#this year as simultaneously been so long and short I’m exhausted

[sjoongki]

how is it already march tomorrow, but also only march ?????

[throwaway-yandere]

ERROR 410: GONE (Yandere Faceless!Kamisato Ayato/Reader)

A/n: thank you for the 5 dollar tip, "anonymous"! I asked them for what they want in exchange and they asked for a fac█le██ ayato fic... Alright then... You did ask for it...

Unreliable synopsis: Your new coworker doesn't seem to be from around here...

It was a cramped night at the bus stop. Except for the elderly, many people had their phones out since it was nearly midnight and nobody had the stamina to engage in conversation. You recently got promoted as a district manager for an international company, and oh, the work is just too exhausting to drone about. However, in this station, it didn't matter if you were an energetic student or an employee. The bus is abnormally later than their usual "lateness", and such a redundant statement elucidates just how shoddy their schedule is. Everyone was simultaneously stressed and drained and each of their war faces screamed that they would selfishly fight for the seat ride home.

All except for one man.

From the moment he arrived, you were peering at him. He had a similar appearance to the character you were "maining" in the video game you were enamored with for approximately two years. Though you seriously doubt he was in cosplay, he and that favorite of yours look eerily identical. His long-sleeved black coat and simple white turtleneck blend in with modern fashion fairly, save for his elaborate light blue hair, which was organically unkempt and not at all synthetic. His keen eyes led you to believe that he is from an Eastern lineage, most likely Japanese, but you didn't want to make any unfounded assumptions. Because it's simply impossible for someone to cosplay at this time, you were left silently marveling at the incredible coincidence.

He muttered something to himself, but you did not hear it.

“11:56 PM.”

You had a smidgen of knowledge regarding the bus schedule enough to give yourself a pep talk in the hopes that it would motivate you to give him directions. But no amount of psyching yourself up could have prepared you for when another person walked up to him. She asked the question you had been meaning to ask for the past three minutes, assuming she was a college student. He grinned at the worried girl. 

He was stunningly gorgeous when he smiled.

Wholly unfair how he exudes an aura of elegance whilst wearing normal clothes while you look like a sloppy burrito wrapped by a beige shawl this dead of night.

“Oh, no, no. I am not at all lost. I’m simply looking for someone.”

Everyone was fairly sure that person would never arrive, but he stayed roving around the room, pacing back and forth as if the person he was looking for will arrive the next minute. Whoever it was, you were starting to get angry on his behalf. Who would leave such an attractive man waiting? It was improper. 

But to be honest, you have already admitted to yourself that your life is quite dull— so you’re aware that this nonsensical drama you had over this imaginary person stemmed from boredom.

Out of the blue, he fixed his gaze on you.

The stranger’s eyes softened. The simmering panic in his expression vanished in an instant the moment he saw your face, and his mouth gaped open for a short while before he sauntered forward, ignoring the student who awkwardly shuffled back to her waiting spot.

You immediately felt small, upright, and astoundingly nervous. Not ready to be accosted by anyone at all.

“There you are…” He gave you that smile again. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Mx. (Y/n).”

You scanned the area before jabbing your finger at your chest. He nodded as if you were being ridiculous to consider that it may be someone else.

Ah, so the lookalike was waiting for you. 

You were mentally fighting yourself.

“I’m ███████ █████,” he said in a gentle tone— not at all reflecting the stressed out look he sported a moment before. “— The new product manager. I’m an incredibly recent hire, so please do not feel bad for not recognizing my face.”

That wasn’t the reason why your eyebrows were knitted, though. It’s because you DO recognize his face, but you doubt he’d take you for a reasonable person should you start pointing out his physical similarities with a fictional character.

███████ █████, huh? His full name is a bit average-sounding. Sounds like something you may have read on an early 2000s Weaboo forum on "What would your Japanese name be?" which lists down dates, birth months, and the first letter of a person's first name. However, it wasn’t entirely unbelievable— you just chalked him up as an unfortunate kid whose parents were eager to give their son the name "John Doe" when given the chance.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mister █████.”

“P-Please,” he shook his head. “Let’s drop the formalities. We shall work alongside together officially tomorrow. I would like for us to talk more casually if you would not mind.”

His vocabulary was painfully filled with constrictive pleasantries for someone who seemed to be eager to have a casually cordial relationship with you. Since a product manager and a district manager have roughly equal levels of authority in your company, his desire for friendship isn't too shocking.

Yet, you can’t help but stare… It’s still so strange how he also has a mole right underneath his lip.

He looks just like Kamisato Ayato from Genshin Impact, but not for long.

At first, you envied █████’s youthful glow and wanted it for yourself, but upon learning that he will replace Mister Blaiddyd, you mentally prayed that he wouldn’t lose his mind from stress like his predecessor. That’s how stressful being a product manager is. Give him two months and he’d probably start ruining his coiffed hair during crunch times.

“Understood,” your eyes darted back to the bus station, which remained regrettably devoid of any vehicle. You were starting to consider taking a taxi to avoid this awkward conversation but there’s not a single one in sight. “Since you’ve mentioned that you were trying to find me, might I ask why that is, exactly?”

“Ah, yes,” he instinctively adjusted his collar. His sharp and sophisticated face never averted away from you. “You see— Miss Goneril had informed me that I should approach you if I had any concerns about work.”

Ahh… Hilda…

His future plight still doesn’t change how annoying this situation is. Can’t believe you’re already assigned to helping a newbie out as soon as you got your promotion. She’s planning to milk your kindness dry this month, isn’t she? Despite being your best work friend, Hilda doesn’t have to be unkind to someone to exploit them. But you suppose you wouldn’t mind too much, given how he doesn’t look half-bad. Call it vain, call it a “coping mechanism”, but there wouldn’t be any shame on your end to teach a new attractive coworker the ropes of your job. 

You'll treat him nicely. As the good Samaritan you are, maybe you'll also ask him to give up while he's ahead for good measure.

“Sure, I wouldn’t mind helping you out—”

“I'm most grateful!”

“—but it is VERY late.”

You took a quick look at your phone. 11:53 PM—and there were three messages from Miss Goneril confirming that █████ is the new hire. Since Hilda never filtered her remarks when it came to... aesthetically pleasing people, you instantly pocketed your phone. It was a grave oversight on your end that Hilda found out earlier that you weren't paying attention to her babbling earlier. You wouldn't get such a long message on how "hot" █████'s mole was if you were a better pretender. Her thirst was kind of unsettling.

Ah, whatever. You’ll just delete it later.

You held back a yawn, “where’s your stop?”

“███ ███████.”

“Ah, that’s where I drop off too.”

Additionally, it is the bus's final stop, so you would have to spend a lot more time with him. Great. You hoped he wouldn't try to strike up a conversation with some small talk.

He placed his hand on his chin. Now that he’s up close, you realized just how long his sleeves were. The silhouette nearly reminded you of Kamisato Ayato once more. █████ nodded with a half-teasing smile.

“Oh, not to worry, I know.”

Hilda must have told him right away. You secretly hoped that the main reason she paired you two up was because of your shared destination so you could applaud her wise decision-making skills, but you knew better. Once more, Hilda is attempting to match you with someone.

You cleared your throat, “well then, you better prepare yourself with some sleepless nights because the buses around here don’t come around plenty. You’d have to stand most of the time—”

He muttered something again, “three minutes left.”

“Hmm?”

“Ah, no, it’s nothing. I’ve recently moved here so please do continue explaining.”

“… Right.” You sighed, “do you live in ██████████?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’d go in opposite directions. I live in █████ so this is the only bus we share.”

“Unfortunately.”

That almost made you snort. Unfortunately? It's not at all unfortunate, though. During these hours, you rarely feel socially motivated to communicate, and you just know deep down that once he starts working, you'll find a method to board buses separately from him.

“If it’s alright for me to quickly digress— may I trouble you with something, (Y/n)?”

“Sure.”

“May I take a picture with you?” █████ asked. “I want to upload it in my Instagram Story to show my friends and family that I’m faring well. They’ve been insistent that I should make friends on my first day of work— even when based on technicalities, this doesn’t qualify as my first day.”

He must be the eldest and the breadwinner of the ████████ family. That's admirable. Working with someone like him is not a problem for you. They constantly know how to get the job done.

“I don’t mind,” you said, slightly nervous. “But can you not add any weird stuff?”

“Weird stuff?”

“Like, maybe a “my new coworker is ugly” or something like that.”

“W-What?!” █████ jolted. “I would never do such a thing! Especially towards you, my bel—”

“R-Relax, that was just a joke.” Not really. “Is it okay if I don’t take my face mask off?”

“… Of course, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Great.”

█████ scooted closer to you, placing his phone up and angling it in the direction that mostly showed your face. It’s as if he didn’t want his face to be seen, but with a handsome face like that? You’re highly doubtful that is the case. His hands were trembling. The poor man must’ve been incredibly sleep deprived and running on coffee like you.

