her face. “Since we’re getting married someday.”

Jyn rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too. “I guess. Technically,” she says. “But I want all the credit for proposing, then.”

“We can’t tell anyone our actual proposal story,” he says, laughing. “Ever.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t have people knowing that I tricked you into marrying me by accidentally committing a white collar crime.”

Jyn scrunches up her nose, realizing how that sounds. “Good point,” she agrees. “I feel like other people aren’t going to understand how romantic that is.”

At that, he finally gives in and kisses her, not caring that they’re in public and this is exactly the sort of thing Jyn doesn’t want the paparazzi catching her doing. She doesn’t seem to mind right now, though, because she presses up onto her toes and kisses him back, wrapping her arms around his neck. They probably shouldn’t carry on like this where anyone could potentially see them, but it’s not that thought that actually stops Cassian. It’s something else entirely.

“Wait,” he says, pulling back. “Should I buy you a ring?”

Jyn looks perplexed by the question, or maybe just annoyed that he’s not still kissing her. “You don’t have to,” she says, finally.

“I mean, I know how much you hate diamonds.”

“Do you know the markup on diamonds? It’s ridiculous. They are so cheap, and yet they’ve been marketed so well—”

“Jyn, honey. I’ve heard this speech before,” Cassian says, kissing her forehead.

“I know. I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head a little, as if to clear her thoughts. “I don’t want an engagement ring.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am,” Jyn says, and he doesn’t think she’s pretending. “Besides, I’m the one who proposed. I should get you a ring.”

Cassian laughs. “I also don’t want an engagement ring.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he says, kissing her again. “I have everything I want already.”

“So corny,” Jyn says, laughing, but she kisses him back anyway, and that’s what matters.

———

In the end, it’s Han and Leia who have the City Hall wedding at a moment’s notice, and it’s perfect for them, Cassian thinks, as he watches the ceremony with Jyn by his side. He hasn’t even slipped up and called her his fiancée at the office yet, which is astonishing because, according to their friends and coworkers, subtlety is not their strong suit. Their discretion is even more impressive considering that Jyn ultimately did find something shiny she could give him to celebrate their engagement: a key.

#taxicabsandbirthdays2019 #rogue one #rebelcaptain #jyn erso #cassian andor #the newsroom #star wars #my writing #anyway here's wonderwall #otp: your mother and i have been together ever since #otp: built on hope #just trying to get all my tags out of the way #happy birthday zainab!!!#if your existence was a movie i'd put it in the criterion collection #because you're a classic!!#i used so many italics in this damn thing you'd think I was getting paid off by the Italics industry #i don't know what else to put here goodbye

24 notes · View notes

ariadnelives · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 19 -- The Parting Gifts

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

“I just don’t really have any use for a bunch of church junk,” Ariadne said, pulling the lumpy duffel bag out of the safe. “It’s not like I believe in this stuff— weird, it’s lighter than I expected— but it feels wrong to sell it on the black market.”

“We could give it to a museum,” Pilar suggested. “It’ll probably do a lot more to reclaim our legend than attacking the cult, I mean, think of how it looks, the cult stole all those priceless artifacts and hoarded them in a basement for decades until real Ariadne’s Angels liberated them and gave them back to the people?”

“Legally speaking, it’s probably for the best that the museum not be linked to a known criminal syndicate,” Ariadne replied, “but you know how rumors are, I’m sure people will talk.”

“Now,” Pilar said, “let’s look inside and see what we’ve won.” She carefully zipped it open and peered inside, then immediately snapped it closed again.

“What is it?” Ariadne asked, “something good?”

“Nope,” Pilar said, “we are definitely not donating this to a museum.”

“What is— let me see,” Ariadne said, snatching the bag away from her, “oh my god?!”

“What do we do with this?!” Pilar tried to maintain some semblance of calm. She was no stranger to fear, of course, the life of a pirate usually gives one a certain tolerance for danger. Surprise, on the other hand, is something that can’t really be trained away. If you have some reason to expect a surprise, the ensuing response can be avoided, but as Pilar had never quite found herself in this situation, she had no reason to expect the contents of the bag and, reasonably, found herself beginning to panic.

“Go… Go get your sister… Sweettalk too… And a bucket.” Ariadne dry-heaved. “Bucket first, time is a factor on the bucket.”

“Was it scary?” ViLaz asked Deathsbane and Sweettalk, who’d come to visit her with a large tub of graham crackers and cannoli cream.

“Was whuh scary?” Sasha asked, her mouth full of cannoli cream.

“The larceny,” ViLaz replied.

“Well, that’s the fanciest word I’ve ever heard for a Stealy Burgle,” Sweettalk said, but ViLaz didn’t seem to register the joke.

“It was scary seeing Sweettalk get shot,” Sasha admitted.

“You got shot?!” ViLaz asked with a mix of genuine concern and somewhat macabre fascination.

“That was my role in the robbery,” Sweettalk explained. “We didn’t want to hurt anyone for real, but we needed the security team to think we were a real threat, so Sasha here gave me a few doses of her healing serum and we let Spacebreather shoot me.”

Sasha hesitated. “I knew she’d be okay, but it was still scary to see my girlfriend shot, you know?”

ViLaz scooped too much cannoli cream onto a single graham cracker. “It wasn’t scary getting shot?”

“I’d trust Spacebreather with my life, even though she hates me,” Sweettalk explained, and created a small sandwich out of the crackers and cream.

Sasha moved to reassure Sweettalk, “She doesn’t hate you, she—”

“Babe, she despises me.”

“I thought she was unaware of your relationship?” ViLaz asked.

Sweettalk laughed. “Yeah, that’s why she didn’t shoot me for real.”

ViLaz looked somewhat disheartened. “Does she have a problem with your… lifestyle?”

“I mean...” Sweettalk seemed confused by this, “we work for her, so I’m pretty sure she knows we’re criminals.”

“Hey, speaking of,” Sasha asked, “you seem pretty chill with us being criminals.”

“Well, casinos are dens of sin, right?” ViLaz said, “so, it isn’t really bad if you steal from them.”

Sweettalk and Sasha exchanged a glance.

“I have problems with… like maybe half of that,” Sasha said.

“I was sorry to hear about Prescott, though,” ViLaz said, twiddling a graham cracker between her fingers.

Sweettalk chuckled. “Why?”

“I assume his death brings you sadness,” ViLaz explained, “you’ve known him for a long time.”

“I don’t even fully believe he’s dead,” Sasha replied casually, “I mean, we just saw how easy it is to fake a fatal shooting, and Prescott’s nothing if he’s not a slippery bastard.”

“He made my life hell, I’m glad he’s gone,” Sweettalk would have elaborated more on this, but she didn’t get the chance, since at this moment Spacebreather came barrelling into the mess hall.

“Sasha, Sweettalk, you’ve g—” she gagged, collected herself, and continued, “—you’ve gotta come to the mess hall right away.”

“Everything okay?” Sasha asked.

“Oh, no, you’ve eaten. Grab a few buckets. ViLaz, you come too, we’re gonna need your input when we pick apart Prescott’s dossier on the Zealot.”

The girls rushed up the stairs to find Ariadne holding the Jumper in her hand and heaving over a bucket, with an open safe on the table and Prescott’s duffel bag laying open in front of it.

None of them blinked for a moment.

“Well, I guess I was wrong,” Sasha said, “Prescott is definitely dead for real.”

Sasha was right, as they could all see, as they looked into Prescott’s lifeless, glazed-over eyes staring back at them sideways from the inside of the bag. His head had been cleanly severed, but there was still a fair amount of blood coming from the area where a screwdriver had been driven through the side of his skull, firmly pinning a blood-stained note to his remains.

The note read, “YOUR MOVE. XOXOXO NICKS”

The head was quickly moved to the infirmary and placed in a stasis jar, with a cloth over it so nobody had to look at it. Sasha, fearing that someone would be curious and peek under the cloth with no way of guessing what was underneath, decided to stick a note to the cloth reading “SEVERED HEAD - DO NOT TOSS.”

Shockingly, the crew had very little experience dealing with human remains. For the most part, Deathsbane was very good at keeping them all alive and, for the most part, functioning. Most of the actual corpses that had seen the inside of the station were medical cadavers that Sasha had gently scammed into her possession for academic purposes. There was at least one instance where Spacebreather had killed an assailant in the station, but in that instance the body didn’t stay onboard for very long.

However, for the most part, the human remains Sasha had to deal with were mostly things like amputated limbs or fingers that had been lost in tragic but absolutely unavoidable fireworks accidents. It rarely fazed her, since she was skilled enough to regrow most lost limbs and damaged organs. The regenerative serum she invented helped, but there were injuries where they would need assistance from lab-grown transplants or, in very extreme cases like ViLaz, she would enlist Ariadne’s help in crafting cybernetic replacements.

