#the sleep deprivation is making reasoning and emotions difficult though. why do i feel sad abt this wtf 😭

[dandyshucks]

seeing that they announced an official plush today, just as i rly started getting going on making my own by hand ... i do not see it ... i am looking away .... this shall not deter me from my goal nor will it take the wind out of my sails.....

[msoogabooga]

Closure • (Remus Lupin x Reader)

Warnings: None

Description: You reconnect with your former Hogwarts-years lover in the most unexpected way.

A/N: Slight angst, ends on a good note.

Walking around the corridors of the Hogwarts castle with an injured hand wasn’t your ideal way of spending your night. It had all happened just as you were getting ready for bed. Gathering all your graded papers, you decided to store them in your trunk, as you usually do every night. Unfortunately for you, the lid of the trunk came crashing right back down out of nowhere and landing straight onto your hand. It took every inch of your body to not scream out a slew of unforgivable words in order to maintain the peace of the castle. Still you couldn’t help but kick the trunk in frustration and snatch your hand away. With a throbbing hand you searched frantically for something to soothe it. Nothing was readily available and you didn’t feel like waking up poor Madam Pomfrey for a bruised hand. So you resorted to the only man you know to be awake at this hour: Remus J. Lupin.

Remus Lupin was not a man to get much sleep. Back when you both were students at Hogwarts, you always remember him sitting in the common room in the dead of night. Usually it would be to finish a lengthy essay or get some more study time worked in. But sometimes you two would sit together near the fireplace and talk about the most insightful topics. The nights would end with you falling asleep on him and magically waking up back in your own bed. The days when you two dated were the most comforting and enjoyable you’ve ever felt. He was the perfect boyfriend. Everyday he would serve you a glass of pumpkin juice with a peck on the cheek. During classes he would pass you notes that often contained several compliments and an occasional sneaky answer. Days would be filled in with study sessions, sitting by the lake, and lots of cuddling. He trusted you with everything. Including the long kept secret that terrorized him the most, that he was a werewolf. You were everything to him.

You never wanted to end the relationship. It was the last thing you wanted to do. But the comforting days of teenagers at Hogwarts turned into a stressful time as adults. You had become an Auror right out of Hogwarts while Remus struggled to find a stable job. Being a werewolf didn’t come with its negative effects, after all. You would sometimes go days without seeing him depending on how much time was needed on an investigation. When you did see him, you were always so exhausted and sleep deprived. Eventually all this stress kept piling up to the point where you both decided it was best to part ways. No hard feelings were left but you didn’t hear much from him after that.

Just a few years later, you resigned your job as being an Auror. Though it was an exciting couple of years, it was best to just take some time for yourself and find a more peaceful job. When you heard of the Muggle Studies teaching position open at Hogwarts, you knew this was your opportunity. You knew all about muggles, as you grew up around them, therefore it was an easy job to secure. What you didn’t realize, however, was that one of your colleagues was the same man you left years ago. Catching his gaze at the Great Hall feast in the beginning of the year brought all of the memories back to you once more.

Which brings us back to this moment. You scurry your way to his quarters in hopes of obtaining a treatment for your hand and perhaps some closure from the man you once loved. You mumble apologies to the portraits you had awoken until you finally reach his door. Though hesitant at first, you finally muster up the courage to knock 3 times. It doesn’t take long for an answer as you look at a disheveled Remus Lupin standing at the front of the door wearing some worn out pajamas. Clearly, he didn’t expect you to be the one knocking at his door in the middle of the night as he continues staring you down for a moment. Eventually, he clears his throat and addresses you.

“Oh.” Remus speaks. “Professor, what a surprise. I didn’t- I wasn’t expecting any guests at this hour. May I help you?”

“You got anything for this.” You say, lifting your bruised hand up.

“Oh of course, do come in.”

He opens up the door wider for you and you make your way inside his quarters. It was a cozy little place. All his bags were on the floor and a few garments were thrown onto the bed. He mumbles an apology for the mess and goes to one of his drawers. Pulling out a small blue water packet, he performs a freezing spell on it to turn it into ice. He gestures to you to come over. You and him plop on the edge of the bed. He takes your hand into his own, ever so gently, careful not to hurt you even more. You wince as he begins to apply pressure to it with the ice.

“Just hold still.” He says, calmly. “I promise this will make it feel better.”

You nod and bite your tongue as he applies more pressure. His hands are coarse and rough now as opposed to a few years ago. Clearly, these past few years haven’t treated him well. His hands keep the ice steady as he gently brushes your palm.

“How have you been?” You say out of nowhere. You couldn’t bear the silence any longer.

“Rough.” He admits. “Full moon yesterday and well… you know.”

“Oh right, sorry. I didn’t notice.”

“No worries.”

You remain silent as he removes the ice pack for a moment to examine your hand. He pushes his thumb against the bruised area slightly and you wince once more. He looks up at you with concerned eyes. You give a slight smile, assuring him you are alright. He takes the ice pack and applies it to your hand once more.

“Yes, just leave it on for a few hours.” He says, letting you hold onto the ice pack now. “It should help numb the pain. Other than that your hand appears to be fine. Just some minor bruising. You’re free to go get some rest now.”

As you stand up from the bed, he catches your shoulder. You gasp a little in surprise and slowly come to sit once again with him.

“But that’s not the reason you came here, is it?” Remus asks, almost reading your mind. It was true. This visit was more than a mere injury treatment.

“I just… wanted to see you again.” You admit. “I know we didn’t get the closure we needed. I kind of just wanted that, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh not at all.” He says with a sigh. “Ever since I first saw you during the feast, I wanted to have this conversation with you.”

“Well then. Here we are. You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Why would I be? This decision was made by the both of us.”

“I know I know. I just feel so guilty. I didn’t get to see you that much near the end of our relationship and I often wondered if you thought I didn’t care about you.”

“You were busy. I understood that. Never did it cross my mind that you didn’t care. I knew you did. And so did I.”

You let out a small relieved smile. “It’s just so hilariously sad now.”

“What is?” He says, shifting himself closer to you.

“Now I have all the time in the world but no one to spend it with.”

He gives a sad smile. “Oh the ironies of life. Would you like some tea?”

“Please.” Remus gets up and heads to the small kitchen attached to his room. You get up and follow him, leaving the ice pack on the bed. “Make sure to add only two spoons-”

“Two spoons of sugar.” Remus finishes for you. He gives a slight smile. “Don’t worry, I remember.” You feel your face blush slightly at this. That man never misses a beat, you’re sure of it. He sets the kettle and leans against the counter, running a hand through his hair.

“Was it bad?” You ask. Remus raises an eyebrow. “The full moon I mean.” You clarify.

“Oh no, not terribly at least. A few minor scratches and bruises. Nothing I haven’t already experienced before.”

“And here I am complaining about a bruised hand.” You laugh. Remus, however, gives you a concerned look as he walks over to you. He carefully takes both of your hands into his.

“Please don’t feel bad about asking me for help.” He says looking straight into your eyes. “You know I will always help you no matter how small it is. Always.” As you stare into his basil-green eyes you can’t help but feel your face heat up again. Something about his stare always drove you mad. Clearly it hasn’t stopped anytime soon. He appears to be moving closer to you before the whistle of the kettle makes him jump a bit. He quickly runs to it and prepares the cups.

As he pours the green tea into an elegant cup, you can’t help but try to explain everything going through your mind. “I wanted to reach out to you. I did. I just didn’t know how. I’m just so relieved that now I get the chance to.”

“So did I.” Remus confesses as he hands you a cup. You take the cup of warm liquid and take a sip from it. Delicious, of course. He always made the best tea. “I just figured you wanted to be left alone. I wouldn’t blame you. Being an Auror is a difficult career. Therefore I went against my own personal emotions considering I still… well, it would be inappropriate to say now.” He takes a gulp from his own cup.

“No please, tell me Remus.” You plead. He stares at you once more and sighs before setting his cup on the table.

“Considering I was still in love with you.” Your heart is racing now. You set your own cup on the table.

“You were?” You ask, stunned. “And now?”

“Nothing has changed. Even after all these years. I still thought of you and hoped you were doing well. Everyday.”

“Oh, Remus.” You cup his face with both hands, bruised hand and everything. Your thumb rubs against his cheek as you slowly move his hair away from his face. He brings his hands to cover yours and gives you the most comforting look.

“Don’t you worry about me now.” He reassures you. “I’ll cope.”

“You don’t have to.” You finally fill in the gap between the two of you and press your lips gently against his. He doesn’t react to this at first, just stands there in confusion. Slowly, however, he brings his hands to your hair and gently combs through it, falling into your kiss. He never once retracts from you. Only crashing back onto your lips over and over. It was the most sincere and wonderful kiss you’ve ever had.

When he finally breaks it, he still holds onto your waist, giving you the biggest smile. His eyes were a different story, however. They were drained and half open. Clearly he was exhausted.

“You’re tired, Remus.”

“A tad. Never of you though.” He places a kiss on your forehead.

“I should really let you sleep.”

“You know you can stay the night.” He says to you in a half whisper. “Only if you’d like. I’d be more than willing to have you here.”

You laugh, running a hand through his sandy locks. “Of course.”

You both climb into his bed, completely exhausted from a long night. Before you get a chance to say something he clutches you close to him. You smile and ease into his embrace. He rests his chin on your head and has his arms wrapped tightly around you. Kissing your head, he sleepily mumbles something into your hair that you couldn’t quite catch.

“What was that, dear?” You ask.

“I’ve missed you.” He mumbles before crashing into a deep sleep.

[teacup-of-candlelight]

how long has it been since you slept?

1:00…. 1:30… 2:00?

2:30.

Fjord rolled over and began to slowly and silently touch each of his friends, the Mighty Nein, and cast water breathing for all of them. Normally being awake at 2:30 in the morning would not have been Fjord’s thing, but ever since the incident four nights ago sleep had been turbulent at best. If he slept at all.

Beau.

Caleb.

He went one by one counting his friends, chanting their names in his head so as to make certain he didn’t miss a single one. He couldn’t bare it if anything bad happened to them because of him.

Caduceus.

Veth.

Jester-

Jester?

Fjord started out of his silent chanting.

Where was Jester?

Panicked, he shot his eyes around the dome in search for the little blue tiefling. He had already cast the spell on everyone else. But Jester was nowhere to be found.

Rising fear and logic had a short but heated struggle in Fjord’s head before he finally gave in to logic. None of the rest of his friends had been awakened, no alarms had tripped, he couldn’t hear anything that would suggest a second invasion. But even so… where was she?

Tiptoeing as softly as possible over his sleeping comrades, the half-orc left the dome, endeavoring to not wake his compatriots in the process.

“Jester..” He called softly into the bowels of the ship. “Jester!”  Fjord found it difficult to shout and whisper at the same time. He continued to look, but with each passing minute his anxiety grew. Eventually he decided to abandon the lower decks all together and check topside. At least there might be more light to see by up there.

Sure enough, as soon as Fjord reached the top of the creaking wooden steps to the main deck of the ship, there he could see the form of Jester Lavorre in white under gown, tail twitching in the moonlight. She leaned against the railing, staring out at the sea, the breeze playing with her dark hair. Fjord let out a sigh of relief.

“Jester, there you are! Thank gods. What are you doing here?”

“Nothing…” came her slow reply. She didn’t turn to face him. “Just looking.”

Fjord heard something that could have been a sniffle, but that didn’t make any sense to him so he attempted to ignore it. Instead he took a deep breath and moved to stand next to Jester at the ships railing. They stood in silence for a heartbeat, watching the moon play on the waves, before he remembered his initial reason for finding the young blue woman. A little smirk crept onto his lips as he reached up and pated Jester’s head.

“Water Breathing…!” He declared playfully. “Now you should be good for the next 24 hours. Although it probably took me a good five minutes to find you so from now on you have to wait five minutes after the others. Which is really quite inconvenient for me you know since I should really be sleeping at this time of night…” Fjord sniffed and watched Jester letting his idle attempts at chatter to fade. His puffed up chest deflated the longer he watched her, his concern growing by the second.  

“How long has it been since you’ve slept, Fjord?” She finally turned to look him in the eyes, face small and serious.

Gods. The moonlight did beautiful things to her eyes.

“Like, really slept?” She emphasized with a slight pout.

Fjord was momentarily stunned, both by the ethereal image of the woman before him and by her sudden and direct question.

“Er.. uh. I was sleeping earlier tonight…! But you know, Yasha snores and…” He shifted uncomfortably. “Well you don’t seem to have much room to talk. How long have you been up here?”

“We’re not talking about me, Fjord, we’re talking about you!” She called him on his bluff with an adorable scowl. Her expression softened and she took a deep breath before continuing. “You haven’t slept through the night at all since then, have you?” It was phrased as a question, but Jester said it as a statement of fact.

Fjord swallowed. She wasn’t wrong.

“I heard you screaming… Was it nightmares again? From Uk’otoa?” She continued in a softer voice, eyes trained on the glistening dark waves off the side of the ship once again.

“Well now- I didn’t scream-” Fjord quickly defended his pride. If he had screamed for real he surely would have woken up the rest of his friends who were sleeping in such close proximity to him. But that wasn’t why he felt the need to correct her…

“Okay, okay! But you know what I meant.” The blue tiefling gesticulated grandly and rolled her eyes, voice pitching higher in impatient annoyance. Fjord always secretly thought it adorable when she got exasperated, but somehow the experience was markedly less fun when it was directed at him.

She was trying to hide her worry behind a veneer of something like cold aloofness, but no matter how high in the air she stuck her button nose, he could still see her knuckles white in the moonlight as they interlaced tightly, resting on the railing.

“Jester…” He sighed. “I’m alright. Really.”

“Stop telling me you’re okay! Like nothing happened!” She rounded back on him, hair whipping around her, horns glinting in the starry light. Violet eyes watery. “Because it did Fjord!” He could now see the purple tinges around her eyes and nose.

Had she been…? Oh gods.

“You died!” Jester’s voice hitched on the word died. “And… And I couldn’t do anything.”

Jester had turned her face away from Fjord, head down and bangs covering her eyes. Oh gods… It seemed to Fjord that she had been crying, or something very close. He couldn’t fathom why, but she seemed to be aiming all of her emotion at him. It wasn’t as if she—

Even so he wanted to support her… not that he really knew how.

Fjord put a tentative hand on her arm. “Jester, you look sad…” That sentence had made sense in his head until he heard it out loud. The half-orc silently cursed himself as he scrambled to find better words despite his bleary sleep deprived mind. “Ehr! What I mean to say is- Why are you upset about that?”

“Because,” Fjord couldn’t breathe when she looked at him this time. “I care about you!” She choked back a tiny sob. Little streams of water now freely fell down her soft cheeks.

“Jester-”

“I promised you before that I would heal you when you were hurting- if Uk’otoa hurt you. But when you needed me.. I couldn’t get to you! I-I let you die, Fjord.” Jester aggressively wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “And I couldn’t even heal you…!” The girl finally gave in to her tears and stopped speaking.

Fjord once again felt as though there were a sword in his chest. How was it—how could it possibly be—that seeing Jester cry made Fjord almost wish the that he actually had been stabbed again, instead of having to see her like this. He would do anything to make her feel better. Take a sword. Fight a sea god… Hold her?

Somehow that one seemed harder than the others. More terrifying.

“Hey, hey…!” Fjord consoled the crying Jester softly. He cupped her face with his hands almost instinctively, and tried to wipe the tears from her purple flushed cheeks.

Her face fit so neatly in his hands. Her skin was soft and warm to the touch. His heart hiccupped in his chest, but he pressed it down. She was more important than his feelings right now.

“Jester listen to me—” She looked up at him, lips quivering, still sniffling violently. “It’s okay. You did your best! You always have. And we’re alright.”

Jester stopped sniffling for a moment, caught off guard by his word choice. She wasn’t the only one, but Fjord didn’t exactly have the time to truly contemplate the implications of it. First he had to help her. He could have a self-chastising session later.

“You do so much for me all the time,” he couldn’t help but chuckle fondly, “it’s alright if you share that burden every now and then.”

“You’re not a burden Fjord!—” Jester tried to protest, but he kept going.

“Think about it. Caduceus was there to help you.” He thought about that for a second before adding, “Help me. Either way, you’ve never let me down in any way Jester. What happened to me wasn’t your fault.”

The tiefling girls violet eyes began to glisten with water once more. “But-!”

“No buts!” Fjord interjected sternly, a finger out in front of her face. Contemplatively he studied her face, subconsciously noting every freckle. “We’re in this together, you and I. We’ve always been a team, yeah?”

With a hesitant hum she nodded in agreement.