Unwittingly, you placed your hand above his to steady his phone and you heard him gasp softly. You quickly withdrew your hand away as though you touched a hot kettle when its anything but warm.

His hands were cold, it almost didn’t feel human.

“Oh— sorry!” You shrugged, cringing. “I didn’t mean to—”

“N-No, it’s fine!” He chuckled nervously. “If anything, I should be the one apologizing. I have been told that I am terrible at using a Kamera.”

Why does he say “camera” with a hard “K”? You’ve never heard anyone else pronounce it in that way. Possibly a local accent. It was tempting to ask where he’s from but perhaps that topic would be better brought up some other time. Asking that question might just make him miss his family more, and his parents might be wide-awake right now anticipating any form of reassurance that their child is doing fine.

“Then allow me to take the pic for us.”

He smiled eagerly, “I would greatly appreciate that.”

█████ handed you his phone. You set it up at the same angle he had originally intended, although this time his phone's screen displayed both your faces more clearly. Although you made an effort to contain your emotions, you couldn't help but be overwhelmed by how much he resembles Kamisato Ayato. You mentally readied yourself for the possibility that you would feel his breath on your neck, but you didn't feel him breathe. That doesn’t make you feel untouched, however, since he rested his hand on your shoulder to pull you close enough for the picture.

Is he holding his breath?

“Stay still,” he commanded.

You clenched your fist, trying hard NOT to think about how close his voice is to Chris Hackney’s.

After you pressed the shutter button at least three times, you opened the pictures you’ve taken.

He really does have a beautiful smile.

“Is there something wrong with my face…?”

“Hmm? N-No,” you sputtered out. “I just thought it was a good pic.”

“I’m glad,” he laughed heartily. “I’m still getting used to this face after all.”

… Huh.

Maybe you lack sleep, but the photos remind you of those AI-generated photos on social media— the stolen ones that artists rightfully plead credit for. Maybe you just find him excessively gorgeous because he reminded you of a fictional character you were familiar with, but his appearance somehow seems otherworldly…

“11:55, one minute left.” He muttered again as he crooned above your neck, gazing at his phone.

“For what?”

█████ laughed heartily. 

“For the bus, of course!”

You raised an eyebrow. The station was incredibly empty. You genuinely can’t tell who would lie to him about that.

“Sorry, █████, I don’t know who told you that but there’s genuinely no pattern as to when the bus arrives here. That’s fake news—”

“██████████!!! ██████████!!!”

You immediately snap your neck at the sound of the bus conductor.

“H-Huh?” Your eyes widened.

█████ wore a smug smile on his face as he watched you stare at his phone in disbelief. He was correct; the time was 11:56 pm. But before he had time to gloat and act “mysterious”, you snatched his cold hand and sprinted for the seats— apologizing to the college student you bumped into along the way.

No way in hell you’re going to wait for the next bus.

“We need to go! Now!!!”

You woke up the next day feeling more tired than the previous morning.

Tuesday means that you will inevitably have to work today. You woke up before your alarm, but instead of being a responsible adult and opening up a parcel of bread with hot coffee on the side, you rolled on your bed to whisk your charged phone from the nightstand. You received notifications from several social media apps and a work email from Mister Gautier, but you'd prefer not to startle yourself by hearing one of your subordinate's absurd justifications for being absent. Instead, you launched the Instagram app that you reluctantly installed because of Hilda.

The picture you took together with █████ is still up on his Story.

The image is just as you recall it. You might even say that your opinion of his appearance significantly increased after a good night's sleep. How did you manage to converse with your new coworker last night without turning into a stammering wreck when he is THIS drop-dead gorgeous? You're confident the picture wasn't edited in any way. After all, you saw him upload it directly to his phone's social media account because you wanted to make sure he wouldn't add any odd captions. Congrats to █████ for being incredibly photogenic. He genuinely looks like an AI-generated person with how flawless he appeared. You would have told Hilda straight away that whatever she was swooning over had to be some kind of catfish if you hadn't met him—

You squinted.

…

“Wait a second.”

You looked closely at his hand which rested on top of your shoulder.

“… Are those six fingers?”

That can’t be right.

Sure, he does look like an AI-generated person in the flesh but six fingers? Absurd. It’s probably due to the horrible lighting.

You can’t zoom in on a story, so you took a screenshot but—

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

“Shit.”

You had no time to spare. Hastily, you rolled out, tossed your phone on the bed, and staggered to the restroom. You had to go as soon as possible since you have a meeting this morning. At this rate, soldiers who lived ration by ration likely had a healthier diet than you– but your boss is the embodiment of evil.

You’ll just have to look at the image later.

“Bad morning?”

“Oh, nice to see you here, █████.”

█████ grinned, pointing at the chair beside you, “would you mind if I sit?”

You smiled politely, “I don’t own this place, you know?”

He chuckled, “fair enough.”

It's 4:07 PM. Even though one of your team members arrived later than expected, you eventually built momentum and finished the presentation on a high note. Working with Mr. Gautier is such a headache. Thankfully, district managers have to go out in the field, so before you know it, you've excused yourself to eat lunch at your preferred café. The barely-melted coffee powder you had at home wasn't going to help you get through the day like your favorite cup here. Your cup was no longer a "morning joe", but better late than never.

█████ sank on the cafe’s chair, inhaling the aroma of the rich coffee you ordered. You assumed yet again that it was Miss Goneril’s atrocious wingman skills that led him to this place. His shoulders relaxed a bit afterward as he eyed your cup.

“I do wonder what real coffee tastes like…” █████ mumbled.

You'd give it to him, but you're stressed out—probably more so than he is, given that your supervisor basically holds his hand around the office like a newborn child. The gravity of the problems you carry as a District Manager is nothing to laugh at, either. It’s just a matter of getting used to it.

“Looking already stressed on your official first day, hmm?” You teased before you sipped your cup, pretending you don’t feel his jealous eyes. “Is being a Project Manager not what you had expected?”

█████ shook his head, scoffing with a lopsided grin.

“Oh no, I used to have bigger workloads. I’m only behaving this way since I’m not used to moving this face often.”

This face, huh? What a unique yet expected phrasing. After all, he is so attractive that it wouldn't surprise you if he thought of his face as a separate entity that must be maintained. █████ must be the type of person who cares an awful lot for skin care and self-love. Good for him, good for him.

“Never worked in retail before?” You tilted your head. “Never practiced your customer service smile?”

“In a way, yes,” he chuckled. “I am more accustomed to working behind the scenes since my younger sister takes most of the spotlight in the commi— our family business.”

█████ sure laughs a lot.

“Ah, is she something of an entertainer?” You teased. Knowing a thing or two about other people’s younger siblings, you anticipated some messy anecdotes which served to amplify your opinions on how chaotic having siblings is.

“No. On the contrary, she’s incredibly reserved and poised.”

“Then I bet there’s just something charismatic about her— is she the artistic type?”

“She is. Our family’s beloved princess is quite skilled in the art of dancing and calligraphy. You ought to watch her perform someday.”

You made an effort not to grin foolishly as humiliating thoughts ran rampant inside your head. His sister sounds like Ayaka already. How surreal would it be if you opened up your phone and did your Daily Commissions in front of him—

Oh, right! Your phone— that screenshot!

You ferreted your phone out of your bag, side-eyeing him each time you failed to find it inside its mini-pockets. █████ kept smiling as you busied yourself in hopes you’d locate your phone sooner. To fill in the dead air (and to avoid getting uncomfortable knowing that a man was keeping a close eye on you), you got right onto the meat of the subject by asking questions.

“Hey— I know this is weird, but can I see your hands?”

█████ didn’t respond for a while, lost in a trance before you lightly waved at his face. His soft gaze broke as he blinked fast multiple times.

“My… hands? Alright.”

He pulled his long sleeves— which iconically trailed longer than any other coat in the company— to smoothly show off his slender fingers. █████ glanced at his wristwatch in the process. 4:09 PM. Just one minute more.

Meanwhile, you flinched. He clearly had five fingers in each hand. The normal amount. You didn’t know what exactly you were expecting.

“Hah, I’m definitely sleep deprived,” you spoke humorously. “When I checked our picture this morning I swear I saw six fingers.”

He didn’t laugh. Slowly, he closed his eyes, unamused.

“You’re wrong.” 

█████’s voice dipped low.

You never realized how warm his servile gazes were until he starts looking at you with a cold glare.

You felt your spine tremble as you took note of how he crossed his arms. What’s with this sudden shift in atmosphere? Shouldn’t he laugh at how strange your question was instead?

Why did he sound so offended?

Due to the nature of his tone, you sputtered out an excuse to bring back the light conversation you had before, “must’ve been because its dark— here hold on I took a screenshot of it.”

You opened your gallery, not bothering to scroll deep into it since it should be a recent photo. Yet, you paused, and frantically swiped up and down. You expected that screenshot to be the first image that greets you upon opening the app, but you only saw an entirely black PNG file. Why on earth did that screenshot turn void? You tried searching but you only found recent scans from the last week’s meetings and some “candid” selfies Hilda most likely snapped for herself. 

