#where the fuck is my insurance card I’m calling my doctor to start t when the offices open

[toasted-valentine]

@pyrotechnicarus was right, that tv can fucking glow.

[autumnleaves1991-blog]

Day 14: The Test Results - Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia

Day 14: The Test Results - Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia 

Todays story was requested by @itspdameronthings​. Thank you so much for the request and I really hope you like it. This is the longest of all the stories I have written for the November Writing Challenge.

November Writing Challenge Masterlist 

Day 13: Water Flowed- Llewyn Davis 

Day 1 

“Do you have to go?” Your voice is quiet as you watch him pack his bags from your seat on the bed. 

“Querida, you know I don’t want to but they are asking me back as a favor AND I’m being compensated. I worked in Columbia for three years, it's where my mother was born. I feel like I need to do this,” he kneels in front of you, taking your hands in his own. “It’s only four months and I promise I will call and text you every single day. It’s killing me to leave you but...I feel I have to do this.” 

Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia was a former member of Delta Force in the US Military before leaving to go work for the DEA in Columbia. Three years ago, he left Columbia to return home but not without one final mission. He got together a few of his old buddies from the force and robbed a drug lord before killing him and fleeing the country. But something went wrong. Well… a lot of shit went wrong, resulting in the death of his old captain, Tom, and forcing them to leave millions of dollars off the side of a cliff buried in the snow. 

Santiago had accepted a temporary assignment with the DEA to return back to Columbia and train some new recruits. You were not one bit okay with this plan but the one thing you loved and also kind of hated about your husband was how headstrong he could be. Unfortunately, you are just as stubborn as him. The last few weeks leading up to his departure had been fraught with arguments. You didn’t want him to go. Even though it had been years since that last mission, you didn’t know what the situation down there was. Were they still hunting for the men who had robbed and gunned down Lorea? Was he walking into a trap? No money was worth losing the man you loved, and he didn’t seem to understand that. 

“You don’t have to do anything.” The words are bitter on your tongue and Santiago winces, before moving to stand. “We don’t need that money, and you have no idea what you walking into baby…” 

“Y/N, we have talked about this enough. I am going!” He slams the top of his suitcase closed before pulling the zipper harshly and walking towards the door. He turns sharply at the door pointing at you, “Why do you keep arguing with me about this? I have told you a million reasons why I need to do this! Instead of supporting me you're just fighting with me!” 

“I do support yo-” 

“Well, you sure have a funny way of showing it.” he swings his backpack on his back, puts on his hat and walks out the door. You’re on your feet in a hurry. “Goddamnit, Santiago! Will you just fucking listen to me for two minutes?”  You grab his shoulder and turn him to face you. He’s fuming and you can tell the volcano is seconds away from blowing. “I DO support you! I understand WHY you feel the need to do this but I LOVE YOU and I don’t want to LOSE YOU!” 

You're out of breath from shouting, and you see the anger slowly fade from his face as he comes to stand closer to you, “Querida...baby you're not going to lose me. I love you….so … damn … much. I never really felt alive until I met you, and no one,” he puts a finger under your chin and raises your eyes to his own, “no one is going to take me away from you.” 

“You can’t promise that…” Your words come out broken and a choked sob escapes you. “You don’t know what’s going to happen. Santi I can’t lose you. I won’t survive without you…” 

“Shhh.” He pulls you close and you collapse in a sobbing heap into his chest, your tears soaking the front of his t-shirt, his hands are strong as he holds you close. “I know nothing is one hundred percent but I love you and I am going to come home back to you. Nothing could ever keep me away.” He pulls you away from his chest, wiping your eyes before kissing you gently.

“I love you too Santi, so much.” You sigh into the kiss and hold him tight before he pulls away, walking towards the door, grabbing his duffle bag from the floor and walking out, taking your heart with him. 

Day 31 

Santiago kept good on his promise and called and texted every single day, each time letting you know he was safe and how much he loved you. He was working hard down there, and he loved the adventure, even if he missed you like crazy. You missed him too and the combination of being without your husband, taking care of the whole house, your shared basset hound, and work was draining. It was only a matter of time before you started feeling under the weather. You had been feeling fatigued, sore throat, cough, and after two days of vomiting throughout the day you had to admit it, you were sick. 

On your nightly call with Santi the worry in his voice warmed your heart. “Baby, you need to go to the doctor and get checked. Remember when you got bronchitis last year? It was pretty bad.” 

You hack into the receiver “Yeah, maybe you're right. I just feel like shit Nauseous all day long. Jonathon actually sent me home today. Said he was worried about me ‘infecting’ the office.” 

Santi mutters under his breath but you hear him and snort. “Yeah I agree he is a dick, but I appreciate being sent home. I’ll go to the urgent care tomorrow.” 

“Do you promise?” 

“Yes, I promise. I want to feel better...I just hate going to the doctor.” You recall the many times Santi had to drag you kicking and screaming (sometimes literally) to the doctor. 

“Why don’t you ask one of the guys to go with you?” 

“Maybe...Frankie mentioned he was off tomorrow when I called him yesterday....” 

“See. It was meant to be. Why don’t you text him after you hang up with me and he will make sure you go? Then I can rest easy tonight knowing you’re ok. I wish it were me though. I would take such good care of you baby.” 

“Oh yeah?” What would you do if you were here?” You snuggle down into the comforter with your box of tissues, hot tea, the humidifier and his deep soothing voice lulling you to sleep. 

It doesn’t take long before your soft snores fill the phone and Santi smiles to himself. Listening to the sounds of his love finally feeling at rest. When you wake up three hours later to throw up the light from your phone signifies a message. 

I called Frankie, he’s going to come by at 10 o’clock to take you for an appointment. I booked it online through the app. Get some rest and drink lots of fluids. I love you. - Hubby 

You smile before brushing your teeth and crawling back into the warmth of your bed and falling back to sleep, dreaming of your husband. 

Day 32 

The next morning Frankie rings the doorbell at exactly 9:45.Like all the other Delta Force guys (except Benny), they are meticulously early. You greet him with a cup of coffee with his own special airplane shaped mug, complete with his name engraved on the side. You knew that when you married Santiago, Frankie came as part of the package. 

“Hi Garcia, how ya feeling?” He wraps one arm around your shoulder and you lean into the embrace, placing your head on his arm. 

“To be completely honest Cat? I feel like shit.” 

Frankie lets out a small laugh before rubbing gentle circles on your back. “Well then let’s get you to the doctor. You got your insurance card?” 

“Yeah it’s in my bag.” You grab your brown knit bag, swinging it over your shoulder. 

“Then let’s get going.” He guides you out to his truck, helping you into the seat before running around the front to the driver's seat. 

About twenty minutes later you're pulling into the parking lot of your doctor. Frankie walks you inside helping you get signed in. It's another thirty minutes before you're put back into a room, sitting on crinkled tissue paper, Frankie reading back issues of People. The door opens and you sit up a little straighter. 

“Mrs. Garcia?” You nod. “I’m Dr. Jacobs. What can I help you with today?” 

You proceed to tell her what’s been going on and she goes through the motions, asking you all about your symptoms, checking your ears, nose, throat, and chest. When she's done she types everything into her tablet, “one more question, when was your last menstrual cycle?” 

You open your mouth to answer before closing it slowly. “When was my last...Oh. Uhm,” you laugh nervously at a loss for words, “about a month ago it should be starting any day now…” 

“Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” she asks, looking between you and Frankie. 

“Oh, he’s not my husband!” 

“I’m her husband's best friend. He’s out of the country.” 

“Well it sounds like you may have the flu but I would like to run some labs as well if that’s alright with you, and maybe a pregnancy test just to be sure?” 

You laugh. “Sure doc whatever you need, but I am not pregnant.” 

Day 35 

You swing your car haphazardly into the driveway narrowly missing a planter box and running over Mia’s pink bike. The front door slams open. Frankie is running down the driveway, yanking the car door open and pulling you into his arms. Your sobs are staining your cheeks and you're a blubbering mess. 

“Garcia! What the hell! Are you ok!?” Frankie checks you over. You shake your head frantically. 

“NO! No I am not ok!” you shout! “The test results came back!” 

“Oh god, is it bad!? Cancer? Diabetes? Fuck! Did Pope give you some kind of STD because I swear I will kick his ass for you!” 

“NO! God...no...I'm...Pregnant!” You break down in sobs and hold onto Frankie who starts to laugh. “Stop laughing! This is serious! Frankie!!” 

He chuckles squeezing you tighter, “Garcia this is wonderful! You're gonna be a mom and Santiago is going to be a daddy! Mia will have someone to play with. Fuck, I’m so happy for you guys.” You pull away to see a huge smile on his face. 

Some of his excitement rubs off on you and you rub your nose on the sleeve of your shirt before you smile, “I’m gonna be a mommy…oh shit Frankie what do I tell Santi?

“We will worry about that later. But right now let’s get you home and back to bed. You still have that cough and you need your rest.” 

Day 36 

“Hey baby. How is my favorite man?” 

“Oh Querida I miss you so much. I think I forgot how much I love being out in the field. The rush, the thrill. It’s addicting.” 

Your heart drops and for a minute you say nothing. How the hell could you tell him about the baby? He would want to come straight home and he’s loving the work.

“Everything is great here. Yeah, I got the test results yesterday from the lab and everything is normal. I just have the flu and since I’ve been off the last few days I’ve rested and drank lots of fluids and I am feeling much better.” 

“Oh good, I was so worried about you.” He sighs. “I got a new app on my phone that counts down to the second till I get to be back with you.. I love you so much Querida.” 

You bite your lip to keep from crying before letting out a shaky breath, “I love you too baby, and I can’t wait to see you soon.” 

The conversation shifts and when you hang up with your husband you shoot a quick text off to Frankie. 

Don’t mention ANYTHING about the pregnancy to Santiago. I’ll tell him when he gets home. 

What? Why? 

He loves being there and if we're going to have a baby then he's not going to be able to do this again. If I tell him you know he will just come home early. 

Ok...I still think you should tell him. You're going to need support though...he’s still going to be gone for three more months. 

Your right...Frankie...will you be my person? 

... of course. Get some sleep Garcia. 

Day 100 

Four months doesn’t seem like a long time. But when you're pregnant and missing your husband it seems like a lifetime. It had been one hundred days since Santi had left for South America and only twenty-two more days till he came home. When you did the math in your head you had become pregnant two weeks before Santi had left. Meaning you were well on your way to being a very noticeable pregnant woman. 

You had been shopping a couple times with Benny to Motherhood Maternity store to get some bigger clothes because yours refused to fit. Also a very interesting trip to Babies-R-Us where after much convincing he did not purchase the entire store for his future niece/nephew. Will had been attending your doctor and lab appointments with you. And sweet Frankie had been helping you around the house, getting groceries when you were too tired, keeping up the yard, and taking you and your dogs for walks to keep you moving. Your husband’s brothers had become your own, and you loved them for it. Only 22 more days. 

Day 120 

You're sitting at the kitchen table doing a puzzle with Will when Frankie comes in carrying takeout and a squirming Mia. He puts her down and she rushes toward you. 

“TIA GARCIA!” she screams, launching herself into your arms. 

“MIA!” you shout, squeezing her tightly before tickling her sides. She giggles before shimmying out of your lap and running to the kitchen. Coming back a moment later carefully balancing (at least as careful as a three year old can) a plate filled with watermelon to you. 

“Papa says this is for the baby,” she tells you in what could be called an attempted whisper but more like a shout. 

“Why are you whispering Mia?” 

“Papa says that I have guts to be quiet because the baby is sleeping.” She leans forward and hugs your slightly protruding belly before climbing into the kitchen chair across from you. 

You give Frankie an amused look and he smiles with a shrug before plating out the food. Pizza for them and watermelon for you. It’s all you seem to want anymore. “Oh come to mama.” You spear a piece before placing it in your mouth, moaning as the cold sweet juice goes down your throat. 

“So I’m taking you to the airport on Friday to pick up Santiago. Any ideas on how you're going to tell him?” Frankie asks, taking a large bite of pizza. 

“Well I think he’s going to know.” You gesture to your stomach, spearing another piece of melon. 

“I’ve been looking up ideas on how to tell people you're pregnant, and you could give him a jar of pasta sauce,” Will says and you all look at him like he’s nuts, “No, hear me out it’s Prego pasta sauce...get it, Prego?” 

You groan before taking another bite, “I think he’s going to notice I’m pregnant before I can even give him a jar of pasta sauce Will.” 

“Not if he doesn’t see your stomach first…” Frankie says, “what if you made a sign?” 

“A sign?” 

“Yeah like when we used to come home from a tour and the families would have signs. You could make a sign!” 

You think about it for a minute before you fall in love with the idea. You go to the office and come back with a couple poster boards you kept for work presentations. You place one in front of Mia who squeals and grabs one of the markers you provide. You get to work outlining the words and filling them in with his favorite colors blue and red. When completed, you lift it up and show it to the others.

“That’s perfect!” Frankie beams. 

“Bet you 50 bucks he cries,” Will says. 

“Deal,” they slap hands and you glare, before smiling at the two. Only two more days. 

Day 122 - Santiago Comes Home 

You feel sick, what if he doesn’t want to have a baby? Will he be mad I kept this from him? Shit, maybe this was a terrible idea. What the hell was I thinking? 

“Garcia, you need to calm down, you're making me stressed.” 

“What if he doesn’t want this? What if he is disappointed? What if-” Frankie stands up and puts his hands on your shoulders. 

“Garcia listened to me. Santiago loves you more than anything in this entire world and he is going to love this baby just as much maybe even more. He may be surprised yeah but trust me. Once he wraps his brain around it, he’s going to be ecstatic.” He pulls you in for a hug and you take a deep breath, calming your nerves. 

The constant flow of travelers does nothing to lessen your anxiety. You take a deep breath and almost choke on the smell of espresso from the nearby Starbucks. Frankie gives you one last squeeze before handing you the sign and stepping back as people flood out of the gate. 

You rise to your tiptoes in search for a familiar head of salt and pepper curls. When in a break of the crowd you see him, running in a full sprint towards you. His face split into a megawatt smile. As he gets close enough to touch, you hold up the sign. He slows down slightly as he reads and you watch the smile fade only slightly before it’s replaced by shock. 

Welcome home daddy 

He reaches forward, holding tight to the poster board and slowly lowering it, eyes transfixed at your swollen belly. Silence. His hands shake as they put the sign on the floor, his eyes never leaving you. Your heart races and you feel the urge to vomit return again before he drops to his knees. 

You wince, “Baby, your knees…” reaching down to pull him up, but he makes no move to stand, his hands coming to your stomach. Placing his lips gently over your shirt. His forehead rests against you and tears drench your shirt. The baby chooses that moment to make their presence known kicking softly against his cheek. You run your hands through his curls and he looks up at you with a watery smile and a small laugh. 

“Querida, you’re pregnant. We’re...we’re having a baby…” he sniffles and you can’t help the tears in your own eyes. “Why...why didn’t you tell me? I would have come home…”

“That’s exactly why I didn’t. You’ve been so happy these past few months and I knew you needed to do this. Yes, I was scared as hell about losing you but...I understood.” 

“I don’t deserve you,” he whispers before shakily getting to his feet and clutching you tight, his hands frame your face and he pulls you close getting lost in the kiss, “I love you...so fucking much,” he whispers putting his forehead against your own. “I love you too. I’m so glad your home… I mean the guys have been great but I’m excited to go shopping for baby stuff with you, attend my doctor appointments together, and have you bring me platefuls of watermelon.” 

He laughs pulling back, “Watermelon? Is that what you’ve been craving?” 

“Oh god yes, even talking about it makes my mouth water.” 

“If that is what you want Querida, then you can have as much as you desire,” he kisses you again. 

A cough sounds from behind and you turn to see Frankie smiling at you.  Santi reaches out to give him a slap on the back, the two conversing in Spanish. You hold your hand out and Santi latches on, never letting go as you make your way through the terminal and out to the truck. 

The world passes by in a kaleidoscope of color as Frankie drives you both home. Arriving, you thank him before leading Santi by the hand and into the house. When the door is latched behind you, he presses you into the door gently. Every touch, every caress, left you breathless. His lips warm and wet against your own. When you take a breath his tongue snakes inside and he drags you from the door, striping each other, leaving a trail of clothes to the bedroom. 

After you’ve been thoroughly fucked and your wrapped up in Santiago’s strong arms, legs intertwined together, and he’s rubbing your belly do you finally relax. Sighing into his chest, and kissing it lightly. “Your really happy about the baby?” you whisper, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between you. 

His grip around you tightens, “I promise you, I am very happy about the baby. You made me a daddy Querida. I love you...so much.” 

You sigh, “I love you too.” 

3 months later 

Eight months of pregnancy has flown by. After Santi got home from Columbia he took over doing everything. Attending your appointments together, buying and building things for the nursery, and bringing you platefuls of watermelon at all times of the day and night. Santiago takes the roll of daddy very seriously. All of those year in the military have come into play the last few months as he has transformed your house into a fortress. God help anyone that tries to hurt you or your unborn daughter. 

It started small with a few extra cameras on the perimeter, then installing a new indoor security system. A new fence was put up around the pool two months ago, and most recently the baby monitors set up throughout the house. He was beginning to drive you a little insane and you honestly just wanted him to lay off a bit. The perfect opportunity arose one fateful morning during breakfast. 

“So I’ve been thinking Querida, how do you feel about putting carpet on the floor of the nursery?” 

Part 2: Carpet (If you haven’t read it, check it out!)

Day 15: Just Walk Away- Ezra (Prospect) 

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga Continues…

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle committing to right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals/Friends: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

[skruffie]

It’s not the anniversary yet, but it IS National Siblings Day and I conveniently forget that this is even a thing until I go on Facebook or Twitter or something and remember. This year is a big milestone for my family because it is the 18th anniversary, which marks a passage of time from now to forever where she has been gone longer than she was alive.

I saw this thing on Facebook about grief, and it went something like grief is this hole, and you can try to fill the hole with whatever you can, but nothing fills it. It’s bottomless. It seems like your entire life gets sucked into it, but eventually as the years go on... the hole doesn’t get smaller. Your life gets bigger, and it grows around it. The hole is always there, but there’s more expanse around it as you move through each anniversary, each holiday, each milestone. It’s similar to describing grief as “it doesn’t get easier, you just get better at coping”.

(This is going to be very long and probably very sad because I talk at great length about her life and death)

I tried to write about a little bit about Nicole on Twitter today, but my initial post mentioned the word “cancer” which caught the attention of this fucking asshole that was advertising faith healing on his timeline. That dulled my grief a bit but it sure made me mad.

Trying to remember things.

We were seven years apart so we never really had a sibling rivalry or anything. I actually looked up to her so much--she was like a teenage rock star to my child self. She loved writing and wrote lots of poetry, got published in an independent zine by age nine, and through her adolescence was a bit of a grunge punk. She played piano and bass. She wore combat boots. Occasionally she dressed up with the full make-up and everything and called them her “pretty days”. She had a lock of hair in front of her face she kept in a small braid. She did blogging before the word “blog” even existed by maintaining an email list of friends and family, and she would email her updates directly to them. She coded her own websites and experimented with graphic design. She did photography. She’s why I love nail polish and tarot cards and Doc Martens--her own boots had navy blue laces with suns and moons on them. She had a huge, huge crush on Dave Navarro. She would buy hostess cupcakes for the kids at school who didn’t have food, and she kicked her own friends out of our house when they tried to bring alcohol to her party.

Nicole grew up with the brunt of our parents’ addictions before I came along. My mom (seen with baby Nicole in one of the photos above) and dad were only 19 when they had her and got married. When she was younger, they actually split up for a while and I think my great-grandma helped take care of her. My parents both went to rehab, got back together, and then had me, so... I was the baby that grew up in a sober house for a while at least. My parents still argued and it bothered me a lot when I got a bit older, so she’d come get me and take me to her room and bring chips and bean dip, and I’d have a safe place to cry.

...That’s a thought I just had right there. After she died, I didn’t really have that same kind of shield from my parents fighting (which was a lot worse after her death--a lot of couples who lose a child end up divorcing and my parents came close), which I think is probably what made the emotional neglect worse.

I don’t remember the exact progression of her cancer, but things started getting noticeable when she started developing night-blindness. I think at the time there were some doctors that didn’t believe she could be getting cancer so getting the insurance to cover tests and treatment was a fight every single time. A tumor started growing in her left arm, and the diagnosis was finally clear: rhabdomyosarcoma. She asked the doctors after her diagnosis if it was genetic, because even after that, she thought of me. (Thankfully, it isn’t. It was just a stupid, cruel twist of the universe.)

She got chemo, started to go into remission, and eventually it came back. Nicole then got a stem cell transplant when it was getting worse--more tumors, etc etc. I had met with a grief counselor at the hospital once or twice during this time period, even before we knew for sure it was terminal, because I was 10 going on 11 and needed someone to help me process and also like... kinda pay attention to me? Admitting that feels weird, but I was just a kid.

The day that I found out that the stem cell transplant didn’t work is probably almost worse than the day she died for me. They brought in a minister and we sang “Amazing Grace” and I watched her be baptized, and while she was being anointed, I kept asking everyone “Why is she being baptized? Why??? Why?! We’re Wiccan!!” Which was true. Nicole also underwent a Wiccaning around this time. Everyone was ignoring my questions, until finally it was time. She told me the stem cell transplant had not been successful and broke down crying, and I immediately understood what that meant, and I started screaming and crying. I started screaming to see the grief counselor, and I had to leave the hospital room to go with the counselor down to my favorite spot on the hospital campus.

Fuck. I hate Easter. I fucking hate Easter. It was around Easter time and this holiday plays a role in this awful memory of mine: at the hospital, some very kind person made little easter baskets for all the kids that were on the juvenile cancer ward, and I even got to get one even though I wasn’t a patient. I was starting to open mine but Nicole just looked at it. She said “Why do I get one? Why do I get one when I’m going to--” and probably started crying. I put my basket aside because the thrill of like... easter chocolate or whatever the fuck was gone. I don’t think I’ve been able to enjoy this holiday since.

Make A Wish was involved at some point, obviously. NIcole’s original wish was to meet Tori Amos, but her management team responded with “Uhhh, Tori doesn’t really do that” which was disappointing at first. (A few years later, a couple of Nicole’s friends saw T live in concert and met her at a meet and greet. They told her Nicole’s story and I guess she had no idea actually, so I believe it was a decision firmly on the management’s side.). The next wish had to be rushed, and Nicole realized that she wanted to go to prom. The actual senior prom for her high school was going to be too far out in advance with her surviving that long, so Make A Wish threw together a special prom just for her and about 150+ attendees.

The prom was held at Newport Harbor on a yacht. Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette, known in 2001 as CommieGirl for the OC Weekly, met with Nicole once prior to this and attended as a prom guest to write about it. Naturally, Nicole was crowned prom queen and when she stood up to receive the crown, it was something magical. She had spent most of the evening in and out of sleep from being so ill and from the medications she was on.

When she was dying, she wanted to be at the hospital. I stayed at my grandparent’s house... probably for a couple days, I don’t actually remember how long it was, and my parents were there for her. I believe she died in the early hours of the morning on April 30th, two days short of her 18th birthday. I had a moment that morning that I consider a small blessing, which is that I found out she was gone before anyone had actually told me, and it gave me a brief reprise to just be by myself while I gathered up my will to go downstairs and face my parents. I had been in the process of going downstairs, and I saw my mom come out of the bathroom, and that was it. That was all I needed to see.