“But we’re not alone either. We have friends that care about us support us too. Hells, I have this past that I’ve been trying so hard to get rid of that I just can’t seem to shake! But that’s not your fault. We’re not alone in this. We have the rest of the Nein to fall back on… So don’t be sad about not healing me this time, okay?”

Heaving a heavy sigh Jester consented. “…Okay.”

“Okay.” Fjord smiled fondly at her, hands still holding her cheeks.

“But Fjord,” a small blue hand came up and rested on top of Fjord’s calloused green one. “Are you sure you’re really okay? That you’ll be okay?”

Bless her, her expression was still filled with concern. For him.

The man let out a troubled sigh. “I’m, sure I will be. With time.”

“And sleep…!” Jester giggled softly through her drying tears.

“And sleep.” Fjord agreed.

The two continued to share a look, hands touching still, hair and clothes tugged on by the sea breeze, eyes locked. What in Exandria had Fjord ever done to deserve someone like the young lady before him who would worry about him? Butterflies began to crawl their way up his gullet, and he became instantly aware of their rather intimate position.

“Ehem!” The half orc cleared his throat as he removed his hands from Jester. “Well, eh, we better be getting back below decks, yeah? Sleep, and all that.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah!” She emphatically agreed, rubbing at her face in an attempt to clear it. “It would be really bad if the others woke up to like, poop or something, and saw that we were missing. I bet they’d be like, super worried.” Finally she smiled. Fjord smiled too.

“Probably! I know I w—” He caught himself. That had been too close for comfort. Moonlight glowed softly on Jester’s skin. The waves were lapping at the ship rhythmically, above the stars were twinkling.

The ensuing internal struggle last only a second or two but felt to Fjord like ages. Half of him yearned to press his lips to hers. But the other half knew that no matter how he may have felt, this wasn’t the time. He wasn’t ready. He hadn’t even been brave enough to even hold her properly. Not yet.

In compromise, Fjord leaned forward and planted a small kiss at the top of Jester’s forehead. “Thank you, for your concern. It means a lot to me. But you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about me anymore. I’ll be fine.”

The young woman’s cheeks turned a shade darker. She looked like she was searching for the right thing to say, but by the time she had found it Fjord was already entering the depths of the ship.

Despite the freshness of the incident only days before, tonight Fjord knew he would sleep.  

[sleepless-in-starbucks]

Hewo! I know I was literally just hear but like, I like your inbox soooooooo yeh. ALSO you introduced me to my new obsession *coughAnalosleepcough* and that deserves some recognition or whatever. So uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, meep. quack quack. moo. mooove bitch get out the way. (in a john cena voice) ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT. I'm feeling very memey right now. Send help. Or send me Analosleep fics\headcanons. Whatever works to make sure I don't die. I'm sowwy I have done this (Not really tho)

oh,,,, so you want analosleep do you,,,, :3

a dangerous thing to say to an idle Me, Hewo…. a dangerous thing….

(warnings for sleep deprivation, self-deprecation specifically around feeling things/feeling sad, referenced nightmares + isolation, panic attack, happy ending ofc; tagging @emo-disaster for the fic idea + the fact that it’s their ot3 I’m legally obligated to tag ‘em)

~~

When Logan shot up in bed in the dead of night, his first instinct was to slam a hand over his mouth.

Of course, this seemed to be a poor choice on his part- it was hard to breathe through sobs when you couldn’t pull in the air through your mouth, as sobbing often demanded you do- but in reality, it was the most logical one. It was the only way to muffle his sobs; aka, it was the only way to make sure he didn’t wake up his partners. They were cuddled against him, Virgil simply curling into his side whereas Remy had their arm through over his midsection. Though both were snoring softly, Logan knew that, if he wasn’t very careful, they’d be awake soon enough. Insomnia and poor sleeping habits made both of them into very light sleepers.

Which made the whole ‘not waking them as he fell apart’ thing a little difficult.

Slowly, Logan lifted Remy’s arm off of himself, tucking it against his partner’s side. Remy stirred at the movement, and Logan immediately froze, holding his breath as well as he could until Remy seemed to have settled back down.

He pushed himself up, careful not the creak the mattress too much as he quietly jumped over Remy. He hit the ground quietly enough, the result of having pulled this move off many times for happier reasons- usually to escape Remy trying to keep him in bed all day (and often being immediately caught a moment later by Virgil) or to get out so he could make a surprise breakfast for his partners. Using it in such unpleasant circumstances was grim, but if it worked…

Logan was careful as he crept out of the bedroom, well aware of exactly where the hazards and noisy spots were. He moved towards the dresser first, claiming his glasses before moving towards his escape. The door was tricky- it always squealed halfway through opening. Even opening it as little as possible, it still whined, and Logan winced, quickly turning back towards the bed to see if either of his loves had awakened.

Remy remained on their side, motionless and facing away from him, but Virgil had moved, face scrunched up as he reached out for the warmth that had left when Logan did, but his eyes thankfully still closed. Logan waited in the doorway as he watched Virgil grope about, letting out a small breath of relief when he found Remy’s arm and tugged them closer. With luck, he’d assume that Remy was Logan and fall back asleep, paying no mind to the lack of a third body in their shared bed.

Feeling secure in a successful escape, Logan slipped fully out of the bedroom, padding down the hallway towards the kitchen. He wiped impatiently at the drying tear tracks on his cheeks, happy that, at the very least, his sobbing had sorted itself out.

All he had to do now was get a drink of water, wash his face, take a breath, and go back to bed, pretending like nothing happened. Because that was the truth of the matter- nothing had happened! Nothing at all! It had just been some stupid nightmare- hell, was it even bad enough to be called a nightmare? Logan really didn’t think so.

After all, it had been bland- just him, him in some void of a place, all alone. Which was fine, what did he care, the only thing that even mattered a little was the odd lingering feeling dream-him had, the feeling that earlier he hadn’t been alone, that earlier Virgil and Remy had been there, but they were gone by the time the dream started, gone because they didn’t want to be there, gone because they didn’t want to be with Logan, gone because they had left him because they didn’t want him couldn’t deal with him couldn’t be with someone they didn’t love-

Logan stopped in the doorway to the kitchen, hand coming up to his mouth again as another sob tried to bubble out- this time not to muffle himself (the kitchen was down the hall from the bedroom, he was plenty far, he hoped) so much as to stop the sobbing before it could start up again.

Because it was pointless, really, to be crying over some stupid dream that wasn’t even real, that he knew wasn’t real and therefore didn’t matter to him at all, that didn’t mean anything because it was just. a. dream.

His body, however, wasn’t getting the message, and his attempts to stop his sobs were failing. All he could manage was keeping them quiet, even as he leaned against the kitchen doorway and slid down it, hitting the floor not-so-gently as he continued to remind himself why this all was just stupid.

Stupid, pointless, not even real, just a dream, get over yourself, even if it was real you could deal with it, this is stupid, whiny, emotional, this is-

“Honey?”

Logan froze at the sound of his partner’s voice. Why were they awake? He had been so careful- and they needed their sleep, why would they have come after him-

Remy was already dropping down to crouch next to him. They looked odd like this- hair messy instead of carefully arranged, sunglasses no where in sight, wearing baggy shirt and shorts instead of their fitting jacket and jeans- but they also looked soft, so Logan didn’t mind. At least, they normally looked soft- right now, forehead creased, eyes worried, they looked unhappy, and Logan hated that.

Logan opened his mouth to speak, but a sob came out instead, and even though he slapped his hand over his mouth as soon as it slipped out Remy had still heard it, their eyes only going wider in worry. They reached out, placing their hands on Logan’s shoulders. When he didn’t react, they started moving their hands over his arms, grounding, comforting, familiar.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, shh, you’re okay, I’m here, you’re safe, you’re okay, darling it’s alright, you’re alright.”

“Why are you awake?” Logan managed to ask, this time successfully stifling the sob that tried to slip out instead. There were still tears running down his face, yes, but it was dark- he could probably convince Remy it was just a trick of the light, convince them that Logan was fine, that they could go back to bed and Logan would be there soon enough, completely fine, as if nothing had happened (because, in Logan’s mind, nothing had).

“I woke up when you opened the door.” Remy answered, still running their hands over Logan’s arms soothingly. “Virgil did too. I thought you were just going to get water, but he said you looked upset.”

“I’m fine.”

Remy chuckled, but they sounded pained. “Babes, you’re crying on the kitchen floor at two am in the morning. This isn’t fine.”

“I’ll be fine.” Logan corrected. “You should- you can go back to bed, I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Then I can wait a moment so that we can go back to bed together.” Remy told him, one hand moving from Logan’s arm to cup his cheek, thumb wiping away some of his tears. “I know how you react to these things, love, and I’m not going to leave you alone to repress and ignore your problems away.”

“Go to bed, I’ll be fine.” Logan repeated, turning his head away from Remy and the hand cupping his cheek. He closed his eyes, as if pressing them shut would stop the flow of tears, would make Remy be sleeping again, would put everything back to a few minutes ago when everything- as far as his partners were aware- was fine, would make it so neither of them had to deal with him now, deal with him like this.

And that was the really ugly part of all this, the reason why he couldn’t just shake the thought, shake the stupid nightmare that wasn’t real- because it could be real, so easily, so easy that Logan was surprised it wasn’t real already, because his partners must have made some mistake when they picked him and every day that passed that they didn’t undo it was a miracle to him.

Because they were so- so feeling, Remy so lively and real and carefree, and Virgil may often be stuck in the throes of his anxiety but when he wasn’t he was so alive and bright and happy in his own way it was nearly infectious, and then there was Logan, Logan who had as many feelings as a worm and smushed them all down to the point they barely existed anyways, until all he was was stupid pointless outbursts and annoyance and waking up his partners who needed to sleep and not worry about him or his stupid fake unrealistic problems that came in the form of night time terrors and sobs he just couldn’t silence-

“-gan? Logan, I need you to breathe for me.”

Breathe? Why did he need to breathe? Wasn’t he already breathing? Why was Virgil (and when did Virgil get here?) asking him to breathe when he was already-

Oh.

He wasn’t breathing.

That was why.

He tried to do as Virgil asked, tried to take a breath in (since apparently at some point he had stopped), but it got stuck halfway up his throat, choking him instead. He bent over as he coughed, someone squeezing his hand reassuringly as he did so, Virgil still in front of him. Virgil took Logan’s free hand and pressed it against his chest.

“Breathe.” Virgil repeated, taking a deep breath as he spoke. Logan knew what he was doing- over-exaggerating his breaths so that Logan could follow them. Logan was more than grateful for the gesture.

It took a few minutes of Virgil coaching him through the breathing exercise and Remy- who Logan had finally identified as the one holding his hand- murmuring reassurances before Logan finally got his breathing under control. As soon as he did, Logan ducked his head, refusing to meet Virgil’s focused and earnest yet incredibly worried eyes any longer.

“Hey, Lo, can you look at me?”

Logan ignored Virgil’s polite ask. His boyfriend sighed before softly cupping Logan’s cheek. He didn’t force Logan to look up, however. “Can I see your pretty face, love?”

“Don’t want to.” Logan murmured, shaking his head minutely against Virgil’s palm.

“Alright.” Virgil responded easily, still cupping Logan’s cheek. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Logan said. “I’m fine.”

“You already tried that, hun.” Remy pointed out, words accusatory though his tone was only gentle. “And if I didn’t believe you before you had a panic attack, I’d definitely not believe you now.”

“I’ll be fine.” Logan said instead, well aware he was just repeating what he had told Remy earlier, hoping it would work this time. “I’ll be fine, just- you can just go back to bed, I’m sorry I woke you-”

“We’re not going back to bed until we know what’s wrong.” Virgil said, calmly but firmly. His hand remained against Logan’s cheek, thumb now rubbing a circle right beneath his eye. “And something’s pretty clearly wrong.”

“And whatever it is, you can tell us, sweetheart.” Remy added. “We won’t be angry, or upset, or anything. We just want to know what’s hurting you.”

“It’s stupid.” Logan told them bitterly.

Virgil clicked his tongue. “If it’s got you this worked up, it’s not stupid. And even if it were, I’d still want to hear it. We can’t help you til we know why you need help, starshine.”

Logan didn’t respond to that, allowing the conversation to be overtaken by silence. Remy and Virgil seemed to be alright with it, Virgil continuing to rub circles against Logan’s face and Remy continuing to ground him by squeezing his hand, neither of them showing any signs of stopping soon.

“…I had a dream.” Logan finally admitted after a good five minutes had passed, forced to accept that nothing he said would get his partners to simply give up on him (and a horribly illogical part of him spoke up too, saying this meant not escape but comfort, but Logan ignored that part). He cleared his throat. “A nightmare, actually.”

Both his partners made a noise of upset. “What was it about?” Virgil asked.

“Nothing, which is why it’s so stupid.” Logan lamented, angry at himself. “It was just me, sitting around doing nothing.”

“Is that all?” Virgil asked, gently prying, clearly unbelieving that there was nothing more to the nightmare.

“Yes!” Logan said, snapping, not at them but at the general idea of such a thing having brought him so low. “That was all- I was just there, minding my own business, alone, alone because-” Logan cut himself off, ignoring the lump that was starting to reform in his throat.

“Because what?” Remy pushed, quietly.

Logan swallowed. “Because-” He could say this, it wasn’t that hard, just the truth, “because you- you two had- you weren’t actually there I just knew that- that you had- you had left.”

Something that had just barely been fixed broke inside of Logan as he said that, and suddenly he was crying again, which really wasn’t making him feel any less stupid. Now, however, his partners were here, Virgil moving to hold Logan’s face with both his hands, gently wiping away the tears but not minding if he missed some; Remy’s grip moved from his hand to his waist, their arms wrapping around him and holding him comfortingly close.

“Shh, darling, handsome, honey-love, it’s okay, it’s alright.” Remy murmured, laying their forehead against the side of Logan’s head, a warm and real reminder that they were there. “No wonder you were upset, sweetness, I’d be upset too.”

“And it’s not stupid.” Virgil added, taking a moment to tuck Logan’s hair behind his ears so that Virgil could see his eyes. “Being left behind by people you care about is terrifying, Lo.”

“But it wasn’t real.” Logan protested, his voice raw and ugly from crying as he spoke. “It was just an illusion, a product of my mind, and you two are- you’re here, now, and not gone- yet- not gone and-”

“We’re not gone ever.” Virgil corrected. “You’re stuck with us forever.”

“I don’t know why…” Logan muttered, looking downwards, as if that would hide his comment.

“Because we love you, ya dork.” Remy said, voice light but sincere. “Because you’re cute and you make nerdy science jokes and have our favorite meals memorized even though you can’t cook and you’re the best at giving surprise cheek kisses and while it’s really stupid you’re always trying to be admirable and deal with your issues alone, which- like I said- is stupid, but sweet in theory.”

“Don’t want to bother you-”

“And you’re not.” Virgil cut him off, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You’re our very beloved boyfriend, Logan. If you’re hurting, we want to help you. You’re never bothering us, especially not over something like this.”

Logan didn’t speak for a moment, processing what his partners had told him. He almost wanted to come back with a lie, almost wanted to look at it and find that their words were false and empty, but he didn’t find that- it was late, they were all tired, and yet their voices were real and honest, in a way that couldn’t be faked ten minutes after awakening.

With a sigh, Logan leaned his head forward, Virgil immediately moving up so that Logan’s head hit his shoulder. “I’m sorry.” He mumbled.

“Don’t be.” Virgil told him, starting to run his fingers through Logan’s hair. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I was being illogical.”

“We all are sometimes, dearest.” Remy said soothingly.

Once more, silence fell upon the three of them, but it was more comfortable this time, Logan allowing himself to relax against both his partners as they held him. The nightmare was still playing in the background of his mind, but it didn’t hold as much sway over him now, the loneliness of the false memory nothing against the warmth of his reality.

“Should we relocate?” Virgil asked after a good five minutes had passed, still combing through Logan’s hair. Logan had started to lean more and more heavily against him, slowly but surely falling back into the embrace of sleep.

Logan nodded against Virgil’s shoulder, humming tiredly. Crying took too much effort.

Virgil just chuckled. “Babe, you wanna pick up our moonbeam?”

“Of course.” Remy said, quietly but happily. There was some shifting around Logan- part of which involved him removing his head from the crook of Virgil’s neck- before he was settled in Remy’s arms, his partner holding him close against their chest.

“No offense, babe, but you look worse than I do when I haven’t had my coffee.” Remy teased as they carried Logan back towards their room, Virgil following behind.

“Oh, don’t be mean to him.”

“I’m just saying!”