This shook her a little more than any of that, though. She briefly wondered if she’d be able to build a life support system that could sustain Prescott if she could heal his injuries, but she knew the deep wound to his brain would prove too much for her to repair to working condition. The serum would be able to repair the physical damage, with a helping hand from Sasha’s own equipment, but the brain was a unique organ.

Most human tissues and organs, even bones, can heal back the way they were before if they’re configured properly, given enough time. Set a broken bone or stitch up a laceration and leave it for long enough, it will eventually heal. Treat it properly and there won’t even be a noticeable scar. Sasha’s serum just changed that process from a matter of weeks or months to a matter of minutes or even seconds. With a quickly-applied dose of her serum, someone could survive a stab to the heart or exposure to the vacuum of deep space, and walk away feeling nothing more severe than a hangover.

What the serum could not do, however, is restore information lost when extensive damage is done to the human brain. If someone, for instance, sustained damage to the part of their brain that allowed them to create and store memories, if applied carefully, the serum could theoretically repair that damage and allow them to create new memories. It could not, however, restore the memories destroyed when their spouse’s lover leapt at them from behind with an icepick.

If Sasha were to build a life support system, she could potentially use the serum to heal the bullet wound to the brain and restore the processes of life in the head. However, she dismissed this thought quickly. It would have no memories or consciousness, no cognitive abilities whatsoever, and no potential for quality of life. Reviving it would be a waste of time and resources, and more importantly, it would be completely inhumane. There’s really no point, Sasha figured, in cheating death at the expense of life.

Once the head was covered, she hurried back to the War Room just in time to hear Ariadne tell her that she and Pilar would be taking ViLaz back to their quarters to discuss Prescott’s dossier on the Zealot, and that they would brief the rest of the crew after dinner that night.

“Oh,” Ariadne added in a hurry. “You might wanna go keep Sweettalk company, Prescott left another document on the drive and addressed it to her. I don’t know what it says, but I doubt it’s something she’ll want to be alone after reading.”

“Roger,” Sasha said, and filed into the War Room to join Sweettalk.

12 notes · View notes

goldenrathians · 6 years ago

Text

So, I would like to take some time to elaborate on who exactly has been cyberstalking me for the last 10 months and the context for nearly every personal post i make. I’m doing this because I haven’t ever really directly stated what happened to me beyond “my last relationship was abusive and my ex is not finished with me” and because i know she reads my blog constantly, i figure it can’t hurt to list some of her actions.

this year, i’ve done a lot of healing, gone to a lot of therapy. ive been able to distance myself enough from my ex to realize that not only was her behavior towards me during our relationship emotionally abusive, manipulative, and unfair, but that her behavior since leaving me has been even worse (harrassment, smear campaigns, lying, stalking). it took about 5 months to really even be able to acknowledge that it was abuse while we were together and that the amount of self blame i had been harboring was something she’d purposefully instilled in me. the unhealthy behaviors i’d been expressing while with her (mood swings, outbursts of anger, confusion, difficulty with overattachment) are literally symptoms of a trauma bond and began to go away almost immediately after implementing no contact. i also currently have doubts about the validity of any of her statements concerning her other exes and current partner because i know she enjoys lying and uses it as a tool to turn people against her victims. i also experienced symptoms of ptsd following the breakup that worsened when i began to fully admit to myself the extent of the emotional trauma i’d gone through (for context, i went from an unhealthy relationship with someone far older than me directly into my last one, so it was about 3 years worth of baggage).

i am capable of recognizing that not only was it good for me to be discarded by my abuser but that she only did so because i had become too vocal about my unhappiness with the way she was treating me. we fought pretty much every week because she continually neglected my needs while i tried to cater to hers and whenever i would bring it up she would accuse me of being controlling, violent, or otherwise unhealthy. she has gaslit me before (and oddly enough accused me of doing the same to her to a friend, despite me never having done such a thing) and convinced me briefly that i had undiagnosed bipolar disorder and that THAT was why i was always so unhappy with our relationship. she likes people who make her feel good about herself, and because i was no longer able to do that at a rate which outweighed my criticism of her behavior, she decided to fabricate an excuse to leave me and did so through text and would not allow me to speak about it to her for the next month. she also tried to get me to stay friends even though i had explicitly told her i did not want to do that, and when i told her i would on the condition that i be allowed to ask about the breakup or take time to express grief, she told me that she was “not my therapist” and that i was being unfair. i then cut contact with her, which began the now 10 months long (and most likely will be years long) period of harrassment and stalking.

i have dozens of screenshots saved of our discussions on discord, as well as detailed records of her activity since we broke up (all the times she harrassed me). i have evidence of her talking about me to her friends at the time of us dating in a way that paints me in a very poor light. i have screenshots of a conversation where she forced me to publicly apologize to her friend group after claiming that i was an embarrassment, which was prefaced by the phrase “i love you, so i cut you a lot of slack.”

she used my physical attraction to her as a tool on numerous occasions. first of all, she literally lured me into the relationship with it, as the one i’d had before had left me feeling disgusting and unwanted because of a transphobic partner. she learned how to make me feel whole and then used that to her advantage, because it was instrumental in getting me to stay (i believed no one else would treat me like a person in bed). sex became a bargaining chip and on more than one occasion i was told i was unnattractive or undesirable because of something i’d done, such as expressing the urge to be more submissive in bed. i was also encouraged to force myself on her sexually during a fight (something i am not and was not comfortable doing in reality), which i now realize was her way of using sex to keep me from staying mad at her long enough to raise a complaint about her treatment of me. as a result, i’ve had extreme difficulty with touch and sexual contact over the last ten months because in my head no matter who i sleep with the last person who touched me is her and i can’t escape that.

i constantly felt trapped, because i was aware on some level that people do not treat someone they love in this way, and yet any time i tried to leave she would act like she could change and treat me right. i kept staying around against my better judgement because i thought she would stop lying to me. i felt i owed it to her because she said so many people in the past gave up on her or got mad at her for being depressed. i truly thought she was a good person and that a good person would be capable of reasoning with me and we could both be happy.

she also maintained contact with the person she’d been dating before she met me, which was unquestionably cruel towards said individual. She would say hateful things about this person, yet never give them a chance to truly grow on their own and encouraged them to stay in love with her (i suspect they had a similar attachment to her). After dumping me she returned to this person only to abandon them again three months later to get engaged to someone she may have been cheating on them with.

i have proof of her lying about committments we’d made to eachother as a way to get out of spending time with me, and when confronted with evidence of said lies by people who’d witnessed her make the promise and fail to keep it, she would respond negatively and blame me, telling me i was a controlling person and then giving me the silent treatment. she constantly accused me of using our relationship as a threat in arguments, yet i never once said “if you don’t do __ i will break up with you,” only confessed that it felt like she did not want to be with me because of the lying and the refusal to spend time with me. she expressed desire to physically assault me once while angry, and made repeated comparisons between me and her abusive father, despite my voiced discomfort with being compared to men. when i once said (and immediately regretted) that sometimes i wished i could “shut her up forever” during a fight, she then began to claim that i harbored desire to physically abuse her...despite her having expressed violent desires towards me months earlier. anything i had ever said or done became fair game in an argument if i tried to voice my discomfort in the relationship.

she often compared me to her exes or to her friends as a way to make me feel inadequate or unenjoyable to be around. she would then private message me to start fights while around these friends, then accuse me of starting fights and preventing any further private communication. if i showed signs of distress publicly, i would then be “humiliating” her and she would tell her friends that i was overemotional.

She told me reasonably early on in the relationship (first six months) that she wanted to marry me. She said that since she was going to be in the military, we should marry soon so that we could live together. I was hesitant at first because it seemed strange to marry at 20 or 21. She would continue to bring it up until I said I was okay to do so. She told me in december that she wanted me to buy her a $400 bear and propose to her with it. Every month I was met with the same message of “I want to marry you.” In may, I mentioned that i might propose when she visited in july, since she had said to propose before she enlisted. She told me it was too soon and that she no longer wanted to be engaged to me. I was hurt and responded poorly, and accused her of having once again made a promise to me she had no intention of keeping. I recognize now that as an isolated incident, this was a total, blatant overreaction, but at the time i was feeling a lot of stress due to her racking up nearly $500 on my debit card and her repeatedly agreeing to date nights and cancelling last second while arguing with me if i was unhappy. She then used the military as an excuse to dump me in early june, which i now suspect was a total lie because i know for a fact she has not gone to basic yet and has been theoretically scheduled to for nearly a year. She accused me of being immature and pathetic, and told me that her life was much better without me in it. I asked her if there was someone else, which she denied, but i knew better. I had been suspecting it for a while.

since i told her to never contact me again over the summer she has:

in july, she began dating her ex girlfriend again, and told a mutual friend she had never loved me to begin with. Keep in mind that this ex was the one she’d left to date me, and that I never once pressured her to be with me. I don’t doubt that she never loved me, but not through my own personal failings. Rather, i don’t think she is capable of healthy love. She would repeatedly bring up that she did not ever love me and that I was stupid for believing her when she’d told me she wanted to be with me.