She had them write a letter as her own personal message to me. Two days later for her 18th birthday, my cousin sent us 18 lavender balloons. I don’t think we had her memorial until the 11th of May and I know this because it was the same day Douglas Adams--one of Nicole’s favorite authors--died. We joked that she took him with her. Nicole was cremated, and I do remember there was at least one funny moment that morning as we were getting out of the car. My mom handed me the wooden box that had Nicole’s cremains in it and said “Here, hold your sister for a sec.” We got a touch of that grave humor in my family.

One of the hardest things about this... hole of grief, is aging. My parents are in their mid 50s now, and I’m going to be 30 next year. I don’t have any other siblings to help take care of my parents. My mom rather flippantly says “Oh, put us in a nursing home”, but that just feels so bleak. I don’t have my sister with me to help with my wedding, to meet Zack or any of my friends, to talk to about our past and our future. She’s not here to kick ass and build amazing apps or tear down the patriarchy or be on the ground reporting the latest news break. There’s so many milestones I’ve already crossed without her but I am always going to miss her.

Bon swayr, ma souer.

[serak-sarak-meta-sarahk]

As a Model I Got Stalked by a Porn Cam Girl Who Couldn’t Let Go of Her High School Ex Boyfriend in College and How I Dealt

So for those who don’t know, on top of modeling I was an elite springboard and platform diver, in the Olympic track. Technically I left modeling for sports after modeling got scary, but I still dabbled in the clean side of the industry.

I technically started being recruited by The University of Alabama by age 14 years old, well that was my first real trip to campus anyways.

I liked the University of Alabama, because their art program is located near Birmingham, which is an indie designer fashion hub of America. After watching Project Runway on binge growing up, I wanted to support the industry there.

However, as soon as I got to campus on my first or second night I was asked on the team who I would either make out with or hook up with before I knew any of the guys on the team, or girls if I were to go that way for a matter of fact. I was also coming off a myriad of injuries that were half attended to with doctors, after my dad left. My mother lied and said we didn’t have health insurance anymore.

So, I get to campus, and meet this guy Joseph James Pursley (DOB: 10/21/1994, causasion male). On the first day, I didn’t realize he was our head coaches son, because I was a diver and his father was a swimming coach. I told my teammates that I thought he was cute, they told me he was the head coaches son. Hearing how psychopathic our new head swim coach was from the rest of the team before showing up, I wrote him off.

To be fair, Joseph James Pursley does suffer from a myriad of drug and alcohol addictions. I’ve watched him pound a full bottle of wine in one sitting then run to the shower to barf. He would ask me to act out rape scenes with him, because it turned him on according to him. On spring break, I woke up from a daytime vacation nap to him passed out barfing in and breaking the rental home shower once. He uses these things called whippets to get high. He was the mens team Vyvanse supplier when he wasn’t even on scholarship to be on the team. He once punched a crack in his own car windshield as I gave him a sober ride home. He would openly tell me how much he wanted to die or join the military to get me to help him with his homework. He has a cocaine addiction. He once kicked a girl in a twister costumer to the floor on Halloween. And, he wouldn’t let me break up with him, ever. As hard as I tried.

By the end of this relationship I was waking up everyday in panic attacks, or ending the night with anxiety attacks over what JJ Pursley thought of himself while he used drugs. He would do cocaine and speak out of his head. He would else me into sex while he was on psychedelics and I was not. Police were getting called to his home and I would have to go over to try to help during my workday, not mine. Below is an image of what he did to my face. I asked him no repetitively 5 times before I was thrown into the asphalt concrete. Essentially, I was waking up everyday fighting for my own life or having an anxiety attack over what JJ was going to make me do in the night while I slept.

Anytime I talk to police about this situation I get light headed and almost pass out. My mother knew his father where she was from, so she does little to advocate for me at all.

However, I now have advocacy groups working to protect me in the state of Texas from JJ Pursley and everyone still connected to him. I’ve just never known how well these avenues work for kids frok.places like where I’m from.

Time and time again, the United States has shown that no one gives a fuck to help the little kids from the projects of Cincinatti and we do nothing to warrant it. I am hoping that this political shift brings that, if nothing else at all, for once, actually representing kids from the projects.

And what they actually have to fight through to survive and what their usually single parents have to do to get them out of it. One parent is always a hard addict and the other can never seem to do enough to get their own family resources. For me my mother was a HARD addict in the state of Kentucky for a LONG time. After the things I saw my mom do to herself, I don’t even understand how she is alive. I’m always pushing my mom to get clean, but fact of the matter is, she never stays clean. She will scream she hates drugs as she is abusing them behind closed doors. Diet pills, injectables, painkiller pills, alcohol, whatever she can get her hands on.

My mother has also been getting model sued for the greater portion of her adult life whenever she starts using again. Which seems to be anytime I leave the door to start life on my own. Then, I deal with the ramifications of my mom being an addict. I CANNOT LEAVE MY HOUSE IN AMERICA WITHOUT BEING ACCUSED OF BEING AN ADDICT BECAUSE OF MY MOTHER. AND. I. AM. SOBER.

No one thinks this is real, but when you get out of the projects, people try to attack you and your kids through their whole lives as you progress beyond it. Because there is a side of the country who thinks kids from the projects don’t deserve to get out of it.

Two weeks after I arrived at school, his father paired us in the same team building group. He seemed fairly normal this day as a person, but then again he was also sober this day to my knowledge as we were required to be as far as I knew. Then he began pursuing me at parties.

One night, when I was the sober driver for the team, he asked me to give him rides to pick up his friends because his cell phone minutes were apparently out at the time. I later learned that his parents had to put him on minutes because of his addiction to naked images of girls from his high school. He would tell me how guys in his high school would fill their phones up with nudes and then trade Sim cards so that everyone got a little bit of every girls nude images. So, his parents had to move him mid year of school from Arizona to Alabama.

He didn’t tell me it was this serious until after we started dating and his personal porn girl began attacking me directly. I am a girl who had never sent nudes at all by college.

I grew up primarily Hellenist as my religion, and this is something WE DO NOT DO within hellenism. Strictly, I was told our gods would be angered at me if I ever shot nude for a man in a porn sense or sent full porn type nudes to a man for his sexual attention unless it was my boyfriend or full time partner that I trusted to protect me.

He just told me that he had gotten into some trouble in high school, however he had gotten accepted by the coaches onto the team, so I figured he was trying to do better. I was never told to judge people by their past mistakes. However, in JJ Pursleys case, I wish I had.

We actually did become friends before we dated. We would actually spend sober platonic time together, but I also hung out with his roommates so I didn’t think he was a danger to me. In short, I wasn’t scared of a digital pimp.

The first time we “hooked up” we only really made out, and then the next day he told me he had a girlfriend that he hadn’t mentioned previously while getting to know me. After he told me,I told him u was sorry and made up an excuse to leave the situation. So, all was good and dandy. Then the party stalking began.

I coukd not attend a team party in the same room as JJ Pursley without him eventually finding himself standing directly behind me or three feet away from me trying to talk. If I would give him the time of day, he woukd follow me around the party like a lost dog. Then I started noticing how alcoholic he was. He would borrow my car to take his friends to smoke in it without me attending with them.

He would find ways to place himself in the same places as me. However, he was uninterested in leaving the dorm to try any of the clubs I had joined to try tonget acquainted to campus outside of athletics and the inter team hook up culture that was going on within my team.

I for some reason, forgot what level of model I was in college as I was trying ti focus on school and athletics for the four years. But, the team culture still creeped me out. I guess that was just the modeling in me still holding me close to my morals, I’m thankful I did it this way.

A few months into the semester my phone was thrown onto the floor out of my locker by a teammate or a call vibrated it out of my locker. Being a student athlete, I couldn’t afford a new one at the time, so JJ Pursmey gave me his old phone. This girl, Kelley Vivas, had probably sent 100-300 Streams of naked images of her rolling around naked on a workout ball alone in her room, not even working out.

It was literally quote comical to see. When i firstly the images I was like, “hmm what are you doing there???” The positions she was in in order to show her coochie angle to the camera seemed so uncomfortable. Isn’t a workout ball for working out? Zhe woukd be making like angry faces in the images trying to be sexy. It was really just something as they say.

I had never seen another girls nudes at this point, I was shocked.

By winter break, I was able to throw the phone away. Luckily the girl was over 18 according to JJ at the time he gave me the phone. I threw it out anyways, and she wanted to be there doing that. I’m pretty sure that’s still how she makes “her living.” So I did what I can to not get involved with it.

I actually never revenge porned the girl even though she had me non consensually revenge porned for simple dating her ex, when I never even sent her nudes. I was just like, “Holy shit, this is EXTREMELY embarrassing for this girl Kelley. I’m just gonna not and get rid of the phone.”

But then, even though I didn’t revenge porn her after being handed her nudes in the age of revenge porn, she would still attack me. Now her and all of her local friends have protections set up by me where I can call police if they try to get near me at all. JJ Pursley as well.

Luckily the Texas DAS office let me look up all their information and submit it in for protections. Then, a stalking advocacy group took over this portion of my life for me. So I do feel safer, now.

Just knowing I can pick up my phone and have them arrested if they even get near me, is a ton of solace after this situation. I thought I was I’m a literal living hell after seeing this girl naked and how much she wanted to attack me into oblivion for simply dating someone.

I would make him go on walks with me. We would go to the movies with groups of people. We would eat. He would take me to stores or shopping centers driving wise. But this girl just would not stop. I have no clue where her psychology us at after being a porn cam girl, which is why I had to report her to police.

It wa super creepy and I was honestly afraid she was getting ready to seek me out. She would acreenshot my social images of me on spring break during the second semester of college and send send to him as if she was going to use them for something. And now her whole life is a revolving lawsuit luckily for me. I don’t don’t think she was loved to finish out her college degree.

She has no job listed online, and she still tries to attack my character. I’m unsure why, she sees how bad JJ Pursleys life has gotten, how does she not realize that she is next. I was tying to help her by not forwarding her nudes to anyone. But I guess she was mad because she likes being a porn star? That’s fine with me, but you can’t attack non-porn stars for not wanting to join you.

I’m not sure if this girl was a part of a wider network, but she’s about to be a Jeffrey Epstein cronie by age 24. If she’s not already, I felt so bad reporting her, but the advocacy group and DAS office gladly took the information from me. That was a HUGE step forward in feeling safety in my own life again as a model.

Personally, I did make a plan to jump from the roof of my dormitory dormitory the ground after this girl began attacking me. I DO NOT FEEL THIS WAY ANYMORE, AT ALL. I have gotten multiple rounds of therapy for what Kelley Vivas and Joseph James Pursley did in my life as I was trying to start art school, my whole dream after being born in projects as a kid.

Luckily, after receiving therapy and getting better, I still have my modeling career and my art career. And I don’t struggle to get jobs in fashion or art still. My contracts have actually begun protecting my personal images and creative content for me online after how many times both women and men began stalking me with bad intentions. THIS WAS A MASSIVE BLESSING IN MY LIFE.

So immediately then after the attacks began, I knew I was going to have to report the situation eventually to either my contracts or police. I happen to have such a huge modeling contract established when I was a child that my family has it protected by a bank. Some models do have their contracts protected, if they are large enough at a young age. My family personally doesn’t speak about the intricacies of my specific contract for how large it got so young. I’ve started telling people small parts of it so they will leave me alone, but the rest of my contract is in a bank vault at what brands were willing to offer me at such a young age for my good nature and ability to always try to do the right thing.

My family, after my childhood, is extremely proud of me for this and they remind me daily, weekly. And monthly of how proud of me they are for my work in modeling alone.

It got so huge so fast for me that I had to hide inside of my home after a while. Eventually, the world got safer for highly talented kids and now I just get my big drops at home.

I do really miss going to a set, but shooting from home helps keep me safe from the types of men that used to be kept around modeling sets or would sneak their way onto set.

I also began looking up free scientific mental health resources online so that I wouldn’t fold in on my own mental health while moding, and could laugh about situations such as these.

Any time I catch myself doing something out of character for me and my career. I get therapy, get online resources, get free hot lines. Then I move on.

Again, growing up within the modeling industry, I was ALWAYS told by my dad’s model friends and the Cincinatti Ballet that I DID NOT NEED OR HAVE TO DO PORN TO SURVIVE. They very much advised against it with me, and any guy who has ever tried or threatened me into it, has no life now financially. I cannot thank these people enough for their guidance.

In business, JJ Pursley with a degree, was offered offered $22k base salary and them promptly almost lost his sales job, because no one would buy from him.before finishing my degree, I was offered a 40k base salary after freelancing through college, for a role where I didn’t even have to make sales at the job.

Now, I’m getting modelng contracts and job offers galore now that I have my degree completed out after going through this while trying to finish a collegiate degree out. I cannot say thank you enough to the people who kept a pulse on the EXTREMELY DANGEROUS situation for a model of my level and helped to pull me out of it once I could break free.

I am extremely proud of myself for surviving this, this felt like one of the biggest tests of my life so far. It was an extreme every day stressor while I attempted to complete my college courses, and I wasnt even attacking anyone.

Now, I can only laugh about it. Now, that I know larger organizations are working on the issue. I feel immensely safer now that this new wave of police and legislative system know this story.

But then again, JJ Pursely himself, began being followed by police before the relationship was even over. He has now been removed from SEC athletic football games, and almost arrested on the streets, by police.

So back to the story. At the time, JJ was telling me how much he hated being this way and how much he was trying to not be a porn and drug/alcohol addict verbally. He would tell me that he wanted to kill himself over this girls attachment to sending him nudes. So, I tried to help him in early work ways as best as I could. No one deserves to die over this. But I still haven’t heard of JJ Pursley and Kelley Vivas being forced into rehab, and JJ almost gets arrested on the street.

Yes, porn is not illegal, but trying to force a model into it is. I couldn’t tell JJ how big of a model I was.

During the relationship he woukd se the quality if my contracts and start to wonder about what was going on. But, I kept it a secret from him because of the lorn addiction attached to him and how much he would beg me to do it for him.

Kelley Vivas on the other hand, was a dancer I guess. I’m learning from this situation and others, that a lot of ballet or those types of dancer dancers actually engage in full porn type shooting or sex work outside of their jobs. Let me make this clear, not pole dancing, full porn and sugar daddy’s type stuff. I feel bad that they have to do this to get paid, but get a second legal job if dance doesn’t pay enough.

That is exactly what I do. Sometimes I get 3-5 legal jobs or contract position to not do porn or sex work when I’m not modeling. I know tons of other dancers who work 3-5other jobs on top LEGAL dance as well. I’m only approached by ballerinas for prostitution, still. Ballerinas mostly, approach me in public and try to tell me sex work is okay.

I left Ballet to model when the outsiders beginning targeting me shit started because I didn’t like it. My modeling contract is now protected by a bank vault vault yall can’t get it.

The Cincinatti Ballet is the only Ballet I trust. The Cincinatti Ballet and my contracts. The women and men at Cincinatti Ballet and within my personal modeling contracts told me I NEVER needed to do porn. They would only side hug me and tell me how beautiful I was. They were not upset at me for leaving dance after what men tried to do to me because of it. I would still dance for this Ballet troop if I could even meet their standards for human beings.

The dancers from the Cincinatti Ballet would pull me to the side as a little girl and show me the dance hall asking me if I even knew how beautiful I was as a very very young girl. And they gave me the confidence to never need to do porn or give into Sugar Daddy culture. All because a Ballet troop showed me how much they cared about children NOT having to do that.

I cannot thank the Cincinatti Ballet enough for dropping in on my practices as a child or finding me at their shows and walking me through the hall making me feel poised and confident enough to rise above it.

So after I initially was beginning to date JJ Pursley and trying to hear him out about how he wanted to change as a human himself, I thought I would give him a chance to change. He didn’t. And that’s okay, I hope he gets mental health help.

Once Joseph James Pursley decided that I was a better option than his ex, he began trying to break up with her. I guess fearing that she would lose her already set Porn career, she woukd threaten to kill herself to him as he broke up with her. She would literally threaten to kill herself for her high school boyfriend breaking up with her.

So then eventually JJ Purey did enough work to get her in the back burner, and he actually started making an effort to get out of the home with me. He woukd take me to my car appointments to get my car serviced at the time. He woukd take me in fast food dates. He woukd teach me how to skateboard again outside, etc. Once we got his cam girl ex out of the picture, we actually started having a pretty wholesome time with others. Then the attacks began.

She would call him telling him that she was going to hang up and kill herself if he broke up with her on the phone call. JJ Pursley would be on the phone crying and asking her to not kill herself over their break up. This part was actually really sad.

JJ would start hanging up and telling me that he wanted to die or join the military, because of what Kelley Vivas, the cam girl, was making him go through.

And she still stalks him. This part if the story I actually feel bad for him.

I don’t feel bad for his addictions. That’s the part I don’t feel bad for him for.

Let me preface, I sometimes do put filters over my social media images, because technically my face is trademarked or protected under brands. So if someone were to catfish trying to be me, or use my face and body as intercultural property without ler.ission from my contracts, they woukd get sued. So, at that time I would filter my photos in order to avoid becoming the subject of someone’s catfish over another.

I’m sure this girl would say, “well I’d didn’t know it was like that,” now. But she shouldn’t have to know it’s like that to not be a psychopath.

She began messaging JJ Purey how ugly I was. Calling out my filters on my photos. Reminding him that they had child names picked out. Eventually, JJ showed me it all. He would tell me how delusional this woman was and how wrong she was when he told me.

But at least he made sure to let me know some psychopathic girl was about to drive in from Arizona.

She eventually began requesting that JJ Pursley shoot revenge porn of me for their high school hometown of Phoenix, Arizona. Because I woukd refuse to send JJ any nudes as his girlfriend. I was actually very adimate against sending them to him.

Then JJ Pursley made the conscious decision to film me during a compromising moment via the app Snapchat, which is apparently trackable. I know my blog is being followed by my brands only now. So I do feel safer, now.

This girl just would not stop. We were dating 3 years later and age woukd still try to reach out to him. Luckily, I was able to follow and screenshot her and her friends socials until they got found out in order to protect myself.

These girls even sent their friend to stalk me on campus at my own university and laugh in my face… they stalked and abused a blind girl via social media.

Eventually, after these women got found out, they were forced to join community service organizations.

I have no clue if the girl, Kelley Vivas, was even allowed to finish out her collegiate degree via The University of Arizona, however she was supposed to be a medical professional. And she eas threatening suicide to a man over a break up when they didn’t even live in the same state anymore.

So my best advice if you are in a situation like this and scared to get out of it, fearing death, tell police. Tell therapists, tell your parents, tell your friends.

Tell anyone you can about how you tried to get away. Work hard or seemingly difficult busimess type or learning jobs to try to take over your mind.

It gets extremely stressful and downright CREEPY in your life if you let people do this to you or approach you with these intentions. I quit my sport and my dream major, left and separated myself and pretended it wasn’t happening unless to defend myself.

I was super lucky that my next major was also a dream to me and made my mind actually feel good again. But I did research it super hard before transferring into it, so I knew it would be that way. I am still EXTEEMELY THANKFUL for my school in letting me do this and then eveb reach out when my boyfriend became extremely abusive to me again tonhelo get me into therapy.

As women, this is all we can do, in my own opinion. When it comes to modeling at the level that I do, I choose to forget about it completely from the creepy people who try to know me after my modeling career hits again. Luckily, by starting to tell people when I weirded out or scared of the people who even try to follow me, I get better protection to do my job.

Thank you for stopping by!

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Published July 6, 2021

Categorized as About Me, Social Justice IssuesTagged real life relationship abuse, stalking

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SARKAT DESIGNS

Sarkat.design

[unfetteredwill]

Guaranteed I’m more scared to show my face than you are disgusted to see it.

I’m transgender and gay. Don’t click unless you want life story.

I’m Alister, I also go by Kishi. I’m 25. I’m a Transguy.

I have gone by Kishi for years but it’s not my real name. I don’t want to share it and I’ve been avoiding using it since damned Middle school. The guy that runs up to the teacher to talk to them in High school and college before they say my name. It’s not my dead name. It’s the name my mother gave to the little girl she wanted to have. It’s changed as I have since that day.

 It’s this year that I have decided on the name that’s me. Alister Orion Sutherland. 

Nice to meet you, person that decided to click read more and read this far. You’ve got a boring story ahead, I guess it’s boring. I’ve always felt that my roleplaying is more important because it’s not me. It’s anything but me. But you aren’t my therapist so... Let me shut up and move along. 

Timeline stuff. I had no idea what Transgender was until... Well, maybe High school. But before that.

1999ish.  I needed to be a Tomboy. BADLY. As a kid. It’s that movie scenario that the boy cousins had a treehouse their father built. No girls allowed. My female cousin got in because she was a Tomboy. So... To get in I did Tomboy Tests. 

Kids, man, fucking kids.

 One of those tests was lifting a heavy rock and throwing it over their house. Me, 8 year old, house is tall. But. Fuck. Let me in the treehouse. Please, I’m a Tomboy too. I’m not a girl, I’m not a girl, I’m not. That rock didn’t make it over the roof. It is probably still on the roof 3/4th of the way.

They never validated my man card. A year later my grandmother died. They made me wear a dress to the Wake when everyone came and suddenly started giving a fuck about my grandmother. I took off that dress later for overalls. They bitched at me. I still didn’t know.

After her death, I had no protection against my family and we lost our house. 

I disappeared for 4 years. Middle school is something I barely remember. I wasn’t me, the depression blocked me out. The only incidents I have of middle school are minimal. During one was an interaction with the cots because I clawed through a boy’s neck enough to draw blood. Had to convince the cop, for my other self, that I wouldn’t do it again. I guess I’d be more sincere than them... Then I was gone again.

2006. Shoot to High school where I am slowly returning and start cheating on my bf from Middle school. Hahhahah. I didn’t even know him but I liked that he had a dick?? He cheated on me a lot before I left him. Apparently I was attractive because there were boys that liked to buy me things. Things I didn’t need. Jewelry and shit??? 

2006. I ran into that one kid who I clawed, the other me clawed, and like... He wanted nothing to do with me. Terrified. He paid me $15 not to go near him. I met my true love in high school and after I touched his dick on the high school stais during lunch. Hand job and all. that’s the first time I knew. I told him in the first 5 months that I didn’t feel like a woman. That I felt like a man, while we hugged in my room. He didn’t leave and neither did that feeling. 

I graduated in 2010. Most of High school was bullshit but I calmed down some. Less criminal activity besides that some of my friends would steal shit for me because I wanted it but was really poor. Also my boyfriend helped me get off the ledge by being there for me. He didn’t buy me flowers like the guy I was cheating on. I don’t regret it, he left me in California for Missouri where he was with another girl. They’re married with a kid.

Kind of realized that one wasn’t for me when he wanted me to talk to people on his RPG so they’d think he was a girl.

Told my abusive-as-fuck Aunt Sarah in 2013 that I was Transgender for god knows why. I think it’s because she took me to the movies. Kindness is just as addicting as love. 

2014ish. I told my mother and my doctor and really started moving towards functionality. My memory drops in and out. and in and out and I don’t remember all the things. 