Logan hummed again and pushed himself closer to Remy. “Shhhh.”

“Aw, sleepy nerd.”

Virgil gently slapped their arm for that one, Remy chuckling soundlessly before leaning over and giving Virgil a kiss. “Love you too.”

Finally, they reached their bedroom once more, Virgil pulling Logan’s glasses off for him as Remy settled him down on the bed.

“And this time-” Remy  got on the bed as well, barely a second between them letting Logan go and them pulling him close against their chest once more, “you’re going to sleep until noon.”

“That’s too late.” Logan protested sleepily.

“And you’ve had a rough night.” Virgil said, climbing in behind Logan and wrapping his arms around both him and Remy. “You can have a little bit of sleeping in. As a treat.”

“That’s grammatically horrible.”

Virgil just laughed quietly and kissed the top of Logan’s head. “Go to sleep, nerd. Worry about my grammar in the morning.”

And, surrounded by the solid, real warmth of his partners who had no intentions of going anywhere, Logan did.

[et-lesailes]

i’ll help you // part two

PART ONE

pairing: michael weiss x reader

word count: 1508

summary: you and mike have finally achieved having a healthy and loving relationship.

themes: romance, angst

WARNINGS: mentions of drug use and death

taglist: @evanstush​, @tanyam93​, @bval-1​, @wonderwinchester​, @patzammit​, @rohaintahquil​, @deidrashouseofpain​, @sammyslonglostshoe​, @jadedhillon​, @bohemian-barbie​, @whysparker​, @sebastian-i-stan​, @sebabestianstan101​, @lille-kattunge​, @teller258316​, @peach-acid​, @allsortsofinterests​, @xoxabs88xox​, @heyiamthatbitch​, @cptn-sgrogers​, @heyyouwiththeassbutt​, @bangtan-serendipity​, @troublermalik​, @beardburnsupersoldiers​, @hannie-stark​, @bookish-shristi​, @kind-sober-fullydressed​, @whores4thor, @gingerninjaprincess16​, @straightforwardly​,  @denisemarieangelina​,  @frencchfries​, @xlanawriter​, @littlemoistcarrot​, @pottxrwolff​, @arianatheangelworld​, @ifuseekamyevans​, @southerngracela​​, @nsfwsebbie​, @rororo06​, @savemesteeb​, @raveviolet​

notes: I FINALLY DID THIS!!! get early access to my oneshots on patreon! graphic creds to @thewritingdoll​ ~

“C’mon, c’mon-- it’s a fuckin’ party, no more work talk. Get outta here with that bullshit. Have a fuckin’ drink, c’mon.” 

You rolled your eyes fondly upon hearing your boyfriend’s strong Boston accent, striding up to the bar of the house party and placing a hand on his shoulder, arching a brow. “But none for you, correct?” He scoffed and threw an arm around you, pulling you into his body. “The fuck do I need a drink for when my girl’s way more intoxicating?”

“Smooth.” You replied sarcastically, but couldn’t help but smile as you leaned into his hold. 

The past year had been rocky, to say the least. It usually was, recovering from addiction. There were times where you had been frustrated, angry, miserable-- you had even gone as far as to quit your job at Weiss & Danziger because seeing Mike high and fucked up when he consistently promised to quit was too much. The two of you broke up for a good month or so before you gave in, getting back together with him. You loved him. You had to accept that. And you had to be patient.

That didn’t mean the fights stopped. The second you thought he was improving, he’d be taking pills whenever he thought you weren’t looking. You even received concerned messages from his students who had seen him out at clubs or parties. You felt trapped. Besides for the drugs, he was an excellent boyfriend-- truly attentive, observant, and had no issues showing his admiration and love for you. He wouldn’t even look at other women, despite the countless drugged out, barely legal affairs from before showing up at his door. He loved you.

But he was struggling from a disease.

It took his literal death for him to finally, finally understand.

 You had been at your parents’ place for the weekend. You needed to get away, being around him was suffocating. The problem with dating a lawyer was that he knew just how to talk. He was manipulative without even trying. It was practically in his DNA; your own bedroom would turn into a goddamn courtroom. And so, understandably, a break was much needed.

He was depressed. Miserable. Terrified of losing you, but too stubborn and too deep into his addiction. You had been sitting at the dinner table when you received a phone call from the hospital informing you that Mike had overdosed and had quite literally been declared dead for three minutes before the paramedics had managed to revive him. 

You had rushed to the hospital-- to this day you were unsure how the hell you had made it there in one piece, considering your tears had been blurring your vision the entire time. You burst into the room only to see that he had been crying too, his face pale, his eyes bloodshot, and dark circles extending to his cheeks. The two of you stared at each other for a few moments before the waterworks began again, you screaming and bawling about how worried you were, him apologizing over and over again looking both frustrated and anguished at the same time.

“If you want me to stay, Mike,” you managed to finally sputter through your sobs, “you need to get help.”

And that he did. He was sent to rehab, and there he stayed for three months. For obvious reasons, it was horrible in the beginning. He was sick, angry, lashing out, depressed, suicidal-- but he was getting help, and so you stuck to your promise. You stayed. You were patient, and you were there for him when barely anyone else was. When he was finally released, it felt like a dream. He was finally wholly the man you had fallen for to begin with-- the man you would catch glimpses of those rare moments he wasn’t high, the man who was filled with love and compassion despite sometimes seeming so cold and calculating. Of course, he wasn’t perfect. There were times he was tempted to relapse, but you were there to talk sense into him. There were still fights, but every healthy couple had those. It finally felt like the two of you were in a real functioning relationship, and you could finally be wholeheartedly proud of the man you loved so much.

You convinced him to avoid parties for a while, which was difficult for him- he was an extroverted guy, and one of his ways of unwinding after a long day of work was spending quality time with people. Still, the temptation of alcohol and drugs was far too risky. 

Now that it had been four months since he had been released, the two of you were finally out at your first social gathering together in months. And he was doing wonderfully. He was still the same old Mike-- witty, loud, blunt, and a bit of a smart-ass, and you loved all of it. 

“You having fun, sweetheart?” he questioned, holding his arm around you as he gestured to the bar with his other hand. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” You shook your head with a smile; ever since he had become sober, you had also decided to stop drinking to help encourage him. “I’m good. And yes, I am having fun. It’s been forever since we’ve done this, it feels kinda good being around all these people again,” you remarked as you looked around at your friends. “Mm, it does, but if we’re bein’ perfectly honest I just wanna bring you back home and fuck you into tomorrow.” He replied bluntly, and you blinked before laughing loudly. “Michael! Please, can you be appropriate for at least five seconds?” you jokingly scolded, and he laughed as he pulled you into a rough hug, playfully shaking you around. “It’s all your fault, you’re just so damn pretty all the time I can't help but be aroused! Be ugly for once in your life, huh? That’s all I’m sayin’.”

You laughed as you let him jostle you about, wrapping your arms back around him to return the embrace. “Please. You’ve seen what I look like completely sleep deprived and bawling my eyes out like a little baby. You know perfectly well I’m not always pretty.” You teased- you were expecting some banter in return, just like there usually was with Mike, but instead he pulled back and looked down at you with a more serious expression. “Yeah. I have, and I was the reason for it. And I never, ever want to see it again, baby doll.” You blinked when you saw the sadness in his blue eyes, frowning lightly as you reached up to gently touch his beard. “Hey. I didn’t mean it like that, I was only kidding around. You make me happier and happier everyday, Mike, I’ve never felt so complete with someone. Honestly.”

He barely smiled but you could tell he was still somewhat melancholy. Rehab really had changed him; you noticed the lawyer expressed much more serious, sentimental and heartfelt emotions with you ever since he had been released, but you appreciated this. In the past, he had been a little too rational minded, only thinking of things in straight lines with no gray areas. “I just need you to know I love you.” He mumbled, taking your hands in his. “And I don’t think I could ever stop apologizing for everything I’ve done to you. And even then, a million apologies wouldn’t be enough.”

“But you learned from your mistakes,” you gently reassured him, squeezing his hands, “and you were able to be brave and take the step needed to make our relationship work. I knew I loved you for a reason, Mike, and it’s because of this. You’re resilient and you’re compassionate. You’re a lawyer because you care about standing up for what’s right, and you’re my boyfriend because you care about me.” You leaned upwards to kiss him gently, rubbing his fingers with yours. “So thank you. For working so hard and fighting your addiction. I love you so much.”

When you pulled back, his eyes were already somewhat wet. You smiled, shaking your head to yourself as you reached up to caress his cheek with your thumb. “Hey, mister, don’t you dare fucking cry because you know I will too…”

He chuckled lowly and suddenly pulled you into a tight hug. “Christ, I don’t even know who the fuck I am anymore. Cryin’ at a fuckin’ party like some sorority chick who drank too much Franzia. Why do you even put up with me?”

“Didn’t I just give you that spiel? Gosh, Mike, do you even listen to me?” you joked, though hugged him back just as tight, sighing in content. “Maybe we’re both nearing our limits with the whole party scene, because going back home and cuddling up in bed and watching a movie sounds… way better right now.”

“Agreed.” He scoffed, pulling back though keeping one arm around you as he looked around. “Fuck this place. C’mon baby, let’s head back home.”

[starstruck-xavier]

[6] 5 Times Someone Stopped Virgil From Self-Harming and 1 Time He Stopped Himself

it’s the final big big chapter!! the support i’ve had on this fic, both on tumblr and ao3 has been whoaaa and i’m so so glad people are enjoying it <33 this is the last update, i didn’t intend for the chapter to get this long but it’s actually- longer than the rest of the fic combined so ahdgjfhgdfg get ready for a long read

1 - Logan || 2 - Roman || 3 - Patton || 4 - Janus || 5 - Remus || [6 - Virgil]

ao3 || wattpad || fanfiction masterpost

words for this chapter: 4277 ships: platonic dukexiety & anxceit & prinxiety & analogical, queerplatonic moxiety warnings: self-harm (cutting, bruising), injury, one brief mention of (not-real) spiders, scars, anxiety, brief mentions of alcohol towards the end

One tiny thing can really set a lot of regrettable decisions into action.

It doesn’t quite matter what happened, just that Virgil is desperately trying to pry open this disposable shaving razor to alleviate some of the pressure inside his veins that’s building exponentially by the second. He’s not sure if he should be frustrated or happy that it’s next to impossible to dismantle the thing; it’s almost like the manufacturers don’t want people to take the blades out and hurt themselves or others or something.

He leans his forearms against the bathroom sink and lets out a shaky breath, his tears escaping with it. This is stupid, he tells himself in one fleeting moment of reasoning, but he suddenly comes quite close to being able to open the godforsaken razor and any rationale is completely lost on him.

His five other roommates are also home, each probably doing their own thing. Virgil could always go to one of them and see if he could find someone who’s feeling okay enough to help him feel okay too, or just ask for a hug, or even just to sit in the same room as them, because then he at least has a safeguard if he were to give into the urge and try to cut again. However, clouds swirl around inside his skull, blocking his vision, rainfall trickling out of his eyes, and now - now he almost wants to do this, wants to feel the pain.

The now freed piece of metal shines with the reflected light of the ceiling lamp above him. Something’s stopping him from making the first cut, though, like an invisible force. Virgil’s mind is taken back to his conversation with Remus that had started with him grabbing his arm to stop him from bruising his collarbones with his pencil. He almost feels like Remus is stopping him from doing this, too, even though he’s not in the room, or probably even aware of what Virgil’s doing. What would Remus think or say if he could see him right now? Virgil recalls the events of the night Remus found out about his habit like it was only yesterday.

Virgil winces and clutches his shoulder as the sting subsides at an agonisingly slow rate. He always regrets this immediately after it happens, now that the initial frustration has been replaced by an overwhelming of pain that has tears pricking at his eyes, which momentarily scrunch shut at the feeling of new bruises forming. Soon there’ll be a new blossoming of them to go with the others, in varying stages of healing, some purply-blue, some with a hint of yellowy-green. It doesn’t help that they contrast so well with his skin.

He trudges out of his room to find an ice pack; he may as well, he tells himself. Besides, he wanted a glass of water anyway. So, he eventually enters the dark kitchen and crouches down, beginning to rummage around in the freezer (with difficulty as he didn’t want to turn on a light and blind himself) until a voice suddenly startles him.

“Virge, is that you?" It sounds like Remus - of course he’d be up late at night too. Virgil doesn’t have time to hum in response before a bright light stings at his eyelids and he brings his hands up to rub at them. Remus’ hand places itself on the small of Virgil’s back. "What are you looking for in there?”

"Ice pack." He replies hoarsely, the reminder that comes with saying it aloud making him aware again of how much it hurts.

Suddenly, he’s being manoeuvred up to a standing position and then lifted onto the kitchen counter with ease. At last his eyes begin to adjust to the light; the sight of Remus creating a makeshift ice pack with ice cubes and a small dish towel comes into focus. He seems to be examining the bruises peeking out from underneath Virgil’s shirt as he pulls the hair tie from his hair and fastens the ice inside the towel. Then, he sets the ice pack down next to Virgil on the counter and moves to touch the bottom hem of Virgil’s shirt.

"May I?" He asks with a hint of playfulness; Virgil rolls his eyes with a smile but nods, lifting his arms to allow Remus to remove his shirt and get a better look at the bruises. His face immediately falls to one of concern and he winces empathetically. "What happened here, emo?”

Virgil sighs. "It’s about time I tell you, but… don’t laugh when I say it?" He starts to fidget with his hands, but the way Remus’ face softens almost puts him at ease again.

"I would never, I promise. I'm worried about you, what’s going on?”

"Well… they’re self-inflicted.”

Remembering how Remus grew quiet and looked at him with such sadness in his eyes as he pressed the ice pack to the newest bruises, it breaks Virgil’s heart just a little more than it already feels. He’d hate to see his friend look at him that way again, especially if it’s while treating cuts like the ones he’s about to make.

Then, all of a sudden he feels a tiny bout of tiredness coming on. Are these emotions coming from a lack of sleep? His and Janus’ conversation comes to mind - ‘I suppose me telling you that you look tired wouldn’t help with those anxious feelings, hmm?’. Virgil reluctantly looks up at the mirror; he does appear exhausted. The shadows under his eyes, even without makeup, are starting to settle into weary, sleep-deprived lines sinking into his skin, and the redness of his eyes accompanied by the dampness of his cheeks only adds to that image. The sorry sight of his face only spurs more tears to fall.

Another memory swims to the front of his mind amongst the clouds and rainfall inside his skull - the one where Janus first started to point out that perhaps he’s not letting himself rest enough.

They’re both huddled together in the back of the library, Janus working on his history essay and Virgil doing research on various artists. The problem with researching artists, though, is that sometimes it’s extremely difficult to find any biographical information that doesn’t come from one of the sources he’s been specifically instructed not to use, and so he’s been at this task since late last night with only sporadic naps dotted throughout time since. He’s had no deep sleep at all and now that’s what his body is crying out for, pulling his head down to rest on the table and just close his eyes for a few minutes.

Before he knows what’s happening, though, he’s being prodded out of his slumber.

“Virgil, c’mon, wake up.” Janus is talking quietly into his ear and pulling at his shoulders to get him to sit up. "I was letting you sleep, but they said if you’re not gonna keep working we have to leave. Let’s go back to the dorms, okay?”

"Hmm?" Blinking slowly as the sticky remnants of sleep still hold onto him with its sweet promise of exhaustion relief, Virgil lifts his head to sit up and winces at the stiffness of his neck. "Did I fall asleep?" But Janus doesn’t answer straight away, instead busying himself with packing up Virgil’s things for him. Virgil tries a different question, "How long?”

Janus slings both of their backpacks over his shoulder and stands, offering a hand to Virgil. "Around half an hour. Did you get any sleep last night?”

Even though they both already know the answer, Virgil takes a few seconds to decide whether or not he should tell the truth, and Janus watches him expectantly as they both make their way out of the library together. Just as they pass through the automatic doors, with the air conditioning just above them ruffling at his hair, Virgil finally answers. "I was doing art research.”

"That’s one way of saying no.” Janus huffs, but there’s a softness to his face that reminds Virgil of the caring attitude his friend always has towards him. "You’re going to get a full night’s rest in preparation for tomorrow’s classes, alright? Falling asleep in the library is one thing, but you’ll never hear the end of it if you fall asleep in the lecture hall.”

Virgil smiles sleepily, nodding along to Janus’ words. "Okay, if you insist.”

