#the first half of 2023 felt like a long few years to me but still lmao

[kimmkitsuragi]

damn. i havent listened to loona since the boycott started basically... i mean i pirated a few songs that one time but like it doesnt even count when u consider i was listening to them on the daily for years... i will just pirate all songs and download them to my laptop and listen atp 😭

[angelkiyo]

haikyuu characters as romance tropes + songs in my playlist ❀

a/n - this was a thought i needed to get out..! i love music n i love haikyuu soooo. i also did a series similar to this but w actual one shots but tbh compiling them is smarter ngl. totally fw the spotify linked in my nav btw :0 — unedited drabble/thought piece

——“ they just can't reach her, princesita inalcanzable / le rompieron el cora, pero nunca se la perdió" (igual que un angel, 2023) - after years being your friend, getting friend-zoned for so long and finally getting a chance to date you, they're whipped and put you on a pedestal. they know all that you've gone through regarding relationships and would want nothing but your happiness. they're the immense green flag you need and would treat you with nothing but respect, sending you notes in class, and making you little bento boxes filled with their cooking, sending small poems that remind them of you but then again, you deserve it. you're as sweet as sugar and in their eyes, you're an angel on earth. they don't know when their feelings for you started, but when they finally confessed to you, it was the happiest they've felt. you've been their “other half” for so long that all your mutual friends have been telling you to get together, so imagine your friends' reaction when they see you and them on a date one random day, hand in hand and with your head on their shoulder as the two of you sat waiting for the bus back to your place.

best friends to lovers : kageyama tobio, BOKUTO KOTARO, ojiro aran, IWAIZUMI HAJIME, SHIMIZU KIYOKO

——"only like myself when im with you / nobody gets me like you” (nobody gets me, 2022) - both of you strive for excellence, only really wanting to achieve the best academically and on the court during gym class. it's obvious how strong your rivalry with him is, that even your friends jokingly tell you "just kiss already" when you already do. the two of you would be taking little secret rendezvous when you're supposed to be studying to be at the top of your class and staying up after his volleyball practice when everyone leaves. it felt thrilling as no one knew about your relationship (after constantly bragging that you didn't need a significant other). but once your grades began to slip, you couldn't risk losing the source of validation you've gotten to know for so long. you still had your ego and your pride to maintain, and he understood. he understood more than anyone which is why you felt yourself so emotionally attached to him. leading the both of you to enter an almost endless cycle of attempting a secret relationship while also trying to achieve validation from academic success.

rivals to lovers (and rivals again) : shirabu kenjiro, KITA SHINSUKE, tsukishima kei, sakusa kiyoomi, KUROO TETSURO

——"i burn for you / and you don't even know my name" (close to you, 2024) - after accidentally adding them on social media from quick add (due to mutuals from school), you find yourself in a predicament. you're from the same school and know of them, but know that you have never talked to them. you've never even interacted with them at all in real life. though, for the past few weeks, they're earned themselves the title of a talking stage, staying up until 3 in the morning sometimes, just to talk to you. you two would play valorant or whatever video game you’ve been wanting to play and last hours on video call, sharing playlists and being mutuals on everything. although, talking for so long caused him to be a little bold, flirting with you a bit. you're in different classes yet every time you have a break in class, you talk to them, sending snaps of what you do and so does he. so when you finally have your first date in person, you panic and in all honesty, he does too. what if you two don't get along? what if you thought he was weird? your first thought was that he's very handsome, that's for sure. though, it felt that all you really needed was to just talk as you've gotten past the digital barrier and had natural chemistry in real life.

online love : kozume kenma, SUNA RINTARO, miya atsumu, TENDO SATORI, terushima yuji

——"no one's ever good enough / i want a love like i've seen in the movies" (like the movies, 2021) - you met them at a barnes and noble during a regular day after school. you’ve always been a hopeless romantic, longing for love between the pages of a romantic comedy book or film. so when you bumped into them, books in hand, it felt like a spark between you two. the two of you ended up exchanging numbers to talk more, then meeting up and talking / hanging out in person (a date in your opinion). being in a relationship with someone else who also understood the want to fall in love “romantically” felt amazing. every time your school would have a game, you’d go and cheer them on from the sidelines, wearing his spare jersey. good morning texts, gift baskets for monthaversaries, huge love letters, and frequent dates felt too good to be true, and it was. you can always expect them to have heart eyes and only for you, as well as listening to your rants and theories surrounding different romance novels and films. especially your thoughts on the concept of the meet cute.

meet cute : AKAASHI KEIJI, yamaguchi tadashi, sugawara koshi, OIKAWA TORŪ, miya osamu, SEMI EITA

[gatorbites-imagines]

Kinktober day 1

Alec Lightwood + Praise Kink

Happy first day of kinktober everyone. I’ve got a lot more schoolwork this year (curse you psychology) but ill be doing my best to try and keep up with my posting.

I’m gonna be honest I haven’t watched Shadowhunters in a long time, but Alec and Magnus still mean a lot to me. So, this is super vague about background stuff, cuz I can’t remember any of the plot from the show or books.

Kinktober 2023 masterlist

Alec found himself sighing as he leaned back in the chair behind his desk, his hand reaching up to rub at his aching temples. He took his duty very seriously, but at times it could do nothing but cause pains and aches throughout his body and psyche. Not only that, but his work kept him apart from you, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. Alec had known at the time when he gained his rank that this work would fill much of his life, but now that he had finally found his way to you, it almost didn’t feel worth it.

Alec sighed softly as he got out of his seat, there was no reason to keep working any more tonight. At this point he had stared at those reports enough that he was seeing double, and the thought of your shared bed was like an angel’s call. With that in mind, the shadowhunter found himself almost floating to your shared room, a new edition to your relationship. Neither of you even had much time to spend in this room, as you were both important people in your circles and both took your duties seriously.

It was because of this that Alec didn’t even think about you being present when he entered the dimly lit room, his eyelids heavy and half shut as he pulled off his clothes robotically, folding it up neatly and placing it off to the side to go in the laundry in the morning. It was only when he fell onto the bed, now only clad his boxers, that he noticed the second presence in the room. He almost jolted up with shock, but your arm wrapped warmly and securely around his waist, pulling your lover close as you nuzzled into the back of his stiff neck.

“there’s my pretty boy” you rumble, your voice thick with sleep but also the love and admiration you have for Alec. Alec only allows himself to huff a little, feeling embarrassed at your sweet words. He had never gotten used to being complimented or praised, so when you peppered sleepy kisses on his neck and mumbled about his beautiful, he was and how strong he was, the shadowhunter felt himself grow hotter in the face.

“Look at you, all tense” you huff, your warm hands running up and down the planes of Alecs torso as you hook your chin over his shoulder, your thumbs rubbing just below his pecs, the action causing him to twitch and exhale sharply. “Always working so hard for everyone, but you never take care of yourself” you mumble, your lips pressed to the side of his neck. You can’t help but nibble on the skin there, letting your tongue flatten against the rune on his neck.

“Guess that’s why you have me, isn’t it” you almost tease, your hands finally grabbing his tight pecs in your palms, giving him a loving squeeze, making your sensitive lover whine. “Always such a diligent, good boy, aren’t you?” you croon, giving both of his nipples a quick pinch and twist, enjoying the punched-out noise that leaves Alec at the action. You had always loved how sensitive he was, and how easily you could work him up with just a few touches and sweet words.

“My good boy” you purr, hands traveling down his torso at a snail’s pace, almost in a worshipping manner as you feel out every shape that makes up his body, basking in the shaky way he breaths and how he can’t seem to keep his legs still. “My pretty boy” you hum, your thumbs teasing at the elastic of his underwear, an almost catlike smirk on your lips as you let your lover stew in the need and want running through his tired body.

“Just lay back Alec, ill take care of you” you mutter, using your grip to pull him further against your chest, your hips grinding into his own from behind. Alec shakily exhales but seems to melt in your arms, his muscles untensing as you fold his boxers down under his sack, releasing his hardness to the darkness of your shared room.

“Ill always take care of you. Because you are so good, and so beautiful. So smart, and so considerate of everyone around you” you keep mumbling, one of your hands wrapping around where Alec craves you the most. The noise that leaves him sounds drawn out and almost painful, like he had wanted you to touch him for so long. There isn’t a need for lube, as you don’t have to do much to work Alec how he needs it, at the moment he doesn’t need anything wild, he just needs your touch and presence.

The loose grip you have around him and the lazy way you stroke him is enough to have Alec twitching and jolting, his mouth open as he gasps and whimpers, words long gone from his person as he arches his hips into your hand. How you feel about him is impossible to express in words, so you keep laying every compliment you can think of on him as you kiss and suck at his neck and shoulder.

His keens rise in volume, his voice wobbly and almost hoarse as he begs in broken words. “Go on baby. Good boy, come on, be good and give it to me” you rumble, reaching up with your free hand to give one of his nipples a rough pinch and twist. Its all Alec needs to finish, his hips jolting almost painfully into your hand as his essence spills across the sheets in thick white stripes, painting your black sheets in a different shade.

You barely are able to withdraw from his back before Alec is asleep, the exhaustion of the multiple days of nonstop work and the euphoria of his orgasm knocking him out cold. With a soft chuckle, you kiss his temple and start cleaning up, moving him around to change him out of his underwear into a new pair, and getting new sheets on the bed. As you cuddle against his back again, this time under the sheets, you smile softly to yourself as you kiss the back of his neck. “I love you so much, my sweet boy” you whisper before shutting your eyes, burying your face into his hair, and inhaling his scent, letting the familiar scent carry you off into the land of sleep.

[thatlittleviolin]

//A little ramblig about eddie dear bc i cant stop thinking about him

Im not joking when i say this whole post was inspired after seen @//purple-raspberries “the mailman” drawing because O MY STARS WHAT IS THAT DRAWINgGGGGGG /pos

Okay so anyway, whats up with Eddie Dear? As, like, an active character of Welcome Home?

Something rubs me in the wrong way when it comes to him as a whole, not that I dislike him, pretty… much the opposite (thats why I'm making this post) actually, but I feel he is more relevant to the lore than what ppl give him credit for.

Even way before the past-year (2023) Halloween and Homewarming updates, I felt that he must simply be more than what is presented to us about him:

- He is the only character who sees all the rest of the neighbours every day due to his work

- He is one of the few if not the only one who is confirmed to be from outside of Home

- He brings one of the TWO functional clocks in all of Home (which could well be due to the nature of his work, but it doesn't take away from the fact that it's curious)

And I know, ik, this is not a lot. In fact, I believe this is not crucial info, but I want to mention it because it gives, in some way, a certain statement: Eddie Dear is not like everyone else. It differentiates him from the others.

There's simply something intriguing about him; and I constantly think about how, again, he's the resident who interacts most with his neighbors, the most helpful and willing to do anything, and despite that, he's the one who gets the most hits?

Hes always in a rush because he likes helping others, he's clumsy and yet he does his job in a stellar way and yet he goes the more underappreciated by his neighbors and its the first one to get to have his own personal breakdown during the Homewarming

Keep in mind, I don't mean that the other characters are bad or smth, we all know that inside they care for each other and are a pretty nice neighborhood-

But yea, starting with the most obvious, Howdy and Sally are downright condescending, bordering on rude to him. Howdy ignores him or pays half attention when he goes to deliver merchandise to the Bugdega and tries to start a conversation, and despite this, we can see that Howdy asks him for help to deliver things to someone else.

More specifically, during a hidden audio, we can hear that he uses Eddie to deliver an order of bowling balls to Julie DESPITE Howdy having a home delivery system and probably being able to better handle the weight of the merchandise, being at least two heads taller than Eddie, right when Eddie had just told him he had a very tiring day (of course he didn't hear that)

Sally, on her side, is condescending to him to the degree that when we hear them interacting, at least until now, it's mostly her giving him orders. Heck, Sally has a "long name" for every resident EXCEPT Eddie, whom she usually just calls "Mailman" for everything.

Julie and Frank tend to be more passive about it, but it doesn't take away from the fact that they also end up... taking advantage a bit? Or leaving him a bit aside. I know, I know, we all ship FranklyDear here, but it still bothers me how during "Eddie's big lift" (+ another hidden audio) we're shown how Julie tends to involve him in her games without much consideration as to whether Eddie even understands them to begin with, and Frank, despite acknowledging that he works hard and often overworks for everyone, leaves him lying on the ground. They don't even wait for him to get up to say goodbye properly, they just leave him there and go home. It's a bit sad to hear how Eddie talks to himself while getting up and dusting himself off.

And finally, one that I understand is a joke but serves as a transition to my next point: Barnaby and his constant gag of chasing Eddie around the neighborhood as soon as he sees him making his deliveries, or insisting that Eddie lifts him up because “he's just a puppy”. I won't delve into this (not now) because I know that overall that's Barnaby's way of joking; Eddie is not his only victim, but when you mix it with everything said above, it gives off some weird vibes.

It's as if Eddie was the typical "punching bag" character of the show's creators; you know, the one created so that the fun we get from him is at his expense, and sadly, somehow that fact makes sense to me as to why he's the first to have a "breakdown" during Homewarming and said breakdown has to do with, what else? his isolation and probable sadness.

During Sally's history and Poppy's confinement in her own house, there were two predominant themes: what happens when we're in the dark, what lurks in the shadows and whatnot, and isolation: Sally talks about this but Poppy experiences it first hand; shes alone and in the dark, house bricked to the top. However, Eddie gets overwhelmed despite being surrounded by everyone and, clearly, in a lit environment.

My opinion? Said loneliness and darkness don't necessarily need to be tangible, and in Eddie's case, they come from a mental place. My dear doesn't seem to have too much appreciation for himself, constantly letting people get the help they want (need, of course) from him at the cost of his own well-being. Eddie Dear is not happy, in fact, I feel he puts himself down a bit, which equates to darkness, and when he can distract himself from this fact again, Home reminds him; and his loneliness comes in a literal-but-not way. Eddie is never alone, that's evident, but again, in the Homewarming video we're not only emphasized that he's upset and confused because no one has asked him for help, but because he DOESN'T KNOW how to handle his own activities outside of work. Anything that doesn't have to do with the post office but is more personal overwhelms him because he's not used to thinking outside of how he should help others because that's his "only" way of interacting with them. Eddie needs to be needed in order to be closer to others, and when that's not the case, it frustrates him so much that it even seems like anger.

Heck, it's even sad how Sally mentions that nobody bothered him with the usual tasks they would require him for to give him a day off, and then downright nobody interacted with him. Not even Julie called him to play. When Sally finds him under Home's tree, she asks him to escort her to Home for the Homewarming and it's narrated that they're the last to arrive, but if Eddie hadn't left his house then... what? Would he have stayed there? (Lowkey I theorize that he wouldn't have, because of the fact that Sally and Frank seem to have more awareness than the others, I feel like she was actually waiting for him)

Personally, I consider that when it comes to a case like Eddie's, it's even worse, because you don't need to be actively in a closed and dark place, isolated (in what voluntary situation would someone have to be like that?) for your head to go completely to shit. Think about it, you make Home angry and he doesn't need the rest of the neighbors to build a wall around you. It does what you already do well: it locks you up with your thoughts and leaves you there.

So,,, uh, yeah, I don't know how to end this.

I just wanted to talk about my fav man.

somebody help him PLAEASSE

[venusmage]

Commission/Life update for 2024

EDIT 9/16/24

As of now I've resolved around 15 commissions since this post was made at the start of June! This is much faster than I was going the past year. They're going well and I thank everyone again who has been so patient and kind. I've gotten nothing but kindness as a response to the wait, even from those who have been waiting for over a year by now. Thank you.

I recently started two new jobs and school again, so I'm a little busy. BUT everyone is (albeit not at a super fast speed) moving up in queue! Once the owed "Full" commissions are done, I expect to get through Sketch Coms even faster and currently I'm at a good pace to be done by the end of the year.

The best days to reach me are Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the moment. Otherwise it might take me a day or so to get back to you. I work on my own projects on the weekends to preserve my sanity, lol! Just know if I'm drawing something else, I haven't forgotten my queue!

------

Original post:

Just want everyone to know I AM okay now and life has gotten better recently. However the past year and a half have been extremely difficult and I'm only now getting back on my feet. I generally don't like sharing life details publicly, but as a freelancer with clients that have been waiting for a while I feel like transparency is key.

If you don't want an explanation for the delays and just want to know my completion timeline, that's totally okay. Here is all the info up front. I'm going to continue updating my commission queue as usual and will not be accepting any more orders until ALL of the queue is completed. I'm working on finishing the half and full bodies first since they've been the longest waiting in queue. Then the rest. I don't have a set date in mind for when they'll be all done for good but the goal is by the end of the year. I think that's more than doable for me now. If you're a client of mine and have questions/concerns, please message me either here or on Discord and I'll do my best to help you. My username on discord is the same as my Tumblr username. Twitter and Ko-Fi are also options but I don't check them as frequently. I usually work Monday-Thursday so that will be the best time to shoot me a message or expect an update to the queue.

Information on what's been going on is below.

CW for mentions of death, financial hardship and homophobia.

As a few of you might remember, in 2019 I was disowned by my mother for being a lesbian. I made the choice to go no-contact. Since then, up until LAST YEAR, she's routinely harassed me or had other family harass me, stalked me on social media, tried to get to me through the website I take commission orders, and threatened me multiple times. I was forced to move across the country both because I felt unsafe and because my partner had family elsewhere that were more accepting. I've had to change my phone number twice.

It's been extremely difficult both financially and mentally to keep my head above water. In 2021 my grandfather died and I still haven't felt like I've been able to properly grieve. I wasn't able to see him due to her and I wasn't invited to his funeral. We were very close and he meant the world to me. In 2023 my grandmother passed away very suddenly as well, and my mother used it as an excuse to harass me over ko-fi/my professional email. It was such a horrific experience that I fell into a months long spiral that I only just now feel like I'm climbing out of. This is when commissions first stalled. I was also starting to get overwhelmed, as I had to take on more work than I could realistically handle in order to pay bills and rent. That's really it - I just had to take more orders so we weren't kicked out of our apartment, and as my mental state deteriorated I couldn't keep up.

The good news is that my wife and moved earlier this year we're living with supportive(!) family now and our financial burden is much lighter. This gives me time to work on my backlog without re-opening. I'm also going to school again, back in college starting this summer for a second degree. For my own health after commissions are finished I'm likely going to take a break on opening them for a good while, even though I really enjoy doing them.

In the past two months amazing and not-amazing things have happened. The amazing thing is I got an ADHD diagnosis, something I didn't even know had been ruining my life for years. I'm still getting used to the proper medications but I'm already seeing a big improvement. It's as much of a relief as it is frustrating. My mother also reared her head again (like she usually does at least once a year) - this time, though, I learned she'd had a stroke. While I'm not involved with her anymore, I think most people could understand how it would still be a very weird and upsetting situation. As of right now I'm free of her once again, she seems to be making a good recovery and will hopefully continue to live a happy life far away from me. Still, those two things back to back have been a LOT to deal with on top of just trying to get better in general. I stepped away from the internet for a while for my own sanity.

The downside to being a freelancer is that there's not always a safety net. That's what happened to me. Thank you all very much for being kind and patient, I genuinely have had nothing but polite interactions with all of you and I really appreciate it. I'm sorry my personal bullshit got in the way of getting my work done for you. This is the longest I've ever taken to complete commissions and it's something that I'm deeply ashamed of. I promise they will get done. Being medicated and starting to recover from the family drama has revitalized me a bit. If you have any questions or concerns please reach out.

