#three degrees and a bit of rain? nothing to me

[feketeribizli]

me when i dont wanna pay for bus tickets

[sister-lucifer]

READ THE FIRST PART HERE 

READ PART THREE HERE

Genre: Fluff, a bit angsty but has a happy ending, not explicitly romantic

Summary: It’s been raining all day, and the gloomy weather has you thinking about what could’ve been, and especially what never will be.

Content/Warnings: Brief mentions of alcohol, brief mention of death/suicide, it’s a little sad, I guess? But that’s it. Reader just speculates on how life would’ve been if the Operator hadn’t fucked them over and gets down about it, but theres a happy ending. 

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Not fully proofread! Let me know if you see any errors!

It’s raining again. Not that that’s new. Springtime out here sees its fair share of storms. Normally you’d observe the rain from inside, but today something inside was gnawing at you for some fresh air. 

The old rocking chair creaks beneath your weight, moving to and fro softly as you watch the rain. It comes down in sheets off the sides of the cover, splattering to the muddy ground and making a shallow moat around the patio. It lands loudly on the old tin roof, rattling and groaning in a manner that is far too dramatic. It obscures anything beyond the perimeter of the cabin and hides everything in a misty haze. 

It’s going to be foggy tomorrow, you think. It usually is when it rains like this. It’ll be cold for the next few days, too, and the ground will be soggy for weeks. Miserable weather, that is. Not that that’s new. 

It’s a good day to wonder, that’s all. You’ve been doing plenty of that lately. A bit too much, maybe, but there’s no helping that. 

You’ve been living out here with Tim for…shit. How long has it been? Almost a year, you think, but your perception of time is unreliable at best. It’s just one of the many things you lost when your world turned upside down.

That’s what it’s really about. The loss. Tim doesn’t like to talk about it, but you know you both feel it, him even more so than you. He was going to go to college, get a degree, and he’d be damn good at it, too. He was going to find a place of his own, maybe adopt a dog, a big old Saint Bernard like he had when he was a boy, the only type of housemate that wouldn’t annoy him. That’s what he’s told you, anyways. Not sober, of course, not even close; he’d never tell you anything that personal without at least a bit of alcohol in his system. He’s been drinking less since you showed up, though. You noticed he was cutting back a couple months after you moved in. You wonder if you’ll ever get him to open up like that again.

But those were Tim’s plans. He was already in his mid twenties when things really went south, you were barely out of high school when everything started. You didn’t really have plans. So…what are you mourning, exactly? 

You don’t really have an answer to that. 

You didn’t really have a set path for yourself. Your plan barely existed, and it’s feeble skeleton was little more than an intention to simply float around until something caught your eye. You’d find your way eventually, there was no need to worry. At least, that’s what you used to think. 

Now where do you go?

You didn’t have any real plans, no, and you can’t mourn something that never existed, but it there’s this heavy feeling that comes with knowing you’ll never be able to choose. 

That’s what it comes down to, you realize. Choice. 

No, you didn’t have any plans, but that was because you had all the options you could ever want. Now, you don’t have any plans because you’ve only got one. 

Tim does everything he can to keep you entertained out here. Hell, he risks his life every time he walks down the path to his truck to go to town for you, or when he just steps off the porch to refill the bird feeder he knows you love to watch. Nothing outside of these walls in these woods is safe. If it weren’t raining so hard, he’d tear you a new one for even sitting on the porch. 

It’s a miserable existence, but it’s so nice to have someone to be miserable with, even if he can’t change anything. 

You just wish that was enough to push away that yearning for more, that subtle thrumming ache that only wells up in your stomach late at night, that want that urges you to just take the truck and leave, to forget this cabin and Tim and everything in these godforsaken woods. 

But you can’t. 

You’d die. And even if you didn’t, the guilt of stranding Tim would eat you alive, especially knowing he’d kill himself before letting that thing get him. 

You don’t want to think about that. You push the thoughts away before they can take root in your mind. It’s better to just not consider that possibility at all. 

You jump when you hear the front door open. You look back to see Tim standing there, one hand buried in his pocket and the other still on the door handle. 

“The hell are you doin’ out here?” He huffs, “I been yellin’ for ya, thought you up and ran off.” 

You give him a weak smile, but you can’t keep it up for very long. You pull your knees to your chest and rest your chin on them, curling up as if trying to make yourself look as small as possible. You mumble an apology, but don’t look at him. 

He pauses, then, and you can imagining his expression changing to confusion and then concern before he covers it up again. His footsteps come up behind you, the wooden porch creaking beneath him. His hand grabs the back of the rocking chair and forces it to still before he pulls it backward to get a look at you.

“…What’s up with you, kid?” 

You shrug. It’s an easier response than an explanation, but it doesn’t satisfy him at all. 

“C’mon, we both know that’s bullshit,” He says with a dry chuckle, and he’s entirely correct. “What’s goin’ on?”

You sigh, thinking for a moment about your answer. 

“…It’s just…I dunno. Do you ever, like…think about what would’ve happened if you hadn’t…you know…”

It’s a stammering, stumbling attempt at explaining yourself, but he understands. He nods, crossing his arms and leaning back against the house. 

“Yeah, sometimes,” He replies, scratching at his stubble, “But if I’m bein’ honest, it ain’t gonna do you any good. That sorta thing only gets ya down.”

He’s right about that, too. If only it were that easy to just stop. It’s just so hard not to wonder at least every once in a while, it’s human nature. You just wish you knew when to stop. You just wish you were able to ignore the ‘what if’s that piled up in the back of your mind until they couldn’t stand anymore and toppled over into a pathetic mess of rubble. They’ll crush you one day if you aren’t careful, but such an idea seems almost inevitable. 

“Do you think—“ You start, but stop short before you can get any further. Tim quirks a brow, and you don’t have to look at him to know he’s making that skeptical face. 

“…Do I think what?” He asks. 

You hesitate to answer. Is this really a question you want to ask? If this starts an argument you won’t be able to take back, will it ruin the comfort you and Tim have finally managed to establish with each other? You can’t just not tell him now, though, or you’ll just piss him off more. He doesn’t care for secrets, but he can’t stand when someone wusses out of a conversation at the last second. 

“…Do you think if you had the chance you would…like, go back in time? If you could make it to where none of this ever happened, would you?”

You feel stupid asking that, and it doesn’t help that Tim is silent for far too long before he answers. You’re already regretting this. 

Tim finally opens his mouth, and he stammers for a few moments before his sounds turn into words.

“…I don’t really think I can answer that, kid. That’s a tough one.” 

He sounds monotone, almost uncaring, but you can tell he’s doing it on purpose

to conceal whatever he doesn’t want you to know he’s feeling. You finally turn to look at him with a look that says ‘Can you please try?’ 

His eyes widen for a moment, his shoulders tensing in that subtle way they only do when he’s scared. His lips part slowly, and it sounds like he’s forcing his next words out. 

“I don’t know. Maybe? I…”

He trails off, and you turn away again. Then there’s silence for another few moments. 

Then he’s beside your chair, slowly lowering himself to sit down and doing that annoyed groan he does anytime he has to strain his back. He takes a moment to get comfortable, and you see him reach for his pocket to grab a cigarette only to sigh in disappointment when he realizes he left them inside. You feel bad for smiling, but at least he won’t be able to hide behind his smoke the way he likes to when a conversation makes him uncomfortable. 

He accepts his fate, leaning back on his hands and staring out into the rain with you. 

“I might,” He finally says, “But it wouldn’t be an easy choice.” 

“Why not?” You ask, and for some reason he chuckles at that. 

“Good question. This isn’t how I expected things to end up, no one does, but…I couldn’t just up and leave this.” 

‘This’ he says. ‘This?’ That hardly answers your question. You quirk a brow at him, and he begrudgingly continues. 

“You know, I just…I’ve gotten attached to all this—“ 

“What’s this, exactly?” You interrupt, and he winces like he was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. “I can’t imagine there being anything here worth sticking around for.”

“…There wasn’t. Not for a long time,” He says, and now it’s your turn to pause. 

“…What did you say?” 

“There wasn’t,” He repeats, “Not until…not when I was alone. But now…” 

‘You,’ you realize that’s what he’s trying to say, ‘You are the only thing worth staying for.’ 

For some reason, that hurts. Maybe you feel guilty that you ever thought about leaving him, or maybe you feel bad that you of all people are his only friend. The bar for happiness is really low around here. 

You slowly unfurl from your spot on the chair, letting your feet rest on the porch as you slump down a bit. 

“So…you’re saying you wouldn’t?”

You expected an immediate answer. Stupid of you, really. He’s hesitating again. You’d thought you’d get a quick yes or no. You’re not sure if this is better or worse. 

“I’m not…saying anything,” Tim assures you, “I’m just saying that…I’d at least have to think about it.” 

“Yeah, but you have to make a choice,” You say with an eye roll, and the words coming out more forceful than you intended. Fortunately, his stoney exterior deflects any vitriol you could spew at him. 

The silence that settles over you this time is heavy. It makes you slump even further down in your chair. You hate the silence that always follows when you say something that turned out far too mean. 

You don’t breathe until Tim speaks again.

“Okay, yeah…I would.” 

You don’t know how you feel about that answer, but you don’t have much time to think before he continues. 

“But only because I’d know where to find you this time.” 

That surprises you. You sit back up in your chair, looking down at him with an unmistakably confused look. 

“Huh?” You blurt out, and your cheeks warm a bit when he chuckles at your noise of bewilderment.

“I’d do it, yeah, but I couldn’t just leave you to fend for yourself,” He explains, “I’d do it, but I wouldn’t abandon you. Now I know who you are, what you liked to do, where you’d hang out, all those things from before shit hit the fan. I just don’t want you to think I’d, ya know…forget about you like that. I’d come find you, that’s all. I think we’d find each other anyways, though.”

Something in your chest aches as he speaks, and it makes you want to curl up again, but you can’t move. You stare at him for a long few moments, and you’re lucky he doesn’t look up at you because you wouldn’t be able to pull your eyes away. You can’t even blink. 

“I told you kid,” He adds, “I care about you. I always have.”

What do you say to that? 

You don’t know, so you stay silent. You want to say something, to return the monument of emotion he’s just offered to you, to somehow express reciprocity, but you don’t know how. You’re silent. 

You don’t move as Tim stands back up, cracking his back and stretching his legs. He puts a gentle hand on your shoulder, giving a small, affectionate squeeze. 

“I gotta go start dinner,” He says curtly, “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Don’t spend too long out here. If you get sick, Imma say I told you so.” 

You nod, but give no further response. He pulls his hand away, and you think that’s the end of it, but just as you realize you haven’t heard him go to leave you feel him leaning over you. 

You tense. You’re not sure why, but you do. 

You feel him press a brief kiss to the top of your head before he pulls away again. It wasn’t even a kiss, really, he just pushed his lips against your head for a moment, but for that moment it was like everything you’d ever worried about up until that point was arbitrary. It doesn’t last long, but it lingers in the air like the smoke from Tim’s cigarettes as he pulls away and walks back into the house. 

You’re alone again.

Now what? 

You weigh your options for a moment, but once Tim’s footsteps disappear into the house it feels far too quiet out here, even with the rain beating down on the roof above you. 

You wait for only a few moments more to make sure you won’t seem too eager to follow him before you get up, lazily making your way back inside. 

You find yourself wondering again, this time about what Tim is making for dinner tonight, and you take a second to appreciate the pleasure in such simple problems. 

There are things that will never be now, and there’s no changing that.

But for tonight, this is pretty damn nice. 

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[eimids]

Sickness and cuddles

Lionesses x reader

Part6?

It’s once again just a blurb

”Y/n, open up the door, let’s go to breakfast” Esme knocked on your door.

She knocked again but when you didn’t open the door, she left to go get breakfast. You were sound asleep in your room during a morning at the camp.

Last night you had went outside to the pouring rain with Ella and Alessia which probably wasn’t that great idea since it was a December. During the night you woke up multiple times to shivering. You were sweating cold sweat and overall you felt horrible.

Then around 8 you woke up shivering once again. You hadn’t heard Esme’s knocks but still you woke up soon after them. You knew you had a fever and the best thing to do would be to just call the Sarina and let her know but you were stubborn. You decided that you could make it to breakfast and after that you would see if your state got any better.

You slowly started to get out if bed, stretching your limbs slowly but as you stood up, you were quick to faint to the ground, hitting your head in the process.

Your teammates at breakfast quickly got concerned when you didn’t show up. Beth was the first to go ask Ella and Lessi if they knew where you were since you hang out all the time.

“I don’t know I haven’t seen her since last night” Ella answered Beth. She was a bit worried too now.

