#you wanna know why your knives should be sharp not dull and you should limit serrated knife use

[hiddenbysuccubi]

FASHION turn to the left FASHION turn to the right

Anyway I ADHD f'd with my bandage and ended up redoing the wound care with silver sulfadiazine and mom had me cut old (clean) pantyhose to put over the taped up gauze this time. Very cutesy.

[serenagaywaterford]

are you willing to post the first chapter of your sequel at all? i’m dying to read more of your serena/ june works and i’ll take ANYthing you’ve got haha

Honestly... I can’t. It’s just... I feel like I don’t wanna post that if I’m gonna post anything cos it’s very much a transitional chapter. And it’s long lol.

Maybe a part that isn’t super spoilery?

Context: June POV now. I really prefer writing Serena (and find it a lot more organic), but I wanted to challenge myself and approach it from a different angle. June’s voice is so much more difficult for me.

----

Awkwardness is not unfamiliar territory for the two of you, and this appears to be no exception. Something in your chest is tight with want, you think. It hurts anyway and the only possible solution you are considering is physically moving closer to her, but your muscles resist. There's something off about her, and in all honesty, you're not totally okay with the whole “Serena Joy Waterford of all fucking people is my... well, whatever she is.” No word is ever sufficient, and as an editor, that lack of applicable vocabulary should be humiliating, so you write it off as a limitation of the English language instead. 

There's probably a word for it in German. There's always a word in German. All the same, you've never been okay with it, because there's a snarling voice that nags in the back of your mind about how much you can't fucking stand her.

But it's a tiny voice, and it gets weaker each day. Especially when she touches you, when she whispers your name, when she smiles at your daughters. 

You suppose that’s just how memory works, doesn’t it? You lose a little bit every day, until even the bad things get worn down, their once sharp edges becoming dull and soft. Blood-letting gives way to soft bruises, and eventually to nothing much at all. Just a ghost of a kiss, spectre of a pinch. It’s easier to live with that way, to just wear the edges down and put them aside. Old knives in a drawer somewhere.

But it doesn’t happen equally, or all at once. The good memories and even the neutral ones, the everyday occurrences, those ordinary and often mundane moments take on a sort of nostalgic flair, steeping them in a spirit they lacked in the beginning. Some of these become sharper, brighter, embroidering them with meaning and endearing your own imaginings to your mind.

Perhaps it’s just a mechanism of self-preservation but it’s this way with Serena. The uncomfortable memories, the violence and pain that once were immediate and real, fade into a murky grey netherworld. Meanwhile, the ordinary are imbued with more substance than they should have. You consume these new versions of the past like air itself. As you squint, the humdrum becomes the holy with the long passage of time, with her, and with the unrelenting longing you have.

Slowly, you inch out from under the blankets and shift over to where she sits, quietly, patiently. It's not the first time you've sat in silence, side by side, on a bed. It's sort of like a thing of yours. A particular something that you two just do. This time however, you don't reach for her hand. It's always you doing the comforting and asking and reaching out. Sometimes it would be nice for it to be the other way around. Maybe it's petty of you because you know she's a bit out of it, exhausted, and certainly she could use it, but if she won't open up and speak about why she's suddenly here in your bedroom at midnight, why should you?

You have a thousand questions about everything that's happened but she's unwilling to talk to you about it. In a sense, you're fine with the silence because you and Serena have always existed more between the things you don't say. Despite being two women whose entire existences prior to Gilead relied entirely on words, it was the quietness, the touches of skin on skin in the dark, the cold glares, the slow clench of a jaw or fist that, those were what enveloped your language instead of words.

Nothing much has changed except the nature of the silence.

Her gaze shifts from a blank stare at the wall to your face, and there are the unshed tears that she's defiantly holding back, her lips set tightly. It's not the first time you've seen that look; uncomfortable nostalgia calls back to that horrible house in Gilead. Serena never debased herself to ask for help or comfort, even if she came to you first. She would just stare at you with those pathetic, misty puppy dog eyes, cheeks sometimes covered with tears, and hoped you make the first move, and every single time, you had. You would ask if she's okay, she'd play the silent pity card, and you'd move towards her. Perhaps that's just how you work, like magnets, you're inexorably attracted to her weakness just as she's attracted to your strength. How awful that would be if it's true.

She's such a pain in the ass.

Again, like always, you attempt to resist but fail after a while. (She wins.) Rage suits her features so much better, not this pathetic, bumbling misery. 

Maybe it's a subtle revenge but you don't take her hand, not this time. You reach out and glide your fingers lightly across the swell of her abdomen where the baby is before resting your palm against her. You focus on the unborn fetus, not the woman herself. Something about it makes your skin crawl when you role-play this way and you're mystified about how easily she could do this for months on end.

There are no prayers you want to recite, like she did when she first crawled into your bed at night, like a predator. Instead, you whisper, “Hello in there. How are you, baby?”