[unsolicited-opinions]

Read this again today for the first time in a year and it's still one of the best pieces I've read on this topic.

It is long, but I urge you to read it.

(Pasted here unedited so nobody needs to visit Musk's platform, formerly known as Twitter.)

Isaac Saul

11:26 AM · Oct 10, 2023

People ask me all the time if I am "pro-Israel" because I am a Jew who has lived in Israel, and my answer is that being "pro-Israel" or being "pro-Palestine" or being a "Zionist" does not properly capture the nuance of thought most people do or should have about this issue. It certainly doesn't capture mine.

I have a lot to say. I’ve spent the last 72 hours writing, texting, and talking to Israelis, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians. Much of my reaction is going to piss off people on "both sides," but I am exhausted and hurting and I do not think there is any way to discuss this situation without being radically honest about my views. So I'm going to try to say what I believe to be true the best I can.

Let me start with this: It could have been me.

That's a hard thought to shake when watching the videos out of Israel — the concert goers fleeing across an empty expanse, the hostages being paraded through the streets, the people shot in the head at bus stops or in their cars. I went to those parties in the desert, I rubbed shoulders with Israelis and Arabs and Jews and Muslims, I could have easily accepted an invitation to some concert near Sderot and gone without a care, only to be indiscriminately slaughtered. Or, perhaps worse, taken hostage and tortured.

I don’t believe Hamas is killing Israelis to liberate themselves, nor do I believe they are doing it to make peace. They're doing this because they represent the devil on the shoulder of every oppressed Palestinian who has lost someone in this conflict. They're doing it because they want vengeance. They are evening the score, and acting on the worst of our human impulses, to respond to blood with blood — an inclination that is easy to give in to after what their people have endured. It should not be hard to understand their logic — it is only hard to accept that humans are capable of being driven to this. Not defending Hamas is a very low bar to clear. Please clear it.

It’s not possible to recap the entire 5,000 year history of people fighting over this strip of land in one newsletter. There are plenty of easily accessible places you can learn about it if you want to (and, by the way, many of you should — far too many people speak on this issue with an obscene amount of ignorance, loads of arrogance, and a narrow historical lens focused on the last few decades). But I'll briefly highlight a few things that are important to me.

In my opinion, the Jewish people have a legitimate historical claim to the land of Israel. Jews had already been expelled and returned and expelled again a half dozen times before the rise of the Muslim and Arab rule of the Ottoman Empire. Of course it’s messy because we Jews and Arabs and Muslims are all cousins and descendents of the same Canaanites. But Arabs won the land centuries ago the same way Israel and Jews won it in the 20th century: Through conflict and war. The British defeated the Ottoman Empire and then came the Balfour Declaration, which amounted to the British granting the area to the Jewish people, a promise they’d later try to renege on — all before the wars that have defined the region since 1948.

That historical moment in the late 1940s was unique. After World War II, with many Arab and Muslim states already in existence, and after six million Jews were slaughtered, the global community felt it was important to grant the Jewish people a homeland. In a more logical or just world that homeland would have been in Europe as a kind of reparation for what the Nazis and others before them had done to the Jews, or perhaps in the Americas — like Alaska — or somewhere else. But the Jews wanted Israel, the British had taken to the Zionist movement, the British had conquered the Ottoman Empire which handed them control of the land, and America and Europe didn’t want the Jews. As a result, we got Israel.

The Arab states had already rejected a partitioned Israel repeatedly before World War II and rejected it again after the Holocaust and the end of the war. They did not want to give up even a little bit of their land to a bunch of Jewish interlopers who were granted it all of a sudden by British interlopers who had arrived a hundred years prior. Who could blame them? It had been centuries since Jews lived there in large numbers, and now they wanted to return in waves as secularized Europeans. Many of us would probably react the same way. So, just as humans have done forever, they fought. The many existing Arab states turned against the burgeoning new Jewish state. One side won and one side lost. This is the brutal and broken and violent world we live in, but it is what created the global world order we have now.

Are Israelis and British people "colonizers" because of this 20th century history? Sure. But that view flattens thousands of years of history and conflict, and the context of World War I and World War II. I don’t view Israelis and Brits as colonizers any more than the Assyrians or the Babylonians or the Romans or the Mongols or the Egyptians or the Ottomans who all battled over the same strip of land from as early as 800 years before Jesus’s time until now. The Jews who founded Israel just happened to have won the last big battle for it.

You can’t speak about this issue in a vacuum. You can't pretend that it wasn't just 60 years ago when Israel was surrounded on all sides by Arab states who wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. Despite the balance of power shifting this century, that threat is still a reality. And you can't talk about that without remembering the only reason the Jews were in Israel in the first place was that they'd spent the previous centuries fleeing a bunch of Europeans who also wanted to wipe them off the face of the planet. And then Hitler showed up.

American partisans have a narrow view of this history, and an Americentric lens that is infuriating to witness. As Lee Fang perfectly put it, "Hamas would absolutely execute the ACAB lefties cheering on horrific violence against Israelis if they lived in Gaza & U.S. right-wingers blindly cheering on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians would rebel twice as violently if Americans were subjected to similar occupation."

And yet, many Americans only view modern Israel as the "powerful" one in this dynamic. Which is true — they obviously are. It isn't a fair fight and it hasn't been for decades because Israel's government is rich and resourceful, has the backing of the United States and most of Europe, and has an incredibly powerful military. At the same time, Israeli leadership has made technological and military advancements that have further tipped those scales — all while the Israeli government has helped create a resource-thin open air prison of two million Arabs in Gaza.

Conversely, Palestinians are devoid of any real unified leadership, and the Arab world is now divided on the issue of Palestine. Israel is unwilling to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank more than an inch of freedom to live. These are largely the refugees and descendents of the refugees of the 1948 and 1967 wars that Israel won. And you can't keep two million people in the condition that those in the Gaza strip live in and not expect events like this.

I'm sorry to say that while the blood on the ground is fresh. The Israelis who were killed in this attack largely have nothing to do with those conditions other than being born at a time when Israel and Jews have the upper hand in this conflict. Some of the victims weren’t even Israeli — they were just tourists. This is why we describe them as “innocent” and why Hamas has only reaffirmed that they are a brutal terror organization with this attack — an organization that I hope is quickly toppled, for the sake of both the Palestinian people and the Israelis. But as someone with a deep love for Israel, with friends in danger and people I know still missing, it breaks my heart to say it but I'm saying it again because it remains perhaps the most salient point of context in a tangled mess full of centuries of context:

You cannot keep two million people living in the conditions people in Gaza are living in and expect peace.

You can't. And you shouldn’t. Their environment is antithetical to the human condition. Violent rebellion is guaranteed. Guaranteed. As sure as the sun rising.

And the cycle of violence seems locked in to self-perpetuate, because both sides see a score to settle:

1) Israel has already responded with a vengeance, and they will continue to. Their desire for violence is not unlike Hamas’s — it’s just as much about blood for blood as any legitimate security measure. Israel will “have every right to respond with force." Toppling Hamas — a group, by the way, Israel erred in supporting — will now be the objective, and civilian death will be seen as necessary collateral damage. But Israel will also do a bunch of things they don't have a right to. They will flatten apartment buildings and kill civilians and children and many in the global community will probably cheer them on while they do it. They have already stopped the flow of water, electricity, and food to two million people, and killed dozens of civilians in their retaliatory bombings. We should never accept this, never lose sight that this horror is being inflicted on human beings. As the group B’Tselem said, “There is no justification for such crimes, whether they are committed as part of a struggle for freedom from oppression or cited as part of a war against terror.” I mourn for the innocents of Palestine just as I do for the innocents in Israel. As of late, many, many more have died on their side than Israel's. And many more Palestinians are likely to die in this spate of violence, too.

Unfortunately, most people in the West only pay attention to this story when Hamas or a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank commits an act of violence. Palestinian citizens die regularly at the hands of the Israeli military and their plight goes largely unnoticed until they respond with violence of their own. Israel had already killed an estimated 250 Palestinians, including 47 children, this year alone. And that is just in the West Bank.

2) Every single time Israel kills someone in the name of self-defense they create a handful of new radicalized extremists who will feel justified in wanting to take an Israeli life in retribution sometime in the future. Half of Gaza’s two million people are under the age of 19 — they know little besides Hamas rule (since 2006), Israeli occupation, blockades, and rockets falling from the sky. The suffering of these innocent children born into this reality is incomprehensible to me. They will suffer more now because of Hamas’s actions and Israel’s response, all through no fault of their own.

There is no way out of this pattern until one side exercises restraint or leaders on both sides find a new solution. Israelis will tell you that if Palestinians put their guns down then the war would end, but if Israel put their guns down they'd be wiped off the planet. I don't have a crystal ball and can’t tell you what is true. But what I am certain of is that every time Israel kills more innocents they engender more rage and hatred and recruit more Palestinians and Arabs to the cause against them. There is no disputing this.

So, why did this happen now?

I'm not sure how to answer that question except to say it was bound to happen eventually. It was a massive policy and intelligence failure and Netanyahu should pay the price politically — he is a failed leader. Iran probably helped organize the attack and the money freed up by the Biden administration's prisoner swap probably didn't help the situation, either. Israel's increasingly extremist government and settlers provoking Palestinians certainly didn't help. Nor has going to the Al-Aqsa mosque and desecrating it. Nor do blockades and bombings and indiscriminate subjugation of a whole people. Nor does refusing to talk to non-terrorist leaders in Palestine. Nor does illegally continuing to expand and steal what is left of Palestinian land, as many Jews and Israelis have been doing in the 21st century despite cries from the global community to stop. A violent response was predictable — in fact, plenty of people did predict it.

Israel is forever stuffing these people into tinier and tinier boxes with fewer and fewer resources. But if you want to blame Israeli leaders for continuing to expand and settle land that does not belong to them (as I do), then you should also spare some blame for Palestinian leaders for repeatedly not accepting a partitioned Israel during the 20th century that could have led to peace (as I do).

Please also remember this: Hamas is still an extremist group. The Palestinian people do not have a government or leaders who legitimately represent their interests, and it sure as hell isn't Hamas. Will some Palestinians cheer and clap at the dead, or spit on them as they are paraded through Gaza? Yes they will. And they have. Many will also mourn because they loathe Hamas and know this will only make things worse. This is no different than how some Americans cheer at the dead in every single war we've ever fought. It's no different than the Israelis who set up lawn chairs to watch their government bomb Palestine and cheer them on, too. This doesn't mean Palestinians or Israelis or Americans are evil — it means some of them are giving in to their violent impulses, and their zealous feelings of righteous vengeance.

Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.

Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.

I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.

I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.

I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.

I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.

I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.

I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.

I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro- all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.

Whatever this is, I want none of it.

Oct 10, 2023

[x-press-it]

Devilish Desires - 5/8

Dangerous Temptations, Irresistible Touch 🎞️❤️‍🔥🌹⚔️🖤��🖱️

Sub!Logan Howlett x Dom!OC (They/Them)

Summary: Logan, typically guarded and dominant, finds himself captivated by E, a mysterious being with a devilish allure and ancient presence that challenges his control.

Context: This story unfolds 'within' the "Days of Future Past" new timeline, during Logan's early years as a history teacher at Xavier’s School. It’s set well before his consciousness from the original timeline reconnects with him in 2023, as seen at the film’s end.

Content Warnings (for the whole story): Smut 18+ (Dry humping, Edging, Unprotected p in v.) - Dom!Logan into Sub!Logan - Pet Names (Good boy, pretty boy, pet, pup, amongst others…) reversed age gap (Logan is younger) - OC Notes: Established name, backstory, powers, fighting style, female body but gender fluid character (Logan misgender them at first because he doesn’t know, even in the descriptions) - Mention of other character from the MCU and subtle references to the comics for flavor (not mandatory to understand what is happening) - Flash back and mention of past trauma - Very quick mentions of drugs - Fluff with Dark Undertones: Emotional tension and possessive affection - Worship Themes: Religious imagery, reverent language and awe - Ancient Mysticism: References to otherworldly or demonic presence - Mental Health: Power dynamics, personal vulnerabilities - Trope: Rivals to lovers.

I'm back after 10 years of iatus and fairly new to how things are done on tumblr now, so sorry if I missed any warnings. Also english isn't my first language so there might be typos/weird sentences...

Notes: Got very inspired by sub!Logan and repeated listening of "Between wind and water" by Hael. Cover made with canva from an idea I got from this post. If you know who made the picture, tell me so I can credit them - Click on the divider to find the creator. Also this was meant to be an imagine turned into a full story. Just so you know, some chapters are very short, other are long. I'm in the process of editing/writing/rewriting parts so I'll post a chapter everytime I have one fully edited.

Finally, we're here! I had this chapter partialy written since ages (I think it was the first one I wrote) and it's now out for you to read \o/ It's time for some revelations :D (Sorry in advance for the bucket of lore coming your way XD ) I'm so excited, I really hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I liked writing it :D It's time to feed the hunger again :D

Need some music? I've got you I wrote the second scene with this particular song in repeat

Previously: in Devilish Desires

Chapters: 5/8

Word Count: 8.7K / 60K+ for now

The hum of the Danger Room felt more intense from the command center, each vibration resonating in Logan's bones as he leaned against the console, eyes locked on the floor below. It had been two days since the sparring session, and in the day that followed, the team had decided E would face this trial. Logan had offered them a few words of advice about the Danger Room's unpredictability—the way it tested not only skills but instinct and resilience. Now, as night had fallen, the room thrummed with anticipation.

On the other side of the glass, E stood in the center of the vast metallic space, their posture deceptively relaxed. But Logan’s keen eyes could see the tension in their muscles, coiled like a spring, ready to be unleashed. Their hair was down, swept back into a half ponytail to keep it out of their eyes, but still falling like a thick curtain down their back, where the glint of metal—perhaps just a trick of the light—flickered beneath. The simple sport attire they wore clung to their frame, unadorned except for the three bracelets catching the cold light on their left wrist, while their bare feet flexed against the smooth floor. Their gloved fingers twitched, as if itching for movement, a restless energy building in the charged silence, waiting for the simulation to come up around them.

“They look confident,” Jean remarked, eyes narrowed with mild curiosity, but there was an edge to her voice. Logan didn’t respond, jaw tightening. There was no point sharing how skilled E was; they were about to witness it with their own eyes.

“They better be more than just confident,” Scott muttered under his breath, arms crossed as he cast a skeptical glance at Charles. The professor remained composed, hands folded on his lap, as if waiting for something only he could anticipate. With a few practiced keystrokes, Hank finally configured the simulation.

Below them, the virtual reality sprang to life, the soft whisper of machinery and the flicker of artificial lights surrounding E's silhouette. The walls shifted, blocks emerging from all around the room as pixels spread over their surfaces, multiplying and transforming into the textured sprawl of an urban maze—alleys and crumbling rooftops taking shape around them. The objective was simple: evade, outmaneuver, survive. A test of adaptability.

E moved, graceful and quick, weaving through the fake streets, their movements precise and calculating. Logan's eyes followed every twist, every sudden dart, watching as their focus turned sharp. He knew that they were dancing on the edge of instinct and training, the latter being a completely new experience.

“Fast,” Kitty admitted, a touch of surprise lacing her words.

Scott's arms tightened across his chest, eyes fixed on E as they moved fluidly through the simulation. “Speed doesn’t always win fights,” he countered, his gaze unwavering as he frowned at the holographic city. The hint of critique in his tone made the others nod in agreement, their silence suffocating.

But Logan couldn’t help the snort that escaped him, a brief flash of irritation twisting his features. He masked it quickly by clearing his throat, but the sharp sound had already drawn their attention. Eyes shifted to him, brows lifting in question, but he remained silent, jaw set tightly as he turned his gaze back to the floor below.

“I don’t see why you insisted on this, Charles,” Hank said, the low rumble of his voice cutting through the quiet hum of the room. His analytical eyes narrowed slightly as E’s pace faltered. What was happening? Logan's hands twitched at his sides—something was wrong. Tension rippled through the command center as each person silently judged every move they witnessed. E was keeping up, for now, but not without effort.

“Yeah, what’s so special? Just another pretty face with tricks,” Bobby added with a short, dismissive laugh. Logan’s jaw clenched tighter, muscles shifting under his skin.

Charles steepled his fingers, leaning forward in his wheelchair with an unreadable expression. “Patience, my friends. There’s potential there. Untapped, but it’s there,” he said calmly, though the confidence in his voice was met with a few skeptical glances.

Logan’s teeth ground together as he watched them scrutinize, his muscles coiled with something raw, protective. This wasn’t just a trial for E; it felt like a trial for him, too, as if every dismissive comment was a thinly veiled accusation that he was thinking with something other than his brain.

Suddenly, a part of the simulated cityscape fractured with a metallic groan and came crashing down toward E. They twisted sharply, eyes wide, narrowly rolling out of the way as debris shattered where they had just stood. Dust plumed around them, and for a heartbeat, everything seemed to slow. Logan's hands clenched around air, claws itching, muscles flexing as if ready to leap down there himself.

The murmurs intensified, no longer masked by civility. Each comment jabbed at Logan, who could see the slight stutter in E’s movement below—a shadow of hesitation—as the room adjusted, shifting to create new streets ahead while the terrain behind dissolved seamlessly into nothing.

“That was close. They’re fast, sure, but is it enough?” The criticism in Scott’s voice was borderline caustic, hitting Logan like a sudden blow to the stomach.

“Enough!” he said, voice cutting through the low chatter. Heads turned, surprised. He rarely broke his silence, rarely defended anyone outside his trusted circle. “You all stepped into that room as first-timers once, too.” The statement wasn’t loud, but it was like a shot ringing out, silencing any further mutters.

Silence hung for a breath. They exchanged glances, eyes sharp with wariness, doubt simmering just beneath. The shift was palpable, the tension stretching taut as realization sunk in: they thought he was under their influence, as if E’s enigmatic pull was some kind of intoxicating drug.

Below, E stumbled, a flicker of vulnerability breaking through their poise. The sight struck Logan, a sudden twist in his gut. “That’s it,” he muttered, blood boiling, as he pushed off from the console, ignoring the startled looks as he strode toward the door.

“Logan, where are you—” Jean started, but he was already gone, the metallic door sliding shut behind him.

Their back pressed against the rough façade of an artificial, crumbling building, muscles taut as they scanned the street past the corner they were hiding behind, E’s heart raced. The air hummed with the ambient sound of clanking metal and distant combat. The Danger Room was more relentless than they had expected, its projections more immersive and intricate than they could have imagined. Every inch of their being screamed for focus, but exhaustion—and most of all, hunger—gnawed at their resolve. The weight of the command center's watchful eyes, laced with thinly veiled animosity, chipped away at their energy reserves, a constant, draining reminder of how unwelcome they truly were. They had known this would be difficult, but not this punishing.

As they prepared to move forward, a flicker of movement caught their attention—a shimmering distortion in the air, just a few feet from them, cracking the illusion for a heartbeat. What now? Frustration and irritation surged within them as the projection rippled, revealing a familiar form stepping through the pixels. E’s eyes widened in surprise. Logan. His expression was stormy, unreadable as always, with a raw determination etched on his face. The glint of his left claws, half-drawn, made their breath catch for a split second before they realized he wasn’t there to attack. He moved swiftly to hide beside them, his back pressed against the artificial building. The air between them buzzed with the charge of their connection. Concern.