”Yeah I mean we were in the rein yesterday and after that she went to bed” Alessia explained

“You were in the rain? In the cold?” It was Lucy who spoke now. She was like a oldersister to you at camp. Always looking after you and taking your side.

“Well yeah but we didn’t thi..” Ella started

“She’s probably sick, maybe we should go see her in her room” Lucy stopped the younger girl.

“Leah don’t you have the keys?” Beth asked the skipper.

“Yeah I can come with you to check on her” She answered anfd got up.

You teammates found their way to your room quickly, shock put on their face as they saw you on the floor. You had a little bump on your forehead which they assumed came from you falling down.

Lucy was the first beside you. She quickly put her hand on your head and realized that you were burning up. You had a fever of at least 39 degrees.

“She’s burning up, we nedd to get her to the medical room” Lucy said and then the three girls carried you to the medical room which usually was used for sprained ankles and other sports injuries.

You laid there still unconscious as the team’s doctor checked you out. She checked you temperature to find it be 40,7 degrees. She was a bit worried for that but otherwise you were fine. A little dehydrated so she started an IV.

“She’s probably going to wake up soon, you can call me then I’ll be in the next room. I’ll give her some medicine then but now let’s just wait for her to wake up” The doctor said and left the lionesses alone.

“I’ll call Sarina and inform her” Beth said and stepped out of the room.

Soon after that you woke up and were given a shit ton of meds. Leah was kind enough to bring you water bottle to you and you happily drank from it.

You were still hazy and groggy from the fever but you didn’t want to stay in the hospital like room.

“I just want to go to bed please” You said in a tired voice. Obviously your teammates couldn’t resist that request and after checking with the doctor, they helped you back to your room.

“Lucia” You said as they were about to leave.

“Yes sweetie” She answered.

“Can you come cuddle with me” You asked half awake.

Lucy had a little concussion the other day so she wasn’t allowed to train that day.

“Of course, anything for you little” Lucy answered. She said bye to Leah and Beth who were ready to give Alessia and Ella a mouthful.

Lucy just settled next to you under the sheets and was met by your warm frame.

You loved nothing more than cuddling with your closest people. So that’s how you fell back asleep. Lucy laying next to you, playing with your hair.

[cherubispunk]

CHERUB (PART II) - Dealer!Joel Miller x AFAB!Reader

summary: you will forever be his fallen angel. his cherub. 

a note from Lucy: IT IS TIME! Now, I KNOWWWW i said that there woud be dp with tommy in part two...but that can wait until part three because this is just as disgusting as the last one hehehehe! Enjoy sinners, i'm off to bed. This is also unedited to just ignore any typos. I promise I’ll get round to reading it through later today. X

playlist | alternate banner by THE cherub @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

wc: 4088 Warnings: 18+ MDNI! DARK CONTENT! Unedited for now, no outbreak, no use of y/n but joel calls the reader ‘Cherub’, porn with little plot, bombastic age gap (reader is in her early 20's and Joel is in his late 50s), Smut, car sex, very dubcon in theory but both parties want it, smut, P in V sex (unprotected — pleaseee don’t do tis irl), oral - m reeiving, handjobs, Creampie, choking, orgasm denial, slapping, dom!Joel:/sub!reader dynamic, gagging , mentions of gagging with panties, panty sniffing, nipple play, biting, Smoking, use of pet names (baby, cherub, angel, good girl...etc), Joel being foul mouthed, cursing, dirty talk. Again, some of the most animalistic, disgustingly wretched and vile porn I have written thus far...with so little plot that this earned me my place in hell, a circle lower than the last. Big Dick Joel Miller comes as his own warning.

series m.list | m.list

Lace. Pretty. Delicate and intricate. 

Torn and tossed to grimy carpet. His trailer, his bed. Laying in his large warm arms for no more than a brief moment of afterglow. Then observed by his hawk eye while you were strewn naked about his sheets in a divine headrush of oxytocin, endorphins. And numb to all but the ghostly ache of pleasure within your belly.  

Truth can be ugly. It can beat and maim even the strongest of heart and half of soul. It can dampen spirits, bash, batter and bruise a hope so bright to such a degree it is nothing but a mere flickering flame, awaiting its snuffing out from a final exhale of a familiar broken heart. It can go pummeling, plundering and pillaging a love you held so tightly to your chest, that once was so dear to one’s self, the mere idea of letting it slip through your fingers would bring on an agonising loneliness even death's pain could not compete or match with. 

One night later was your time to face truth, the world fell dark again. The rain had subsided back to choking heat, summer’s final scorch before biting winter rolled in, icy and frostbitten on its heels. You were catatonic in bed from that day forward. Contemplated the end of it all. Then got up for work again when the sun peeked over aluminium trailer rooftops. All of this…just come back to your own bed again. 

You belong to the ground now. Your purple knees might as well be caked in dirt. Each of your hairs stood on end in protest to your shivers, vexatious and unforgiving. And choked sobs suffocated you, face red, raw, puffy and salty. Everything seemed to hurt. The sound of humanity seemed so far away from you now. Even the crackling of TV static in the next room over. Nothing felt quite real. It was just…dull. Exhaustion ached in your bones, sinking in deeper - bone marrow level deeper - after twenty-four hours of little to no rest. You bit down on your bottom lip and scrunched your eyes closed as your fingers and toes curled in and you writhed in emotional pain inside yourself. Physically you were still. A weight had pressed itself into your chest, digging at you and carving a hole through your sternum. Your teeth were now gritted as you let out strained whimpers muffled by the pillow. Desperate for some form of relief, you were clasping at your upper arms, clawing your flesh until red lines rose

No one knew. No one could know. they did not have to carry the idea that someone, who roamed the halls of your mind peacefully, passively, vacantly, now rampaged through those same corridors with an iron fist and a burning torch, setting you alight, leaving breadcrumb trails for ravens to pick at and fragments such as that of sharp, cutting mirror glass for you to piece together with no map or original picture but your own memory. You tumbled, spiralling into a world of ‘was it this?’ or ‘was it that?’. And the line between each question soon grew thinner, smearing together like streaks of sunlight smudging in tears. 

—

It was a slow roll of a shift. No one but the regulars on a quiet Monday morning. The bikers who stop for coffee. The business man here for the Bessy's Diner ‘premium’ breakfast before his day starts. Greasy and warm but with the crispy potatoes. Eggs sunny side up on two slices of golden brown white bloomer bread. The smell stuck in your hair. 

You watched through the window as the world turned dark under bruising night sky. His name on your tongue at the back of your teeth. His handprint on your thigh under your yellow polyester skirt. It was the branding of him on you in the most achingly beautiful way you could imagine. You might not be bent in half any more but in your mind you are replaying each thrust that edged you over the side of harrowing oblivion. You were in his bed. Right there. You could almost feel him.

The ding of the pass bell made you blink once, twice, thrice, with a sharp inhale through your nose while you tuned in a daze to collect a cheeseburger and curly fries. You weren't much to look at by your standards – grease stains on your uniform, scuffed shoes and bruised knees; But the man you delivered the meal too had you for his appetiser. Eyeing you like a juicy cut of rump steak, plump and tender to sink one's teeth into. Your nostrils flared and you couldn't help but wonder what Joel would think of his roaming eyes as you gave the trucker a curt but saccharine ‘Enjoy!’ through gritted teeth. 

Then it was back to staring out the window while more coffee brewed and the sky sunk deep blue, a rim of purple at the horizon. Like it had been beaten and left by the sun. Clouds murking the sky above like dried blots of ink. A heavy downpour to come and you hadn't bought your coat or umbrella. Headlights beamed through the window in the blue, sailing over your eyes and the wall behind you, making you strain and squint at the familiar number plate. 

That very truck had been parked in the middle of your trailer and his. Taunted you now whenever you saw it. Reminded you that he had not come calling since a few nights ago. How long was it now? A week of no contact that made you claw at your skin and the marrow of your very bones ache with the pain as they hollowed out. Waiting for him to fill that place in you again with a sense of being needed. The place only he knew how to reach. It was pathetic and you knew it. But, oh, how you'd fall to your knees in the dirt each time to just see him. To have him call you Cherub. It felt like a dream no one would get to see or feel but you and him. A secret whisper of delight that had a pending knot of tension tighten and twist in your gut. Then a flutter when his truck door opened to reveal him in his usual wife beater tank and dirty denim combo. This time a leather jacket straining over his broad shoulders. Your mouth watered at the sight of his bulge. How, when he stood with the devils own smirk at the sight of you through the window, arm slung over the top of the drivers door, the tank rode up to give a tease of happy trail on his softer tummy. He was a man who could ruin you with a look; Have you pleading to be his anything. 

He licked his lips at the promise of his meal. You. All you could do was stand with feet planted firmly to the floor in your frilly hemmed socks and patent mary janes. His picture of innocence dressed in a ditsy diner uniform. His eyes were dark and lit only by the inside glow. They snared you in ways you often found hard to elucidate to yourself. But you'd be a liar if you refused to admit the excitement your gaze held his with. The beaming toothy grin you shone at him as he walked through the entrance. A chilly gust of wind hot on his chunky book clad heels. 

“Be right with ya!” You called to him as you took the coffee from its hotplate, unable to keep yourself from smiling. He was here. You would once again be his. Whole. 

A girl could dream. Oh she can dream up to the clouds and pass the very sun. But, lord above, how calamity hits like a stone to a dove’s wing. Causing the fall to earth and the fire to consume. This time, Icarus waited for the night. Who knew Selene would give the same backhand as Apollo.

“No need.” He cleared his throat, ambling over in his swagger to slump over the counter against the bar stool. “Lookin’ awful happy, Cherub.” There it was. It had your eyes glazing over in a haze. The first man who gave you a reason. An ability to serve and care and be wanted. “Just happy ‘cause I'm seein’ you.” You sighed. His arms crossed over themselves on the counter and there was Lucifers smile to lull you closer.

“That so?”

You nodded eagerly. “Yeah.” It was ineffable to explain, really. The temptation. But it was so damn perfect you couldn't get enough of it.

“What time you get off then, Cherub?”

“Ten.” You replied instantly. A heat warmed your core. A fizzle of something, a cramping of a dull pleasure spasm in your belly. From there he leaned over, breath tickling your ear as his scuff scratched the shell of it. Made your pulse thrum under your skin. He could feel your supple warmth, noticed how your pretty round chest hitched at the feel of his words in your ear. He ogled you like a hunter would his prey. His next feast.

“Y’think you can help me get off?” 

If you had it your way you’d trace each scar, pale of almost rare silver, raised upon his skin. Gnarled. But so unmistakably beautiful it takes your breath away for a moment. Born again, the first breath you take. Learning how to inhale, familiarise yourself with how his chest rises, to then fall with tumble of the exhale. But this was on his terms. It would do. Ideally you'd do it your way. However, he wanted what he wanted. He took. You had so much more to give him if you were just gifted the miracle of opportunity. Jeopardising this love now would be a foolish idea. 

“Yes, Joel.” You whispered, though it caught in your throat a little. Joel pulled back to eye you. Chuckling at the sight of your open wide doe eyes. A pretty helpless fawn for him to scrape off the road after being crushed by a truck. Or a bird whose wings needed patching. Little did you know he wasn't mending your wings. Merely plucking feathers from them until you could no longer glide through skies. Only be dragged by him across the ground on a leash. Rubbing flesh raw to the point of bleeding.

“Then i’ll be waitin’ here for ya, Cherub.” 

—

He had his eyes on you the whole time. In his stare you saw each scene of what could be play out. What position he'd fix you in before the descent of his hips into yours. The slap of heavy balls against your ass. The ripple of your skin while a hand clapped down on one cheek, then the other. Rendering you useless for the rest of the night. Unable to walk without legs trembling. Poor pretty Bambi. Poor precious Cherub. 

You could feel the heat of his eyes lick up the back of your neck. Flushing bright colour into the apples of your cheeks. Each time you passed him, a silent glance from you. A primal, phallic stare from him. Cogs in his mind turning to see what scenario would take his fancy. The look from other customers didn't fall short on his attention. He noticed the way that trucker had eyed you upon giving him the bill. Jealousy curled in his gut because how dare another man so much as think about touching what is rightfully his. What you were so eager to please with. The plush of your breasts, the encompassing warmth of your slick wet cunt. Joel would remember that when you stumble home, his come dribbling down your leg in a thick, gluttonous rivulet. You, so ready to flay yourself open at his word and present all to him. Your broken ribs and beating heart. The blood that bled in vain for him. 

At the end of your shift he waited while you got you things from out back, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Thick fingers plucking one ready to light. 

“Can't smoke in here, Joel.” You pointed out as his lighter hissed under the roll of his thumb.