He would’ve been lying if he’d told Janus he didn’t feel much more well-rested the next day. He remembers feeling more emotionally stable too, and concludes that if he was an emotional mess before, it must’ve been from the lack of sleep. Now, as he watches the disheveled man in the mirror, shaking and quietly crying with irregular, hitched breaths, a passing thought that the exhaustion may be just why he’s about to do this terrible thing crosses his mind, though the contents of the thought are hard to make out as the water in his skull is growing murky.

However, if all of these emotions and urges to just do it already are polluting the water, the spontaneous thought of Patton is a water filter, beginning to clean out all the dirt and murkiness clogging up his ability to think straight. Patton, the one who always offers his support when people are feeling down even though oftentimes he needs that comfort just as much, the one who kisses Virgil on the forehead every morning, the reason why he leaves his room in the first place on days with an empty schedule.

The one who always reminds Virgil of just why he tries not to do this kind of thing anymore.

"Oh, Virge, look at the sky!” Patton points up to the sky with one hand and squeezes Virgil’s hand with the other, beaming excitedly at the little drops of snow that fall down to coat the grass at the park they’re walking through. "There’s snow-way I would’ve expected that in a place like this.”

Virgil lets himself laugh at the pun, his days of groaning at the word-play to shield his amusement left behind. "This is unexpected for Florida." He muses, watching as the green grass starts to become a sheet of white rather rapidly. Patton shivers just a little beside him; even though he’s wearing his cat hoodie, the material isn’t the most insulating. "Are you cold?” Virgil lets go of Patton’s hand, just to take off his own hoodie and offer it to his partner. "You can wear this over your hoodie, I don’t want you to get cold.”

Patton takes the hoodie and smiles as he feels the warmth of the inside of it, but still glances over at Virgil’s short sleeves worriedly. "Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

"Yeah, it’s alright, Pat. Besides, you have a singing part for your music class this week. You need your voice intact more than I do, so let’s make sure you don’t get sick.”

That logic isn’t incredibly easy to argue with, Patton must admit, so he gives in and pulls the purple hoodie sleeves over his own grey ones. "Okay, if you’re sure." He still takes Virgil’s hand in his own so that they can share the warmth a little more as they walk through the park.

Eventually they both end up standing together underneath a large tree that hasn’t lost its leaves yet, creating a natural shelter for them to avoid getting more snow in their hair. All the while, they’re making easy conversation and playing off of each other’s comments like usual, until Patton takes Virgil’s warm hands into his own and grows quiet. Virgil’s about to ask what’s wrong, but the sudden embrace that Patton pulls him into makes his breath escape him. While the hoodies feel cold against his skin because of the weather, Virgil can hear Patton’s heartbeat and it fills him with warmth, along with the sensation of his partner’s breath fanning out over his neck in regular intervals. Then, Patton starts to sway just slightly, from side to side, akin to rocking a baby to sleep, a sign that this isn’t some ordinary hug in a passing moment - this one’s emotional, soaked with feeling.

It takes a few moments for Virgil to put the pieces together. He’d actually forgotten about the partially faded lines that litter his arms, not thinking anything of it when he took off his hoodie, but then remembers that he’s never really told anyone about it, only assuming that people know from when they see him wearing short sleeves and don’t comment on it. Considering how Patton had held his hands, he must’ve seen.

The hug drags on for some time, but then Patton pulls back, looking just a little teary-eyed. Virgil intertwines his fingers with Patton’s and gazes warmly into his eyes. "Hey, it’s okay. I— those scars are old, I don’t do that anymore. I promise.”

A short silence settles over them both until Patton holds out his pinkie. "Pinkie promise?”

"Pinkie promise.”

Thinking about that, even if Virgil has created new scars since in moments like this one, something about the image of Patton’s upset expression makes him want to throw the blades away, go do something else. He can’t hurt his partner like that.

Even so, Virgil can’t help but think of Roman and Logan, the two roommates he’s yet to reminisce about as he continues to fiddle with the piece of metal, not quite letting go yet. Why can’t he let go? A quick mental assessment of himself just shows that the urges still haven’t passed - this is getting tiring, he thinks to himself. Though, if he were to think about it in a more optimistic light, these reasons and memories he keeps thinking about are still clearing away the water in his head, still slowly dripping out of his eyes but less muddy and opaque.

After a one-night hospital stay to fix up Virgil’s broken ankle, Roman was the one who’d volunteered to collect him, aware that having everyone there all at once would overwhelm their injured friend. So, when Virgil gazes passively at the cast on his ankle as he sits on the edge of the hospital bed, still a little out of it from the intense painkillers he’s been on, he almost doesn’t register the presence of Roman finally walking into the room, but when he does, a small blossoming of happiness is felt in his heart.

"Hey there, Thundercloud.” Roman speaks with a soft tone, crouching in front of the bed so that they can wrap their arms around each other, Virgil missing those warm hugs and touches, Roman just happy to see that Virgil’s not in so much pain anymore. He’s not sure if he can get the memory of that injury, the look of it, the screams, out of his head. "You can come home now. I've brought you a change of clothes, okay?”

It does take some effort to get Virgil into his clothes, both with the cast and his hazy state, but luckily Roman had thought ahead and brought only loose clothes that would provide minimal trouble. Then, the next thing that Virgil’s processing is Roman’s smooth voice, filling him in on how everyone’s been since he got admitted to the hospital, accompanied by the click of the crutches that help him along down the hospital halls, and then the rain-stained streets.

The rest of the day also goes by quite fuzzily, with everyone else greeting him at the door, giving him hugs, then allowing him to rest when they notice how his responses and movements are still slow with fatigue. Part of him still hasn’t even processed that he has a broken ankle.

It’s just a couple of days later, when he’s relaxing in Roman’s arms on the couch with hands carding through his hair, that it finally hits him. He’s been crying fairly often since coming home, mostly from the pain that takes a while to go away before the prescription painkillers kick in and also the slight drowsiness and general loopy feelings that come as side-effects to the medication. So, when his breathing suddenly hitches and the tears start to fall from his eyes, he hears Roman coo quietly and feels him move one hand away from his hair to rest on his cheek.

"What’s the matter, Virgil?”

Virgil looks up at Roman’s soft expression and barely holds back a sob as his anxiety starts to build, clutching at his heart. "What if I can’t dance again?”

Roman’s face also grows anxious, but just for a moment before it morphs into a sad smile. "The doctor said that if you follow his instructions, it’s entirely possible for you to recover. And you’re doing wonderfully at that, aren’t you?” Virgil nods, sniffling as he spares a glance at his cast, covered in signatures and messages from his friends, even some from the people in his dance and sports classes. "You’ll be dancing with us again in no time. Just remember to avoid breaking any more bones in the future, yes?”

Despite the tears that won’t stop flowing for a while after this, possibly for hours, Virgil nods with a quiet laugh. "I will.”

Part of that promise to not injure himself again would include avoiding working himself to exhaustion and not attempting the more dangerous moves while he’s tired, which he’s definitely been working on (even though Roman had to bring him home way later than they were intending to stay out earlier this week, but it’s an improvement from the past). Now, on some days, Virgil can forget he ever had a broken bone in the first place with how enthusiastic he is to hit the track field and the dance studio again, returning to his athletic activities again and again like clockwork. It took all the support from his friends, especially Roman, to bring him to this point.

And, at last, the thought of Logan swims into Virgil’s head and everything becomes just a little clearer, almost back to the way it should be. His heart rate has slowed to a regular kind of calm at this point and he still hasn’t made any cuts, even after standing here for so, so long, but it may just be one last memory involving Logan that could make him put the blade down. In fact, when he recalls that memory, the setting doesn’t even change. He’s still here. The only thing that’s different is the state of his arms.

Blood. Blood, everywhere, staining the perfectly white sink and draining out of him along with his focus on reality; not a life-threatening amount, but certainly enough to freak himself out a little. So, when Logan enters the bathroom and physically startles at the sight, Virgil lets himself be guided by him, lets him clean up the blood, rub stinging alcohol into his wounds and bandage up his arms. Still a little hazy and not fully processing what he’s done, his voice just carries itself through the air, simply delivered if not with a delay when Logan tries to ground him by asking him questions.

The next moment he can really ground himself in is when he finds himself in Logan’s bed, his friend’s arm draped loosely over his waist from behind, touching gently at the bandages. And while Virgil can’t see Logan’s face, he can hear the sounds of crying as clear as day.

Crying? At this point in their friendship, Virgil’s never seen Logan looking extremely emotionally charged, never mind crying, so he tries to shuffle his body to look at Logan but he’s stopped by another hand in his hair, stroking through it, making Virgil stay still.

Eventually, though, Virgil finds his voice returning enough for him to speak. "Are you okay?" He asks the wall just a short distance away from his nose, and Logan breathes a laugh through a quiet string of sobs.

"That question should be directed to you, not me." His voice sounds hoarse and wavers with his words, but then Virgil hears him attempting to take a deep breath. "You’d been in the bathroom for so long, I was just going to check up on you, and…” Logan sighs shakily. "Why do you do it?”

It takes a moment for Virgil to think about it before he can respond. Why does he do it? "I… I just— sometimes I get really anxious, too anxious, and the pain… it stops my brain from floating away. Keeps me grounded. I also feel like I deserve it for having a messed up brain.”

He can really imagine Logan’s face, concerned, upset as the arm around his waist moves to Virgil’s face, prompting him to move from his side to his back so they can make eye contact. “Virgil, you don’t deserve any of the harm you bring upon yourself. There are much better ways to keep yourself grounded when you’re anxious too, just… please, try not to give into the urges to hurt yourself if they arise again. You’re really strong, you know that?" By this point, Logan’s tears are flowing freely down his face, and at some point Virgil had begun to cry too, but there’s no shame coming from either of them. Virgil nods and snivels, almost sobbing as Logan lets one of his rarer, genuine smiles show. “I'll always be here for you. I don’t care what I may be in the middle of, or what time it is, whether it’s day or night, even if I'm in the middle of a class, just tell me if you’re ever wanting to cut again and I'll give you whatever it is you need to calm down.”

Virgil just looks into Logan’s eyes for a sweet moment, then reaches up to wrap his bandaged arms around him, the two of them holding each other close for eternities. "I will. I promise, Logan, I will.”

The water is perfectly clear.

Now simply reduced to tired, breathy sobs, Virgil throws his blades into the toilet along with the other smaller parts of the razor and flushes them away, out of his reach forever. The simple motions feel unexpectedly freeing and empowering, knowing that this is the first time he’s been able to stop himself, all by himself. That’s not stopping the tears, though, and Virgil remembers Logan’s words: ‘I'll always be here for you’.

After calming himself down enough to leave the bathroom, he quietly shuffles down the hall and into the open-plan common room-combined-kitchen space, where all of his friends are dispersed about. Roman and Remus are arguing over some board game on the floor while Logan moderates the discussion from the couch with the rules booklet in his hands, and Patton and Janus are talking and sharing wine in the kitchen. Upon seeing Virgil walk in, completely dishevelled, hair fallen in his bloodshot eyes and tears still not dried, the twins share a concerned look and are about to stand and ask if he’s okay, but Virgil just gives them a teary smile and walks over to the couch, nudging Logan’s arms up so he can sit in his lap with the arms holding the booklet looped around him.

"Are you okay, Virgil?” Logan looks a little surprised but doesn’t protest the extra weight in his lap, instead setting the booklet aside and hugging Virgil closer to his chest.

Virgil hums contentedly and buries his nose into Logan’s shirt. "I will be.”

There’s not much time for Logan to try to decode that answer before the twins are abandoning the game on the floor and joining them on the couch, Roman running his hand up and down Virgil’s arm soothingly while Remus plays with his hair. Soon enough, Patton and Janus are also abandoning their wine glasses so they can come over and see what’s going on. After some shuffling about, Virgil is now still sat in Logan’s lap but with his legs laid across Patton’s, Roman’s hands in his hair from the other side of Logan, and Remus and Janus sat on the floor but still providing their own comfort, holding Virgil’s hands so that he feels safe and secure.

All of the anguish, the anxiety, the fear, it all completely melts away as he’s finally exhausted his supply of water filling his skull. The tear tracks dry away to reveal contentment in his eyes, happiness at all the cuddles from his chosen family, them all making conversation around him, him simply listening in and occasionally inputting his short comments and laughing at the various antics going on, mostly from Roman and Remus.

Eventually he will explain what happened, receive hugs and forehead kisses and different coloured hearts drawn on his arm so that he can look at them and remember who he’s staying clean for. There’s an eloquently drawn, large red heart with extra little stars around it and the letter ‘R’ written inside it in cursive, a similar one in green but with a moustache drawn on it and the letter ‘R’ written in bubble writing, a light blue heart with paw prints and smiley faces all around, a dark blue heart with Virgil’s zodiac constellation drawn inside, a yellow heart simply drawn with the words ‘stay strong’ inside with neat writing, and finally, a purple one with little spiders and cobweb designs inside, drawn by himself. A reminder that he’s doing this for himself just as much as his friends.

A reminder that, even after all that’s happened this week and today, there’s still a sobriety timer on his phone ticking away at two and a half months.

~

tysm to @underestimatemethatwillbefun for all the support and comments because aaa each one you’ve left on my chapters just encourages me to write more <33

[shardminds]

CS FIC REC MONDAY

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It’s that time of the week again! I spent a lot of last week reading (between writing and working) and I cannot wait to share these lovelies with you! I love each of them and I hope you will too! If you’ve got a spare sec, definitely dive in and give each of these a read! Enjoy! Love, Ems ♥ 

Warning: there may be mild spoilers in each review.

Across The Snowy Places / 17k / M / by @profdanglaisstuff As someone that’s never celebrated Thanksgiving, I didn’t know how much I’d really get from reading this upon first inspection. If you didn’t already know, I am a big dumb baby. This work is fantastic. Filled with, quite literally, ALL THE TROPES (fake dating, snowed in, bed sharing, author Killian, drunken confessions and mistaken first impressions to name but a few), this fic will bring you the warm fuzzies on even the coldest of days. If you need a light hearted read with heaps of UST and just the right amount of will-they-won’t-they, this is the fic for you. Dark Hook Comes to Storybrooke / 148k / M / by @hollyethecurious​ and @winterbaby89​ An entire retelling of S1 and parts of S2 but with Killian Jones as The Dark One? Don’t mind if I do! This work in its entirety weaves together a narrative that I WISH we could’ve had on the show. The relationship and foundations that the authors built throughout is so wonderful to read and experience. Killian’s reluctance to pursue Emma romantically until the curse is broken just shows the amount of disdain he has for the darkness he’s been cursed with and I love it. The whole development of Killian being a friend and, dare I say it, surrogate father to Henry during the curse will forever be in my heart.  A Sparking Attraction / 3k / E / by @shireness-says​ OH BOY! First of all, Car Trouble? I feel that. The realism of this work really lends well to the whole reading experience. I can’t speak for everyone but I know that any mornings spent under the hood of my car would be a lot easier and a lot less infuriating if I had a hot neighbour to lend a hand. Secondly, Killian in this is Too Cute, with all his wit and how he’s constantly putting his foot in it, and I will be answering no further questions on that fact. This is a short hot read that is more than likely to get your engines revving! I urge you to give it a go! 

‘Cause I’m Broken (When I’m Open) / 13k / M / by @bisexual-killian-jones​ SECRET DATING? ACCIDENTALLY FALLING IN LOVE? RUNNING FROM FEELINGS? I’ll take 4, which is, coincidentally, how many chapters this fic has! I know a lot of people don’t like Emma being written to fear big emotions like Love but I do, especially when we also get to see how she overcomes that. I also LOVE being pleasantly frustrated when things do go to shit for the characters and hanging on the authors every word to see how it’s going to work out, so this is right up my street. Also, the smut? Incredible. 

Indirect Deposit / 40k / T / by @let-it-raines​ Would this list ever be complete without an addition from the incredible Raines? Absolutely not. I read Indirect Deposit a couple of months ago but I reread it recently, and then again last week because... reasons. Raine’s works are the fic equivalent of comfort food to me. Feeling sad? Time to have a glass of wine and reread a 40k fic about pregnancy, sperm donors and finding a family. If I talk too much about this fic I will end up writing an essay and there isn’t enough space on this post for that. 

If Looks Could Kill / 132k / M / by @wellhellotragic​ The Bachelor AND Miss Congeniality? Entwined together so fantastically to make this absolute masterpiece of a work? I LOVE that for me. Really. I wasn’t looking to start another MC fic quite yet (I have so many queued up to read) but I dove into this with an enthusiasm that I didn’t know I had. Picture the scene: freshly home from a difficult shift, 12:15 am, -2 outside, laptop whirring away and keeping my knees warm and a link to this pops up on my dash. I thought eh, why not! and just got straight to reading. 132 thousand (ish) words and over 13 hours later, I finally reached the end, sleep deprived and smiling like the big dumb that I am. I have not yet been able to leave a comment yet, because my mind is still a shambles of AAAAAA and ??????, but all I have to say is, if eternal bachelor Killian Jones and undercover agent Emma Swan on a reality tv show doesn’t pique your interest, I am sorry for your loss. (Please make sure you get plenty of sleep, though!)