“What the hell are you doing here?” E whispered, their voice harsher than intended. The slight breathlessness in their tone betrayed them, and Logan’s keen senses didn’t miss it, catching the faint tremor at the edge of their stance.

His brows furrowed, deepening the lines carved by years of battle and unyielding reliability. “You look like hell,” he said bluntly, eyes searching theirs for the truth they stubbornly tried to hide. Up close, E could see the muscles in his jaw clenching, his instincts coiled tight. The primal protectiveness that had driven him past Jean’s concerned call was written in every line of his posture.

Above them, in the observation deck, the palpable, hostile energy grew, stoked by Logan’s intervention. E gritted their teeth, feeling its force like a storm pressing down on them, threatening to break through their resolve. They held their breath, adapting to the oppressive weight with each rapid heartbeat.

“I’m fine,” E countered sharply once they regained control of their voice, though the claim rang hollow. They turned away, ready to press on, but Logan’s voice caught them like a tether.

“You’re not,” he growled, inching closer, casting a shadow that darkened the line of their vision. The cold, glaring artificial sun above was a poor mimic of real warmth, but Logan’s presence radiated heat, grounding them amidst the surreal chaos.

A silence stretched between them and E hesitated, a moment’s pause in which the weight of their exhaustion threatened to spill over. The edge of their allure had dulled, they knew it—no subtle shimmer beneath their skin, no echo of energy. Where vitality had thrummed, there was now a draining emptiness, a void that was craving his touch, his admiration.

Logan’s gaze sharpened as he took in the rapid rise and fall of their chest, the glazed weariness in their guarded eyes, the dullness to their horns, the fine sheen of sweat glistening on their neck, and the way their fingers twitched inside their gloves as if struggling to suppress a tremor. He couldn’t ignore how different they seemed from the fierce, fluid form they’d shown two days ago. His instincts screamed at him to act, to pull them out of this self-inflicted trial.

“E,” he said, his tone softer now, the rough edge replaced with something raw, familiar. His right hand lifted, hesitating before landing on their shoulder, a steady weight that offered comfort.

They met his eyes, the defiance in their stare wavering briefly. For a breath, the noise of the Danger Room dulled, replaced by the heat between them. The test, the hunger, the harsh judgments—everything faded as Logan’s gaze anchored them. They nodded once, forcing a small smirk that Logan didn’t buy for a second.

“I’m good enough,” they murmured, the sharp edge of confidence slipping.

Logan didn’t flinch. His gaze didn’t waver, and the concern etched into his rugged features went far deeper than simple vigilance. It was something fiercer, more personal. “Don’t push it. You don’t have to prove anything.”

“I do, actually,” E said, glancing at the command center before meeting his eyes again.

The animosity above seemed to swell, the silent disapproval pricking at them like thorns, likely fed by Logan’s gesture. They rolled their shoulders, shrugging off his hand in an effort to appease the unspoken hostility growing from the observation deck. They couldn’t keep up with this for much longer. They had to end this soon, or the consequences—ones they wouldn’t dare imagine—would catch up to them.

With a deep breath, they set their jaw, the mask of sharp confidence snapping back into place. Pushing off from the wall, they squared their shoulders.

“Let’s finish this,” they said, their voice steady despite the strain.

Logan didn’t respond, but the look in his eyes as he fell into step beside them spoke volumes. This was no ordinary training exercise. The stakes had shifted, and he would be damned if he let anything happen to them.

With a shared glance, they pushed forward, moving through the chaos. The mechanical whisper of the Danger Room came back to life around them, roaring in E’s ears as they navigated the labyrinthine maze of twisted metal and simulated war-torn streets. Every turn, every shadow, tested their resolve. Every step was weighted by exhaustion, their body teetering on the edge of collapse, finding strength only in Logan’s unwavering presence at their side. The extraction point glimmered in the distance, a brief beacon of hope.

But that hope was short-lived.

A metallic groan rumbled through the air as a shadow stretched across the ground. E’s eyes snapped upward, and their breath caught in their chest. Towering above them, metal plating glinting under the harsh artificial light, stood a sentinel—its towering form ominous and all too real. The red glow of its eyes sent a shiver down their spine as it powered up, joints whirring with deadly intent.

“What the actual fuck?” they whispered, eyes wide as a brilliant laser beam split the air, barely missing them. They dove to the side, rolling onto the cracked pavement and pushing themselves up against a wall for protection, breathless.

Logan’s gaze darkened as he pressed his back next to them, his eyes narrowing to sharp slits as he processed the sight. “Really, guys?” he muttered, low and venomous, clearly directed at Scott and Hank, who undoubtedly had a hand in programming this nightmare. Fury coiled tight in his muscles, but he didn’t let it show. There was no time for anger—only action.

“What’s that thing?” E’s voice, despite its edge, wavered.

“Listen,” Logan said, gripping their arm and forcing their wide eyes to lock with his. “That’s a sentinel. A robot designed to kill every mutant it sees. We need to take it down.” His voice was as unyielding as steel, but beneath it lay something softer—belief. He trusted them.

E’s pulse hammered against their temples, but Logan’s resolve wrapped around them like a shield, momentarily blunting the razor-sharp hostility pricking at them from the command center. They nodded, swallowing hard as they reached behind their back, fingers parting the curtain of their black hair as they curled around the cool texture of two big metal rings. With a swift motion, they pulled the circular weapons free, their sharp edges catching the artificial light. Chakrams.

Logan’s brow arched, the barest hint of amusement twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Where did you—”

He didn’t get to finish. The sentinel’s red eyes flared, and another beam cut through the air. E’s eyes widened as they registered the attack a heartbeat before it struck. With a surge of adrenaline, they shoved Logan hard, propelling him out of harm’s way as they dove in the opposite direction. The ground shook beneath them as the beam exploded against the wall, scorching the surface where they'd stood mere seconds ago, debris scattering like shrapnel.

They hit the ground with a grunt, pain sparking up their shoulder, but there was no time to dwell on it. Pushing themselves up, E glanced over at Logan, who was already rising, eyes narrowed with a mix of frustration and admiration.

“No time to chat, pretty boy,” E muttered, gripping their chakrams between their indexes and thumbs as they locked eyes with him. Logan gave a sharp nod, the sound of his claws unsheathing a cold metallic promise.

Together, they moved with the seamless coordination of two souls bound by an unspoken connection—like a red thread pulling them through the chaos, guiding their every move. E darted forward, using their agility to keep the sentinel’s attention, chakrams slicing through the air with deadly precision. Each throw found a weak point—joints, sensors, anywhere that could be chipped away to disrupt its functioning—before returning to their fingers, drawn back by the essence they had infused into the circular weapons long ago. The sentinel’s massive hand swung in retaliation, narrowly missing them as they twisted out of its reach.

Logan took the opening, charging up the sentinel’s back with the ferocity of a man who knew how to make every second count. His claws gleamed as he latched onto the metal plating, scaling the behemoth with a speed that defied logic. Sparks flew as he plunged his claws into the nape of its neck, tearing through wires and circuits with a snarl.

The sentinel stuttered, its movements jerking as it faltered. With a final, violent lurch, it began to collapse, metal shrieking as it toppled forward like a giant felled by time itself. Logan leapt down, landing in a crouch just as the robot crashed to the ground with a sound that echoed through the chamber.

E turned, breath heaving, as the dust settled around them. Relief surged in their chest, but the victory was fleeting. A sudden noise—an ominous creak—rippled through the air. E’s eyes snapped up just in time to see a chunk of debris, dislodged from a nearby structure, plummeting toward them.

Before they could react, Logan was there, moving faster than seemed possible. He grabbed them by the waist, yanking them to the side as the debris smashed into the ground where they had just stood. The impact threw up a pixeled cloud of dust, metal dressed in a stone-like sheen skittering across the cracked surface.

Logan’s arm stayed wrapped around them, the weight of his protective embrace more solid than the chaos surrounding them. For a moment, everything was silent except the pounding of their hearts. E looked up at him, eyes wide and stunned, and caught the raw, unguarded look on his face—one that spoke of fear and relief mingled with something deeper.

“You good?” he rasped, voice low and tight.

E nodded slowly, catching their breath as he released them from his hold. The warmth lingered on their skin and their throat became dry, forcing them to clear it. “Yeah,” they whispered, the reality of their near miss finally sinking in. The sentinel was down, but it wasn’t over. Not yet. Though, with Logan’s eyes locked on theirs, the weight of the hostile energy above felt a little less suffocating.

Around them, the holographic shield shimmered and fizzled out, leaving an eerie silence in its wake as the walls of the Danger Room shifted and retracted, returning the space to its usual stark, featureless expanse. The air was thick with tension, the adrenaline still pumping in their veins.

E couldn’t help but smirk, the exhaustion still gnawing at them but not enough to mask the small victory. “I think we make a pretty good team,” they said, their voice betraying the tremor of weariness that ran deep.

Logan shot them a sideways glance, the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips despite the concern still written on his face. “Yeah, just don’t get used to me saving your ass,” he muttered, though his words lacked the usual bite. Beneath the gruff tone, there was something softer—almost affectionate.

E raised an eyebrow, a challenge dancing in their tired gaze. “Oh, don’t worry,” they teased back, reaching behind and slipping their chakrams into the small crochets sewn into the back of their tunic, where they rested securely, hidden beneath their long, disheveled hair. They opened their mouth to say more, wiping sweat from their neck, but before the words could form, the door to the Danger Room slid open with a hiss.

Logan’s instincts flared to life, sharper than ever. He moved in front of E without hesitation, his broad form a solid wall between them and the approaching team. His eyes darkened with barely suppressed rage, chest heaving as he fought to control it.

“What the hell, guys?” Logan’s voice cut through the silence, rough and seething. “This was supposed to be training. You used a fucking sentinel? On someone who’s never used the Danger Room before?” His glare was as raw as his voice, daring anyone to challenge him.

Scott’s jaw tightened, meeting Logan’s gaze with a stoic defiance. “We needed to see what they could do in a non-controlled environment,” he countered, his cool tone only fueling Logan’s fury further. The tension between them thickened, crackling with unspoken animosity.

Logan took a step forward, fists clenched, eyes blazing with unrestrained aggression. His face flushed red, a clear warning that he was dangerously close to losing it.

“Logan.” The calm, steady voice of Charles Xavier sliced through the tension, his wheelchair gliding smoothly between them. His eyes held a mix of reproach and understanding. “It was indeed a bit too much,” he acknowledged, addressing the group. “But we’ve learned something valuable. E showed they can work with the team. They fought well with Logan.”

A small scoff escaped Scott’s lips, the sound turning Logan’s rage into a furnace. “Of course, they did,” Scott muttered under his breath, his gaze flicking between them. “It’s easy for lovers to fight in sync.”

The words struck like a match to gasoline, igniting the fire in Logan’s chest. His jaw clenched so tightly it felt like his teeth might crack. He moved forward, but a cold hand—trembling, far lighter than it should have been—landed on his forearm. The movement froze him, and he glanced down, meeting E’s gaze. Their face was pale, drawn, the defiance in their eyes replaced with an exhaustion so profound it was almost tangible. Their knees buckled slightly, and in an instant, Logan’s anger was gone, replaced by a wave of deep, gut-wrenching concern.

He reached out, catching them in his arms, steadying them as their body swayed. “Easy,” he growled, his voice softening, becoming more protective. His focus shifted entirely to them, every instinct urging him to shield them from the glare of the team.

With a quick glance at the others, Logan’s eyes hardened again, colder than ice. “This isn’t over,” he spat, teeth bared in a silent promise, his words dripping with warning. He didn’t care to explain further, focusing instead on E. Without another word, he gently guided them out of the Danger Room, his movements deliberate as he shielded them from the questions, the stares, and the storm he would unleash later.

For now, only one thing mattered—getting them out of there and making sure they were okay.

The walk to E’s bedroom felt longer than it should have. Logan's arm stayed firmly wrapped around their waist, guiding them as their steps faltered. They leaned on him heavily, their usually sharp gaze clouded with exhaustion.

When they finally reached the door, Logan pushed it open, leading them inside and helping them sit down on the edge of the bed. E reached over their shoulder, carefully pulling the chakrams from their tunic and placing them on the bed beside them, the metallic weight a comfort against the soft fabric. With a sigh, they removed their gloves, setting them beside the weapons.

Logan stayed close, his eyes scanning their face, searching for any sign of what was wrong. Their breathing was ragged, an unusual warmth radiating from them as sweat slid down their skin. Their fingers clutched the blanket beneath them, as though it was the only thing holding them steady.

He sat beside them, the mattress dipping under his weight. He didn’t want to leave, not when they looked like they were hanging by a thread.

“Logan…” Their voice broke, weaker than he’d ever heard it, and a tremor ran through them. There was more than just exhaustion—there was fear in their tone that made something in his chest tighten.

He shifted closer, brows furrowing as he studied them. “You okay? You look like hell.”

A faint, breathless laugh escaped them, but there was no humor in it. “Thanks… exactly what I needed to hear.” The words came out flat, without their usual teasing edge. They tried to stand, legs trembling beneath them. “I just need an hour… outside, and I’ll be fine. It’s… nothing.”

Logan’s reflexes were quicker than their unsteady movements. Rising too, his hand shot out, grabbing their arm before they could collapse. “No way in hell you’re goin’ anywhere like that. You’re burnin’ up.”

“I’ll be fine…” E muttered, trying to pull away, but there was no strength behind it.

He tightened his hold, eyes narrowing. “Are you on somethin’? Drugs?” His free hand shot to their forehead before settling on their cheek, searching their eyes for any sign of intoxication.

They laughed again, hollow and cracked, leaning into his touch instinctively. “I wish it were that simple.”

Logan’s frustration flared, his patience thinning as he gripped both their shoulders between his hands. “What do you mean by that?”

Their eyes met his—dark and shadowed with exhaustion, and something else. Something resigned. “I can’t live on food alone, Logan. I need… more.”

“The hell does that mean?” He wasn’t sure if he was angry, worried, or both. No, definitely both.

They swallowed hard, gaze falling as their voice dropped to a whisper. “Emotions. Desire, joy, lust… worship.” The last word left their lips like a breath, carrying a desperate weight that made his gut twist.

He went rigid, realization dawning on him. It was starting to make sense—the way they came at him at first, their playful behavior, the way their energy surged when they sparred, how they seemed to pull at him without even trying. It wasn’t just empowerment, it was sustenance.

“Negative energy drains me,” they continued, each word sounding like it took effort. “Criticism, doubt, disdain… it’s why I’m like this. Because of the team’s… distrust. But you… you’re like a damn buffet to me.” Their gaze locked onto his, more serious than he’d ever seen it, a deep, ravenous hunger veiling their vision. “Your healing ability… it’s dangerous for me. It makes me want to eat you alive. It’s hard to resist.”

Logan’s jaw clenched, processing their words. Finally, he asked, “So, what the hell do you need to feel better?”

E’s hand trembled as it reached up to cup his cheek. Their touch was light, hesitant, but it felt like fire against his skin. “There’s a solution… but I won’t force you. I’d rather die than hurt anyone again.”

Logan’s eyes searched theirs, taking in the raw pain and sadness—a vulnerability he’d only glimpsed until now. Something deep inside him shifted.

“If I can help… just tell me.”

Their eyes flashed with desperation, a glimmer of something dark and intense. “Kneel.”

He stiffened, caught off guard. The command hung between them like a challenge. Their tone wasn’t harsh, but it carried weight he couldn’t ignore. He could push back, deflect, but then they whispered, “Please.” The word, almost a cry, trembled out of their lips.

The softness of it cut through his defenses. With a grunt, he exhaled sharply and sank to one knee, his eyes never leaving theirs, still unsure but unable to pull away.

E moved closer, the fabric of their sweatpants brushing against his nose, their unique scent—spice wrapped in smoke—filling his senses and clouding his thoughts. Their tail slipped free, caressing his cheek like a soft, warm breeze. As the energy between them shifted, Logan caught sight of their horns subtly lengthening, the tips darkening to a crimson hue that shimmered with a subtle pulse.

“Is there anything about me you find attractive?” Their voice was softer now, teasing but tinged with need.

Logan's gaze flickered to their hips for the briefest moment before he forced himself to look back up. “Maybe,” he muttered, heat pooling in his lower belly.

E sighed, their tail trailing down his neck. “I can feel that. Your pulse… it’s quickening. It’s not enough to make me better… but it’s a start.”

Their fingers slid into his hair, gentle but firm, tilting his head back slightly. “Tell me, Logan. What would you do to me if I let you touch me?”

He swallowed hard, his breath shallow, unable to fight the images their words conjured. The pull in his chest tightened as if they tugged on it, firm and relentless. His voice dropped, low and feral. “I’d… I’d hold you by the hips. Smell you.”

E shuddered at his confession, eyes closing as they soaked in his desire, a deep sigh escaping their lips. The strength they had lost was starting to return, slow but sure, coursing through their veins like a lifeline.

“You’re not allowed to touch me,” they whispered, their voice more commanding now as they felt his muscles tense under their tail. “But I grant you the right to imagine it.”

The impact of their words hit him harder than he expected, his reason struggling to keep control. His jaw clenched, and he felt E’s hand lightly combing through his hair, each stroke sending a sharp pulse of heat down his spine. The weight of their touch made his blood rush faster, thrumming beneath his skin, coaxing everything he’d tried to keep buried to the surface without apology.

“Keep going,” they ordered in a breath. “What else do you want to do to me?”

Logan groaned low as E's hand tightened in his hair, forcing his gaze to meet theirs. Their eyes burned with something primal, hunger so raw that there was no room for hesitation. He knew that look, but this time, it wasn’t controlled or smooth—there was desperation hidden beneath it, like a storm tearing through their soul, destroying everything in its wake. And that desperation was pulling at him, unraveling every shred of restraint he had left.

E's lips curled into a smile as they felt his struggle. “Tell me, pretty boy,” they cooed softly, their voice laced with an intoxicating sweetness.

He clenched his teeth, eyes shutting tight, fighting to push back the images flickering through his mind. He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to admit it. But their power, the praise, their sultry words, were messing with him in ways he couldn’t resist, coaxing out the desires he kept buried deep inside. The energy swirling around them was intoxicating.

E's fingers curled tighter, pulling his head back, forcing him to look at them again. “Use your words. Be a good boy,” they continued, their tail caressing his neck. “You know you want to.”

Logan growled, fighting the urge to let it all out. The shame mixed with desire was like a drug to them. He could feel it—E's energy was returning, and with it, the confidence they had lost just moments ago. Their posture shifted, becoming more commanding, more certain, towering over him.

“Words! Now!” Their voice crackled like thunder in his mind, no longer a request but an order, sharp and insistent.

His pulse pounded in his neck, and he knew they felt it too—the barely controlled beast inside him, clawing to break free. “You sure you can handle that?” he muttered, voice rough and strained, as though dragging each word up from the depths of his soul. The restraint cost him dearly, but their nearness made it impossible to hold back.

E’s eyes, dark with a hunger that now matched his own, met his. “I need it, Logan. I need you.”

The simple admission shattered the last of his resolve. Their gaze pulled him in, command and vulnerability twisting him tighter. His breath came harsh, uneven, his lips parted as the words slipped out before he could stop them. “You want to know what I’d do?” His voice dropped to a low growl, fingers curling at his sides, desperate to act on the vivid images in his mind. “I’d pull you so close there wouldn’t be an inch left between us. Make you feel every bit of what you’ve done to me.”

A shiver ran through them, their chest rising as they drew in a shaky breath. The tension between them thickened, electric. Confidence surged in them, and they leaned into him, letting his energy flow through them like a wildfire finding dry kindling, a soft laughter bubbling in their chest.