“Then hurry up ‘n let me get you outta here, Cherub.” He mumbled, eyes trained on the cigarette between his lips. You admired how the yellow hue of the lighter washed him a glow in brief flashes. The scruff on his jaw lighter. Greyer. Handsomer. 

“Okay.” 

He led you out with a hand to your back. Hoisted your bike into the bed of his truck and you had to hold your breath at the swell of his muscles under his leather jacket. Its dark shine scuffed and worn down. 

He drove you back downtown with the cigarette lit in his mouth to puff on, a hand on your clenching thigh, inching closer up to dangerous territory. He felt how you squirmed inside yourself. As if your bones were begging to be rattled by him. Until the highway bled off into smaller roads towards the trailer park where he opened the window to flick his smoke out and then shut it. You weren’t expecting him to pull over in a lay-by. The trees skeletal as leaves had started to fall here. 

The engine sputtered before shutting off with the twist of the key. You found yourself staring at your skirt, picking a loose thread from the hem of it before his finger hooked under your chin. Just like the first time. Still smelling of tobacco and something mustier. Something human. It was hard to see in the dark, but his shadow said it all. It was carved out by the backdrop of trees outside the window. It made a rattling burst of desire dart down your spine and fill the hollow slowburn in your womb. 

“Look at me.” So you did. And his finger grasped your chin, almost embedding his touch into your with trembling tingle were he to ever let go. Like a solder’s phantom limb.

“What are we doing here, Joel?” You asked, eyes innocent. Begging to be corrupted and crying. 

“Gettin’ me off, Cherub.”

His lips crushed yours like seeds of pomegranate. Chapped and split. The metallic taste of his blood on your tongue. Your lungs breathed him, absorbed him. What noise he gave you, nonsensical as it was, it was a relief there was something. Something you could do. Part your thighs.

While one hand stayed fastened to your chin in its vice grip, his other palmed himself through his jeans. Hips rolling into the heel of his hand and a groan departed from his chest heavily. One you happily consumed with a needy inhale. Desperate to feel something of him inside you. 

“Gonna make me feel good, ain’t you, Cherub? My pretty little thing.” 

It was hard to nod in his grip. But you managed with the aiding of a whimpering “Mhm!”

“‘M gonna let you feel it.”

The bulge in his jeans was straining at denim and suffocating him. You felt blindly for his erection, fumbling with the belt, button and zipper. Joel smirked into your mouth while his tongue trialled sloppily over your bottom lip, enclosing it between the prison of his gnashers. Biting down hard. The friction of his beard was coarse against the dichotomy of your soft, supple skin. 

“Yeah.” He sighed, leaning back in the passenger seat, detaching his lips from you. “Jus’ like that.” You swallowed. Aching to feel him. To have him as a part of you again. But for now you'd settle with the steady dragging stroke of his thick heavy cock in your hand. 

You watched him with curiosity, the way his eyes fluttered closed. It was more the way a child would observe a butterfly trapped in a jar. Even though he was anything but delicate. 

“Fuckin’ angel aint ya, Cherub?” He swallowed, hips twitching and bucking up into your hand while your thumb rolled over the sensitive head of his dick, smearing a bead of precum over the delicate flushed skin. You salivated like a rabid dog at the sight. The smell of his sex thick on your nose. 

You felt the curl of this large hand at the crown of your skull before he pushed you down. Pulling you with him to hell’s heat once more. 

“Suck it.” 

And you did willingly; Took him into the warm cavern of your mouth, swirling your tongue over the flushed red tip to have the heady taste of him thick on your tastebuds. His hips stuttered, meaning you had to hollow out your mouth and relax your throat to take him as far as he wanted. The ache in your oesophagus burned, bruising deliciously. Tears stung the backs of your eyes, heavy and wet and dripping over the threshold of your eyes, streaking clumpy mascara down your face like an abstract painting for him to smirk at later. His fingers twisted in your hair like brambles through hedgerows. His hands were being laid on you. More like beckoning you closer to being laid to rest in the dirt. Ready for that little death his anatomy promised. The lust between you heated the car, fogging windows slightly. 

As you went a little further, and little faster, nails digging into his jeans to ground yourself, you realised you’d never rather be anywhere than with him. Saliva running from your mouth down his shaft, collecting in a shine around the base and rolling over his tightening balls. He chuckled when you gagged, spluttering and heaving on him. Begging for more, you dared to ghost a single finger over your dripping slit. Cunt twitching at the attention. An action that was far from lost on him. 

“Did I tell ya you could touch yerself?” He hissed, ripping you from his cock as the heat of an orgasm started to bubble in his lower belly. You spluttered a no, holding your hands up in surrender to him. “Little minx.” He sneered.

You yelped at the grip on your thighs as he kicked your legs out from under you, tugging your underwear from your heat in one swift yank. He held the cotton up to his nose, taking a deep inhale. “Fuckin’ filthy. Just imagine what your uncle would think ‘bout this?  Ruining your fucking panties for me.” Shame flooded your gut, but the clench of your tight, drooling hole told you otherwise about disliking the thought. A heat warming your cheeks once more. “Oh, you like that dont you, Cherub?”

“Yeah.” You owned up to the fact. There was no point in lying. He’d fuck the truth out of you one way or another. 

With your hands still raised, you watched in fucked out awe of his tonge that darted out to taste your slick on your underwear. His eyes closed as he savoured the tang on his tongue. There was no need to commit it to memory. If he wanted it again all he need do was ask. Your legs would part open, panties in his hand again. 

“Taste like fuckin’ honey, Cherub. All sweet and sticky.” His voice verberated in your chest and his and had your eyes blurring in a split of a second. Crawling back once again to the memory in his trailer. “What do you think? Should I shove these in your mouth instead of my cock? Huh, Cherub?” You swallowed at the thought. “Nah…” He cast the thought aside, tossing them in the backseat. “I might just go easy on ya tonight.” 

That was a short lived promise, for he was sliding back his seat as far as it would go, dragging you into his lap, thick head prodding the weeping entrance of your cunt. Waiting deliciously for the stretch of him. Whole again. Make me whole again. You begged to the ears of your own mind. Please!

“Sit down.” He demanded. And you obeyed; Notching him between the slick lips of your pussy. He hands found grounding purchase on your hips, grinding you along the underside of his thick length. Smearing your juices over himself. Each time the tip so much as grazed your clit it had you whimpering his name. Had your brain scrambling to form a coherent sentence. It was sinful Disgusting. But the way it felt was enough to cast a shadow on those doubts. Turn out the light, and set them to temporary sleep in your head. 

The roll of your hips worked in tandem with the taboo buck of his thrusts. His neck strained and veins bulged under tight tension knotted, gnarled skin.

“This pussy’s made for this, ain't it, Cherub? Made for makin’ me feel good.”

“Yeah.” You mumbled while two thick fingers slipped into your mouth. The rough pads of them pressing into your tongue. You pressed your lips around them, taking his digits down to the last knuckle. His taste was rich in your mouth. One you'd never even dream of forgetting. 

Your humping got faster, more erratic and less careful. Big. Mistake. 

“Don’t go getting sloppy on me now, Cherub.”

You whined. It was all you were good for. All you could do. There was only so much finesse you could master with the steering wheel at your back, digging into your arching, aching spine. You waxed and waned over him in more careful movements now. Made sure to press down with each roll back over his shaft. All while he had an open mouthed trained gaze on the way his fingers slipped in and out of your mouth. Slow. Setting the pace for you to mimic. Lips puffy, saliva slick. 

From there, it was your dress. Greedy and heavy hands popping the buttons of it open and stripping you down to nothing but flesh. It crumpled around your waist. His lips pursed while suckling your nipples into his mouth until they were pert and erect on his tongue. Teeth sinking into tender flesh, jaw unhinged as he took a bite of their swell and mimicked it on the other side.

It was so bad. So, so, so bad. If there truly was a god you’d be signed over to hell. But you didn't care, how could you when you felt the burn in your belly of your orgasm. The stars sputtering over the backs of your closed lids in a hypnotic kaleidoscope image. Either way, you were damned. Icarus to Apollo’s heat. His heat was burning. Scalding. Making a sheen of thick, damp sweat accumulate over your skin. Chest heaving into his mouth while your back arched and held tight like the string of a bow ready to release.

“Fuck– please, Joel. Wanna– fuck– come. Wanna come!” You whined around his fingers. To which he replied by ripping them from your mouth and striking a heavy hand over your cheek. The sting was thrilling. It made the apples of your cheeks tingle, begging him to do it again. Abuse you in any way he saw fit because the pleasure burning, building in your core had your cunt clenching. Ready to let go at his given word. He bared his teats at you while he smeared his tongue and spit over your tits.

“No. You come when I say and only when I say.” 

And with those as his damning words, he lifted your hips off his, using a hand to line himself up with precision, spearing into you in one fowl swoop. You bit back a scream on your bottom lip from the intrusion. But before you could let the pain sink in it melted into brain fogging pleasure. You had to clench your walls around his thick length, his cock hot and pulsing within your cunt that spasmed with the promise to unwind. Had you a babbling crying mess in his lap while he jackhammered up into you. Balls slapping your spread cheeks. 

His palm closed around your pulse, the other in your hair as you held yourself just above him on trembling legs so he could have the room to thirst upwards, swollen cockhead nipping your cervix vigorously like the last time. Whatever broken thing inside you that made you yearn for this could rattle around within of you. It was nothing unless it got you here to the sheer pleasure you felt when in his unforgiving arms. You’d go easily like this. Tear stained cheeks as you babbled his name nonsensically. All for him to keep up the relentless pace of his hips. The coarse hairs at the base of his cock adding a friction to your twitching clit that wasn't needed. You were already on edge. God, how you lived for the little death.

“Please, sir!” If anything else you did didn't set him off, that did. The words sweetened by the whine that curled from the back of your throat and dripped into his ears like fine wine. High pitched needy for him to finish you off. Deliver the killing blow. 

The hand tangled in your hair jerked your head back, leaving your jaw to hang open and your eyes to roll back in your skull. Your toes curled in their frilly socks and shoes, the tingle turning to numbness and then to an overstimulated pain that you couldn't stave off any longer. 

“Gonna come ain ya, Cherub? After I’ve been so fuckin’ nice to ya. Let ya touch me. Feel me inside of ya.” He pressed a hand over your womb, feeling the bulge of himself each time he fucked up to meet that perfect spot inside you. “Feel me fuckin’ wrecking this cunt for anyone else?” And you nodded stupidly, finding it hard to breathe with his other hand still at your neck. He could feel the quickening of your pulse under your flesh. “Words, Cherub.” He growled with heat into your pulse. “Or have I fucked you dumb, pretty girl?”

“Yes! Yes, Joel, I'm yours! Yours yours yours!”

“The fucking come. Show me.” 

And finally, the closing scene to this act of sin. The little death you had been waiting for swelled within you, sending you falling from the stars in your eyes and back down to earth – crashing into the wall of his chest. A string of curses from his sneering lips and he released inside of you, balls tightening and dick twitching sheathed within you. His thick, hot come dribbled gluttonously from your quivering cunt. And you were twitching uncontrollably against him. 

Your chests heaved out of sync with each other. Him out, you in. You accommodated the invading rise of his chest with the crushing and concaving of your own. His cock softened inside of you and in the mess he had made of you cunt. You were well and truly wrecked for anyone but him. Your body, no matter how much you may come to hate this fact in future, belongs to his pleasure. 

You will forever be his fallen angel. His Cherub.

[kaorikarma]

Let Your Soul Take Flight

Howard Phillips Lovecraft X Reader

"I'm... starving.."

"Aren't you always?" You tsked, having been caring for him for several days. From the moment you saw him, emotionless and uncaring in a pouring rain shower, you knew he would be difficult; but you hadn't expected just how deeply odd he was.

He hummed, gazing at a wall with what you could only hope was some sort of thoughts processing in his brain.

"Most of the time." His head turned to look at you at an eerie, inhuman swivel while he answered, eyes blank and wide. You shivered a bit, something you hoped he didn't notice.

"Ok, well, let's go for a round three on taking care of that today. Let's try a buffet this time. I can't afford $300 in fast food again." You sighed, noting his doe-eyed expression. He didn't really seem to care if he drained your wallet; hell, he didn't even seem to fully grasp the concept of monetary value.

Feeding him had been a monumentous task. It was first on your list, since he looked frighteningly gaunt and emaciated, but nothing seemed to fill his stomach.

He constantly complained of being hungry, tired, and itchy, though no amount of sleep, food, or anti-itch cream sated him. He just stared at you with those blank, dead eyes.

There was something about him that made you decide to keep trying. He didnt seem to understand anything about society, and you were strongly worried for his well-being otherwise. At first, you had suspected mental health issues, his eccentricities ever-present to a degree of naiveté, but after the several days you'd spent trying and failing to care for him, you began to suspect some inhumanity present in him. His odd movements, insatiable needs, the way you discovered late last night that the cause of his consistent itching was your gaze, he seemed to you too strange to be human.