This makes no sense whatsoever! You swore you took the screenshot earlier and there was no notification that it failed to save it.

“█████” smirked.

11:56 PM M: (Y/n) waits at the bus station.

02:33 AM T: (Y/n) arrives home.

8:01 AM T: (Y/n) has a meeting.

4:10 PM T: (Y/n) looks at their phone at Cafe █████.

4:10 PM. GONE.

You’re so adorable when you have your phone close to your face with your eyebrows knitted like that… Oh, his dear beloved, you nearly got him…

It’s such a shame that he knows your phone like the back of his palm.

“Is something the matter, (Y/n)?”

Kamisato Ayato chuckled behind his sleeve.

You wouldn’t meet his eye, “I was pretty certain I took a screenshot of it this morning, this is so strange…”

Quickly, you opened Instagram to check “█████”’s Story, but the image was missing as well. Since Stories only expire after 24 hours, and it has only been a little over half that time since it was posted, it shouldn't have disappeared. Your eyes remained glued to your phone, unbeknownst to the sinister smile your coworker wore amidst your defeated state.

“Say, did you remove your Stor—”

“Here.”

“█████” slid his phone onto the table.

You picked it up. It’s the picture you two had at the station. You zoomed in on his hand.

Five fingers.

“… Yeah, it’s definitely five,” you whimpered almost inaudibly. “Here I thought I could show you something funny. Damn. I’m really sleep-deprived.”

“I know, you sleep at around 2:30 after all.”

“Yeah—”

You took a breath and then shook your head. There is no need to be skeptical about that statement; it's simple arithmetic. He reportedly knows a lot about accounting, thus he most likely estimated the length of your ride home as if it were a no-brainer. You gave him a wary smile. He's a lot more calculating than you first thought; he even picked up that you were looking for the photo you took the night before without your having to tell him.

Doing what needed to be done without being asked…

“█████” swiftly took his phone back.

“Now then, would you care to enlighten me as to what tastes good on this cafe’s menu?”

You smiled.

Yeah. You think you’ll get along with the new Project Manager just fine.

“Why, it’ll be my pleasure! First off, the frappe here is not that bad…”

[mazzystar24]

idk who else to go to with this but i have so many people sending me hate because i don’t like bucktommy when i literally never even post about them????? they keep calling me toxic and a hater and i’m not i just have shipped buddie for years and i don’t vibe with tommy…. it makes me sad because this fandom used to bond over buddie so much but now i just see angry tommy fans (and admittedly some buddie fans but nowhere near as many) spreading so much hatred and rudeness while turning around and calling buddie fans toxic when we just want to ship our 6 year long standing ship… and like i said i genuinely never post about bucktommy, and if i do say something about them that can be perceived as negative then i always tag it “anti-bucktommy” and i NEVER tag it bucktommy so that they don’t have to even see it! It hurts to open up the app not knowing if i’m going to have another person calling me homophobic or a fetishizer (i’m literally queer) or calling me a toxic bitch when i literally don’t do anything but post happy buddie content 9/10 posts! and like i said i know i’ve seen some buddie accounts go to extremes and i’m not defending that, but i’ve seen people who will call out even the slightest apprehension to bucktommy as if they stepped on someone’s grave, while simultaneously bullying and harassing buddie shippers for minding their own business… like i can’t even go into the buddie tag and it’s people attacking us left and right while the bucktommy tag is nothing but everyone gushing over them… i hate that we can’t enjoy a 6 year old ship anymore because half the fandom decided to jump to this other one that has barely gotten any screentime between two characters that don’t really have chemistry with each other and they want to berate us for it and call us names. I’m not a fetishizer and I’m not toxic, I’m just a late 20s queer girl who wants to talk about buddie without a barrage of hate and insults thrown at me but I can’t do that anymore… 9-1-1/buddie used to be my safe place but now i can’t even come on tumblr because i’m worried a stan will be lurking in my asks/replies waiting to tell me how awful i am.

i’m sorry to dump all of that on you but i just opened a really nasty ask and it hurt a lot to read what they said about me and you were the first person on my dash

Hey anon!

Okay so I can already guess I’ll be late posting this cos i think I’ll be replying to this in increments throughout my day today, and also I can tell this is really bothering you so I don’t wanna just give like a short rushed answer - oh wow I actually wrote this in one sitting cos I can’t shut up once I start

Yes the fandom has been a downright mess lately and it’s like I always say, people if you wanna engage in discourse that’s your prerogative and no one is faulting you for that but it’s the utter lack of fandom etiquette these toxic fans have that’s the real issue and I also feel like as you said a huge issue is this kind of imaginary high horse they seem to have

Like I totally agree that there is like this section of toxic bucktommy fans who try to warp not liking bucktommy into being biphobic- which look if people are actually being biphobic by all means call them out but when you’re going to actual queer people who posted 166283894 posts celebrating bi buck, only to attack them for not liking the ship?? Then that’s just plain stupid I’m sorry, like being happy to have the queer rep and not liking bucktommy isn’t mutually exclusive and it’s ridiculous people are trying to make it out to be

Like I’ve personally been sent an ask like that where they implied that I was biphobic for not being a big fan of bucktommy and that “I don’t know how exhausting it is for bi people” - which I gotta say made me go what about my blog would ever make someone think ah yes straight 🤩

And thing is at the time they sent that my most note filled post was my celebration reaction meme extravaganza to getting bi buck which I feel added some fun irony to the whole thing

And calling people shipping two MEN (buddie) homophobic takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance that I gotta say I’d almost be impressed with the leaps in logic if it wasn’t so annoying

Now I personally don’t know what state the bucktommy tag is in cos I mostly stick to the 911 abc and the buddie tag but I know how the buddie tag has been and I agree the misuse of tags to make a negative space is absolutely ridiculous and again that all goes back to the etiquette part

And the fetishising thing is also just another thing that absolutely grates my nerves, because these toxic fans really need a dictionary thrown at their heads because buddie is like the polar opposite of that.

First of all a large section of buddie shippers im aware have asexual Eddie headcanons and that aside let’s say we want gay Eddie and buddie and all those things, let’s even say we want them to fuck nasty *gasp🫢* and sloppy and write 156273 smut fics where they plain fuck like rabbits (*nun faints in the background* also probably some pearl clutching occurred upon reading this),

THAT’S NOT THE POINT HERE- the point is the main appeal of buddie as a ship isn’t that ooo look two hot guys kissing; it’s the history it’s the friendship, it’s the vulnerability, it’s the will scene, the shooting, the trust, the parallels, the understanding of each other, it’s the domesticity and it’s all these moments that have nothing to do with sex or objectifying their dynamic or mlm relationships but rather shipping them because they are two people with this amazing connection and these experiences

and THAT? That’s the furthest thing from fetishisation

Now I could be controversial and talk about how SOME and some is the operative word of this sentence- SOME toxic bucktommy fans have been blatant in not really caring about the story or the characters or buck and Tommy as individuals or the team dynamic or anything other than seeing these two men kiss, these being a lot of the same fans who refuse to watch the show other than the bucktommy and Tommy scenes and then will act like they somehow understand the show more than fans who’ve been here years or seen the whole show BUT I digress because I know that saying this is me basically asking for spam hate (so shhhh let’s pretend I didn’t say that 🤫)

who said that? 👀not me👀damn that’s crazy a ghost just ran across my keyboard 🙄

Anyways back to you specifically, because I really do think it bares mentioning, if you’ve been respectful to others then that’s all you can do and thank you on the behalf of everyone cos it really makes a difference, and I wanna say sorry on the behalf of every asshole who’s deciding to attack you for ridiculous reasons, the best advice I can give you is to genuinely not let it get to you I know it’s easier said than done but you know who you are and you know your intentions and some dumbass sitting behind a screen who can’t even properly comprehend what biphobia or fetishisation actually is (or worse DOES know what it is but is just using it as a way to put others down over a tv show to have an imaginary high ground) isn’t worth your time or your distress and they cannot change who you are

This part might be over explaining the obvious but in case you don’t know/ are new to tumblr or whatever: If you wanna continue to have fandom spaces as a safe place filtering should get rid of a lot of the posts and so should blocking but ofc you’ll see a few so just skip past and enjoy the content you like, if you wanna make posts and are scared of asks from toxic shippers maybe you can turn off your asks temporarily until you feel like you’re in a better place mentally to deal with it

Oooo or an idea that might work is you can ask your followers and mutuals (who are the ones most likely to be sending the nice asks) to use an emoji at the start of their asks to indicate to you that this is an ask you’ll like then you can delete any ask without that emoji without even having to look at the hate if it’s causing you that anxiety - if that makes sense?

I hope my reply somehow made you feel better and I really hope that you can have your fandom space and enjoyment back 🫶🫶🫶🫶

[tossawary]

Happy June, everyone! It’s my birthday month!