In august, i was still suffering the effects of the trauma bond and was still in love with her despite knowing she was being unnecessarily cruel to me. i couldn’t believe the person i’d loved with my whole being was the same person who was openly insulting me. I tried to ask a friend how she was doing in late july. He told me she was happy with her then partner and showed me screencaps of her doting on said partner with the same “we should be together forever” crap she fed me. I was later made aware that he would mock me behind my back with her. At the time i had her blocked on most social media platforms, but she reached out on a tumblr sideblog to tell me i was an idiot and that i should have known she never loved me and that her then-girlfriend loved her better than i could and that she had always been in love with her.

in october/early november, she dumped that person. she then began dating someone who i know has a history of low self esteem (she picks her targets like that) and purposefully liked a personal post on my blog (knowing that i would take the bait and try to directly engage her). I did. And she told me in the most condescending way possible that again, i didn’t know anything about her and that she was happy with this new person, who was everything i was not, and that i was the person who needed to grow and let go of bitterness. Please note that i had only asked why she was liking things on my blog. I told her i didn’t want to hear from her anymore and blocked her again on discord. She then reached out to me on tumblr (before i could block her there) to say “I can unblock you on my main account if you want to talk.” as though it were some kind of favor to do that to me. as though i had done literally anything besides say “i’m blocking you, don’t contact me.”

Also in november she had her new girlfriend send me messages telling me to stop stalking her, which is ridiculous because i made a rule to myself to not look at her social media back in august and had been reading about what to do with narcissists (no contact rule). The new girlfriend told me I deserved what had happened to me. I attempted to warn the new girlfriend that it was all lies, but then realized it wouldn’t do any good, so i blocked the both of them.

On january 1st, i recieved a discord call from a dormant group chat (unused for nearly a year). It was from the new girlfriend. She hung up and then posted screenshots of her and my ex together, along with a message @ing me saying that they were now living together (from long distance to cohabiting in my ex’s parents’ house) and that my ex had proposed to her. Multiple people witnessed this. It was entirely unprovoked on my part as i had not attempted to contact either of them since november. This was a post designed to demoralize me or upset me, which it failed to do because by december i was out of love and in full recovery. i had acknowledged that my ex was not the person i had romanticized so heavily in my head.

Late january, my ex posed as her fiancee on discord to message someone who was once a mutual friend but who is now only my friend. After he told her he wasn’t interested in talking, she revealed it was her and not her fiancee, made a very pitiful attempt to insult him, and then blocked him.

Early february, she contacted a friend of mine whom she had met twice in real life december 2017. she still had his phone number and snapchat, and reportedly sent him an image of a paypal receipt, which i suspect had something to do with the (expensive) items i’d requested she return to me when we broke up. This could have been innocent, but given her other patterns, i highly doubt that it was anything short of intentional because she knew he would ask me about it. I told him to block her just in case.

Following that, in early march, I recieved anonymous questions on tumblr about my relationship status. I have a brain and am able to easily spot her text speech patterns. I then installed a tracker on my blog to register page hits and responded to the ask, knowing she was bound to check for responses.

Around that time, i was made aware by a friend that someone i used to talk to no longer talked to me because of how i and my ex had treated them. i reached out because i felt like even if it was way too late at least maybe they could know i was aware i’d been shitty to them. we talked and i was told that my ex had pretty much lied constantly about my actions and that this person didn’t like me because they were under the impression that i was the abuser in the relationship. This is not the only time someone has come forth to tell me that my ex used to talk about me behind my back. I have had other friends and acquaintances mention it to me over the past year.

Since then, she has visited my page and looked through my personal tag numerous times a week, ranging from once a day to up to 6 times or more. I have evidence of her every move ever since she decided to start harrassing me back in July. I know she is likely reading this exact post. I also know she isn’t very smart, because a smart person would have stopped trying the first time they were blocked. I know that she secretly hates herself and that she represses the anger she feels because she likes to make people think she’s afraid to hurt them, but she enjoys starting drama and spreading rumors wherever she goes. I know that she probably had some sort of traumatic events in her early teens that caused her to begin serially dating/abusing people, but I also don’t really care at this point. I did a lot of emotional labor trying to humanize her up until I realized I didn’t owe her that anymore. It’s somewhat refreshing knowing that I’m allowed to speak now and that there will be no consequences. There is no relationship to lose. Anyone who wishes to challenge me is totally welcome to do so, because I have a shit ton of proof that supports my side of this story.

#ender.txt #long post

4 notes · View notes

okimargarvez · 6 years ago

Text

IT’S JUST SEX

Original title: It’s just sex.

Prompt: sex challenge.

Warning: mention of sex.

Genre: romantic, smut.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez.

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: oneshot, part 16 of 365 pills of Garvez canon life.

Legend: 💑😘😈.

Song mentioned: none.

GARVEZ STORIES

IT’S JUST SEX

-Why do we get along only when we have sex?- the question comes to point-blank, just as he has just finished dressing and threw himself on the mattress, perfectly satisfied and happy, only eager to remain silent embraced to her until the sleep will prevail.

Silence for a few seconds, maybe for a minute. She throws herself on his side and looks at him, waiting. - One: it's not sex, for me, we make love.- he starts listing. -Two: it is much easier to roll among the blankets, because there are no conflicts, you know that I desire you and I know that you want me. While when we are discussing something, you and me both want to be right, that the other gives up or thinks in the same way, from the first moment...- Penelope rolls her eyes, annoyed that he has managed to find fair words once again.-

-Here's what happens when you git together with a profiler!- she comments, turning her back to him, pretending to be offended. He grabs her for the hips and turns her back in his direction. He caresses her cheek and then a breast. -Do you see, however, that you are obsessed with that?- she teases him.

-I never said I don’t love having sex- he says on purpose -with you.- he grabs her by the chin and kisses her. Penelope moans with pleasure but keeps her eyes open and he too. Challenge looks. -And I'm not at all obsessed.- she intercepts the hand that was about to reach the elastic of her panties.

-Ah yes? Do you want to bet?- Luke looks at her, thinking back about the last time they had been in the same situation. He had been very lucky.

-What you have in mind?- his girlfriend has that mischievous look that should make ring an alarm bell on his head.

-No sex. No physical contact. Not even innocent kisses. Let's see whoever gives up first. So, I'll show you're obsessed with!- but he knows isn't over.

-What’s a stake? What do you want me to do, in the very remote case that I lose?- she bursts into laughter. She passes her tongue over her lips and he catches it. Then he comes off, reluctantly. -The challenge hadn't yet begun.- he justifies himself.

-Well, for example, you could accompany me to that boring convention, dressed as Luke Skywalker. Think how simple it will be, you don’t even have to change your name!- it could be worse. Probably he will do it anyway, because it is however an occasion to spend time with her. And she, dressed as Princess Leyla, is so good to look.

-And if you lose?- theoretically he should decide it, but she had the original idea and he wants to see if she has something in mind. She is so convinced of winning, this time... and she still has to take revenge for the walk-run.

-Well, let's say I could do something that I would not do at all.- she grabs the small bottle on the bedside table, slowly. -Something you want for a long time.- she turns the cork and takes it off. -And that I have always refused.- she drinks, swallowing in a theatrical way. And Luke can’t help but concentrate on her throat.

-You mean?- he asks, feeling every part of his body vibrate.

-I mean.- she confirms.

He should have expected that she would not play loyally. But she had on her side above all the fact that she was born a woman. Moreover, when she wanted, she could turn into the devil. Penelope doesn’t change clothes, because there is no need. On the other hand, it seems that she spent evenings looking at the entire filmography of Marylin Monroe. The first morning, just finished discussing the case, she put into practice the oldest of female seduction techniques. -Misery, I dropped the folder.- and she leans down to pick it up, shooting her backside in his face. Others can’t understand their strange behavior, but they sense that there is something going on between them. Until it interferes with the work, Prentiss is willing to tolerate.

Upon landing, when he calls her, she answers with a video where she starts to unbutton her blouse, so she has only her bra on, naturally one of Luke's favorites, the straps lowered. -It's really hot, here in the office. And where are you?- they have been together for a year, yet he seems to be back in time, at that time when she was not yet his and he still had to conquer her.

In the evening, from O'Keef, she takes a century to cross her legs. And how the hell she moves them! It should be illegal. He had forgotten how capable she was to be sensual. The routine had turned passion into habit, and it wasn’t bad. He wanted exactly what JJ and her husband had. But sometimes, some games could help. She does it on purpose to give him the necessary time to see her panties. But he's not falling for it. He is not so weak. But the eye falls there, after all, looking isn't touching. And it is at that moment that he realizes. Oh, fuck. She doesn’t wear any kind of panties. Anything.