You plopped down in the chair in front of your bed, which he had promptly taken over before you could direct him to your couch, complaining all the while that the linens were giving him a rash. Head in hand, you watched his brows furrow with unease as you looked him in the eyes.

"You said mostly. So.. what's kept you full in the past, stranger?" He paused for a second.

"Mm... Call me Lovecraft." The words floated lazily off his tongue. He hadn't graced you with his name yet, though he knew yours.

Your eyebrows shot up with amusement. "Well that's certainly a step in the right direction..., Lovecraft. You starting to trust me now?" You chuckled a bit as he seemed to look regretful of the admission, turning to look away from you.

"Ugh...Yuck. My stomach aches when you call me by that name."

You openly face-palmed, albeit playfully.

"If that's your name, what else should I call you?"

He seemed to think for a moment.

"...How..ard..? No.. that doesn't feel right either.. Perhaps you should go back to calling me 'stranger'." He finished, crossing his arms with a deep frown.

"Howard? Hmm.. a bit old-fashioned, but I think it suits you well--" He gave you such a look of incredulous disgust that you sat, slack-jawed; you couldn't recall a single time he seemed to feel so strongly about anything.

"Absolutely not.. It feels too weird... ugh... no..no..." You watched as he pulled the blankets of your freshly made bed over his head, quite literally hiding under the covers, writhing a bit, like he'd been physically wounded by your attempt to call him by name.

Sighing once again, you stood up to pull the covers off his slender frame, but found that he tugged stronger than you could pull your fleecy bed-spread from him.

You sat next to him, dramatically flopping backwards until you were lying next to him, on top of the still-tucked in edge of the bedding.

"So your name must be Howard Lovecraft, huh?"

He made some sort of hissing sound and withdrew further under the blankets, curling into an ill-proportioned, too-leggy ball of a gangly, tall man.

"But you don't like either of those."

No hiss. A good sign.

"What about a nickname?" You looked over at the lump under the covers; had there been no linen divider, your noses could almost touch.

You swore you heard a low grumble in his throat. Not particularly a pleased sound, but it wasn't an aggressive 'no'.

You put a wary hand on where you thought the back of his head would be, feeling his breath catch and his body shiver with the unexpected sensation. He didn't pull away, like you'd thought he would. This was the one of the first times you'd been this close to him, and the first time you'd touched him, even if indirectly, through thick cotton.

You admonished the feeling, letting all the possibly nicknames for 'Howard' run through your head.

"What about... Howie?" You whispered to the ball next to you.

He growled again, this time more than pleased.

Not a man of many words, but as you smiled, happy with with yourself for finding something he liked, he emerged from the blankets, navy hair mussed, but looking overall content with his new namesake.

He reached out an touched the base of your head curiously, as you had done to him, light smile gracing his face.

"Perhaps..is this... affection, you displayed to me?" He asked quizzically, voice soft and slow with all the wonder of a dreaming child.

The moment was gentle, you thought, but you were having trouble focusing on his words with the deep, freezing chill the emanated from his fingertips, making your skin prickle with goosebumps.

You took the icy plunge and braced yourself for discomfort as you embraced him quickly and tightly, head resting in the crook of his neck.

He seemed confused and surprised, arms still where they were a moment ago, helplessly curled around the air.

"Yes, Howie. This is affection."

When his arms finally came down to awkwardly squeeze you, you realized this was the first time you had given him attention in which he responded well; no shivers of discomfort or anxious expressions in sight. He seemed to actually enjoy the embrace, freezing cold and trying to keep your teeth from chattering as you were.

You weren't sure how you'd not realized he was this cold before. Though you'd been staying decently far away from him, you thought that he would eminate this raw polar cold from a distance, yet you'd not felt a single change in the air until you were in his arms.

Though he'd relaxed and began deepening the embrace himself now, you had to pull away out of sheer discomfort, briefly looking down to see your bare skin blue and purple-tinged where you'd touched him for too long.

You hoped he didn't notice, although he looked disoriented after you'd broken the hug off so suddenly, looking a bit upset and ready to cling to you again, so you changed the topic with a gentle smile.

"You didn't answer my question earlier. What's kept you full in the past?" You repeated, knowing he'd already blanked on the question from minutes earlier.

He blinked for a moment, thoughts slowly returning to your prior conversation.

"I've not been full since I was a child. I ate copious amounts of crabs and fish, until I was sated for a few hours." At least he was more open to your probing questions now.

"Wow, your parents must have thought you a real challenge, huh?"

He looked down at you from his high perch with an unnerving gaze, not at all kindly and curious as it was a moment ago.

"I was capable of feeding myself. My parents had nothing to do with it."

"Oh.. ok, then."

You looked down at your feet, shuffling to the other side of the room before he took your hand, unexpectedly. A chill ran through your body, but his touch was so soft and pleading for you to look back at him, you didn't pull away.

"Am I too cold?" He asked, observing the way your fingers reddened in his grasp.

"A bit," you laughed lightheartedly, through half-chattering teeth.

He dropped his hand, ruffling through an inner pocket of his coat until he pulled out thick, woolen gloves.

Pulling them on, he took your hand again.

"Better?" You barely felt the chill of his hands this time. Smiling, you nodded at him.

"Let's go get lunch, Howie."

He let out a low, quiet laugh, accompanied by a near-impercievable smile, that barely reached your ears.

Maybe the third time would be the charm.

°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°•°

Note: Can be taken as a (long-before) prequel to 'Primal'. I want most of my Lovecraft stories to follow the same essential plot and lore I set up, so they shouldn't have many differences unless it's a request.

Thanks for reading!

June 5th, 2023

-Kaori

[lesmisletters-daily]

The Heroism Of Passive Obedience

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.2.3

The door opened.

It opened wide with a rapid movement, as though some one had given it an energetic and resolute push.

A man entered.

We already know the man. It was the wayfarer whom we have seen wandering about in search of shelter.

He entered, advanced a step, and halted, leaving the door open behind him. He had his knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel in his hand, a rough, audacious, weary, and violent expression in his eyes. The fire on the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous. It was a sinister apparition.

Madame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry. She trembled, and stood with her mouth wide open.

Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering, and half started up in terror; then, turning her head by degrees towards the fireplace again, she began to observe her brother, and her face became once more profoundly calm and serene.

The Bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man.

As he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the newcomer what he desired, the man rested both hands on his staff, directed his gaze at the old man and the two women, and without waiting for the Bishop to speak, he said, in a loud voice:—

“See here. My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict from the galleys. I have passed nineteen years in the galleys. I was liberated four days ago, and am on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination. I have been walking for four days since I left Toulon. I have travelled a dozen leagues to-day on foot. This evening, when I arrived in these parts, I went to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow passport, which I had shown at the town-hall. I had to do it. I went to an inn. They said to me, ‘Be off,’ at both places. No one would take me. I went to the prison; the jailer would not admit me. I went into a dog’s kennel; the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a man. One would have said that he knew who I was. I went into the fields, intending to sleep in the open air, beneath the stars. There were no stars. I thought it was going to rain, and I re-entered the town, to seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square, I meant to sleep on a stone bench. A good woman pointed out your house to me, and said to me, ‘Knock there!’ I have knocked. What is this place? Do you keep an inn? I have money—savings. One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which I earned in the galleys by my labor, in the course of nineteen years. I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am very weary; twelve leagues on foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing that I should remain?”

“Madame Magloire,” said the Bishop, “you will set another place.”

The man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on the table. “Stop,” he resumed, as though he had not quite understood; “that’s not it. Did you hear? I am a galley-slave; a convict. I come from the galleys.” He drew from his pocket a large sheet of yellow paper, which he unfolded. “Here’s my passport. Yellow, as you see. This serves to expel me from every place where I go. Will you read it? I know how to read. I learned in the galleys. There is a school there for those who choose to learn. Hold, this is what they put on this passport: ‘Jean Valjean, discharged convict, native of’—that is nothing to you—‘has been nineteen years in the galleys: five years for house-breaking and burglary; fourteen years for having attempted to escape on four occasions. He is a very dangerous man.’ There! Every one has cast me out. Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?”

“Madame Magloire,” said the Bishop, “you will put white sheets on the bed in the alcove.” We have already explained the character of the two women’s obedience.

Madame Magloire retired to execute these orders.

The Bishop turned to the man.

“Sit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few moments, and your bed will be prepared while you are supping.”

At this point the man suddenly comprehended. The expression of his face, up to that time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint of stupefaction, of doubt, of joy, and became extraordinary. He began stammering like a crazy man:—

“Really? What! You will keep me? You do not drive me forth? A convict! You call me <i>sir!</i> You do not address me as <i>thou?</i> ‘Get out of here, you dog!’ is what people always say to me. I felt sure that you would expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a good woman that was who directed me hither! I am going to sup! A bed with a mattress and sheets, like the rest of the world! a bed! It is nineteen years since I have slept in a bed! You actually do not want me to go! You are good people. Besides, I have money. I will pay well. Pardon me, monsieur the inn-keeper, but what is your name? I will pay anything you ask. You are a fine man. You are an inn-keeper, are you not?”

“I am,” replied the Bishop, “a priest who lives here.”

“A priest!” said the man. “Oh, what a fine priest! Then you are not going to demand any money of me? You are the curé, are you not? the curé of this big church? Well! I am a fool, truly! I had not perceived your skull-cap.”

As he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner, replaced his passport in his pocket, and seated himself. Mademoiselle Baptistine gazed mildly at him. He continued:

“You are humane, Monsieur le Curé; you have not scorned me. A good priest is a very good thing. Then you do not require me to pay?”

“No,” said the Bishop; “keep your money. How much have you? Did you not tell me one hundred and nine francs?”

“And fifteen sous,” added the man.

“One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous. And how long did it take you to earn that?”

“Nineteen years.”

“Nineteen years!”

The Bishop sighed deeply.

The man continued: “I have still the whole of my money. In four days I have spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned by helping unload some wagons at Grasse. Since you are an abbé, I will tell you that we had a chaplain in the galleys. And one day I saw a bishop there. Monseigneur is what they call him. He was the Bishop of Majore at Marseilles. He is the curé who rules over the other curés, you understand. Pardon me, I say that very badly; but it is such a far-off thing to me! You understand what we are! He said mass in the middle of the galleys, on an altar. He had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it glittered in the bright light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on the three sides, with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could not see very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and we did not hear. That is what a bishop is like.”

While he was speaking, the Bishop had gone and shut the door, which had remained wide open.

Madame Magloire returned. She brought a silver fork and spoon, which she placed on the table.

“Madame Magloire,” said the Bishop, “place those things as near the fire as possible.” And turning to his guest: “The night wind is harsh on the Alps. You must be cold, sir.”

Each time that he uttered the word <i>sir</i>, in his voice which was so gently grave and polished, the man’s face lighted up. <i>Monsieur</i> to a convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked of the <i>Medusa</i>. Ignominy thirsts for consideration.

“This lamp gives a very bad light,” said the Bishop.

Madame Magloire understood him, and went to get the two silver candlesticks from the chimney-piece in Monseigneur’s bed-chamber, and placed them, lighted, on the table.

“Monsieur le Curé,” said the man, “you are good; you do not despise me. You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man.”

The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. “You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew.”

The man opened his eyes in astonishment.

“Really? You knew what I was called?”

“Yes,” replied the Bishop, “you are called my brother.”

“Stop, Monsieur le Curé,” exclaimed the man. “I was very hungry when I entered here; but you are so good, that I no longer know what has happened to me.”

The Bishop looked at him, and said,—

“You have suffered much?”

“Oh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double chain for nothing, the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still the chain! Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty-six. Now there is the yellow passport. That is what it is like.”

“Yes,” resumed the Bishop, “you have come from a very sad place. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us.”

In the meantime, Madame Magloire had served supper: soup, made with water, oil, bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, of her own accord, added to the Bishop’s ordinary fare a bottle of his old Mauves wine.

The Bishop’s face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is peculiar to hospitable natures. “To table!” he cried vivaciously. As was his custom when a stranger supped with him, he made the man sit on his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceable and natural, took her seat at his left.

The Bishop asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself, according to his custom. The man began to eat with avidity.

All at once the Bishop said: “It strikes me there is something missing on this table.”

Madame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks and spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the whole six sets of silver on the table-cloth—an innocent ostentation. This graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child’s play, which was full of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into dignity.

Madame Magloire understood the remark, went out without saying a word, and a moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded by the Bishop were glittering upon the cloth, symmetrically arranged before the three persons seated at the table.