2016. November. I had my doctor sign my paperwork to get my Birth certificate changed to Male. My mother also signed as a Witness and one of my best friends went with me to the Notary. Glad they held my hand because I was terrified excited. 

2017. June-July. I finally decided to start T. I couldn’t handle how my voice. My face. My body. Would make people call me ma’am. I didn’t go to Del Taco to get misgendered. I came for fucking tacos. 

2017. September-December got into the University I wanted. Got better health insurance. Got a new doctor. Set in motion the steps to get my breasts the fuck off.

2018. Mastectomy happened 5 weeks ago. I’ve a scar as big as my fibula. Maybe longer. This month I went to the DMV and got my gender changed in their records too. 

My next goal is to get my name changed or set into motion before the end of this year. 

TL;DR

I want to be Alister. Please call me Alister... 

I’m a man and I exist.

[foryouandbits]

Please write it! If you want to...I understand that pushing fic writers can be stressful. I guess I just mean that I would love to read it if you want to write it!

Okay, okay, twist my arm, will ya? This is not at all angsty, but here is Jack and Bitty getting into a fender-bender, and Bitty showing that he’s been in Boston for far too long. Rated T for swearing and implied sexytimes. (Read on AO3)

They were both in the car when it happened, headed from the Haus to Jack’s apartment for the weekend. It was one of those rare times their schedules synced up for more than a day – Jack was coming off the high of winning yet another home game, and was headed into a four-day weekend before travelling to Carolina to start their next away trip. He still had practice, as usual, but it seemed almost like a vacation, getting to sleep in his own bed for so many nights in a row. Bitty, on the other hand, had a game Sunday afternoon, but he was looking at almost forty-eight hours of Jack time.

Rush hour hadn’t quite started yet, but it was getting there as Bitty maneuvered Jack’s car through city streets toward the highway. It was another rarity – getting to drive Jack’s car. Most of the time Jack drove, fiercely protective and unwilling to budge when it came to Bitty’s safety, but when they left the Haus Bitty asked, “Can I drive this time?” and thoroughly expected Jack to say no. However, Jack tossed him the keys and Bitty stared at them for five full seconds before he sat behind the wheel.

He was never going to be allowed to drive again.

Bitty could have gunned it through the yellow light two blocks from the I-95 onramp, but years of experience with Jack’s old man driving made him think twice about it and instead he came to a hard stop just before the white line. The person behind Bitty seemed to think he could have gunned it through the yellow light too, because as the car came to a complete stop, a surge and a sickening crunch pushed both forward into the automatic airbags.

“That motherfucker hit us!” Bitty yelled after the collision of his face with the airbag.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked immediately. Jack’s seatbelt was off and his hands were already on Bitty’s arms to check for damage. “Bits, look at me. Are you okay?”

Bitty had spun in his seat already, looking out the back window at the car behind them. There wasn’t much to see since the collision had popped the trunk, but Bitty could see the crinkle of gray metal that was the rear of Jack’s car. Bitty returned to facing forward in his seat only when Jack physically spun him in that direction.

“Yes, sweetie, I’m fine,” said Bitty with a passive hand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay. We’re both fine. Excuse me while I get out of this car and give that asshole back there a piece of my mind.”

“You’re not supposed to leave the car after an accident! I’m calling 911 right now. Are you sure you’re okay? Is your neck okay?”

“I’m fine, Jack,” said Bitty through his teeth. He unbuckled his belt and opened the door, despite Jack’s grasping hands attempting to keep him in the vehicle.

The other driver was a forty-something man with a horrible mustache and a Patriots sweatshirt. He was also out of the car and headed toward Bitty with both of his hands up in the air. “Where the fuck’d you learn to drive, kid? Get your ass back in Rhode Island where it belongs.”

“Listen, asshole,” yelled Bitty, “I’m from Atlanta. I know about traffic. I also know about red lights, which you apparently don’t.”

“That light was barely yellow! You had plenty of time to go through it!”

“And you had plenty of time to stop! Just give me your damn insurance card so I can go home.”

The man’s face fell and Bitty felt cold all over.

“Ah,” he said, “you see… I’m kind of… in between insurances right now.”

“You don’t have insurance?” Bitty yelled. “Did you spend all your money on Patriots’ gear?”

The window lowered, drawing Bitty’s attention from the man’s increasingly red face. Bitty looked at Jack, who was leaning over the center console. “Bits,” he said. “The cops’ll be here in a minute. Get back in the car.”

“Not right now, Jack, I’m dealing with this asshole who doesn’t fucking have insurance,” said Bitty.

“Yeah, you should get in the car, Bits,” said Jack.

Instead of getting back in the car, Bitty took out his phone and began to take several pictures. The back of Jack’s car was crunched beyond repair; Bitty would be surprised if the insurance company didn’t total it. The front of the culprit’s car was equally destroyed, but by the looks of it, the vehicles took most of the impact. Bitty could already tell his neck was going to be sore in the morning, but it wouldn’t require medical attention. Bitty was sure to get the other man’s license plate in the shot, just in case he decided to skedaddle before the cops arrived.

“Stop taking pictures of my fucking car,” the man said.

“I’m taking as many pictures as I can so you can’t even begin to say this is my fault. I stopped for a red light. You didn’t stop at all,” said Bitty.

“Bittle!” yelled Jack through the window. “Get back in the car!”

Bitty didn’t, more riled up with anger than common sense, and continued to walk around both cars taking photos with his phone with little regard to the other cars on the street that were honking and yelling out open windows for them to clear the road.

“Stop taking pictures of my car!”

“Bittle!”

Jack finally got out of the car as well and took two steps toward Bitty, who was still snapping pictures. “Bitty,” he said. “Get in the car. Let’s get off the road before you get hit by someone trying to go around us.”

“Holy shit,” said the man. “You’re Jack Zimmermann.” Bitty shot an annoyed look at him; he no longer had any edge of a threat to his voice.

“Yes, and you just hit my car,” said Jack. “We’re going to pull over and out of everyone’s way. My boyfriend has pictures of your car, so I suggest you do the same. There’s the cops now.” Jack nodded toward flashing lights down the street, headed in their direction. “Bittle. Car. Now.”

Bitty made his way toward the driver’s side, but Jack pushed him in the other direction. “No, you’re never driving this car again.”

Bitty buckled himself into the passenger’s seat and quietly allowed Jack to pull the car out of the street and into the parking lot of the gas station at their intersection. When Jack shut the car off, Bitty reached for his belt buckle again, only to have Jack place a gentle hand on top of his.

“No,” Jack said firmly. “Stay here.”

“But the cops –”

“I’ll handle the cops. You stay here. That man was thirty seconds from punching you in the face.”

“He’s just an asshole without insurance,” said Bitty. “He could have seriously hurt us. You’re okay, right? How’s your neck?”

“I might get it checked by the team doctor tomorrow before practice, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine,” said Jack. “Are you okay? You look okay – but are you okay? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you riled up like this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear this much in my life, even when… well. You know.”

Bitty could see the smirk on Jack’s lips as he let his last sentence linger, which caused an unexpected change in Bitty’s blood flow. “Do you like it?” Bitty asked.

“I do,” said Jack quietly.

“Hopefully this won’t take long,” said Bitty. “I’m amassing quite a bit of aggression right now. I need to let it out.”

Jack’s pupils dilated and Bitty squirmed in his seat.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Jack.

Ten minutes and a couple of name drops later, Jack and Bitty were in an Uber back to the apartment with assurances that everything would be handled by Boston PD. Thirty minutes after that, Jack tossed Bitty onto their bed with a request to continue swearing a blue streak, and Bitty, still incensed from the accident and Jack’s reaction, was happy to oblige.

[cncorner]

I Got T at Howard Brown! An Overly Detailed Post

Note: I wrote several in-depth descriptions on Reddit about some of my experiences so far. Here’s one I posted on April 5

I got T! I am T'd! My leg hurts... because it's full of T!

Here's another overly detailed account, this time of me getting T. I'll be highlighting areas again.

About Me

I'm FTM! I've been dressing like a guy for my entire adult life and have been fascinated with transition-related stuff since I was like 15, but Not Because I Was Trans, Nope. I've been in therapy since the beginning of the year to deal with gender-related issues.

Why I Chose to Start T

I've wanted to go on T (and "could handle not being on T, I'm serious") on and off ever since I decided that I could handle giving myself shots, so maybe 7 years? But I hate talking about it and doctors make me kind of nervous because I have trouble standing up for myself. Talking with my therapist helped me gather the confidence to talk to strangers (essentially) about transitioning needs. I visited my family last month and being around them made me feel "done" with being a woman, so when I came back home I told my therapist that I'm Fucking Ready, let's do this bitch.

Planning the Appointment

I told my therapist that I wanted to start, and they told me I had a couple of options: Howard Brown, Planned Parenthood, and an endocrinologist who works with trans people whom my therapist never mentioned again so I axed that option. My therapist said that Howard Brown liked doing bloodwork (which I liked) but there was a waiting list (which I didn't like); PP didn't have as much of a waiting list it was kind of implied that they didn't do bloodwork. Both work under consent-based models. My therapist also mentioned that Howard Brown just hired a bunch of phlebotomists who could be kind of strange.

When I got home from that appointment I found the closest Howard Brown clinic (which was, like, a 40 minute drive away) and made an appointment. They asked my legal and preferred name, and preferred pronouns. The waiting list was like two weeks, which I was okay with.

I also wanted to see what the waiting list for PP was, so I looked online. I thought there would be a location closer to me (I'm in the NW Chicago suburbs), but the closest was still a 50 minute drive. But I had gone to that one before when I didn't have insurance so I knew where it was and where I could park. I tried making an appointment through their online booking application, but apparently for new trans patients you have to call. I called the number the application gave me and it gave me a phone tree with two options: Family Planning, and Abortion. I figured that was the wrong number, so I dug up the number for the particular location I was interested in. It gave me the same phone tree. I tried the first number again, and got the same phone tree, then just chose the family planning option.

The receptionist who answered didn't ask me about family planning, and I told them that I wanted to start HRT. They said that they do first-time HRT patients with two visits. The first visit would have been that Monday and the second visit the Monday after that (ending up being 4 days before the Howard Brown appointment). Both times available were during my work hours. I was still going to make the appointment and deal with the work stuff later when my phone connection failed and I got hung up on.

I took it as a sign and didn't try calling again.

Waiting

Sucked.

The Appointment

They recommended showing up 15 minutes before your appointment; I got there in 20. I parked on the street and walked up to the building, which was a large stand-alone clinic. They had a small parking lot but it was full. There was a lot of street parking options around it, and I noticed a bus stop sign right outside. There was a Walgreen's pharmacy inside.

There was a front desk right inside the door and I stopped by there and got my new-patient paperwork, as well as an anxiety/depression questionnaire that they said that they give to everyone every time they visit. They also gave me a large laminated card with a number on it and told me to sit in the waiting area. There were a lot of visibly... GNC/queer (?) people there, which made me feel more at-ease.

I sat down and almost immediately my number was called before I filled out the paperwork. I was called up to a booking station (? I'm not sure, I've never seen two "receptionist" desks in a clinic before) and they took my ID and insurance information. They said to give them the paperwork after I was done with it. I sat back down in the waiting area and filled out my paperwork and gave it to the booking lady.

Five minutes after my appointment time I was called in (appt time at 11:20, so I was called in at about 11:25), and put in an exam room. The nurse tech (??? I have no idea) took my blood pressure, temperature, and O2 stats (that finger thing), said that someone would come see me in a bit, then left.

I had no cell phone reception so I played solitaire on my phone.

The More Important Nurse (but not a doctor) came in at around 11:55 or so. We talked about (in some order I don't remember): my current prescriptions, my family medical history, my preferred pronouns, my gender identity, what I was in for that day, planning the rest of my visit, figuring out my preferred method of T-delivery, and the side effects of T. She handed me a pamphlet with the effects of T and estimated rates of changes, and the expected frequency of visits and bloodwork. She also asked if I'd like to make Howard Brown my GP and I said yes. She said that they bought T in bulk (something like that) so they can sell it directly because a lot of insurances don't cover it.

After I agreed that I wanted to start T and that I'd like subdermal injections, we went to the lab. At the lab I did a urine test (for STDs because I haven't been tested in a while and it was like "might as well") and I got blood drawn. I had to wait a bit to make sure I didn't pass out so I talked about getting blood drawn at military clinics because apparently me and the phlebotomist both were military brats, so that was kind of cool.

After the lab I went back out into the waiting area and to the Walgreens to pick up my prescription. It was around 12:30 or so at this point. It took a while to get it together (about 20 minutes, because it had just been ordered). I talked with another patient who didn't know great English, but her English was better than my Lebanese so she was probably better off than me. I got a vial of testosterone, needles, syringes, a sharps container, and a pile of alcohol wipes. The T was $20 and the pharmacist said that it'll last for ~230 days, which blew my mind. I asked how much it would be covered by my insurance and she said that under my insurance it was $30 for 30 days.

I checked in at the front desk again for injection training and they gave me another laminated card, this time with a letter on it. I went into the waiting room and was immediately called up. I told the booking lady that I needed injection training and she seemed confused. She called someone up and said she had a patient in front of her, and told me to sit down again.

I waited for an hour. I saw a music video for PrEP and lost a lot of games of solitaire.

I got up to call my fiance to let him know that I might not get home in time to take him to work and if he needed to take an Uber then I'll buy him dinner. On the way in the receptionist noticed me and asked if I needed anything else. I told her that I'd just been waiting for an hour and needed to call someone. She got upset on my behalf and checked the scheduling system to learn that they didn't put me on the schedule for the injection training. She apologized and said that it would be another 20 minutes. I didn't really have a choice, so I sat back down.

Twenty minutes later I got called in to a different exam room. This new nurse (???) asked if I wanted her to demonstrate how to inject or to walk me through it. I definitely wanted to inject correctly once before leaving so I took the second option. I took apart my bag of medication and she walked me through all the steps. Subdermal was easy for me because I'm chunky and I have a lot of space to inject and fat to pull up. I "felt" the needle, it was the barest pinch, but most of the stress of having a needle in me was from the knowledge of having a needle in me and not so much from feeling it. About 3/4 inch of the needle went inside of me. I felt fine afterwards. It took a bit for me to get dizzy and the nurse said that sometimes the adrenaline rush after getting a shot masks the dizziness and that I took self-injecting well for someone who's afraid of needles.

After that I was done. It was about 2:30 then, which was far longer than it should have been because they forgot to put me in their schedule for self-injection training. My fiance had to take an Uber, so we're probably eating sushi tonight.

Two Hours On T

Nothing has happened. I feel hungry, but that's because I was so nervous that I hadn't eaten anything today yet. I did feel a small wave of calm about an hour ago that felt similar to a drug hitting my brain but I'm definitely chalking that up mostly to either adrenaline wearing off or anxiety wearing off.

But I'm T'd now. 👍

[myheartmightexplode]

I've Swallowed Your House Keys

Summary

Mikey comes across Pete while walking Piglet in the park. The first time, Mikey pretends he didn't see him. The second time, he awkwardly waves. The third time, he's worried Pete thinks Mikey's stalking him, so they make awkward conversation and Mikey figures out that Pete’s homeless. And the fourth time, he and Alicia collect him from the park

Mikey gets home after the third time and says, "Alicia, I think Pete is living in the park. He's there every time I go, and always wearing the same clothes, and there are leaves in his hair."

And Alicia rolls her eyes, gets the car keys, and drives to the park without a word.

Pete's sitting on his bench, kicking at leaves, just listening to the wind.

Alicia asks him, "Are you living in the park?" without any preliminaries.

"Yeah," Pete says. "I thought it was time for a change. And I like it here. It's quiet."

"Did you get tired of showering?" Pete kind of smells.

"Well, there aren't any showers here, that was a trade-off I had to make."

Of course. "There's a shower at my house," says Alicia. "We're going to go there now."

"It's okay. It's cool. I like it here." He kicks at the leaves some more. "The hot dog guy gives me his leftover stuff at the end of the day. He's cool."

"You're going to get food poisoning and die, Pete. Seriously, get the fuck in my car."

"You're going to put me in a headlock if I keep arguing, huh?"

"I'd just grab you by the scruff and toss you into the car. Get in." Maybe she should call Mikey to order food, but she doesn't need Pete to freak out about Mikey right now.

He gets up and follows her to the car, climbing into the passenger seat and obediently putting on his seatbelt when she glares. "I feel like I'm having a lot of clarity."

"From watching the leaves?" Alicia asks, flooring it.

"Yeah. The leaves and the clouds and the rain and the hot dog guy."

"Pete... are you okay? Did something happen?" In theory, Alicia is in favor of Pete having clarity, but in practice, she's dubious.

"I needed to change my life. Stop with the pills and the Internet and the lies."

"Uh-huh." This sounds promising. "What've you been lying about?"

"I don't know. What haven't I been lying about?" He chews on the string of his hoodie. "Meagan broke up with me. Ashlee took Bronx to New York. I don't know. It just seemed like a good time to walk away."

"You can't walk away from your life to a fucking park, Pete. You work on that shit." Alicia pulls into the driveway and pauses before unlocking the door. "Promise you won't walk away from dinner? It's just dinner."

"I'm really tired of working on shit." Pete looks really small and, well, tired. "I'll stay for dinner."

"Good." She reaches out on impulse and puts her arms around him. "Piglet will be happy to see you. Mikey said she liked you when she saw you in the park."

"Piglet's a sweetie. Good for hugs."

"She is. Now get your ass into the house."

Pete goes inside and carefully takes his shoes off in the entryway. He kneels down to hug Piglet and rumple her ears. "Your house is awesome, Licia."

Alicia grins. Pete always looks cute next to animals. "Thanks. Want to check out the shower while we order food?" She wonders where Mikey is, if he's hiding.

"Okay. I don't have any clean clothes, though. I left them all behind."

"I'll find you something to wear." She walks him to the guest shower and thrusts a towel into his arms. "I'll leave you clothes outside. Use whatever stuff is in there."

"Okay." It's kind of nice, doing what he's told. Not as nice as just sitting in the park, but if that's not allowed, this works.

Mikey's in the bedroom with Bunny lying on his chest. "Did you find him?"

Alicia drops down next to Mikey and pets Bunny's ears. "Yeah. He was exactly where you said. But now he's in the shower."

"Are we going to keep him for a while?"

"That's sort of up to you, baby. But I don't want him to go back to the park. He's going to get mugged at some point."

"Why is it up to me?"

Alicia shrugs. "I always got the feeling you two were still weird about each other."

"So shouldn't that make it up to you?"

"I guess that I don't mind that."

"I'll go talk to him if you take Bun."

"Okay. And call the Chinese place." Alicia grabs Bunny and puts her on her boobs. "She's all warm."

"She's in full-on cuddle mode. You'll be here for an hour."

"That's perfect, because I am too. Call me downstairs when the food gets here."

"Got it." Mikey goes to the kitchen and calls in the food order, then makes his way to the bathroom and knocks. "Pete? Can I come in?"

Pete's just tying the towel around his waist. "Uh, yeah," he calls through the door, trying not to sound awkward. "Did Alicia find anything for me to wear or should I just put my stuff on?"

"Yeah, there are clothes here." Mikey's t-shirt and boxers, Alicia's sweatpants. That's about right for Pete's size and shape. "Coming in."

"Okay." Pete takes a step back and waits for the door to swing open. Being in this bathroom and smelling like Mikey's shampoo and Alicia's lotion is making his mind race.

Mikey comes in and hands over the clothes, then boosts himself up to sit on the counter. "Do you want to shave?"

"What, you don't like my casually chic scruff?" asks Pete. "Can you close your eyes? I want to put the clothes on."

Mikey closes his eyes and swings his legs, kicking at the cabinets under the sink. "You off your meds, dude?" He doesn't say it accusingly. It's just a question.

"Kind of. I left them in my house with the rest of my stuff." Pete pulls on a pair of old boxers he knows can't be the ones he remembers, and Alicia's jeans that smell like her, and a t-shirt he definitely does recognize.

"Maybe later I can go over and get them for you? And some of your clothes?"

"I'm not sure they were working that well. I was taking them and everything went to shit anyway."

"Yeah, I get that. Maybe we can call your doctor tomorrow."

Pete sighs. It's good to let Mikey suggest things and to just say yes. "Could you get my wallet too when you're at my house? My insurance card is in it."

"Sure. Clothes, wallet. Do you want your phone?"

Pete's heart starts to thump in his chest when Mikey mentions the phone. "I don't know."

"Okay. You don't want it, I won't get it. That's cool. Can I text, like, Gabe and Ashlee and some of the guys at Atlantic and Crush and let them know you're here so none of them call the cops?"

"Sure." Ashlee won't give a shit, and Pete doesn't think that Gabe will be too reassured to know that Pete came over for dinner and left. But whatever.

"Ash needs to know how to reach you in case anything happens with Bronx, Pete." Mikey can be very patient. "And if you haven't been answering your phone for days, Gabe and the suits probably think you're dead."

"Oh. That makes sense. I don't want Bronx or Gabe to worry." Pete stares at himself in the mirror. "I think I'll shave after all, if you think I should. You should also get my phone. Just, like... don't give it to me or tell me you have it, okay?"

"Sounds good. It will be Schrodinger's phone. You want a hug?"

"I really want a hug." Pete steps sideways towards Mikey and there's more of that shampoo smell.

Mikey slides off the counter and wraps his arms around Pete nice and tight and warm. "Don't live in the park, Pete."

"Two days ago I woke up and there was a bird sleeping in my hair," Pete confesses.

"That's kind of cool but also pretty scary and kind of gross."

"I think it got tangled up in it and couldn't get out. I should probably get a haircut."

The doorbell rings and Pete shudders. "Did I crash a dinner party?"

"Nope. That's Chinese food delivery. You hang out up here, I'll go pay and set the table. It's okay. Just the three of us tonight."

"Okay." Pete can handle that. He sits down on the bathroom rug and waits.

Mikey pays for the food, sets up the table, and goes to get Alicia. "He's cleaned up, he's off his meds, he's having a major episode of something, and he hasn't checked his phone in ages so a bunch of people probably think he's dead in a ditch somewhere."

Alicia loves Mikey for always sounding calm. "It could be worse, right?"

"He could actually be dead in a ditch somewhere."

"I love it when you look on the bright side. Let's go feed him?"

"Yeah. Then I'll go to his house and pick up stuff for him. Can you get him out of the bathroom and get him started? I'm going to call Gabe, who is probably, like, burning shit."

"Tell him that if he breaks down our door, I'm making him pay for it."

Alicia gives Mikey a kiss and goes to find Pete. He's still sitting on the rug. She's choosing to ignore that. "Hey. Hungry?"

"Pretty hungry, yeah. Mikey said there was going to be Chinese delivery and no other people?"

"There is Chinese delivery and absolutely no one downstairs except for some pets." She sticks her hand out. "Help you up?"

Pete lets her pull him up and tries not to fall into her, but he's clumsy and a little bit dizzy, so he kind of flops into her boobs anyway.

Alicia catches him and squeezes him close. She wants to kiss his hair. "Hey. Let me give you some eggrolls and whatever else Mikey randomly picked off the menu, okay?"

"Sure. No hot dogs, okay? I guess I'm kind of sick of hot dogs."

"I would be too," Alicia says and guides him downstairs. Mikey set out Avengers glasses and there's over a dozen delivery containers piled in the center of the table. "Where do you want to sit?"