“Don’t stop.” Their voice, now more than a whisper, carried an edge of authority. “Tell me everything that runs through that gorgeous head of yours.”

Logan’s breath hitched, muscles tensed with the war waged inside him. His gaze turned predatory, and he felt the last barrier of control splinter. He drew closer, his forehead almost touching their leg, so their scent—spice wrapped in smoke—was the only thing filling his thoughts. “I’d take my time… pulling your pants down. Start with your thighs, kiss every inch—”

Something snapped inside them. E gasped, the intense rush faltering as their grip on the bond loosened. A sudden softness overtook their movements, the intoxicating power that radiated from them wavering.

They stepped back abruptly as they came back to their senses, eyes wide with a mix of concern and regret. The haze in Logan’s mind lifted, confusion colliding with clarity, his pulse still thrumming with the heat of the moment. He blinked, shaking his head as he caught his breath, eyes searching theirs. “What… what was that?” he asked, his voice soft with confusion.

“I’m sorry, I should have been more careful,” they whispered, kneeling in front of him, their hands trembling slightly as they reached for his cheek and shoulder, their composure slipping. E’s fingers brushed back a strand of his hair, gentle. “I got carried away. It… can happen sometimes, when the hunger is too strong. I lost control. I pushed too far. I’m so sorry.” They studied him, their eyes scanning his face for any sign of damage. “Are you okay?” E asked softly, their voice more tentative now.

“I guess so,” Logan muttered, still unsure of what had just happened.

E slowly rose to their feet, one hand extended toward him. He exhaled, the last embers of their moment cooling, and took their offered hand. The tension between them now mixed with lingering desire and mutual understanding.

Logan felt the force of E’s strength as they effortlessly pulled him up, the realization hitting him that they were back to their full power. Despite the energy that coursed through them, embarrassment was written all over their face. “Thank you, Logan.” Their voice still carried the worry they’d shown a few seconds ago. He caught the shift in their demeanor, but his response came naturally. “It’s okay.”

E, however, wasn’t so easily soothed. Sitting on the edge of their bed, they shook their head, avoiding his gaze. "No. It’s not okay," they muttered. "A normal person could have been seriously hurt from that.” Their words trailed off, and Logan could see the craving still burning behind their eyes—a flicker of something deeper, darker, barely restrained. “Good thing you heal fast…"

Their horns had returned to their smaller size now, but he knew that look. The hunger wasn’t gone.

Logan’s eyes couldn’t leave them, and he sat beside them, the bed protesting under his weight. "You're not done, are you?" His tone was blunt but laced with understanding. "You need more."

E sighed, and for a moment, their confident, commanding presence crumbled, leaving them looking small, vulnerable, and uncertain. "Yeah, I do," they admitted quietly. "I've been hungry… for most of my life. Pretty much since the day I awakened… which cost me someone’s life."

Logan didn’t push for details, though the weight of their words hinted at a story full of pain and regret. If they wanted to share it, they would. He wasn’t the type to force anyone into reliving their worst memories.

Instead, he asked a more practical question. "How do you usually deal with it? The hunger, I mean."

E's gaze shifted, as if deciding how much to tell him. "I find people who agree to let me… feed on them." The word clearly didn’t sit right with them, the frown on their face making it obvious. "I go to clubs, feed on the emotions in the crowd, or find a lover who’s up for a night of pleasure."

Logan's brow furrowed, caught off guard by the ease with which they said it. He wasn’t a prude, not by a long shot, but the detachment in their voice was something else. It sparked his curiosity.

"What do you mean? You can feed on… sex?" His voice was rough, but the question hung between them, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied their reaction.

A sad smile tugged at their lips. "Yeah, I can. I only did it once… and someone died." They hesitated for a moment before continuing. "I make them feel good instead. I feed on their emotions, not their life force. I'm a giver, only."

Logan blinked as the realization hit him. "So if you have sex with someone, they die?" The weight of it settled in his mind. "So that means… you haven’t… since?"

E shrugged, their expression resigned. "I haven’t had sex in the way you conceive it in roughly… 250 years, give or take… maybe it’s 260. Time gets blurry after a while."

"Wow…" was all Logan could manage, his mind reeling from the thought. A pretty thing like them, not having been with anyone in… centuries? His thoughts drifted, imagining it, and he felt his face warm slightly before he caught himself. But before he could hide it, E chuckled.

"I can sense you’re thinking about me again," they warned, a hint of humor glinting in their eyes despite the sadness. "Did I get too much into your head?"

Logan grunted, but a smirk tugged at his lips. "You wish." Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something here, something raw and uncharted. An opportunity that could satisfy the primal part of him always searching for more—a connection that might, even for a moment, quiet his restless spirit.

“How do you keep the hunger in control around the kids here?” His voice softened as he spoke, more carefully this time, a rare edge of concern threading through his words.

A long, strained silence filled the space between them. E’s expression darkened, the raw vulnerability that slipped through making Logan’s chest tighten. Their shoulders slumped, and for a moment, they looked impossibly small, their strength faltering under the weight of their admission. “I don’t.” The words were soft, but the heaviness in them rang louder than any shout. “I haven’t properly fed since I got here… which is also why… I had that meltdown.” E’s gaze faltered, a rare crack in their usually unshakable facade. "I don’t want to hurt them, Logan. They're just kids. Too innocent. I… I don’t want to corrupt them with this."

Logan’s throat tightened as he processed the weight of their words. Their restraint was admirable, but the flicker of concern in his chest grew into something heavier, a gnawing worry that lodged deep. What if he hadn’t been there to help? Who would they have turned to? The thought unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

“Maybe…” He hesitated, unsure whether his next words would cross a line. But they were already on the tip of his tongue, and his protective instincts pushed him to speak. “Maybe we could work out an agreement.”

E looked at him, brow furrowing in confusion, the weight of his offer hanging in the air. “What do you mean?”

He leaned forward, his voice low but deliberate, eyes never leaving theirs. “Well, if I’m a walking buffet, might as well grab a bite now and then, right?” He tried to keep his tone gruff, but the underlying implication was clear—he wasn’t just talking about feeding.

They stared at him, disbelief written all over their face. Logan added quickly, “To keep the kids safe, you know…” His voice dropped, edged with something deeper—a personal stake he couldn’t quite define.

E’s chuckle filled the room again, their eyes gleaming with amusement. “Convenient,” they said, seeing through his cover but not arguing. If Logan was offering, who were they to say no?

“I mean,” he carried on, voice low and rough, as he tried to push past the weight of their amusement. “No strings attached, you know? Just a quick fix once in a while. Maybe you could try bein’ a little selfish. Not just givin’, but takin’ too, to blow off some steam.” He leaned in a little closer, his words edging toward a challenge, a hint of something dangerous in the way he spoke.

A slow, teasing smirk spread across E’s lips, their eyes gleaming with something dark and playful and Logan couldn’t help but remember how he first thought they would be trouble. And, oh boy, had he been right. It was written all over their face again, but hell, maybe that’s what made life worth livin’. Though, instead of jumping into his offer, E shrugged, playing it cool. “Yeah, sure,” they said nonchalantly, “if you’re up for it… And if you think you can handle my games." Their eyes glinted with amusement, but they left the offer hang in the air for a few heartbeats. "Maybe we can work something out.” There was another pause. “Just to keep the kids safe.”

Logan chuckled, the sound rough but laced with genuine amusement. “Of course. Just to keep the kids safe.” Though, the words were more loaded than either of them were willing to admit.

Their eyes met, an unspoken understanding flickering between them before silence settled, thick and charged. Then, E stood, a shift in their demeanor as they moved with purpose. “So, if we’re going to do this, might as well make it good for the both of us, right? What do you like most?” They flashed a playful smile. “Guy? Girl?”

As they spoke, their form shimmered, shifting into a strikingly handsome man. Logan’s brow lifted, eyes narrowing as he assessed the change with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. The ease with which they wore this unfamiliar face made him feel both intrigued and guarded, muscles unconsciously tensing in response. Before he could fully process the thought, E shifted back into their original form, and he felt his heartbeat slow to its usual rhythm.

“Want me to look like someone you know?” they teased, voice laced with something darker, a playful glint sharp in their eyes. Logan’s gut clenched as E’s features rippled, reshaping into Ororo’s elegant visage. The sight tugged at a memory of storms and shared battles, sparking a flicker of warmth that was swiftly overtaken by wariness. Then Scott’s face emerged, stern and self-assured, making Logan’s teeth clench involuntarily—old rivalries resurfacing for a brief, silent heartbeat. But it was the final shift that gutted him: Jean. The phantom ache hit him hard, a rush of regret and want tangled in an old wound he thought long scarred over. He forced himself to stay stoic, the turmoil in his chest hidden beneath a practiced frown. E’s eyes glimmered with mischief as they returned to their usual form, gaze locking with his in an unspoken challenge.

But they weren’t done.

“What about plain old me?" The question carried a whisper of vulnerability, softening the edges of their usual bravado. Before Logan could catch his breath, they morphed again, this time into something unexpected: tanned skin glowing warmly, innocent blue eyes staring back at him, long, wavy brown hair that spilled down to their knees. The transformation stunned him, a contrast so striking it made the breath catch in his throat. The unfamiliar curve of their smile, the way their presence seemed more tender yet powerful—it tugged at something primal, something he hadn’t expected.

Logan’s gaze lingered, caught off guard as curiosity tangled with an unexpected coil of desire. He felt his senses sharpen, instinct flaring as the tension between caution and temptation thrummed just beneath his skin, daring him to stay composed, even as the line between control and surrender blurred at the edges.

Hell, they knew exactly what they were doin'.

He let out a low breath, eyes steady on them. "Take the one you like most," he said finally, his voice thick with the weight of it all. "I’m good with whatever. Might as well be comfortable, you know." There was a small pause before a few more words slipped out. "But I gotta admit…" He smirked, unable to hold back. "Leaves some interestin' ideas."

There was a spark of amusement in his eyes now, the prospect of what could come. So many versions of them, so many ways this could go.

Logan kept his cool on the outside, but his thoughts were racing. He wasn’t exactly shy about what he liked, and the way E changed forms so effortlessly was unlike anything he'd seen. The possibilities? Endless. And for a guy who'd lived as long as he had, it took something special to surprise him.

But as much as his mind wandered over the many options in front of him, there was still that feeling — something deeper than just lust. Maybe it was the way E seemed so guarded under the teasing and power. The way they tried to make everything sound casual, even though Logan could see the weight of their long, lonely existence hanging on their shoulders. It made him pause.

He leaned back again, his hands on the mattress behind him, taking in their latest form — tanned skin, long brown hair, blue eyes. It was tempting to let them become someone else, someone new every time. But then, something clicked. “You don’t have to change for me, you know,” he said, voice a little softer, but still with that signature gruffness. “I kinda like you the way you are.”

The smirk on E’s face flickered, like they weren’t expecting that. It wasn’t just the words — it was the way he said it. Like he actually meant it. They stood there for a second longer, holding his gaze, before they shifted back into the form they always wore until now. Still powerful, still beautiful, but now with a hint of vulnerability they didn’t usually show.

Logan’s lips twitched, just a hint of a smile. “Besides,” he added, his voice dropping lower, “I’m not exactly picky. Just as long as you can handle me.”

E chuckled, walking closer. “I think I can manage,” they said, though there was a glimmer of something else in their eyes now. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was relief. Whatever it was, Logan wasn’t sure yet. But he’d figure it out eventually. After all, it wasn't just about keeping the kids safe anymore. There was something more brewing here, and Logan could feel it.

But for now, he played along, letting the tension between them hang in the air. He knew this settlement was going to get messy, but hey, hadn’t that been always the case for him? At least this time, he’ll get some fun out of it.

Logan smirked, still taking in everything E had just shown him. He’d seen a lot in his time, but nothing like this. It was a display of pure power, confidence, and—hell, he couldn’t deny it—beauty. His curiosity got the better of him as he spoke, voice low. "What’s your real form, anyway?" he asked, genuinely intrigued. "And… is E even your real name?"

E smirked, clearly enjoying the effect they were having on him. Slowly, they shifted back into the form of the young woman with the long, wavy brown hair that cascaded down to nearly touch their knees, tanned skin glowing faintly in the dim light. Their piercing blue eyes locked with his, intense and unyielding. The two horns above their hairline, now fully extended, had the sheen of polished obsidian, gradually darkening to a deep red at the tips, adding an almost regal fierceness to their look. Their thin tail moved with a life of its own, curling toward his cheek as it had earlier, the only constant in their shifting forms.

A pair of feathered wings unfurled from their back, the inky black plumage fading to a crimson red at the edges, casting subtle shadows across the room. It was an image of raw power and allure, both ominous and breathtaking in equal measure. But what really got him was the way their hips swayed as they moved closer, drawing his attention like gravity itself.

"This is my real form," they said, their voice soft but laced with power. "Once, I was Amrit, Amrit Kaur Singh. But that was centuries ago. When they revealed themselves…” Their wings twitched at their back, a subtle shift betraying old memories. “I became Ezekiel. Ezekiel Nepharael.” E let the name float in the air between them for a couple of heartbeats. “I sometimes go by Eki or Zeek, depending on whether I’m feeling more… feminine or masculine. But for most people, I’m just E."

Logan felt like his mouth had gone dry, his eyes glued to them as the energy in the room practically buzzed around them. The wings, the tail, the horns—it was like nothing he’d ever seen, but damn if it wasn’t mesmerizing. His throat felt tight as he tried to form words.

"You like what you see, pretty boy?" E teased, their smirk widening as they stepped closer once again, a playful gleam in their eye. It wasn’t even a question, more like a statement of an universal fact. They could feel his reaction, sense the heat of his desire.

Logan, despite himself, nodded, a muscle in his jaw tightening as he struggled to keep composed. "Yeah…" he managed, the word caught somewhere between disbelief and desire, his voice rough and breathless under the weight of it all.

E’s smile softened, though, almost tender, like they were savoring every drop of the power they felt from him. It wasn’t just lust—they could feel the admiration, the curiosity. They took a slow breath, as if inhaling his energy, their smile growing even more gentle before they pulled back, releasing the hold they had on him.

Logan blinked, shaking his head as if snapping out of a spell. “I mean…” he cleared his throat, regaining a bit of his composure. “Yeah, that’s… that’s okay, I guess.” A smug smile curled on his lips.

E chuckled softly, the sound rich with amusement. They shifted back to their favorite form, casually sitting on the bed, still exuding the same undeniable confidence as if they were wearing something far more formal than their simple sportswear. "So," they said with a playful smile, "how do you propose we handle this agreement, Mr. Howlett?"

Logan cleared his throat again, his gaze meeting theirs with an edge of concern. "I’m not gonna sell my soul to the devil, right?" he asked, half-joking, but there was a quiet unease gnawing at him, like something deep inside was warning him.

E chuckled again, shaking their head. "No, don’t worry. I’m only in the business of pleasure, not deals. And I’m a giver, remember?"

"Right," Logan muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as he mulled over the details. "Well… whenever you’re feeling… peckish, just knock on my door. I’ll do the same. If one of us doesn’t feel like it, then nothing happens. No strings. I don’t owe you anything, you don’t owe me anything."

E nodded, clearly pleased with the terms. "Fair enough," they said, but their smile turned sly again as they leaned forward, adding, "Anything you’d rather avoid? Things you don’t like doing?"

Logan's mind flashed to the moment they'd almost shared a kiss under the stars a couple of nights ago. He felt a shudder at the memory of the pull he'd felt, like he was going to be drained dry. "No kissing," he said firmly. "Also… maybe we should keep this between us. No one can know. And… well, if something makes either of us uncomfortable, we stop. No explanations.” He paused, briefly considering, but nothing else seemed necessary. “Yeah, that’s it. That’s all I ask."

E’s smile softened, genuine this time. They nodded. "Agreed. I’ll have the paperwork for you tomorrow." Their eyes sparkled with amusement, and despite himself, Logan chuckled.

"What?" E asked, amused. "I’m still a lawyer, pretty boy," they teased.

This time, the nickname sent a new warmth through Logan’s chest, one he wasn’t quite prepared for. Clearing his throat again, he stood up. "Well, if you don’t need me tonight, I’ll see you around, counselor."

E smirked, watching him intently, their eyes sweeping over his broad shoulders and the way he moved. "Of course you will," they purred, their voice low and full of promise.

He was halfway to the door when they called out. "Logan?" They waited until he turned to look back at them, their eyes softer now. "Thanks again. And… goodnight."

He gave them a small nod, his voice low as he responded, "You too." Without another word, he left the room, the weight of their offer—and whatever this was between them—still lingering heavy in his mind.

To be continued…

Notes: Curious about what does E looks like? Check out their moodboard. If you enjoyed it, don't forget to comment and spread the love 😊 More on the way!

✨ Masterlist ✨

Don't forget to follow the tags "Devilish Desires" and "xpressit writings" to stay tuned for the next chapters 😁

🔖 @quillycrow

[fereldanwench]

I didn't want to completely sit out a year-in-review, but for reasons I'll explain at the end of this post and under a cut, doing the traditional pick-one-pic-from-each-month approach just wasn't going to work for me. So instead, here are 20 of my favorite shots (in no particular order) of Valerie from 2023!

(I'll share solo Goro shots and shippy/story shots in two other posts before the year ends.)

Some thoughts about this year (cw for anxiety and depression mentions):

So yeah. I actually hadn't planned on joining in on the virtual photography year-in-review fun in part because... Well, frankly, I wasn't sure if it would actually be fun for me.

Although I do have pictures for every month, the first third, maybe even half, of the year was a struggle on almost every conceivable level. A lot of it was shit that carried over from the end of 2022, which was also an incredibly difficult year for me. I don't really want to delve too deeply into why--Some of it was personal, some of it was professional, some of it was fandom, and if you know, you know.

The main obstacle I had here is that looking at a lot of the shots I took from about January to May (give or take a few weeks on either end) honestly reminded me of Bad Times™️. I've worked really hard to pull myself out of that depression/anxiety cycle and return to a healthier approach to fandom and online socialization in general, but I just didn't want to spend a lot of time in that mental space. There are a few shots from those months that made it to my favorites, and I hope one day I can look back on that stuff and just feel the good from it again. Alas, that day is still not here.

But I am happy to report that the other reason I wanted to approach the review differently is a lot more positive! It's also two-fold: 1) I spent the earlier part of this year exploring more of a technical side of virtual photography and 2) I was really prolific the last third or so of this year so trying to narrow faves from about August until now was just not possible.

One of the few good things about the end of 2022 was being able to upgrade my graphics card, which meant I then had a rig that could support ray-tracing and hot sampling. As a result, I started putting a lot more focus on lighting and getting acquainted with new tools. I also was trying to work with the new AMM posing system, which is very convenient in some ways (100s of poses without reloading the game!) and a complete pain in the ass in others (can't move characters without their poses breaking!). Custom photomode poses + Nibbles Replacer has been the game changer I've been waiting for.

Or to put it more succinctly, December 2022 through about April 2023 felt like a relearning/return to basics kind of creative period, which is essential, but also means I just don't really like a lot of what I did, lmao.

Then, shockingly (I'm not shocked at all), starting treatment for my anxiety and depression in the second half of this year suddenly made creating a lot easier and fun again! Crazy how that works.

Even bumping this little review up to 20 shots instead of 12, there are still pictures from the past few months that I had to cut as favorites. There was just no way I could condense the amount of fave shots I took from August to now in just 5 options.