Varcolac: A Hybrid Tale / 55k / M / by @hollyethecurious​ I love supernatural elements in fic. I love vampires. I love werewolves. I love the sheer amount of freedom that they give the author to play with. This, a combination of all of that, walked right up to my face, kicked the everloving shit out of me and made me say thank you. I regret Nothing. It’s 6 chapters of Storybrooke mystery, pack dynamics and discovered unity that Hollye so eloquently unravels before your eyes until, by the end, you’re left with heart emojis for eyes and a warm heart. THEY’RE A PACK NOW! THE THREE OF THEM! THE JONES PACK! AAAAAA!

[ultimatefandomjumperhayden]

A letter from an insomniac

      More of just a thought dump really. When a human mind has decided that there are more important things than sleep, there is no way to prevent said mind from remaining active in thought and nuerotransmission. As one fidgets it becomes obvious that just laying around will only make for a boring 8 hours, why not do something productive. The problem with this becomes the sensory overload that one's brain can experience, further deepening the unrest.

      As you dive into rabbit holes of the deep internet to just occupy your busy mind. You end up researching whole essay topics while playing beat heavy music with simple lyrics to steady the thought process.As you research psychological disorders, serial killers, riddles, and even paradoxes, you sit and let the stream of information ease your mind. Your fidgeting lessens to a level that you now consider manageable. Now finding yourself on the inner monologue train of just thinking.

      I always try to write my thoughts directly from the brain because that yields the best result. Overthinking lowers the descriptiveness and honesty of writing as you overthink every letter and space. I find myself deciding to just...type. type what I think to share because that will give someone and inside look to my brain at night. Of course I never share such thoughts in such a successful manner under the sun because it becomes difficult. If your thoughts are over thought they sound unreal and for lack of better terms idiotic. I sometimes avoid punctuation as to not disrupt the thought flow.

      I can think like this for hours on end with no stopping as long as something runs in the background. Stories, thought, alternate futures presents and pasts. My mind is a universe upon itself that I can warp and shift how I want. For once I am the one in control. Nothing and nobody can touch me.

      As I sit at a place that feels like home, yet I feel unrest yet I think it is for a reason. There can be rest tomorrow for now exists and why wait. As I jump from planet to planet in my mind, writing full books, songs. Imagining the future near and far. Hoping tomorrow feels as good as today. As I'm sure you havent made it to this point it is mostly my own venting point.

      I'm not depressed, or anxious, I'm free. Free of parental chains and my own standards. Though I have a sense of unrest physically, I'm at peace. Among the music flowing through my mind and the words that are produced from and empty book, being written as quickly as I'm thinking. If I wanted I could make a whole world with only the power of my mind. A world just like ours, but 30 years in the future. A world where there are titans and faeries and mermaids. A world where we have all gone to hogwarts. A world where we all have magic. And though it isnt real, it is always there. I truthfully believe that there are so many possibilities in life that worrying is sometimes unnecessary, yet the human brain likes to think otherwise.

      All I can do is ease myself. I am better than what I believe, I am capable and talented and worth a damn whether others think so or not. I have made friends with the monsters in my closet and the demons under my bed. They have become friends that warn of troubles to come and I am not afraid to call them out when they are being irrational. I can laugh and smile and cry and scream and feel. And that is ok. I can be sad over this song, I can be happy about this memory, I can be angry at my parents because that is ok.

      And sometimes I dont feel and I just am. And that is ok because then I stay out of trouble. I'm not too loud, or a burden, or being irrational because I can be like that. I am just here and in a state of nothingness. A break from the rampant emotion of daily life. I often get so happy that I tire myself out. When I do nothing all day and feel nothing I can be up till 3 and awake at 8, but when I go and play and cry and laugh and scream I often fall asleep at 8 instead because I am tired. And it is in my states of nothingness that I find my moments of genius as the creative side of me joins with the analytic and all there is is thought. And if you are still listening then congratulations, I dont think you are still listening though. For I cant see why it's probably just bothering you and I am sorry. But I feel better. Like just pouring my thoughts out into a little purple message bubble made the unrest...rest. as i spew words like a rainbow fountain of youth my fidgeting slows and my emotions ease to a crawl. The beat slowly changes with the music and flows with my own heart beat like a boat along the river. As my thought process fluctuates with the music and I take moments to gather my brain waves. A new song to a new thought train.

      As I switch through realities I see different versions of myself that I want to be, some of them unattainable I see drawings of us that I wish I could draw, all of them in different styles.

      One version of myself I see with a pair of feathered wings that fade from a dark blue to a scarlet red as I fly and am free. I've always had an obsession with flying. The sense of freedom and passion as you feel the wind over your back and you holler into the wind and you swear you hear it respond to you. Like its calling you. Maybe that's how Icarus felt before flying too close to the sun.

      Another version of myself shifts into a wolf with fur that flows from dark gray to white in swirls. Being able to shapeshift has been another obsession for me since a young age. It made me feel strong and powerful. Like I could fight against everything I hated in this world and I would win. I felt powerful in a way I had been deprived of. I used to growl when I was angry, I still sometimes do. Being able to run with the speed and agility of a wolf has always peaked my interest, just barely feeling your feet hit the ground as you are pushed further forward. And if you saw someone in trouble, you had the ability to end it as peacefully as you needed to.

      I have always seen freedom and power as a luxury I am denied. Afraid to make my own choices as I never believed I truly had any. For if I did make a decision it was always wrong or selfish.

A Letter From An Insomniac: 1185 words.

[thelawsofdaylight]

I.... Don't know what to say to your post? I'm also sleep deprived but??? Thank you? Sometimes this fandom gets exhausting because like, I don't know. Idealism is sometimes tiring to me but I've never really? Thought of it like that? I've been hurt so many times but like? I don't know? This doesn't make sense but that's, like. A good take! Maybe I'm just sad and traumatized but that's a really good take!!!!

I’m glad my sleep deprived emotional rambling resonated with you! I think idealism is one of those things that’s really hard to talk about positively because it’s so often used in a negative way!

Like, I get you completely because I think, generally, idealism is really fucking hard. It frustrates me so much when people call it ‘naive’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘childish’ because choosing to believe in the collective good isn’t something that’s easy to do! It’s a choice, and it’s a choice that, at least for me, is really difficult! You have to choose to believe that things can be better and that we can make them better; you have to choose to see the good in people within a society that makes it so goddamn hard to see anything but the bad. You have to constantly choose, every single day, to believe that the future will be a brighter place. 

I get how it can feel like a fantasy or an unreachable goal because I still have those moments of doubt that are like ‘yeah, it sounds nice, but it’s impossible to change the world on that scale’. But what I’m trying to realise more and more is that choosing to still pursue those ideals in spite of that doubt is what makes it such a radical action! There are a lot of people who can probably put it better than I can tbh, but I truly believe that to be unapologetically idealist in all of your beliefs is the hardest + most radical thing a person can do. 

Like, at it’s core, idealism is a refusal to accept the concept of reality as this unchanging and unmoving entity. Reality is constantly being reconstructed by history and society and power and wealth, etc. What we think of as ‘reality’ isn’t set in stone by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just the accepted way of things; we literally have the power to shape and reshape it ourselves.

Without idealism, a lot of the things we currently see as normal wouldn't have been possible because at the time they were proposed they were seen as too radical, too unrealistic, too unachievable. I was involved with trade union organising before the pandemic broke out and like, the things I realised during that time completely changed my worldview- especially in regards to how much we take for granted. There are so many things that were fought for with an unapologetic idealism that are now just part of our accepted reality. 

Every kind of social movement you can think of has in some way radically changed the world through idealistic principles. People constantly dismiss the power of collective action, civil disobedience, protests, and trade unions, etc, because the things that they've won have become so embedded into our reality that we've forgotten what a struggle it was to get here and how impossible those things originally seemed. There’s a good quote that I think is from Kelsey Mohamed and I can’t remember it word for word but it’s basically something like ‘everyone says that prison abolition is too radical, but they forget that the same thing was also said about the abolition of slavery’. 

It kind of baffles me how we still talk about 'not being realistic enough', as if being realistic has ever changed the world in remotely the same way as being idealistic has. If you stick to what’s realistic, you’re forever stuck in the constraints of our current reality. So when people are like 'that's not realistic' it’s like, well... good! I'm not interested in being realistic because at the minute reality means war and poverty and the prioritisation of profit over human life. I don't want to be 'realistic', I want to fundamentally and radically change the reality that we live in! Idealism is vital to that, because it’s the only thing that can change our reality. 

Every idealistic principle could be a future reality. The reason I go absolutely feral every time I read ‘love, the future is thine’ (and why I’m like 99% sure I’m gonna get it tattooed at some point) is because it’s essentially saying that today’s idealism is tomorrow’s realism. This idea that the future needs to be governed by love, and we owe it to the future to be as idealistic as possible in the hopes that we might one day see that love realised and enacted- it’s just a really beautiful way of thinking about progress and this whole idea that ‘the next century will be happy’, etc; idealistic principles help change the world because they shift what is possible and redefine the realities we live in. And that’s precisely why, to me, idealism is so powerful! It allows us to imagine what a future governed by love could look like, and in doing so says a big ‘fuck you’ to the system which tells us that radical action is impossible, that there’s no way to live other than how we’re living now, that anything other than this reality is impossible- even though our current reality is built upon the radical actions of the past. 

I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense, it’s 3am and I’m very emotional about, well, everything. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to articulate just how much this stupid brick of a book (and especially Enjolras as a character) mean to me, but this is probably the closest I’ll ever come to trying!

[bookfreaky]

A Small History of Chemical Beings

An average adult suffering of major depression can present the symptoms of hypersomnia and / or insomnia. During the hypersomnia periods said average adult can sleep for about anything from 12 hours to 3 days without a waking moment, and still feel tired. The depressed brain feels tired because it is overworking to produce your daily dosage of dopamine (a hormone associated with pleasure, joy and motivation) and serotonin (a hormone associated with well-being, satisfaction, and self-esteem), these substances need to be produced because they make you happy. As it happens, being happy is very important for humans, as their enormous brain are in constant search for meaning to add up to their complex ideas that they think that constitute the world in their perspective, such ideas like politics, money, religion, philosophy, arts, and whatever else they create.

Warning: humans should know that the world is actually made out of earth, water, air, some other gases, and living carbon species. But somehow, they insist on the money thing.

The problem with a brain that cannot produce the right amount of dopamine and serotonin is that human brains generate a stupid association of pain and illness with sadness, and happiness with well-being and health. So, depressed people actually feel pain. That’s their brain telling their body that they are really fucking sad because they must be really fucking sick or wounded. Probably, when our ancestors were hurt by a lion or something, their brain learned how to make this association, because it doesn’t make fucking sense to be happy while attacked by a lion. That’s why today, when you’ve been 6 hours watching Big Brother without moving in the dark of your room, sometimes it feels like you’ve been hurt by some carnivorous animal.

This association between hurt and comfort, pain and health, sadness and happiness that human brains do make people crave for another substance, one that is much littler, but very addictive. Endorphins. Endorphins are a hormone associated with pain-relief and immediate pleasure, that’s the substance you get when you eat a chocolate bar. But there are things that can produce much more endorphins than a fucking chocolate bar: drugs. Humans love drugs. And there are a lot of options for drugs. Like for example, nicotine has a 200.5 concentration of endorphins per minute; while cocaine has a 700.6 concentration per minute; and methamphetamine has a 1001.1 concentration per minute. While food has mere 75 concentration for minute. Endorphins are cool because they offer a temporary relief to pain and sadness, but since it is temporary your overloaded brain asks for a next hit of it as soon as it stops working, that’s what we call addiction.

Generally, humans deem addictions to be bad thing, which really sucks because humans tell each other that drugs are a good thing. Contradictory. Addictions can be socially acceptable depending on their legal status, their price, and their association with certain ethnical groups and cultures. Some drugs take a slower burn in your body, those are more well accepted mostly: like weed, alcohol, coffee, nicotine, painkillers. The other ones, the heavy drugs are normally considered bad because they generate such a flow of endorphins in your brain that they can cause addiction in a short usage, fucking up your brain’s ability of producing happy hormones on its own, making you waste all your money on them, lose your job, sell your house and end up on some charity rehab – oh, here’s the money thing again. – Yes, heavy drugs such as coke, synthetics, heroine and crack aren’t only addictive, they are also very profitable.

Okay, it’s clear now that a shitload of endorphins isn’t exactly the most plausible solution to our poor depressed, dopamine/serotonin deprived, brain. So, humans, the smart ones I guess, invented other drugs, the controlling drugs. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference, like heroine was used as an anti-psychotic for many years, and we all know how it went. The controlling drugs are used not to inject a substance in your brain, but to assist on its production or maybe block the excessive production of hormones (that can also fuck you up). There are many of them in the market and they are quite expensive: Prozac, Xanax, Carbonated Lithium, Paroxetine, Sertraline, Clonazepam, Haloperidol, Seroquel, Lorax, Lamitrol, Sumatriptan, Tegretol, Lexotan, so on, so on. They usually work with a right combination of them along with a healthy sleeping cycle and frequent exercising.

The shit thing about them is that they are also addictive, most them at least. That’s why is so important to keep visiting your doctor. In a way, they are like your drug dealer but they are a little more concerned about your mental health, or at least they should be. Unfortunately, for chronic cases of mental illness, which they are various: major depression, dichotomic depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, bipolar affective disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, schizoid-paranoid disorder, craziness, craziness, craziness. For most of these cases the solution will be one or two of these drugs, allied with a lot of therapy. Psychotherapy is basically two or more people talking but one of them is trained and charges you money for it.

Still even, it’s not uncommon that our little depressed brains, although with a lot of therapy and a lot of drugs (the right ones, duh!) still relapse, collapse, break-down forever and eventually die because that two substances are not in correct balance. And there’s no explanation, no real data that determines the criteria for telling which of these sad brains that will get happy, and which will remain sad. Excuse me, though. Looking back in evolution, natural selection has given us another powerful little tool that can help us.

Oxytocin. This is the hormone associated with love, physical contact, childbirth, breastfeeding, it is the hormone that is produced when humans commune, when they share food, when they have sex, when they kiss, dance, play or do whatever it is together.

When the first mammals started to walk together in small groups, they realised that they had better chances of surviving than if they’re alone. The problem is that living together often sparks aggressiveness due to a competition for food, reproductive partners and whatever. So, their little primitive brains started to produce a hormone that would not just cause joy, but affection. Affection is any manifestation of emotion, but normally used in the meaning of the manifestation of love. Human females discharge a huge amount of oxytocin during labour, and also during lactation, so the baby human is involved in this hormone. Oxytocin is responsible to our ability to form life-long bonds, this is not fucking endorphin, I’m talking life-long bonds.

Whenever oxytocin is produced the brain also produces levels of dopamine and serotonin which causes pleasure, calmness, butterflies in the stomach, and a basic sensation of being loved. It’s proved that just by looking at the smiling face of some you love can make a healthy brain produce oxytocin. Yes, no need to swallow it down, to smoke it, to drink it, not even touch it. Of course, touching makes it much better, hugs, kisses, cuddles, caresseses in general are great oxytocin deliverers. Sex is the up-most oxytocin deliver, but not any sex, only good fucking sex. That’s the reason why humans can’t stay around each other having sex for too long or they fall in love.

Perhaps the secret solution to our depressed brain isn’t just stabilizers of dopamine and serotonin, moderation in your intake of endorphins, but also a little oxytocin production every now and then. A little company must help.

[spnskinnyballs]

Mr Stranger

Summary- It was purely by coincidence that you were paired up with this particular mystery man in a random chat roulette site on a Thursday evening. (Not one of your finer moments) Charming his way into your little life as Mr Stranger how long can you two really keep the anonymity between you?

Word Count - 2,282

Warnings - Sadness, panic

Part Five

Series Masterlist/ My Masterlist

Your day had been filled with naps and Supernatural reruns, really it was the dream but you couldn’t enjoy the simplicity of it. Your Mr Stranger had never text you back. Sure with being on night shifts it had meant that you were texting each other at odd times but this was a long gap for the two of you.