-Penelope, do you know you're an asshole?- he says when he finds himself next to her in bed. -I didn’t think you would play so dirty.- in the dark, he hears her laugh.

-All's fair in love and war.- she reminds him. -You got excited, right? You would have liked to bring me by force in the bathrooms.- another laugh. -Well, you can give in, or to use your hand. Remember that I still have nothing on me. It's too hot tonight.- Luke swallows.

-Do you want it, do you want the war? And war you will have. Get ready to lose.- so he starts making his own game. From the next day, in the office. -What a dummy, I spilled coffee on my shirt. Now I'll have to change it...- he knows perfectly what effect on Penelope, his muscles wet with sweat. -I almost prefer to stay without. It's so hot... don't you think?- she is staring at him for a few seconds with her mouth open, and then she recovers.

Cheers. -Congratulations, but is there anything you can do, Newbie?- not her ass before his face, nor an almost striptease as a greeting, or her damn legs and even the knowledge that she was naked under there. Nothing had been enough to shake him, but a nickname that he didn’t hear for too long, only this can make him give up. He drags her into the bat-cave, he puts her against the wall, kissing her lips first and then her neck, while his hands run along her thighs and, damn, this time they encounter an obstacle. -Luke!- Penelope moans as he moves a few fingers inside her. -Do... do you know that you have... lost?- the answer is delayed by her, who is now nibbling his nipples and shoulder.

-Yes, well, I don’t care. Even if you were about to give up, I know. We lost both... or won. Depends on perspective.- he laughs as she tries to get settled.

-Ok, and what would you suggest?- he smooth the skirt.

-Uh, I could take you to your convention and you could, you know...- he winks. -I know that the two things don’t have the same weight. I am willing to accompany you for the rest of our lives.-

TAGS: @theshamelessmanatee @itsdawnashlie @arses21434 @jarmin @kathy5654 @martinab26 @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @thinitta @skisun @myhollyhanna23 @thenorthernlytes @garvezz @mercedes-maldonado

#garvez #criminal minds #penelope garcia #luke alvez #penelope x luke #luke x penelope #alvez x garcia #garcia x alvez #cm #luke alvez x penelope garcia #penelope garcia x luke alvez

12 notes · View notes

theotherwomanzg-blog · 6 years ago

Text

The One Where It All Starts

Being the other woman never seemed like the ideal situation. I never intended to let it get to this point, but in all four “relationships” that I have been in, I have always been the other woman. The worst part is I don’t actually think I can tell anyone about all of this. I need to keep it to myself or it could end up ruining someone else’s entire life. Blowing apart marriages and engagements that I have no intention on destroying.

But keeping all of this to myself is driving me insane. I need to let it all out, and this is how I intend on doing so without wrecking everything.

Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). I always saw myself as being asexual. I never really felt attracted to anyone and still don’t feel physically attracted to people. I’ll admit, I did have crushes on a few people after getting to know them, but I came to realise quite quickly that I just liked them as friends and when things started to get any more serious I would back off and usually complicate things to try and keep the distance.

When I was about to turn 24 and had not had a boyfriend, my friends deemed it the oddest thing. With my sexuality constantly being called into question, and the constant comments that there was something wrong with me or the way I was “built”, I started doubting everything. I could not figure out what was wrong with me and why I never felt attracted to anyone. Why my biological clock had not started alerting me to the fact that by the time my mum was my age she had already had a child. I was confused and I didn’t like it.

This is where it get’s inappropriate and I know it’s messy, but it happened and I am documenting the whole story here.

I went out for drinks with my bosses boss one evening. We were used to hanging out in a group after work, but it was one of the first few times that it had just been the two of us. He knew I liked a good whiskey and took me to a gorgeous whiskey bar near the office. We sat on the terrace and talked about everything from the latest gossip to discussions on the best ways to theoretically structure a business. It was wonderful. For the first time I felt like he saw me as an equal.

A couple of days later, I got a text from him asking me to join him at the same bar after work again. It had been a long day and I really needed a drink or five. I had a couple more than I should have, and yet again, my sexuality was brought up as was quite common with him and the group that we hung out with. None of them believed that asexuality was a thing. After my 6th glass, he jokingly teased that if I kissed him and still felt nothing, then he would accept that asexuality was a thing. He joked about this a little until I gave in and agreed to one kiss. Given that I had drunk quite a fair amount, (and let’s be honest, it felt nice kissing my bosses boss... the power was quite a draw), the kiss lasted a lot longer than I had intended. And it led to a fair bit more kissing on the way home when he dropped me back.

It felt nice. I stopped thinking and the stress of being the perfect employee all day at work and then being the perfect daughter all evening at home sort of melted away because for once I was doing something that I knew no one would approve of. No one could find out about this. Not only was he my bosses boss, but he was also a married man, 12 years my senior, had two kids, and was generally recognised by everyone as a serial womaniser. At last, though, I stopped thinking there was something wrong with me. I had done something relationship-y and had not hated it. I wasn’t “broken”.

This continued for a while. Things got more frequent. We wanted to spend as much time as we could alone after work. We started going to a hotel after work to be alone together and it was the stupidest thing I could have done but it was great stress relief. After one particularly fun round of...”stress relief”, we lay in bed and he told me he loved me. Now I’m not an idiot. I knew about all his millions of girlfriends and I did not want to be another name for the list and just another piece of gossip. I laughed it off.

Things then got more serious between us. He started becoming a confidant and much more than just a friend from work. He broke things off with the other girl that he was seeing, lets call her K (she comes back again later in the story) and assured me that things between himself and his wife were merely cordial, because they did not want the kids to be impacted by what was happening between the two of them. That’s about the time that he became my boyfriend... my first boyfriend and first real relationship.

I am not the most romantic of people and generally like being by myself and am incredibly strong willed. He is hard headed, drinks way too much, and craves the attention of every woman in whichever room he is in. This led to us arguing a lot. I was not loving enough, he was too rude when he drank, I did not want to go out all the time, he flirted too much, I felt the need to completely split work and personal life, he thought I was too robotic. We broke things off and got back together so many times, that we used to jokingly refer to ourselves as the Ross and Rachel of our friend group. The whole time, no one knew anything about this, but my closest friend at work grew a little suspicious.

Fast forward several fights, we sort of agreed that we could see other people while we were seeing each other. I met some of his new girlfriends, he got angry every time I said I was going out with someone else. I got busy with work and stopped being bothered by this. If we were together, great, if we weren’t, I just kept things friendly with everyone else in my life.

Fast forward a few more fights, he took a job in another country. Towards the end of his time in the country, we had an incredibly strained relationship. I pushed all my concerns aside, waiving them off as him being under a lot of stress. I finally snapped one night after drinks, and tried to break things off for good. I lived further than him, and was dropping him off at his spot on my way home after drinks. I knew his family was in town and dropped him off at his gate. He paid for the cab and then dragged me out and tried to convince me to come up to his place while his family were asleep in the other room. I refused. I could not do that to the kids or to the poor wife. I got mad and ended things. Got in a cab and went home. It was only the night before he flew out that we made up and agreed to try to make things work long distance. I think by that time, I had convinced myself that by being a part of his life, I could help him and I had gotten used to the mess of a relationship. I had gotten used to being the other woman.

#the other woman #relationships #asexuality

2 notes · View notes

unfortunatelysirius · 7 years ago

Text

Chocolate Frogs and Love Notes [Remus Lupin - Marauders Era] [Part 1 of ?]

💟☼💟 PROMPT 💟☼💟 ☾ ¡Original! ☾ Remus Lupin and Y/N L/N have anonymously exchanged notes through a library table for over six months. When Sirius and James start meddling, will they put Remus’s love life in jeopardy or accelerate it positively? 💟☼💟 A/N 💟☼💟 In the comments below, tell me if you like this idea or not. Please, tell me if you want a Part 12 to Not Your Girlfriend and a Part 3 to Whispers in the Dark! As a tertiary question… do you all want an updated masterlist? I haven’t made one in a while, and I’ve uploaded a lot of imagines I’m sure you all have difficulty finding at times. Hopefully this isn’t complete garbage because I literally wrote it in under twenty five minutes. 💟☼💟 WORD COUNT 💟☼💟 1411 💟☼💟 TAG LIST 💟☼💟 @kapolisradomthoughts @rageofcaliban @saucyleftovers @bunnymother93 @siriuslyr5 @apareciumimagines @random-quartz @ruefulposts

IF SOMEONE told you a year ago that you would be genuinely excited to study in the Hogwarts library, you would have physically balked and laughed aloud. “Sure,” you would have said, throwing in a scoff for good measure. “Totally.” Unlike Lily Evans, you would have rather spent your time reveling in solitude, reading a Muggle book or watching the scenery and movement of the clouds outside in the courtyard. Studying was a hobby you never wished to voluntarily participate in. It was a dull and horrid thought, sitting there and reading theoretical nonsense; the worse, unwanted alternative was having to write an essay on the ingredients to make an obscure potion you couldn’t pronounce. Most times, the latter was what you were given. Slughorn certainly knew how to get on your bad side.