I’ve wrapped up “Stepping Up”, finally, which became far longer than I originally intended and has thus before my... first SVSSS fanfic novel of the year, I guess? (Saying that still feels kind of wild, because... wow, I’ve written... a lot... at this point, huh?) It was fun! It allowed me to explore a lot of SQH & LBH thoughts. I enjoyed exploring a different take on a parental relationship for them.

It might seem sudden to some, but I had to end it where I did because I’d covered all of the story/character beats that I’d imagined in my initial AU concept, and then a few extras, and while I have plenty of fun ideas on how that AU might continue from the current ending, they’re so vague at the moment that trying to pull them together on the fly into a coherent story on a weekly basis would be exhausting. It’s very tempting, but I know that I would end up burning out, so I just can’t do it right now. I’m going to let that An Ding Disciple LBH AU rest and focus on other projects.

Specifically, I’m going to focus on some commitments I’ve made to fan events and auctions, so I don’t expect to be posting anything this month, and possibly not through July or August either. Maybe there might be a very short one shot if I get a sudden burst of inspiration, but no promises there. I’ll be back in the autumn with a big bang, though, for sure!

Oh, and I’ll also be replying to all those comments I let sit for so long... Whoops. I really didn’t mean for things to get this out of hand. I do appreciate them! Very much! I decided to focus my free time (work has been good while simultaneously also kicking my ass a little) and energy on writing more fic and repeatedly lost track of time. I apologize to anyone who hoped for a speedy response and thank people again for their patience.

[polysprachig]

tell us more about these projects! i’ve struggled to pick up languages again after an extended break and no time and a project-based approach seems very refreshing!

Apologies in advance for the long post. I do plan on making a more detailed post on this at a later point hopefully a video but I make no promises these days.

Important note!! Before you start any short- or long-term learning projects, begin a polyglot journal outlining your objectives and check in every two weeks with an extra detailed summary of what you’ve done, haven’t done, dislike, feel needs changing, etc. either once per quarter or 2x year. Your micro-goals, methods and timeline should shift over time, showing that you can reassess the project and try out new things to suit your needs. If you don't update on time it's nbd, but at least try to write a note in your planner or calendar about what you did when because it can be extremely helpful one year later when you try to revisit where you are now and how you got there. 🧿🤍

The main projects from 2019 to today include the following

Greek - Conversational Speaking, 2019

Goal: meet for casual 30-minute lessons with a teacher, 2 or 3x per week to build up conversational skills and high frequency grammar in use as a passive bilingual (it being the native language which I actively lost growing up for various reasons).

Reflection: The real studies were repetition in speech and looking up key vocabulary I would need to use to tell my teacher about what happened in the last week, and my teacher supplied me with additional vocabulary to help me be more specific. Now I have a record of that vocabulary which I can review whenever by topic/story. Plus my family did notice my drastic improvement and asked if I had been studying.

Irish - The Merlin Project (Quarantine Project), 2020-2022 (+ ongoing, needs new methodology because I met my aims a while back at this point)

Aim: Go from A2 to B1 by learning to write so that you can have the skills to be able to read longer texts

Challenge: Rewatch an episode from the last show that you watched and write down what you see in as much detail as possible, making sure to use a grammar point you’re currently studying in your writing. Look up new words to make the text more specific and add them to the description. Correct your text. Watch the same scene again and add more detail, as in the following:

(Basically: first: do a grammar practice, then: watch 30 seconds, write using that grammar, translate dialogue if you want, consult dictionary, write again incorporating the new words and/or make the sentences more complex, at the end: correct your text yourself or with a teacher, start again and repeat until the scene or full episode is complete or you've exhausted the usefulness of the exercise.)

Alternatively just write or translate fanfiction, but I don't say that here.

By self-correcting you should become very confident on the basic skills at your level, whereas the rewriting itself allows for varied attempts at forming sentences and vocabulary acquisition in a specific context.

FYI I posted the project itself along with the notes to my website (here) and intend to share the presentation on the experience I gave in the Gaeltacht this past August soon enough.

Multilingual, select Romance and Germanic languages - The Diana Project, 2022-present

Challenge: dive deep into the rhythm, melody and sound of certain languages (which relate to a poet I’m analysing) via a slow read of poetry and familiarisation with the poet, poet-translator and poet-actor

Components: read, write, translate and recite poetry on the subject of Greco-Roman tragedy (now its shifting to satire after 1+ year or so of tragic influences) from select eras and in select styles, ex. ottava rima, rhyming verse & simultaneously learn about the rhetoric of poetics that influenced these authors and their poems or translations

These writings I’m still adding to my website as part of a translation, recitation and poetry portfolio.

Most recently, I’ve started what I call the Secret Senecan Project which requires reading certain ancient and mediaevil texts on stories I’m familiar with in the original, identifying key words based on context then extrapolating the grammar from their features (declinations, location in reference to other word forms, etc.). The next step will be to compare these predictions with the bilingual translation and consult my grammar books in those languages to confirm or improve my predictions.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope to polish this up and make the details more learner-friendly sometime before 2024. (:

[zannesgender]

Hey. I don't really post much here bc I don't have much to say. I tried writing a short story as a kink shit post the other day and I liked how it turned out. This place is better for that sort of longer form text, so I'm gonna stick it up here as well. Disclaimers: I am not a writer, I do not have a zombie kink, this is a story I wrote about zombie sex.

You throw your shoulder into the front door, splintering the frame as you collapse into the threshold. She stumbles over your body, unshouldering her rifle and placing it on the dusty floor. She regains her footing and hastily helps you to your feet. You shut the door as best you can and assess this new interior. As you both frantically dart your eyes across the room, you simultaneously settle on a tall, wooden armoire, drawers stripped and cabinets bare, but solid. Each claiming a side, you move the furniture in front of the door. You next grab the nearby loveseat and move that into position as well. Exhausted, you each fall onto the loveseat to catch your breath and think. You unholster your handgun and rest it on your lap. You know instinctually that the rest of the house has not been secured, like a subconscious knot of anxiety that cannot be released until you do the work. But just a minute, fuck, you just need one god damn minute.

“We need to sweep,” she says, shaking from the adrenaline coursing through her.

“What the fuck was that? The way was supposed to be clear. Patrols have had it clean for over a month.”

“Must have been a breach. Closest settlement from their direction would be Lynchburg. Not that we would have heard shit from them, not after Carrigan started heading the board. Fucking fragile little assholes.” You nod your head, those residual slugs of the American prepper community can’t ever seem to learn a god damn thing.

“We need to get word back to Carrigan or Summerton will be blindsided by nightfall. And God knows how many caravans will get caught up in it.”

“How the fuck do you expect to do that? Closest comm station is two miles through a swarm of three hundred fucking zombies. Next one is twenty miles west.”

“We dump our packs and haul ass. We still have 6 hours of daylight.” You’re pretty beat, but a little rest and you know you can pace yourself out in time. It’s not even a marathon, and you’ve done those in half the time, back before the world began.

“Maybe, but I need a bit. Let’s sweep this house real quick.” She gets up from her seat slowly and retrieves her rifle from the floor, slinging it back over her shoulder, and slides out her sidearm. “I got point.” You usually take point, but you’re not gonna argue. Besides, this house looks like it’s been swept and scavenged a dozen times over the years. You’re not expecting any surprises.

You sweep through every corner of the three-bedroom rancher with little incident. You have to shift some kitchen furniture around to secure the back door, which was previously kicked in. It’s long-since been picked-over of anything useful, and you end your survey lying down on a California king four-poster bed in the primary bedroom. The knot of anxiety finally loosens as you sink into the mattress. She leans her rifle against the empty nightstand and joins you, sitting a bit too rigidly on the side of the bed, staring into her open pack on the floor. She gives a deep sigh and pulls out her loop of rope. “Babe, I’m gonna need you to do something for me. I don’t have much time, and definitely not enough for you to melt down.”

Your body tenses, a numbness surges through your limbs and your stomach sinks. “What are you talking about?” you quiver, but you already know exactly what she’s talking about. “How? We got away. Are you sure it’s not just a scratch?” Then you notice the wet spot on her black cotton t-shirt. She pulls off the shirt, revealing an open wound, no longer bleeding, but dry and necrotic at the margins.

“Yeah, I’m sure. And I’m gonna need you one last time.” She uses her knife to section out four lengths of rope. “Make it tight. Make it hurt.” She gives you the ropes and begins to undress.

You’re still trying to process the reality of it all. You recall that night, around the bonfire, passing around a jar of Trudy’s jet fuel and unwinding with the camp. Troy asked the group how they’d go out if they got bit, the sort of gallows question you ask people grown hard and cold to this world. “If I’ve got my side-arm. Y’all just leave me to myself,” Marcus said, poking a stick into the fire. Your arms were wrapped around your girl to keep her warm, to smell her hair, a mix of salt and dirt and smoke and that sweetness underneath it all that never faded. She spoke next in a slurred but sultry voice, “Babe, if I get bit, I want you to just tie me down and fuck me to death.” Troy spit his drink up into the bonfire, igniting in a whoosh as the group joined in laughter. “I can do that for you,” you said, “but then I’m gonna have to get going,” and you kiss the top of her head and smirk at the laughing circle of your fire-lit family.