[paula-in-dreamland]

QUESTIONS FOR YOU BELOVED

38. What’s one show you watch or musician you listen to that your friends know nothing about?

50. Describe your perfect sleeping conditions

49. What’s your favorite thing to do when it’s raining?

45. Do you have good handwriting?

YAY!

38. What's one show you watch or musician you listen to that your friends know nothing about?

Lmao. Like every show these days? Especially since leaving college, my IRL friends and I don't really talk about shared love of shows/movies/books/etc. And if we do, they definitely do not know HOW obsessed I am with a show. For example, I think only my husband knows my affliction that is The Last Kingdom. As for music? I mean ~kinda~ the same answer. Maybe MGMT? But also,I feel like this question is asking about ~guilty pleasures~ and I don't feel like there is any musical artist that I am ashamed to admit that I listen to or that I like? *Shrug*

50. Describe your perfect sleeping conditions.

Probably a room around 70 degrees - warm enough that I'm not freezing going to sleep but cool enough that I can wear my long sleeve PJS and pile on blankets without over heating. I have grown to love White Noise of some sort. A teensy bit of light. At least three pillows - Two head, one knee. Soft mattress with some give. All the soft blankets. All of them. Also my husband. It's nice sleeping next to my husband. Makes me feel safer.

49. What's your favorite thing to do when it's raining?

Sleep. Cozy movie marathon. Cozy book reading. Bake. Write. Video Games. Spa Day. YOU NAME IT. But usually - movie or tv 😂

45. Do you have good handwriting?

👀👀

I think it's mid at best lmao. You can read it but not winning any awards.

THANK YOU!!!

[nohara-rin-dot-mp3]

do you have naruto fics you rec

yes!!!! i may be a hater but there is room in my heart for love. my selection may be. a tad bit biased. but everyone knows that this blog is for rin brainrot anyways so i'm sure you were expecting that <3

rin fic:

She Never Made it to the Ocean by OpensUp4Nobody- takes place in a root!rin au, but is conpletely canon compliant because there's nothing in canon to contradict. it's got a very utilitatian writing style that perfectly conveys rin's headspace throughout the fic. one of my favorite post-obito kakarin dynamics ever, too. a requirement for anyone who loves rin imo

all the things we will become by Ringwil- spy rin au. great mask imagery, and really digs down into the meat of rin's emotions. a little too pro-konoha for my tastes sometimes, but otherwise an amazing read

in the end. by Araived- another fantastic rin study, this time without any alterations to her backstory. it really focuses on the dissonance between the person rin is seen as and the person she is, which is always really fun to see. the ending is one of the better depictions of her death i've seen, too. hard recomend.

Crack Me Open (Pour Me Out) by Araived- kakashi tries to save rin, and rin doesn't want to be saved. takes place during the war arc (rin has been edo tensei-d). incredible kakarin dynamic, and beautiful exploration of rin's relationshop with death.

six degrees of separation by OneshotPrincess- i'm always a sucker for rin-sensei aus. does wander towards fix-it sometimes, but overall i think it does a good job of balancing personalities within the roleswaps, amd rin has a good amount of interiority.

other naruto fics i guess:

When it Rains (it Pours) by SunshineAndRainbows- kakashi, tenzo, and an infant naurto go to the bnha universe. i really like the exploration of the naruto universe's messed up technology and culture here. the angst can be kind of hit or miss in my experience but the worldbuilding alone makes it a worthwhile read.

Seeing Double (Seeing Ghosts) by NicWrites- WONDERFUL kakashi study. really hammers in how terrible of a teacher he was. it's not bashing- just a terribly honest translation of what happens in canon set from his pov. does a great job depicting an imperfect individual. must-read.

above inferior by EasyPeasyPanic- genin danzo gets the memories of the things his old self will do. i'm a little hesitant to rec it, because its attitudes towards the system are a little... funky, and i do think that danz is kind of ooc... but it's not every day you get someone willing to explore danzo as like, a person. who does things for actual reasons. worth a try i think, and it's a fun read if you can get into it.

Triage by Fahye- EXCELLENT poly team 7 fic. the sakura characterization really shines here, and the complex dynamic between the three of them is really just on full display. i'd highly recomend this one.

[no6secretsanta]

Tonight's Mood

From: ren @minamiren

To: @bee-archivist https://www.tumblr.com/bee-archivist

The sky is grey, and there are no stars, and it is raining. 

Shion had gone outside about an hour ago as the water had dripped sluggishly down the stairs, carrying mud and sludge down into the library entrance. The rain wasn’t heavy—nothing like that storm in which he’d met Nezumi—but the drizzle was cold and oppressive, wetting his bangs against his forehead and seeping into his clothes. 

The dull rain left a haze over the horizon, covering the existence of any stars that might have otherwise shown. It had already been well past midnight, even then, and Nezumi hadn’t come home yet. 

Nezumi often does not come home until late, and it has been made clear to him that Shion isn’t to concern himself with Nezumi’s comings and goings, but something about tonight feels different. Something in the air. Shion sits on the couch and watches the door, trying to ignore the exhaustion tugging at his eyelids and making his head swim. He is not good at getting less than the required amount of sleep. 

Hamlet runs in circles, and Cravat curls into an uneasy ball on the table. The mice are acting off, too—maybe picking up on Shion’s mood. Maybe they’re the reason he realized something was wrong in the first place. He couldn’t be sure. Doesn’t remember anymore.

Shion’s ears catch the sound of something shifting outside—footsteps in the mud, out of sync enough to be heard even over the mind-numbing drizzle of the rain. He feels proud of noticing in the moment, although Nezumi would likely simply laugh at him, having heard the approaching figure ages before. 

Still, the steps most likely belong to one person. 

Shion rises off the couch, stumbling a bit as he makes his way over to the door. He opens it just as Nezumi approaches, hand tucked into his shirt for the key he keeps strung around his neck. 

Nezumi frowns at him as he stuffs the key back into his shirt, displeased. “You didn’t know that was me,” he accuses, although his heart doesn’t seem into it. Something in his voice feels…empty. “Why do I go through so much effort to keep you alive when you offer yourself up on a silver platter to anyone who wants you otherwise?”

“The chances were good enough that it was you over anyone else that the risk was worth it,” Shion says simply, frowning as Nezumi shoves past him and into the library, trailing muddy footsteps. He’s not usually so rough, nor so careless with how he tracks into their living space. For a rat, he likes to keep things from becoming unduly filthy. 

Shion wanders after him, rounding the corner into the library to see Nezumi shucking off his boots, leaving them where they fall and rising from the couch, only to collapse face-first into his bed. 

“Nezumi?” Shion asks hesitantly, after several moments of nothing but labored breathing from where Nezumi’s face was smothered in the dirty pillow.

There isn’t an immediate response. Then, “Not tonight, Shion.” His voice sounds tired to a degree that worries Shion, but it also makes him want to listen.

Shion stands there quietly for a bit, over Nezumi, wondering how Nezumi could simply ignore him when his energy is usually so frantic, so alert, to the point that he’d never leave his body open to the whims of someone standing above him. Three days ago, he tripped Shion and nearly dislocated his arm for startling him. His reflexes had been amazing, Shion had asked him four separate times to repeat the move for him later. This Nezumi…it is almost like he isn’t even here.

Finally, Shion gets ready for bed.

The morning dawns still grey and drizzling and wet, and Nezumi wakes Shion up by shoving a mop and bucket at him and telling him to get cleaning before his shift with Inukashi. Shion laughs as he accepts the bucket willingly, not minding the work—especially not when Nezumi seems to have come to life again.

———

Shion had thought it was a one-time event, but it wasn’t.

Sometimes Nezumi comes home sad.

It’s not anything drastically different than his usual moods, except it still feels like it is. There’s something subtle about it, a dark cloud a shade too black over all of his movements.

On these nights he doesn’t cook, doesn’t clean, doesn’t read. Doesn’t do anything. He stalks through the library past everything and gets in bed, just like that, no matter how filthy his clothes are, and then he doesn’t leave.

The first time it had happened, Shion thought it was a simple bad mood. The second time, Shion thought he was sick. After that, he realized that there was something different going on.

———

“Yeah, he gets like that sometimes,” Inukashi tells him when Shion asks, feeling a bit guilty to be talking about Nezumi to anyone behind his back, but Inukashi is one of Shion’s few connections that aren’t Nezumi himself. “Just goes off the rails for a night or a few days, disappears, misses practice sometimes. Gets away with it by being the best we’ve got here.”

“So he’s not ill?”

Inukashi waves Shion off. “Just a mood. He always snaps out of it. Now keep working, I’m not paying you to waste soap.”

Shion nods and goes back to the German Shepherd that he’d been washing. 

———

The weather is nice tonight. On nights like this, with clear skies and a beautiful view of the walls of No. 6, Nezumi likes to sit outside and watch. Shion believes that he likes to imagine what he’ll do to the city when it finally falls, the way he believes. 

When Nezumi comes in before twilight is more than a few minutes past, Shion looks up from his book curiously. When Nezumi falls onto the couch and doesn’t move, Shion realizes what is happening.

For the first time, he has the thought to do something about it.

Shion approaches slowly, cautiously. Nezumi is always unresponsive and uncaring in these moods, but he knows better than to antagonize the man unnecessarily. It won’t end well for him. 

When Nezumi fails to respond to his approach, Shion settles onto the couch next to his shoulder, frowning down at him. Nezumi faces the back of the couch, his legs pulled up under him in what strikes Shion as a shockingly vulnerable position. Shion feels his hip brush the back of Nezumi’s shoulder, but Nezumi doesn’t move. “I’ve heard of things like this, in class,” Shion ventures. “Safu was better at neurological issues and chemical imbalances, but—“

“Saying my head is fucked up, Shion?” Nezumi laughs hoarsely, tilting his head just enough to look up at Shion out of the corner of his eye. “I thought we were well past establishing that.”

Shion shakes his head. “No, I’m saying that at home, my mom was like this, back when I was a top student. Before—“ 

Before Nezumi.

Shion shakes his head, recovers. “She was tired all the time, and sad, and she was happy for me but never had the energy for anything other than being sad. My failing out of the program helped her, in a way. She always said people brought her life.”

“I perform in front of hundreds at a time,” Nezumi says acerbically. “I doubt more people are going to do anything other than making me want to start bashing heads in more than I wanted to before.”

“No, but…maybe one person?”

Nezumi rolls his eyes, returns to his previous position staring at the back of the couch cushions, but he doesn’t say no. Doesn’t push Shion off the couch or yell. Maybe he doesn’t have the energy to. Maybe he simply is waiting to see what Shion has planned.

Shion is waiting to see what he has planned too, just a bit.

He leans over to Nezumi’s feet, loosens the laces of his boots. Nezumi’s shoulders tense when he starts, but slowly loosen back up. When he finishes, he tugs the mud-crusted boots off of Nezumi’s feet and tosses them to the floor. He shucks off his own shoes, then fits himself onto the couch behind Nezumi.

He’s forced to tuck close in order to fit on the couch, his knees bending into the curve of Nezumi’s. His arm goes around Nezumi’s waist from behind, and Shion tucks his nose against the back of Nezumi’s neck, not bothered by the low ponytail tickling him.

The whole time he positions himself, Nezumi stays stiff as a board. But when Shion finally falls still, Nezumi lays his hand over Shion’s arm, long fingers gripping around his wrist. 

“You expect a hug to fix things?” Nezumi asks, and it seems like he’s trying to sound acidic, but his voice shakes just a bit too much to hit the mark.

Shion shakes his head against the back of Nezumi’s neck, glad his smile is hidden from Nezumi’s view. “No, just trying to prove you’re not alone,” he says instead. “I don’t think things are going to be fixed. But this isn’t terrible, is it?”

A long silence. Shion finds himself focusing on Nezumi’s warmth, on how it feels to hold a warm body against his chest. It’s nicer than he might have expected, and it comes to his own attention that this is his first time doing anything like this with someone. He likes it, thinks he would like to do it more often—especially if Nezumi is the one he’s able to do it with.

Nezmui’s fingers tighten around his wrist, then let go. He turns all the way over, shoving his body in such a way that nearly shoves Shion off the couch entirely. Nezumi grabs him at the waist, pulls him close just so that he doesn’t topple off the edge. 

Nezumi settles down a moment later, letting go of Shion’s hip, leaving a brand of heat where he’d grabbed. Shion wraps his arm back around Nezumi’s waist; the move feels far more intimate when they’re facing each other than it had when Nezumi had been resolutely pretending that he hadn’t been there.

“No,” Nezumi finally says, shocking Shion out of his momentary stupor.

“No?” Shion repeats, a bit stupidly. Nezumi’s eyes are not often so close to his—they’re a gorgeous grey, Shion thinks.