Of course, instead of a hypothetical moron barking up the wrong tree, it was you. Here you were, standing outside of the double-doors of the library, a nervous smile on your face. None of your friends were you in sight—not Marlene, not Lily, not Alice, not Mary. It was merely you, something that would have shocked a few persons out of their knickers if they were to know the true extent of your hatred of studying. But they wouldn’t have known what had gotten you to smile in such a way, or what had caused you to suddenly have a reason to study. It wasn’t studying. Quite frankly, it was an anonymous boy who loved books and Muggle music just as much as you did. And you were eager to read his note and write your next.

You were very easy to read; your face could easily reveal everything with a single flicker of emotions. Because of this, Lily and Mary were constantly pestering you to spill what had gotten you into such a state of nerves. “Is it a boy?” Mary had teased just three days ago. She’d let out a burst of laughter when your face turned pink with embarrassment. You had to spend five whole minutes ranting about how they couldn’t tell a single person, especially those bastards called the Marauders. They would antagonize you for sure, and you certainly didn’t want Remus to overhear about it. You used to have the biggest crush on the bloke, and you didn’t want a harmless pen-pal to suddenly ruin your chances. Well, if you even had any chances. Remus was very hard to read.

With a sigh at the thought, you pushed open the library doors. You were swept into a fortress of air that smelled like new books, old books, and bowls upon bowls of ink. Madame Pince immediately looked over with a sharp glare, her look dropping into a frown of disdain that read, “Oh, it’s you.” You merely returned the look before you power-walked towards the back-table, the one beside the shelf that held books on lycanthropy and goblin-hunting. You dropped your rucksack filled with textbooks and crumbled pieces of used parchment onto the chair nearest the shelf, then plopped down into said chair. With a deep breath of excitement, you reached beneath the chair and hunted for the familiar shape of parchment. After seconds of searching, you found what you were looking for—and you quickly jerked it from the metal bar of the underneath of the table, then unraveled it slowly onto your lap.

In the first few weeks of writing notes to your mysterious pen-pal, he was worried about you figuring out his identity. You reassured him time and time again that you were patient and would wait for him to be okay with seeing you in person—and he retuned the gesture. You had anxiety when it came to meeting new people, so you promised that you wouldn’t try to seek him out, both for your sake and his. You had been fulfilling that promise for nearly six months.

You excitedly removed the tape from the note, and you were beyond shocked when you found yourself looking at the petal of a rose inside of the note. A look of utter shock fell on your face, and you gaped, looking identical to a speechless and breathless flounder. You took the rose petal and lifted it to your nose, taking a minute to just inhale its scent, hoping to catch a waft of the boy who was slowly stealing your heart. No one had ever done something so kind and thoughtful for you.

“Bloody hell,” you muttered to yourself, knowing you were in deep. Before you could pity yourself for being so moronic, you gently placed the rose petal onto the table and looked down to begin reading.

Dear Rosy, About your book recommendations a few weeks ago… I mailed my mum to buy them from the muggle bookstore and they’re sitting in my dorm as we speak. While all of them look very exciting, I especially look forward to reading The Importance of Being Earnest. You seemed very passionate when you spoke about your love for Oscar Wilde, so I know I will love it just as much as you do. Truthfully, the best books I can recommend are Animal Farm, 1984, and The Old Man and the Sea. I’m a big Orwell and Hemingway fan, if you couldn’t tell. If you’re into dystopia and politics, then Orwell definitely suits you. Hemingway’s a big cynic, and I honestly don’t know how to describe his writing. How much do you love The Beatles? You always talk about them in our letters, and I just want an estimate. Maybe it’ll give me ideas for your Christmas gift?

As a side note, how is studying for exams going? I remember you mentioning your utter loathing for “reading textbooks.” So as a token of motivation, here’s a petal of your namesake. I hope it still smells nice when you open this note. If not, then I apologize in advance. Love, Moony

A smile immediately fell into place, and you quickly quirked them downwards to avoid looking like an utter loon. You opened your rucksack and dug out a quill, a container of ink, and a piece of parchment. Then you began to write.

Dear Moony, I’m so excited for you to read those books! You will adore Oscar Wilde; he’s a divine artist of words. His book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, is also a classic. I highly recommend it, after you finish the rest. Orwell—how have we not picked up on a discussion about him yet? I loved Animal Farm, but I have yet to read 1984. You said it’s a dystopian novel, right? I love dystopias, so I’m sure I’ll love the book. If I had to rate my love for The Beatles, it would be a million out of ten. If they ever have a concert in Scotland, tell me, and I’ll make sure to sneak out of Hogwarts and buy a ticket. What are your favorite artists? I know you like Don McLean and The Doors. But who else? I hope you enjoy The Who because I adore them. Don’t we already have a very similar music taste? This rose petal smells amazing, and I hope you know that I’ve never had someone do something so nice for me. You’re extremely smart so I know for certain you’ll pass with flying colors—a card full of Outstandings and Exceeding Expectations. We all need to hope and pray I manage all Acceptables!

Love, Rosy

You taped the parchment with the piece of tape Moony had used, and quickly crushed it into the nook beneath the table. You gathered up your things—making sure to be careful and meticulous with the rose petal—then left.

What you didn’t notice was a familiar pair watching you from a nearby table. They saw the rose petal, and they remembered a certain werewolf plucking one from the courtyard when they were out walking earlier. They certainly remembered how utterly smitten he had been acting lately, and they’d finally gotten to the bottom of it.

Sirius Black looked to James Potter and grinned. “It appears that Remus has acquired himself a lady friend,” he said in a mock, theatrical whisper.

James returned the grin and glanced back at your retreating figure. “And it seems she has no idea who he is,” he observed. He glanced over at his best mate. “Should we meddle?”

Sirius’s grin widened, if that was even possible. “Hell yes.”

521 notes · View notes

adultsell223 · 3 years ago

Text

Justice Bi Dating

Intimate partner violence among queer, transgender, and bisexual people is underresearched and undertheorized. Insights from studies of same-sex domestic violence apply to these populations, but such studies may not address identities that transcend or trouble conventional sex and gender categories. Mainstream domestic violence discourses, criminal justice interventions, and social services have marginalized queer, trans, and bi populations along with, and sometimes to a greater degree than, lesbian and gay populations. Some service agencies and community groups have begun to ‘‘queer’’ the discourse on domestic violence by acknowledging a fuller range of gender and sexual identities that contribute to multiple and divergent contexts for, and experiences of, domestic violence.

Are you looking for a new slave to obey your every command? You’ve come to the right place. At The SubDom Club, you will have access to thousands of submissives who are waiting for you to dominate them, giving them orders and purpose. If you’re looking for BDSM dating, stories or casual hookups, join The SubDom Club today, and start taking.

Outline

Why Match.com is a top bisexual dating site: Match.com offers useful search filters. These allow members to look for people who meet their preferences. The result is that members can specify that they’re looking for bisexuals, offering a higher chance of dating success. There are loads of bisexual dating tips on Match.com too. “Hi, my name is Brittany, and this is my girlfriend Brittany.” Check out more awesome BuzzFeedYellow videos! MUSIC Ages Licens. Succinctly, middle class African Americans often experience different dating and marriage patterns, leaving black females with fewer dating and marriage options if they only seek partners within their racial/ethnic group. The primary purpose of this book is to tell the stories of black women who are dating, married to, or divorced from white males. Bisexual comedian Margaret Cho made a substantial argument for gay celebrities to come out in a HuffPost piece, citing the implications of the 1980s AIDS crisis: 'We wanted gay celebrities to come.

Introduction

Queer Movements and Identities: Terms and Concepts

Queering Understandings of Domestic Violence

Isolation, Power, and Control

Victim and Perpetrator Roles

Interventions and Services

Introduction

‘‘Same-sex’’ violence in lesbian and gay relationships is addressed in a number of edited volumes (Kaschak 2001; Leventhal and Lundy 1999; Lobel 1986; Renzetti and Miley 1996) and in many additional articles from a range of academic, clinical, and social service fields. Several foundational studies provide in-depth analysis of lesbian partner abuse (Renzetti 1992; Ristock 2002), lesbian sexual assault (Girshick 2002), and battering among gay men (Island and Letellier 1991).