Yesterday when you got home from your final night shift you talked to each other and fell asleep on the sofa. Once you woke you made yourself something to eat you tried to fall asleep once more. Staying up all night had messed with your body clock and you couldn’t wait to be back to normal so you spent most of the night falling in and out of sleep. Stumbling out of bed the next morning the short naps had continued although you tried to force yourself to eat at normal times and by around 5pm you were already feeling better.

Well, better physically. Your phone still lay silent next to you without a response. Part of you obviously thought that you were being stupid, he didn't text you for a day and a half, that was nothing but for the two of you it was everything. You hadn’t gone that long without talking since your first conversation all those weeks ago.

Anger began to fill it’s way inside as you realised that this was the first time you wanted him to be there for you for emotional support and he wasn’t.

He had other things to do. Better things to do.Things that didn’t involve you.

He was too busy doing whatever he was doing that he couldn’t spare 30 seconds to fire off a ‘Sorry your favourite patient died i’m thinking of you’ text.

Opening up the back door and sitting inside the frame you let the fresh air wash over you as you tried to calm yourself. You knew that you were overreacting but you were sad,hurt and emotional. All you wanted was your friend to show that he cared about you and he was nowhere to be found.

Leaning your head against the cold plastic of the frame you looked out over the garden and watched the birds dancing in the trees above, it was peaceful. It felt calm despite the battle of emotions inside you and you willed that calmness to invade your body, to slow your mind down, to just let everything stop.

As you sat outside a thought took center stage in your mind, you liked this guy. Not i like him as a friend or as a fuck buddy but you liked him. The only time that you could ever remember feeling this upset when someone ghosted you was when your ex did it to you. Someone that you were dating, even when Lucy ignored your texts you moaned at her but you never felt betrayed by it.

Waking up in the morning the first thing that you did was open your phone to see if there was a message from him, as soon as anything happened in your day your first thought was to tell him. You two talked every single day multiple times a day, you had sex, albeit cyber sex, regularly. You made jokes and laughed at each other for hours about nothing in particular without ever seeing each other’s faces.

If you were doing this face to face it would be exactly like you were dating.

Shit.

It would be exactly like you were dating.

Fuck.

You were falling in love with a man you had never even met.

As all the realisations came crashing down into you it was like a weight was pressing down onto your chest, christ, it was like you could barely even breathe. Leaning forward you twisted yourself around until you were on your hands and knees just inside your house, oh my god you were in love with him.

You didn’t even know his real name?!

Leaning your head down until your forehead was pressed into the floorboards you swore under you breath and rocked backwards and forwards until your breathing started to calm itself down. Rolling over onto your back you looked up at the ceiling taking in the enormity of all of this, you were in love with a man you had never met, who’s name you didn’t know, had no idea what he looked like and he was currently ghosting you. Awesome.

What the hell were you going to do.

After what felt like forever you pushed yourself up to your feet and shut the back door, making your way into the kitchen where you left your phone you picked it up ready to write out a text to your mr stranger. What the hell were you going to say though? ‘Hey, so i think i maybe kinda love you even though i know absolutely nothing about you, call me x’ Fucking hell that would go over well.

Nibbling on your thumb nail you scrolled through some of the old messages that you two shared, looking at the ease that you two had with one another brought a smile to your face. Sure this was different but you guys always fell into conversations easily, this shouldn’t be that difficult right? A girl can dream at least.

Shaking out your hands you began to type and delete and retype until you had something you thought you were okay with.

‘Hey hope you’re okay you kinda fell off the edge of the planet there, i didn’t say anything did i? Anyway i don’t know if you noticed or not but i’ve been a bit emotional and sleep deprived so just ignore me if i’m overreacting or whatever haha. Miss you Mr Stranger x’

That was as good as it was going to get. Hitting send you turned your phone upside down and turned around to focus on a different task at hand, what on earth were you going to make yourself to eat? Opening up and searching through the cupboards you decided on some veggie rice with some sticky chicken, placing the ingredients you could muster onto the side you started chopping the veg when you heard your phone go off. Hesitantly walking over to it you lifted it to discover a message from your very own mr stranger sitting in your inbox, nibbling on your lower lip you opened it up and dropped the phone back on the counter. Why were you so nervous?!

‘Hey there. Yeah sorry i did, listen i’m really sorry that i disappeared when you had just told me that you were sad. It wasn’t anything to do with that i promise and i hope that you’re feeling better about it all now, that was a dick move of me and i’m sorry. I just took a step back but i’m here now, i missed you Mrs Stranger x’

Smiling to yourself relief filled you that you didn’t say anything to scare him away and he was back but why did he need to take a step back from you? Something about that sentence didn’t sit right in your stomach. The anxiety that you had been feeling began to bubble back up so you turned on netflix focusing on friends to aid to your distraction as you wrote out a reply.

‘Don’t worry about it, it’s okay i was just worrying about nothing. So listen, i feel like a dumbass but i need to talk to you about something. So i’ve been having so much fun talking to you and getting to know you and ‘having fun’ together haha and i guess that i kinda like you a little bit Mr Stranger, so i was just wondering if you wanted to do something more than what we’ve been doing? It’s okay if you don’t want to i just would have hated it if i never asked x’

Hitting send you groaned out loud and hid your face in the corner of your elbow, why did you feel like such a teenage girl. Rolling the phone over once more so it was face down you turned back to making yourself some dinner while constantly telling yourself that it was going to be fine. If he turned back and said no that’s totally fine, you would just carry on like you had been or you wouldn’t talk as much anymore and that would be okay. You really wanted him to say yes though, you couldn’t deny it.

By the time you allowed yourself to check your phone again your rice was almost done and the chicken was just simmering away so you had a few minutes spare.

Okay. Breathe.

Turning over your phone you found more than one message gracing your homescreen and by just the few words that you could see they sounded positive. With a smile on your face and a beating chest you played with your screen until you could read them in their entirety.

‘Okay, wow, don’t feel like a dumbass you’re not! I’ve been having a great time talking to you too and if we’re being honest part of the reason why i didn’t text you back was because i was realising just how much i liked you too. Okay now i feel like a dumbass haha.’

With shaky breaths and a smile you opened the second message.

‘So yes i do want to do something more, i know you might think it’s big but i would love to meet you. I’m actually travelling for work next weekend and if you wanted to we could do something then, just to see how we get on in real life without being in each others home towns or anything. How does that sound to you? I would really love to take you out on a real date x’

Oh my god he wanted to take you out on a date. He felt the exact same way?! This was amazing. Were you actually going to jump on a plane and go out to meet him in a random city though? Thinking it through it did make sense, even though you liked this guy you didn’t feel comfortable just giving him your address so maybe he felt the same way. It was considerate and sweet. Your Mr Stranger was so sweet. Smiling to yourself you wrote out a response to him.

‘You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that, i would love to go out on a date with you. Might be a little bit awkward to start with though seeing as how we’ve never even seen each other haha I’m not saying no to this weekend but it’s soon and i’m nervous. Maybe we could finally share our faces with each other or talk on the phone before we make a decision like that first?’

Sending the text you turned your attention back to a pan that was threatening to boil over. While you were nervous about actually meeting up you were patting yourself on the back for being practical and not allowing yourself just to say yes i’ll fly across the country to see you. Turning off the pan you reached over for your buzzing phone, the excitement inside couldn’t wait just for a moment.

‘I’m glad, i really want to do the whole dinner drinks thing with you. I get it, i kinda dived in straight to meeting but yeah if you want to send selfies first just to put a face to the name?’

Smiling at the kindness in his words you turned your camera on and turned your back to the hob, taking a smiling selfie with the pans in the background you attached it to a message. It wasn’t the prettiest photo of you but that didn’t matter, what mattered was that it was a real photo not one that could have easily been copied off google. Writing a caption underneath you hit send and made your way with the rice over to the side to start dishing up before it got burnt. ‘Selfies sound really good, i’m cooking dinner but hi so I’m Y/N its really nice to meet you, your turn! x’

Dishing up your dinner you couldn’t stop smiling, you were going to finally be able to put a face to a name and a name to him as well. This time next week you could have had dinner with your perfect stranger and be an actual couple, even with the worries and doubts that niggled at your brain your couldn’t quell the happiness and hope that came right along with it. The second that your phone buzzed you dropped your pan and opened up the app.

‘I told you that you were beautiful. It’s really nice to meet you Y/N, i’m Jensen x’ Reading his text a squeal left your lips, he thought that you were beautiful and Jensen was such a nice name, it suited everything you knew about him. As you held the phone in your hand a picture message began to load, holding your breath a little bit you waited for it to become clear and when it did your heart stopped.

It was a selfie of a beautiful man with green eyes and freckles smiling softly at you.

You knew this man.

You told your stranger in passing how hot you thought this man was.

This man who you had talked to every single day just grabbed a photo of someone who he knew you thought was hot and copied and pasted it straight to you.

This wasn’t him.

He lied to you.

He lied to you this entire time.

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[tom-at-the-farm]

I was talking to Sarah @smurkark  and I cannot believe I forgot to write about my great experience soliciting a psychic in New Orleans.

As you might imagine, this is the tourist version of trying to find a hotdog vendor in Times Square; they’re fucking everywhere, in actual shops and in make-shift booths and in people’s backyards. And much like the meat actually used in street hotdogs, their abilities are mysterious and difficult to verify.

To be clear: I do not believe in a world beyond the material one immediately observable to us and subject to scientific laws. To also be clear, I am a stupid soft human being and as such I’m totally superstitious and more than a little afraid of ghosts.

I was raised by atheists in a country that was nominally atheist at the time. What my mother believes - and this I asked her - is that we are all here for a limited time before we die, but this is not sad, because we have all these years to live and gather experiences and love other people and hopefully be loved in return.

She’s also the same person who bought me a tiny silver cross and then had me secretly baptized in the Russian Orthodox church to combat the crazed anxiety that has plagued me since I was a toddler - my demons, as it were.

My great-grandmother, who died about 20 years ago and had early childhood memories before the 1917 Revolution, attempted a number of pagan rituals on me for the same reason. I forgot most of it, but the crux involved her pouring water over me and letting it gather into a bowl as she chanted. She dripped candle wax into the same bowl, and supposedly it solidified in the shape of my fears, which were then purged from me by the water. Looking at the hardened wax floating in the bowl one time, I told her it looked like a wolf, the Seryi Volchok that had scared me. I didn’t actually care about the wolf, but I loved her so much and she had tried so hard. I wanted her to believe in it, and in me by extent.

In the end, it’s all so fascinating to me, and not because obviously none of it worked, or because I’m Jewish and yet the idea of taking it to a rabbi at the time would have been too impossible and wild. It’s mostly because I was apparently crazy enough as a toddler that grown-ass adults who went to college for engineering and grew up in Soviet communes thought Christianity and villager paganism were worth a shot.

Everything is worth a shot when you’re scared.

This is a long and arduous way of saying that I think psychics are charlatans who at best are delusional and at worst prey on the delusional. They are also - the convincing ones - excellent readers of people’s emotions and circumstances. It’s a talent, even if it’s used for dubious reasons.

One time in NYC, I paid a woman named Madame Rosalie to read my palm, because I was feeling lonely and bored and sad and I wanted someone to touch my hands. She told me I needed a man in my life. I did not.

In New Orleans, I paid a woman named Miss Patty to tell my fortune from her tarot deck. I was extremely sleep-deprived and had trouble focusing my eyes; as a result, the wall perforated with tiny holes behind her played optical illusions on me, which made it difficult to concentrate. Maybe because of this, her physical appearance is hazy to me.

She told me many things that were true, like that I felt trapped by my life, as though in limbo, and that I had previously been weighed down by people who didn’t have my best interests in mind. I suspect this is probably true of 90% of the world’s population. All of the cards she placed before me were good omens, even the ones with lots of sharp knives in them.

The thing she told me that I can’t let go of is that a presence of a “much older female relative” is with me. Specifically, a “grandmotherly” presence. Because, you know, dead grandmothers are highly unusual for women in their 30s.

This dead woman told her that I’m being brainwashed by people in my life, and that I should be grateful that certain things I wish had happened didn’t actually happen, because they would have “consumed” me otherwise. Like, she actually looked me straight in the face and said that this was what the “presence” was telling her.

Does Miss Patty know the Russian words for “brainwash” and “consume”? Would my dead grandmother even know what “brainwash” means? Why would she be with me and not her daughter? Why would she be in America at all when she had a husband and other children and grandchildren in the country where she lived and died?

Or maybe it’s not her at all, maybe it’s my other living grandmother’s sisters who died in the Holocaust. What would they have to tell me? “So I died before you were born, and also, you kinda suck.”

And still, it doesn’t make me mad. It’s obviously false and deliberately manipulative, but what kind of person has the self-assurance to look someone in the eye and tell them “your dead grandma says your parents ruined your life”? Either a sociopath or a true believer.

And what sort of person doesn’t respond to that by spitting in their face and demanding their money back? Me, I guess. I named my “presence” Marya. It’s my grandmother’s name and what my mother wanted to name me.

Marya has yet to speak to me.

[ithoughtyouweredifferent]

Chapter 15 What is Love

Previously on…”“I love you,” he said pulling back an inch so he could look into your eyes as he said it making your breath hitch, why wasn’t it automatic and easy to say it back. It should be easy to say those three words, natural even, especially to someone you’d said it to in the past. But now you froze.

A/N: This is such a roller coaster of emotion I don't even know. You’ve heard of word vomit? Well, this is feels vomit.

Word Count: About 4,500

Chapter 14

Masterlist

Chapter 16 (link also at bottom)

Shout out: @superwholockbooknerd526 @panacebean @genericusernameblahblahblah @casual-vaporwave

You didn’t know what to say and you would have to figure it out later. You couldn’t just not say anything. The best thing you could come up with for now, in the moment, was to kiss him again and act like you hadn’t heard him. It was a terrible thing to do but you couldn’t think of anything else. You could sort through your problems later but this was the only stalling technique you could think of that would eliminate the ability of an awkward conversation. It was a great kiss and you hoped with everything in you that he would think you just hadn’t heard him. After a minute you pulled back smiling as if nothing had happened,

“I meant what I said,” he told you quietly and you did everything you could to keep a blase attitude,

“Meant what? About ripping apart an audience's heart with this path of events? I meant it too, but really you should think on it, maybe a sad kid who is trying to come to terms with a traumatic event isn’t the right person to blame for a crime. People will either love or hate it, there won’t be an in between. We’d get accused until our ears bleed about subtly encouraging blaming the victim, it could be a mess. So think on that, back to the opening song…” you said. You probably didn’t convince him but he at least played along figuring out the opening song.

After a few minutes things had fallen back to your normal routine, a line here, an idea there and eventually just playing to play.

“Well I think we’ve made some excellent progress even if somebody didn’t do his part since the last session,” you said teasingly lingering near the door before you went home for the night.

“You have had an excellent teacher on how to do this,” he said and you rolled your eyes,

“Are you sure?” you looked around, “I didn’t realize someone great had been practicing with us, I’d like to meet this person,” you said and he chuckled,

“This is why I love you, Socrates,” he said as you clasped your hands behind but stayed leaned back enough to look in his eyes,

“You’re none too bad yourself you lazy oaf,” you said before kissing him again. Not as a planned diversion technique this time but because it just felt right

“I’m serious, I really love you,” he said when you separated,

“I know you do and what’s not to love!” you laughed and walked out the door not seeing him shake his head in frustration. You let out a small breath of relief, he was not going to let that go. You needed to figure out what to say when you’d see him tomorrow because you couldn’t laugh him off forever.

It was weird, you’d thrown around I Love You’s with people for ages when it seemed like the right times to say something, not because of actual feelings. After you had realized the whole concept of love was a joke you had just said it or said it back. It didn’t need to mean anything. So why couldn’t you say it back to Lin?

There’s different types of love, you had seen the six types of latin or greek love or something somewhere recently. It was like the love of self, love of basically others in general, platonic love, one was more lust than love, the idle happiness love, and then there was long-standing love in the English hearts and romance form.

You loved being around Lin, you loved talking to him and just being with each other. He made you happier than anyone you had ever been with, you felt safe and at home around him. Everything seemed easier and better when you were with him. You thought about him constantly. You had spent hours upon hours wondering about a future with him in it. Everything said you should love him. You wanted to love him. In at least one form of the word you do love him, so why couldn’t you say so?

You had been with him for what felt like forever but hadn’t actually been that long. Was that what was bothering you? Afraid of falling too hard, too fast? You must have loved him before with how badly it hurt when you went separate ways. Had you built back up those walls you used to have? He had helped you take down so many of your walls since he had come back into your life. Since you had met him in the first place. Was this a good thing?