"On the floor."

Okay, she didn't expect that. "Um, like next to the table? Or like a picnic in the living room? I'm down with a picnic."

Pete blushes and ducks his head. "Sorry. I'm being weird. I can sit at the table."

She pictures Pete sitting on the floor between her legs and Mikey's and it makes her feel warm inside. She brushes it aside. "I'll get you a pillow for the floor, okay?"

Pete nods and pets Piglet. Piglet's great. Maybe later they won't mind if he just lies on the floor with the dogs for a while before he leaves.

Alicia gets him a pillow and then puts a little of everything onto Pete's plate and sets it in front of him on the floor. "Don't feed Piglet. She's already stealing eggrolls."

Mikey comes in with a slightly wide-eyed, startled expression and steps carefully around Pete. "Okay, that's taken care of with a lot of confusing shouting, but we're good."

"Our front door is safe?" Alicia asks. She has to step around Pete too to get to her chair, and her hand automatically drops to his hair.

"Yep. I convinced him to wait a week. You can do a lot of meditating in a week. Find your Zen."

"Of all your friends, he's the strangest." She lets her hand stay on top of Pete's head, because he's pushing up into it a bit. She'll deal with how weird that is later, after they eat and she convinces Pete to stay in the guest bedroom.

"He's a good guy," Mikey says with a shrug. "Pass me the rangoons? Pete, do you want a rangoon?"

Pete nods and Alicia reluctantly takes her hand out of Pete's hair to grab the container. Mikey hands one to Pete with his fingers. He figures Pete won't mind.

"I think I'll tell Gerard I'm gonna sit out tomorrow," Mikey says casually. "They can work on guitar lines without me."

"I think that's a good idea. I have to go to the tar pits in the morning, but we'll hang out in the afternoon. Is that okay, Pete?"

Pete looks up, startled. "Um. I thought I was leaving after dinner?"

"We can't eat all this Chinese food by ourselves, dude," says Mikey. "You have to help us with the leftovers tomorrow."

"Oh." Pete eats his rangoon and thinks about that. His park bench is going to be all unattended. But Mikey doesn't sound like it's a big problem to have Pete around. "Okay, I guess. If you need my help."

"You can also help me walk the dogs in the morning. If you want. If you just want to chill out in the bedroom, that's cool too."

"Bedroom?" Pete puts his fork down.

"You're not sleeping under the table," Alicia says. "I'm putting my foot down. We have a perfectly fine guest room."

"Oh. Guest room." Pete blushes again and looks down. He's so stupid. "Right, yeah, guest room, okay. If you're sure."

Alicia looks at Pete and then looks at Mikey, raising her eyebrow. Mikey's the one who translates from Pete-ese. She's out of practice.

"It's totally fine," Mikey says. "You want to watch a movie after dinner or lie down for a while?"

Pete thinks about it. He's kind of tired, but lying down means a dark empty room, and if they watch a movie, maybe he can sit between them. Or at least next to one of them. "I'm not tired. Movie? If that's really okay."

"It's totally fine." Mikey goes back to eating, not looking directly at Pete but keeping his leg close enough that Pete can lean on it if he wants to.

Pete leans his head against Mikey's leg and picks at his tofu, turning the impending movie-viewing over in his head. "Can I sit between you?" he asks suddenly. "When we're watching, I mean."

"Sure." Mikey glances at Alicia. "Piglet likes to be on the couch, too, so you might have her in your lap."

Piglet comes trotting up at the sound of her name and noses into Pete's hands. "I like Piglet," says Pete. "The park was, like, full of raccoons and squirrels. I miss normal animals."

"Raccoons are pretty rad. But, you know. Wild. None of them bit you, right? That would suck."

"They mostly hung out next to the hot dog guy." Pete gives Piglet a bite of tofu. "Oh, sorry. I wasn't supposed to do that, right?"

"In theory, but none of us can actually resist her."

Pete grins. "She's a connoisseur of international cuisine, huh?"

"She's a vacuum cleaner," Alicia says affectionately. "She'll eat anything."

"That's a useful trait in a dog." Pete puts his empty plate onto the table and thinks about what to do next. Should he get up? Help clean up? In the end he presses his forehead to Alicia's leg.

Alicia pets his hair gently. "Go get comfortable in the living room with Piglet. Mikey and I will put all this away and come join you."

Pete nods and stands up. His legs are half-asleep and Piglet isn't helping, weaving around them as he makes his way to the living room. There are blankets on the couch, lots of them. When he burrows in, Piglet sits on his lap as promised.

Bunny chirps at him from the back of the couch, putting her paw on his head to tell him to hold still.  Pete is really warm and reaching some kind of unfamiliar contentedness. "Maybe I'll go to therapy soon," he tells Piglet. Piglet wags at him.

Mikey puts the leftovers in the refrigerator. "Movie first, then I'll go get his stuff? He wants people with him, so I probably shouldn't go now."

Alicia wipes the table and puts her arms around Mikey. "Yeah, go after he goes to bed. I'll stay here to make sure he's okay."

"He's dissociating really hard. But I think the pets help. And having us around but not pressuring him."

"I kind of want to keep him in bed with us. But maybe the pets will keep him company there too."

"I think being in bed with us would be too overwhelming right now. Low-pressure is really important. Gabe's handling calling Ashlee and Crush and everything."

"Yeah. If we offer that, he'll be gone in the morning. And then death by raccoon." Alicia frowns at the coffee maker on the counter. "Should we make some or is that just going to keep him from falling asleep?"

"No coffee. He drinks sleepytime tea. Do we have that? What IS that?"

"It sounds horrifying," says Alicia. "Maybe milk. And cookies."

"Milk and cookies are always a good answer. Milk, cookies, and a Shar Pei all up in his junk."

"She's so excited about new junk," Alicia nods. "Okay, Way. Let's go cuddle the shit out of him."

"Cuddle team powers activate." Mikey offers his hand for a fist-bump.

Alicia knocks her fist against his and kisses him on the lips. "It's on."

Pete allows cuddling and eats his cookies and is visibly yawning when the movie is over. "That was a good one. You have good taste, Mikes."

"Alicia picked that one," Mikey says and lets himself pet Pete's leg. "Do you want to stay up a bit more or go to bed?"

Pete's face twists. "I... I could stay up. If you guys are staying up."

"How about I stay with you until you fall asleep?" Alicia asks. "You look really tired, honey."

"Do, um. Do your pets ever sleep in the guest room?"

"I think I can pretty much guarantee that. They'll edge you out of the bed if you let them." Alicia strokes Pete's head and pulls him off the couch, and Piglet and Bunny's ears come up in excitement. "See?"

"Piglet's a good blanket. I wouldn't mind her sleeping in there with me." He more than wouldn't mind, he'd feel really safe. "Okay. Show me where it is?"

Alicia leads him upstairs to the guest bedroom. Mikey trails behind them. "You're right across from us, so knock or yell if you need anything. I'll go get you some pajamas."

"It's really nice of you to let me stay."

"We like having you here," Alicia says. She'd do anything to get that sad look out of Pete's eyes. "We missed you."

"Yeah? For real? I mean, I've missed you guys, too, a lot."

Alicia nudges him towards the bed and makes eyes at Mikey, who's hovering in the doorway, to stay with Pete. "For real," Mikey says. "I'm sorry I kind of lost touch with you."

"You were busy. You had stuff. And I was kind of a major downer for a long time, there."

Mikey shrugs. "Me too. That's not really an excuse."

Alicia comes in with the pajamas. "I hope these fit."

"Thank you." Pete takes them and sets them carefully on the bed. "For dinner, too. And all of it. I think maybe I'm not really doing okay right now."

Alicia steps a little closer and wraps her arms around him. "We'll help you work on it if you let us. Right, Mikey?"

"Definitely." Mikey puts his arms around both of them. "I'll get your wallet and stuff right now, and tomorrow we can call and make appointments. We'll go with you to all of them. Cool?"

Pete thinks about it. "If you go with me, I'll be able to go. It got really hard doing it on my own lately, you know?"

"I know." Mikey squeezes Pete's arm. "Sometimes Alicia takes me and we get doughnuts after."

"If we get doughnuts after, I'll definitely go." Pete yawns in Alicia's face. "Wow, I'm more tired than I thought."

"Hop in bed. Pig will crash out with you."

Pete takes his pants off, not even caring that the two of them are watching him, and crawls into the bed. As promised, Piglet jumps up and stretches out along Pete's body. She's warm and smells like clean dog. "Good dog," Pete whispers.

Mikey goes to find his keys. And his phone, so he can text Gerard that he's bailing on recording tomorrow for reasons. He's going to have to tell Gerard not to come visit either. He'll have a lot of explaining to do. He can just say there's something he and Alicia need to do, maybe. Gerard usually respects that.

He sends his texts and drives over to Pete's, letting himself in and frowning at the mess inside. Pete must have cancelled his cleaners at some point. He makes a mental note to set up the cleaning service again before they let Pete go back home and starts to check logical places for the wallet, phone, and meds. They're all set carefully in a row on the kitchen counter, not forgotten but deliberately left behind.

Mikey kind of wants to punch Pete. But only kind of; the rest of him gets it. It's scary and overwhelming sometimes, and Pete doesn't have an Alicia and a Gerard to lean on. They're going to help Pete fix it and keep an eye on him this time, so it doesn't get this bad again.

The phone is dead. Mikey goes on a hunt for the charger. It's still plugged in in the bedroom and there are clothes and a duffel bag on the bed, like Pete thought about taking clothes with him and decided against it.

Mikey puts the clothes and everything else in the duffel bag, along with a picture of Bronx from the top of Pete's dresser. That's probably the most important things. They can always come back for other stuff later.

When he gets back to the house, Alicia's peering into Pete's bedroom through the cracked door and jumps guiltily aside when Mikey taps her on the shoulder.

"Is he asleep?" Mikey whispers.

Alicia pulls the door shut. "I think so. He was petting Piglet for a while and talking to her, but he's not moving now. Did you find his things?"

"Yeah. They were all lined up on the counter, clothes and bag on the bed. He definitely had a kind of a plan in mind."

They go into the bedroom and Alicia lies back on the bed. "Is it better or worse that he thought about leaving instead of just walking out the door, even if it was terrible and dumb?"

"I'm not sure. It's really good that we found him, though. He could've... been hurt."

Alicia squeezes her eyes shut. Fucking Pete. "Him not getting assaulted or catching something is a plus. You wanna plug that phone in and see how many people we have to call?"

"Gabe covered some of them. But yeah. I'll plug it in in a minute." First he needs to wrap his arms around her and breathe in the smell of her hair.

Alicia snuggles up to him and strokes his back. "I really want him to be okay."

"He will be. We'll take care of him."

"I really love you, Mikey."

"I really love you, too, Licia."

* * *

Alicia wakes up first in the morning and she's cold, which means that the animals have been with Pete all night. That's good.

She goes downstairs to start the coffee maker and finds Pete and the animals standing at the pantry door, staring at the bags of pet food. "One at a time," Pete says. "One at a time. I only have two hands, dudes."

"Hey," she says sleepily. Pete looks wide awake but also rested, not quite ten times better than the day before, but close. "Bunny steals Pig's food unless you feed her first."

"The cat steals the dog food? That's different. Pig, sit. Sit. Good girl."

Both Piglet and Bunny sit. "She likes to pretend she's a dog," says Alicia and starts the coffee. "Coffee for you or do you want something else?"

"Coffee's good. Thank you." Pete measures out food into the bowls. "I slept really well. Your guest room is nice and Piglet's a great blanket."

"If she slobbered all over you in the night, you're welcome to have another shower. Actually, you can have a shower or nap or anything you like whenever you want, okay?"

"Maybe." Pete sets the bowls out and watches the animals go at them. "I think I should maybe call my doctor."

"I think that's a good idea." Alicia looks at the contents of the fridge critically. "Do you eat meat right now? Should I make bacon?"

"I'm on meat right now, yeah. Though the hot dogs might put me back off it. But bacon would be good."

"Mikey brought your meds and wallet over last night," says Alicia carefully after starting breakfast. "Do you want to take your meds now? Or wait for what the doctor says?"

"He's going to be really annoyed with me."

"You don't need him to love you. You have other people for that."

"It's going to be all, Peter, we've talked about noncompliance." He makes a face. "But I tried."

Alicia hides a smile behind her hand at 'Peter.' "I'm sure you're not his first person with med problems. Sit down, breakfast is ready. I'll go get Mikey."

Pete sits down obediently. Alicia and Mikey are so good at making their requests and expectations clear. There aren't any mind games or tricks. It's really nice.

Alicia puts a fork in Pete's hand and that's when Mikey walks in. His hair's sticking up in every single direction.

"That looks good," Pete says. "It reminds me of Warped."

Mikey knows Pete means it, too, so he doesn't try to fix it. "That was a good summer."

"Yeah." Pete opens his mouth like he's going to say something else, then shuts it and looks down at his plate.

Alicia exchanges looks with Mikey. This isn't the right time to be bringing any of it up, but she wants to. "I have to go to work," she says instead. "You two can handle the doctor stuff, right? And we can talk tonight."

"You want me to stay another night?"

"Definitely," she says. "If you liked staying here last night."

"It was nice. Really nice. I slept." He rubs the back of his neck, still looking down at the table. "But I don't want to be in the way."

"You're not in the way. We like having you here and so do the pets." Alicia pours Pete more coffee. "I know it's probably hard for you to ask for what you need, but you officially can, by the way."

"I need..." Pete takes a shaky breath and still doesn't look at either of them. "I need to not be all alone with nothing but my brain."

"We can do that." Mikey inches his chair a little closer to Pete's. He's been on both sides of needing that. "That's, like, the easiest request you could make."

"I know you need to go to the studio and stuff. Maybe I can stay with the pets while you do that?"

Mikey shrugs. "Maybe tomorrow. I took today off."

"That's right. You said that." Pete nods. "I guess I should call my doctor, then."

Mikey pats him on the shoulder. "Want me to stay with you while you do that?"

"Yeah. Please. He's going to get all... and then I'll get all..." Hand gestures accompany the gaps.

"Even if it's painful, it'll be quick," Alicia says and grabs her handbag. "I have to run. Call me if you need me."

Pete swings his feet and watches her go. "She's so great."

"Yeah, she is. Did she wrestle you into the car yesterday?"

"No, but I could tell that if I kept arguing she was going to." Pete glances at him. "I'm not, like, going to hit on your wife, Mikey. I'm not going to be a jerk and ruin everything. I'm really trying to cut back on the 'ruining everything' hobby."

Mikey blinks at him slowly. "I wasn't worried about that. Do you want to hit on her?"

"No. She's your wife. I'm not an asshole. Cheating sucks."

"You're not an asshole," Mikey agrees. "I don't think Alicia worries that you'll hit on me either, so we're all good here."

"Okay. So we're good?"

"We're good." Mikey slides his own phone towards Pete. "Call your doctor."

Pete takes a breath, looks at his insurance card, and dials. This is going to suck. But Mikey's got his back.

Mikey watches him and drinks his coffee. The comments about hitting on Alicia are interesting, but the personal shit is being shelved until further notice. "You can put it on speakerphone if you want."

Pete nods and hits the speakerphone button, then makes his way through the maze of receptionists to get directly to his psychiatrist. He reaches across the table and hooks his finger in Mikey's sweatshirt.

Pete's hand is almost imperceptibly shaking, so Mikey takes it and presses it. "It's okay."

The doctor picks up and Pete closes his eyes and holds on to Mikey's hand tightly while he explains what happened and how long he's been off his meds. The doctor sighs and lectures and gives him numbers about how to step back onto them. Pete doesn't write them down, just keeps his eyes closed and nods and mumbles "okay" every so often.

Mikey reaches over for a pad of paper by the landline and a pen. "Hi," he interjects. "I'm Pete's friend. Could you repeat that so I can write it down?" The doctor rattles off the information again irritably and transfers Pete to reception, where Mikey makes him an appointment for next week.

"All done," Mikey says when they hang up and hands Pete his pills and a glass of water.

"Thanks." Pete squeezes Mikey's hand. "I should call my therapist, too. For an appointment. He's really nice, though, he won't yell."

"Let's do it right now. And then you can take your meds and we'll hang out."

Pete takes a deep breath and dials. This time he just has to talk to the receptionist and make an appointment. That's better.

The appointment is for the next day, so Mikey writes that down, too. He might have to take off from recording again if Alicia has work. "Come on," Mikey tells Pete. "Your choices are ice cream, nap, or cartoons. What do you want to do?"

Pete laughs. "Is that the same list of options you have for your niece?"

"She likes it," Mikey says defensively.

"I wasn't complaining, just... laughing at myself for being a toddler."

"Toddlers are awesome," says Mikey. "You'd like her, I think. Bronx would too."

"Toddlers are great." Pete brightens visibly thinking about Bronx. "I would love to let them play."

"When you're ready, you should call and talk to him. I bet he misses you."

"Yeah. Maybe... maybe this afternoon. He's in New York, it's so far away."

Mikey walks around the table and gives Pete a hug. "He won't be there forever."

"Thanks, Mikey. I couldn't do this without you."

Mikey squeezes Pete more tightly. "You're welcome. Oh, hey. I forgot another option. We could go walk Piglet."  

"Let's do that first. She'll like it."

"Pig!" Mikey yells. "We're going for a walk." She comes galloping up. "Do you want to check on your friend the hot dog guy or go to a different park?"

"Different park." Pete ducks his head. "It'd be awkward to go back there right now."

"I agree," Mikey says. "There's a playground the next block over, with swings. We'll go there."

Pete gets Piglet's leash from the door and lets her drag him out the door. She is on a mission.

Mikey has to jog to catch up with them. Pete turns around and laughs when he's half a block ahead of Mikey and twisted up in the leash. Piglet knows exactly where she's going.

"Pig loves the park," Mikey says once he's caught up. "Lots of things to sniff and pee on and sometimes kids who will give her snacks."

"That's what I like about the park too," says Pete. "Except they frown on peeing and talking to strange kids."

"So you like sniffing things."

Pete waggles his eyebrows and cracks up. "You know it."

Mikey grins and bumps his hip against Pete's. Pete is definitely doing better. This is going to be okay.

The playground is completely deserted so they let Piglet off the leash. Pete's as restless as she is for a while, hanging on the monkey bars while Pig jumps below, but then he seems to settle down and makes his way to the swing where Mikey's checking his phone.

"They're putting out a patch for my Star Wars game. That's awesome. I'm gonna level up so hard." Mikey glances up at Pete through his hair. "How're you doing, dude?"

Pete walks the swing back until he's up on tiptoes and lets go. "I feel like I'm doing something. That's better than hiding."

"Yeah, I hear you." Mikey watches Piglet sniff around at the base of a tree. "You want to help me paint the fence tomorrow?"

"Totally." Pete looks down at his sneakers and gives himself another push. "Can we watch another movie tonight? You know, on the couch like last night?"

"Yeah. We can have popcorn, too. Pig loves popcorn."

"Sweet. I'll feed her. Does Bunny eat popcorn?"

"Bunny licks the salt off and then bats it around. It's really cute." Mikey tucks his phone away and smiles at Pete. "This is cool. I like hanging out."

"I like hanging out with you too," Pete says quietly. There are butterflies in his stomach. "With just you and with you and Alicia. I thought it would be weird for me to be in your house but it's not."

"I'm glad. I want you to feel comfortable there."

"Just promise me if I'm outstaying my welcome, okay? Or being too clingy? I promise not to go back to the park." Pete doesn't want to go back to the park anymore, not really. Sleeping on an actual mattress felt too great.

"Where would you go instead?"

Pete shrugs and kicks at the sawdust under his feet. It gets into his sneakers and he wrinkles his nose. "I'd go back to my house. Pretend the backyard is a park if I really need to, I guess."

"I'm glad you would go home instead of finding another park. But you can stay with us for as long as you want."

"I want to for a while." Pete looks at Mikey out of the corner of his eye. "Cuddling with you two is nice."

"It's awesome. Between the three of us I bet we have a PhD in cuddling."

"Maybe even two PhDs, if you count the animals." Piglet runs around them in circles, nosing at their legs and yipping.

"What do you want, Pig? You want to play? You want to wrestle?"

Piglet barks and puts her legs on Pete's knees. Pete laughs. "I think she wants to wrestle," he says and launches himself at her.

Pete needed to roll around with a dog. He's flushed and breathing hard and it makes Mikey remember Pete the way he was on his best days, when he smiled so wide that Mikey forgot all the shitty parts of his life.

"I miss having a dog," Pete says, looking up at him from the ground. "I didn't even realize how much I missed it."

"You can play with Piglet any time you want. Standing offer." Right now, Mikey would even let Pete take Piglet home for a night. Just one night, though. And Pete would have to bring her back in time for breakfast.

"She's a good girl. Doesn't get mouthy at all."

"She plays nice." Mikey thinks about helping Pete up, but he looks so happy lying down in the sawdust with Pig's paws all over him, so he sits down next to Pete instead.

"Maybe I'll get another dog. When I go home."

"That would be pretty cool. You could take it on playdates with Pig."

"Yeah. Maybe a really big dog. A mastiff."

"Those are really great to cuddle with. It would be, like, your size." Mikey drums his fingers on his jeans. "Do you want to go get coffee?"

"Yeah. And maybe, like, some muffins."

"I will totally find you a coffee and a muffin, Pete Wentz. And you, Piglet."

"Does she get her own muffin?"

"She isn't really supposed to have anything with sugar in it," says Mikey, clipping the leash to Pig's collar and starting to walk towards the house. "But if I don't get her one she'll get all up in my face until I cave and we like to circumvent that kind of thing while I'm driving. Alicia insists."

"We could get her a gluten-free muffin."

"I don't think gluten-free is the same as sugar-free," Mikey says thoughtfully. "But maybe she would like one of those better. Usually I get her carrot cake because it's with vegetables."

"But it has frosting, right?"

"I scrape it off and eat it myself." They come up to the car and Mikey clicks it open. "No, Pig, you do not get shotgun. Pete gets shotgun."

Piglet hops into the seat before Pete can and gives Mikey a woeful look.

Pete's watching them both with big eyes. "You can't guilt-trip me, Pig," says Mikey. "Pete, haul her out and get in."

"I can ride in the back if she really wants it."

"You're going to spoil her," says Mikey but relents. "Okay. Sit in the back and let's roll. I need a venti."

Pete climbs into the backseat and rests his chin on the back of Piglet's seat. "She's the co-pilot."

"She takes on the role when Alicia's not here. She knows exactly how to get to Starbucks, too."

"Like, if you take a wrong turn she'll bark at you?"

"Yeah. She also yips at me if I take my phone out when I'm driving." Mikey fishes it out of his pocket and Piglet yips right on cue. "I don't know how we ended up with these weirdo smart pets."

"She's looking out for you. That's awesome."

"I'm pretty lucky."

The Starbucks isn't far at all, and there's an open spot right in front of the door.

"I can go in and order and you stay with her?"

Pete nods. He's not ready to see any people other than Mikey and Alicia, and part of him is petrified that one or, worse, both of them will be recognized. "Can you get me a medium? Black?"

"Yeah. I'm on it. And what kind of muffin?"

"Chocolate, please." Pete pets Piglet and puts his hood up. "Fuck, there are all these people around."