In contrast, extremely limited research specifically addresses intimate partner violence involving nonheterosexual people who do not identify as ‘‘lesbian’’ or ‘‘gay,’’ including transgender, bisexual, and queer-identified people. Diana Courvant (1997) has written a landmark article on domestic violence affecting trans and intersex people. Sulis (1999) provides a groundbreaking article on battered bisexual women, and Crane et al. (1999) discuss lesbian and bisexual women’s caucus work in a domestic violence intervention agency. Bisexual men’s experiences of violence are discussed together with gay men’s experiences (Johnson 1999; Letellier 1996) and as part of lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) experiences in general (Merrill 1999; Toro- Alfonso 1999), but specific information on domestic violence involving bisexual men per se is sparse.

The shortage of empirical research results in part from impediments to obtaining accurate data. These impediments include pressures on queer, trans, and bi people to remain closeted, decreased reporting of violent incidents among these populations, lack of documentation of this violence by criminal justice and social service agencies, and widespread lack of general understanding of these populations and their differences from straight, lesbian, and gay populations. In 1997, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) began producing annual reports on LGBT domestic violence in the United States and Toronto. Compiling data on violence against transgender and bisexual people is integral to NCAVP’s ongoing research efforts. The number of service sites contributing data, and the capacity of these sites to collect accurate data, has increased over time (Moore and Baum 2004).

Aside from the limited but productive and growing literature that documents and analyzes LGBT intimate partner violence, the vast majority of research on domestic violence focuses on heterosexual relationships, with two results pertaining to queer, trans, and bi communities. First, scholarly theories and institutional discourses on domestic violence have marginalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) populations, contributing to a scarcity of resources suited to LGBTIQ people experiencing violence in their intimate relationships. This scarcity is even more pronounced for trans, bi, and queer-identified people than for those who identify as lesbian or gay.

Second, most theories about, empirical research on, and criminal justice and social service approaches to domestic violence are constrained by heteronormative assumptions about the identities and roles of individuals in intimate relationships, intimate partner violence, interventions, and service provision. These assumptions have the effect of forcing both queer and nonqueer individuals seeking institutional or community support to fit themselves and their experiences into a narrow set of frameworks in order to garner recognition and support from the system.

Queer Movements and Identities: Terms and Concepts

Understanding intimate partner violence among queer, trans, and/or bi people requires some familiarity with concepts related to their identities. Especially among younger generations of LGBTIQ people, a growing proportion of nonheterosexual people do not identify themselves exclusively as ‘‘lesbian’’ or ‘‘gay.’’ Many align themselves with queer identities and movements instead of, or in addition to, lesbian or gay ones. The word ‘‘queer,’’ now commonly used in a variety of social, scholarly, and political contexts, has at least three interconnected meanings. First, it has been reclaimed from its original negative labeling purpose and deployed repeatedly as a positive expression of group identification and pride by various LGBTIQ communities and movements.

Second, ‘‘queer’’ is used as an umbrella term for individuals, communities, identities, and practices commonly defined as outside normative social constructions of sexual orientation and gender. Sexual orientations under the ‘‘queer’’ umbrella include lesbian, gay, and bisexual as well as other forms of desire that defy normative gender and sexual boundaries. For example, polyamory, sadomasochism (S/M), and the communities that practice them are sometimes referred to as ‘‘queer.’’ ‘‘Queer’’ as an umbrella term also encompasses non-normative gender identities, namely those of people whose lives and forms of self-expression do not fit within society’s binary system for categorizing bodies and gender identities as either male or female. Transgender(ed), transsexual, transvestite, FTM (female-to-male), MTF (male-to-female), transman, transwoman, and gender-queer are examples of gender identities often included under the ‘‘queer’’ umbrella. Bornstein (1994), Feinberg (1996), and Halberstam (1998) offer analyses of MTF, FTM, and transgender identities and histories, and Nestle et al. (2002) provide an edited volume of gender-queer narratives.

It is important to respect each individual’s chosen language for identifying her or his own gender and sexual identity. Many self-identified queer people prefer not to be called ‘‘queer’’ by straight outsiders to their communities, and not everyone considered ‘‘queer’’ by someone else considers themselves so. For example, many transsexual and intersex people do not identify as queer, and although queer theorists may consider transvestitism queer as a practice, many transvestites do not claim a queer identity.

Third, queer theoretical and political movements challenge systems that construct and uphold binary categories of sex (i.e., male/female), gender (i.e., man/ woman), and sexual orientation (i.e., straight/gay). Participants in queer movements tend to see gender and sexuality as fluid social constructs, rather than as strict binary systems for categorizing individuals and relationships. Queer communities, activists, and theorists deploy queer ideology and identities to dismantle polarized categories of sex, gender, and sexual orientation, along with the implications of these categories, in a range of social and institutional contexts (Butler 1990/1999; Gamson 1995). Transgender and intersex movements have gained visibility and influence in queer theory and politics as well as in medical and other arenas (Bornstein 1994; Chase 2002; Fausto-Sterling 2000).

Complete understanding of intimate partner violence in queer, trans, and bi communities requires attention to aspects of identity other than gender and sexuality. Numerous empirical and analytical studies highlight the importance of race, ethnicity, class, citizenship status, HIV status, age, parenthood, and physical ability or disability in the roles and experiences of LGBT people in intimate partner violence, criminal justice interventions, and service provision (Bograd 2005; Garcia 1999; Hanson and Maroney 1999; Letellier 1996; Mendez 1996; Toro-Alfonso 1999; Waldron 1996). Queer theory investigates intersections of gender and sexuality with race, ethnicity, nationalism, class, and other dimensions of identity (Butler 2004; Ferguson 2004; Gopinath 2005; Halberstam 2005), and the implications of these intersections for violence affecting LGBTIQ communities. Insights from queer theory and politics illuminate dynamics of violence, particularly those related to identity, that are ordinarily obscured in domestic violence discourse. These insights are valuable for developing more effective service and intervention models.

Justice Bi Dating Videos

Queering Understandings of Domestic Violence

Several analyses of violence against LGBT people subsume bisexual, transgender, and queer identities under the populations and relationship categories they discuss, and insights from these analyses do apply in many respects to queer, trans, and bi populations. For example, Onken (1998) and Allen and Leventhal (1999) discuss contextual factors contributing to violence against and within LGBT communities, including trans, bi, and queer-identified people. Hate violence, dominant gender norms, and isolation contribute to violence in queer relationships and to the lack of resources available when violence occurs. Violence against LGBT people is socially sanctioned (Onken 1998), and acceptance of this violence may be reinforced by a cultural climate that supports anti–gay rights ordinances and anti– gay marriage legislation. Trans and intersex people experience elevated levels of violence beginning in childhood that may in turn contribute to future violence in relationships. As a result, it may be harder for LGBT people to stand up to violence or to ask for help in the face of violence. Further, LGBT people may internalize blame for violence that happens against them or other members of their communities (Allen and Leventhal 1999).

Gender norms play a significant role in domestic violence in queer, trans, and bi communities, as they do in all communities. There is general consensus in mainstream domestic violence discourse about how masculine and feminine gender socialization manifest in heterosexual relationship violence (although gender dynamics do not play out according to formula in every heterosexual relationship). Violence committed by men is linked with masculine gender socialization that reinforces sexism, misogyny, homophobia, and physical and sexual violence. Feminine gender socialization may lead women to internalize blame and to resist leaving abusive relationships.

Queer, trans, and bi people, too, are affected by dominant gender norms, but in ways rarely discussed in mainstream domestic violence discourse. Men and masculine-gendered people are not easily believed when they report violence, whether their partners are masculine or feminine. This disbelief may be heightened for a masculine person whose abusive partner is either a woman, feminine in gender expression, or perceived as feminine or effeminate. Masculine gender norms dictate that men should be able to defend themselves, are not victims, and enjoy sex at any time, in any place. These expectations delegitimize masculine persons’ claims of physical and sexual abuse. For example, abusive partners of butch women, transgender people, and FTM transmen may suggest that they are not butch enough or man enough to take forced sexual activity (Allen and Leventhal 1999).

On the other hand, masculine-gendered partners’ abusiveness may be overlooked by the community as part of being masculine. A butch woman or FTM transgendered abuser may garner more sympathy from the surrounding queer community as the more ‘‘out,’’ visible, or at-risk member of a couple. At the same time, enduring abuse may be viewed as part of being feminine. For example, MTF transgender victims of abuse may be falsely blamed for acting too effeminate or ‘‘victim-like.’’ Thus adherence to gender norms, rather than the behavior and motivations of the abuser, can become the defining feature that legitimates claims of violence. In all segments of the LGBTIQ community, internalized gender and sexual stereotypes may be used to justify intimate partner violence or to deny that it is damaging to its victims.