I also owe quite a bit of this revival to modders for asking me if I wanted to take shots for them--Exploring more of a fashion photography approach to my shots I think did a lot to build on what I had learned earlier in the year and encouraged me to try something new. I don't want to tag anyone in this long-ass glorified diary entry, but if you invited me to take mod shots for you, just know that it really meant a lot. ♡

And that's where my head has been with a yearly review! Is filling out a little template with 12 pictures this serious? No, it definitely is not, lmao. But hey, overthinking shit is still something I'm working on. ✌️

[mir4inotes]

soon i’m gonna wake up, someone’s gonna bring me ‘round // kndz hurt/comfort

(kunikida-centric!!!!!!!)

originally posted 19 aug 2023

tw: self-harm, references to a suicide attempt, vomiting

read on ao3! / 3.4k words

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Kunikida hadn’t slept well in weeks. He still made a decent effort to go to bed at the same time every night, hoping something would change. But each time he turned the light off, said good night to Dazai and succumbed to the darkness, he was kept awake.

At first, when he was hopeful and convinced he only needed time to recover from recent events, he tried breathing. He’d lay there, eyes lidded, breathing in for four and out for eight in endless rounds until the fact he still wasn’t asleep raised his heart rate far too much. That initial night, he had simply laid on his back, restraining himself from flopping over onto either side so as not to disturb his partner. And if he had gotten sleep that night, it was certainly more than he’d be getting in the nights to come.

Once Kunikida realized he wouldn’t be able to get any shuteye from simply breathing and meditating, he’d asked Yosano for any ideas. She’d risen an eyebrow at the fact that Kunikida, the man who everyone assumed got a perfect eight hours every night without fail, needed medicine to sleep, then promptly wrote up a prescription for a bit of melatonin for him to take before bed. Wonderful.

After a lighthearted joke from Dazai about how Kunikida now needed drugs to sleep and was therefore getting old, Kunikida took the recommended amount and went to bed, skeptical yet hopeful.

And then he woke up to sunlight on his face, birdsong, and Dazai’s drool-smothered cheek on his chest, and he couldn’t have felt more relieved. His sleeping problem had finally been fixed, and now he could focus on getting his life back together piece by piece.

Except, not even a week later, Kunikida began having nightmares.

What had started as a physical inability to sleep had now morphed into a general dislike of it. He’d dread getting ready for bed, unable to know if he’d be blessed with a deep, uninterrupted sleep or tormented with an unsettling dream. And when he finally settled beneath the covers and waited for Dazai’s soft, pug-like snores to begin, he always fought off sleep for as long as he could until the melatonin knocked him out.

Kunikida wouldn’t have a nightmare nightly, but he almost wished he did. The feeble guessing game he had to play at got old quickly after he’d woken up shaking from his only bad dream in seven days.

The dreams themselves were nothing remarkable. For the most part, they were an amalgamation of the ones he’d suffered from a few months earlier, before the whole Decay of the Angel plot took place: blurry, muffled versions of the people he’d failed to save over the years, hostages locked in a cage while he was forced to stare and do nothing until they were long gone, among countless other scenarios that would already be muddied by the time Kunikida got up and brushed his teeth. They left a sour, unpleasant twist in his gut, but besides that, they were able to be swept aside and forgotten about with a bit of breathing.

Until, one seemingly inconspicuous night, Kunikida experienced a vivid, full-on nightmare that seemed to last for hours. And instead of showing him scenes he was bitterly familiar with, it was something new entirely.

He was sitting in the ward where Jouno had taunted him about joining the hunting dogs, but it was as if he was seeing through a thick, choking veil of smoke. He could hardly see the other end of the tiny room. His notebook laid torn in half on the cot, just as it had all those weeks ago. His thoughts swam; he wasn’t expecting to see this place ever again.

Of course, his arms weren’t working. He had hands and fingers, but he was unable to move them, met with a blank wall of resistance whenever he tried. They were mangled, sticking out at odd angles that shouldn’t be possible, and they hurt.

Outside of the window, Kunikida could hear nothing but chaos. Bloodcurdling screams, rapid gunfire, helicopters. He tried to move his neck, but it remained in place as if held there by an iron vice. His gaze was locked on his destroyed notebook in his lap. He even thought he could smell Jouno’s pear, sickeningly sweet to the point it was nauseating. His lungs were filled with smoke at that point, not that he was breathing in the first place.

Kunikida felt sweat dripping from his forehead as the noise from outside only grew in volume. Even his own heartbeat had moved to his skull, a constant, thumping bass drum that just. Wouldn’t. Shut. Up.

The room was gray, then white, then black, then back to gray. Kunikida saw someone clawing at the door with their hand over their mouth out of the corner of his eye. He hunched over, trying to block them out, but winced as the metal handcuffs scraped against his disfigured fingers.

Handcuffs? Those weren’t there before.

At that point, Kunikida thought his eardrums would burst from just how loud everything was. He brought his hands to his ears, pressing them against the side of his head so hard he thought he’d end up squeezing his own brains out. The cold handcuff chain dangled against his neck, and he swallowed against it. His throat was terribly dry.

Without needing to think about it, Kunikida brought his hands past his ears and behind his head, steadying the chain against the vulnerable skin of his neck. One last desperate, strangled wail reverberated through his entire being like a gong, and he yanked on the chain, tugging it against his neck until the room went black again.

//

Kunikida jolted upright in his shared bed, sputtering and gasping for breath. His hands instantly flew to his neck, almost expecting the resistance of the handcuff chain as he did. After confirming that no, he hadn’t actually choked himself to death, the grip on his neck relaxed, but only slightly.

His hands had returned. He lowered them from his head, holding them out in front of him. He couldn’t keep them still.

The sight of his own two hands, functioning and whole, made Kunikida feel sick. A horrendous wave of nausea swept through him, and he almost gagged right there in his bed.

He could hardly remember what had happened between heaving himself up out of bed (nearly tripping over discarded clothing as he did) and sinking to his knees in front of the toilet, already coughing up bile as soon as his legs hit the ground. His head was pounding too hard for him to care.

He stayed there, miserably slumped on the bathroom floor, resting his forehead on his arms on top of the toilet seat. He wondered briefly if Dazai would come find him, almost wanted him to, then decided he really didn’t want his partner to find him in such a state.

Not that this hadn’t happened before, Kunikida being sick in front of Dazai. On rare nights when he attempted to keep up with the rate at which Dazai tossed drinks back, he’d usually find himself retching in the bathroom (or worse, the kitchen sink) with Dazai drunkenly comforting him, slurring his words while combing his fingers through Kunikida’s hair.

The memory of those nights alone made Kunikida gag again. He’d been trying his best up until now to be as quiet as one can in such a situation, yet he unwittingly let out a low groan as his stomach began cramping up again.

His wrists brushed against each other as he shifted his arms around. He heaved again. He shouldn’t have those hands back. Those damned hands that were meaningless if they couldn’t save every person they attempted to help. Kunikida’s nails dug into his pale wrists.

They shouldn’t be there.

He’s screaming, Dazai’s arms wrapped tightly around him, tugging him away from the glass wall

The skin on his wrists began to sting.

Rokuzo’s in front of him, stumbling, neat entry wounds patterned on his chest

He staggered to his feet, ran the tap water over his dirty, quivering fingers and watched the blood swirl down the drain. He left his wrists alone.

He’s being forced to the ground, vision blurry and ears ringing. There’s blood in his eyes, but he doesn’t feel a thing. He only gazes at the ceiling through lidded eyes as he hears the muffled voices above him.

Kunikida leaned forward on his forearms, resting against the sink now. Nothing was being improved by the breathing techniques he swore by; each gasp for air felt like a fishhook being drawn up through his throat. His wrists burned.

And then, of course, there was a timid knock at the door. Not that Dazai needed to, considering the door had never been shut in the first place. Kunikida cringed as Dazai’s light footsteps reached his side.

Kunikida didn’t speak, or move. He stayed still with his head hung, letting his hands dangle above the sink. Dazai slowly reached for Kunikida’s bloody wrists, turning them over with icy fingers. Kunikida let him.

He also let Dazai rinse them clean, until there were only small, red crescent moons dotting his skin, and he let Dazai wrap his favorite brand of bandages around his wrists, just as Kunikida had so often done for him.

Then Dazai plopped himself onto the bathroom floor while tossing a dirty hand towel up into the sink. “Sit” was all he said as he patted the space in front of him.

Meanwhile, all Kunikida wanted was to drag himself back to bed. His breathing had managed to steady itself as Dazai worked earlier, but the rest of his body ached from exhaustion. He felt horrible enough having woken up Dazai, he wasn’t about to subject him to a pity party on top of it all.

Dazai tapped the floor again, looking up at him. Kunikida opened his mouth to reply, to say he was going to try going back to sleep, but a sudden surge of nausea crept up on him instead.

And so he was back on the floor. He was vomiting for the second time, though most of it ended up being dry heaving. Kunikida heard Dazai shuffling over to him, his hands sliding to their usual comfort spots: one hand brushing his hair away from his face, the other slowly rubbing circles into his upper back.

Kunikida would lean against Dazai in between gagging and coughing fits, his throat too sore to say anything. Dazai would murmur gentle comfort against his ear, quietly reassuring him that he was doing well, it’d be over soon.

Dazai particularly took note of the fact that Kunikida made no attempts to push him away. Every other time he’d taken care of Kunikida in times like this, he’d try making some blabbering excuse (as he was typically blackout drunk) that he could take care of himself, or that Dazai was suffocating him.

Now, however, Kunikida slumped against Dazai once his coughing and heaving had ceased. He shut his eyes and let his head settle against Dazai’s chest, curling into him sideways. He didn’t say a word.

Dazai instinctively wrapped his arms around Kunikida’s frail, shivering frame. This sort of thing had began happening nearly every evening since the Decay of the Angel situation; Dazai would let Kunikida rest against him just before they went to bed, neither of them saying anything. Occasionally, that would be how they fell asleep, too. Dazai would wake up some mornings to Kunikida coiled around Dazai’s lanky figure, an arm flung over his torso like some sort of rope.

It was endearing, sure, but the action was bittersweet, too.

Dazai combed his fingers through Kunikida’s hair as they sat there. The hair between his fingers was Kunikida’s usual dirty blond, except when Dazai peered a little too closely he could make out tiny rivulets of gray as they caught the light. It seemed like the jokes Dazai had made only months earlier about Kunikida going gray young were coming to fruition after all. Dazai looped a few strands around his finger and pretended the flashes of gray were due to his lack of sleep and nothing more, and that they would be gone by the time morning came.

Kunikida shifting his neck a bit brought Dazai’s attention back. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been holding Kunikida for; the only thing that clued him in to how much time might have passed was how the bathroom light had started flickering. That only happened after at least 45 minutes-or-so of it being turned on.

“Kunikida,” Dazai started, lips brushing past Kunikida’s hair. “Do you want to talk about anything?” His voice was hardly above a whisper.

Kunikida took in a deep breath before shaking his head. “It’s late,” he mumbled before tucking his head in even tighter against Dazai’s chest. “I’m sorry for waking you up.” He hoped Dazai hadn’t noticed the unavoidable crack in his voice that so often punctured his words now.

Dazai only hummed in response, continuing to idly play with Kunikida’s hair. A few moments went by before he spoke up again, sitting up a bit more as he did.

“Can I ask you something?”

Kunikida didn’t look up. “…What?”

It wasn’t until after an eerily long pause when Dazai opened his mouth once more, and asked in an impossibly languid voice:

“You’ve thought about suicide, haven’t you?”

He’s being forced to the ground, vision blurry and ears ringing.

Kunikida didn’t move. Faint, blurry snippets of those moments when he was recovering from the explosion trickled through his memory like ice water.

There’s blood in his eyes, but he doesn’t feel a thing.

His mouth went dry. He could still feel Dazai’s heartbeat thumping against his side, yet he still felt himself falling away from him all the same. Kunikida wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to steady his grip or let himself be lost.

Yes, he had thought about it. He had turned it over in his mind repeatedly while sitting in that bed as if it were as natural as breathing. For at the time, his world as he knew it was gone. The agency. His coworkers. His partner. His ideals. There was nothing left except for the searing reminders of everyone he had failed to save.

“Easy, Kunikida. Breathe.” Dazai gently tapped Kunikida on the back.

Each time Kunikida inhaled it felt like the air was being chased out of him again. He knew he was shaking, knew he was gripping Dazai’s leg with too much force, but with one sentence, all the memories he had been trying to suppress out of shame were being unearthed one by one.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Kunikida muttered finally. His fingers began to knot themselves in his tangled hair. “I had nothing. There was nothing…” He cut himself off with a muffled sob.

Dazai’s heart stuttered as he felt that slow drip of realization dawning. The question had been assuming Kunikida had only thought about it. A person required a very specific mindset in order to turn those intrusive thoughts into a reality. Quite honestly, Dazai didn’t believe Kunikida had it in him to attempt anything.

Why didn’t he believe that?

As Kunikida’s body began melting even further against Dazai, his voice nothing but unintelligible sobbing and whimpering, Dazai could feel the slow drip becoming a waterfall.

Sure, the Kunikida of a mere few months ago wouldn’t have let himself go so far. Even if the thought had crossed his mind, he wouldn’t have succumbed so easily, especially not with the ideals he held himself to so strictly.

But now, the Kunikida who left his clothes scattered on the floor, who showed up to work a few minutes later than usual, who isolated himself from his coworkers and who hardly even ate three meals a day anymore; thinking about this Kunikida in such a situation suddenly became a lot more believable.

“I didn’t think you were alive.”

Dazai twitched as he was brought out of his own thoughts by Kunikida’s thick, hoarse voice. His fingers were digging into Dazai’s thigh so much it almost hurt. He considered saying something, except he didn’t want to tip Kunikida over the edge again on accident; he didn’t know what he could or couldn’t say anymore.

Kunikida took in a shaky, unsteady breath, and when he spoke again he sounded like he was seconds away from collapsing into another fit of tears.

“I thought they might have killed you…” he paused and took a breath at that, “when the terrorist accusations came out.” His breathing picked up again, but he didn’t stop speaking.

Dazai only kept holding him, since it was the only thing he knew wouldn’t set his partner off again.

Kunikida always complained about how cold Dazai’s skin was, but now he clung onto him as if that iciness was the one thing that could cool his very core.

“Eventually, the only thing i could think of doing was—“ Kunikida hiccuped, his breathing now just as erratic as it had been when Dazai first entered the bathroom. “…was slamming my head against that wall until it was over.”

And then all Dazai could hear was a desperate string of apologies, suppressed by Kunikida’s own arms as he hid his face from view.

At that point, all Dazai thought to do was wait until Kunikida managed to calm himself down. Even if he did speak, what would he say? It wasn’t as if suicide was some foreign topic to him, it was very much the opposite. But somehow, when it came to discussing it with the one person he never would have thought to consider it, the person he planned to spend the foreseeable future with, it put a knot in his throat.

So, for now, Dazai only gently swayed from side to side, returning to his routine of pressing circles against Kunikida’s back. Kunikida had let his arms fall in front of him, where Dazai decided to lace his fingers between one of Kunikida’s hands, rubbing his thumb up and down the back of his partner’s palm as he fought to get his breathing under control.

Even through everything else going through Dazai’s mind, there was a tiny voice at the back of his head criticizing Kunikida’s method for being too painful, too messy.

And that is why he kept his mouth shut.

//

The bedsheets had been sucked of all warmth by the time the pair returned. Kunikida noted through puffy eyes how his side of the bed has clearly been tossed around with panicked hands, whereas Dazai’s side looked more like he’d slid out much more gracefully. He bit back the rising swell of guilt for the nth time that night, and clambered back into bed.

As soon as Dazai wriggled back under the sheets, he pressed his chest against Kunikida’s back and tossed an arm over his waist. His breath felt warm and soothing against the back of Kunikida’s neck.

“i know you’re beating yourself up over waking me, so stop,” Dazai whispered in the gentlest tone he could muster. He wasn’t a very gentle person after all; unless he was with Kunikida, that is. Even then, he could struggle to get his voice to sound calm enough.

Kunikida sighed heavily, all energy drained. Dazai was right, as he often was. He could read Kunikida so easily.

“You aren’t upset?” Kunikida mumbled, shifting his legs slightly.

“No.” Dazai’s fingers slid up to Kunikida’s chest, pressing against his skin so he could feel his heart beating. “I’m just glad you’re here,” he murmured, burrowing his face into the crook of Kunikida’s neck.

Kunikida briefly thought about getting up to fetch some water, both to soothe his sore throat and to rid the lingering bitterness from his tongue, but he decided against it so as not to disturb Dazai for the second time that night. Dazai’s leg had slithered its way between Kunikida’s own two, anyway.

Gradually, with Dazai’s gentle snoring as background noise, Kunikida found his eyes growing heavy. Relief at Dazai’s words had spread throughout his body, although he wasn’t sure how long it would last.

Dazai shuffled a little closer to him, then, and Kunikida sullenly decided he’d deal with any remaining thoughts in the morning.

No, it wasn’t perfect, but it was certainly some of the best sleep Kunikida had gotten in weeks.

[alexbkrieger13]

I haven't read it yet so maybe it's just a summary from another interview or something, but I just saw this (it's in German)

https://twitter.com/queer_de/status/1739592775115366576

looks like a new interview!!!

Lesbian professional couple: "Women's football has always been a safe space"

Pernille Harder and Magdalena Eriksson from FC Bayern are not only top footballers. For the gay couple, their commitment to the LGBTI community is also important. An interview about kissing and fighting.

By Martin Moravec, dpa Today, 11:22 a.m.  9 Min.

The world-class footballers Pernille Harder (31) and Magdalena Eriksson (30) have been playing for FC Bayern Munich since this summer. Together. This was also very important for the Danish-Swedish couple in their private lives (queer.de reported). In an interview with the German Press Agency, Harder, a striker who has just recovered, and Eriksson, a defender who is currently injured, talk about communication in a long-distance relationship, Tetris while disposing of waste and two kisses that made history.

Ms. Eriksson, Ms. Harder, you met ten years ago at Linköpings FC in Sweden. What was your first impression of each other? Eriksson: I thought Pernille was great as a football player. She really impressed me, she was next level for me. I had never played with a player as good as her before. I was also surprised at how modest she was, even though she had so much talent. And she's a nice person too (laughs). We became good friends and then had a mutual group of friends who did a lot together. Harder: We are both very interested in mathematics and then we took a math course together. We got to know each other even better. After a few months we became a couple.

You were in a long-distance relationship for several years. How difficult was that for you as a couple?