She smiles up at you, her eyes slow-blinking you like a soothed cat. Your eyes sting from trying to hold back the tears, but your fingers know these ropes, and work the knots unthinkingly as they’ve done a thousand times before. First the hands, then the feet. You’re careful to anchor the hands low on the posters to ensure as little movement as possible after she… after it’s done. You straddle her, admiring every curve of her as if it’s the last time, your penis pressed against hers. Your hands trace up and down her sides and around her breasts as you feel her grow against you, her nipples hardening at your touch. You lean forward and down and kiss her, delicately at first, caressing her face and neck and sliding your hands down the length of her slender, firm, tethered arms flexing against their restraints. You pull back just enough to whisper, “I fucking love you.”

She smiles and whispers back, “Then fuck me ‘til I’m gone, and maybe a bit more if you want.” Her smile breaks into a grin and you kiss her hard, hungrily, your tongue exploring every familiar contour of her soft mouth. After applying some of Trudy’s lubricating gel from the pack, you enter her slowly, gently. Her eager hole accepts you readily and you become one for the last time. Your mind swims, trying to take in every last detail as her breath quickens and her chest rises and falls, shimmering and perfect. When you feel her moment approach, you reach down and take her swollen dick in your hand as you quicken your thrusts into her. Her breaths turn to moans and squeaking pleas of “Yes, fuck yes.” Her back arches as you thrust deep inside and her light spurt of crystal ejaculate stretches thinly across your hand and into her navel. Her back falls into the mattress and she breathes deep and slow. You lean forwards to kiss her, but her hips buck and her head turns away to the side. Then she exhales deeply and is still, silent, perfect.

Alone, but still inside of her, you allow your tears to come. Streaming, shrieking tears mark this final shattering of your world. Every day that has ever mattered started with you waking up in hell next to the most beautiful creature you could have ever imagined. Every struggle you’ve faced in the blistering sun and choking dirt you conquered with ease knowing every night you would get to hold her and feel her drift into sleep. You had everything this morning and you knew to savour every moment of it. Now, at the end of it all, you regret nothing. You’ve decided you don’t want to run anymore.

You grab the loop of rope and cut four measures for yourself. You’re not sure if you’re too cowardly to continue or brave enough to accept your end. In this lonely, abandoned home, those words lose all meaning. They are standards and concepts rendered meaningless in a world that has shrunk to the size of a California king. You start with your legs, and finish tying up your right hand with a firm jerk of your head. As the last end of rope drops from your jaw, you feel the body stir underneath you. You barely pull out of range before the head snaps towards you hissing and lurching for a bite of you.

The shock sets your heart pounding again, and you watch as the head weaves back and forth, mouth grasping desperately at you, shoulders struggling against the restraint. You breathe deeply, exhaling as you move close, enjoining your mouth to what remains of the world. You feel the teeth sink into your tongue as your mouths fill with blood. You pull back and moan as you slip inside of the writhing beast for the first time. You drink the blood and feel the poison burn down your throat. Beneath you, the creature gnaws at the meat it has been fed. Your arousal overcomes you and you begin thrusting ever more voraciously. Every moment of her reels through your mind as you close your eyes and fall into your needed rhythm. The surge of ecstasy engulfs you, your mind burns with pleasure as your body shudders one final gasping time. Your head falls on the creature’s chest as your awareness fades and spreads thin across eternity. It does not try to bite you, for you are one now.

[trisshawkeye]

👀tell me about MCS/Yan Yujin for the wip game?

Yeah! So, this is the file name for In The Footsteps Of Our Fathers, which I started writing after joking about the rarepair premise for a Yuletide treat the previous year and then got obsessed enough with it to write for real. In short, it's a story about the people we become when we grow up, and is my enormous manifesto for why Yan Yujin is perfect for Mei Changsu, actually.

The WIP document is 102 pages long, 781 words of chapter 15 have been written, and there are a bunch of very disorganised notes for the rest of the chapter, as well as the outline for the rest of the fic. There's also a whole load of little conversation snippets that will turn up in later chapters when I get to them.

I am still working on it, it's just in that unfortunate situation of things like exchanges or new fandoms taking precedence in my mind, and the past couple of years have been busy enough for me that when I have time to sit down and just write for myself, I just go for the path of least resistance and this... is not it. I'm hoping that the next year will calm down a bit and I can make some more proper progress.

A snippet of chapter 15 below the cut:

It wasn’t long before a horse’s hooves were heard outside and Zhen Ping’s voice called into the house that the Chief was on his way back. Yujin and Tingsheng rushed out to the entrance. Presently a carriage arrived, accompanied by Mu Nihuang and Mu Qing on horseback. Li Gang hurried to help Mei Changsu down, though once on the ground he walked strong and straight-backed up the stairs, looking simultaneously exhausted yet somehow energised, as if years of weight had fallen from his shoulders. Yujin caught his eye as he reached the top of the stairs, and the slightly vicious twitch of a smile was all he needed to see. Yujin surged forward to wrap him in a tight hug, and after a brief pause, Mei Changsu’s arms came up to curl around his shoulders too.

“It’s done,” Yujin whispered, not even needing to ask it as a question.

“It’s done,” Mei Changsu confirmed, and Yujin stepped back to clutch his hands and beam at him. 

“I’m so glad,” he said. “I want to stay, but…” he glanced around at the others present. 

Mei Changsu knew what he meant. “There are plenty here to look after me,” he reassured him. “Go take care of your father.” 

Yujin squeezed his hands gratefully. “I’m taking you to lunch tomorrow,” he declared. “No arguments.”

“Well then, I suppose I am going to lunch with you tomorrow,” Mei Changsu said with a slight smirk. “I won’t try to fight the inevitable.”

[dumfanting]

Something in the Orange, part 2

AO3 Link

Rating: Safe

Warnings: alcohol consumption, illness

Notes: second person pov, present tense, readers gender unspecified

3092 words

Making a new post for this part; I went to edit the original and tumblr broke it. (Also I don’t think anybody ever saw it?)

GN Reader/ Cody

“You’re familiar,” he says, weak with exhaustion. “Do I know you?” he asks.

“When this is over, find me. I’ll wait for you.”

You can’t remember how long ago you said that. It simultaneously feels like days and years have passed between then and now.

You had been younger then, still hopeful, but that hope was brutally extinguished by a single order not long after you and Cody separated.

In the aftermath of the Separatist victory, you fled to Tattooine, where the empty landscape and sparse population are about as different from Coruscant as it gets. The Empire doesn’t seem to notice this planet or care about it, which suits you just fine.

Even so, rumors still manage to reach the tiny village you now call home. You’ve heard dozens, but two stick with you; that the Jedi were traitors, slaughtered by their own men, and that those men, the clones, are being ‘decommissioned’ in droves as time goes on. With each low whisper you overhear, your gut twists into knots.

What happened to Cody?

You told him to find you, but as the time drags on, that seems less and less likely to happen. Is he still ‘useful’ to the Empire, or has he been thrown away like a worn out tool that served its purpose? Which would be worse? You left him no clue as to where you had gone, so could he still find you? If he does, would he be the same man you fell in love with?

These questions and more keep you awake at night.

It’s hard to gauge the passage of time in the desert. You lost track of how long you’ve been here a while ago, but it’s been long enough for you to make at least one friend. The bartender of the town's only cantina, a Pantoran man around your age named Kellis, had managed to chip through the metaphorical wall you hid yourself behind over the course of several weeks worth of drinks and late nights.

As you walk the short distance from your small, one-room apartment to the bar, the day's high winds whip your linen pants around your legs. The constant sand and dust make the thin white fabric look dirty and ragged. You step into the doorway, unwrap your head from the dark red scarf you wear to keep the worst of it out of your face, and brush yourself off, ignoring the soft pattering sound the falling sand grains make while hitting the floor. Kellis brightly calls your name from behind the bar, and you make your way over to him.

You sit yourself down on your preferred bar stool, and he starts mixing up your usual. He asks how you’re doing, which you shrug off with a comment of “I still haven’t given up yet,” which usually makes him chuckle, and today is no different.

He hands you your drink and when you glance up at him while taking it, you notice that he looks tired. You point this out and ask if anything is going on.

“You remember the sandstorm that blew over a few rotations ago?” he asks, barely holding back a yawn.

“I’m still finding dust in my dishes, yeah. What about it?” you say, sipping at your drink, which is perfectly mixed as always.

“Well, I found somebody on my building's doorstep when it finally passed. I brought him inside, and he’s got sand fever, which is no surprise,” he says.

“You didn’t catch it, did you?” you ask, taken aback.

“No, I’ve been careful, been keeping my face covered up,” he says, waving your concern off.