“No, this is not so terrible,” Nezumi reiterates. “Going to soothe me physically, until I forget my worries, city boy?”

The words are teasing, an entendre that even Shion can catch, but he finds himself reacting to them anyway. He leans in, catches Nezumi’s hips in a clumsy kiss. His lips are softer than expected, although maybe he should’ve known—Eve always takes care of her appearance. Shion pulls back a moment later, smiling wryly.

“Not what you expected?” he asks.

Nezumi looks a little bit shocked, but his recovery is quick enough. He raises his hand to cradle Shion’s jaw, push back into his white hair. Uses the leverage to pull Shion into another kiss.

This one is sweeter.

Nezumi pulls back and grins. “No, but I wouldn’t complain if you knocked me out of my moods like this more often,” he teases.

Shion is tugged to his feet by Nezumi, dragged to the bed, and bundled in. In a reverse of their position from earlier, Nezumi shoves Shion down first before manhandling him into a spooning position, Shion tucked up against Nezumi’s chest.

“You have my permission to do this when I need it,” Nezumi mutters finally, right as Shion is finally falling asleep. Shion nods sleepily.

————

Nezumi doesn’t have the moods often, but when he does—when he tracks mud through the library and collapses onto the nearest surface that he can pass out on—he isn’t alone anymore. Now Shion is there, to get into bed with him, to hold him, sometimes to kiss him when Nezumi permits it.

The moments are quiet and stolen and peaceful and theirs.

[yerpenachams]

JJBA Protagonist Abilities

I'm really inspired by 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure,' because stands are an excellent way to go about avoiding power creep and creating versatile but limited power sets. Probably my favorite plot point in Part 8 is that the Rock Humans have more predatory and devastating, but situational stands, compared to most other antagonists in the series.

However, Araki doesn't go as far as he could with the protagonist's abilities. Giorno's is a little too versatile, while still being strong (although you could say this fits thematically with him being the son of Dio, whose stand is also 'unfair'). Jotaro's stand is obviously very basic, but that's acceptable since it's from the first part with stands. That leaves Crazy Diamond, Stone Free, Tusk, Soft & Wet, and November Rain.

I was super excited about the reveal of November Rain, because it really seemed like a mook stand that just happened to be used by a main character. To me, this fit really well with the themes of Part 9, since Jodio believes that he's a psychopath doomed to struggle with human connection; he doesn't view himself as a hero. Of course, in more recent chapters, November Rain has been established as a pretty versatile stand, although it's still a bit more specific than any of the previous main character stands (in my opinion).

Crazy Diamond has a very neat and clean powerset; healing and repairing objects. This may seem simple, but has a variety of applications in Part 4. Stone Free essentially just allows Jolyne to stretch herself, fit through tight spaces and go "long-range" at the cost of vulnerability; it basically just improves hand-to-hand combat, but it's still a pretty good stand.

Tusk is a stand that really makes a point of "harnessing a force of nature." Gold Experience gives Giorno control over biology, but Tusk gives Johnny control over rotation, including allowing him to create black holes. Objectively, it's probably the best idea for a main character stand so far in a series about the power of fate. However, I've read some convincing fan theories about November Rain, I love the way that Crazy Diamond is used in certain fights in Part 4... and I think that Soft & Wet had a lot of potential.

I actually love Part 8, and it's kind of necessary for Josuke to have a "bullshit stand" when a lot of his opponents use devasting and/or long-range and/or automatic stands (of the Rock Humans, Aisho Dainenjiyama, Dolomite, Poor Tom and Satoru Akefu/Toru all have automatic stands). In addition to Doobie Wah!, Blue Hawaii, Ozone Baby and Wonder of U, Tamaki Damo's Vitamin C and Yotsuyu Yagiyama's I Am a Rock both have features of automatic stands. Once infected, victims of Vitamin C are doomed as long as they're in its range. I Am a Rock attracts objects to people's bodies automatically, although Yotsuyu is at risk since he has to touch people to activate his stand. For Vitamin C, I Am a Rock and Brain Storm, calling them 'automatic' is varying degrees of a stretch, but I definitely think Doctor Wu and the Schott Keys are the only Rock Human stands that have no automatic elements (although Doctor Wu clearly has a different-functioning brain to control all the different parts of his body in the way he does). That's a count of seven automatic stands to three non-automatic, and Brain Storm and Schott Key No. 2 have very small automatic features, since they are diseases. One could argue that, if Green Day functions automatically, then so do Brain Storm and Schott Key No. 2.

Of course, there are non-Rock Human stands that are automatic in Part 8. This in particular includes Kei Nijimura's Born This Way. California King Bed also takes memories automatically, although only when Josuke breaks a rule. That's excluding Yasuho Hirose's Paisley Park and Norisuke Higashikata's King Nothing, which are automatic stands used by allies of Josuke.

I just really enjoy talking about my theory/"observation" that the Rock Human stands are especially predatory, aggressive and unfair because they're a solitary species of humanoid with low to no empathy.

Regardless, Gappy's Soft and Wet is a very interesting stand that's hard to write for. It can "plunder," absorb, steal basically whatever Josuke wants... from physical objects to abstract concepts. He can place himself inside a bubble, mediate air pressure, steal friction from a floor or eyesight from a human being.

I basically came up with this list of Jojo protagonist abilities to make myself feel a bit better while I devise abilities for my own protagonists.

[gatalentan]

I'm 32 years old now, sitting on a bench.

Inside me is a 20 year old sitting on a windowsill.

I developed myalgic encephalomyelitis (m.e. or "chronic fatigue syndrome") when I was around 14. It's post-viral, like long-covid, and has much of the same symptoms (though overwhelming fatigue from small actions and muscular pain, predominantly), in varying degrees from person to person. I don't know exactly when it happened. I had a lot of infections as a kid, it could have been any one of them.

What I do know is that it snowballed in a slow way that felt like my body was being dismantled bit by bit. Over time, I lost the ability to walk. And then stand. And then sit, until eventually I became almost completely bedbound, but certainly housebound, roombound. I was in pain all the time. I had a migraine all the time. I was sick all the time. 

In the gaps between, on the good days, where the symptoms were manageable, I could go to school, go to class, see friends, make bad choices, get bullied, finish my exams, normal teenage things, good and bad. But the good days became scanter and scanter, until by the tail end of my teens all I knew was my four walls and my bed.

I cannot express to you how being trapped in one room makes you into a fundamentally weird person. And I don't just mean psychologically, because, obviously, duh. But people talk about depression making you numb, and it does, but I was very literally numbed.

It was the sensory deprivation. The only time I left the house, my room, for about 4 years was for hospital appointments. I went weeks or months without feeling so much as a breeze, or even a draught from a door opening. No sun, no cold bite, no rain. Just the same dead air, absolutely stagnant, day in and day out, for years. It was like if you put a blindfold over my senses. The only real sensory input I had was the physical pain of my disability, whatever food I was given (shelf stable, room temperature, packaged), and whatever I listened to on my headphones. For years.

And I mean only too, because what the illness also did was fuck up my sleep. On a bad day, I'd sleep over 24 hours. My record was 32. And when I was awake, it was for maybe 5 hours at a push. When you sleep that much, statistically, I woke up to the rest of the house already asleep, the world outside asleep, for those five small hours, more often than not.

So for months, years, I was alone in a dark, silent room with dead air, lit by the only lamp I could reach from my bed, eating food left on a tray on the floor for me by my parents, in excruciating pain. I would sometimes go weeks without our clocks aligning. Just my own head, looping the same thoughts, because nothing happened, so nothing was new. Talking to no-one, seeing no-one, touching no-one, but knowing life was going on around me. 

My school friends were growing up, going to college, university, getting married, having children. I'd see their posts on Facebook, like I was looking through a window. I deleted my Facebook.

I was in suspended animation. 

I got sent to inpatient physio in my early 20s, for three months, five hours from home. I got specialised treatments. I learned to walk again. I could do things again. I could see people again. I could go outside again. I could live a mostly normal life. I got therapy. It helped.

But I was still in suspended animation.

I'm still in suspended animation.

I'm walking around, and living my life, but I'm still in that room.

I know that whenever I go walk the dog and it's cold or it's windy or it starts raining and I just start crying, and crying because I can feel.

For a lot of years, after being freed, I pressed everything down, refused to live, because everything was too new, too much. I developed depression that was worse than when I was locked up, because I was grieving what I'd lost. I'll always be grieving what I lost. But I have to live now, because she couldn't.

When I say I'm happy to be alive it sounds like a platitude. But I'm not talking about getting to experience life and opportunities, I mean on a very physical, fundamental, biological level, I am happy to be alive. 

I get to stand by the water and watch the sea come in - I can hear it, smell it, taste it, see it, feel it. Being fully aware of your own sensory experiences and the absolute miracle they are is what I've been left with. It's hard for me to do things without full commitment, anymore, because everything is so much and I want to feel all of it. I take so many photos, all the time. If I go for a walk somewhere nice, it's like I almost can't take it all in at once. Like I'm Bruce Bogtrotter trying to eat that chocolate cake in Matilda. I want to experience it and hold onto it and remember it and take all of it in and lick the plate clean, too.

It's all the time, even in the small, everyday things. I don't look for it, it's just there. The rattle of a poorly maintained bus engine under my seat. The smell of bakery section at the supermarket. Hot toast with half melted butter sticking to my lips. The jingle of ice cubes on glass. Birds calling to each other. Other peoples' cigarette smoke on my clothes. The dog smacking his tail against my leg under the table. Making a joke and getting a laugh. 

You're always being touched, but until it was taken from me, I had no quantifiable concept of how much, how often, and how much I was missing. I just knew that it was missing.

I wasn't alive, I wasn't living, but now I am. 

I'm a 20 year old who painfully climbed up on the windowsill in the middle of the night to feel the breeze on her face for the first time in months, who is crying, and crying. 

I'm a 32 year old sitting on a bench under a tree in the rain and giving it to her.

[brownweaselpoetry]

Poison, Processing Out.

Late April and the flowers are really going for it now. The air is fragrant from artificially planted natives. I make my way from the edge of Skid Row to a favorite bench in Chinatown's only large green space. The rainy season has nourished then drowned much of the grass here. It's a flat park and while I have no doubt there are stormwater systems underfoot, the drainage just isn't meant for rains like I'm used to seeing. There's a precise patchwork of grafted turf, the pieces cut to size over the wide drowned areas. Some of the replacement grass has already dried, sun-cooked before their roots could grasp the soil underneath. The patchwork resolves itself or doesn't, always a work in progress. There is constant maintenance on this agreeable facsimile of the natural, its thorns and fangs plucked away. Men in tan uniforms trundle along the park paths on their Gators, speaking laconically.

It's the end of April and I'm missing Michigan. I said I didn't have a homestate for a while until my heart proved me a liar. My phone has an outdated weather widget. In this way I was informed it's not quite fifty degrees there. Not quite ninety here. I dream of the town I spent the first few years of my life, the images coming more insistently now that visiting has moved from the realm of impulse to endeavor. Transplanted. Thousands of miles of separation. I need to remind myself regularly of the size of California, the size of the United States. How many biomes away is that? Is there a climate classification that could quantify how alien my body feels, sweating in shorts and burdensome shirt?

When I visited my parents back home over Christmas break, we talked a lot. It's been easier to talk with them, both of them, the past few years. I was a pretty hurtful kid. I think my moderate demeanor is penance for that, baked now into my adult persona. Something I carry everywhere. I'm proud of it. Better for it. Mockingbirds seemingly swarm around the bench I'm writing on, perhaps thinking I'm one of those patrons of crumb and seed. A sparrow, having given it up, busies herself plucking young leaves from a nearby shrub.

Drove up to Midland on Christmas Day, 2020. It was the middle of the pandemic and I like everyone else was wading-drowning in lockdowns and mask mandates. Emily was out of state with friends in a rented faux-castle. Her ten-year Dungeons & Dragons anniversary. Quite a campaign. I decided to make a road trip out of the time alone, feeling untethered and adrift in my isolation. So I visited pure beautiful snow-hushed Midland and dream-walked through my old street, the old blue water tower at the end of the block as big as I remember. The castle-like children's park still appeared capable of leaving kids with splinters. But the wooden-bodied Tridge looked smaller. I walked its three spokes; let it carry me over the confluence of two rivers. It was something of an engineering marvel to a kid like me. Cute, in any event. The whole thing was frozen over when I last saw it, my moment in time stuck in another moment in time.