Harder: It was difficult. You really have to work hard to make it work. But the time we were apart was also good for our relationship. Luckily, we developed in the same direction. The fact that we lived apart for three and a half years and are still together shows that our relationship is really deep and resilient. We both felt that this relationship was worth fighting for, even if we often only saw each other once a month. Magda often flew from London to Wolfsburg for a day and a half. Eriksson: You learn a lot about communication when you have a long-distance relationship, because that's the key. If you don't communicate, you actually have nothing because you don't see each other, you're not physically close. We've learned over the years that we had to get better at talking to each other and expressing our feelings with words. That helped us grow into our relationship. We communicate much better now than before our long-distance relationship. We have also become much stronger in this respect. The distance has disappeared at Chelsea FC, where they played together from 2020 to 2023, and now also at FC Bayern Munich. Did you have to get used to being so close to each other again? Eriksson: It really went from zero to 100 (laughs). Harder: The fact that we lived together for two years before I went to Wolfsburg in 2017 meant that we knew what our routines were. Eriksson: We had to sort out more practical things: who does the dishes, who does the laundry? Harder: And who takes out the garbage... (laughs) Eriksson: In a relationship, one partner always thinks that they have more to do with the housework than the other. How do you divide it up? Eriksson: In England I did the dishes and Pernille took out the garbage. Now it's more balanced. But there was a point where I thought she was playing Tetris with the garbage, she was trying so hard to balance garbage in the garbage can just so she didn't have to take it out straight away (laughs). Harder: It's funny how people can have different opinions about washing up, whether something is already clean or still not (laughs). But we're of the same opinion now. Apart from that, it was completely natural to get back into a common rhythm. Can you imagine leaving your job again to change clubs? Harder: I really like it here. FC Bayern is a great club, Munich is a great city. I'm enjoying it, even though I've been injured for two months now. We have a contract for the next three years and I can imagine staying here longer. Eriksson: It's the first time we've moved to a new club together. It's really nice to have the security of having Pernille with me. Football can be quite lonely when you're away from your family and maybe your partner. Having started a new adventure here with her is inspiring and cool. Like Pernille, I couldn't wish for a better environment. In 2019 during the World Cup, you kissed in the stadium after Eriksson's Sweden team won against Canada. It was just a kiss, but the photo of this public kiss caused a stir around the world. Harder: I didn't realize at first that the photo had such a wow effect because I was simply at the World Cup to support Magda. It wasn't our first public kiss after a game either, we had kissed a few times before (laughs). The photo quickly attracted a lot of attention on social media, became popular and attracted a lot of positive comments. It was interesting for me to see how much society apparently needed this image. Eriksson: We were surprised at how necessary such a photo was for football. We had also lived in our own bubble before and had been open about our relationship for a long time. But after that special moment, we realized how important it is to be visible, to do things that come naturally to us and to be proud of it. I think the best way to be an example to others is to express yourself and be yourself. That's exactly what we did. I'm happy and proud that the photo of our kiss became such a big topic because it was obviously something that football really needed.

As a teenager, did you have role models that you could look up to, that made you feel like your sexuality was perfectly fine the way it is? Eriksson: My older sister Amanda has always been very important to me. She encouraged me to be comfortable with who I am and not to think about what others might think of me. Growing up, she was always this calming voice that said, 'You are good the way you are. Be yourself.' I came out when I was 16, my sister was very important to me in the early years so that I didn't feel like an outsider. Harder: My parents, Annie and Mogens, always let me know that it doesn't matter who I love or who I bring home. They are happy as long as I am happy. I don't know if they expected me to bring a girl home one day (laughs), but they always made me feel like I could be who I am. I was really lucky in that respect. How far do you think football has come in terms of diversity and inclusion for women and men today? Eriksson: Women's football has always been a safe space for me and a place where I can be myself. I never felt like I had to hide any part of my sexuality or myself. I have never been discriminated against by fans because of my sexuality either. Harder: That applies to me too. I never felt like I had to hide, I can always be myself in football. Eriksson: There are more and more players who use their platforms and speak out on social issues. But we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We have to continue to create this safe space so that men's football becomes even more diverse, including in terms of sexual orientation. Harder: The next generation is growing up in an environment of increasing acceptance, which makes them more open. I therefore hope that men's football can continue to develop as a traditional sport. Unfortunately, there will probably still be people in the next ten or 20 years who are not happy about a gay man playing football. Is it easier to discuss such topics with younger people? Harder: I think that when you are younger, your own values ​​are not yet completely set, so you have the opportunity to provide input on what can and cannot be valuable for an open society. Older generations, on the other hand, often have their values ​​and opinions on certain things already set. Then it is more difficult to change your attitude. Do you find it strange that sexual openness is normal in women's football, but not in men's football? Eriksson: Women's football is a much younger sport. A lot has become entrenched in traditional men's football over the course of more than 100 years. Women's football is therefore more influenced by modern views. I hope that the more women's football grows, the more men's football can learn from it in certain aspects.

Your famous photo was taken at the 2019 World Cup. In 2023 at the World Cup there was a contrary photo when the now resigned Spanish association boss Luis Rubiales kissed national player Jennifer Hermoso on the mouth at the award ceremony. Hermoso saw the kiss as an act of violence, Rubiales, who also has to answer to the court, speaks of mutual consent. What do you think about that? Eriksson: They are the two ends of a spectrum. I always try to see things positively, even in a situation like this. Something has actually changed for the better for the Spanish national team since then. They started a fight against their association almost a year ago in which they wanted to bring about a change in the culture towards more safety and respect. They have now achieved that. I don't know if it would have been possible without this attack. Harder: The fact that the change has taken place shows how far we have come in society, how we are moving in the right direction. We do something when something unacceptable happens. The Spanish players fought for their cause, which was noticed worldwide, and brought about change. Eriksson: A kiss like the one at the World Cup this year might not have been a big deal ten years ago because times were different then and the team might not have felt they were in a position to openly address and criticize such a disgusting act. That kiss may have felt like a big step backwards for women's football at the time, but everything that has happened since then shows that we are becoming more and more confident and can really make our voices heard if we want to.

[myseungsunglove]

44,640 Minutes | Ksm

Pairing: Seungmin x reader

Warnings: fluff, mild cursing

Word Count: 720

Synopsis: the reader is missing her boyfriend while he is away on tour.

This is my first Drabble in years and years. I used to write regularly many years ago, so if this really sucks ass, I’m sorry. I’m so rusty!

Feedback Appreciated!

「© June 28, 2023 by myseungsunglove」

It had been a month since you last saw Kim Seungmin’s face live and in person. 31 days of absolute torture. 44,640 minutes without feeling his hand in yours. 2,678,400 seconds since his lips last brushed against yours.

You were losing your ever loving mind. The fact that you were keeping track of how long it had been since you had last been with Seungmin, down to the second, was proof enough that you were without a doubt head over heels in love with that little menace.

You stepped out of the Uber, buzzing with excitement. The LA sun was bright, the chill of the air reminded you that summer was still a long way off. You pulled your jacket closer around you as you walked toward the concert venue, still shocked you just got on a plane and flew half way across the world for a boy. Missing him made you do crazy things, but this one was an all time record.

The boys’ manager met you at the door with a warm smile. In your haste to leave Seoul two days ago, you had at least had the forethought to let someone know about your plans. Telling Seungmin a convincing lie about why you couldn’t FaceTime two nights in a row was much harder, but you managed.

It wasn’t long before you were surrounded by the usual crews. Occasionally people waved greetings and smiled warmly as you passed by. You could feel the butterflies flitting in your stomach the more steps you took. A month had been far too long without your boyfriend, and you couldn’t wait to have his arms around you.

The manager stepped through the door into a room where the boys were holding a pre-rehearsal rehearsal. A time that was much more relaxed than the actual rehearsal before the show. You followed, taking a deep breath as you did so.

“Look what I found roaming around outside,” he joked, stepping aside to reveal you to the group.

“Y/N!” a few of the boys rang out, but not your boyfriend. His back had been turned in deep discussion over a specific dance move with Minho.

“Shut up, guys. Not funny. You know I’m missing her like crazy. Don’t gotta rub it in on concert day,” he whined turning around to face the group. As he did so, he came face to face with you, a stupid grin plastered on your face, the beginnings of tears forming in your eyes from the overwhelming happiness you felt.

“I really missed you too, Seungie,” you chuckled, looking up into his beautiful deep brown eyes.

His face scrunched up, confused for half a second before his brain caught up with what was going on.

“Shit,” he breathed out, as his arms wrapped around your waist and pulled you close to him, his face quickly nestled against your neck. “A month is too damn long,” he mumbled, his breath warm against your cold skin.

Your hand held the back of his head, fingers gently running through his soft brown hair, as you reluctantly pulled away from the hug to look into his eyes. You were barely able to do so before Seungmin’s pink, plush lips met yours in a slow, meaningful kiss. You pressed him closer to you and deepened the kiss, desperate to be closer to him.

“I agree,” you breathed out against his lips. “Let’s not do that again,” you added as your fingers combed through his hair once more. “I don’t have to be in my studio to get work done. I’m on hiatus anyway. I can record just about anywhere. You aren’t there. So, neither am I.”

His smile brightened, stretching all the way to his eyes. “So you’ll join us?” he asked, and you could hear the desperate hope in his voice.

“Can’t get rid of me now,” you joked, pressing your lips to his again.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he smiled against your lips. What you didn’t know was that the 31 days away from Kim Seungmin had drove him to buy a ring just last night while missing you because he wanted to make sure you didn’t have to spend 31 days apart again. That ring was currently in his hotel room, hidden away in a safe.

44,640 minutes made people to some desperate things when they missed someone, but you’d both soon realize that these two decisions were the best decision either of you had ever made.

Tags from interest in original announcement I won’t continue to tag you unless you want: @starlostseungmin @backintomykpopphaseagain @jho-1

[vanmarkus]

2023 Writing Round-Up 💫

• 15 fics / 138.6k words posted; out of which 8 fics / 67.8k were buddie

Phew, it's been such a productive year, especially the second half, thank you for everyone who tagged along for the ride!! 🤗

(also I'm doing it in reverse order because... well if you know, you know 😪)

•December•

we’ve got something permanent (i mean in the way we care) [buddie, 7.1k, Explicit]

Buck has baby fever and it’s Eddie’s job to give him what he wants. Kind of.

Keep My Heart Warm In Yours [buddie, 18.5k, Mature]

Christopher decides that he wants to go skiing, Buck makes it happen and the cabin at the foot of the mountains turns out to be quite the romantic backdrop for their little getaway.

Of Love, Hospital Jitters And Christmas Lights [buddie, 6.3k, Teen + Up]

Eddie and Buck end up in the hospital waiting room a few days before Christmas.

You Ring, I Drool [buddie, 8.6k, Explicit]

5+1 times Buck reminds Eddie of a dog // alternatively; the one in which Eddie accidentally conditions Buck to beg for treats

If This Is What The Season Is Bringing [buddie, 2k, Teen + Up]

Buck and Eddie made a promise after Eddie decided to leave the 118 and they finally make good on it this Christmas.

•November•

Out Of Order, Still In Line [buddie, 6.2k, Explicit]

When Buck finally gets to the Clinic, the long awaited release doesn’t seem to come; cue Eddie to the rescue.

'Cause I'm still seeing colours that are red (If I close my chest and let it take me) [steddie, 11.4k, Explicit]

Ever since they came back from the Upside Down, Steve has been struggling on rainy days, but Eddie’s there to provide support and a maybe even a little more than that. - Project #182 of Steddie Bigbang 2023

How It Was Meant To Be [steddie, <1k, Gen]

Steve's casually calling Eddie 'baby' all the time, without even registering what he’s doing.

•October•

I Was Betting On Forever (But Forever Comes And Goes) [buddie, 4k, Teen + Up]

Eddie gets a call from Buck in the middle of the night and it’s about as bad as one would expect.

It gets better, it gets worse [steddie, 52.7k, Explicit]

Steve tried to tell Eddie how he felt, only to get shut down immediately. Now meeting for the first time in a year, they have to figure out how to be around each other.

Coming On Ever So Strong / Coming Off Ever So Soft [buddie, 14.7k, Explicit]

They get drunk, Eddie makes a move and then there is the next morning.

•July•

But where they lay, they cannot stay [radskier, 4.3k, Explicit]

Jaskier comes to Tretogor and meets Radovid for the first time in months, but their reunion is bittersweet given how much everything has changed since they’ve last seen each other.

•May•

Helping hands (are better than praying lips) [steddie, 5.5k, Explicit]

Eddie breaks his arms and Steve is on nurse duty. [cw for watersports]

•February•

Who we are in the dark [steddie, 3.4k, Explicit]

It's their first anniversary and they go to the cinema.

•January•

It might walk like a duck [steddie, 10k, Explicit]

Eddie Munson is a busy man, busy enough to have a planner. Steve misses his friend so he hijacks said planner, learning something unexpected in the process.

Aaand that's all, folks! 💛 Now, here are some tags:

I was tagged by the lovely @wikiangela and @jamespearce9-1-1 thank you~ 💛

(these guys went in so early and I left it for the last minute lmao but just in case you missed their round-ups, you can read them: here and here)

✨tagging (if you've already done it, no worries and still no pressure otherwise either): @malewifediaz @spagheddiediaz @jeeyuns @eddiebabygirldiaz @hippolotamus @daffi-990 @disasterbuckdiaz @nmcggg @thewolvesof1998 @watchyourbuck @theotherbuckley @fortheloveofbuddie @ladydorian05 @rainbow-nerdss

[you-remind-me-of-the-babe]

Another lovely year in this wonderful fandom. Here’s a little recap of how my year went:

My Writing:

Depth of Reason - Mature - 70k

How to Avoid a Scandal - Teen - 43k

Episode 3: The Diplomat, A Star Trek Redemption story - Teen - 13.5k

This list is much shorter than my list of fics written in 2022, but my fics last year were much shorter. Also, this word count is deceptive, because I wrote about 22k of Depth of Reason last year and about 20k of How to Avoid a Scandal last year as well. But! My writing goals this year were to finish these two WIPs and not take on any other projects until they were finished and I very nearly did that! Took on two projects (and more below), but I still finished these before the year finished, so pretty good!

Total words:

About 83k. Last year was more like 120k.

Other works:

Podfic of Petrichor - Teen - 34 minutes

Themes:

Finishing long works apparently! One was for my 2022 COBB and the other for my 2022 CORB. Even though these were started last year, they are the longest things I wrote since my first fic (49k) back in the second half of 2021.

Also, trying new things! Writing sci-if and recording a podfic felt very outside my wheelhouse at the time, but ultimately, I’m glad I went for it.

Top 10 fics I read in 2023:

Someone Wicked - Explicit - 60k by @artsyunderstudy

Three Months or 3,000 Miles - Gen - 3k by @larkral and art by @theimpossibledemon

Blood, Salt and Hummingbirds - Teen - 32k by @hushed-chorus

Restoration Ecology - The REmix (Baz’s version) - Explicit - 62k by @royalasstronaut

Good at Something - Explicit - 19k by @larkral

A Gift From the Propheseals - Mature - 6.5k by @skeedelvee with art by @letraspal

What Remains After the Storm - Mature - 86k by @hushed-chorus art by @erzbethluna

To Do, to Know, to Want - Mature - 8.5k by @facewithoutheart

Mishaps on Zoom - Explicit - 10k by @eelwinks

Swords Into Plowshares - Teen - 6.5k by @ileadacharmedlife

WIPs I’m excited to keep reading in 2024:

I Knew A Boy, I Knew A Man - Teen, by @shrekgogurt

Hiding Out In The Open - Mature, by @cutestkilla

A Little Bit Deadly- Explicit, by @emeryhall

Basil Pitch’s Diary - Teen, by @bookish-bogwitch

Other notable fandom things:

I helped to run @carryon-reverse-bang again with @angelsfalling16 as well as helped to put on a new event this year, @caught-on-tape-fest with @cutestkilla and @sillyunicorn

I met up with fandom friends while on a trip this past summer. Making personalized friendship bracelets as gifts, doing fic readings and crafts, and putting on our own Lady Ruth style tea party were some of my fave moments <3

I did a book club style reread of some of my fave fics with friends. I hope we do a few more in 2024!

It’s safe to say I engaged with this fandom everyday of 2023. I might get quiet on the main Discord server or Tumblr, but I’m certain I read, reblogged, wrote, DMd or otherwise participated in some way, shape or form throughout the entirety of the year.

Goals for 2024:

Read more fic! This fandom has such a wealth of works, my TBR list is a mile long and isn’t organized. I’d like to formally rework my AO3 bookmarks to exclusively show recs and either utilize the Marked for Later function or make a spreadsheet or something to better organize a proper TBR list so i don’t lose track of what I want to read next. Currently, having a dozen tabs open on my phone and another dozen on my iPad doesn’t really work well. If anyone has a brilliant system you’d suggest, please enlighten me!

I also want to read all of my physical canon books this year. I’ve only ever listened to the audiobooks! I’m currently reading my anniversary edition of Fangirl. (I think this is the prettiest book I’ve ever owned.) Up next, the Fangirl Manga, followed by the trilogy and Snow for Christmas.

More fandom meet ups! Already planning for June…

I don’t have any writing plans currently, so we shall see if/what I decide to create. I have a few ideas rolling around in my head, but nothing I’ve felt urged to put down in words. I’m sure I’ll write something, I just don’t know what it’ll be yet.

[nurgletwh]

Hey all! You’re about to see why this got so delayed when Tumblr ate my post. >.<

Remember how I’ve previously stated “I disappeared because I had issues, but no worries!”?

Yeah.

Not so much this time. Which has only sunk in with retrospect and time. (@grumpyoldsnake is gonna be “I told you so!!!)

It still doesn’t really feel that way, because the human mind is stupendous at deemphasizing how much danger you might really be in/were in.

Some of this might be covering ground I’ve already covered here or elsewhere. However, I think having it all in one place and all sequenced together will not only help me keep things straight but give it all perspective.

With that out of the way, let’s see if I can not only keep this all the fuck straight but remember what ground I need to cover. I’m putting the rest under a cut for a couple of reasons. It’s long, and it may be triggering for some people. Please let me know if I’ve missed a tag I should have added.

October 2023

I went back to the Dr. to get my medications adjusted, as my blood sugar had gone back up. (Side note: I hadn’t been properly and regularly testing my blood sugar. I was exhausted and sleeping what felt like all the time with no energy to do much of anything at all.) For whatever reason, my blood pressure comes back rather shockingly high (164/108!!), not in line with what it’s been at all. I comment that I’ve never seen it that high, and the nurse says to have the doctor check it after I’ve been there a while.

It doesn’t happen because I’m forgetful.

My cholesterol also comes back high, but that’s been creeping up for years, so no shocker there.

Diabetes medications are adjusted, one is added for the cholesterol. By the time I get home, there’s another one for my blood pressure. I shrug and add it to my pile, since my blood pressure had never come down as far as I thought it should in the first place.

November 2023

Back for a follow-up appointment. My sugar levels haven’t changed all that much, and my blood pressure still comes back as pretty damn high, and I make a mental note to test it at home more regularly, because it doesn’t seem right.

Warning: diet talk.

———

We talk about stuff and whatnot, and decide to try Ozempic (as its original purpose was for diabetes) as the next step to get my blood sugar down.

I was aggravated as he goes on about things like how I’ll feel better for losing some weight, and I half-assed express a few concerns because I have disorganized eating habits. I already don’t eat consistently, and I firmly believe my current weight “problems” are due to my disorganized eating patterns (as well as picky eating and just not really wanting to eat in general) in my youth leaving me borderline malnourished. Most of my teen years were spent trying to get me to gain weight. FYI: being significantly underweight for a long time is a great way to have issues with being overweight later.

I go home with a prescription for Ozempic. Fine and dandy, although I’ve been getting the impression he doesn’t really listen all the time.

———

December 2023

Christmas happens, travel happens, fun happens.

January 2024

Cute cat pic, just because. :-)

Next appointment. My blood pressure still reads significantly higher than normal (156/92), and higher than it has been at home, but what with travel and all, I haven’t really been testing it to back up that assertion. The doctor tests it and gets approximately the same result.

I get another prescription for an additional blood pressure medication.

(Can you guess where this one is going?)

I woke up a few days later with a massive headache that wouldn’t go away. I didn’t connect this at the time, but based on what happened next, I think it was.