"Stay in the back. I'll be quick. Promise."

Pete nods and makes himself small in the middle of the backseat. "Hey Pig, want to come here and cuddle?"

Piglet hops over the divider and climbs into Pete's lap like he’s a chair. He nuzzles into Piglet's face until Mikey comes back with coffee and a bag of muffins and Piglet jumps back into the front seat to sniff and pant at the bag. "I see how I rate," Pete says, but he's relieved Mikey is back.

"Hold these so she doesn't eat them? You're a pig, Pig."

Pete grabs the bag and finds Pig's muffin. It's carrot cake covered in frosting, just like Mikey said. "Can I eat her frosting?" he asks.

"Stealing my sugar fix, Wentz. But yeah, go ahead, or she'll wrestle you to the floor for it."

Pete scrapes the frosting off with his finger and licks it, holding the muffin in the air away from Piglet. "It's really good," he says quietly, mumbling around his finger. Mikey's watching him in the rearview. "Eyes on the road."

"Right." Mikey drops his eyes to the road. "I got you a chocolate one, like you asked."

"Thanks." Pete licks the rest of the frosting off and wonders if Mikey's has frosting too. Piglet is whining for her muffin now, poking her wet nose into Pete's face, so he gives it to her and she scarfs it up. "Can we go home now, please?"

"Right." Mikey eases the car back into traffic. He doesn't know why he's so agitated all of a sudden. "You feeling okay?"

Pete feels kind of warm and his stomach is kind of fluttering in a way he's learned to associate with wanting to lie down and close his eyes forever, but he doesn't really want to do either of those things right now. "I'm okay. Just tired. And I kind of miss your house. Is that weird?"

"I don't think so. It's a good house. Hang in there, okay?"

Pete closes his eyes and pinches a bit off his muffin. "Yeah. I'm sorry I'm so messed up."

"You don't have to apologize to me, Pete."

"Thanks." It's nice not to have to apologize. It's an instinct Pete has by now, though.

"Alicia and I talked last night and we both totally agree we want you to stay as long as you want to."

Pete nods. "I really appreciate it. I--" He thinks about what he was going to say, and yeah. "I don't want to leave right now. I want to stay with you."

"Cool." Mikey smiles at him in the rearview mirror. "Then it's settled."

Bunny is really glad to see them. She ignores the muffins but rubs against Pete's ankles and sniffs at his sawdust-covered clothes.

"Can we sit in the living room with the coffee?" asks Pete. Maybe he can get an extra cuddle.

"Yeah." Mikey leads the way and flops down on the couch. "Ow. Bunny. Not on my crotch, dude."

Bunny walks all over Mikey, on his crotch and up his abs and chest, and Pete wants to get in on that. Bunny walking on him, not Pete walking on Mikey. He sits down too. The cushions are so soft he ends up leaning into Mikey's side.

"So later I'm supposed to log on to Call of Duty with Suarez," Mikey says around a mouthful of muffin. "You can hang in here or if you don't like the game, the pets will keep you company while you nap or read or whatever. You can grab any book you want. Alicia's on a sci-fi kick."

Mikey offering him a few choices again is so exactly what Pete needs. "I'll hang around." Pete wants to stay near Mikey even though the thought of Suarez makes him a little nervous. He's not nervous enough to ask Mikey not to tell him that Pete's there, anyway.

"Cool. Alicia will get home sometime after that and I think she wanted to go grocery shopping later. You can go with her if you want to, or I'll go with her and you can keep the pets company."

Pete shrugs. "Maybe. That's people again, but I guess I gotta get back on that horse sometime, right?"

"There are a lot more days for sometime. You don't have to do it yet if you don't want to. Tomorrow's your therapy appointment, that might be enough to focus on."

"Shit." Pete forgot about that. "Will one of you come with me?"

"Yeah. Or both of us, if you want. And doughnuts after."

Pete carefully leans into Mikey's side. "I'm glad you found me in the park."

"I'm glad, too. You know, when things get bad and scary in your head, you can call me. Any time. Or Gabe. Or Patrick. Or, like, the Maddens, even. Any of us would come help you."

Pete nods. "I know that. I don't know why I didn't this time."

"It's hard. I know it's hard." Mikey puts his arm around Pete's shoulders. "I have an unfair advantage, which is even if Alicia wasn't around, my brother can't go more than twenty-four hours without being all up in my business. I've never been alone."

Pete turns his face into Mikey's side. He smells like the Mikey Pete remembers, just slightly more washed and shampooed, which is weird because now he's all, like, wise and shit. "Speaking of your brother, it's been about twenty-four hours since you found me. Is he going to come around?"

"I texted him last night. Didn't tell him you were here, just that I was helping a friend and would be a little out of pocket for a couple days."

Pete nods. "How is he?"

"He's good. He's great, really. He's got the world in the palm of his hand."

"Good for him. I never felt like that."

"You and Gerard are different people. Just like me and him are different."

"How's the album going? I'm distracting you from recording, aren't I?" Pete chews on his knuckle.

"Nah, we needed a break. It's going okay, but we need a creative refresh. Gerard's gonna write a comic book, see if that makes his brain shift gears."

"It'd be cool if you showed me your studio. I miss recording, sometimes."

"Totally. You can fool around with my basses, if you want."

Pete chokes on an innuendo. "Sure, yeah. That would be awesome."

"No joke? Not even a little one?"

"Yours is the only bass I ever wanted to fool around with, Mikeyway," Pete says, and it comes out way too fucking truthful.

"Gabe put down the bass years ago, I guess."

"And he'd never offer."

"He loves you."

"Yeah," Pete says warmly. "He does. He doesn't love me like that, though, and I'm okay with that, I think."

"As long as you know he'd take a bullet for you. I think. Well, unless the bullet would fuck up his jacket or his hair."

Pete punches Mikey in the side. "It depends on what jacket."

"I'm teasing you, man. Gabe would do anything for you."

"I know. I shouldn't have disappeared without letting him know. That was shitty. I texted him to say I'd be offline, but he freaked out anyway, didn't he?"

"Yeah, kinda. He was really upset. But he knows Alicia and I are taking care of you now, and he sends his love. So does Travis."

"Okay." Pete swallows the lump in his throat. He owes each of them a vegan cake and, like, puppy toys. "I love them too, you can tell them that if they call. Can you call Patrick later and tell him too?"

"Yeah. I can definitely do that. They're not mad at you. They're glad you're okay."

Pete gathers Bunny to his chest and pets her ears. "Is it okay if I just nap on the couch while you're gaming? I don't want to be in the room alone, but I'm kind of tired."

"Yeah, that's fine. You'll probably have pets on top of you."

"I was counting on it."

Pete slides down sideways onto the couch and pulls his legs up, pressing them into Mikey's thigh. "I can do some chores after. Just tell me what to do."

"You don't have to. But if you want to help me vacuum later, that'd be cool."

"Cool. I'm good at picking stuff up. It comes with being a dad." Pete yawns. "Shit, I'm wiped."

"Lie down. I'll grab you a blanket."

Pete presses himself further into the cushions and sticks a pillow under his head. Bunny curls up in front of his face and Piglet lies down where Mikey was sitting.

Mikey drapes a blanket over Pete and Piglet. "Sleep well, dude."

Pete looks up at Mikey before closing his eyes. He looks completely normal, none of that painful, careful kindness that's so hard for Pete to handle sometimes. "Thanks."

Mikey sits down on the floor and texts Suarez that he's about to sign on. He shoots a quick text to Gabe, Travie, and Patrick, too, saying "pete loves u & has therp appt 2mrrw. going back on meds. still off phone/net. ive got this."

The phone starts buzzing with reply texts and Mikey sets it to silent. Gaming time is quiet time, and it would suck to wake Pete up. He's already breathing evenly.

* * *

Alicia gets home a few hours later. "Babe?" she calls from the entryway. "Hey, Mikes? You home?"

Pete stirs on the couch and Mikey trails a hand over his hair on complete autopilot as he goes to meet Alicia at the door. "Hey, Licia. How was work?"

"Pretty good. We got a lot done. Is he still here?"

Mikey takes Alicia's hand and walks with her to the living room. Pete's still half-asleep but starting to move. "He said he wanted to stay for a while. And he promised not to go back to the park."

Alicia smiles. "Good. Now we don't have to chain him to the wall in the laundry room."

"Kinky," says Mikey.

"What's kinky?" Pete asks in a bleary voice.

"Alicia is," Mikey says. "You hungry?"

"Yeah," Pete says, getting off the couch and dislodging the animals. "I was promised Chinese leftovers?"

"All of the Chinese leftovers in the world. Come on."

Alicia notices Pete looking wistfully at the floor, but he sits at the table this time. "How is Chinese even better reheated?"

"Magic." Mikey moves around the kitchen, getting everything out and heated up. "We went to the park with Pig. It was pretty rad."

"We wrestled," Pete nods. "We're very well-matched."

"You and Mikey wrestled, or you and Piglet?"

"Uh. Me and Piglet." Pete looks at Alicia nervously.

"It's hard to tell sometimes. They both love wrestling so much." Alicia rolls her eyes at Mikey, but she's grinning.

"I wouldn't wrestle with Mikey without your permission."

"Don't let him body-slam you. He almost broke my brother's neck."

"That was one time," says Mikey. "And I apologized."

"Doesn't Gerard have scars from your overly enthusiastic wrestling as a child?"

"That is badass, Mikeyway," says Pete.

"I hit him with a folding chair," Mikey says with mixed pride and embarrassment. "Right across the back."

"Brutal," says Pete, impressed. "You've got style."

"He fell off the porch. Blood everywhere. It was a thing."

"I will never be misled by your joined-at-the-hip front again," says Pete, eating the last eggroll. "Are there fortune cookies?"

"We ate them all last night. We have Oreos, though."

"Double-stuffed?"

"Fuck yes." Mikey goes to the pantry and Alicia stares at Pete.

Pete feels his cheeks get red and looks down at the table to avoid Alicia's eyes. He wishes he had more hair to hide behind. "So, uh. How are the tar pits? I haven't been there since I was still a new kid in town."

"They're good. Full of fossils. You're feeling better. There's, like, an actual person behind your eyes instead of just numbness."

Pete rubs his eyes and looks back up at Alicia. "The TLC helped. Thank you."

"I'm glad. I don't like seeing you all numb and sad."

"I don't like seeing me like that either. I keep trying to not make that my default state."

"Good." She smiles. "What do you want to do tonight?"

"Mikey said you had to go to the grocery store."

"Yeah. Stock up on all the goodies."

"I could help. I have good taste in goodies." He still feels a little nervous about going out in public, but it's less scary with Alicia.

"Yeah? Awesome. Maybe you get less distracted by cheese products than Mikey does."

"Cheese is an important part of the food pyramid," says Mikey.

"It's not the entire pyramid, though."

"There are also crackers," says Pete. "According to my son."

"Dude." Mikey points at him. "What are Bronx's thoughts on fruit snacks?"

"He'd wrap himself up in fruit roll-ups like a mummy if he could." Pete's voice catches. "I should call him now before it's too late in New York."

Alicia nods and reaches out to squeeze Pete's arm. "Totally. You want to use one of our phones, or yours?"

"Ashlee's number is in my phone," says Pete. "I have to use it, but can you put it away after I'm done?"

"Absolutely." She squeezes again. "Do you want us to be in the room, or should we go in the living room?"

"Living room, please. I don't... let's just say me crying isn't my most attractive look."

"Okay. We'll be right there." Alicia kisses his cheek and takes Mikey's hand, tugging him along to the living room.

The phone is upstairs and it only takes Mikey a couple of minutes to bring it down to Pete, and then he sits down on the couch next to Alicia. "Hope that goes well."

"Hopefully he'll just talk to Bronx. Have kiddo time."

Mikey runs his fingers over Alicia's knee. "Maybe this weekend we could go over to Gee and Lindsey's. Play with Bandit."

"Yeah, maybe." Alicia leans on his shoulder. "You holding up okay, babe?"

"Yeah, it's not too bad. I like being around him. It's kind of hard to see him like this but I try not to think about it."

"It's not messing up your routine too much?"

Mikey shrugs. "It's okay right now. At some point I'm going to have to go back to the studio. Maybe I can take Pete with me."

"Okay. Let me know if it gets rough, okay? Promise?"

"Promise." He links his fingers with hers. "Look, maybe this isn't the right time, but for full disclosure purposes, you know that I still have, like, feelings for him, right? Not like I have feelings for you, obviously."

"I'm not blind, Mikey."

Mikey smiles. "Just checking. You don't have to worry about me."

"I dated him too, remember?"

"Yeah. But he promised me he wouldn't hit on you. I am not sure why he said that. It was kind of weird."

"He said he won't hit on me?" Alicia frowns and thinks about it for a minute. "Maybe he still has feelings too."

"Huh. You think so?"

"How can we test this?"

"He's going to think we're playing mind games if we try to test him. Maybe you can ask him at the store."

"Right. No mind games. I'll bribe him with candy."

"He'll go for that." Mikey listens to Pete's voice in the kitchen. It's too quiet to make out individual words, but it sounds pretty calm. "I kind of want to make out with you right now."

"Well, if you insist."

Mikey laughs and pulls her into his lap. "Hi."

"Hi. You being loving and taking care of people and all strong and wise really turns me on."

"It's totally mutual," Mikey says and kisses her. "We should do something tonight. After we go to bed."

"Something of the sex variety?"

"No, I was thinking we could do the New York Times crossword in bed," says Mikey and gasps when Alicia squeezes his dick.

"You think you're so clever, Mr. Way."

"I can stop that if you want."

"I don't think you can."

Pete's voice in the kitchen goes quiet. "Oops," says Mikey and kisses Alicia for the last time.

"We'll pick this up later, don't worry." Alicia eases off his lap. "Pete?"

Pete walks into the living room gingerly holding the phone. He doesn't look like he's been crying, but he doesn't look deliriously happy either. "Hey. I miss my kid."

"Sorry, man." Mikey holds his arms out. "Is he having fun in New York?"

Pete awkwardly leans in for a hug. "Yeah. He likes spending time with his mom. I guess I can't be mad at that."

Alicia takes Pete's phone and switches it off. "Grocery store, or you need a few minutes?"

"We can go to the store. I'm okay." Pete finally looks at them properly. "Um, your t-shirt, Alicia, it's kind of riding up."

"Boobs, stop trying to escape." She tugs her shirt back into place. "They're incorrigible. Like puppies."

"Chest puppies." Mikey grins. "We should make that a thing."

Pete stares. "Like, stick little googly eyes and whiskers on them?"

"No, no, we should just make the term a thing. Chest puppies." Mikey laughs, his stupid honking giggle. "Chest puppies."

"You are twelve years old, Mikey, and I'm rethinking your earlier request to do something," says Alicia. "Please don't tweet that."

"I'm just gonna text it to Frank, he'll be into it."

"You do that." Alicia pats his knee and gets off the couch. "Pete and I are going to the store. You want to take anything with you, Pete? Piglet is not allowed."

"Just a hoodie, I guess." Pete grabs the one he'd worn to the park earlier. "Is this store, like, crowded usually?"

Alicia herds him out the door. "It's not too bad. But if it is and you don't like it, you can wait for me in the car and I'll try to be quick, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you." He flips his hood up in the car and watches the traffic go by. "Bronx said he misses me."

"Of course he misses you, Pete. You're his dad."

"I guess I didn't even think about that when I went to the park. That he would miss me. I kind of assumed he'd forget about me."

"You're kind of unforgettable."

"I don't know, I could give you a list of people who haven't had that problem."

"Fuck them," Alicia says viciously. "The point is, your kid isn't going to forget you."

"He's such a good kid. So smart."

"I'd like to meet him sometime." She pulls into the parking lot and sees with relief that it's not full at all.

"Yeah? It wouldn't be too... I don't know. Crossing streams?"

"You're going to have to translate that one for me."

Pete shrugs and follows her into the store. "Getting too much reality in the friendship."

Alicia wrinkles her nose and puts a bag of apples into the cart. "Do you think this friendship isn't real? We're only just picking it up, I know, but Mikey and I care about you for real."

"I know it's real. I phrased that wrong. I guess it's a question of... depth? Like, casual friends or I can cry all over you and puke on your floor friends. Which. I guess I'm living in your guest room, so... that question's kind of moot, huh?"

Alicia squeezes his shoulder. "Yeah, dumbass. If you have to puke on the floor, though, just try to do it on tile."

"Got it. Does Mikey need cheese?"

"Mikey always needs cheese." She steers the cart to the deli section. "If we can limit the selection to four different kinds of cheese things, that would be awesome."

"Does it all need to be for-real cheese, or does cheese from a can count? Cheez with a Z."

"It can be cheez with a Z. He eats it with Gerard when he comes over for gaming. There's always an empty can on the floor the next morning." She purses her lips at the cheese selection and throws a few things into the cart. "That's done."

"What do you like? Your cheese equivalent."

She grins at him. He's smiling back and he looks almost happy. "Cookies."

"Chocolate chip?"

"Yeah. And thumbprint ones with jam."

"I'm on it. I'll be right back."

Alicia leans on the cart and watches as Pete disappears into the cookie aisle. She's starting to feel nervous.

He comes back with bags of cookies and a big smile that fades when he sees her face. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. Just thinking. I'll tell you if you tell me your cheese equivalent."

"Doritos. No, wait, guacamole."

"We'll get both," Alicia says decisively and rolls the cart on. She takes a deep breath. "I just wanted to ask you something."

"Okay. Shoot."

Alicia bites her lip and says, "Mikey and I were talking about feelings earlier. Feelings that might still be there."

Pete hugs the cookies to his chest. "Oh?"

"We still have them for you. You and I can pretend I didn't say anything if it makes you uncomfortable, though. Which flavor Doritos do you want?"

"Both of you do?"

Alicia nods and looks at Pete out of the corner of her eye. He's standing stock-still, studying the Doritos like they're the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

"Even... even after everything," he says.

"I guess it never went away. I didn't realize until I saw you yesterday."

"So... so you want me to leave so I won't fuck you guys up. Okay. Yeah. I... yeah, of course, definitely."

Alicia whips around. "That's not what I said at all."

"But you guys are having feelings about me. I don't want to mess up your marriage."

"You couldn't mess up our marriage if you tried, Wentz. I just wanted you to know because if there are any feelings you still have, too, I thought we could do something about them. Something that involves you staying, not leaving."

Pete's mouth falls open and he stares at her.

"Obviously you can stay with us even if you don't want to be with us. We'll still be your friends, always. Maybe you can think about that in the car?" Being brave is exhausting. "Pick your chips first."

Pete blindly reaches out and grabs a bag of chips. "Wait. Alicia. You. For real?"

"I wouldn't joke about this," Alicia says forcefully.

"Be with both of you. Like. At once?"

Alicia shivers. "Yeah. That would be nice."

"Wow. I didn't think that was... an option."

Alicia rolls the cart back to produce, glancing back at Pete. She'll make Pete guac from scratch. That'll be good. "Mikey and I have never tried it."

"Neither have I."

"Are you okay with trying it with us? I can't promise it'll work, but I can promise that we'll try and that we'll never deliberately hurt you."

"I know you guys wouldn't. And, just, like, for the record, I've had opportunities for threesomes. I just. Never."

Alicia hides her smile in her shoulder. "Well, I'm honored. Any reason you're changing your stance on threesomes now?"

"Like you said. You and Mikey won't hurt me."

"Damn straight." She picks out some avocados and limes. "Ready to check out? Anything else you want?"

"Can I get treats for Bunny and Piglet?"

Alicia reaches out then and touches him on the cheek because she can't not anymore. "Yeah. I'll meet you here in a few minutes? I just thought of something else we'll need."

Pete nods and hurries off to the pet supply aisle. Treats and toys. Bunny and Piglet need to live it up. He's glad he took his wallet. Now he can really spoil the pets. The way he hasn't given them any treats yet is appalling.

Alicia has to pick up condoms and lube. She and Mikey are so unprepared for threesomes, it's embarrassing.

She texts Mikey, too, so he's not totally blindsided when they get back. "pete on board. change sheets on bed." It gives her a thrill to type that, those mundane words implying so much.

"do we even have other sheets???"

"mikey i dont care find other sheets"

"i dont even know where they would be. where do we keep sheets?"

"i am going to draw up blueprints of the house for you. try linen closet next to bthroom"

Pete comes back with treats and toys. "I wasn't sure if Bunny liked fish or chicken better."

"She likes both," Alicia says. She's got a box of condoms in one hand and a bottle of lube in the other.

"Oh. You were getting supplies."

"I thought we should have them." She feels kind of embarrassed now. "Pete? Okay?"

"Yeah. That's okay. Safety first. Uh, I'm flattered that you went with Magnums, but..."

She starts to smile again. "Maybe those are for Mikey."

"Ouch. Zinged."

Alicia laughs. "Or maybe they're for me. We should go home and find out."

"Okay. Let me pay, cool?"

"It's just some snacks. But if you really want to, okay."

Pete pays and they drive home quietly, Pete staring out the window and Alicia hoping they're doing the right thing.

"We'll watch a movie like we planned, okay?" Alicia says quietly when she parks in the driveway. "Get comfortable."

"I'm comfortable. I'm totally comfortable."

"I'm kind of nervous," she says with a laugh. "Full disclosure."

"Oh, thank god. Me too."

Pete's not hiding it that well. "It'll be really good," Alicia promises. "Let's go find Mikey."

Pete carries the grocery bags in, weaving around the pets to get to the kitchen. "Yeah, hey, guys, hey, I have treats for you, can you smell them?"

Bunny and Piglet sprint towards Pete and paw at him, begging, and Mikey comes downstairs to investigate. "You're going to make them love you more than anyone, Wentz."

Pete kneels down to distribute treats and toys and belly-rubs. "Animals are easy like that."

Mikey gets on his knees next to Pete and strokes Piglet's side. "You're good with them."

"They don't expect anything but you being nice to them."

"Yeah. I know what you mean." Mikey's not sure if Pete would believe any promises about mind games, but he can at least cuddle him. "You ready to watch that movie?"

"Yeah." Pete ruffles Piglet's ears and stands up, shooting Mikey an awkward smile. "I'm making it weird, huh?"

Mikey bumps Pete's shoulder with his. "We're pretty good with weird. Lots of practice."

"We should have popcorn. With the movie."

"Right." Mikey rifles through the snack cupboard. "We have caramel and plain. Let's do plain, so Bunny and Pig can have some?"

"Yeah. Awesome. Microwave or stovetop?"

"Microwave all the way." Mikey throws the bag into the microwave and punches the popcorn setting. "I burn things."

"Dude, me too. But Bronx loves the noise stovetop popping makes, so I'm trying to get better at it."

"I'm totally with your kid on that." Piglet whines when Mikey pries the first bag open. "You should give her some right away or she won't let us leave the kitchen."

Pete takes a handful and tosses the pieces at Piglet one at a time, making her jump for them.

"Now we make a break for it," Mikey whispers and tugs Pete out of the kitchen by the hand.

Alicia's already set up on the couch with the remote in her hand and Bunny on her lap. "Were you guys tormenting Piglet?"

"Pete was, as per my instructions," says Mikey. Pete looks at the couch and Mikey uncertainly.

"Come sit down, Pete," Alicia says, patting the cushion next to her. "I want the popcorn bowl in the middle."