“Okay. But, he mustn’t be from here then, no local in their right mind would go out during a sandstorm like that. Did you get his name?” you say, your curiosity piqued.

“He looked vaguely familiar, and when I said so he kind of laughed bitterly and mumbled something under his breath. But no, he said he isn’t from here. He was slipping in and out of a delirium, kept mumbling about the desert and finding something. The fever has been steadily getting worse and he kept me up last night, it looked like he was having flashbacks to something terrible,” Kellis says, softly shaking his head. “I don’t fault the guy for it at all, but still, it kinda wore me out. On top of that, he didn’t tell me his name, and he refused to sleep in my bed. He says that old bench I’ve got is closer to what he’s used to,” he continues, trailing off into thought.

Something stirs in the back of your mind, though you can’t place what it is.

“That’s kind of you to keep an eye on him,” you say, finishing your drink and fishing some credits out of your small bag.

“You know I couldn’t just leave him there. Besides, if the scar along the side of his face is any indication, the man’s been through enough already,” he says.

You suddenly freeze, and despite the suppressive heat of the building, an impossible chill runs through you.

“W-what was that?” you say, fighting to keep your hands from trembling.

“I could tell he’s been through some shit by the scar along his face,” Kellis says, watching you with a puzzled expression.

Your heart is pounding in your ears, and your thoughts are swirling like a twister in your mind. That sounds like Cody. You’re tempted to run to Kellis’ place and find out if it is him right this second, but logic takes over. There are billions if not trillions of people in this galaxy, you tell yourself, so the odds that it is him are almost impossible.

Kellis says your name, concerned. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

You’d never told him about your past with the clone commander, but it wasn’t something that you’re ashamed of, so you aren’t sure why you kept it quiet. You shake yourself.

“I’m fine, sorry. I think I’ll have another one today,” you say, gesturing to your empty glass. He doesn’t seem to believe you, but drops the subject as he prepares your second drink, changing the subject to an upcoming meteor shower.

Later that day, you’re sitting on the rooftop terrace of your apartment building, staring up at the bright orange sky while the two suns are setting. The color is almost exactly the same as the paint was on Cody’s armor. You’ve avoided thinking about him since you left the bar; the sheer amount of ways he could have changed kept threatening to overwhelm you. As you sit, the orange in the sky quickly deepens to scarlet, then purple. It eventually becomes the inky blue-black you’ve gotten used to, and you pause for a moment to admire the view of the stars. You never could see the stars like this back on Coruscant.

Cody always said that someday he’d take you somewhere like this to see the stars.

With nothing to distract you, you finally allow yourself to wonder if the stranger from the sandstorm really could be him. You mull over everything Kellis had told you earlier today, intensely examining it all in your mind. You hoped for years that Cody would be able to find you, but that had flickered out and died after the Empire took over. You were convinced that he was dead or worse, ‘reconditioned’, and found yourself wondering if he would find you less and less as time went on. You never completely gave up though, and much to your surprise, a long-dormant spark of hope ignites in your heart again.

“‘I won’t give up on you’,” you whisper to yourself. You meant it back then, and you mean it now. Your mind is made up; you’re going to stop by Kellis’ place first thing tomorrow morning and find out who this stranger is for yourself. For the second time today, you’re tempted to rush over there right now, but your mind has been racing ever since you left the bar and you convince yourself that you need to sleep first.

You’re abruptly awakened the next day by loud, persistent knocking at your door. It’s early in the morning, the two suns having barely risen over the horizon, and as you stumble out of bed and pull on a robe, you wonder who could need to see you this badly.

You open the door with a yawn and find Kellis. He looks frantic, which fully wakes you immediately, and he starts talking as soon as the door opens completely, though his words are so fast and jumbled you can’t understand any of it. You grip him by the shoulders.

“I need you to breathe and calm down so you can tell me what happened,” you say, firmly but not unkindly.

“Y-yeah, okay, sorry,” he says, making an effort to relax. He lets out a long exhale, then repeats himself, speaking clearly this time.

“I just got a call that my sister was in a speeder collision back home, and I need to get there as soon as possible,” he says, shifting restlessly from foot to foot.

“Then go! What are you here for?” you ask, alarmed and confused.

“Can you keep an eye on the guy I told you about yesterday while I’m gone? I’ve sent for a doctor but it’ll take a few days to get here from where she is, and I really don’t want to ditch him,” he says quickly.

“Done,” you respond without hesitation. “Should I bring him here or go over to your place?” you ask.

“I don’t think he’s in any shape to be moved,” Kellis says, shaking his head.

You tell him to give you just a minute to get dressed, do so, then meet him in the hallway outside.

Once you’re there, he runs from your place to his own a block or two away with you close on his heels. He quickly shows you the passcode to his apartment, leads you inside, then grabs a hastily packed bag and takes off without slowing down. You forgive the rude goodbye, as he obviously has more important things on his mind. Thankfully you’ve been here a few times before, so you have a good idea of where everything you may need is.

Your heart is pounding from the sudden burst of activity and you take a minute to catch your breath. As you lean heavily onto the wall, panting, you suddenly hear loud coughing coming from further inside, followed by a soft pained groan. Remembering how contagious sand fever can be, you wrap the scarf around your face just a little tighter before going to investigate.

You step further into the living space and freeze. Partially hidden from the front door by the low light, on the heavy wooden bench Kellis uses in place of a sofa, lies a man with dark hair and tanned skin under a mountain of blankets. He looks thin, and his hair is long and unkempt, but you’d recognize that face, that scar, anywhere.

“Cody!” you say in disbelief, your voice muffled by the scarf.

He doesn’t seem to have heard you, so you take a few steps closer to him. He’s still coughing, but once it passes, he looks up at you, confused.

“Where’s Kellis?” he asks, and his voice is gravelly and hoarse. You barely recognize it.

“He had a family emergency, I’m a friend of his,” you say, somehow managing to hold your composure, although your heart threatens to break out of your chest. “He’s called a doctor for you, I’m going to stay with you until she gets here.”

Cody coughs again, but doesn’t protest. Unsure of what to do, you pick up an empty glass on the caf table nearby, walk over to the kitchen and get him something to drink. You return and hand it to him, which he accepts and sips at gratefully. He seems to be looking you over with more intensity, and his brow creases when he meets your eyes.

“You’re familiar,” he says, weak with exhaustion. “Do I know you?” he asks.

You don’t know why, but you hesitate to answer him. Seconds later, he slips back into sleep.

Once you’re sure Cody won’t wake again for at least a few minutes, you rush back to your place and pack enough clothes and toiletries for a few days, stuffing it into a worn out old bag that you swing onto your shoulder. When you return, he’s still asleep, but it doesn’t appear restful.

He’s sweating terribly despite shivering, jerking his head from side to side while mumbling and every few seconds one of his arms or legs will twitch.

You drop your bag and duck into the refresher, fetching a cool, damp rag, then come back out and sit directly across from him on the caf table. You lean forward and gently cup his face with one hand. You ignore the pang in your chest at the comfortable familiarity of the action. With your free hand, you use the rag to gently pat away the sweat on his forehead. You take this opportunity to get a better look at his face, and you immediately notice that he looks much older than he did when you last saw him. How much of that was due to his accelerated aging or due to stress isn’t clear, but either way, Kellis was right. Even without his scar, you can tell just by glancing at Cody’s face that time has not been easy on him since you left.

You get to your feet, fighting back a lump in your throat. You chuck the rag in the direction of the kitchen sink without noticing or caring where it landed, all the while not taking your eyes off of Cody, then you sit back down onto the caf table and continue watching him. He isn’t sweating as much, and he’s stopped moving his head around, so hopefully he’s actually resting now, you think.

“What’ve you been through?” you say, unaware that you’ve spoken aloud.

As if he’d heard you, he starts mumbling in his sleep, but it’s difficult for you to hear him. You lean forward and lower your head closer to his to better understand him.

“-deserted… choices… orders,” he says, and something clicks in your head. You sit back up, surprised.

Kellis told you yesterday that Cody would mumble about the desert, which had confused you at the time, but after hearing him yourself just now, you realize he’s saying ‘desert’ as in to desert something, not as in reference to the landscape.

Had Cody deserted? When?

It couldn’t have been before the Empire took over, you reason. As dedicated and loyal as he is, he never would have left General Kenobi or his brothers, whether the General was a traitor or not. No, he had to have left afterward. Was it because of what’s been called ‘Order 66’, or had he been in the Empire’s hands after that?

Whenever he left didn’t really matter, but the reason for it does. Something had to have happened to him or around him to push Cody far enough to abandon his duty. Whatever that was, you know it had to be serious, which worries you. The anxious knots you feel when overhearing those whispered rumors return in full force as you wonder how he’s changed while under Imperial control.

Cody stirs, coughing again as he wakes and grabbing your attention. You cautiously hold your palm to his forehead, noting that his fever seems to have gone down, at least a little. When you move your hand away, he startles you by suddenly grabbing it and pulling you down to his level.