You thought about how much you had changed, you started playing the piano for other people because he built up your confidence. You got a dream job because he pushed you to. He had reminded you that not everyone is cruel and cold. You found it easier to talk to other people now, you had become more optimistic overall. He had you writing a Broadway musical for crying out loud! You had never remotely imagined doing something like this!

Why did he have to go and say something like that? He had pushed through so many barriers in you, you didn’t want that to end. Just imagining it ending was heartbreaking.

But why wasn’t it just an instinct to say it earlier? Why did it take power walking home when the subway would have been a hundred times more logical for you to put it together? Were you just afraid? You only had another block before you reached your building which was absurd, you lived miles apart, but you had spent the whole trip worrying over this and now it felt like your heart was miles away.

Confused. The only word that could fit this moment was confused. You slowed down as you got up the stairs and to your place. You needed to figure this all out by tomorrow morning. It was almost 8 now. You weren’t going to get a lick of sleep tonight but you figured you might as well try. Maybe a new day would bring new insight to your situation.

The museum was doing nothing for your delima. The budget meeting had everybody on edge. Your nerves were through the roof and your whole focus was on not letting butter fingers get the best of you while handling priceless artifacts. This was not usually a problem, but this was not a usual day. Your palms were sweaty, you were focusing on focusing which had an opposite effect. You thoughts alternated between don’t drop this and don’t think about Li-him,

You wanted to just cancel your plans this afternoon and stay home so you could keep trying to think things through. On the subway home you were making your umpteenth pros and cons list on Lin.

The fact you were making a pros and cons list was one of only three reasons on the side against, the others being your reaction yesterday and how intertwined your relationship was with this Broadway Musical. Writing a musical with him in itself was a whole list of pros and cons that were all negating each other.

Why was this so difficult? You dragged every step on your way from the subway to his home. What was the big deal with saying you loved him anyway? You had never had a problem with “I love you too” no matter what you felt. At least one, if not two or three or four of the Greek meanings of love applied.

“You’re here!” Lin said opening the door before you had even lowered your hand from knocking, he had been waiting for you.

“I said I would be,” you replied smiling, you were always smiling around him - another of the many reasons pointing that you do love him that way.

“So what’ve we got Socrates?” He asked leading you on over to the piano and you threw your coat and bag on his couch. You felt at home and comfortable around him, another reason indicating you loved him.

“I actually didn’t come up with anything,”

“Really? That’s new,” he noted and you shrugged,

“I’ve had a lot on my mind between the meeting yesterday and the new exhibit and about you-you and Alex-and yeah, some of us with normal jobs get preoccupied,” you said almost telling him what the other weight on your shoulders was,

“Oh yeah normal jobs,” he dramatically shuddered, “So glad I’m a successful weird jober,”

“Jober?” you asked with a bit of a laugh, “to think I’m trying to write something with you,”

“Got a better word?” he challenged with a raised eyebrow, “jober”

“I-wait,” you quickly stood up all but pushing him off the bench to find the right journal,

“If you are about to somehow mash job and robber together please don’t,” he asked crouching down next to you looking at the precious journals you were carelessly throwing from one side of the bench to another,

“Really? A rap battle interrogation around town, have someone get nervous and stumble over their words,” you asked looking dead into his eyes with a strong determination in yours,

“But why would anybody be nervous? Nobody is lying about their alibi, not if we have Renato do it,”

“Isn’t there one particular person who is lying anyway though?” you asked leading him to the conclusion you’d already made,

“Terry and Marirea are covering for each other,” he said slowly finally catching on, “because Terry is a sketchy guy and was doing something that’d get him in trouble,”

“And only Marirea knows that, Marirea who is still learning English anyway now being put under pressure to tell a secret…”

“See why working in silence wouldn’t work?”

“You always have to be right don’t you,” you accused not bothering to hide the humor in your voice,

“Around you, I’ve gotta take what I can get,” he said smiling a bit,

“What you need to get is a haircut and some sleep,” you said reaching over to ruffle through his hair and he rolled his eyes,

“Sleep is for wimps,”

“What are you doing so late anyway that has you so sleep deprived? You’ve picked up some hot other woman haven’t you” you teased and he rolled his eyes, after a moment though your mocking shifted, “Seriously though, your chronic eye bags have been making a reappearance a lot lately, what’s eating at you?”

“Nothing. Maybe I just have trouble falling asleep sometimes,” he said a bit defensively,

“C’mon I know you, what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing….everything...the past, the future, people, the couch lint, why I have three colors in the ceiling fan blade, poverty rate, I don’t know,” he sounded defeated which was rare. Most people mask sadness and contain anger, Lin tried to find a way around them. There’s two sides to every coin and he made it a personal goal to find the better side. Even when everything was great, there was always a better side to find. But when he couldn’t find the better side...you had no idea what to do, the helpless feeling was both on your pro and con side of the list. The positive aura he carried was something you couldn’t imagine being without and how terrible you felt knowing you couldn’t make him stay in his happy bubble versus your inability to help him stay in his happy bubble.

“I just, why am I doing this? They say write what you know and so I took this crazy idea and found out everything, years of constant finding out more so I would know what the right thing to write was. Why don’t I just have a normal job and be a normal person and...I don’t know,”

“Because you’re not normal,” you finally said, confident but quiet, “because you have this determination and understanding and ability and brain that nobody else has. You would never be happy in a normal job. And this...you’re giving these people voices. Lin-Manuel,” you began annunciating every syllable but staying soft, “you’re telling people’s stories for them and giving them a chance for them to tell it. A chance. A hope. A story.

“The purpose of theater is to tell a story,” you recited, “you’re bringing a whole new story to the table, you love doing this. You did all of that research because you care. Because you knew this was going to be something big. Because you are offering these people a voice. And you know it needs to be an accurate voice. Because they deserve accurate stories to be told about them and you care about getting that story told. Because that’s who you are, brilliant, in every sense of the word.”

It was silent for a long moment while you both drank in everything you had said, absorb and realize why you couldn’t just say you loved him yesterday,

“Why are you here? Do you really want to be with me or am I just a way to pass time?” he asked and you looked at him shocked,

“A way to pass time?” you asked slowly

“Was all that indecision at first just an Iago to Othello ruse? Pretending not to want to agree so I'd think you were being really genuine when you did?”

“What are you talking about? Lin I-”

“Because that’s all I’m coming up with, I’ve not been sleeping for a while now because I’m back at reading the dictionary all night so I don’t think about this, but I have to know. You said yourself you’ve been single for ages, am I just someone who will give you the time of day?”

“No that’s not-”

“And it just keeps going through my head, you didn’t want to even talk to each other while we were writing, you’ve taken over this show and you’ve done some great things for it but not all of your ideas are perfect you know but I don’t know how to tell you that. I know that they’re threatening cuts at the museum, is this just some sort of insurance policy and I’m part of the deal?”

“Lin where is all this coming from!” you said trying to get a word in, “You have it so backwards. I never wanted this show but it was part of the deal with you, this isn’t me, if you think something's terrible rip it out because I have said countless times I don’t know what I’m doing. But I thought it was worth a shot because-”

“Because why? If it is such a waste of your time and it makes you so unhappy why are you doing it?” he was shouting at you and your voice matched that just as strongly. Whatever calm deep moment you had been having was gone just as quickly as it had come,

“Because you're a drug to me, because I am addicted to being around you. I am happy around you, seeing you and writing this musical has given me something to look forward to day in and day out. Because I need you in my life and if composing a musical of all things is what it takes to keep you around then I’m doing it! And I love doing it, I didn’t think I’d love it this much but I do but if walking away this instant is what it takes to convince you I’m not just ‘in it’ for the show or the money then consider be out because I love you, Lin-Manuel Miranda,”

“You-you what?” he started to shout again but cut himself off when he realized what you’d said

“You said last night you loved me, three times, and I blew you off because I was scared. I spent all night and most of today trying to understand why I was scared. And I’m still not certain. Who does that? Who has to go home and think about whether or not they love somebody else?”

“You said it to me before, you told me you loved me constantly, when did the phrase become so meaningful to you huh?” the accusation was ringing through his tone again, this whole argument was such a roller coaster,

“Because it didn’t matter then! Because I didn’t actually love you back then, I deeply cared for you, sure, but then it was just something to say. But actually meaning it is terrifying, because it’s admitting how much I have to lose. Once a word has a meaning, that meaning is the only thing you focus on when you use it. You’ve changed me and you know it, so believe me when I say that I love you.”

Something happened after that, something you didn’t understand, but something changed. Whatever had caused that outburst on both of your parts left the room and both of you in a silent confused loss of words

“What the hell just happened?” he asked after a moment and you started cackling all of the crazy emotion and tension the past few minutes came out through a cathartic laugh, and he joined you after a moment. You both needed this.

“I don’t think I have ever heard of someone saying something so heartfelt as all of that in such a hateful tone,” he finally said,

“You think you can do better?” you asked raising an eyebrow,

“Yes,” he a beat for emphasis and to pull out the look that came out whenever you came up with a good idea, the one he knew put you on top of the world, “I love you,”

“You win,” you said after a minute and he chuckled,

“You must really love me if you’re finally admitting to that you aren’t the best in something,”

“I didn’t say that!” you protested and he rolled his eyes, “Conveying a positive message in a less hateful tone is not something you can do better than me if I actually give myself a shot,”

“By all means,” he moved his arm as if gesturing you to walk ahead of him though you were both still on the floor. The only move you made was to lean forward,

“I,” you kissed his forehead, “love,” his nose, “you,” his lips, a slow and love-filled kiss,

“That is so not fair,” he murmured against your mouth

“Are you arguing?” you asked leaning back just a bit to look at him,

“Not at all,” he said pulling you back to him slowly weaving his fingers into your hair,

“You really do need a haircut. A good clean it up trim at least,” you said after a minute and he snorted

“Oh come on! I’m going back to the shoulder length mane. You’ve never even known me with long hair,”

“Yeah we should keep it that way,” you said and he narrowed his eyes raising an eyebrow, you sighed before exchanging your statement in the most dramatic tone you could muster, “it’s your head to do with as you please but I’m just saying, in my very humble opinion the in-between stage is an unclean mess,”

“You’re so rude,”

“You look younger and happier with short hair than any picture I’ve ever seen with a ‘shoulder length mane’ pft”

“Maybe I like the serious well aged wise man look,” he said and you laughed,

“Whatever Lin I don’t really care,” you said

“Are you suuurreee?”

“Lin do whatever you want it’s your head, gosh, you’re making me into some villain, I’ll go cut my own hair and super glue it onto your neck if that makes you happy,” you said laughing

“That would be incredibly time-consuming,” he pointed out trying not to laugh with you, “maybe you should just be patient a few months until it’s back to long luscious locks,”

“Long luscious locks? Oh my God” you snorted and face palmed, “I think you’re right, hot glue might be better,”

“I already have an appointment on Tuesday to get it but I just wanted to see how far I could push you,” he said kissing your temple smiling,

“You’re a mess,” you said rolling your eyes,

“Hey you’re the one who loves me,” he kissed your other temple and you rolled your eyes,

“Ugh don’t remind me,”

“You love me,” he said poking between your ribs where he knew you were ticklish

“Stop!” you shrieked trying to pull back but he just poked you again,

“Stop what this?”

“Yes! that stop that!”

“‘Yes’ well if you insist,” you were saved by an unfamiliar ring tone, you’d never heard it before but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out,

“Lackity lac, lackity lac lac lac lacity lac lackity ackity lacity LAC!”

“I think Alex is calling you,” you quipped and he rolled his eyes letting you go to get his phone

“Hello hello hello!” he said putting it on speaker, “guess who’s here!”

“There is no telling with you, listen, Lin we-”

“Say hi to my Socrates she looooovves me,”

“Lin!” you whisper shouted smacking his arm

“We-wait what? Your girlfriend actually exists, I gotta hand it to you man, you really had me convinced she was a fake,”

“This is where you say hi,” Lin said to you and you smirked,

“payback,” you mouthed and he glared,

“Ummm hello, I’m Alex uh this is weird,” you covered your mouth to muffle giggles, “Lin is this some sort of joke? Ugh okay but seriously, meeting Mon-”

“No she’s real, she’s right here I swear, say something c’mon I’m looking really dumb,” Lin said pushing you and wiggling his fingers threatening to tickle you again, you scrambled across to the other side of the rug like some sort of animal as quietly as you could,

“Lin I don’t have time for this-”

“No, I’m serious come on, come on you’re making me look dumb-”

“Lin you need to bring something tomorrow. We’re falling behind schedule again and this is the sort of shenanigans that’s causing that. We have a meeting tomorrow and I truly hope for everyone involved’s sakes that you can put on a grown-up face for once and give us something to work with. Not all of us are interested in quitting our jobs to be comedians,”

“Behind?” you mouthed, “I thought we were ahead?” you whispered

“Yes behind,” Lin said to you, “Maybe if you’d come along you could show him that there’s good stuff coming,”

“God Lin you’re talking to yourself again. Go take a nap and drink some coffee and then write us another song, I know you can’t rush art but don’t keep dragging it out. Get busy.” Alex hung up,

“Yeah I think I’m fine staying away from those meetings with you,”

“Alex is a really great guy, you’d love him he’s just a bit mad at me right now - at us actually,”

“I don’t understand, you keep talking about how far ahead we are,” you said, “What’s going on?”

“Well…” he scratched his ear,

“Lin.” you said in a warning tone,

“See we’re doing great, we are ahead of schedule but I might have a tendency to just blank when me and Alex and them sit down to talk, and I mean there’s so much that’s happening and-” he stopped, “So yeah, we me and you are great but we us and Alex...not so much,”

“Lin,” you groaned,

“But! You’re really great at planning things and getting stuff organized and collecting thoughts and all that, you can explain all of this so much better than me and I get all nervous about misrepresenting your ideas and...maybe if you were to come with me it’d work out better?”

“Lin I don’t know how to do this!”

“That’s what you’ve said about everything and look! We’re making something great,”

“But-”

“But you need to come to one of these or all of this might as well be for nothing,” he said,

“Be glad I love you,” you muttered,

“So you’ll do it!”

“On one condition,” you said raising a finger and he cocked his head to the side, “you let me dye the tips of your hair highlighter pink Monday before you get it cut on Tuesday,”

“Absolutely not,” he said shaking his head vigorously,

“That’s my deal, take it or leave it,”

“I hate you,” he said and you grinned,

“So we have a deal?”

“Just the very ends and the mess on my neck or behind my ears or whatever else is getting hacked off,”

“So if I accidentally slipped with the brush and you just got a pink streak right there?” you asked dragging your fingers in a zig-zag motion between the tops of his ears,

“You wouldn’t,” he said narrowing his eyes and you smirked,

“Would I?” you let him think, “Don’t worry there was a kid in the museum the other day talking to her dad about some sort of wash-out chalk dye,”

“I cannot believe I am going to let you turn me into a Sharpie product,” he groaned,

“I cannot believe I’m going to let you drag me to a meeting with Alex Lacamoire to plan a musical I’m co-writing,”

“Touche,” he said and you snorted, yes hair dye that takes a few months to wash out is the exact same as becoming the next Broadway sensation,

“Hey guess what,” you said leaning against him,

“Hm?” he looked at you

“I think I might be unhealthily in love with you,”

“Good to know the feeling is mutual,” he said tilting his head to rest against yours.

Next Chapter!

[sage-nebula]

Okay, so now that I’m actually on a computer, let me talk about the Rito segment.

I did the Rito segment yesterday, and honestly . . . aside from the fact that Rito Village has a slower and prettier version of Dragon Roost Island’s music playing, the entire segment was something of a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, the gameplay was fun; getting into Vah Medoh was more challenging than getting into Vah Naboris (surprisingly), and Vah Medoh itself was an excellent dungeon with nice music, nice atmosphere (corruption aside), and logically sensible puzzles. I’ll admit, I got stuck in a couple of places in both Vah Ruta and Vah Naboris, but I didn’t once have to consult a guide for Vah Medoh. This is extra surprising considering I went through Vah Medoh when insanely sleep deprived, but nonetheless, I was able to clear Vah Medoh with relative ease. It was absolutely the easiest Divine Beast yet (even with the fact that I’m pretty sure I took on Windblight Ganon in the most difficult way possible, but the one time I tried to use what I’m pretty sure is the recommended strategy, it literally blew up in my face).