Colder now and 2022, I am in Michigan again. A stranger and home. I talk a bit about my memories of Midland, my frosted-rose-colored visit a couple years past. My parents listen but are hesitant. My dad remembers Midland as an adult, as another point on a long timeline of homes and homestates. Nothing so precious. He says it was a company town, everyone working for or else expected to work for the chemical company that bankrolls every lovely thing worth the grasp of memory. My parents did not work for that company and were thus determined not to be worth knowing. Dad says there were pews at Church for company men, their wives and children. And pews for the other people. We were the other people. I never realized. A gust of wind picks up and carries aloft some sweet scent and laughter like a single sensation.

When I was a little boy I remember being sensitive to the pulse of natural things. But now I wonder if I just internalized the stories my mom has told me, grafting her observations to my washed-out memories.  Mythologizing myself and the places I happened to be. I breathe in the seasons and exhale a sigh. I used to place my palm on the sticky bark of trees. A pagan-child ritual of union, myself and some tree planted and manicured for an ideal suburb, make-believing I could speak reassurances and praise to them. I love you. Keep growing until you break the sidewalk, okay? You're the prettiest tree. Thank you.

Closer to Christmas, my dad recalled the trees in Midland had strange sap. He remembered how so many trees in that town, planted in chemical-spill soil, did what they needed to keep themselves green and alive. The trees had black, tarlike sap. I said I didn't recall the sap but I think I do. I remember my slender black-sap palms, my fingers seeming to want to bind together. The need of a garden hose. Those trees were processing out the poison we raised them in. They were bleeding, sweating death so it didn't remain in their bodies. I thought sap was just black until a few years ago, its clarity being an aberrant form.

Some sentimental home locked in ice and memory. Weeping poison and I weeping for an illusion. Home is not a place I can return to. It has transformed, shed the carefully-structured lies and child-hopes I built for it. It has become itself, as Los Angeles has always been itself to me. Mom got upset when my older brother and I were laughing discussing poverty meals, comparing notes on the shit we ate to stay alive in that chasm between becoming an adult on paper and in actual fact. I ate raw rhubarb straight from the ground in Midland. It lit my tastebuds up. And at eighteen I ate entire Little Caesar's pizzas for five dollars. Just didn't know any better. She said she feels like a bad mother. But that isn't how I see it. Mom and dad did their best with me in the way I know I didn't reciprocate until much later.

Summer is too-quickly coming on and Los Angeles is home and will remain home until it is no longer. My parents are in Michigan with most of my family. And so my heart yearns for Michigan. Its patterns and cycles are of my kind. I could have been anywhere and felt this heartbreak. The cycles are not diminished by my knowing them.

[spaciousreasoning]

Reading, Shopping & Walking

The low this morning was 24, so it was pretty frosty all over, but there was not a lot of fog. In fact, there was still a lot of frost on the driveway up near the house, where the sun never reaches these days. It crunches when you walk across it. The layer of frost finally disappeared, even though the temperature never got above 47 degrees.

The sun came out early with some blue sky still evident before the clouds started moving in. The rain in the forecast for today wasn’t scheduled to arrive until just after bedtime.

My blood sugar was down a bit to 165. I need to confirm what the acceptable range is for someone with diabetes. I want it to be lower, but I’m not sure I can do it with just changes in diet. I might need to start getting some more exercise.

Once we were done with our coffee and brain games, we had oatmeal for breakfast. With nothing else on our schedule for the day, I went back to the couch and done some more reading.

I finished “The Big Empty,” the newest Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel by Robert Crais. It was quite the adventure. I wish he published more frequently. While looking up his list of novels, I found that Crais is only a couple of months older than me, and his first Elvis Cole book was published in 1987, the year I entered recovery. It set me to wondering again about how I never managed to become a writer of books. At this point in my life, I’m not sure it’s something I need to be concerned about, although it might give me insight into other aspects of my life.

Now that I’ve finished that book, maybe I can return to the three other books I’m in the middle of reading, two on my iPad and one other in hardback. I guess I’m easily distracted, or, perhaps, more inclined to read works that engage me more due to characters or plotting or writing style. In fact, there are way more than two on the iPad I have not finished reading. Sometimes I give up too easily and too soon.

We decided to make a visit to PetSmart to get some more litter and dry food for the cats. Then we crossed the street to Costco to pick up Nancy’s new glasses and a few other items. Once we got home, we had sandwiches and potato chips for lunch.

After briefly trying to nap, I got up and went out for a walk. A slow walk, so I did not do any more damage to my arthritic foot. Nancy’s back was bothering her, after standing around waiting for her glasses at Costco, so she opted out of the walk. Instead, she started reading “The Big Empty,” which she found quite engrossing.

On my walk around the neighborhood, I managed to make 1.41 miles in 32:39 minutes, an average pace of 23:12 per mile, with a total of 3,500 steps. Added to the one mile of miscellaneous steps during the rest of the day, including all the wandering at Costco, today was a record for the past couple of weeks.

I napped on the couch after the walk, and while I snoozed, Nancy started fixing the sauce to go with the spaghetti for dinner. I awoke and did the noodles while she put together another salad, and then we enjoyed our dinner.

For our evening’s streaming entertainment, we started with Colbert’s Wednesday program, with Will Ferrell as the guest. We looked for new episodes of “Matlock” and “Elsbeth,” but even though they were scheduled for today, they did not show up on the roster. So we went with the second episode of “Ink Black Heart,” the latest series covering the adventures of London detective C.B. Strike. Then, as bedtime was nearing, we went with one episode of “Still Standing,” with Jonny Harris visiting Pelee Island, Ontario, an island in Lake Erie that is Canada’s southernmost populated location.

[the-unspeakable-tsar]

Illustrious Magenta Chapter One

This piece of original fiction utilizes public-domain characters, including a few new ones. So enjoy reading about Tintin and Popeye in space.

Chapter Two

Air flooded into his lungs suddenly and he was hit by the compounding sensations of drowning, freezing, and overheating as he stumbled forward into a room of nearly identical glass tubes that lined the walls around a central column of pulsing lights and webs of cables.

His vocal cords began to rapi-thaw and all he could manage to get out was a croaky, “What?” 

He staggered around, trying to recollect where he was. The other tubes were unoccupied, save for one. Within it was the body of a scrawny, one-eyed man with forearms the size of watermelons, squeezed into a dull white jumpsuit, the same as his.

He found a chair and took the next logical step, seizing it by the handles and smashing it into the glass, raining chips of glass down upon the previously sleeping man. He made a hiss as he tore himself from the remains of his glass and metal prison.

“Blow me down!” he bellowed as he struggled to simultaneously find his voice and mind. 

His eyebrows narrowed and he focused his fury on the one who had awoken him. He moved quickly, seeming to regain his energy much faster than his counterpart, grabbing him by the collar and hoisting him up as though he weighed nothing before pinning him against the warm computer column. 

“What’s the big idear, eh?” he asked. ‘Wakin’ a fella up likes that?”

“Deeply sorry,” he gulped. “I just thought that it was the quickest way to figure out where we are.” 

“What makes ya thinks I knows?” he made a grunt and looked around at the array of LEDs and the now broken computer screen behind him.

He dropped him down on the floor like a sack of shit while he allowed parts of his mind to further thaw and catch up with him, “What’s yer name, lad?”

“Tintin,” it took him a moment to find the words and connect them back to his thoughts. “I was a journalist for the Daily Graph.”

“Popeye,” he said, extending a hand down to him. “Sorry fer bein’ a bit rough on ya, I don’t wake up well.” 

A door panel opened up, soundtracked by a metallic hiss and some manner of man-shaped machine stepped inside, arms akimbo. It had a face like a mask made of clay that hadn’t been allowed to set and wore an unbuttoned blue Hawaiian shirt over its mechanical frame.

“Get behind me, lad!” shouted Popeye before knocking Tintin back to the floor.

He cut across the room and socked the robot in the face, making its head spin in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. The robot did nothing to attack or even move, instead, it said in a cold machine voice, “Are you done?”

Suddenly the bruiser felt stupid, “Don’t think you’ll be makin’ a slave out o’me, tin man!”

“Slavery? What a backward and barbaric concept. I will not be making a slave of you, Mister Popeye. My name is Manowar, keeper of the White Streak of Peace. I’ve been your pilot and steward while you were sleeping. The others have already been roused from stasis.” 

“Others?” asked Tintin. “What is all this, what are you talking about? Where are we?”

Manowar made a soft electric chime, “It seems you don’t fully recall. No matter. Your memories will return in time. Cryo-stasis renders certain memories to be akin to dreams. You’re about the seed ship, Illustrious Magenta, Mister Tintin.”

The names all rang familiar to Tintin, but the connection wasn’t fully there. His mind drifted further back to the past and he remembered feeling immense grief that his dog, Milou couldn’t join him in the final grand adventure into the stars. They were led out of the cryo-stasis room and into what looked like a larger living area reminiscent of a cafe if it were dreamed up by Doctor Manyus. A long couch of white leather ran and curved along a wall and on it sat a host of people; a black woman, another less human-looking robot,  a lanky white woman, a young woman with tan skin, and a young man who looked nearly identical to Tintin himself. 

Everyone in the room was dressed in the same dull and white jumpsuits that Tintin and Popeye woke up in. 

“Olive?” asked Popeye, causing the lanky woman to turn and face him. 

She ran like a praying mantis on her long, legs and was quickly scooped up by the short strongman, “Popeye!” 

At least he could be with someone who loves him, Tintin thought. He then focused his gaze on the man who looked exactly like him. He turned his head to face him and Tintin felt an icepick of pain jab into the center of his skull.

Then a voice came from the center of his mind, thunderous and overpowering his own internal monologue. The boy managed to say without speaking, “You best stop staring. It’s rude.”

The black woman looked over to him and addressed him sharply, “Stop it, Matthew. He’s going to throw up.” 

Tintin felt his head jerk back as the headache swelled and vanished. It was like the icepick he’d felt had suddenly been pulled free. From there his brain allowed him the steam to form a list; himself, Popeye, Olive, and Matthew. 

“I’m sorry,” he began, addressing the woman who had gotten whatever that was to end. “I’m afraid my memories haven’t been fully recovered just yet. What is your name, again?”

“Formal as ever,” she said. “Micheals, Marian. You’ve been reacquainted with Matt, his galpal Maria, and Z-13. Tell me, how much do you remember about our mission statement?”

“Manowar called this a seed ship,” said Tintin. “I assume that means we’re to colonize an alien planet?” 

“I never liked that word, ‘colonized’,” said Maria. “That or ‘settled’. I think what we’re doing is so much bigger than that. I want to believe that we’ve embarked on something new.”

“Right,” said Olive, breaking her embrace with Popeye. “How would you describe things, then?”

A memory flashed across Tintin’s synapses. This was a conversation that had been had before. Radiant light seemed to dance in Maria Irado’s eyes. Whatever she had going on was similar to what was going on with Matt. 

“I’d like to call it Pax-Mens,” she said, proud of herself.

Marian laughed, “No bias there, I’m sure.”

“Our mission,” said Manowar. “Is to establish a base of operation on this planet, Kailix, farm, and go from there.”

“Go from there feels very broad, doesn’t it?” asked Tintin. 

“It’s less colonizing and more trying to figure out a new way to live,” said Matt, using his words this time. “I’m not sure that there’s really a word for it. I don’t want to use utopianism, because that feels silly.”

“Issat a fact? Seems eak-see enough,” said Popeye. “Have we run aground?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Manowar. “Downstairs, you will find your equipment in labeled containers and the doors leading outside.” 

---

The downstairs area was a maze of towering crates and boxes, eventually, Tintin found the crate marked with his name and pried it open like an otter ripping open an oyster to get at its succulent meats. Inside was a carefully curated mess of notepads, pencils, a heavy-looking tablet computer, and an equally weighty-looking keyboard attachment. 

After surveying his equipment, Popeye looked around the rapidly diminishing maze and saw everyone else gathering their effects. He donned a pair of metal-finger gloves that looked built to make somebody bleed. Olive looked like she’d taken on a few pounds worth of surveyor’s tools. The psychics in the corner donned a matching pair of pyramid helmets that seemed to change colors when they moved. Then there was Marian, who fitted herself with a cylinder backpack and a pair of frog gloves. The robots each had backs hunched over with untold pounds of equipment squirreled away inside.

“Our first few days will primarily be setup and maintenance,” said Manowar. “Until we can get the crops growing, rations will be supplemented with hunting the local wildlife as well as foraging. So if you’re hungry, go into the woods and pick out a big tasty one!”

It said it with a kind of ‘aww shucks’ sense of gumption. 

“The wildlife isn’t sentient, is it?” asked Tintin.

“Elaborate,” said Manowar as it and Z-13 opened the door. 

“I mean they’re just animals, right?” he clarified.

“Yes Mister Tintin,” said Manowar. “They are just animals.” 