“Please, I have to go, I need to find-,” he says, before falling into another coughing fit. He groans, still exhausted, and his hand slackens, allowing you to free yourself from his grip.

“Whatever it is will have to wait,” you say, keeping your voice soft. You brush a few stray pieces of his hair out of his face and continue. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere yet,” you say.

“No,” he says, managing to sit up. “They’re waiting for me, I’ve taken too long already!” he says, sounding almost desperate. Your heart aches for him as it beats even harder in your chest.

“Cody, listen to me,” you whisper, and his head whips up in your direction so quickly his whole body wavers, dizzy from the sudden motion.

“You shouldn’t know my name,” he says, and he sounds suspicious. “I haven’t told anyone since I’ve gotten here.”

Before you can respond, his eyes meet yours again, and you can see recognition spread across his face. He whispers your name in complete disbelief, reaching for the scarf you have wrapped around your face from the nose down.

You get to your feet to stop him from touching you, then take a few steps backwards, creating a fair distance between the two of you, even though all you really want to do is take him into your arms.

You take a deep breath, then slip the scarf down past your chin, just long enough for Cody to get a clear look at you. His jaw drops and he tries to stand, but stumbles backwards, too weak to manage it. You pull the scarf back into place and return to his side, holding him by the shoulders as you firmly push him back into a lying position.

“You’ve got sand fever, you need to rest,” you say.

He curses under his breath, still not taking his eyes off of you. “It’s really you,” he says. His voice is barely audible, so you know he’s about to slip back into sleep again.

“It is,” you say softly. You return to your seat on the caf table, releasing his shoulders but entwining the fingers of your hand with one of his. Despite his condition, he grips you like a lifeline, strong enough to faintly ache.

“But why here? I’ve been everywhere,” he says.

“There will be time for that later, once you’re better. You need to rest,” you say, firmly repeating yourself.

Reluctantly, he nods, and releases your hand. You get to your feet once more, and turn to head towards the kitchen, but stop when he speaks.

“Don’t leave me again, please,” he says, begging, and your heart breaks. You turn around and kneel beside him, and briefly touch your forehead to his.

“Don’t worry, Cody. I’m not going anywhere,” you say softly.

Taglist: @kaminocasey @madameminor @jennamelinda12 @arctrooper69 @the-cantina

[ripley-ryan]

I haven’t ever gone to the ER for pain. Only for other forms of illness. But I can tell you even then that from infancy neither I nor my mother were taken seriously when it came to getting me treatment. I won’t get too much into her experiences with healthcare here aside from the fact that I probably wouldn’t have ever even existed had it not been for my grandmother sticking by her side during emergencies. But I will tell you about a shared experience between us. Below the cut so this doesn’t take up too much space.

When I was born, I was vastly premature. Just short of making it into the third trimester. So obviously, I spent the first few weeks of my life in NICU. I finally arrive home. That Friday afternoon, I quit breathing. It’s temporary, I resume shortly after. But this is enough to prompt my mother to take me in. Now obviously this is a Friday afternoon, nobody wants to deal with the new mother and a baby that seems fine. But she refuses to leave until I’m treated. A social worker is even sent to speak to her. She asks, “Are you afraid to be alone with your daughter?” to which my mother replies, “No, I’m not stupid.” Thankfully a few minutes later I stop breathing again in the waiting room and someone finally takes me back. We leave with a little infant sized baby monitor.

This experience, I think, really highlights this kind of issue. I was an infant. I had no way to self-advocate. I’d only just come home from my first few weeks of life in that same exact place. So the only person I had to advocate for me was my mother. A woman with her first ever infant. On a Friday night when everyone just wanted to go home. Holding a baby so small she had to wear Cabbage Patch Kid clothes for the first few months of her life. Of course any doctor or nurse would assume she was nervous about finally being alone with such a small and fragile child. But she was right, I was having problems. And so I was on a breathing monitor for the next few months.

I’ve never been withheld treatment for pain in an emergency (although I have been told I can take a third! extra! advil if the first two didn’t work for my knee pain that was borderline debilitating at the time). But I have faced similar levels of disbelief. I recently had to gather medical records for an upcoming doctors appointment. I came upon test results from a 24/48 hour set of heart monitors from a few years ago. WHITE COAT HYPERTENSION was what the title of the page said. In big bold letters in case I somehow missed anywhere else on the page it said the same thing. Simultaneously, but at the bottom of the page in a place that wouldn’t immediately catch the eye, the paper read that I experienced enough of an anomaly that it could “result in more target organ damage and a more adverse clinical outcome.” It also took the time to list every factor as NORMAL even though those same numbers were the ones that prompted my doctor to even order those tests in the first place.

Now, I can’t fault all healthcare workers for not treating women the way they do men. I know how exhausted they are. How overworked and overburdened. But I think it’s fair that I should have known when they ran a pregnancy test on me as a teenager without notifying me beforehand. That also occurred during a visit to the ER in 2020. I was 15 and in the beginning stages of an allergic reaction to something I couldn’t put my finger on. Due to the nature of a disorder I have, it could have been anywhere from a cold or bug bite to a broken bone or surgery (although the latter two were clearly not the cause that time). But the cause didn’t matter. I was 15 and female and so despite my insistence I was not pregnant, they ran tests without telling me first. In retrospect, it’s nothing in the long run. It’s pretty harmless. But I think it’s definitely interesting what I was told and not told in my many visits to the hospital. For the white coat hypertension diagnosis, I was simply told that the results were slightly different than normal but showed nothing wrong with me and that I was fine. So I never bothered to read the results for myself, because when you’re told you’re fine, what else are you going to do? And for the pregnancy test, I was just straight up never informed of a test being run. Of course it was negative so there was nothing to report back, but it’s still something I should have been notified of.

This is honestly part of why I still sometimes call my mom back with me during specialist appointments. It helps to have an advocate around. Because when you’re female and not trained in the medical field, and your doctor is much older than you and has training, you’re very likely to be intimidated by the interaction, even if you are not intimidated by the person on the other end of it.

Early on a Wednesday morning, I heard an anguished cry—then silence.

I rushed into the bedroom and watched my wife, Rachel, stumble from the bathroom, doubled over, hugging herself in pain.

“Something’s wrong,” she gasped.

This scared me. Rachel’s not the type to sound the alarm over every pinch or twinge. She cut her finger badly once, when we lived in Iowa City, and joked all the way to Mercy Hospital as the rag wrapped around the wound reddened with her blood. Once, hobbled by a training injury in the days before a marathon, she limped across the finish line anyway.

So when I saw Rachel collapse on our bed, her hands grasping and ungrasping like an infant’s, I called the ambulance. I gave the dispatcher our address, then helped my wife to the bathroom to vomit.

I don’t know how long it took for the ambulance to reach us that Wednesday morning. Pain and panic have a way of distorting time, ballooning it, then compressing it again. But when we heard the sirens wailing somewhere far away, my whole body flooded with relief.

I didn’t know our wait was just beginning.

I buzzed the EMTs into our apartment. We answered their questions: When did the pain start? That morning. Where was it on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being worst?

“Eleven,” Rachel croaked.

As we loaded into the ambulance, here’s what we didn’t know: Rachel had an ovarian cyst, a fairly common thing. But it had grown, undetected, until it was so large that it finally weighed her ovary down, twisting the fallopian tube like you’d wring out a sponge. This is called ovarian torsion, and it creates the kind of organ-failure pain few people experience and live to tell about.

“Ovarian torsion represents a true surgical emergency,” says an article in the medical journal Case Reports in Emergency Medicine. “High clinical suspicion is important. … Ramifications include ovarian loss, intra-abdominal infection, sepsis, and even death.” The best chance of salvaging a torsed ovary is surgery within eight hours of when the pain starts.

* * *

There is nothing like witnessing a loved one in deadly agony. Your muscles swell with the blood they need to fight or run. I felt like I could bend iron, tear nylon, through the 10-minute ambulance ride and as we entered the windowless basement hallways of the hospital.

And there we stopped. The intake line was long—a row of cots stretched down the darkened hall. Someone wheeled a gurney out for Rachel. Shaking, she got herself between the sheets, lay down, and officially became a patient.

We didn’t know her ovary was dying, calling out in the starkest language the body has.

Emergency-room patients are supposed to be immediately assessed and treated according to the urgency of their condition. Most hospitals use the Emergency Severity Index, a five-level system that categorizes patients on a scale from “resuscitate” (treat immediately) to “non-urgent” (treat within two to 24 hours).

I knew which end of the spectrum we were on. Rachel was nearly crucified with pain, her arms gripping the metal rails blanched-knuckle tight. I flagged down the first nurse I could.

“My wife,” I said. “I’ve never seen her like this. Something’s wrong, you have to see her.”

“She’ll have to wait her turn,” she said. Other nurses’ reactions ranged from dismissive to condescending. “You’re just feeling a little pain, honey,” one of them told Rachel, all but patting her head.