Masculine gender norms may be the main cause for the underrepresentation of domestic violence among bisexual and gay men in the literature, and for the secrecy surrounding male bisexuality in general. Discussions about domestic violence in the bisexual community have emerged in part from a growing bisexual feminist movement (Sulis 1999). Domestic violence against both bisexual women and men has received little research attention, perhaps because bisexual people are often misunderstood and maligned by straight, lesbian, and gay men’s communities. These misunderstandings may contribute to increased violence and lack of appropriate services for bisexual victims of domestic violence. Although bisexual people’s experiences and needs regarding domestic violence are often assumed to be identical or interchangeable with those of straight, lesbian, and/or gay people, this is not necessarily the case.

Isolation, Power, and Control

The U.S. domestic violence movement has converged upon the importance of patterns of power and control in relationship violence and abuse. Although patterns of coercion and control are fundamentally similar across relationships, conditions related to sexual orientation and gender identity influence how the batterer achieves control, how battering affects the battered partner, and the resources available for support. Power and control can take particular forms when abusers or their partners are queer, trans, or bi. Just as abusers in straight, gay, and lesbian relationships may draw upon sexism and homophobia to threaten and intimidate their partners (Allen and Leventhal 1999; Pharr 1988), abusers of queer, trans, and bi people may use intimate knowledge of their partners’ particular gender and sexual nonconformities against them. On the other hand, queer, trans, and bi abusers may enact power and control in ways that are specific to their own identities and those of their partners.

Isolation is a central tactic of power and control, with profound effects upon queer, trans, and bi survivors of domestic violence. Social homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia force LGBTIQ people to constantly negotiate the socially constructed phenomenon of ‘‘the closet,’’ and to decide, repeatedly, whether and how to ‘‘come out’’ (Sedgwick 1990). If not out in any of a number of contexts (family, work, social circles, faith community), a queer person is by definition socially isolated. For example, by coming out to one’s family, one may risk homophobic hostility, emotional rejection, or being disowned outright. Any of these scenarios makes it difficult to return to one’s family for support in a crisis such as relationship violence. Isolation from family, coworkers, or other social networks can give abusers greater power and their negative comments more weight in the minds of their partners.

Social conditions that stereotype and isolate trans, bi, and queer-identified people lend themselves to abusive power and control. As an example with regard to transgender, an abuser of a gender-transitioning person may say that the police or shelter won’t help ‘‘a freak like you’’ or that s/he is physically or emotionally oversensitive due to the hormones s/he is taking (Allen and Leventhal 1999). Like transphobia, biphobia too can be exploited by an abuser. Sulis (1999) outlines power and control tactics used to target bisexual people. Outing is an especially effective tactic against a bisexual victim because the abuser may threaten to out the victim both to straight family members or coworkers and to the lesbian or gay community. As with lesbian or gay parents, partners of bisexual parents may threaten to expose their sexuality to the children’s other parent or other family members. In addition, a bi person’s partner may exploit internalized shame about being attracted to, or having relationships with, both women and men, and the surrounding community may justify the abuser’s violence against a bisexual person because ‘‘s/he slept with a woman/man.’’ If bisexual people’s partners identify or pass as straight, they may exploit their heterosexual privilege. Trans- and biphobia are used against lesbians and gay victims as well as transgender and bisexual people. For example, abusers might accuse their partners of not being ‘‘real wo/men’’ or ‘‘real lesbians’’ in an attempt to undermine their sense of self.

Victim and Perpetrator Roles

Domestic violence in queer, trans, and bi relationships poses a challenge to the ways victim and perpetrator roles are theorized and applied in dominant conceptions of domestic violence. Most mainstream accounts assume that each participant in a domestic violence scenario assumes one of two polarized and mutually exclusive roles: either ‘‘victim’’ or ‘‘perpetrator.’’ The attribution of these roles to participants is usually gendered—women as ‘‘victims,’’ men as ‘‘perpetrators.’’ These roles are functional in many, perhaps most, cases of domestic abuse, but clearly not in relationships that include some other arrangement or construction of gender identities than ‘‘man’’ and ‘‘woman.’’ Roles in relationships, including roles pertaining to violence, can shift over time, perhaps more frequently in queer relationships than in straight ones. For example, women can take on a multiplicity of roles in violent lesbian relationships, and these roles can extend beyond or even rupture the traditional victim–perpetrator categories (Marrujo and Kreger 1996). Among bisexual and gay men, too, ‘‘being the victim in one relationship does not preclude abusing in future relationships’’ (Johnson 1999, p. 217).

Service providers to queer, trans, and bi communities repeatedly confront situations in which law enforcement, the legal system, or service providers themselves misidentify the victim as the perpetrator or vice versa (Goddard and Hardy 1999). Gendered assumptions may lead advocates, police, or others to assume that the more masculine-appearing member of a couple is the abuser, which may not be the case. In some cases, the abuser may initiate or compound this confusion by calling in and identifying her/himself initially as the abused member of a couple. In response to situations where police or the courts have mistakenly mandated anger management or abuser treatment for the survivor, agencies have developed their own intake procedures to determine what the client’s specific role is in an abusive dynamic and channel that person toward the appropriate services (Holt and Couchman 2004). Goddard and Hardy (1999) offer helpful techniques for advocates sorting through the potentially confusing terrain of violence in a lesbian relationship.

A queer analysis of intimate partner domestic violence would argue that rather than mapping queer, trans, and bi people and their relationships onto the existing binary gender framework for understanding domestic violence, it is necessary to consider how construction of the victim and perpetrator roles frames understandings of relationship violence. The weight that these roles carry, and the gender assumptions with which they are associated, may discourage queer, trans, and bi people (as well as others) from seeking help and services when violence is occurring.

Interventions and Services

Fears that discourage lesbian and gay people from accessing services are also present, and likely compounded, for transgender people (Johnson 1999). Failure of law enforcement to protect members of LGBT communities and violence committed against LGBT communities by law enforcement have been particularly acute for transgender people and LGBT people of color (Whitlock 2005). Moreover, queer victims of domestic violence are not legally protected in several states (Fray-Witzer 1999). Transgender youth, particularly those who have fled or been kicked out of their homes, may have been particularly targeted for harassment, violence, and verbal abuse by law enforcement as well as by others. Transgender, bi, and queer individuals may be less likely to report abuse or seek support against violence, whether they are ‘‘victims’’ or ‘‘perpetrators,’’ because of their justifiable fears that criminal justice and service institutions will repudiate them or subject them to further violence.

Although a growing number of LGBT-led agencies now serve LGBT communities, these agencies tend to be located primarily in urban centers with large concentrations of LGBT people (Moore and Baum 2004). In many areas, mainstream shelters are the only resources available to anyone dealing with domestic violence. Many mainstream domestic violence programs do not serve gay or bisexual men, FTM or MTF transgender people. There is a long tradition of straight women-only groups in domestic violence service, and many women’s shelters struggle with how to effectively meet the needs of transsexual and transgender clients. Many programs designed for women inappropriately define transgender, MTF, and FTM people seeking support as men, regardless of how these individuals identify themselves or live their lives (Allen and Leventhal 1999), and deny them service on this basis. One battered women’s program admitted that providing motel vouchers to MTF transwomen was ‘‘the best solution we (could) come up with’’ (Crane et al. 1999, p. 130).

Justice Bi Dating Websites

Bisexual women face numerous barriers in addition to the lack of data on violence, policing, and services pertaining specifically to them. Battered women’s programs have traditionally focused on heterosexual women in their services, outreach materials, and staff and volunteer trainings; many either have not offered services to openly bisexual or lesbian women or have not done the work necessary to make their facilities safe for participation by these women. This work would entail developing nondiscrimination policies, implementing procedures for interrupting homo/biphobic comments and behavior by staff or clients, providing comprehensive training to staff and volunteers on LGBT battering, and hiring lesbian or bisexual survivors of violence (Allen and Leventhal 1999). Even when programs are open to out lesbians, they may not be prepared to serve bisexual women. Bisexual women in relationships with women are not protected by heterosexual privilege when seeking help for intimate partner violence (Sulis 1999); yet lesbian support groups and lesbian-specific services often exclude them in part because some segments of lesbian feminist communities view bisexual women as ‘‘traitors’’ who can fall back on heterosexual privilege or relationships and therefore do not belong in lesbian groups (Crane et al. 1999).

Although some mainstream service agencies may consider themselves open to LGBT populations, queer, trans, and bi people’s experiences of being treated as ‘‘other’’ or even threatened can extend from the greater society into the shelter or service agency. Assumptions made and questions asked by domestic violence advocates, whether on the phone, in person, or on intake forms, can be problematic. Without asking preliminary (and sensitively phrased) questions, service providers cannot know how callers and their partners identify with regard to gender. Yet unless a domestic violence agency has specifically undertaken to provide comprehensive anti-oppression training to its board, staff, and volunteers, intake forms, procedures, and language can (albeit unintentionally) inhibit the ability of queer people to feel welcomed and accepted by the agency. Some mainstream programs have made strides by expanding their service approaches in collaboration with local LGBT communities. Some agencies have established relationships and collaborative programming with local S/M communities to promote community education about healthy relationships and the differences between consensual S/M and abuse (Crane et al. 1999; Margulies 1999).