The door gradually opened, and the group was met by a warm and clean smell close to a pine forest, but not close enough in Tintin’s estimation. He squinted his eyes and a few others covered themselves with their hands to block the glare of the alien sun as it reflected off of the lake.

[the-firebird69]

We can't believe all that work that he did as an estimator you just don't do anything with him at all and he does a lot of other stuff and you just sitting there doing nothing but harassing it's disgusting it is repulsive I have excuses upon excuses and you get nailed because of it you are a horrible lot terrible. This is perfect example is what happened to Jason and he is undergoing the ceremony now he was put in the dirt it's only six feet and here that's about 50° it's not bad your refrigerator is it like 45 degrees mostly and it's cool and it's been thoroughly and bombed but he is full of germs and they grow a little and there's battle to get them out and he's going to be a sick dummy by the time they get him out and he won't be able to work and Lily will be alone and she'll probably try hiring people and it won't work it's too moist here and they simply won't say that for some reason and it's going to get ugly. And yeah she's the one who came by and it says it to look good knows what's going on and she's saying I don't feel like working today I'm tired and feverish I need to rest Christmas is coming I can't do anything for some reason most of the places that they're checking on are empty the others need minor repairs and they're having difficulty getting it done. There's a large amount of people who are trying to figure out where to go and how to lift that her and survive there this place doesn't seem to be the right place and it isn't they say the radiation levels about 10 minutes ago or up to about 85 and they're still at 84. The traffic a moment and our son says he can't detect it at all at all. And it doesn't know what it's like it's not true but here comes the bus but he is fine so they don't like that it's going to happen two more times today and then about five times tonight up above 80. And this is going to be a recurring theme. Also there's a lot of infighting and it's right outside of Charlotte county and it extends all the way up to 20 mi south of Kissimmee and all the way down to the Everglades practically the whole thing at times it's very dangerous.

--when are the thing is there are about 50 people who are heinous and they did check and they do look like they have severe damage to their brain recent damage that's going on trying to track them down and they're not going to be nice because they are being very mean never can't help it but that's what they're going to do to them

--one more thing we have a bunch of people today and it's going to be a long ride. This is only three stops not bad

--we also have a couple items happening in punta Gorda that are new be sure if it's down there they are fighting with the local police and it's not very good anymore and they're causing trouble and problems and it's getting bigger and they are anticipating the cabin to drama they did see the cover and a good see the rain coming down and going east and they know what happens there's a lot of personnel moving from other armies into the area to secure it a lot of these guys are going to be out and it is about time what a bunch of peevish little assholes okay. They are not going to go far with this kind of attitude.

--this is similar to the procession that happened in California with Chris Kyle and this is in Florida there are two areas where minorities to go to it's kind of deploy one of them but there's something a little bit darker and they're saying they'll come in in the work and it's to their own detriment and it is in the code and it is in the characters and their names and who they are and son of San Diego that's what they're saying and that's Brad his son is Jason and he knows about the shroud and you're talking about me Jersey girl so the night out to lunch completely it is pretty bad and the code is pretty rich and is depressing and things are going to change but it probably harder but they will change soon and people will find that they should help each other

Thor Freya

Olympus

[parksprout]

Sprout Journal 11/18/24

Hey Tumblr! This is a little later in the day than I wanted, I was really distracted at work earlier and didn't wanna bother with typing at the moment. It's been sorta a dreary day here. The weather has changed maybe three times if not more. The first part of the day was slightly foggy, unseasonably warm and too humid for my liking. Then it got rainy, a light drizzle that made me wanna take my shirt off and enjoy the cold air. Now it's bright, with the sky open directly above my city and the whole horizon ringed with gray clouds. They've all been pretty in their own ways! I wish that the fog had stayed longer, and that the mist was a little colder. I love driving through a fog when it's light enough for me to still see, and nothing feels better on my skin than the gentle kiss of autumn rain.

Yesterday was a good enough day! I had a fun time at school. All of my professors are really hammering in the idea that we're running up on the last few days of class before it's over, which is simultaneously really exciting and something I dread. On one hand, I need time away from school so that I can reassess myself and breathe. On the other, I'm almost afraid of that alone time - school has been a nice distraction with everything I've been going through these past few weeks. At the same time, I'm clearly burnt out. I need a break from school that the month of December will surely provide - I've fallen a little bit behind in a couple of classes and keep working up just enough energy to claw myself back to where I'm supposed to be, never enough to get ahead. I was such a great student before everything that happened happened!! I'm sure that I can find that part of myself again, it's just tough! I need the reset.

The exams aren't all that scary, though. I have four classes this semester and out of all of them, only the Archaeology exam seems to have that make it or break it heft to it. My intro to Anthropology course has had a bunch of assignments and there's a few more before the exam, too, all of which have been relatively easy and do a bunch to boost my grade. During that class on Monday we talked about race and racism. Mostly about how the concept of race was originally invented by Anthropologists past, and that it is our duty as modern Anthropologists to make up for the sins of our predecessors and craft a legacy of inclusion, understanding, science and sociality that invites people of all ethnicities into the fold. I'm excited to be entering Anthropology at this time of all times, I don't think the field has ever been so accepting. We need Anthropologists during the era of fascists and hatred we're currently living through; academics who understand that despite our varied physical appearances, we are all humans worthy of love. The Spanish final should be intimidating, but I don't really see myself failing it. I can bullshit just enough to pass, and passing is all I need. To continue my degree I need a final score of a 60% or higher in that course, which unless I get a literal 0 on the final exam and the few remaining assignments before it is almost impossible to fall below. My creative writing course is a little further into the stressful side of things. I wrote this big story about the struggle of accepting childhood grief that was supposed to include the main character struggling somewhat with relationship issues while also recollecting on the death of someone familiar to them, but then the breakup happened and... it doesn't even feel like I'm the one who wrote that story, now. It's like I'm looking at it through an audiences lense. I think I'm a little traumatized, as silly as that may sound. My partner was the first and only trusted reader I've ever had... it felt like such an intimate part of our relationship, me sharing my writing with them. Now it's... something I'm afraid to start again. That's really keeping me in this spot where I'm delaying the story crafting process, I wish I could find the motivation to start it again.

After school ended I immediately drove to a cafe to meet up with a new friend! We met on this friend making app, and they were the first person who wasn't an actual weirdo towards me. They're literally in a relationship right now, and I made it very clear that even though I'm not dating I am very much taken and not interested in sex, polyamory, relationships or whatever. They don't want that either, which is such a relief. The last person who reached out to me on that app before them was this guy who called me yummy ToT it made me feel.. gross. Anyways we met up at a coffee place and talked about stuff for a bit! Specifically we talked about relationships, school, work, aspirations. We talked a lot about the books we're both currently reading and where we hope to live five years from now. I told them that I originally wanted to live out west, and that I'm still hoping that's where life takes me because of love but truth be told I wanted to move out that way regardless for my career and... to escape fuckass OHIO. I'll be another midwesterner moving out west chasing dreams, watching the sunset from the beach someday instead of from between endless parking lots and litter filled forests. Anyways it was a fun, but brief, little hangout! It's hard meeting new people - we all have so much lore and history, so unless you find an immediate common ground it can be hard to feel like you've got that spark that even platonic relationships take. Maybe I'm just too analytical of friendships, though.

After I got home from that hangout I hit up the gym and absolutely killed it. I'm really proud of where my body is going. I managed to rep the rowing machine at 160lbs 30x, the shoulder press machine at 110lbs 25x, the leg press machine at 175lbs 25x, and I hit up every other machine at moderate weights for 30 reps as well. The real thing I'm proud of is my running. I ran for 5.66 miles yesterday. It took me exactly an hour to do that... I didn't stop once, and only ever slowed down to take a drink from my lil setlzie water because I am bougie as hell and jog with seltzer water alksjdhfakljsdf I'm sure that the carbonic acid is technically unhealthy and that filling my tum up with gas might not be the best (I didn't burp :p) but I love my seltzies. Anywayz that pace is super close to a 10 minute mile! Which is one of my big goals. When I was running two years ago the fastest time I managed a mile in was 8 minutes, but I wouldn't run more than that one mile - I had no need to pace myself. I've been taking pictures of my progress and... ough. I am starting to see ab lines very very faintly through my tum. I've always had them slightly, but they're becoming more defined. I'm still not happy with how my torso looks, but I'm making progress. My arms look great. I have some under arm flab still but they keep getting tighter each day with more defined muscles and veins approaching my skin. My shoulders are becoming more rounded and defined, stronger too. My collarbone is more obvious, and chest is getting tighter. My legs were already really good I'm not gonna lie. My butt also needs work but alkjsdhflakjsdf I don't really mind it being squishy (^//^).

After my workouts I came home, grabbed a super quick shower, and then immediately headed out to the grocery store! I actually got into a bit of a confrontation there ToT some guy was lurking over my shoulder so when I turned around I got kinda startled and made a face while saying "oh", and then I walked away while listening to a podcast in my earbuds. I was walking and I could hear him shouting, then he called me a pussy & a bitch and said I'd never be a real man (which I AM LITERALLY AN ENBY THIS IS OAKY) so I turned around and said "huh???" really loudly. I was honestly originally super hot for a second, I thought about escalating it but... that immediately disappeared so I said "dude this is a Kroger and I didn't say anything to you" and walked away. It was weird. We ended up in the self checkout line together and neither of us said anything at all lkjashdlfkjasdf. I got myself some stuff to make spaghetti with italian seasoning lamb sausage and some hardy whole grain bread with butter, but I came to find out that I had actually bought big ol' macaroni noodles instead of spaghetti because I grabbed them quickly from the aisle while that guy was cussing me out ToT so my spaghetti plan turned into more of a goulash.

After I ate my dinner I was feeling pretty tired, but my friend Sammy wanted to call me and play video games :3 so I thought y'know, what the hell? I'll hang out on the phone and watch him stream to me for a bit. It was really fun! I probably should've spent my time doing chores or catching up on homework, but talking to my bestie is always nice.

AFTER THAT I didn't do a ton besides sleep askldjfhasdkj it was a super eventful day yesterday! Probably one of the one's I've felt the best mentally since the breakup and election. It was a good time :3 <3

Okay so after this selfie I'll probably talk about my feelings about my love life again? I think? I'm saving this as a draft and coming back to it so we'll see!!!

Honestly? Today is the first day I can really say I'm seeing signs of personal growth that... are real, tangible, and in the right direction. I've been working my ass off trying to become a better person for myself, but also because... if I'm ever going to be someone the Bnuuy can love again? I need to be much better than I was. After putting out all of my emotions in that vent post the other day I feel.. different. Like a weight came off of my chest. Like I finally have an opportunity to be normal, to heal from the trauma of losing their love, and to grow in positive ways that aren't fully directed at appealing to them. I'm still very much hoping to be their partner in the future, that's not going away, but I'm also excited to just... be better because I want to be, too. I know I'm lovable in a trillion ways, and frankly? I think I love myself, too. Here soon I'll be finishing up the final touches of the first present I've ever gotten to send them, but honestly? I really don't feel like it'll be the last anymore.

I was developing this fear since we broke up that... maybe after they get this really special gift, they'll have a good enough capstone to our relationship to move on. But I don't think it's so simple anymore. A lot of people were whispering that in my ear, honestly. No one I'm too close with, no one who really understands how me and Aaron loved each other before, but still people were giving me the anxiety that... maybe I'm being used and lead on again. I am really prone to both akdsjfaskdhf I got led on by my last breakup for six months because she kept saying that she would be ready to try again soon, but it turned out that she was really just using me for emotional gratification while actively dating another person. Then I've also been led on by friends who used me financially, and by family members who took a lot of emotional energy from me and never gave any back. What I'm saying is that I am a little bit naive, and... really trusting. Really very loving. But after thinking about it, reflecting and even asking the Bnuuy about it... I feel ashamed for thinking that they'd ever be that way towards me at all. They didn't even want to hurt me the first time... they said that if they could choose their emotions, they would choose to love me. But now? I think that... maybe it'd be nice if I could get them a birthday present/valentines day gift, too. It'd be so nice to be able to get them a valentines day gift as a partner someday, that's really one of my biggest wishes. I wanna be a romantic with them askdjfaskdf. But for now that's a dream that's a long way off (month to months minimum probably) and I've gotta stick level with what I have now. I gotta be on the square, I gotta be on the square, on the level.

Anyways!!! I think that... we're doing better these days. We're talking and having fun a lot more, I've lowered my expectations for how fast things should progress and.. I'm being generally a lot more chill than I was. I really enjoy talking to them every day and... they seem to wanna talk to me, too. I love them a lot, and.. I'm still really hopeful about us :) they're my best friend and the person I love more than anything.

It's been good writing this as always! I hope everyone is having a really good night. I love you tumblr! BYEEEEEE