We didn’t know her ovary was dying, calling out in the starkest language the body has. I saw only the way Rachel’s whole face twisted with the pain.

Soon, I started to realize—in a kind of panic—that there was no system of triage in effect. The other patients in the line slept peacefully, or stared up at the ceiling, bored, or chatted with their loved ones. It seemed that arrival order, not symptom severity, would determine when we’d be seen.

As we neared the ward’s open door, a nurse came to take Rachel’s blood pressure. By then, Rachel was writhing so uncontrollably that the nurse couldn’t get her reading.

She sighed and put down her squeezebox.

“You’ll have to sit still, or we’ll just have to start over,” she said.

Finally, we pulled her bed inside. They strapped a plastic bracelet, like half a handcuff, around Rachel’s wrist.

* * *

From an early age we’re taught to observe basic social codes: Be polite. Ask nicely.Wait your turn. But during an emergency, established codes evaporate—this is why ambulances can run red lights and drive on the wrong side of the road. I found myself pleading, uselessly, for that kind of special treatment. I kept having the strange impulse to take out my phone and call 911, as if that might transport us back to an urgent, responsive world where emergencies exist.

The average emergency-room patient in the U.S. waits 28 minutes before seeing a doctor. I later learned that at Brooklyn Hospital Center, where we were, the average wait was nearly three times as long, an hour and 49 minutes. Our wait would be much, much longer.

Everyone we encountered worked to assure me this was not an emergency. “Stones,” one of the nurses had pronounced. That made sense. I could believe that. I knew that kidney stones caused agony but never death. She’d be fine, I convinced myself, if I could only get her something for the pain.

By 10 a.m., Rachel’s cot had moved into the “red zone” of the E.R., a square room with maybe 30 beds pushed up against three walls. She hardly noticed when the attending physician came and visited her bed; I almost missed him, too. He never touched her body. He asked a few quick questions, and then left. His visit was so brief it didn’t register that he was the person overseeing Rachel’s care.

Around 10:45, someone came with an inverted vial and began to strap a tourniquet around Rachel’s trembling arm. We didn’t know it, but the doctor had prescribed the standard pain-management treatment for patients with kidney stones: hydromorphone for the pain, followed by a CT scan.

The pain medicine started seeping in. Rachel fell into a kind of shadow consciousness, awake but silent, her mouth frozen in an awful, anguished scowl. But for the first time that morning, she rested.

* * *

Leslie Jamison’s essay “Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain” examines ways that different forms of female suffering are minimized, mocked, coaxed into silence. In an interview included in her book The Empathy Exams, she discussed the piece, saying: “Months after I wrote that essay, one of my best friends had an experience where she was in a serious amount of pain that wasn’t taken seriously at the ER.”

She was talking about Rachel.  

“Women are likely to be treated less aggressively until they prove that they are as sick as male patients.”

“That to me felt like this deeply personal and deeply upsetting embodiment of what was at stake,” she said. “Not just on the side of the medical establishment—where female pain might be perceived as constructed or exaggerated—but on the side of the woman herself: My friend has been reckoning in a sustained way about her own fears about coming across as melodramatic.”

“Female pain might be perceived as constructed or exaggerated”: We saw this from the moment we entered the hospital, as the staff downplayed Rachel’s pain, even plain ignored it. In her essay, Jamison refers back to “The Girl Who Cried Pain,” a study identifying ways gender bias tends to play out in clinical pain management. Women are  “more likely to be treated less aggressively in their initial encounters with the health-care system until they ‘prove that they are as sick as male patients,’” the study concludes—a phenomenon referred to in the medical community as “Yentl Syndrome.”

In the hospital, a lab tech made small talk, asked me how I like living in Brooklyn, while my wife struggled to hold still enough for the CT scan to take a clear shot of her abdomen.

“Lot of patients to get to, honey,” we heard, again and again, when we begged for stronger painkillers. “Don’t cry.”

I felt certain of this: The diagnosis of kidney stones—repeated by the nurses and confirmed by the attending physician’s prescribed course of treatment—was a denial of the specifically female nature of Rachel’s pain. A more careful examiner would have seen the need for gynecological evaluation; later, doctors told us that Rachel’s swollen ovary was likely palpable through the surface of her skin. But this particular ER, like many in the United States, had no attending OB-GYN. And every nurse’s shrug seemed to say, “Women cry—what can you do?”

Nationwide, men wait an average of 49 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain. Women wait an average of 65 minutes for the same thing. Rachel waited somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours.

“My friend has been reckoning in a sustained way about her own fears about coming across as melodramatic.” Rachel does struggle with this, even now. How long is it appropriate to continue to process a traumatic event through language, through repeated retellings? Friends have heard the story, and still she finds herself searching for language to tell it again, again, as if the experience is a vast terrain that can never be fully circumscribed by words. Still, in the throes of debilitating pain, she tried to bite her lip, wait her turn, be good for the doctors.

For hours, nothing happened. Around 3 o’clock, we got the CT scan and came back to the ER. Otherwise, Rachel lay there, half-asleep, suffering and silent. Later, she’d tell me that the hydromorphone didn’t really stop the pain—just numbed it slightly. Mostly, it made her feel sedated, too tired to fight.

If she had been alone, with no one to agitate for her care, there’s no telling how long she might have waited.

Eventually, the doctor—the man who’d come to Rachel’s bedside briefly, and just once—packed his briefcase and left. He’d been around the ER all day, mostly staring into a computer. We only found out later he’d been the one with the power to rescue or forget us.

When a younger woman came on duty to take his place, I flagged her down. I told her we were waiting on the results of a CT scan, and I hassled her until she agreed to see if the results had come in.

When she pulled up Rachel’s file, her eyes widened.

“What is this mess?” she said. Her pupils flicked as she scanned the page, the screen reflected in her eyes.

“Oh my god,” she murmured, as though I wasn’t standing there to hear. “He never did an exam.”

The male doctor had prescribed the standard treatment for kidney stones—Dilauded for the pain, a CT scan to confirm the presence of the stones. In all the hours Rachel spent under his care, he’d never checked back after his initial visit. He was that sure. As far as he was concerned, his job was done.

If Rachel had been alone, with no one to agitate for her care, there’s no telling how long she might have waited.

It was almost another hour before we got the CT results. But when they came, they changed everything.

“She has a large mass in her abdomen,” the female doctor said. “We don’t know what it is.”

That’s when we lost it. Not just because our minds filled then with words liketumor and cancer and malignant. Not just because Rachel had gone half crazy with the waiting and the pain. It was because we’d asked to wait our turn all through the day—longer than a standard office shift—only to find out we’d been an emergency all along.

Suddenly, the world responded with the urgency we wanted. I helped a nurse push Rachel’s cot down a long hallway, and I ran beside her in a mad dash to make the ultrasound lab before it closed. It seemed impossible, but we were told that if we didn’t catch the tech before he left, Rachel’s care would have to be delayed until morning.

“Whatever happens,” Rachel told me while the tech prepared the machine, “don’t let me stay here through the night. I won’t make it. I don’t care what they tell you—I know I won’t.”

Soon, the tech was peering inside Rachel through a gray screen. I couldn’t see what he saw, so I watched his face. His features rearranged into a disbelieving grimace.

By then, Rachel and I were grasping at straws. We thought: cancer. We thought: hysterectomy. Lying there in the dim light, Rachel almost seemed relieved.

“I can live without my uterus,” she said, with a soft, weak smile. “They can take it out, and I’ll get by.”

She’d make the tradeoff gladly, if it meant the pain would stop.

After the ultrasound, we led the gurney—slowly, this time—down the long hall to the ER, which by then was  completely crammed with beds. Trying to find a spot for Rachel’s cot was like navigating rush-hour traffic.

Then came more bad news. At 8 p.m., they had to clear the floor for rounds. Anyone who was not a nurse, or lying in a bed, had to leave the premises until visiting hours began again at 9.

When they let me back in an hour later, I found Rachel alone in a side room of the ER. So much had happened. Another doctor had told her the mass was her ovary, she said. She had something called ovarian torsion—the fallopian-tube twists, cutting off blood. There was no saving it. They’d have to take it out.

Rachel seemed confident and ready.

“He’s a good doctor,” she said. “He couldn’t believe that they left me here all day. He knows how much it hurts.”

When I met the surgery team, I saw Rachel was right. Talking with them, the words we’d used all day—excruciating, emergency, eleven—registered with real and urgent meaning. They wanted to help.

By 10:30, everything was ready. Rachel and I said goodbye outside the surgery room, 14 and a half hours from when her pain had started.

* * *

Rachel’s physical scars are healing, and she can go on the long runs she loves, but she’s still grappling with the psychic toll—what she calls “the trauma of not being seen.” She has nightmares, some nights. I wake her up when her limbs start twitching.

Sometimes we inspect the scars on her body together, looking at the way the pink, raised skin starts blending into ordinary flesh. Maybe one day, they’ll become invisible. Maybe they never will.