Mikey nudges Pete a little and sits down on his other side. "I can't promise I won't try to touch your hand when we both reach for the popcorn."

"Dude, I'm not, like, afraid of you."

Alicia laughs. "Smooth moves, Mikey."

"I'm not making fun, either!" Pete blushes furiously. "I'm making this so weird."

"We both really like weird," says Mikey and takes Pete's hand. "I told you."

Pete squeezes Mikey's hand tightly. "I like weird too."

Alicia's not paying attention to the movie at all. She cuddles up to Pete's side instead, feeling him breathe and Bunny purr.

Pete carefully rests his head on Mikey's shoulder. He's ready to pull back if Mikey shifts or frowns, but Mikey just keeps eating popcorn and watching the movie. Pete's kind of sandwiched between the two of them now. It feels...nice. Really nice.

Mikey starts rubbing little circles on Pete's hand with his thumb and that feels more than nice. "You can keep doing that," Pete says, even though he feels the furthest from assertive.

Mikey smiles and rests his head against Pete's. "You're all tense. I can feel it."

"I'm waiting for one of you to make a move," Pete says honestly.

"We don't have to do anything but this tonight, Pete." Alicia rubs her cheek against Pete's arm. "Seriously. We're not crazed nymphomaniacs."

"Uh." Pete laughs nervously and touches her hair. "Maybe it's too soon for sex. But a little kissing could be nice. I just don't know what you want."

"I can't speak for Mikey, but I want to cuddle like this and maybe kiss."

"That works for me," Mikey says and puts his head on Pete's shoulder. "I'll kiss you when the next scene is over, okay? There's about to be a big fight. It's kick-ass."

"I like that you have priorities, man." Pete glances at Alicia. He can't kiss her without dislodging Mikey. Maybe after Mikey kisses him, though, then he can.

"We're big on priorities," Alicia nods. "The scene is pretty short, though, don't worry."

"Stop talking," Mikey says. "This is seriously the best part."

Pete pokes his fingers into Mikey's side but goes quiet. It helps to know that he's not going to be ambushed by kissing. Someone's going to be punched out, and then he'll be kissed. It's great.

Mikey has seen this movie five million times. He doesn't really need to watch even the best part. But he knows Pete needs some time to prepare before he's kissed.

When the movie cuts away from the last explosion, Alicia sits up and looks at the two of them with a smirk. "I want my turn after."

"Bossy, bossy." Mikey turns and cups Pete's chin in his hands. "Ignore her, dude. I got this."

Pete closes his eyes and leans up, kissing Mikey before Mikey kisses him, because he thinks he should show some initiative.

Mikey smiles against his mouth. "Hey."

Pete really missed Mikey's lips pressed to his and his smile, too. "Hey. Kiss me, I'm not going to break."

"Promise?"

"I fucking promise," Pete says and threads his fingers through Mikey's hair, pulling him close. "Come on."

Mikey grins and kisses Pete properly, hard and deep, letting his tongue push into Pete's mouth and taste him. God, it's been a long time.

Pete reaches back to clasp Alicia's hand, hanging onto her as he takes Mikey's kiss and returns it as best as he can. Second first kisses are better than a first kiss could ever be.

Alicia kisses the back of Pete's neck, smiling over his shoulder at Mikey. Kissing is one of Mikey's top five talents.

Pete shivers, because that's two people who might even almost LOVE him kissing him. Mikey's so GOOD at it, and he can't wait to kiss Alicia's mouth too as soon as Mikey lets him go.

"My turn," Alicia says, reaching out to tug Mikey's hair. "My turn, Way, let him go."

"If you insist," says Mikey, putting his hands on Pete's back and gently turning him around to face Alicia, and hooks his chin over Pete's shoulder to watch.

Alicia threads her fingers in Pete's hair and holds him still, taking charge of the kiss. She wants Pete to know that he is hers, as far as she's concerned.

Pete whines into her mouth, completely involuntarily. He forgot what being with her was like, how it felt like being owned. And with both of them here, it's twice as intense, because Mikey's pressed up to Pete's back and ass with his hand on Pete's thigh.

"Share," Mikey says, tapping at Alicia's wrist. "My turn."

Pete shivers and turns back to Mikey, tilting his face up. "There could be some under the clothes touching."

"Of you? Or of us? Because if you want to touch Alicia's boobs, I totally get it."

Pete moans as Mikey kisses his neck. "Well, I was thinking of me, but the other thing is really tempting."

"My boobs are great," Alicia agrees, slipping her hands under Pete's t-shirt. "But they'll still be there tomorrow."

Pete can feel them pressed up to his side. "Can't wait, Licia. Fuck, I missed you. I missed both of you."

"We missed you too, baby."

"This is, like, the most human contact I've had in weeks."

"You're going to sleep with us tonight."

Pete turns his head to kiss Alicia. "Can we start now? Cuddle in bed?"

"Definitely." She kisses him slowly. "We definitely can do that."

Mikey kisses Pete again too. "I'll dump the rest of this popcorn out into Pig's bowl and catch up with you upstairs. I changed the sheets, by the way."

"I'm so proud," Alicia says, sticking her tongue out at him. "Where did you find them?"

Mikey shrugs. "Where you said."

"You changed the sheets for me?" Pete asks.

"We have manners." Alicia stands up and offers Pete her hands. "C'mon."

Pete looks at Mikey but follows Alicia upstairs, letting her kiss him every other step.

"Welcome to where the magic happens," she says, switching on the bedroom light. "Sorry about the mess."

"I don't care about the mess," says Pete, staring at the bed.

"You want to borrow some of my sweatpants to sleep in?"

"Can I sleep in my boxers?"

"Yes." She kisses his nose and tugs her t-shirt off over her head.

Pete's eyes go round. "You're not wearing a bra."

"I took it off while you guys were making popcorn. Underwires suck."

"You're so gorgeous." Pete wants to touch, but Mikey's not there. He doesn't know if he's allowed.

She smiles at him and grabs a tank top from the stack of laundry on top of the dresser. "Thank you."

Pete sits on the edge of the bed, watching her. "This is definitely the best non-sex I've ever had."

"I should be flattered, right?"

Pete nods. "It's a good thing."

Mikey walks in the room and starts taking off his clothes as soon as he gets through the door. "Hey. Animals love us even more now. Popcorn is effective."

"So we have a whole five minutes before they're up here begging for their piece of the bed?"

Mikey nods. "Let's batten the hatches. Pete, you're in the middle. We want to cuddle."

"On it." Pete climbs into the bed, feeling awkward at having his ass up in the air and the two of them looking at him hungrily.

"Shit," Mikey says under his breath. "Pete."

"What?"

Mikey shakes his head and climbs into the bed next to Pete. "Nothing. I just can't really believe this is happening."

"You can't believe you took me in from living on a park bench? Yeah, me either."

Alicia presses all along Pete's other side and kisses his shoulder. "Nope. The change in the number of hot dudes in this bed. It's really exciting."

Pete's pretty sure that if he makes another self-deprecating comment, Alicia will smack him in a not-fun way. "I'm glad to be here."

Mikey kisses the corner of Pete's mouth and slides his hand under Pete's t-shirt. "We're glad too."

"I'll try not to kick during the night."

"That makes one of you," Alicia mutters and wraps her arms around Pete. "Sleep now."

* * *

Pete wakes up first, and for a minute he almost panics, because he's pinned in on both sides and there's a weight across his legs. He twists around, trying to figure out what's trapping him, and throws an elbow into Mikey's ribs before he realizes that is Mikey. And on the other side, that's Alicia. And the thing on his legs is Piglet. He tries to figure out where Bunny is for a few moments and then relaxes back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. He made out with Mikey and Alicia last night.

Piglet snorfles at him and paws at his legs. "Do you need to go outside?" Pete asks her softly, and she wags frantically. "You are totally making me get up, dog."

Pete slides out carefully from between Mikey and Alicia and they roll towards each other into the spot where he was. He pulls on his jeans, trying not to let Piglet push him over.

Piglet leads him to the back door and woofs unhappily until he lets her out. The air outside is cool and clear and morning-ish. he shoves his hands in his pockets and stares up at the sky, thinking about Mikey's hands and Alicia's face. And her breasts, too. Those kind of sneak in there.

He has therapy later, and for once that doesn't make him want to go back to bed forever. Except... Mikey and Alicia are there. "Hurry up, Pig," he whispers. "It's too early for walks."

Piglet ignores him. It takes as long as it takes to finish the morning sniff routine.

"Bad dog," Pete laughs quietly. "Don't look at me like that. I was kidding."

Piglet wags and rushes past him back to the door. Now it is time for breakfast and coffee and toast and sharing toast with her.

Pete follows her into the kitchen. The house is still very quiet. He throws a look at the staircase and strains his hearing for any signs of Mikey and Alicia waking up, but Pig herds him into the kitchen, where Bunny is already expectantly sitting next to her bowl.  "Okay, okay, I can take a hint."

Mikey's floating in the vague gray space between asleep and awake. he hears noises downstairs, but he doesn't smell coffee. Therefore, it cannot actually be morning.

It takes several minutes of distressed-sounding clanging for Alicia to realize that Pete must be trying to work the coffeemaker and failing. She makes her way blearily downstairs. Pete's standing in front of the coffeemaker, looking very close to defeated.

"What even IS this thing? It's like HAL."

"Mikey's on a quest to conquer every coffee maker on the planet." Alicia wraps her arms around Pete from behind and nuzzles into his neck. "Hi."

"But how do you make it make coffee?" He leans back into her. "Hi."

"Oh, you just press-- hold on." She pushes Mikey's favorite preprogrammed sequence. "He and Gerard have some kind of coffee one-upmanship going, the more complicated the better."

"Do they ever just literally compare dicks or is it all through proxies?"

"I can't promise that's never happened. But enough about Gerard's dick." Alicia tips Pete's chin up and kisses him sleepily. "You escaped from bed too early."

"Piglet needed to go out. She was very insistent."

"You're her favorite now." Alicia kisses him again, slowly, pushing him back into the counter. "Was last night good for you?"

"It was really good. Really, really good."

"Good." She smoothes Pete's hair down and smiles. "I want to do more with you."

"Do you have specifics in mind?" He rests his hands on her waist. It feels...daring. Scary. But good.

"Hmm. I have some ideas. I want to boss you around a little. I want to ride you and watch you with Mikey. That's just a shortlist."

"Watch me do what with Mikey? Be specific."

"I want him to fuck you," she says challengingly. "That specific enough?"

Pete's eyes widen. "Um."

"Hey. It's okay. Obviously we're only going to do stuff you like."

"I'm just not sure I can jump right into that."

"Fuck, Pete, I'm sorry. I'd be happy just watching you touch. You're so fucking gorgeous together."

Pete rubs his face and looks at Alicia. "Kiss me."

Alicia kisses him the way he kissed her last night, slow and gentle. "It's okay. You can decide everything."

"I definitely want to start with kissing. Both of you."

"I like kissing." Alicia kisses him again. "Mikey better wake up soon. I love it when you kiss him."

"Kissing would be a good distraction before therapy."

Alicia hugs him. "Take your meds now and we can make out until we have to leave."

Pete nods and counts his meds out, then takes them standing at the sink, washing them down with handfuls of water. He's scared shitless, but he can't tell her that.

Alicia comes up behind him and wraps her arms about his waist. "Mikey and I like you so much."

"I like you guys, too. You're part of me."

"You're part of us too." Alicia prods the coffeemaker. "I can smell the coffee, but he's not coming down."

"I could go get him?"

"Let's bring him coffee and hang out in bed. You got up too early to get the cuddling I wanted."

"I'm just really wound up. I'm sorry."

Alicia holds his hand for a few moments before she gets the mugs out of the cupboard. "That's okay."

"I'm really mad at myself for falling apart, you know? Dropping the ball."

Alicia shrugs and pours the coffee. "It's not like you wanted to do it. It wasn't your fault."

"It was, though. If I stay in charge of myself and on top of things it doesn't get so bad."

"I know how hard it is to always have to be the one who takes care of yourself. Cut yourself some slack." She gives him two of the full mugs and kisses him. "You're trying."

"Yeah. I'm back to trying now."

"We're not going to let you stop trying."

"And you're not going to let me go back to the park." He tries to smile and doesn't quite make it.

"The park is out of the question. You can go there under strict supervision only."

"Can I ask you something kind of... harsh?"

Alicia raises an eyebrow. "Okay."

"What made you decide to bring me home instead of checking me into the psych ward?"

"We weren't really deciding between those two things, Pete."

"I'm just asking. A lot of people would have. Probably my doctor would have, if he found me. Or, like. The guys from Crush."

Alicia smiles a little. "I guess we wanted to take you home. The other thing didn't even occur to us."

"I appreciate that."

"Can I ask you something in return? Answer for an answer."

"That's fair. Yeah."

"Mikey and I were shit about keeping up a friendship with you. How come you aren't mad at us?"

He smiles at her a little. "I don't blame anyone for not wanting to be friends with me, Licia."

Alicia can't keep a cheerful face up anymore. "Pete."

"I'm hard to love. I know that. I wear people out. I'm trying to get better about that, too."

"Well. There are two of us for one of you, so I think we have a chance."

"I hurt you guys a lot. Back then. With the songs, and with how I acted, and just... I sucked."

Alicia sets the mugs down on the counter, splashing coffee everywhere, and clings to Pete. "That's in the past now, okay? Blank slate. Forgiven?"

Pete leans into her, hiding his face against her shoulder. She smells so good, like sleep and sweat and herself. "Nothing to forgive. I'm just glad you got me."

"I'm so glad too. So, so glad."

He just wants to stay there being held by her forever.

"Come on, baby," Alicia whispers into his ear. "Let's go upstairs. Let me kiss you in bed."

"Okay." He nods against her, not pulling back. "Okay."

Alicia kisses Pete's neck and reluctantly pulls away. "Coffee. Mikey will be really confused if we don't bring him any."

"Don't want to confuse Mikeyway. He'll put a curse on us."

"He'll make a hilarious face."

"You wake him up. I want to see the face."

"Yes, good idea." They walk upstairs quietly. There are animals on the bed on either side of Mikey.

Pete takes the coffee from Alicia and steps back so she can wake Mikey up. They're so beautiful together it makes his heart ache.

Alicia climbs on the bed, covering Mikey's body with hers. "Hey, sunshine, it's morning."

"Nnngghhhh." Mikey tries to burrow deeper into the blankets, but he can't escape.

Alicia grins at Pete and waves him closer. "Wake uuuuuuuuup."

"Why? Go 'way."

Alicia patiently pulls back layers of blankets until there is skin she can tickle. "You're being a bad host. Pete's here and he wants to make out."

"Make out?" Mikey pokes his head up. "Now?"

"That's the hilarious face, Pete," says Alicia, tickling Mikey only a little bit. "Come here."

Pete comes over to the side of the bed. "I have coffee."

"Oh god, thank you," says Mikey, stretching out his hands. "Give me that."

Pete hands it over and leans on Alicia. "You look good with bedhead, Mikes."

Mikey blinks sleep out of his eyes and chugs half the coffee in one go. "Wow, so do you. Both of you look awesome."

"You're just saying that so we'll kiss you."

"I'm not just saying that! But I WAS promised making out."

"Who do you want first?"

"Alicia said you wanted to make out, so come here." Alicia takes the mug away from him and sets it on the bedside table. They learned that the hard way.

Pete climbs on the bed and crawls up to Mikey. "Good morning."

Mikey tangles his fingers in Pete's hair. "Good morning. Kiss me."

Pete closes his eyes and does. He will never get tired of kissing Mikey. Never ever.

"I get to kiss you again," Mikey says into Pete's mouth. "I won the lottery."

"Kissing you is amazing, Mikey."

Bunny walks over onto the pillow by Pete and Mikey's heads and observes. Alicia laughs softly and takes her t-shirt off. "If I don't get this started you two will just sit there and smile at each other all day."

"We're also smiling at Bunny," Pete protests, and then goes quiet, because Alicia's boobs are right there.

"Take your shirt off, Pete."

"Yeah," says Pete, and gets tangled in the t-shirt. Behind him, Mikey laughs and helps him drag his t-shirt off. His fingers are warm and callused and just like Pete remembered.

"Way, you'd better be naked under that sheet."

"Uh, not yet," laughs Mikey. "Give me a second." He performs some complex manipulations under the sheet and reaches for Pete again. "Hi. Are we just rolling around this morning or having sex?"

"I hate myself for saying this," Pete says, "but it's therapy day. That has to be taken into account."

Alicia snuggles up behind Pete on his other side and wow, she's only got panties on and her breasts are pressing into his back. "Just rolling around is good. Or clothes can come back on."

"Does rolling around include cuddling?"

"As much cuddling as you like," Alicia says and rubs her face against his back. "Is this okay?"

"Yeah. It's... really okay. I can feel your boobs."

"I love that," says Mikey and wraps his arms around Pete's waist. "Can I move closer to you?"

"Yeah. Please." Pete closes his eyes and just concentrates on how their skin feels. They both are really soft, and warm. Well, some parts of Mikey are hard and/or bony. But his skin is soft everywhere. And Alicia's boobs are really squishy.

Mikey wiggles closer to him and slips his thigh between Pete's. "Okay? You feel really good."

"So do you. Both of you guys. Fuck. I really love you guys a lot."

Mikey's breath hitches. Pete can feel it because they're so close. "We love you a lot too," Alicia says in Pete's ear.

Pete leans forward and kisses Mikey, soft and slow.

Mikey kisses back the same way, following Pete's lead, and Alicia kisses Pete's shoulders. "I want my turn," she whispers.

Pete laughs and turns his head as far as he can. "Can't quite reach. Meet me halfway?"

Alicia sits up and cups Pete's upturned face in her hands. "I like it when you laugh."

"I like it, too." He closes his eyes and waits for her to kiss him. He just wants to spend the day like this, going back and forth between them. "Let's forget therapy and stay here all day."

Alicia shakes her head. Her hair's falling over Pete's face, keeping the light out. "Nope." Her smile makes it okay.

"You can be my therapy."

"We're your supplement," Alicia says and leans down to kiss him deeply.

Mikey loves watching Alicia kiss. And Pete takes it so pretty, just surrendering to her.

He tucks Alicia's hair aside and listens to Pete's quiet sighs and whimpers. "You guys are amazing."

"You could help." Alicia smiles at him over Pete's shoulder. "Touch him."

Mikey grins back and slips his hands into Pete's hair, tugging him towards him for a quick kiss. Then he gives Pete back to Alicia and slides his hands lower over Pete's shoulders and down to his chest.

Pete feels warm and safe and content. He didn't think it would be like this, not... easy. Alicia's murmuring to him between kisses and her breasts are lightly brushing his chest and it's just... nice. Not frantic, not scary. No hidden expectations. He's hard, but it's not a frantic, need-to-fuck-now thing. He's happy to just kind of stay like this. Enjoy it.

"This is the best morning ever," says Mikey burrowing his face into Pete's shoulder. His hand is kind of... roaming around Pete's chest and dipping towards his belly.

Pete pushes his body back against Mikey's. "I can tell you're happy, Mikey."

Mikey makes a pleased noise and pushes back. His dick's poking Pete high up on his thigh. "I can't help it that you're so hot."

"Maybe... maybe you two could have sex and I could watch."

"Fuck." Mikey looks at Alicia with wide eyes and she laughs. "I'm in, Licia."

"Well, you're not in yet."

Pete laughs loudly and covers his mouth with his hands. "Sorry."

"I'm just saying. I am sadly un-fucked as of right now, boys."

"Come here." Mikey reaches for Alicia. "Let's fix that."

Pete pulls back, moving down to the foot of the bed so he has a good view. Mikey and Alicia move together so easily. They fit.

"Do you have a position on positions?" Alicia asks Pete over her shoulder.

"Can, um. Can he take you from behind? I kind of have a... a thing. Which I guess you both know. Um."

Alicia grins and crawls over to Pete to give him a kiss. "Yeah. Let's do it. Way, come here and fuck me."

Mikey crawls up behind her and kisses the small of her back, slipping his fingers between her legs to make sure she's wet and ready. "Condom or no, babe?"

Alicia gasps and lowers her head on the mattress. "No condom. Come on, just do it, I'm ready."

Pete reaches out and pets her neck and the back of her head, watching as Mikey pushes inside her. "Fuck, Licia. Look at you."

Alicia feels so hot. "I love you watching me. Touch me."

"Where? Your boobs? Your... girl-ness?"

Mikey giggles and his rhythm stutters. "Girl-ness."

"Technical term, dude."

"Touch my clit, Pete," Alicia demands. "Joking later, orgasms now."

Pete moves closer and reaches underneath her, brushing his fingers over her breasts and stomach before he gets to the patch of hair between her thighs and then lower, sliding his finger against the wet lips of her vulva.

"Yeah," she gasps. "That's good. Mikey, come on, harder."

"Be patient, baby."

Pete watches Alicia's face as Mikey drives into her and strokes her cheek. "You're so fucking pretty." If he slips his other hand lower, he'll touch Mikey's cock. Pete can already feel it, sort of, as Alicia bucks back into him.

"Mm." Alicia catches his fingers in her mouth and sucks at them, looking at him through her lashes.

"Oh my god." Pete's going to die, maybe. Instead he pushes his fingers in further. "Licia, fuck."

She uses her teeth a little bit, scraping them over his knuckles. If she remembers right, he has a thing for that, too.

Pete's eyes slide shut when she does it. Later, much later, he'll ask them to work him over with bites.

Mikey is trying to watch them and thrust at the same time. Mikey is so close watching them. He got so worked up having Pete's body next to him. "Kiss her."

Pete eases his fingers free and leans in, nuzzling Alicia's lips before he kisses her.

Alicia cries out into Pete's mouth on a hard thrust. "Get your hand back down there, Pete, I need to come."

Pete kisses her more and does as he's told, finding her clit and pressing against it hard, then rubbing in fast circles.

"Like that. That's so good." Alicia kisses him back and drops her head between her shoulders. Pete slides his other hand on her back and it's slick with sweat.

Mikey leans down and bites her shoulder, scraping his teeth over the slick skin. "C'mon, baby. C'mon."

Alicia grabs Pete's hand and presses it to her clit hard, rocking into it, and it's only a few seconds until she shudders with it.

Mikey groans deep in his throat when she pulses around him. "Thank you, baby, thank you." He thrusts into it, twice, three times, then comes as well.

Pete brushes Alicia's hair off her face and looks at Mikey. He feels stunned and like his whole body is buzzing. "Holy shit."

"Kiss," Alicia says, her voice rough and thick. "Kiss me, Pete. And touch yourself."

Mikey eases Alicia up so she leans back against his chest and Pete knee-walks over to kiss her mouth. It's red and swollen and tastes so good.

"Touch yourself," Alicia reminds him. "I want you to get off, too, Wentz."

Pete presses his face into Alicia's neck and wraps his hand around his dick. He's got smears of come all over his stomach already and his dick hurts from how hard he is. "Mikey, kiss me too, I want you to kiss me."

Mikey leans over Alicia and kisses him, biting playfully at his mouth. "C'mon, Pete. Not fair to be the only one here not sticky."

Pete strokes himself faster. "Wanted to get sticky with you two forever."

"You're part of us. Always."

Pete squeezes his eyes shut and jerks himself off thinking about Mikey's come sliding out of Alicia, how wet she was down there. "I'm yours."