The day after that I felt a bit dizzy. When I wasn’t feeling much better by lunch, I took my blood pressure and got 94/68. I took it again and got about the same thing, so I had my coworker (who is also a volunteer EMT) test it. He got 100/54. I continued to check it throughout the day, but it wouldn’t stay consistent. I bugged out of work early, finally sending a… well, grouchy message to the doctor (after hours, unfortunately) firmly expressing my frustration that I wasn’t believed when I stated my at-home readings, pointing out I am also an EMT.

My reading was 96/74 when I went to bed.

I felt even shittier the next day. BP was 94/62 that morning; I stayed home from work. The doctor responded to my message when the office opened, discontinuing the most recently added BP med, sanctioning the choice I’d already made. :-P

Unfortunately, my BP continued to plummet throughout the afternoon and evening. I sent a message that evening and asked what to do, continuing my pattern of sending messages after the office closed. 🙄

I took my blood pressure using my automated cuff before going to bed. It errored out twice before I got this:

Lovely, eh?

(The systolic generally reads 8-10 low, but the diastolic is generally bang on.)

I took it manually; 80/54. I send a follow-up message with those readings.

I felt awful the next morning. The act of sitting up made me dizzy. I stumbled out to the living room and called in to work again; I was in no condition to drive. My heart rate was elevated to around 100-110 (it normally runs fast, about 80-90 in the morning).

By late morning, the automatic cuff wouldn’t do anything but error out. I sent another message asking at what point I should go to the ER. I didn’t get a response from the doctor, but did from one of the nurses, who told me that anything under 90 systolic with symptoms qualified.

What. The. FUCK.

I basically decided that if it got worse, I’d go in. I told a friend to check in with me regularly and stayed in my recliner, drinking water and Gatorade to at least get fluid in.

The lowest reading I got on my manual cuff was 78/52. FYI: I should have been in the hospital the day before. This is “almost died” moment number 1. I was a fucking idiot. Denial is deadly.

——

I think this needs split up; I’m gonna post this now and keep writing, because I’m going to hit some sort of character limit sooner or later. O.o

[leclerqueensainz]

A Family of Three (C.L 16) - Part.I- Discoveries, Reunions, and Surprises

Paring: Charles Leclerc X OC!Marie Anderson

Synopsis: Charles and Marie ended any chance of a relationship years ago. They just didn't expect to have to share custody of a child after the death of their best friend.

⚠️ Warnings: Mention of death and murder, swearing, Charles being a little aggressive in his reactions, mention of sex and drug use. (This chapter may contain triggers!) (+16)

**In this story, Jules Bianchi died in 2019, not 2015, which changes some facts in the careers of the drivers.

A.N: Hello! How are you doing? After a long time, I finally brought Part 1 translated into English! Remembering that English is not my first language, so there may be some mistakes! I tried my best!

Feedback is always welcome. Let me know if you liked it!

Word Count: 7.882

Read the prologue here!

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January 15th, 2023 - Milan, Italy

"Good morning, Marcella!" I greet my secretary as I enter the office. "Any news for me?" I ask the blonde girl who is sitting with her eyes fixed on the computer in front of her.

"Good morning, Marie! And...HA! I did it!" Marcella suddenly jumps, startling me. "I'm sorry! It's just that I managed to schedule the meeting with Fred Lacroix for next week." She says, trying to compose herself, and I smile."

"That's great! You're amazing," I say, leaning over next to her at the table and taking a peek at her computer. "Do you think he'll be in a good mood? He's not exactly known for being pleasant when it comes to selling and buying his art," I ask and Marcella just shrugs.

"I don't know, and honestly, I don't worry about it," she says, and I can see a smug smile spread across her face. "Either way, we're awesome! We always get what we want," she finishes, and I laugh at her enthusiasm. 

I agree with Marcella. We are awesome and always get what we want when it comes to work.

After Jules died, I moved from Monaco to Italy. I felt like I needed to leave it all behind, even if it meant burying a part of who I was with my past. I needed a fresh start, and I closed my eyes to my old life. I had nothing left in Monaco. Nothing held me back or was even worth staying for.

I needed time and a new life, and that's exactly what I found when I came to Italy, where I was able to enroll in arts just in time to continue the school year. And a year and a half later, I graduated and started interning at one of the best galleries in Milan. Shortly after that, I realized I had a lot of potential for curating and dedicated myself to the field, of which today I am still a part, with the highest success rate in recruiting and selling new artists.

Today, I can say that my life is more than comfortable, and I spend so much of my day occupied with work that I hardly have time to think about everything I left behind a few years ago.

"Ah!" Marcella screams and catches me off guard, making me take a few steps back.

"Oh my god, Marcella! You're going to kill me, girl!" I say and put my hand on my chest, feeling my heart skipping like crazy.

"Sorry! I just remembered you got a letter this morning," she says, and I swear my confusion is written all over my face. "I mean, you didn't really get it, it's more like 'they passed the envelope under the door while we were closed, and I stepped on it when I got here'," she says and pulls out a crumpled white envelope with a half footprint on it. "I tried to clean it up, but as you can see, it didn't go very well. Seriously, someone should clean the streets of Milan more," she says and hands me the envelope.

I examine the envelope to find the sender, but I only find "Marie Anderson" written in delicate handwriting.

"There's no sender. That's strange." I say and Marcella nods.

"I thought it was kind of creepy too. I mean, who still sends letters In 2023? Isn't it easier to send a message on Insta? Or like, an email?" I nod my head and shrug.

"Well, let it be," I say and start walking towards my office. "Please let anyone who wants to speak to me know to leave a message. And that includes my mom, okay?" I say and Marcella nods. "Great, thanks," I say, entering my office and closing the door behind me.

I throw my bag on the desk and sit in my chair. I analyze the envelope in my hand again and for a moment, I feel a strange sensation as I stare at it.

"Okay, let's end the suspense, Marie," I say to myself and I grab a staple remover from the pencil holder, passing it over the glued part of the envelope.

Opening the envelope, I take out a sheet of paper with the same handwriting as the envelope, and two photos of a little boy with dark hair and eyes who I swear I've never seen before, but who somehow seems very familiar to me. I turn over the photos to see if there's anything written on the back.

"Vincenzo. 24/12/2021" 

Was written in one of the photos. The little boy was sitting next to what looked like a Christmas tree. I took a look at the next photograph, where the same boy, who seemed a bit older, was sitting on a mat surrounded by toys. "Vincenzo. 19/12/2022."

Feeling even more confused and with a strange sensation spreading through my chest, I picked up the letter I had left aside on the table and began to read it.

France, January 2nd, 2023.

Marie,

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've thought about how I would write to you. You don't know me, and to be honest, I don't think anyone in his circle of friends and family has even heard of me.

My name is Cecilia, and that's all you need to know about me right now, aside from what I'm about to write to you next: I was engaged to Jules Bianchi.

I know this is strange and perhaps even unbelievable, but it's true. Jules and I had a brief but passionate love story. I loved Jules, and I can say that he loved me too.

Two days before his death, I found out that I was pregnant. I gave birth to Vincenzo on December 24th, 2019. He was a healthy and strong little boy, very similar to Jules.

I loved him from the moment I found out he was growing inside me. The result of something so pure and beautiful, from my relationship with Jules.

I know it's a lot for you to process right now, but so that you can know that I'm telling you the truth, there are two photos of Vincenzo. I want you to look at them and see Jules, just as I do every time I look at my son.

"I've been wanting to write to you for a long time. Jules saw you as a sister. I'm sorry I hid this from you and his family too, but I was so afraid. Afraid of rejection, of being seen as a liar. I couldn't go through any of that. I only had Jules, and after he left me, there was no one else I could trust, so I've been raising Vincenzo alone until now, but I don't think I can do it anymore. Vincenzo has a family besides me. And I need him to grow up knowing that he is loved.

I promise I to explain everything you need to know. Please meet me at the café where you used to meet every time you came together to Nice. January 18th at 4 pm.

- Cecilia.

My hands tremble as I put the letter back on the table.

What the hell is this? Is this some kind of sick joke?

I take the two photos back in my hands and stare at them, now realizing why I found that boy so familiar. It was Jules. That boy is the spitting image of Jules.

But how is this even possible? Why didn't Jules tell us he had someone? That's not like him. Jules was always an open book to us. He told us everything, just as we did with him. He wouldn't hide this from us...would he?

With my head swimming with questions and my heart heavy as lead, I found myself shouting Marcella's name, and less than a minute later, her short locks appeared through the door.

My hands tremble as I put the letter back on the table.

What the hell is this? Is this some kind of sick joke?

I take the two photos back in my hands and stare at them, now realizing why I found that boy so familiar. It was Jules. That boy is the spitting image of Jules.

But how is this even possible? Why didn't Jules tell us he had someone? That's not like him. Jules was always an open book to us. He told us everything, just as we did with him. He wouldn't hide this from us...would he?

With my head swimming with questions and my heart heavy as lead, I found myself shouting Marcella's name, and less than a minute later, her short locks appeared through the door.

"Yes?" She asks before looking at me for a moment and entering my office complete with a worried expression. "Are you okay, Marie?" She says kneeling by my side.

"Book a flight for tomorrow morning. I need to go to France."

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January 18th, 2023. - Nice, France.

I stare again at the clock hanging on the wall above the counter of the small café. 3:45 PM.

15 minutes. Just 15 minutes until I could find out who Cecilia was and why she decided to contact me now, after all this time. And why me? Yes, Jules, Charles, and I were always very close despite the age difference. But why reach out to me? If she intended to introduce the boy to Jules' family, why didn't she contact Christine or Philippe?

I hadn't seen Jules' family in a long time, we didn't even exchange messages. I left them behind when I decided to move on to Italy. They were buried with my past in Monaco.

The bell on the entrance door rings, indicating that someone has entered the premises. My head quickly snaps toward the sound.

And it's like in one minute, everything I struggled so hard to forget and leave behind comes back with force and without control like waves of a tsunami.

Standing just a few meters away from where I'm sitting, my gaze meets Charles'.

Charles. My ex-boyfriend whom I haven't seen in almost four years. The part that hurts the most from my past, besides the death of Jules.

He looks different. So different from the last time I saw him at Jules' funeral. This time he's not dressed in mourning black, no. He's wearing casual clothes, dark jeans, and a moss green sweater with the word "FERRARI" stamped in black. There's a scruffy beard on his face and his eyes...damn. The eyes that last time reflected so much hopelessness were now more alive, but still with certain traces of concern.

Charles walks up to where I'm sitting, his steps quick and wide as if he wanted to corner me before I could escape again. He stops half a meter away, and his gaze curiously roams over me. His expression is stern but also covered in doubt. I bet that, like me, he wants to understand why I'm here.

"Charles..." I'm the first to say, my voice low and uncertain. He nods slowly, his gaze still fixed on me, as if he wants to uncover all the secrets I gained during the years we were apart.

“What are you doing here, Marie?" he asks, direct and determined, without any hesitation. It's a tone I would have never expected to hear from the Charles I left four years ago. Yes, he really has changed.

I wished I could answer him with the same intensity, but honestly, I don't think I could. There's so much going on here and my head is spinning with so many questions and emotions. Why is Charles here? What the hell is going on? Did he set all this up?

"Is this some kind of joke? Because if it is, I swear to God it's not funny," he says, his tone now rough.

I sit there staring at him, completely confused.

Charles runs his hand through his hair, messing up his brown locks even more. He sighs heavily and closes his eyes, his tongue quickly passing over his lower lip. He used to do that all the time when he felt anger or frustration. At least that hasn't changed.

"What are you doing here, Charles?" I ask, and he opens his eyes, once again staring at me.

Charles's hand reaches into his back pocket and pulls out an envelope identical to the one that was left for me in the office in Italy. The difference is that I can see that this one was addressed to Charles, only his name, and also without a sender.

"Please tell me it wasn't you, Marie," he says as his eyes shift from the envelope to my face. I look at him with all the sincerity I can muster and answer, "No, it wasn't me." He nods his head, his expression softening a bit. He moves and sits in the vacant chair in front of me, his hands going up to his face to rub it.

"Jules has a son," he says.

"I know," I reply.

"Charles lowers his hands and stares at me once again, confusion etched on his face. Before he can say anything, I reach into my bag on the table, open it, and take out the white envelope. Charles looks at my hand for a moment before reaching over the table to take the envelope from me."

"You got one too," he says, not looking at me, even though it's not a question,  I nod my head in agreement.

"It seems she arranged to meet with both of us. I think it's easier if we hear the story at the same time, that way there's no risk of getting the wrong versions," I say, and his gaze shifts from the envelopes on the table to me.

"Do you think it's a lie? That the boy isn't Jules's son?" he asks seriously, and I just shrug in response.

"I believe it could be Jules's son. I just don't know why she waited all this time and why she chose us. Obviously, we're not the best people to show Vincenzo that he has a family on his father's side," I say, and I see Charles's jaw tighten.

"We were friends with Jules. He trusted us," he says, once again his voice sounding rough.

"It seems he didn't trust us enough to tell us he fell in love," I say, and immediately regret it.

I look at Charles and if we were part of a cartoon, he would have flames in his eyes.

“You don't know what happened. You don't know his reasons, just like me,” he says through gritted teeth. “Don't doubt his motives. Not when he's not here to defend himself.”

In all the years I've spent by Charles' side, I've never seen him so angry. And if I didn't know him, I'd be scared.

But do you still know him? I silently ask myself.

"That's not what I meant," I defensively reply. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to come out that way. Of course, Jules had reasons and we'll find out when Cecilia arrives." Charles relaxes his jaw and adjusts in his seat.

I look at the clock on the wall again. 4:10 PM. She's late. I look at Charles, a little anxious.

"Do you think she's coming?" he shrugs, but his hand goes into his hoodie pocket and pulls out a cell phone. 

"She's late," he states what I already know. "But I think so, she's coming." Charles carelessly tosses the phone onto the table, his anxious fingers fidgeting with his rings.

"Congratulations on the runner-up, by the way," I say, trying to ease both of our anxieties, and he looks back at me.

"Did you follow the races?" he asked, a little surprised.

"Yes," I admit, somewhat embarrassed. "My secretary is a huge Formula 1 fan," I add, which is not a lie. 

Like all Italians, Marcella is a devoted Tifosi. And even though I wanted to leave everything I knew behind, I couldn't escape one of the most beloved sports in Europe, especially in Italy, the home of Ferrari.

Charles lets out a low laugh, his look adopting the expression of a mischievous boy. Oh no.

"Your secretary, huh?" he says with a teasing and suggestive tone.

"Ah, shut up, Leclerc!" I say, trying to sound serious but failing when I let out a laugh. "I'm serious! My secretary is a diehard Tifosi. She can't shut up for a minute about Ferrari and makes me watch all the races," I say, shrugging.

"Yeah, yeah... And I bet I'm your 'secretary's' favorite driver, right?" he says, making air quotes with his fingers and having a smug smile on his face.

"Actually, she prefers Sainz," I say, and instantly his smile turns into a serious expression, which makes me laugh.

Soon, Charles' dimples appear on his cheek and my heart skips a beat at the sound of his typically somewhat flawed and exaggerated laugh. Oh, how I enjoyed hearing that horrible but at the same time very cute laugh again.

At that moment, even though I hated to admit it, I realized how much I missed that feeling of familiarity and lightness. And even though just a few minutes ago, I was doubting whether I still knew the person that Charles had become, I could see that regardless of the years and tragedies that life had subjected him to from a young age, that kind and playful boy that I had once fallen in love with was still there. And maybe he would never leave. And I liked that.

Looking at Charles smiling, sitting in front of me, I wonder for just a second if it would have been different if I hadn't left. But as soon as the thought came, I pushed it away. Because even though I was happy to know that Charles still had something familiar to me inside him, we were not meant to be even before Jules' death. And I doubt that we could have maintained a good relationship with all the pain and mourning that surrounded us. I made a good choice. Yes, I did the right thing.

Leaving Monaco was one of the hardest things I had to face. But it made me grow and become a strong woman. I learned to deal with loss, even if it may not be the healthiest way, it still worked for me. I was able to finish college, got the job I wanted, and met new people. I fell in love, and even though I didn't love them like I loved Charles, I still allowed myself to feel and try happiness. Clearly, it didn't work out, but the experience was worth it.

And I can also say that Charles has achieved what he wanted, or almost everything. He is one of the best Formula 1 drivers and drives for Ferrari, which is almost every motorsport athlete's dream. He has a successful career and is known worldwide for it. And even though he didn't get the title he so desperately craved last year, he may get it this year. He is focused, grateful, and kind. The golden boy. Il Predestinato.

Even though Charles is so young, he has given his family and friends everything they ever dreamed of. Pascale must be so proud of him, and if Harvé were still alive, I'm sure he would also be proud of the son he raised. And Jules would also be proud to see Charles' progress.

And then the emptiness appears again. Jules. I try my best not to think about him. The memories are still painful even after all these years.

I think I let my thoughts reflect too much because Charles, who was laughing before, now looks at me with a compassionate expression. He probably thought of Jules too.

"I miss him too," he says and I nod my head. "And I missed you too," his hand meets mine on the table.

There were no ulterior motives. Just a gesture. A gesture to affirm what he was saying. And it hurt. It hurt in my heart and soul.

I quickly withdraw my hand from his and stare at the table. Charles withdraws his hands and keeps them close to his body.

"I know you didn't owe me anything, Marie. No explanations, not loyalty," he starts, his voice a little broken, making my heart tighten. "But Jules died and you left. Why did you leave?" he asks, and I can hear the hurt in his voice.

I wished I had the strength to lift my gaze and tell him while looking him in the eyes that everything I did was out of fear and thinking that there was nothing left for me in Monaco. That I still loved him even after he broke up with me and that losing Jules to death destroyed me, but knowing that I would lose Charles while he was still alive would only ruin me even more. I couldn't see him every day and know that he no longer belonged to me. And that every minute I spent mourning and heartbroken without him reminded me that love was impossible for me. That I didn't deserve to be loved. That there would never be anyone to love me.

"I had to go," I say, still staring at my hands. "I don't expect you to understand or forgive me. Because I'm not asking for any of that, Charles," my voice sounds firm but my eyes burn.

I take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds before releasing it. I raise my gaze to meet his when I'm sure the tears won't fall.

"I had to make a choice and I did. I chose myself," I say simply, perhaps trying to convince myself.

Charles nods his head and goes back to fiddling with the rings on his fingers. This time it was difficult for him to look at me.

"I'm happy to see who you've become, Marie. And I hope you've achieved what you wanted when..." he pauses for a second, unsure of what to say, "when you left Monaco." A tired laugh escapes his lips. "I'm not going to judge you, especially since when you left, we were no longer a couple. But I was an idiot to think that we were still friends." He looks back at me. "I was foolish until I realized that there would be no possibility for us without Jules being here."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to stand up and throw everything in front of me at him. I wanted to curse at him and tell him that he didn't have that right. But to be fair, I could never do that. Not when I left, when it was me who left what was left of the three of us. Jules had died and I had fled. When I left, I didn't think of Charles or his feelings. I only thought of myself and how I could never live with that.

I don't regret it. I did what I thought was necessary and would do it again. Charles might have needed me, but I needed to leave and heal. And that's what I did. Charles still had friends and family to rely on, and I had no one. No present family, no friends, and no boyfriend. Charles and I both mourned, of course, but we mourned in different ways. He had lost a friend, and I had lost everything.