Justice Bi Dating Site

Regarding queer, trans, and bi batterers, most mainstream and LGBT domestic violence programs continue to use models based on separate services for clients defined as survivors and perpetrators (Cayouette 1999; Garcia 2003; Goddard and Hardy 1999; Grant 1999). Some experienced LGBT service providers argue that it is crucial to determine who is the victim and who is the perpetrator in a given relationship in order to safely assign clients to appropriate support groups or other services. While some agencies view this system as the only appropriate way to deliver services, others have established mixed support groups in which participants include both survivors and abusers, although never from the same couple (Quirk 2004).

Some of the organizations that first organized against violence in LGBT relationships, such as The Network/La Red in Boston and the Northwest Network in Seattle, were initially founded with a focus on battered lesbians. Over time these organizations and others have expanded their conceptions of identity to include transgender, bisexual, and queer identities beyond ‘‘lesbian’’ (Burk 2005; NCAVP 2004). There are a growing number of LGBT-specific anti-violence agencies throughout the United States, but many are just beginning to tailor their work to transgender populations. A 2004 national meeting of these organizations featured panel sessions on transgender services, and agency representatives present acknowledged that their programs had not served transgender clients effectively in the past, mostly because they lacked the expertise and because of transphobia within LGBT communities (NCAVP 2004). Agencies in some local areas have tried mixed-gender groups; facilitators of such groups may find that they need to monitor gender dynamics to ensure equitable discussions (Johnson 1999).

Justice Bi Dating Sites

Queering understanding of intimate partner violence requires acknowledging the experiences of queer-identified people, transgender and transsexual people, bisexual people, lesbians and gay men. These populations include people of color, immigrant people (documented and undocumented), working-class people, young people, elders, people with disabilities, HIV-positive people, and members of drag, leather, poly, and other subcultural communities. At a minimum, anti-violence agencies seeking to serve these populations must implement queer-, trans-, and bi-inclusive intake procedures, forms, and language. Making service agencies truly accessible extends beyond language, however. If domestic violence interventions and services are to interrupt cycles of violence based on gender, sexual, and other forms of oppression, service agencies must confront rarely examined assumptions and privileges associated with gender and sexual normativity.

In addition to service agencies in the nonprofit sector, community-based dialogues and strategies for intervention are a promising avenue for addressing intimate partner violence in queer, transgender, and bisexual communities (see Russo 1999). Emi Koyama (2005) points out that, contrary to what might be assumed, natural alliances do not exist among transgender, transsexual, bisexual, and intersex communities that defy gender boundaries; such alliances must be built. Community building efforts among queer, trans, and bi populations may yield productive innovations that challenge gender, sexual, and other binaries (including client/provider and agency/community) that inhibit successful interventions in domestic violence.

Also check the list of domestic violence research topics and all criminal justice research topics.

Bibliography:

Allen, Charlene, and Beth Leventhal. ‘‘History, Culture, and Identity: What Makes GLBT Battering Different.’’ In Same-Sex Domestic Violence: Strategies for Change, edited by B. Leventhal and S. E. Lundy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999.

Bograd, Michele. ‘‘Strengthening Domestic Violence Theories: Intersections of Race, Class, Sexual Orientation, and Gender.’’ In Domestic Violence at the Margins, edited by N. J. Sokoloff and W. C. Pratt. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Bornstein, Kate. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Burk, Connie. Interview with director of Northwest Network. Seattle, May 31, 2005.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990/1999.

———. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Cayouette, Susan. ‘‘Running Batterers Groups for Lesbians.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Chase, Cheryl. ‘‘What Is the Agenda of the Intersex Patient Advocacy Movement?’’ Paper read at the First World Congress: Hormonal and Genetic Basis of Sexual Differentiation Disorders, May 17–18, Tempe, AZ, 2002.

Courvant, Diana. Domestic Violence and the Sex- or Gender- Variant Survivor. Portland, OR: The Survivor Project, 1997.

Crane, Beth, Jeannie LaFrance, Gillian Leichtling, Brooks Nelson, and Erika Silver. ‘‘Lesbians and Bisexual Women Working Cooperatively to End Domestic Violence.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Feinberg, Leslie. Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Fray-Witzer, E. ‘‘Twice Abused: Same-Sex Domestic Violence and the Law.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Gamson, Joshua. ‘‘Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma.’’ Social Problems 42, no. 3 (1995): 390–408.

Garcia, Martha Lucia. ‘‘A ‘New Kind’ of Battered Woman: Challenges for the Movement.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Garcia, Norma. Interview with Community United Against Violence Staff. San Francisco, October 6, 2003.

Girshick, Lori B. Woman-to-Woman Sexual Violence: Does She Call It Rape? Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002.

Goddard, Alma Banda, and Tara Hardy. ‘‘Assessing the Lesbian Victim.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Gopinath, Gayatri. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.

Grant, Jennifer. ‘‘An Argument for Separate Services.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999. Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.

———. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: NYU Press, 2005.

Hanson, Bea, and Terry Maroney. ‘‘HIV and Same-Sex Domestic Violence.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same- Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Holt, Susan, and Delena Couchman. Interview with LA STOP Partner Abuse/Domestic Violence Program Staff. Los Angeles, October 14, 2004.

Island, David, and Patrick Letellier. Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence. New York: Haworth Press, 1991.

Johnson, Robb. ‘‘Groups for Gay and Bisexual Male Survivors of Domestic Violence.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Kaschak, Ellyn, ed. Intimate Betrayal: Domestic Violence in Lesbian Relationships. New York: Haworth Press, 2001.

Koyama, Emi. An Evening with Emi Koyama. Albuquerque, NM, July 26, 2005.

Letellier, Patrick. ‘‘Twin Epidemics: Domestic Violence and HIV Infection among Gay and Bisexual Men.’’ In Violence in Gay and Lesbian Domestic Partnerships, edited by C. M. Renzetti and C. H. Miley. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1996.

Leventhal, Beth, and Sandra E. Lundy, eds. Same-Sex Domestic Violence: Strategies for Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999.

Lobel, Kerry. Naming the Violence: Speaking Out About Lesbian Battering. Seattle: Seal Press, 1986.

Margulies, Jennifer. ‘‘Coalition Building ’Til It Hurts: Creating Safety Around S/M and Battering.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Marrujo, Becky, and Mary Kreger. ‘‘Definition of Roles in Abusive Lesbian Relationships.’’ In Renzetti and Miley, Violence in Gay and Lesbian Domestic Partnerships, 1996.

Mendez, Juan M. ‘‘Serving Gays and Lesbians of Color Who Are Survivors of Domestic Violence.’’ In Renzetti and Miley, Violence in Gay and Lesbian Domestic Partnerships, 1996.

Merrill, Gregory S. ‘‘1 in 3 of 1 in 10: Sexual and Dating Violence Prevention Groups for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Youth.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Moore, Ken, and Rachel Baum. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Domestic Violence: 2003 Supplement. New York: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2004.

NCAVP (National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs). Roundtable, at Denver, CO, May 2004.

Nestle, Joan, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins, eds. Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary. Los Angeles: Alyson, 2002.

Onken, Steven J. ‘‘Conceptualizing Violence Against Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Intersexual, and Transgendered People.’’ Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services 8, no. 3 (1998): 5–24.

Pharr, Suzanne. Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. Inverness, CA: Chardon Press, 1988.

Quirk, K. C. Interview with director of Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families. Albuquerque, NM, December 5, 2004.

Renzetti, Claire M. Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992.

Renzetti, Claire M., and Charles Harvey Miley. Violence in Gay and Lesbian Domestic Partnerships. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1996.

Ristock, Janice. No More Secrets: Violence in Lesbian Relationships. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Russo, Ann. ‘‘Lesbians Organizing Lesbians against Battering.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.

Sulis, Sarah. ‘‘Battered Bisexual Women.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Toro-Alfonso, Jose. ‘‘Domestic Violence among Same-Sex Partners in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities in Puerto Rico: Approaching the Issue.’’ In Leventhal and Lundy, Same-Sex Domestic Violence, 1999.

Waldron, Charlene M. ‘‘Lesbians of Color and the Domestic Violence Movement.’’ In Renzetti and Miley, Violence in Gay and Lesbian Domestic Partnerships, 1996.

Whitlock, Kay. Corrupting Justice: A Primer for LGBT Communities on Racism, Violence, Human Degradation and the Prison Industrial Complex. Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 2005.

0 notes