Mikey eases out of the bed and grabs a towel from the hamper to clean them all up. "Can we do this every morning?"

Alicia holds Pete up while Pete comes down. "I vote yes."

Pete rests his head on Alicia's shoulder. "What do you guys usually do in the morning?"

Mikey pushes them over gently and wraps his arms around both of them. "Walk the dog. Play video games. Or go over to Gerard's house."

That's something Pete hadn't thought about until just now. "I've been here for days and you haven't seen your brother once."

Mikey nuzzles Pete's neck. "Believe it or not, we've gone longer without seeing each other."

"So you've been talking on the phone, then."

"We've been texting." Mikey strokes Pete's waist. "Are you freaking out?"

"No. Surprisingly."

Alicia smiles into Pete's shoulder. "Good. I think we can fend Gerard off for another day, but he'll probably come over eventually. Is that okay?"

"Will he be mad at me?"

"I'll protect you," says Alicia at the same time that Mikey indignantly says "No!"

"Because if he's mad I can just stay in here and hang out. I don't mind."

"He's not going to be mad." Mikey is very sure of that. "And you have to meet him eventually. You're with us now. You gotta at least meet our family."

Pete has to smile. "I've met him, Mikey."

"Like a million years ago."

"I guess he's different now, yeah. He's a dad. That changes everything."

Mikey kisses Pete's shoulder. "He's different. You'll like him. I'll tell him about us ahead of time so he doesn't freak out in front of you."

"Okay." Pete takes a deep breath and nods. "Okay. Cool. I'd offer to let you meet Gabe, but..."

Alicia hmms. "He's going to be really protective of you. I like that."

"He's been like my brother the last couple of years. Always got my back. Even when he was, like, losing his mind, he was there for me."

"Everyone needs someone like that." Mikey kisses Pete's neck. "I'm glad you have him."

"I should call and talk to him. He's probably pretty pissed."

"He shouted a lot when I talked to him. I think he'd appreciate a call. Do you think you'd want to call him before your appointment, or later?"

"Well, now I need to call him now, I'll be upset all day if I think he's mad at me."

"Sorry," says Alicia. "One step at a time, right, baby?"

"Yeah. One shitty step at a time."

Alicia presses a kiss into Pete's hair. "He loves you. He'll be relieved to hear from you."

Pete leans into her. "Mikey, may I have my phone, please?"

"Sure." Mikey digs it out of the bedside table. "Do you want us here?"

"Yeah. Please." Pete takes a deep breath, turns the phone on, and closes out all of the texts and missed-call alerts to get to his contacts. Gabe is #2, right after Hilary.

Gabe picks up right away. "Pete, fucking finally."

"Hey, man. How's it going?"

"Just fine, aside from the heart attack you gave me." There's a deep calming breath over the phone line. "Pete. Are you all right?"

"Yeah. I mean, I am now. I wasn't, for a while. But now I am."

"Mikey and Alicia are taking care of you?" Gabe doesn't really sound mad, but Pete's not sure.

"Yeah. They're really amazing. They're going to take me to therapy today, and we'll get doughnuts after. Wow, I sound like a toddler. Sorry."

"You're sometimes a toddler. Don't apologize, doughnuts are awesome."

Pete takes a deep breath. "Are you angry?"

"I was pretty mad for a while that you didn't call me. But I'm not mad anymore. I'm glad you're okay."

"I didn't want to worry anybody. I just wanted to go away."

"But do you see the flaw in that chain of logic now?"

"Yeah. I wasn't really thinking in logic at the time, though, I just wanted everything to stop."

There's rustling and the sound of Gabe typing. "I'm flying out there this weekend to give you a fucking hug, Pete."

"Yeah? For real?" He presses closer to Alicia and smiles a little. He could have Mikey, Gabe, and Alicia all in the same place. All he needs is Bronx, Patrick, and Travie and his life would be complete.

"For real. Are you still staying with Mikey and Alicia? Should I get a hotel close to them?"  

"Yeah, I'm still with them. They're taking really good care of me. Not letting me get away with bullshit."

Mikey smiles happily at him and links their hands together.

"I'm glad," Gabe says, still typing. "And I'm glad you're letting them."

"We're kind of, um," Pete starts and looks at Mikey. He's not sure whether to tell Gabe now or in person later.

"Kind of what, Wentzy?"

Mikey nods a little and Alicia hums encouragingly behind him. Pete squeezes his eyes shut. "Kind of starting a... relationship."

There's a long silence. "I'll see you this weekend and you can tell me about it in person."

"Don't be mad."

"I'm not mad, Pete."

"You sound kind of mad."

"Not mad. Concerned, a little. Jumping right from a rough time into a relationship, you know?"

"Yeah," Pete says quietly. "But I've always wanted to, with them."

"Both of them? Together?"

"I don't know. I didn't really think that far."

"I'll see you this weekend, okay? I love you, brother."

"I love you too." Pete kind of wants Gabe to stay on the line with him forever, but Gabe's probably busy. "See you soon."

Mikey takes the phone and puts it back in the drawer. "You okay?"

Pete nods. "I think so. Can both of you hug me?"

Alicia wraps her arms around his waist so Mikey can put his around Pete's shoulders. "Do we need to kick Gabe's ass?"

Pete closes his eyes and presses close to Mikey's chest. "No. He wasn't mad at me. He's coming to visit."

"Rad. He can sleep on the couch with Pig."

Pete laughs and pulls Alicia's arm higher so it covers his heart. "I think he was booking a hotel."

"What, our house isn't good enough for him?" Mikey kisses Pete's hair again. "He can have the guest room, since you'll be in here with us."

Pete grins. "I'll tell him. Is that really okay?"

"Of course. He's our friend, too. Well. My friend. Alicia still reserves the right to hate him."

"I am not going to hate Pete's best friend," Alicia protests.

"Last time you saw him you got drunk and told him he wasn't funny or cute, babe."

"Well, he was being a dick."

"He's better about that now." Pete looks over Mikey's arm at the clock. "I should shower."

Alicia shifts. "We should all shower. I feel gross."

"Hey," Mikey protests. "I'm not gross."

"No," Alicia agrees and reaches over Pete and gives Mikey a deep kiss. "But you try getting fucked bare."

"I have tried but you won't let me." He sticks his tongue out at her.

Alicia pinches Mikey' tongue and jumps out of bed. "First shower."

Pete watches her go and glances at Mikey. "You guys really are pretty perfect, huh?"

"We're really happy." Mikey hugs Pete closer to his chest. They're still sticky. "Even happier with you."

"But, like, do you want to be yourselves with me on the side? Like, I'll still live at my house and just come over when you want me? Or..."

Mikey frowns and thinks about it. "You'd have to drive over here every day. Wouldn't that get annoying for you? I don't know, Alicia is better at logistics stuff."

"No, Mikes, I mean, are you guys a pair with me as your boyfriend, or is it more like... all three of us?"

"Oh. I guess you're our boyfriend now? Like, a serious boyfriend? I'm not sure what the difference is."

"I don't know either. I don't want to, like, try to take more than I'm allowed."

Mikey strokes Pete's cheek. "There's no hidden rulebook. We just love you and want you here."

Pete kisses Mikey's fingers and closes his eyes. "I want to be here."

Mikey traces Pete's collarbones and the thorns there. "I really missed you naked."

"I don't look like I did then. Neither do you, though, I guess."

"You still look hot. Hotter, really."

"You turned into a supermodel sex god when nobody was looking."

Mikey bites back a smile. "I'm stealthy."

"I kind of miss the dark hair, though." Pete touches Mikey's face. "And the glasses."

Mikey makes a face. "The glasses were a pain in the ass."

"Dude." Pete makes a face at him. "Now you wear sunglasses all the time."

Mikey rolls him over and kisses him. "That's different."

Pete closes his eyes and gives in to the kissing. This is so much better than going to therapy.

Mikey loves how Pete's pliant and willing under him and how soft his mouth is. He's definitely ready for round two, but then Alicia coughs from the doorway.

"Pete," she says, hitching her towel up higher around herself. "You need to get ready. You will not distract us with sex."

Pete groans and kisses Mikey one last time. "You're like a steel trap."

"Mikey has spent years trying to use that trick on me."

Mikey sits up. "I guess I should set an example. Licia, show Pete our shower while I get dressed?"

"I can find it." Pete gets out of the bed. "You guys have couple time."

"Don't be silly, Pete." Alicia gets him a towel and takes him into the bathroom. "Don't take too long, okay? If we're on time, that means it'll end sooner."

"Right. Quick scrub, wash my face and my balls, good to go."

Alicia grins at him. "It's like you were made for us."

Pete blushes and gets in the shower. Oh, god, he's falling so hard. He can't help it.

Alicia goes back into the bedroom. "I'd say I was shocked you weren't taking the chance to shower too, but I've met you before."

"You can't smell sex on someone once they get dressed. Science."

"You've tested this hypothesis multiple times and every time you were wrong, Mikeyway."

"Nobody's going to be sniffing me today."

Alicia pulls on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. "We'll just come back home after and cuddle. Maybe walk Pig. She's probably tired of being downstairs all morning."

"Yeah, she needs some exercise." Mikey glances over at her. "You doing okay? I'm checking in."

Alicia can't help smiling wide. "I'm really happy. Is that weird? He's not really doing that well, and I feel happy."

"It's not weird unless you're happy because he's not doing well."

"That's not why." Alicia sits down next to Mikey on the bed and puts her head on his shoulder. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah. I like this."

"I like it too. What did you guys talk about when I was in the shower? You looked serious."

"He wanted to know if, like, you and I were a relationship and he was an add-on, or what the status was."

"What did you say?"

"That I didn't know."

"But he's our boyfriend, right?"

"I figured I should check with you before I said so."

"I think he should be our boyfriend. For real. I want serious with him, you want it too."

"Should he still live at his house and commute back and forth?"

"I want to say no, but maybe it's a good idea for us to take it slow? Do you know what he wants?"

"He's being hard to read about it. Maybe he'll talk about it with the therapist."

"I hope so." Alicia holds Mikey's hand. "We should talk to him later too."

"After we have sex, right?"

"Totally. That was awesome. I want to do it again. With full Pete-participation, if he's into it."

"I really want to go down on him."

Alicia nods vigorously. "Yeah. Me too."

"We're not, just, like, playing with him like a new toy, right?"

Alicia wrinkles her nose. "We're not just playing with him like a new toy. I want to kiss him and watch movies with him and, like, other non-sex stuff with him too. Right?"

"Yeah. Totally. But I also want to bite him on the ass."

"Biting him is great," Alicia agrees. "We're going to be late if he doesn't come out of there right now."

"I'll go get him." Mikey kisses her forehead and goes to knock on the bathroom door. "Pants on, dude."

Pete has been drying himself very thoroughly, both as a procrastination tactic and because he wants to hold on to the images of Mikey and Alicia naked together. "I'll be right out."

"It'll be okay."

"Yeah." Pete ties the towel around his waist and comes out of the bathroom. Alicia hands him his clothes. "You'll be with me."

"Yep. Right outside."

Pete nods and pulls his jeans on. "Let's go, I guess. The only way out is through."

Alicia and Mikey sit in the waiting room like parents, both of them bent over their phones the whole ninety minutes of Pete's super-sized appointment. Gerard texted Mikey six times while Mikey was busy that morning, and once Mikey texts him back, Gerard pounces.

"Where are you?" Gerard texts. "You've been off-radar all day."

"pete emergency"

"???"

"pete was having a hard time and licia and i adopted him"

"Like legally?"

"no. hes staying with us. also were dating him now."

"Wow you've been busy the last three days."

"We had sex this morning sort of."

"Which we?"

"it was a threesome Geezy keep up"

"wow a REALLY busy 3 days"

"are you pissed?"

"Its fine I just had no idea you were dating & sexing & adopting"

"i wasn't sure what was happening for a while. he was homeless in the park."

"Wait what?"

The recap of the last three days takes most of the ninety minutes, and by the end of it Mikey's battery is at 5%.

Pete comes out of the office with his hood up and his hands shoved in his pockets, but he smiles when he sees them. "Doughnuts now. A whole box of them."

Mikey and Alicia smile back at him and hold hands with him all the way to the car. "What's your chain of choice?"

"Anywhere. I don't care. I just want doughnuts and then, like, a nap, I think."

Alicia squeezes his hand and gets in the driver's seat. "We can do that."

"He says I need to go slow and be honest with myself."

"Be honest with us too if you can, okay? If something's not working for you or if you're worried about something."

"I'll try. Going slow is hard, though. I want the good times while I can get them."

"We're not going to drop you just like that." Alicia stays in the car while Mikey goes in to order the doughnuts. "Mikey and I really want to make this work out."

"I'm trying. I really am. I'm just...I'm a little gun-shy, I guess."

Alicia twists around to look at him. "Are we going too fast for you? We haven't really been helping with slow. At all. I guess we were kind of selfish."

"It's made me feel really wanted. So I don't get the slow part. If we go slow then I'll have time to think about how I'll fuck it up."

"We do really want you. A lot."

"So maybe I can do the be honest with myself part and skip the go slow part."

"Replace it with being honest with us if you can." Alicia unbuckles her seat belt and reaches over to kiss Pete. "We'll figure the relationship stuff out. Mikey and I have practice."

"You've had bonus people before?"

Alicia shakes her head. "No threesomes before, remember? We've just been married a long time."

"Oh. Right. I wasn't great at that part."

Mikey returns with a dozen doughnuts. "I thought about getting two dozen but then I remembered they might go stale."

"Not if you leave them down where Piglet can get them."

"I'm not cleaning up that much vomit again," says Mikey. "You guys look serious. Are we making major decisions?"

Pete shrugs and reaches for the box of doughnuts. "Talking about it. I really need a nap, though. Or at least somewhere quiet I can sit for a while and, like, process." Mikey hands Pete the box. "Let's go home."

Pete eats two doughnuts and closes his eyes, trying to internalize the thrum of the engine. It's okay. He's okay. His therapist didn't kick him out and call him a horrible person. Alicia and Mikey waited for him.

* * *

Alicia and Mikey help him out of the car and take him upstairs. Alicia even quickly changes the sheets before tucking Pete in. He feels kind of like a child again, but it makes him feel better anyway.

"What are you guys going to do?" he asks, burrowing down under the blankets.

"We'll play with Pig and Bunny outside and then just hang out downstairs, I guess," says Mikey. "Come find us when you're ready."

"Okay." Fuck, he feels like a tool, but he's supposed to be being honest. "If Pig or Bunny wants to stay inside, though that would... that would be okay, too."

Alicia runs a hand through Pete's hair. "I think Pig needs a walk. But I can find Bunny and bring her here. Would you like that?"

"Yeah. That'd be nice. She's good at cuddling."

Alicia finds Bunny curled up on Pete's pillow in the guest room. "He doesn't live here anymore, Bun." Bunny squeaks at her and allows herself to be picked up. Alicia scritches her under the chin and deposits her next to Pete's head, where she curls up, purring loudly.

"We're going to go downstairs now," says Mikey. "Just yell if you need anything."

Pete nods and rests his hand on Bunny's paws. "Thank you."

Bunny breathes wetly into Pete's face. It tickles. Her purring and soft fur are just what Pete needs to drift off and he doesn't even hear the door close.

Mikey takes Piglet into the back yard and throws her Frisbee for her for a while.

Alicia eats a doughnut and watches them play. Piglet is wagging her tail happily. She obviously felt a bit ignored.

"Who's my good girl? Who's my good baby pig?" Piglet wuffs and slobbers all over Mikey and steals the Frisbee.

"Now you definitely have to shower before we have sex again," says Alicia.

"She's not germy. She's a baby pig."

"Dogs totally have germs in their mouths, genius."

"Not Piglet. She's special. Hypoallergenic."

"You still have to shower." Alicia picks dirt out from under her nails. "We should feed him lunch when he wakes up."

"I'll make grilled cheeses."

"Awesome." Alicia steals the Frisbee from Mikey and tosses it to Pig. "I hope he's okay."

"Therapy is really tiring."

"I know." Alicia pets Piglet's muzzle and ears. "Is there anything different I should do with him than I did with you, do you think?"

"Remember he doesn't have the same backup. I always had Gerard and my band right there. He doesn't have that."

Alicia nods. "Okay. Love you."

"I love you too. You're rad."

"You are super extra rad, Mikey Way." Alicia kisses him despite the dog slobber.

"I love you almost as much as I love my bass."

Alicia shoves him. "I love you almost as much as I love fossils."

"Shit. We're both doing pretty good."

"Yeah, I think this relationship might work out."

He kisses her on the nose. "The dog needs our attention now. Look at how patient she's being."

Piglet is sitting on the ground in front of them and wagging her tail. "Who’s a good dog?" Alicia asks. "Maybe I should take her for a run."

"She'd like that. I'll stay here and do manly things."

"Can you sneak in some laundry into your manly things, baby?" Alicia suspects they might run out of clean sheets.

"Yeah, I can schedule in a load between lifting heavy objects and scratching my balls."

"Sweet. Please don't scratch your balls off. I need those." Alicia ruffles his hair. "Piggy, want to go for a run?"

Piglet barks and runs in a circle. Mikey salutes them both and goes into the house to gather up the laundry.

He loves his home. The house feels a little empty without Alicia and Piglet there, but knowing Pete is in their bed is exciting. He gets the washer going and goes upstairs to peek in on Pete. He and Bunny are both asleep. It's fucking cute, so he digs his phone out and takes a picture. He almost texts it to Gerard, but decides against it. That probably shouldn't be his first image of Mikey and Alicia's new relationship.

He also thinks about Tweeting it, just to really give the Internet something to talk about, but that would be really upsetting really fast. Gabe and Gerard knowing is enough for now. This new thing feels fragile.

Pete sighs in his sleep and curls up smaller around Bunny. Mikey really wants to lie down next to Pete and wrap his arms around him, but Pete wanted alone time. So Mikey pulls the door shut and goes downstairs.

* * *

Pete wakes up a few hours later and lies still for a few minutes, sorting out the facts from the grogginess in his head. He's in Mikey and Alicia's bed. Bunny is asleep on his arm. The sun through the window is definitely in the afternoon part of the sky. He's really hungry and he has to pee. All systems normal, then.

The peeing comes first, after the arm-from-Bunny extraction. Then Pete brushes his teeth, because his mouth feels gross and he thinks maybe it would be nice to kiss someone soon.

Mikey is sitting on the living room floor with a stack of comic books when he comes downstairs. "Hey, dude. Good nap?"

Mikey looks unbelievably good. Pete's not sure if he should come over and just get to the kissing part now. "Yeah. Your cat's a nap charmer."

"She's so good at napping. Olympic gold medalist in naps."

Pete sits down next to Mikey. "Sorry I bailed on you and Licia. There was... a lot, today. Where is she, by the way?"

"Running with the Pigster. They've been gone long enough now that I assume they stopped at Sarah's, though."

"Cool." Pete picks up a comic book and leafs through it without reading or retaining anything. "Can we have lunch?"

"Yes! I was going to make grilled cheese. Is that cool?"

"That's awesome." Pete looks a little below Mikey's eyes to avoid eye contact and then leans in for a kiss anyway.

Mikey makes a pleased noise and kisses him back. "I was hoping for that."

That makes a warm feeling rush through Pete. "I've been thinking about it since I woke up. Kiss me again?"

"Yup." Mikey kisses him long and thorough. "Feel any better?"

Pete runs his hand through Mikey's hair and keeps his lips pressed to Mikey's cheek. "Much. Lunch now?"

"In one second." Mikey turns his head fast and kisses Pete again. "You need to talk about anything?"

The nice buzz from kissing Mikey dies down a little bit. "In the car, I told Alicia that I don't want to go slow with you two."

Mikey nuzzles him. "That's cool."

"Really?" Pete tilts his neck so Mikey knows to kiss him there. "If you guys want me here, I want to be here. Not at my place."

"Okay." Mikey kisses along Pete's neck as directed. "We'll fix up the guest room so you have your own space when you want it, or as an office or whatever. Will you bring the little dude here or not explain this to him yet?"

"Really, you'd be okay with him hanging out here sometimes?" Nothing is that simple, in Pete's experience.

"I like kids if I don't have to parent them. But I don't want to get you in shit with the lawyers, man."

"This is probably why my therapist told me to go slow." Pete rubs his face. "Being with you is easy. Everything else is so fucking hard."

"We don't have to figure every detail out now. We can figure things out as they come up. One day at a time or whatever."

Pete leans heavily on Mikey. "Ashlee still has Bronx for another month. I guess that part can wait."

"Okay." Mikey kisses the top of his head. "Food now. Post-therapy protein boost."

Pete follows Mikey into the kitchen and sits at the counter, swinging his legs. "I want to see that cheese I picked out in action."

"This is some powerhouse cheese, I have to say."

"Watching you cook is pretty sexy, Mway."

"Oh yeah. Me and my frying pan. All greased up."

"Smells really good, too." And Mikey's arms look good in his t-shirt. "I think I feel better already."

"Good." Mikey starts making the sandwiches. "So I'm thinking later maybe I'll blow you."

Pete almost falls off the stool. "Yes. Please."

"I think Alicia maybe wants to do that, too, if that's cool. We can take turns."

Mikey hands him a grilled cheese sandwich like they're not talking about sex at all. "That's...more than cool," Pete says faintly.

"Good. And you don't have to touch us at all if you don't want to, but if you do want to, we'd be really happy."

Pete takes a bite of the sandwich. It's really good. Perfect, really. "I think I'm done with slow here, too. I wanted to touch you this morning."

"Yeah? Awesome. I can't wait to get naked with you when Alicia gets back."

Mikey's mouth is all shiny from the sandwich. "Maybe you could text her," Pete says.

Mikey nods and chews, digging his phone out of his pocket and punching in a message.

Pete looks at the phone and waits for it to buzz with a return text. "Does Sarah live far away?"

"Nope, only like half an hour jogging. Quicker if Alicia has her drive them back."

"Cool." Pete feels jittery all of a sudden. "How does this work? Is it okay for me to make out with one of you when the other isn't here? Obviously sex is off the table." There are so many questions. Pete's therapist was smart.

"I think so? We'll make sure she's on board when she gets back."

"Okay." Pete twiddles his thumbs. "Thanks for cooking for me. You take good care of me. Both of you do."

"We love you."

Pete smiles at Mikey. "I feel it. Can I help you wash up?"

"Yeah. And then we can read comics together till she gets back."

"Okay."

The washing up goes quickly and Mikey watches him the whole time and points out where things should go. Mikey puts his arm around Pete's waist when they're done. "Is this cool? Casual touching?"

Pete turns into it and presses close to Mikey. "It's good. Living in a park makes you miss being touched."

Mikey wraps both arms around him and holds tight. "Now you live in a house."

"Your house." He's never going to get over this.

"Piglet's house, really. We just rent."

Pete laughs. "Does she do all the repairs?"

"No, no, that's what she keeps us around for."

"Oh good." Pete takes one last deep breath and disentangles himself from Mikey so only their hands are touching. "You said something about comics?"

"Yeah. C'mon." Mikey takes his hand and squeezes it.

Pete holds Mikey's hand during comics-reading and listens to Mikey tell him all about the current plotlines. Mostly he just likes listening to Mikey talk. It's impossible to follow what Grant Morrison's done on Batman, anyway, so just letting Mikey's voice wash around him is better anyway.