But aside from that, I was honestly disappointed by how the Rito were handled. To begin with, it felt like the shortest pre-dungeon segment yet. While the Gerudo pre-dungeon segment was definitely the most involved (given that you first had to find a way into Gerudo Town, and then had to go clear out the Yiga Clan hideout, and then had to help Rija, et cetera), even the Zora pre-dungeon segment had more to it considering you had to first get to Zora’s Domain, and then get the arrows from the Lynel, and then get into the dungeon. You had more time---and more reason---to get to know some of the Zora prior to going to face the dungeon. That, coupled with the fact that everyone was telling you that you had known Mipha before everything took place, gave you a personal connection to these people and made it feel deeper than perhaps it was.

But that just didn’t exist with the Rito. Sure, you do have to talk to Tebo’s wife before you go to find him, but when you find him you’re all but immediately launched into the pre-dungeon segment. You don’t get to bond with him like you did with Sidon and Riju. Furthermore, the memory you unlock of Revali is sudden, and the memory itself is . . .

Why, oh why was Revali such a massive dick?

Link’s flashback with Mipha was sweet and soft; we saw Mipha healing his wounds and talking with him about their shared childhood. Link’s flashback with Urbosa was similarly tender, though a bit different, because it was Urbosa being gentle and a bit playful with Zelda (and a bit playful with Link, too). But with Revali? Literally the entire flashback was Revali denigrating Link and talking about how it was asinine that Link was the Hero instead of him, and then challenging Link to meet him up on Vah Medoh. I get the feeling that perhaps the intention was to make it seem as if Revali and Link were rivals, but for that to really be effective we would have to have some semblance of friendship between them. Instead, the flashback ended with Link scowling, and even when it came back to the present it looked like Link was frowning / glaring a bit (which, admittedly, is a bit funny, because to me it almost looked like Link was thinking “yeah, I remember that asshole”). With Mipha and Urbosa we had reason to be sad that they were already dead, we were given reason to think that Link might miss them. With Revali? Not so much. He was just a dick.

And he continued to be one throughout most of Vah Medoh, acting skeptical about Link’s chances to activate the terminals (and being really annoying with all of his puns). In a way, he felt like a carbon copy of Falco from Star Fox, but even less likable because at least it’s clear that Falco and Fox are friends. Falco cares about Fox, despite their (one-sided) rivalry. It didn’t feel like that here until the very end, when Revali finally started to be a bit supportive . . . yet even that was kind of backhanded and cut short. To be honest, the spirit conversation with Revali made me wonder if they were trying to make him a tsundere, but if so, they once again failed because we didn’t get nearly enough deredere from him. It was all tsuntsun, and it was poorly done tsuntsun in the sense that it felt less tsun and more dick.

And the worst part is that since we didn’t build Revali’s relationships with anyone, Link or otherwise, there was nothing to give any emotional weight to his speech atop Vah Medoh when he aimed the Divine Beast at Ganon. Mipha had her speech about Link, but even if she hadn’t, she could have talked about her father or brother (and she did mention her father a bit, though I wish she had mentioned Sidon as well). Urbosa was able to talk not only a bit about Link, but also her people, their history and their pride. She was able to talk about the Gerudo connection to Ganon, and how that affected her. That gave her speech a personal connection as well (and I felt very affected when she mentioned Nabooru by name). But Revali didn’t have any of that. If he had family, we weren’t able to meet them, nor were we able to meet their descendants. He’s a legend among his people, but we didn’t meet anyone who had a deep connection to him, and anyway he wouldn’t know about that, so it wouldn’t matter as much (except possibly to stroke his ego). He could have talked about the history of the Rito, but he didn’t. Unlike Urbosa, who was able to mention Nabooru by name, Revali didn’t say a single word about Medli despite the fact that she’s the Sage that Vah Medoh is named after (and I get that it would have been a bit of a copy of Urbosa’s speech, but it still would have been nice). There were no mentions of Valoo or Dragon Roost, either, that might have helped place this on the timeline, or might have helped us see a connection to the Rito we were first introduced to, versus the anthropomorphic bird people we have now. The most we got out of Revali’s speech is him crooning to Vah Medoh, which was admittedly cute, but it didn’t make me feel anything, there was no emotional connection there. And after the surge of emotions I had after Urbosa’s (she’s easily my favorite Champion out of the three I’ve met so far), it was a definite let-down.

I’ve still got to go meet the Gorons, and after that I can head to the castle and beat the game, provided that there isn’t a bait-and-switch to give us more plot once the final Divine Beast has been awakened and the castle has been stormed (and I mean, I would love that, but I’m not getting my hopes up). Since I don’t want the game to end I’m going around on the memory quest for now, rather than heading straight to the Gorons. I’m still waffling over whether or not this is my new favorite Zelda game, since it feels so different and separate from the other titles in the series (and yet it still feels distinctly Zelda), but it honestly very well might be. I seriously don’t want it to end, I’m having way too much fun with it. It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve had this much fun with a Zelda game (neither Twilight Princess nor Skyward Sword were this fun for me---they both ended up burning me out with their excruciatingly long, tedious dungeons (TP) and poor controls (SS)), and I’m loving every second of it. This was seriously worth the four year wait, and I just . . . I don’t want to have to worry about spoilers anymore, but I also don’t want it to end. T__T Life is hard. 

[chocolate-brownies]

I’m a sleep lover. I like going to bed at the same time every night and getting a full night’s sleep. Deprive me of just one hour of blessed sleep, and things quickly go downhill—just ask my husband. I become bad company—snarky and irritable, hardly able to keep up my end of a conversation, let alone negotiate difficult issues.

Sleep is clearly important for our health, helping our bodies function at their best. It’s also key to our productivity, helping us stay fresh and focused the following day. But does getting a good night’s sleep affect our relationships, too?

In line with my own experiences, some relatively new research suggests that sleep does have positive social consequences. What we’re learning about the connection between sleep, our brains, and our social selves offers yet another reason to safeguard your zzz’s.

Sleep helps us approach others and avoid loneliness

It’s been long known that loneliness is associated with poor sleep. But is the opposite true? Can poor sleep lead to loneliness?

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers scanned people’s brains after they slept normally or had a night of sleep deprivation to see how they reacted to strangers. Participants were asked to watch videos of a stranger approaching them from a distance and to push a button when they felt the stranger was too close, while the researchers monitored what was happening in their brains.

When participants had suffered abnormal sleep, they wanted the person to stop at a much greater distance than they did after a night of normal sleep, and their brains reflected a particular pattern: Circuits associated with social repulsion lit up more strongly, while circuits involved in theory of mind (our ability to gauge the intentions of others) were diminished.

“A lack of sleep leads individuals to become more socially avoidant, keeping greater social distance from others.”

“A lack of sleep leads individuals to become more socially avoidant, keeping greater social distance from others,” the researchers conclude.

The poorly slept participants also reported feeling lonelier. And, when videotapes of them were analyzed by independent raters, the raters thought they looked lonelier and were less interested in interacting with them, too.

Sleep helps us empathize with others

Emotional empathy is our ability to feel what another person is feeling. So, if my friend is feeling sad, her sadness resonates with me to some extent, helping me to care about how she is doing.

But, when we sleep poorly, the parts of our brain devoted to emotional empathy don’t function as well, according to one recent study.

In the study, college-aged participants kept track of their sleep quality for two weeks and then performed a task while having their brains scanned. The task involved viewing photos of people with different expressions—some neutral, some distressed. Participants were asked to note how concerned they were about the people depicted, and the researchers measured differences in how they responded to distressed versus not distressed people to arrive at an empathy score. The researchers also recorded their brain activity patterns while viewing the different photos, to see how this might correspond to feelings of empathy.

Those who’d reported better sleep were significantly more empathic toward people in distress, and they showed increased activity in parts of the brain associated with emotional empathy when viewing distressed people.

Supporting prior research, this finding may help explain why we read people’s emotionsmore accurately and empathize better in romantic conflicts when we sleep well.

Sleep helps us to be less angry and aggressive

A lack of sleep certainly makes me more irritable. But could it cause me to be angrier or more aggressive?

A recent study suggests yes. Participants who were randomly assigned to maintain or restrict their sleep over two days were then asked to do a difficult task while listening to very aversive noise, bound to make them irritated. Those who’d restricted their sleep became much angrier during the task and did not adapt well to the noise—meaning, they didn’t cease to be bothered by it over time—compared to those who’d had normal sleep.

Though experiments have not confirmed that lack of sleep causes aggression, people who report sleep disturbance do tend to bemore aggressive and violent. Women who sleep poorly are more frequently aggressive toward their partners. One study also found that children who were victimized by their peers at school often became bullies later on if they had sleep problems.

And many risk factors for aggression are aggravated by lack of sleep, according to a review of the research. For example, our ability to turn down emotional upset is compromised when we don’t get enough sleep. That means our anger can get out of control, making us more likely to blame and target others.

Additionally, a lack of sleep makes us less able to use techniques like reappraisal—thinking about upsetting events from a more helpful perspective—as a means for tamping down anger and aggression. We may experience other cognitive impairments, too—like becoming hypervigilant of danger or having trouble with decision-making—which could impact whether or not people seem threatening to us. And our reactions to threats are more intense when we don’t get enough sleep.

Sleeping better allows us to have more self-control, which means we’re less likely to lash out at others even if provoked.

Clearly, not being able to control our aggression would be a bane to our relationships. Sleeping better allows us to have more self-control, which means we’re less likely to lash out at others even if provoked.

Sleep may help us be less prejudiced toward others

Does sleep affect how prejudiced we are? This may seem far-fetched; but when you think of the mental processes involved in interacting with those who are different from us—and how those processes, in turn, are affected by a lack of sleep—it makes more sense.

Certainly, being more willing to approach others, more empathic, or less prone to anger could all have an impact on prejudice. After all, these factors have all been tied to less discrimination in other studies.

Additionally, research suggests we are less prone to feeling rejected when we sleep better. That means that if we fear others may not like us—a common problem to overcome in cross-group interactions—we might be less likely to see rejection where there is none, as long as we get enough sleep.

Sleeping better also makes us less likely to stereotype others, while sleeping less does the opposite—particularly if we already have strong, negative implicit biases towards certain social groups. Perhaps that’s why research has shown that “morning people” adhere to stereotypical thinking more at night when they are fatigued, while the reverse is true for “night people.”

The interaction of sleep and social relationships

Of course, it’s not only true that sleep has an effect on our relationships; our relationships can affect our sleep, too. If we are fighting with our loved ones, facing discrimination, or feeling rejected, our sleep will likely be worse. That means that sleep problems can become cyclical, with social problems causing poor sleep and vice versa.

Luckily, we can break that cycle by getting enough sleep regularly. And, since there are all kinds of evidence-based tips out there for getting a good night’s sleep, it’s at least worth trying to do so. After all, we could all use people in our lives who are better rested and, as a result, more willing to connect in compassionate ways.

I’m sure my husband would concur.

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

The post Five Ways Sleep Is Good for Your Relationships appeared first on Mindful.

[sobepeca-blog]

Talking without words

India is a vastly diverse country. Not in terms of its occupation of geographical area, but the diverse group of people it collectively labels as Indians. Each state has its own language, and each language with its own dialect. So, the ability of a random Indian to be able to freely and easily communicate with another random Indian, is quite difficult.

I have always had a problem with learning languages. Keeping in mind my policy of anonymity for the moment, lets just say that my roots (some refer to it as nativity) lies in a completely different part of India, when compared to the part of India that I have spent my life in. This exposed me to two sets of completely different Indian Languages. Hindi, that I speak at home with my family, and Tamil, that I was forced to understand in order to be at ease with those outside the confinements of my home. Add to this, the fact that I grew up studying in an English medium school. So, over the years, I was able to learn a considerable amount of a very colloquial Hindi, and a limited amount of Tamil. The conflicting languages, made me largely dependent on English, making  it more like a primary language. Even-though I was proud of the fact that I was technically multi-lingual, I only realised later, that there is a big difference between actually knowing a language and kind-of knowing a language. This naivety never really posed as an issue for me for the next 18 years of my life. Well, that is, until I joined Medical School.

I have been blessed to have encountered amazing people, ignoring the few that are worth ignoring. Hence, medical school, exposed me further to a wider variety of individuals from all walks of life. English, has made it incredibly easy for Indians to communicate with each other. I know, some might cry foul with regards to this statement, but when you have a country with such a disarray when it comes to communicable languages, having one language that helps unify its  own people and also with the rest of world, does make things easier. I do agree though, that it is unfortunate that English ended up being the language that in a way unites the country, considering the history of India.

Setting aside all that, I have never really felt at loss for words, as bad as this, when communicating with someone in Hindi, English or Tamil. I remember the day when I started my Internship Rotations, and had to overcompensate my language disability with over-the-top hand movements, resembling nothing less than a game of charades. Its not something that I am ashamed of. Some might accuse me of being careless for not learning a regional language properly, as I would be encountering patients of that region. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed my experiences. It also helped break the ice among nervous patients. For some reason my disability made their nerves calm instead of doubting my ability to diagnose and treat.

However, I am not going to claim that every moment of every day playing charades, was nothing but filled with joy and happiness. There have been moments when I wished I was better equipped with words. The first moment, was at the beginning of my Orthopaedic Rotation. This was my third rotation and my 8th week into my rotations. I was left in-charge of the Male Orthopaedic Ward. I was excited with the responsibility and eager to get to know my patients. As I walked up to the fourth bed, on which lay a thinly built, somewhat malnourished man, with a Tibial Traction having been performed on him the previous day. He stared vacantly at the ceiling. These people were individuals who were upset about ill-health not because of the suffering that it might cause, but instead upset over the prospect of worsening a pre-existing financial crisis. Right next to him, sat his wife, hunched in a manner that emanated her exact emotions. I took a deep breath and a moment, realising I would have to put in twice the effort to connect with them. I slowly approached both of them and took a deeper look into his case file. He was a truck driver, admitted the previous day following an accident at work. On routine blood-work, it was found that he was Hepatitis-B positive. He had no previous history of blood transfusion, no history suggestive or signs indicating possible intravenous drug abuse. His previous medical records clearly indicated that at that time he was HepB negative. That left with one possibility, one that is way too common among truck drivers in India. I realised I would need to counsel his wife regarding testing for the same. Its a touchy subject, especially one where it opens someone's eyes towards infidelity. I introduced myself and explained every step of examination and what treatment plan they should expect. I explained to the patient, who insisted that his wife stay by his side every step of the way, about his new found Hepatitis B positive status and what it meant. He enquired further into how he could have possibly acquired it, a question whose answer his wife patiently awaited too.  His wife was a dainty being. She seemed so fragile, like a ceramic doll. Equally thin and malnourished as her husband, with bags under her eyes which well resonated her worry, be it for her husband's well-being or other predicaments that life forced upon her. It was hard enough, finding the right words till that moment, things became harder once the dreaded moment arrived. It is tricky being a doctor. You need to save all the patience and sensitivity for every moment of every day. You cannot falter, otherwise you might inadvertently hurt another human beings’ feelings even though that is the last thing you ever wanted. Add to this, days of having been over-worked and sleep deprived. It's a touchy subject; humans dealing with humans expected to be equipped with towering abilities. It becomes trickier, when you are still in your youth, trying to grasp situations that are much beyond the level of sensitivity or comprehension you are at. Regardless, I continued with my counselling. Not all institutions are equipped with specialists or counsellors who have been specifically trained for such situations. So this intern-ship not only exposes you to the various fields of medicine, but also various aspects and experiences of human life. It's overwhelming at times.

I explain to both of them, the only possibility left for the transmission of infection, that only questioned eachothers' fidelity. Sexual relationship is a touchy subject with anyone, let alone among people belonging to an extremely traditional and orthodox cultural belief. I had to tread lightly, choosing words carefully, so that I don't disrespect any of them, nor do I show any possibility of judgement from my end. I was prepared for a backlash. Prepared for words that would end up blaming me for even making such suggestions, questioning my authority, my ability, my age. Yet, nothing of the sort happened. As I ended my explanation, he turned towards his wife slowly with apologetic eyes. She knew. She just sat motionless for a brief moment, and finally broke down. I approached her, tried to provide reassurance with a gentle hand on her back, constantly repeating the few words I knew, translating into - "It will all be alright." I never felt so inadequate. This isn't the saddest moment that one might have experienced, but sadness is sadness. After a while, I continued to explain to her the need for her to get checked and my obligation to enquire about her sexual history. At the end, she quietly whispered - "Why?" - with such hopelessness in her eyes, it became hurtful to keep an eye contact with her, yet I could not avert my eyes as I stood there at loss for words. She never really made any eye contact with anyone that day. As I moved on to the next patient and the next, looking back at her, to check on her, her existence just seemed to fade away. She became motionless, invisible, as though the person on the chair had no will to exist. I haven't forgotten her face. I haven't forgotten the moment.