There was no one to come home to and hug. There was no one there to tell me that they were sorry for my loss and that everything would be okay. So I went after what I thought I needed and I got it. I went in search of myself, a new life, new choices, and opportunities, and I found them. I found myself. Of course, I let go of a lot, and the void left by Jules and Charles was never filled, but I learned to cope and use it to my advantage for other things, and that was enough, at least for now.

Before I could respond to him, I'm interrupted once again by the sound of the damn doorbell.

Charles and I turned our attention to the door at the same time. Both of us were staring at a slim blonde woman, wearing a green coat and leggings. But what caught our attention the most was the little boy in her arms. He was about 3 or 4 years old, with dark hair, lying with his face hidden in the woman's neck, and his small hand clutching onto her collar as if he were afraid she would leave if he let go.

Charles and I stood up in rehearsed gestures, all at the same time. He stopped beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder, covered by my own coat this time. The woman looked at us and came slowly towards us. When she got closer and stopped about a meter away from us, I could analyze her.

Her face was thin and perfectly symmetrical, and even though it seemed like she hadn't slept in days, her tired eyes were a beautiful shade of greenish-brown. She is very beautiful. Her lips opened in a small smile, and there I could see that she easily fit Jules' type.

"I assume you are Charles and Marie, right?" She says, her voice sweet and tired.

My gaze moves from her to the little boy in her arms, and then they cross with Charles'. He tells me through his eyes the same things I am thinking. We return our attention to the blonde in front of us and nod.

"Great!" She clears her throat before continuing, "I'm Cecilia, and this little guy here is Vincenzo." She gently shakes the child, who tightens his grip on her coat collar even more. "Jules' son."

Charles' grip on my shoulder becomes stronger, and I swallow hard. I can't take my eyes off the little boy, and now up close, I can see his profile. His chubby childlike cheek and long eyelashes, just like Jules'.

Cecilia shifts uncomfortably, her feet shifting the weight from one to the other, and she adjusts Vincenzo's position in her lap.

"I know you must have thousands of questions, and I promise I will answer them all. But before that, would you mind if I sit down? Vincenzo is a bit heavy, and I walked here with him in my arms," she says, embarrassed.

"Of course not. Please," Charles approaches her and pulls the chair he was sitting in a few minutes ago. Cecilia sits down, careful not to make any sudden movements and wake Vincenzo.

Charles points to the empty chair, and I sit down. He takes a few steps hto the table next to us and takes an unoccupied chair to sit on. Once the three of us are seated around the table, Charles calls the waitress, whom I only now notice has been staring at us this whole time. The redheaded and smiling girl, who probably can't be more than 19 years old, approaches with her gaze fixed on Charles- she probably recognized him.

Charles is the one who orders. A cappuccino for me- which causes a sensation in my stomach that he still remembers- an iced tea for himself, and he asks Cecilia what she would like to drink, to which she responds that coffee would be enough. The redhead writes down the orders and asks for permission to leave. Her eyes still glued to Charles.

I roll my eyes internally, but I know I can't blame her. After all, it's probably not every day that she serves a public figure. When we used to come here with Jules, the employees were different, and the small café is located on a somewhat isolated street in Nice, so it's unlikely that many famous people come here.

I take my gaze off the waitress and turn back to Cecilia, who was already looking at me attentively with a small smile on her lips.

"Well..." Charles begins. "Why are we here, Cecilia? Why only now have you contacted us?" He leans forward a little more, his arms resting on the wooden table.

Cecilia shifts in her chair carefully and her eyes briefly glance at Vincenzo before turning back to us.

"I wanted you to meet Vincenzo. While he was alive, Jules always mentioned you as part of his family. He loved you both very much," she says, and I feel my chest tightening.

"But why only now?" I speak for the first time. "I know you wrote in the letter that you were afraid, but it still sounds strange that you would come looking for us now, without any reason," I say, trying to keep my voice steady.

Cecilia falls silent for a few seconds as if she wants to formulate the next words carefully.

"There's a reason," she confirms. "Look, I know it's strange, and I assure you that I'm not looking for any money or anything like that." Her gaze shifts from me to Charles, as if she wants to confirm the latter part specifically for him. "Jules and I met about six months before he died, and it was love at first sight."

"He never told us about you," Charles responds cutting her off and she nods. 

"I know he didn't. I asked him not to," she says and Charles and I exchange confused looks before turning our attention back to her.

"What do you mean? Why would you ask him not to?" I ask, finding it all very odd.

"When I met Jules, I was in a complicated time in my life," she answers and I see her face darken. "I was only 19 and had run away from Italy." Her voice trembles as if it's hard for her to mention those times again.

I wish I could tell her that she didn't need to tell us if she wasn't feeling comfortable, but the truth was that it was really necessary. After all, that's what Charles and I are here for.

Charles nodded for her to continue and I could feel his tension.

"I got involved with the wrong people in Italy," she continues. "There was a boy I had been in love with during my teenage years, Paolo was his name. We were very young and stupid, you know?" Cecília laughs and her eyes fill with tears. "Like every teenager, we thought we were invincible, but we weren't. When I was 17, I spent most of my time at parties and clubs with him. We drank and did drugs, and everything was fun and happy until it wasn't anymore. Over time, the drinking and drugs stopped being just for parties and began to become necessary for anything. From being able to concentrate on studies, to being able to get out of bed. My parents assumed that Paolo was to blame for my addiction and banned me from seeing him. I obviously went against them and they made me choose between a life with them or my ruin with Paolo. I, being young and foolish, chose love and abandoned my parents without looking back. I left the life I had to chase adventures with Paolo and he did the same, running away from home. But the thing is, we were two addicted people without a home and money. There was no more money from our parents, so we started doing whatever we could. Small thefts and even..." She stops for a moment, thick tears streaming down her face.

"Here." Charles extends a napkin and she takes it, wiping her face immediately after.

"Thank you," she says and he offers her a half-smile. "Even prostitution," she continues, and I feel my stomach churn. It wasn't disgust, but rather a pity for imagining someone in that situation. Beside me, I could see that Charles was equally uncomfortable. It was hard for him to put himself in her place.

Charles grew up with great parents who did everything for their children, and even though they weren't millionaires at the time, they still managed to have and offer a comfortable life for them. And I bet that if any of the three, Charles, Lorenzo, or Arthur, had gone the wrong way, Pascale would never have abandoned them.

And me, well, I was lucky. I spent my teenage years with Jules and Charles, who had a structured enough family to share with me because my parents were absent.

Obviously, Charles and I had our rebellious phase with occasional drinking and smoking weed. But Jules, being almost ten years older than us, always kept us in line like a good older brother. And if he knew that we had crossed the line at parties or anywhere else, oh God! He would freak out.

- "Cecilia, I know it's difficult for you to say this, but I think it's important for Charles and me to understand," I say and she nods.

Cecília takes two deep breaths before continuing, and that's when I'm sure the story would only get worse. I try to prepare myself to hear what she had to say.

"I prostituted myself a few times without Paolo's knowledge. Some traffickers gave me drugs in exchange for sex and since many times I had no other choice, I accepted. But one day he found out and that ended us. With us." Tears returned to stream down her face. "Paolo went crazy when he found out and went after the trafficker I had slept with. He got a gun and killed the guy. We were on the run for a few weeks, but it was too hard for two homeless addicts to hide in Italy. Soon they found us and..." She closes her eyes and sobs.

I stretch my hand across the table and take Cecilia's hand. There was a lot of pain there and part of me wanted to curl up and stop listening, but I couldn't. I glance at Charles and he meets my gaze, his eyes reflecting distress at hearing everything that came out of her mouth. It was too surreal for him to hear all of that.

"They killed Paolo and thought they had killed me too. But by some miracle, I managed to survive and ask for help at a church. The priest there was friends with my parents and managed to find a family in Nice who were willing to help me. So I came to France, went through rehabilitation, and started attending meetings for drug addicts." Her eyes become distant again, and I continue holding her hand. "It was on the way back from one of those meetings that I met Jules, and that's where I understood the reason why I survived. We fell in love, but he had a public life and I couldn't expose myself because I was afraid that they would come after me. I told Jules what had happened and unlike what I thought he would do, he embraced me. He promised me that he wouldn't tell anyone, not even you two until I was ready and safe. And he did that. He kept us a secret for months. We saw each other every time he came back to Nice, after the races." She finishes.

Charles and I watched as Cecilia tried to calm her breathing, her grip on the sleeping Vincenzo's body tightening as if afraid he might disappear from her arms at any moment.

It breaks my heart to see all her pain and gives me a completely different perspective from when I walked in here today. She loved Vincenzo, and that was clear, just as she had loved Jules. And that's the part that hurts me the most.

Knowing that the reason Jules never mentioned her to us, his friends and family, was sole to protect her, made my heart heavy and warm at the same time. That was so Jules.

I remember months before he died, he started to spend more time in his hometown and whenever we asked him about it, he said he wanted to spend a little more time with his family. We even found it a little strange, but Jules always had a great relationship with his parents and closest relatives, which made us simply let it go and just enjoy the time we spent together before he and Charles had to go back to racing.

"I'm sorry for all of this, really, Cecilia," Charles is the first to say after she seems calmer. "But we still need to know why you're only coming to us now," he says, and I agree.

Cecilia nods and looks at Vincenzo in her arms. The tension emanating from her makes me shiver, and Charles probably noticed it too as his hand finds my thigh under the table.

"About two days before Jules' death, I found out I was pregnant with Vincenzo," she says and I nod in understanding. "Jules was racing in Shanghai and I was scared and alone here." The tears that had ceased returned in stronger waves.

My mind teleports back to 2019, to Jules' last race. He was so happy to finish seventh that day. But, all of a sudden, he just wanted to go home and rest, not even celebrating with the boys on the grid.

"I sent him a message after the race. I said I needed him to come to Nice as soon as possible because something had happened," Cecilia looks at Charles as she speaks. "Then he sent me a message saying he would take the first available flight back to France."

As Cecilia talks, Charles' grip on my thigh gets stronger. I look at him from the corner of my eye and I can see the moment his Adam's apple goes up and down.

"So that's why he left so quickly that day," Charles' voice sounds low. "He left before I could talk to him..." His eyes fill with tears and his breathing becomes a bit unstable. Cecilia just nods and closes her eyes tightly before continuing.

"When Jules arrived in Nice, it was already early morning and it was raining heavily. He tried to get a taxi or Uber, but couldn't get either," this time I feel my breathing falter a bit as she continues. "He managed to rent a car from a nearby 24-hour agency and sent me a message saying he would arrive soon and that I didn't need to worry because no matter what was happening, everything would be okay and that he loved me."

Charles stood up abruptly. His face adopted a look of disbelief.

"It was you..." his voice was weak and accusatory. "It was because of you that he... My God!" He flinches and his hands pass through his face and his hair.

"Charles..." I try to calm him down, even though I am also anxious. "Charles, please sit down and try to calm down." I try to grab his hand, but he recoils in a sudden movement.

"Calm down? It's her, Marie!" he says, pointing to Cecilia who only shrinks into her chair and holds Vincenzo even tighter, as he moves uncomfortably in her lap. "She killed him! IT'S HER FAULT THAT JULES DIED!" he screams.

My breathing becomes difficult and my heart races. In front of me, Cecilia sobs and holds Vincenzo even closer to her body.

All that commotion made some employees start to appear and approach at a safe distance from the table.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Cecilia pleads. "I swear I never wanted this to happen, I was so scared and..." She stops when she hears Vincenzo's low cry.

Charles' attention goes to the little boy as he realizes he is now awake. He shakes his head in a negative motion and leaves the café in a hurry, slamming the door hard behind him. We are startled by the noise and the little boy cries even louder. I quickly get up to go after Charles, but before I do, I turn to Cecilia.

"Please wait here, okay? I'll try to calm him down. Don't leave," I say, and she nods, her face stained with tears that continued to fall, and her breathing accelerated as she rocked Vincenzo, trying to calm him down.

A dark-haired waitress approaches with a glass of water in her hands and places it in front of Cecilia. I thank her with a gesture and quickly leave through the door to find Charles.

It doesn't take me long to find him, he was in front of a black car. His body leaned against the driver's side. Even from a distance, I can see his body shaking and hear the sound of his erratic breathing. I approach him slowly, so as not to startle him.

When I get close enough, I think about touching him, but the thought leaves my mind when I realize it's not a good idea.

"Charles..." I call him softly to get his attention. "I'm sorry, but we need to go back there. She-"

"No!" he exclaims. "Please, Marie! Don't ask me to go back there. She killed him! It was her fault!" He stares at me with red and swollen eyes.

My heart tightens at the sight of him like this. I find myself being sent back to the year of Jules' death, specifically to the day of his funeral.

I wanted to hug Charles and tell him that everything would be okay, but in reality, I didn't know if it would. Jules had died almost four years ago, and yet it still hurt every time his name was mentioned. And hearing today from a stranger the reasons that resulted in his death was not easy. But there was a reason why Cecilia wanted to contact us after all this time, and we needed to know.

I take a deep breath and decide to approach Charles more. One of us had to try to be rational at this moment, and if it had to be me, okay. I wasn't going to go back to Italy without an answer.

"Charles, I understand that it's difficult to hear all of this suddenly," my hands go to his face. "I know it hurts, Charles. I'm feeling it too." He closes his eyes and I feel tears rolling down my face. "But we can't blame her entirely, Charles. She was scared and just wanted to talk to him.”

“And it resulted in his death." He says, his eyes opening and meeting mine. "Marie, if she hadn't done what she did, he would be here now. He would be alive and he would have met..." His voice trails off. "He would have met his son." He cries and I pull him into a hug.

Jules died without knowing his son. Jules died without knowing that he would have a son. Jules died in the dark without knowing what was happening to Cecilia. Jules died alone and worried, and nothing we can do will bring him back. He died. It's over. But Charles and I are still here.

"Jules died without knowing his son, but we're still here and we can do this for him," I say and he squeezes me tighter.

 "We're still here, Charles. And we can do this." He breaks the hug and looks at me with a face full of sorrow. I nod. 

"We need to go in there together. Together," he looks down at his feet. "Charles, I need you to go in there with me because I can't do this alone." His eyes come back to me and he understands that I used the same words he did a few years ago. "Please, Charles. I don't want to do this alone. I can't." He nods and I take his hand and slowly lead him back to the cafe.

When we walk through the door, my eyes meet Cecilia's. I nod my head to let her know it's okay, and she nods in understanding. I look at Charles who stares at her expressionlessly. His gaze is icy, totally different from the one I once knew.

Still holding Charles' hand, I walk toward the table where she uncomfortably waits for us. I notice that Vincenzo is no longer in her lap and feel momentary concern that quickly passes when I see him playing with the same red-haired waitress who had served us.

We sit in our chairs and I see that our orders are placed on the table. I feel my stomach churn just looking at the cappuccino in front of me. I take glance around and notice the employees trying to avoid looking at us. I make a mental note to "solve" this problem so it doesn't follow us when we leave.

"Just say what you want," Charles breaks the silence, his eyes still staring at Cecilia who nods and swallows hard.

"I understand your anger, and I know I have no right to ask for what I'm about to ask," she says and my hearing sharpens. "I live with guilt for years. Whether it's for Paolo or Jules, guilt and remorse follow me wherever I go. No matter what I try to do, they're always there." She looks at her hands. "Last year, I relapsed. I used heroin, once, but I used it. After years of resisting and not even going near drugs, I let my messed-up mind fall into the hole and I shot up." She lets out a desperate laugh and her eyes fill with water.

My body freezes and Charles makes a sound of scorn beside me. When he opens his mouth to say something, Cecilia cuts him off.

"Yes, I know I'm a whore, and I deserve the worst shit life has in store for me. But that's the thing. I deserve the bad things, but my son doesn't," she says firmly, looking at us seriously. "I need Vincenzo to have a good and decent life. I need to make sure he grows up loved and that he never lacks anything." She looks away for a moment to the table where Vincenzo was happily playing with the waitress and then back to us.

Cecilia takes a deep breath and leans forward. I could swear she was capable of asking for anything at that moment. Money, a house in a distant place, a period in rehab, anything.

"I can't take care of Vincenzo anymore," she asserts, her tone exuding bitterness. "I promised Jules that I would do everything to make him different from me. And that's why I came to you after all these years."

My head spins. She's asking for...? No, it's not possible.

"What do you mean by that?" Charles asks anxiously.

"Cecilia wipes the tears from her face with her hand, blinks a few times, and adopts a determined look, a look that I knew well. The same look I gave to myself in the mirror when I decided to leave Monaco. Suddenly, I feel afraid because my suspicions are confirmed.

"She wants us to take care of Vincenzo," I say.

[butterfly-casket]

Sometimes breaking down and crying to your primary care physician....works

I was desperate for answers at the end of 2023. I mean, it's been 3 years and I still don't have answers. I had lost all hope, as I was gaining new symptoms, and still no one had any idea what could be wrong. Until I read about MS, and it fit nearly all of my symptoms. I scheduled the first appointment I could to discuss it with my primary. After scheduling it, I realized I had only scheduled a 20 min appointment, and spent 4 hours getting all of my symptoms typed out with dates of when they started, how long they lasted, when they got worse. I typed out a script to communicate to my doctor all of the most important/relevant information in the most condensed form possible. I was ready to be in and out, spend 5 minutes getting him the information, and the next 15 discussing with him the plan of action.

Instead, my doc was pissed that I was even there. I had only seen his NP up until this point and he was so upset that I, a person with so many issues, had come in to see him personally the Friday before his Christmas break. He made sure to spend the first 5 minutes of the appointment interrupting me to express his frustration, and I started to feel like he wasn't going to help me at all.

I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop myself as I started shaking out of fear, and then the anger-override kicked in. I whipped out my symptom list, and his demeanor immediately changed. I told him as calmly as I could in the moment "THAT is my symptom list. Are you just not going to help me?"

He started saying "Well its just that you're going to try and make this appointment take 3 hours—" I cut him off to say "No, I wanted to make this appointment 20 minutes but you just spent the first 5 putting your problems on me." *cues the flood gates* "I've had doctors, nurse practitioners, specialists all innaccurately record my symptoms, if they ever even recorded them at all. I have to walk with a cane, I haven't been able to work for a year and a half, I have NO income, I am just trying to survive and I've been dismissed and not believed over and over again, to the point that it's effected my medical records. It makes EVERYONE think I'm fucking INSANE. I just want some help. I just need some fucking help. I just need some fucking answers. Please."

He started getting in my chart and got to business. He immediately ordered about 8 retests and 6 new ones. He got me a referral to Neurology, ordered X-rays, a swallow test, and MRIs to check for MS.

I went to the Rheumatology appointment I already had scheduled a few weeks later. I felt like the doctor was actually listening to me for the first time in forever. He made a point to record every one of my symptoms as I listed them. He seemed to care. I just came back from my swallow test today. The person performing the test acted like he read through my whole chart and was asking me a lot of questions about my other issues. He asked me if I had the MRIs yet before the test, and when going over the results he said "If it does turn out to be MS, come back to us. We will help you, figure out what works for you."

I've been terrified of being too direct with my doctors, I wouldn't even tell them the diagnosises that I thought it COULD be out of fear of them going "You've just been looking up things on the internet, I'm giving you a munchausens diagnosis." But I was desperate. It was a real cry for help. And thank fuck he saw that. Even if I still don't find answers, I've brought to their attention the mistreatment and carelessness I've been dealing with and they have decided to change that. Hopefully I will be treated like a normal human being and get my symptoms recorded correctly.