Pete feels a little sleepy again, but also excited. If Mikey wasn't holding his hand, he'd be tapping out a rhythm waiting for Alicia to get back.

The front door opens and Piglet comes stampeding through like a herd of buffalo. She gallops directly at Pete and launches herself at him, licking all over his face. "Slobber everywhere," says Alicia.

"Do we both have to shower before bed now?" Mikey asks.

"Ideally. Unless you convince me otherwise."

"You are totally delaying hot threesome sex times, Licia." He wraps his arms around her legs and hugs her. "How's Sarah?"

"Good. We caught up." Alicia hugs Mikey back. "Hey, Pete. You're up."

"Yeah. We had lunch, too."

Alicia gets on her knees next to Pete and hugs him. "How are you?"

"Good. Pretty good. Mikey said something about blowjobs."

"Oh. Yes." Alicia looks up at Mikey. "The hot threesome sex you mentioned was, like, a for real right now kind of thing?"

"Yeah. We talked it out. We're ready to go. The bro code is bro'd."

"Okay!" Alicia jumps up. "Operation: blowjob underway. To the bedroom!"

"She doesn't waste any time," Mikey tells Pete. "And she's totally forgotten about making us shower, so, high-five for that."

"I heard that," Alicia yells from the stairs, but Pete high-fives Mikey anyway. And then he goes upstairs quickly, because he's ready.

Alicia's in the bedroom pulling her t-shirt off. "You want to be on the bed or standing up?"

"Bed, please," Pete says, and Mikey pushes him there, already reaching for his jeans.

Alicia steps out of her shorts and panties, then climbs up the bed to kneel between Pete's legs. "Hi. Nice to see you here again."

"Hi," Pete says weakly. She's so pretty and Pete kind of wants to apologize for being a loser, but he keeps his mouth shut. Mikey reaches inside Pete's jeans and palms his dick and Pete gasps.

"Be gentle, Mikey. Not everybody has one that's ready to go on a hair trigger like yours."

"Oh, mine's ready," Pete gasps when Mikey eases his boxers down. "Alicia."

"Take your pants off, Pete."

Pete squirms out of his pants like Alicia said with great effort, because Mikey's rucking his t-shirt up and tonguing the skin over his ribs. "That's not conducive to hand-eye coordination, Mikey."

"Mikey's a troublemaker. But just ignore him for now." Alicia leans in and licks up the length of Pete's cock. "Focus on me."

Pete tries hard to keep his eyes open and his hips still because she's so good. "Fuck, Alicia, you're amazing."

"I haven't even started yet."

Alicia breathes over the head of Pete's cock and sinks down, sucking gently. Pete cries out and Mikey kisses his neck. "Take it easy. This is going to last."

"She feels so good."

Alicia pulls off and bites the jut of Pete's hipbone. "Gonna make it even better."

"Don't tease, Licia." Mikey sticks his tongue out at her.

"That's like telling me not to breathe." Alicia bites Pete harder, until he cries out and fists a hand in her hair.

"Please, Licia."

"Be nice to him," Mikey says. Do I have to come down there and take over?"

Alicia hums and licks at the tip of Pete's cock. "Give me a minute." She sucks him into her mouth again and moves up and down, setting a rhythm.

Pete's whole body shudders. God, this is so good, so good. He can't believe he gets to have this.

"Stay still," says Mikey and sucks on Pete's nipple. "Don't come until I've had a turn."

"Kiss me?"

"Thought you'd never ask." Mikey tilts Pete's head and kisses him deep, pushing his tongue into Pete's mouth. He's going to take every bit of Pete he can. Pete presses up against Mikey's kiss, then falls back against the pillow and rocks his hips up toward Alicia.

Alicia rolls with it, sucking around him and pinching Pete's side. "Mikey, your turn now, I think. And my turn to kiss Pete."

They crawl all over him to switch positions. It's like he's part of the bedding. But instead of being upsetting, it's nice.

Alicia trails her hand along Pete's side and chest and Mikey runs his hands up and down Pete's thighs. He's kneeling between Pete's legs and his mouth is wet from Pete's mouth, and Alicia's mouth is all swollen from Pete's dick. "This is happening," Pete tells himself and the ceiling.

Mikey takes Pete deep right away. Alicia curves her hand around Pete's jaw and kisses him before he can cry out, swallowing the noises he makes.

Pete lets Alicia control the kiss and buries his hand in Mikey's hair and lets them take him and pull him apart.

"You can be loud," Mikey says when he pulls off to breathe, pressing a kiss to Pete's thigh. "You can yell all you want."

Pete cries out like it was an order and Alicia smiles against his mouth. "I'm going to help Mikey out."

"I'm going to die," Pete says hoarsely.

Alicia pets his cheek and slides down next to Mikey. They both look up at Pete with matching dark eyes and he bites his lip. "Please, please."

They take turns sucking him, pulling off slow and wet to kiss his thighs. He can't keep his hips from jerking or his thighs from shaking. It's so much sensation, too much, overwhelming. Pete knows he's being loud, but he can't help that either, and Mikey and Alicia urge him on with quiet firm voices until he shakes and falls apart, coming into Mikey's mouth while Alicia watches them hotly.

Alicia crawls up his body and kisses him. "Fingers. C'mon, Pete. Touch me."

Even her thighs are wet with how turned on she is. Pete sinks his fingers deep into her and rubs her clit with his thumb. Alicia arches up and her breasts brush Pete's face.

"You can suck them," she gasps. "Lick or bite or-- or whatever. C'mon. Harder."

Pete cups one of them with his free hand and licks and sucks the other, feeling her clench around him. "Next time I want to go down on you. Mikey too. Fuck."

"Okay." She tilts her head back and reaches for Mikey. "Get up here and kiss me."

Mikey kneels up next to her and kisses her hard. Pete gets distracted looking at Mikey's cock, red and curving up and leaking against his belly, until Alicia grabs his hand and presses it harder against her vulva. "Pete, pay attention."

"Sorry. Sorry. Just, his dick is... you should jerk him off."

Alicia smirks and wraps her hand around Mikey's cock. "His dick is what?"

"It needs attention."

Mikey's eyes flutter shut when Alicia moves her hand. "Did you mean that about going down?"

"Yes." Pete works his fingers harder against Alicia. "Absolutely."

Pete catches every change in Alicia's expression as her orgasm builds and her rhythm on Mikey's dick falters. "So fucking gorgeous, Licia, come for me. Come on."

Mikey kisses along her shoulders, then bites, and she jerks her head forward, coming hot and tight around Pete's fingers. "F-fuck."

"Fuck me," Pete says, catching her mouth in a kiss. Alicia slumps forward, still shivering jerkily, and lets go of Mikey's cock. "Finish him off, Pete."

Mikey crawls up to Pete, his dick flushed so dark now, his breathing rough and desperate. "Please."

Pete knows how to do this, he does. He jerks Mikey off with the same hand that was in Alicia and watches Mikey's face. Mikey never looks away from Pete even as he moans louder and louder.

"Come on me," Pete whispers. "Come on my chest, Mikey."

Mikey cries out and shudders, jerking his hips forward into Pete's hand and coming in hot splashes on Pete's skin.

Alicia flops down on the bed next to Pete. "Fuck."

"Fuck," Pete agrees. There's come on his chest. Mikey's come.

Mikey lies down on Pete's other side and buries his face in the pillow. "Wow."

"We totally had sex," says Pete. "Actual sex."

"We did." Alicia holds her hand up. "High-fives all around."

Pete and Mikey slap it. "What happens how?" Pete asks.

"We take a nap and later we order pizza for dinner," Mikey says. "Piglet doesn't get any because she's a chunk on legs."

"I might not be able to resist if she begs for crusts." Pete runs a finger along the curve of Alicia's breast. "But I meant more like existentially."

"That's what happens existentially, too." Alicia smiles at him. "Sometimes it's that simple." Pete kisses her smile and then turns around to kiss Mikey too. "I like that about you two."

"Me, too." Mikey kisses him back and then pulls a pillow over his head. "Now I need a post-orgasm nap. Go downstairs if you want to keep talking about existentialism."

"Veto," says Alicia and cuddles up close so Pete is firmly sandwiched between them, no room to move even if he wanted to. "We're all staying here."

Pete closes his eyes and smiles. He's staying there for good.

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga: Feb 2019 Edition

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is at the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link can be found through the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as will be pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

[nyalisa-landale]

ok so I WAS going to talk about how I finally got through to the psych's office and the receptionist STILL tried to give me the run-around, but then more interesting things happened.

and by interesting I mean stressful as fuck, but hey, whatever.

so my aunt is being discharged today, which means that the musical beds we've all been playing has to stop. my bed is... whatever; my room is full of shit and it's encroaching on my bed because I quite literally do not have anywhere else to put it, but whatever, I just kind of... sleep around and on top of it. with earplugs and headphones so that I can't hear the mice. (the mice are ever-present. I don't think there's a single room in the house they aren't in, and if there is then they're in the walls of that room, because fuck you.)

anyway, so my bed is... whatever; I move some shit around and put my pillows back and call it good. aunt's bed is super easy to remake; all I really had to do was shove the comforter over a bit and chuck her pillows back at the top and job done. (I was more concerned about vacuuming up all the hamster bedding that was painfully obvious since we moved the hamster out of the room. and also cleaning the hamster cage again.)

but mom's room. hoo boy.

mom has a waterbed. mom has had a waterbed my entire life, I guess because my dad preferred it. (mom also has his shitty bedframe that he bought with his first wife and kept in the divorce. it's an okay bedframe, with a really spaceous headboard, but it's like three fucking feet high.) the thing about waterbeds? well, actually there's two things about them: the first is that they have to be heated, because who the fuck wants to sleep on top of 220 gallons of cold water? fucking nobody, that's who. (that's right, 220 gallons. it's a fucking california king. because my dad does nothing by halves.) and of course our cats loved hiding behind that thing, and so of course they unplugged the fucking heater at some point. (we haven't had cats in that house since 2014 so uh. that should tell you how long ago that was.)

the second thing about waterbeds is that they are, by nature, filled with water. and like anything filled with water, they can spring a leak. now, we knew my mom's mattress had developed a leak, but we weren't quite sure where, and at any rate there was way too much shit on her bed for us to be able to strip it and drain it. (her room is like mine, re: full of shit which is encroaching on the bed; in her case this happened to be a large majority of our wardrobes, mostly hers but also some of mine, and some books. including, as I tragically learned, one of my mixx comics sailor moon volumes. T^T)

anyway she was all super insistent that we had to remake her bed so that she could actually sleep on it, because apparently I had messed it up or... something? idk. anyway, so we had it more or less done, when she discovered... that the bottom layers on her side? were soaked through where they used absolutely no business being. so she asks me for some scissors and she starts cutting, and then she has me clamber over to the other side to finish, and long story short we, uh, found a way to get everything off the bed and then strip it, because the water damage went further than she realised and the whole thing just needs to be drained and to go in the fucking trash. (that was when I discovered my sailor moon mixx comics volume 3 crammed in somewhere nice and wet, though to be fair it didn't get as bad as some of the other books, so I have a small amount of hope for it.)

(I actually screamed when I found it, like, lilterally fucking wailed in despair, and my mom was all like "it's just a book, it can be replaced" and was... very surprised when I informed her that no, actually, it probably can't be, or at least not without spending a lot of money. it's way the hell out of print and there's new translations. and there's probably no interest now in the mixx comics translations anyway, because tbh they weren't that great, but that was the translation I grew up with, bunny, v-babe, and all. I even have the first... I want to say 28, but it might be 35, chapters in single issue American-style comic form, still from mixx comics; I just don't know where they are and, tbh, I'm kind of afraid of what state they'll be in when I do find them.

anyway, there's a lot of nostalgia tied up in those late-90s/early-00s sailor moon comics for me, is the point.)

anyway, all asides aside, our entire plan for the day was entirely detailed because we still have to pick my aunt up. and we could in theory take her right home, but mom doesn't have anywhere to sleep at home, on account of the waterbed thing coming to a head. I told her she could leave me at dad's house and sleep in my room, but no, she refused. and we can't really just drop my aunt off at home and leave her there; if nothing else my brother openly hates her and she's... probably not all the way recovered. his gf is home and she's at least friendly and helpful, but they're also gonna have their hands full with the waterbed (he almost outright refused to do it, but then he was all "I'll ask gf" and then mom handed over her card in case he needed to buy anything and so suddenly now it's all getting taken care of. although I think gf would have made him do it anyway, because she's friendly and helpful and also if they don't do it then mom, as established, literally has nowhere to sleep, except maybe the fucking floor which, I keep reminding her, is not an option.)

so we're picking up aunt and then heading for dad's house. he's conveniently in the hospital so he isn't exactly using it right now (and ain't that just a story in and of itself). at first mom was all "oh my sister can sleep in your dad's bed and you and I can sleep in grandma's room" and then she was like "wait no what if she falls off your dad's bed" so now aunt is going to take grandma's room and mom is going to take dad's room and I am going to either sleep in there with her (it's a full; we should fit) or on the couch or something.

cause mom has to go to work tomorrow, and the commute from my dad's house is garbage, but she kind of doesn't have a choice. and then either she's going to drag me and my aunt awake at like 5am (unlikely) or she's going to come back for us after work and after her dr's appointment (which, oh, by the way, she has one of those tomorrow, too).

I don't really want to be alone with my aunt, but she'll... probably mostly keep to herself, I think. and I've got plenty of shit to keep myself occupied (especially if I can charge my goddamn ds again) plus, you know, THE OLYMPICS, so I should be good. (aaaaaa I can watch figure skating in hd on a nice tv if I'm at dad's, yay) mostly I just don't want to be stuck having to play caretaker? because I can't even take care of my own goddamn self; I definitely need to not be responsible for someone else's health and well-being. but then, according to the doctors, she's sufficiently recovered as to be able to take care of her own damn self, hence her being discharged. I... am less certain of that, having been witness to the clusterfuck that is the medical industry and my dad on multiple occasions, but then my aunt has better insurance and got to convalesce in a way nicer place than anywhere my dad has ever been in, so. I guess we'll see.

[theruinthatfollows-blog]

Albatross

It’ll be seven years this January since I was raped, the first time. Four years in June the second time. One month today since I was released from Havenwyck Psychiatric Hospital.  I finally sunk to the bottom of my well. No one said rock bottom would be like this, that it would be like falling asleep. Slow, gentle, and suddenly so deep and dark; no one said it would be this hard crawling back up either.  

There’s much, much more to my story, but I don’t quite know how to translate it yet. For years, friends and family have told me to write a blog, share my story, my pain. Every time I try I feel lost; and for the sake of those who know me, and will know of this blog, I will be changing the names of certain individuals. 

So where the fuck do I begin? Do I start with where I’m at now or how I got here? Do I do both? In pieces? A reflection of my fragmented mind? Let’s start with the perfect storm that led to my diagnosis. . . 

At the end of July, I had just moved into my first apartment. Ever. Twenty-five years old, and I finally had a space to call mine, in a sense. I knew my depression was getting bad a few months prior, around the time of my birthday, but I ignored it. I slept 11 hours on Saturdays. I barely combed my hair. My cats were lucky if I cleaned the litter box more than three times a month. I had been depressed since I was a teenager and nothing so far had truly helped so I let go of trying. I still took my paxil, but nothing changed. 

It wasn’t too long after I moved into my own place that my father needed to have a surgery. Bypass surgery. On his left leg which he hadn’t been able to feel for the last few years due to undiagnosed diabetes. The vascular specialist urged him to go in for surgery immediately. My father is not a perfect man, but he was the perfect man for the job of helping to raise me. He understood me in ways no one else, not even my friends did, because he and I have similar souls. The idea of losing my father, even though the procedure would be routine, immediately caused me anxiety. And to make matters worse, the original procedure couldn’t be done because of complications with my father’s veins and the insurance company’s change of policies, which they conveniently forgot to inform their insurees of.  So the surgery went from being scheduled in early August to early September. My depression and anxiety level stayed the same. I barely ate. I barely slept a full eight hours. I worked forty hours a week. 

September 10th: two days before my father’s surgery

I am anxious. I’m bored and lonely. I figure, well, I’ll go to the mall and get some cool knick-knacks and posters for my apartment; or I’ll find a funny t-shirt for my dad that will cheer him up when I see him in the hospital. I stop what I’m doing and just grab my purse and go. Uncombed hair in a bun, hoodie, no deodorant. I did not give a fuck what I looked like. I didn’t care about anything, except my family, but even then, I felt so much it was numbing. I get to the mall and enter through one of the bigger stores, Lord & Taylor. I head up to the second level where the fun stores like Hot Topic and Spencer’s are located. 

Almost as soon as I get out into the rest of the open aisle ways, a tall, Middle Eastern man makes eye contact with me. He asks to show me something at a kiosk two or three feet away. I don't know why I didn't just say, fuck off. I don't know why, but I sat down. I’ve always been told that I am too nice for my own good. This isn’t the first time I’ve found it to be prophetic.

Almost immediately this man started calling me "Mufasa”, "honey” and “cute”. While he uses these sexually charged terms of harassment, I grow increasingly uncomfortable. This man, Jovani, proceeds to call me cute again and tells me he wants my number. At this point, I feel trapped and creeped out. "What if this man follows me and rapes me?" I've been raped by someone I thought was my friend, so I can't imagine what a stranger could be capable of. No one, male or female, should ever have to consider this, but I have, and I did. I felt unclean. I felt my rapists all over me again. I felt sick.

Every other time he mentions the product, he tells me I'll get free stuff or I'll get a deal because I am cute. “I really want your phone number, I'm not joking with you, Mona-Monet." He keeps talking about getting my number and starts getting handsy with me, slightly brushing my chest as he tosses my hair forward. I finally give in and agree to buy his product, as he places a blank receipt slip in front of me and says, "phone number" with a creepy smile. I give him my debit card for the hair straightener and two conditioners for $159 dollars. Then, I black out. It's the first time in more than 6 years, that I've blacked out. It's not convenient. It's not fun. It's terrifying. (The psychiatrists think the psychosis began earlier when my PTSD was triggered, but that the break didn’t happen until later.)

Next that I know, I'm walking with two bags, heavy bags, in Spencer's. I don't remember getting all this shit. What the fuck?, I think to myself. “It’s probably all the free stuff he said he was gonna give you. You probably just blacked out for a second or two.” I try to keep my cool.  I don't know what's happened, but I do know I no longer want to be there or anywhere where this man could find me. I leave and head to Wal-Mart for some groceries on my way back home. I stop at the atm inside to check my account. " No balance inquiry," it says. Well, I figured it was a glitch and pay for my stuff with my credit card. I log online to my bank account in the car. 500 dollars, gone. I'm panicking. Why the hell is 500 dollars gone? What the fuck happened? I drive back to the mall and message a friend from work. I'm crying and can barely muster up the courage to go inside and confront his man who sexually harassed me. I breathe in and out slowly until I can move my legs. I can't even make it to the kiosk. I see him and hide behind one of the big ninja turtle posters by the elevator. I see that he's texted me because he says it’s him, Jovani, and I ask if can return all the items in these two bags. He said no "no refunds. Only exchanges." From what I could remember, he never mentioned a no-refund policy. I didn't see it on the receipt I signed. I freak out. I call a friend, crying, almost sobbing. I leave as fast as I can and drop one of the bags in the store I left through. The other bag, I threw away when I got home. I didn't keep the original receipt. 

Monday - 9/11 Now 700 dollars is gone from my account. An additional charge from the merchant had been made. I call the bank, they say that can't do anything because technically the charges were on hold and in the meantime call the manufacturer. After explaining the situation, the manufacturer refused to refund my money. The only time I’ve spent more than 500 dollars was for rent and a lease deposit. I wait and hope for the best. I go to bed immediately when I get home, tossing and turning the whole night.

Tuesday - 9/12 day of my father's bypass surgery. Couldn't and didn't sleep through the night, got to work at 7 to start a 10-hour shift (I worked 40 hours by Thursday without taking a lunch to be with my father on Friday the 15th). I do my work anxiously as I wait for the news on my father. I check my bank account during a short morning break; now all my money was gone, almost $1200. I immediately call the bank to get dispute paperwork. I fill out the forms and use the entire back of the sheet to explain what happened. Fax it. Finally, I get news that my father made it through surgery and will have a hard recovery. 

For the two days following, I work ten-hour shifts and hear nothing from the bank. I don’t eat dinner. I miss a night of taking my Paxil. I call the bank during my lunch period and a worker tells me they sent a letter and via the account manager my dispute reasoning is "insufficient." I break down in front of my coworkers. They have no idea of how my family has lived pay check to pay check and the burden of private student loans with an 11 percent interest rate. They don’t understand the pressure I’ve felt to be more than myself, to be greatness, to be better. I worked hard for that money, and it was taken. I lost control. I was helpless, like when I was raped.  My brother and friends keep telling me to file a complaint but I don’t consider it until that Saturday. Before I went to the mall to file a complaint I drove 2 hours to see my father in the hospital and offer my mother some much-needed support. 

I avoid the entrance I used the last time I went to the mall. I find customer service and tell them a merchant stole my money and I want to file a complaint. I start crying. I can’t seem to stop crying lately. A security officer is immediately called. He takes my statement. I wasn’t much help to him. I'm confused, agitated. I got my dates mixed up and thought it was two days ahead of the 15th. I couldn’t remember the drive to the mall. I couldn’t stop crying or shaking. The security officer is doing the best he can to keep me calm, he takes thorough notes. Novi police come out to the mall. They take my statement again and proceed upstairs to the kiosk. My face hurts from all the tears. My stomach is in knots. 20 minutes pass. The police officers and security guard look angry. Jovani showed them three receipts. He showed them texts on his phone with my number attached. He told them a whole different story. I did not recall three transactions. I did not recall more than the text asking for a refund. I couldn’t fathom what they meant or could be talking about. I had no recollection. After crying and pleading with them to help me, they place me under arrest for filing a false police report. All the while, people stare and take pictures. One of the police officers told me that I was "lucky he wasn't charging me with a felony." As the doctors later explained, this is when I had a psychotic break. I had blackouts before. I had disassociated before while I was being raped. Nothing like these blackouts, so close together happening though. Nothing so terrifying. I remember stepping out of the police car while counting to twelve. Next memory: hands strapped down, lying in a hospital bed, clumps of my hair on the bed beside my right hand. The nurses ask me why I was pulling out my hair. Next memory: waking up in the middle of the night, a different room. Two days later after the immense amount of drugs I was under finally wore off some, I find out from a polite nurse that I have been involuntarily petitioned for a stay (an indeterminate amount of time) at Havenwyck Hospital - a psychiatric hospital. No one knew where I was for three days. I had no one. No phone privileges for two days. No change of clothes. I smelled horrible. I’m still processing my stay at the hospital. All the smells, sights, sounds, feelings. Dr. Tadeo diagnosed me with Bipolar II disorder with OCD tendencies, trichotillomania, and PTSD.

It’s been a month since my six-day stay at Havenwyck. I have a psychiatrist. This psychiatrist does not really believe in PTSD but believes I had Bipolar II, OCD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I have a therapist as well that I now see once a week. Soon I have another court date to determine the eligibility of probation for the unintentional false police report. And just recently my work put me on a leave of absence because of my poor performance and accidental overdose of Xanax. My albatross only grew heavier at the bottom of the well. . .